On this Day: Margaret Thatcher Steps Down as Britain’s Prime Minister

Mrs. Thatcher left 10 Downing Street, the traditional home of the British prime minister, to be driven to Buckingham Palace where she tendered her resignation to Queen Elizabeth II, the head of state. The incoming prime minister was John Major. 

As head of the Conservative Party, Mrs. Thatcher had informed the House of Commons of her decision days earlier, but until a successor could be named she could not complete her formal departure.

During her tenure, the longest since the late 19th century, Mrs. Thatcher was dubbed the Iron Lady by Moscow—a title she relished—for her outspoken opposition to the Soviet Union. 

At the same time, she embraced Mikhail Gorbachev as a man she could do business with. She formed strong bonds with President Ronald Reagan and the first President Bush, and gained wide popularity in Britain for her decision to retake the Falkland Islands from Argentina.

But her economic policies, though credited with reducing inflation, were considered tough on unions and Britain’s welfare state, and, together with her lack of support for the Common Market, proved her undoing within her own party.

“We’re leaving Downing Street for the last time after eleven-and-a-half years and we’re happy to leave the UK in a very much better state than when we came in,” Mrs. Thatcher told reporters in her last speech as prime minister.

Not everyone shared the high opinions of her time in office, and it was her own party members, convinced that she could not win another election, and afraid of losing office, who proved her undoing.

Thatcher's entire political life, which continued after she left office and adopted the title of Baroness Thatcher of Kesteven, or Lady Thatcher, is chronicled in detail on the Margaret Thatcher Foundation site.

The man who led the assault on Mrs. Thatcher’s leadership, and proved her undoing, was Sir Geoffrey Howe, who resigned as deputy prime minister on Nov. 1, 1990. Sir Geoffrey advocated taking a stronger role within the European Economic Community, a position that Mrs. Thatcher did not support. This video vividly portrays their almost spiteful differences.

The ownership of the Falklands Islands, known as Las Malvinas in Buenos Aires, had been a matter of dispute between Argentina and Britain for many years. But when Argentina invaded the islands in 1982, it presented Mrs. Thatcher, beset by domestic unpopularity, with an opportunity no Iron Lady could pass up. It proved a defining moment of her years in office, and the pivotal point in her otherwise-unexpected victory in the 1983 election.

The sinking by a British submarine of the General Belgrano, an Argentine cruiser that was outside the 200-mile exclusion zone and was actually sailing away from the Falklands, proved to be one of the most contentious issues in the conflict.

It was not only the Falklands War, or while she was in office her conflict with the U.K. unions, that allowed the Iron Lady to show her mettle. Many commentators at the time of the first Gulf War in 1991 voiced the opinion that it was her determination that gave President George Bush the push that he needed to declare war on Iraq after Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait. Her own words in this PBS Frontline interview would seem to support that conviction.

If further evidence of her influence were needed, Mrs. Thatcher’s account of a phone conversation with President George H.W. Bush is famous for its “no time to go wobbly” admonition.