Abstract
This text is an extract from Margaret Thatcher's Memoirs, 'My Downing Street Years'. This book is an autobiography written by Thatcher herself in 1995, in which she explains her ideology and justifies her government policies, led from 1979 to 1990. This book is more a political manifesto of Thatcherism, than a simple autobiography as she wrote in her first book 'The Path to power'. This is due to the fact that she was a politician and that she here takes the occasion to respond and answer back the critics made about her and the Tories at the end of her three terms as a Prime Minister. And she does so with a pleasant ironic tone. Thatcher came into power in 1979 after the crisis of Keynesianism in 1975, which was largely blamed on the big state and very mighty trade unions, and after the Labour's electoral defeat and the 'winter of discontent (1978-1979)'. Therefore, Thatcherism emphasised the small state, free markets and weaker trade unions in order to reverse Britain's economic decline. Nevertheless, this ideology did not succeed. It paradoxically only left a legacy in the political background of Britain. Indeed, when she resigned in 1990, 28% of the children in Great Britain were considered to be below poverty line, a number that kept rising to 30% in 1994 during the Conservative government of John Major, who succeeded Thatcher.
