A Tribute to Baroness Thatcher from the Bishop of Oxford

As others have said, she changed the face of Britain, opening up new avenues of possibility in all directions – share ownership, home ownership, the liberalisation of markets, entrepreneurial innovation and so on. She strengthened Britain’s role in the world with her clear policies on defence, the Falklands, Northern Ireland, Communism, Europe, South Africa and more. No-one was in any doubt that there was a force in the land.

I spent the last years of the 1980s in County Durham, so I know some of the deep divisions Lady Thatcher’s policies caused. Billy Elliot country was not an all-singing, all-dancing landscape. It’s almost impossible to find moderate opinions, for or against, on her style of leadership, but the one thing we can all acknowledge is that she was a leader of absolute integrity in terms of her own beliefs. She was an iconic ‘conviction politician.’

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