HR0249 98TH GENERAL ASSEMBLY

HR0249 LRB098 11743 GRL 44715 r

HOUSE RESOLUTION

WHEREAS, The Right Honorable The Baroness Margaret Thatcher was born Margaret Hilda Roberts, the daughter of a small-business grocer in Grantham, a large town in Lincolnshire in rural England, on October 13, 1925; and

WHEREAS, Despite her humble origins in what was then a strongly aristocratic, male-dominated society, Margaret Roberts won a chemistry scholarship to Oxford University; despite the distractions of the Blitz and World War II, she studied hard and graduated with honors in 1947; and

WHEREAS, During her time as a student, Margaret Roberts developed a deep reverence for conservative economic values, which she saw as necessary bulwarks to the freedom of individuals and their nations; armed with these beliefs, she became president of the Oxford University Conservative Association in 1946; and

WHEREAS, While working as a food chemist on a team that helped to perfect the product called "soft-serve ice cream" in the United States, Margaret Roberts continued her political career and was assigned by the Conservative Party to stand for Parliament in the heavily Labor-minded seat of Dartford; predictably losing the election, she met businessman Denis Thatcher, who would become her husband and lifelong partner in 1951; and

WHEREAS, After pursuing legal studies and qualifying as a barrister in 1953, Margaret Thatcher again stood for Parliament in 1959 and was elected; rising through the ranks of the Conservative Members of Parliament, she was chosen in 1970 to serve as Secretary of State for Education and Science and became the Conservative Party Leader and Leader of the Opposition in 1975; and

WHEREAS, Great Britain was at that time governed by a prime minister and government that were ideologically committed to socialism, and, perhaps as a consequence of this commitment, the nation was moving towards insolvency; Opposition Leader Thatcher's response, broadcast over the BBC in February of 1976, was to say that "Socialist governments traditionally do make a financial mess. They always run out of other peoples' money"; and

WHEREAS, As the English-speaking world faced the grim times of the 1970s, Margaret Thatcher's uncompromising demand that her people rediscover their historic ties to the cause of individual freedom appealed to voters throughout England; on May 3, 1979, these voters elected enough Conservative members to the House of Parliament to give Thatcher's Opposition a majority; and

WHEREAS, On the following day, May 4, 1979, Queen Elizabeth II asked Margaret Thatcher to form a Government for the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, making Thatcher the first elected female head of government in Europe; and

WHEREAS, When, in November in 1980, the United Kingdom's historic ally, the United States of America, voted to elect Ronald Reagan to be its President, Prime Minister Thatcher had a friend in the American White House with whom she could share the burdens of the leadership of the free world for the following 8 years; and

WHEREAS, Prime Minister Thatcher led the United Kingdom for 11 1/2 years until November of 1990, making hers the longest premiership of the 20th century; her leadership was often controversial, but her friends and adversaries alike agreed in her unshakeable beliefs in individualism, freedom, and the United Kingdom's alliance with the United States; and

WHEREAS, Margaret Thatcher lived to see the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the dissolution of the government of the Soviet Union in Moscow in 1991, as well as the complete victory of the West in the Cold War, causes for which she had dedicated her life; and

WHEREAS, The Right Honorable Margaret Thatcher was awarded the highest civilian honor of the United States, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, in 1991; and

WHEREAS, The Right Honorable The Baroness Thatcher passed away at the age of 87 on April 8, 2013, in London; therefore, be it

RESOLVED, BY THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES OF THE NINETY-EIGHTH GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE STATE OF ILLINOIS, that we pay tribute to the memory of Margaret Thatcher, one of the pillars of global leadership in the Cold War and one of the first women to rise to the position of head of a nation of world power; and be it further

RESOLVED, That we acknowledge and express gratitude for the friendship that Prime Minister Thatcher always bore towards the United States of America and its people; and be it further

RESOLVED, That suitable copies of this resolution be delivered to Baroness Thatcher's daughter, Carol Thatcher; her son, Mark Thatcher; the Embassy of the United Kingdom, Washington, D.C.; and to the office of the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.