Martin Parr Quotes

Margaret Thatcher had more impact on the world than any woman ruler since Catherine the Great of Russia. Not only did she turn around - decisively - the British economy in the 1980s, she also saw her methods copied in more than 50 countries.

Margaret Thatcher made tough decisions. She put people out of work and she stood up to labor unions and she did a lot of things that I did not like.

Margaret Thatcher effected profound change in the society and for that she became very unpopular.

Watching the Commons tribute to Margaret Thatcher was like being suffocated inside a gigantic sticky toffee pudding, but one with nasty bogeys planted inside. There was much of the 'Margaret Thatcher who was lucky enough to know me,' especially from her own side of the House.

My only thought about Margaret Thatcher is the same one I had about Ronald Reagan. I hated a lot of what they did, but once in a while a country just needs a change.

In the 1980s and 1990s, radical change in economic policies fostered by Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher put the brakes on government planning and ushered in a new free-market supply-side era and a two-decade boom. That model has been abandoned in the new century. This must be reversed.

After Margaret Thatcher's funeral, I spoke at a tribute meeting organised by her supporters in a pub next to St Paul's.

From the start of her leadership of the Conservative party in February 1975, Thatcher's style seemed shrill and uncompromising, and she became an easy object of mockery. When she left office nearly 16 years later, she was a widely recognised, but clearly still highly controversial, figure.

David Cameron is no Margaret Thatcher.

In a way, the debate about Margaret Thatcher in Britain has just gotten fossilized in this notion that she is either this she-devil who wrecked the industrial base of the country and ruined the lives of millions, or she is the blessed Margaret who saved the nation and rescued us from our post-war decline.

Blair worshipped Thatcherism, could see little or no wrong in it, believed that that was what the country needed, thought that there was no alternative, regarded it as a legacy that had to be built on rather than rejected.

In London - and forget those extra public pressures on politicians - the lovely old Sloane world of manor houses simply hasn't cut it since Big Bang in 1986, the point at which Mrs. Thatcher really started to achieve her ambition to make this country more like America - its ambition, economy, it's very tangible measures of success.

My hope that Thatcher would inadvertently bring about a new political revolution was well and truly bogus. All that sprang out of Thatcherism were extreme financialisation, the triumph of the shopping mall over the corner store, the fetishisation of housing and Tony Blair.

I am sure future historians will say the biggest and most astonishing change in politics has been the embracing of all the tenets of Thatcherism by the party of Keir Hardie: trade union legislation, Europe, the replacement of Trident, 10 per cent tax for people who have made millions from their companies.

I became a Conservative in the late 1980s because I could see that the Conservative party had transformed Britain's economy and our standing in the world compared to Labour in the 1980s.

I never was a great Thatcher fan, and it wasn't a sad day in my life when she resigned.

Thatcher was the motivation for my entire political career. I hated everything she stood for.

Spare me this sanctimony about politeness, please. There are millions of people in this country who hate the very word 'Thatcher' and 'Thatcherism,' which continues until this day.

In the future, people will blame the Eighties for all societal ills in the same way that people have previously blamed the Sixties. The various Thatcherite Big Bangs - monetarism, deregulation, libertarianism - have been working their way through the culture ever since.

So all the system was running down and collapsing. Mrs. Thatcher became the leader of the Conservative Party in February 1975, and she clearly wanted to strike out and do something different.

I believe Mrs. Thatcher's emphasis on enterprise was right.

Thatcherism has become bigger than she ever was.

Thatcher was the best politician I have ever witnessed.

The neoliberal policies implemented first by the Thatcher governments in the 1980s and continued by New Labour and the current coalition have resulted in a privatisation of stress.

If you're dealing with a powerful leader, you're inevitably going to have a dialogue with her political past. It was always my intention to interrogate Thatcher's political life.