Thatcher

 

Put in its bluntest form: the main threat to our environment is more and more people, and their activities: • The land they cultivate ever more intensively; • The forests they cut down and burn; • The mountain sides they lay bare; • The fossil fuels they burn; • The rivers and the seas they pollute.

The result is that change in future is likely to be more fundamental and more widespread than anything we have known hitherto. Change to the sea around us, change to the atmosphere above, leading in turn to change in the world's climate, which could alter the way we live in the most fundamental way of all.

That prospect is a new factor in human affairs. It is comparable in its implications to the discovery of how to split the atom. Indeed, its results could be even more far-reaching.

Margaret Thatcher, United Nations, New York City 1989

This October, Grantham will mark the anniversary of Margaret Thatcher’s birth with a series of events.

For many, her legacy is bitter. I think of my parents’ unemployment, the miners’ strikes, the Brixton riots, and the devastation of the poll tax. For countless families, her policies left scars that are still felt today.

And yet—she was also a woman who broke barriers. A state-educated girl who went on to study chemistry at Oxford. A barrister who passed the bar just six months after giving birth. And the first woman to become UK prime minister, at a time when women were still not entitled to equal pay.

So how do we reconcile these two sides? A leader whose politics divided a nation, and a woman whose achievements were groundbreaking in themselves.

One part of her legacy that often gets overlooked is her 1989 speech to the United Nations—decades ahead of its time in recognising climate change as a fundamental threat to humanity. Here’s a passage that feels just as urgent today:

“Put in its bluntest form: the main threat to our environment is more and more people, and their activities... The result is that change in future is likely to be more fundamental and more widespread than anything we have known hitherto... Change in the world’s climate, which could alter the way we live in the most fundamental way of all.”

So here’s my question:
👉 How should we remember Margaret Thatcher today? By the pain her policies caused, by the barriers she broke, or by the foresight of her words?

I’d love to hear your thoughts.

History rarely leaves us with simple heroes or villains. But sometimes it leaves us with moments of brilliance worth remembering.