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Margaret Hilda Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher, LG, OM, PC, FRS (néeRoberts, 13 October 1925 – 8 April 2013), was the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1990 and the Leader of the Conservative Party from 1975 to 1990. She was the longest-serving British Prime Minister of the 20th century and is the only woman to have held the office. A Soviet journalist called her the “Iron Lady“, a nickname that became associated with her uncompromising politics and leadership style. As Prime Minister, she implemented policies that have come to be known as Thatcherism.Originally a research chemist before becoming a barrister, Thatcher was elected Member of Parliament (MP) for Finchley in 1959. Edward Heath appointed her Secretary of State for Education and Science in his 1970 government. In 1975, Thatcher defeated Heath in theConservative Party leadership election to become Leader of the Opposition and became the first woman to lead a major political party in the United Kingdom. She became Prime Minister after winning the1979 general election.On moving into 10 Downing Street, Thatcher introduced a series of political and economic initiatives intended to reverse high unemployment and Britain's struggles in the wake of the Winter of Discontent and an ongoing recession.[nb 1] Her political philosophy and economic policies emphasised deregulation (particularly of the financial sector), flexible labour markets, the privatisation ofstate-owned companies, and reducing the power and influence of trade unions. Thatcher's popularity during her first years in office waned amid recession and high unemployment until the 1982 Falklands Warbrought a resurgence of support, resulting in her re-election in 1983.Thatcher was re-elected for a third term in 1987. During this period her support for a Community Charge (referred to as the “poll tax“) was widely unpopular and her views on the European Community were not shared by others in her Cabinet. She resigned as Prime Minister and party leader in November 1990, after Michael Heseltine launched achallenge to her leadership. After retiring from the Commons in 1992, she was given a life peerage as Baroness Thatcher, of Kesteven in the county of Lincolnshire, which entitled her to sit in the House of Lords. After a series of small strokes in 2002, she was advised to withdraw from public speaking, and in 2013 she died of another stroke in London at the age of 87.Later life (1990–2013)Thatcher returned to the backbenches as MP for Finchley for two years after leaving the premiership.[203] She retired from the House at the 1992 election, aged 66, saying that leaving the Commons would allow her more freedom to speak her mind.[204]Post-CommonsAfter leaving the House of Commons, Thatcher became the first former Prime Minister to set up a foundation;[205] the British wing was dissolved in 2005 because of financial difficulties.[206] She wrote two volumes of memoirs, The Downing Street Years (1993) and The Path to Power (1995). In 1991, she and her husband Dennis moved to a house in Chester Square, a residential garden square in central London's Belgravia district.[207]In 1992, Thatcher was hired by the tobacco company Philip Morris as a “geopolitical consultant“ for $250,000 per year and an annual contribution of $250,000 to her foundation. She also earned $50,000 for each speech she delivered.[208]In August 1992, Thatcher called for NATO to stop the Serbian assault on Goražde and Sarajevo to end ethnic cleansing during the Bosnian War. She compared the situation in Bosnia to “the worst excesses of the Nazis“, and warned that there could be a “holocaust“.[209] She had been an advocate of Croatian and Slovenianindependence.[210] In a 1991 interview for Croatian Radiotelevision, Thatcher had commented on the Yugoslav Wars; she was critical of Western governments for not recognising the breakaway republics of Croatia and Slovenia as independent states and supplying them with arms after the Serbian-led Yugoslav Army attacked.[211]She made a series of speeches in the Lords criticising the Maastricht Treaty,[204] describing it as “a treaty too far“ and stated “I could never have signed this treaty“.[212] She cited A. V. Dicey when stating that as all three main parties were in favour of the treaty, the people should have their say in a referendum.[213]Thatcher with Yasuhiro Nakasone(far left), Mikhail Gorbachev (left) and Brian Mulroney (centre) at Reagan's funeralThatcher was honorary Chancellor of the College of William and Mary in Virginia (1993–2000)[214] and also of the University of Buckingham (1992–1999), the UK's first private university, which she had opened in 1975.[215]After Tony Blair's election as Labour Party leader in 1994, Thatcher praised Blair in an interview as “probably the most formidable Labour leader since Hugh Gaitskell. I see a lot of socialism behind their front bench, but not in Mr Blair. I think he genuinely has moved“.[216]In 1998, Thatcher called for the release of fo。