The Downing Street Years

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Vehicle access was curtailed in 1973 when metal barriers were placed across the entrance to the street. [18] In 1974, the Metropolitan Police proposed erecting a semi-permanent barrier between the pavement and carriageway on the Foreign Office side to keep pedestrians off the main part of the street. The proposal came with assurances that tourists would still be permitted to take photographs at the door of Number 10. The Prime Minister, Harold Wilson, rejected the proposal, feeling that it would appear to be an unacceptable restriction of the freedom of the public. Wilson's private secretary wrote "I much regret this further erosion of the Englishman's right to wander at will in Downing Street." [19] Mrs. Thatcher’s great battle with the coal miners union in 1984 is now the stuff of legend. She writes that “history intertwined with myth seemed to have made coal mining in Britain a special case: it had become an industry where reason simply did not apply.” She was unwilling to relent on coal pit closures on economic grounds, as indeed the Labour government had closed 32 pits between 1974-79. Suffice it to say that a similar strike had toppled the Conservative government of Ted Heath some 10 years earlier. By contrast, the miners gradually returned to work in 1985 having won no concessions from the Thatcher government. The union was permanently hobbled, uneconomic pits were closed, and Mrs. Thatcher won over the greater part of public opinion. As the years progressed (and due largely to the continued efforts of Norman Tebbit), the TUC was no longer in a position to cripple industry or public services with strikes. And despite the rhetoric which sough to cast Labour and the unions as noble defenders of the working man, many of the Thatcher government’s reforms were undeniably beneficial to workers’ rights—e.g., state-subsidized mail ballots, which prevented union leaders from intimidating workers into supporting strikes with public votes.

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That isn't to say that what she wrote wasn't interesting or didn't made me smile. As an example, her certainty that they'd seen off the Labour party as a party of "prolonged government" had to make me laugh, while her concerns about how a unified Germany might destablise Europe has to make you doubt her judgment. Access-restricted-item true Addeddate 2020-12-10 02:49:22 Boxid IA40001320 Camera Sony Alpha-A6300 (Control) Collection_set printdisabled External-identifier Some of the most famous British political leaders have lived and worked in Number 10, including Robert Walpole, William Gladstone, Benjamin Disraeli, David Lloyd George, Winston Churchill and Margaret Thatcher. Matthew d'Ancona: Michael Gove is now Chief Whip to the nation". The Evening Standard. 16 July 2014 . Retrieved 13 September 2022. Access through these gates led to a political scandal known as Plebgate (or Gategate), which started in September 2012. The trigger was an altercation between Conservative Chief Whip Andrew Mitchell, and the police officers on duty at these gates. Mitchell had to resign as the Government Chief Whip because of the incident.Only the most partisan and deluded of her critics will deny that the country Mrs. Thatcher inherited in 1979 was in shambles. Her election victory came on the heels of Britain’s “Winter of Discontent”—a period between 1978-79 when strikes by public sector trade unions brought the country to its knees. But the struggles had begun much earlier. The British economy was chronically ill throughout the 1970s—so bad by 1974 that Foreign Secretary James Callaghan warned of an impending “breakdown of democracy.” Inflation reached a crippling 26.9% in late 1975, leading Harold Wilson’s Labour government to adopt an incomes policy that capped pay increases for public sector workers at government-mandated limits. Sanctions were levied to persuade private companies to follow suit. But while inflation had halved by 1978, Mr. Callaghan (now the PM) and his minority Labour government kept wage increases capped below 5%. The Trades Union Congress (TUC), which had played nice with their Labour allies for three years, finally revolted. When Mr. Callaghan announced that the general election anticipated for September would be postponed until the next year, he set off the largest disruption of British labor since 1926. For more than three hundred years, it has held the official residences of both the First Lord of the Treasury, the office now synonymous with that of the Prime Minister, and the Second Lord of the Treasury, the office held by the Chancellor of the Exchequer. The Prime Minister's official residence is 10 Downing Street, and the Chancellor's official residence is Number 11. The government's Chief Whip has an official residence at Number 12. In practice, these office-holders may live in different flats; the current Chief Whip actually lives at Number 9. The houses on the south side of the street were demolished in the 19th century to make way for government offices now occupied by the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office. Downing Street has been the official residence of the Second Lord of the Treasury, the Chancellor of the Exchequer since 1828. The residence was built alongside the official residence of the Prime Minister at Number 10 in 1682.

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See also: Townhouse (Great Britain) Downing Street looking west. The Foreign and Commonwealth Office is on the left, the red house is No.12, the dark houses are No.11 and No.10 (nearer, and partially obscured), and the building on the right is the Barry wing of the Cabinet Office, which has its main frontage to Whitehall. The corner at Downing Street and Whitehall Some sources believe that Thatcher wrote at least part of the book at the Manor House Hotel, in Castle Combe, in the Full Glass bar. [12] [13] Reception [ edit ] urn:lcp:downingstreetyea00that:epub:c07def68-f06f-4ffa-92bd-6b7da3f59877 Extramarc OhioLINK Library Catalog Foldoutcount 0 Identifier downingstreetyea00that Identifier-ark ark:/13960/t2f776j7g Isbn 0060170565 A Man on the Moon/The Downing Street Years/Ben & Jerry's: The Inside Scoop/The Withering Child (Reader's Digest Today's Best Nonfiction, Volume 30: 1994) Larry, the Downing Street cat, gets in the royal wedding spirit in a Union flag bow-tie before the wedding of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge.One the things that kept me from reading this book for so long, was my fear that I was not familiar enough with British politics or government to fully appreciate this memoir. In some instances that was true. Lady Thatcher used so many acronyms that were lost on me. I had to look up many, and oftentimes, even when I understood what they now meant, the people and departments were still too foreign for me to fully comprehend. That said, those times were the minority.

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Access-restricted-item true Addeddate 2010-12-03 23:15:58 Boxid IA137121 Camera Canon EOS 5D Mark II City New York, NY Comment Set Scanfee to 100 on all Pre-June IA Sponsored Books as per Robert Donor Following the resignation of David Cameron on 24th June 2016, Theresa May became the second female Prime Minister of Britain, taking office on 13th July. Boris Johnson replaced her in 2019, going on to win a landslide election in December that year. After his resignation, in 2022 Liz Truss became the UK’s third female Prime Minister and the shortest serving Prime Minister to date. She resigned just 45 days later, to be replaced by Rishi Sunak. Downing Street is the official residence of the First Lord of the Treasury, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. The two roles have been filled by the same person since the 1720s with almost no exceptions. It has fulfilled this role since 1735. Originally three houses, Number 10 was offered to Sir Robert Walpole by King George II in 1732 and now contains approximately 100 rooms. A private residence occupies the third floor and there is a kitchen in the basement. The other floors contain offices and conference, reception, sitting and dining rooms where the Prime Minister works, and where government ministers, national leaders and foreign dignitaries are met and entertained. At the rear is an interior courtyard and a terrace overlooking a garden of 0.5 acres (2,000 m 2). Other residents of 10 Downing Street are the Spouse of the Prime Minister and family, Downing Street Director of Communications and Chief Mouser to the Cabinet Office. Margaret Thatcher was a woman who rescued her nation from it's economic woes and inspired a whole generation to rise above the challenges they faced. Her courage, determination, and passion may never be seen again. In this book, she focuses on the tasks she performed while in office and explains the difficult decisions she made. Unlike Winston Churchill who valued the books he wrote just as much as his accomplishments, Thatcher didn't want her decisions recorded. It took pressure to persuade her to write the story. This is all that I would want from such a book. Obviously it is written from a Conservative perspective, which clearly offends some of the other reviewers, (what did they expect?).After securing the royal lease, Downing built between 15 and 20 terrace houses on the street that now bears his name. Although the haphazardly numbered homes—10 Downing Street was actually 5 Downing Street until 1779—were designed by Sir Christopher Wren, they were built on the cheap. In addition, the marshy property wasn’t the most solid ground for building, and 10 Downing Street’s shallow foundations and shoddy construction would plague future British prime ministers, including Winston Churchill who called the residence “shaky and lightly built by the profiteering contractor whose name they bear.” Barriers were erected at the St James's Park end of the street for the unveiling of the Cenotaph on 11 November 1920. They were a public safety measure intended to prevent the crowds in Whitehall becoming too dense. [16]