On April 8, 2013, former British Prime Minister "Margaret Thatcher", known as the "Iron Lady", died of a sudden stroke at the Ritz Hotel in London at the age of 87.
On the 17th of the same month, the funeral was carried out in the form of a ceremonial funeral at St. Paul's Cathedral in the capital, London, according to his will, and cost nearly 10 million pounds.
More than 2,000 guests were invited to attend the funeral, and in addition to celebrities and dignitaries, Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom also came to the scene with Prince Philip to pay tribute.
Thatcher's funeral
On the morning of 17 April 2013, Thatcher's coffin was removed from Westminster Abbey and escorted by the Royal Artillery Pair to St. Paul's Cathedral for burial, gathering people from all over the world along the way.
In addition to the ordinary British crowd and Thatcher's supporters, there was no shortage of opposition, and the strong opponents of "Thatcherism" held aloft placards with the words "rest in shame" in demonstration.
Activities of the demonstrators
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="5" > character experiences</h1>
Margaret Thatcher, full name Margaret Hilda Thatcher, was born on 13 October 1925 in Granson, England, to a relatively wealthy merchant family.
Influenced by his father as a teenager, the young Thatcher showed a strong desire for politics.
In daily life, his father often warned Thatcher not to blindly obey others, but to have his own independent thinking and judgment, and these admonitions always affected Thatcher's life in the future.
Because of her intelligence and studiousness from an early age, her parents had high hopes in Thatcher, and when she reached the age of school, her family sent her to an aristocratic school in order to give her daughter a better education.
Margaret Thatcher
In middle school, Margaret Thatcher began to show her extraordinary way of thinking and vision, there was a touring group to perform at the school, when the touring group proposed to discuss the current situation of the world, Thatcher combined with the specific conditions of the society at that time, put forward some targeted and sharp questions, everyone present was quite shocked by her questions,
In the 1940s, Margaret Thatcher began some political activities as a conservative member of Oxford University, and in 1945, Margaret Thatcher's father was successfully elected in the general election and immediately became the mayor of Greenson, England, under the influence of which Margaret Thatcher began to plan a more ambitious career blueprint.
After entering politics on May 3, 1979, Margaret Thatcher became the first female prime minister in British history, and was later nicknamed the "Iron Lady" by the Soviet media because of her fierce behavior during her tenure.
In addition to her political achievements, Margaret Thatcher also gained the love of her life in her love life. The love affair between the two began with a chance encounter in the London block, when Dennis drove on the London Boulevard, the roadside Margaret Thatcher attracted her attention, Dennis took the initiative to greet Margaret Thatcher and invited her to take a car to the train station.
The two talked freely along the way, and after a brief contact, the two left contact information and began to contact frequently.
Soon, after a long time together, the relationship between the two gradually warmed up, and Dennis held a strong love for Thatcher, so he proposed to Thatcher. The two married on December 13, 1951, with the blessing of their family friends.
Thatcher and Dennis
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="12" > refused a state funeral, and the queen made an exception</h1>
On April 3, 2013, Margaret Thatcher, one of the world's greatest women of the twentieth century, passed away. On April 17, two weeks after Margaret Thatcher's death, her funeral was scheduled for St. Paul's Cathedral, a world-famous religious shrine.
At the funeral ceremony, in order to commemorate Thatcher's life's achievements, the scene decoration specially selected that Margaret Thatcher's favorite military and political elements. The British government issued more than 2,000 invitations, and the funeral guest list was drawn up by Margaret Thatcher's family and representatives, and finalized with the assistance of the British government and the Conservative Party.
The invited personnel include important national and regional dignitaries and representatives. On the day of the funeral, the members of the United Nations Security Council stood in silence for Margaret Thatcher for a minute of silence before the meeting, in honor.
That morning, Margaret Thatcher's hearse departed from St. Mary's Church and passed by the London neighborhood to bid farewell to the British crowd, which was filled with mournful cries.
The coffin was then transferred to the royal artillery convoy, and according to the custom of ceremonial funerals, the coffin gradually marched along the street queue, guarded by soldiers on both sides of the street, and the on-site security measures were tight, and the public could only watch along the street.
The procession arrived at St. Paul's Cathedral, greeted by the British Royal Honor Guard, and it is reported that the funeral site was full. Margaret Thatcher's ashes were buried in the Chelsea Royal Cemetery, accompanied by her husband Dennis.
At the memorial service site, Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom made an exception and brought her husband Prince Philip to mourn, which is also rare in British history, according to British royal tradition, the Queen of the United Kingdom generally does not attend the funeral of the former prime minister.
The Queen of England attends the funeral
The only exception in history was churchill's funeral that year, while Margaret Thatcher shared the same military honors as Queen Elizabeth II's mother and Princess Diana.
However, the funeral was full of joy and some were worried, and there were still many discordant voices at the scene, and conflicts and contradictions between the moments were concentrated on the day of the funeral.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="17" > marchers at funerals</h1>
On the day of the funeral, in addition to the guests attending the funeral and the British crowd watching, the scene almost became a carnival party of many "Thatcher" opponents. The opponents made no secret of their "hatred" for Margaret Thatcher, holding aloft parade plaques with sarcastic remarks that became the focus of the farewell procession that day.
To this end, British university students also organized a special event called "Maggie's Farewell Party", and there was also a gathering of more than 200 people in the Brixton community in south London, with people holding champagne in their hands and shouting: "Maggie, Maggie, Maggie - dead, dead, dead." ”。
On the day of Thatcher's funeral, as Thatcher's hearse pulled out of Westminster Abbey, demonstrators from all over the country flocked to the city with their arms raised in arms and waving parade plaques in their hands. Along the way, more than 3,000 demonstrators gathered, far larger than the guests.
Opposition followed the convoy's footsteps in protest, and in the face of the camera, college students did not shy away from saying: "Even at the risk of arrest, we will not hesitate." ”
Workers interviewed by the BBC claimed: "She destroyed my home with her own hands. ”
However, why is it that Margaret Thatcher, who has been quite successful in her life, is still criticized after she quit politics?
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="21" > the rich rejoice and the poor worry</h1>
During her tenure, Margaret Thatcher implemented many measures favorable to Britain and made great contributions to Britain's economic development. However, due to its consistent iron-fisted policy, it still caused dissatisfaction among many citizens.
Among them, Thatcher's most "notorious" reform policy is the "poll tax" that she led - the citizens of the country, whether rich or poor, have to pay the same tax, abolishing the original "rich pay more taxes, poor people pay less taxes" policy.
Margaret Thatcher believed that the national government provided the poor and the rich with the same level of protection and treatment, and the state treated them equally, and would not treat them specially because of their status as rich people, let alone abandon him because of their poor status.
Based on this theory, Margaret Thatcher believed that there was no reason for the poor to pay less taxes and began to promote the "poll tax" policy on a large scale in the country.
But this successfully provoked contradictions within British society, and to this day some people still believe that It was Margaret Thatcher who tore apart the originally intact Britain.
Second, Margaret Thatcher preached policies such as privatization of the state, cuts in public spending, control of currency issuance, and suppression of union power. She advocated an emphasis on reduced government intervention, the opening of domestic and foreign free markets, and corporateism, of which privatization was the most important component of Thatcherism.
After being re-elected prime minister, Thatcher openly sold large state-owned enterprises to capitalists at low prices on the pretext of activating the domestic market economy, which directly led to the privatization of social resources that were originally controlled by the state.
Under the long-term influence of this policy, social wealth is often concentrated only in the hands of the country's rich, and with it, the gap between the rich and the poor in British society is getting wider and wider, and the rich are richer and the poorer.
Growing socioeconomic inequalities have led directly to soaring crime rates in the country, severe divisions in communities, universal unpopularity in Thatcherism, and growing voices of domestic discontent.
Many British masses even publicly stated that "the rich like her, but the poor hate her".
Former London Mayor Livingstone said: "Almost all the problems facing British society today are the legacy of Thatcherism, and the United Kingdom is now full of crises. ”
Former Mayor of London Livingstone
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="24" > strong woman in the workplace and "bad mother" in the family</h1>
In addition to her international status as a political leader, former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher is also a mother of two children, and the family life behind her is little known. But compared to her political achievements, strong women in the workplace have become a "bad mother" of the family.
Because Margaret Thatcher has been engaged in political activities for many years, work and career occupy most of her life, which directly leads to her lack of time to take care of family life, often absent from the life education of her children.
In her later years, Margaret Thatcher said in an interview that one of the most regrettable things in life was that she neglected her family because of her political career, and she also paid a huge price for it.
Thatcher's family
In 1951 Margaret Thatcher married her husband Dennis, and two years after the marriage she gave birth to a son and a daughter, Mark, and daughter Carol. However, due to political connections, when the children were only two months old, Margaret Thatcher, who was thinking about her work, entrusted them to her husband who supported her work and left home to return to politics.
At the age of school, with the care of the children in mind, Thatcher and her husband decided to send their children to boarding school, where son Mark and daughter Carol spent their childhood without parental company.
By the adolescence of her children, Margaret Thatcher, although she had achieved considerable success in her career, was repeatedly frustrated in front of her family.
In the face of her son's increasingly violent temperament and cold and rebellious daughter, Thatcher's maternal love was worthless in the eyes of the children, and even became a growth shackle in their eyes.
Thatcher and two children
His son Mark often used his mother's name in the political arena to do whatever he wanted and cause trouble. Once in a car rally, Mark lost contact with the team because of missing the direction, after learning the news, Margaret Thatcher first called a military plane to search, after a search, Mark was able to survive.
However, in the face of his mother's many tolerances, Mark still did not grow, and the most serious one even interfered in the internal affairs of other countries in the name of his mother, and was imprisoned in his home in South Africa, and then bailed back to China with the help of his mother.
And carol, the daughter who has lacked maternal love since childhood, has never been able to let go, and the mother-daughter relationship is cold. In Carol's words, it was more of an admiration and admiration for her identity than the love for her mother.
In her later years, Margaret Thatcher lived in the company of her husband Dennis until her husband Dennis died of illness in 2003. Mrs. Thatcher, who lost her husband, was devastated, and her memory began to regress severely, nearly depressed at one point, and gradually showed signs of stroke, and was soon diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease.
For a long time, Margaret Thatcher, whose memory was fading, had almost lost her ability to take care of herself, she was unable to read, was unresponsive, and had difficulty communicating with people. I can only stay at home alone all day, waiting for one night after another to usher in the dawn.
Whenever she woke up, Margaret Thatcher would sit quietly by the large bayonet windows, looking out over the frolicking crowds of people in the nearby beach park.
Thatcher and her husband
Margaret Thatcher, who was absent from the family because of her career, rarely accompanied her children until her death. Margaret Thatcher's daughter even said in public: "She was absent from our childhood, and we had very few opportunities to see our mothers as children, so she should not expect anything from her children." ”
In addition to the cold relationship with her children, Thatcher often recalled her husband Dennis at a certain moment, because of the more serious illness, even forgot the fact that her husband had long died, until people around her reminded that Thatcher repeatedly chewed on her controversial life in the process of repeated memories and forgetting, until the end of her life.
Thatcher in his later years
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="31" > conclusion</h1>
In the 1980s, Margaret Thatcher rose to prominence in British politics as a prime minister known for her toughness.
Throughout Thatcher's life, Thatcher is like a shining star in modern politics, and her dramatic life is legendary.
Now that time has changed, decades have passed, and today's British society is full of mixed evaluations of Margaret Thatcher, but it is undeniable that Margaret Thatcher made great contributions to British society, economy and culture during her tenure as Prime Minister.
Although many of his policies were later criticized by the people, they were called "dictatorial rulers".
But in the special era, a series of policies she advocated successfully revitalized britain, which was once on the verge of collapse, and successfully stabilized Britain's position in the European Union and the world.
Her political legacy is so valuable that even today's British government is still revered, and Margaret Thatcher, as the first female Prime Minister in British history, will naturally not be easily erased by history.
< h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="34" > references</h1>
Margaret Hilda Thatcher. Memoirs of Margaret Thatcher[M]. First edition. Inner Mongolia:Inner Mongolia-Yuanfang Publishing House, 1997.
SONG Xinrui,ZHAO Guangxia. Thatcher's funeral was held in the same format as a concubine, and the Queen of England made an exception to participate[R]. Beijing:Beijing Daily, April 18, 2013.