"Thatcher Was a Dyed-in-the-Wool Social Conservative."
Not really. It was TV journalist Andrew Marr who came up with one of the best one-liners about Thatcher: "Margaret Thatcher was a child of the sixties -- the 1860s." Thatcher loved to invoke images of a halcyon Britain where people relied on their own individual initiative to get ahead, where the needy received care from private charity, and where values of thrift and hard work reigned supreme.
In many ways, however, she was entirely a creature of the second half of the 20th century. Though she was the product of a strict Methodist upbringing that emphasized individual responsibility and respect for traditional values, her record as a Conservative Party parliamentarian shows that she approved of legal abortion and also voted for a landmark law in the 1960s that decriminalized homosexuality. (To be sure, she later angered gay rights advocates with her support for a 1988 measure that prohibited schools from teaching "the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship.") She might have found some common ground with today's U.S. Republicans over capital punishment, of which she strongly approved. Yet it's hard to imagine that her other views on social issues would have proved amenable to the American conservatives who today hold her in such high regard.
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