Margaret Thatcher is no more. Few political figures are distinguished by their courage and inflexibility to achieve their goals. She was one of them.

When James Callaghan had to cede power, everything was to rebuild. Heavy industry were declining, trade unions paralyzed the country by force, the  bureaucracy was almighty. The entrepreneurship spirit was on the low side. It took her a lot of courage to start a “Thatcher revolution” while all the European Left cried wolf.

She has never hidden her ideological proximity with the Chicago School which advocated monetarism, control of the currency, economic deregulation, fiscal austerity, less government, privatization of large parts of the public economy (telecom, rail, energy).

She met all the great leaders of the 1980s who shared his ideological choices: Ronald Reagan, Brian Mulroney, Pinochet whose Chicago Boys straightened the Chilean economy after the  Allende period(Socialist Left allied with the revolutionary left of the MIR).

She was  the target of the left because of her relentless fight against communism. Friend of Ronald Reagan, she didn’t  refuse dialogue with Gorbachev while remaining firm on her positions. The market economy, freedom of thought and action, the unity of the United Kingdom and its economic and moral recovery  were her  reasons of living.  She had ideas and fought and fought again.

She was mocked by the left for her  flawless patriotism  she showed to the whole world in her Bruges  speech in 1988 about European decentralization. She did not care, she took always position. what has ever the  mainstream opinion could think about her. She disliked political correctness.

She had the guts to contradict the trade union and resisted to the attacks of Scargill and his men and their long lasting strike. She stood firm and won.

Her legacy will remain vivid in our spirits and will still be inspiring for XXIst century leaders.

Farewell “Iron  Lady”. History will not forget you!

To remember this great personnality, we reproduce here her speech of Bruges where she, in the beginning, paid tribute to the courage of belgian doctors who saved so many lifes in the “Herald of Free Enterprise”disaster. After she defined her inspirational vision of Britain and Europe.

MIGUEL D. DESNERCK