Former British PM Margaret Thatcher dead at 87
Posted Apr 8, 2013 7:16 am.
This article is more than 5 years old.
Former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher has died at the age of 87.
“It is with great sadness that Mark and Carol Thatcher announced that their mother Baroness Thatcher died peacefully following a stroke this morning,” her former spokesman Lord Bell said in a statement.
The BBC reports Thatcher will receive a “ceremonial funeral with military honours at St Paul’s Cathedral”, according to Downing Street officials.
Buckingham Palace says Queen Elizabeth II was sad to hear the news of the death of Margaret Thatcher.
The palace said Monday that the queen will be sending a private message of sympathy to the family.
Prime Minister David Cameron also expressed sadness, saying “we have lost a great leader, a great prime minister and a great Briton.”
Thatcher — known as “the Iron Lady” — was Conservative prime minister from 1979 to 1990. She was the first woman to serve as prime minister.
She was also the only prime minister in British history to win three consecutive elections.
Although she was loved by capitalists and western conservatives like former U.S. president Ronald Regan and former Canadian prime minister Brian Mulroney, she was disliked by the British union movement for privatizing state-owned industry and utilities and reforming trade unions.
She retired from public engagements in 2002 following a series of small strokes, and was only occasionally seen in public since then.
