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1
HOUSE RESOLUTION

 
2    WHEREAS, The Right Honorable The Baroness Margaret
3Thatcher was born Margaret Hilda Roberts, the daughter of a
4small-business grocer in Grantham, a large town in Lincolnshire
5in rural England, on October 13, 1925; and
 
6    WHEREAS, Despite her humble origins in what was then a
7strongly aristocratic, male-dominated society, Margaret
8Roberts won a chemistry scholarship to Oxford University;
9despite the distractions of the Blitz and World War II, she
10studied hard and graduated with honors in 1947; and
 
11    WHEREAS, During her time as a student, Margaret Roberts
12developed a deep reverence for conservative economic values,
13which she saw as necessary bulwarks to the freedom of
14individuals and their nations; armed with these beliefs, she
15became president of the Oxford University Conservative
16Association in 1946; and
 
17    WHEREAS, While working as a food chemist on a team that
18helped to perfect the product called "soft-serve ice cream" in
19the United States, Margaret Roberts continued her political
20career and was assigned by the Conservative Party to stand for
21Parliament in the heavily Labor-minded seat of Dartford;
22predictably losing the election, she met businessman Denis

 

 

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1Thatcher, who would become her husband and lifelong partner in
21951; and
 
3    WHEREAS, After pursuing legal studies and qualifying as a
4barrister in 1953, Margaret Thatcher again stood for Parliament
5in 1959 and was elected; rising through the ranks of the
6Conservative Members of Parliament, she was chosen in 1970 to
7serve as Secretary of State for Education and Science and
8became the Conservative Party Leader and Leader of the
9Opposition in 1975; and
 
10    WHEREAS, Great Britain was at that time governed by a prime
11minister and government that were ideologically committed to
12socialism, and, perhaps as a consequence of this commitment,
13the nation was moving towards insolvency; Opposition Leader
14Thatcher's response, broadcast over the BBC in February of
151976, was to say that "Socialist governments traditionally do
16make a financial mess. They always run out of other peoples'
17money"; and
 
18    WHEREAS, As the English-speaking world faced the grim times
19of the 1970s, Margaret Thatcher's uncompromising demand that
20her people rediscover their historic ties to the cause of
21individual freedom appealed to voters throughout England; on
22May 3, 1979, these voters elected enough Conservative members
23to the House of Parliament to give Thatcher's Opposition a

 

 

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1majority; and
 
2    WHEREAS, On the following day, May 4, 1979, Queen Elizabeth
3II asked Margaret Thatcher to form a Government for the United
4Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, making Thatcher
5the first elected female head of government in Europe; and
 
6    WHEREAS, When, in November in 1980, the United Kingdom's
7historic ally, the United States of America, voted to elect
8Ronald Reagan to be its President, Prime Minister Thatcher had
9a friend in the American White House with whom she could share
10the burdens of the leadership of the free world for the
11following 8 years; and
 
12    WHEREAS, Prime Minister Thatcher led the United Kingdom for
1311 1/2 years until November of 1990, making hers the longest
14premiership of the 20th century; her leadership was often
15controversial, but her friends and adversaries alike agreed in
16her unshakeable beliefs in individualism, freedom, and the
17United Kingdom's alliance with the United States; and
 
18    WHEREAS, Margaret Thatcher lived to see the fall of the
19Berlin Wall in 1989 and the dissolution of the government of
20the Soviet Union in Moscow in 1991, as well as the complete
21victory of the West in the Cold War, causes for which she had
22dedicated her life; and
 

 

 

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1    WHEREAS, The Right Honorable Margaret Thatcher was awarded
2the highest civilian honor of the United States, the
3Presidential Medal of Freedom, in 1991; and
 
4    WHEREAS, The Right Honorable The Baroness Thatcher passed
5away at the age of 87 on April 8, 2013, in London; therefore,
6be it
 
7    RESOLVED, BY THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES OF THE
8NINETY-EIGHTH GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE STATE OF ILLINOIS, that
9we pay tribute to the memory of Margaret Thatcher, one of the
10pillars of global leadership in the Cold War and one of the
11first women to rise to the position of head of a nation of
12world power; and be it further
 
13    RESOLVED, That we acknowledge and express gratitude for the
14friendship that Prime Minister Thatcher always bore towards the
15United States of America and its people; and be it further
 
16    RESOLVED, That suitable copies of this resolution be
17delivered to Baroness Thatcher's daughter, Carol Thatcher; her
18son, Mark Thatcher; the Embassy of the United Kingdom,
19Washington, D.C.; and to the office of the Prime Minister of
20the United Kingdom.