It is with the greatest sadness the Bow Group accepts the passing of Baroness Margaret Thatcher.
The Bow Group will always be indebted to the life and legacy of Margaret Thatcher. Her work defined and will continue to define the outlook and direction of the organisation in all that we do.
As a think tank, the Bow Group became a foundry of ideas for free market liberalism that eventually overcame the Keynsian consensus of the post-war era. The successful 1979 Conservative Party Manifesto, which Margaret Thatcher was first elected under, was largely the product of the work of Peter Lilley and others from the Bow Group, who had been campaigning for a change in direction in Conservative leadership and policy for a decade.
The appointment of many of the Bow Group’s senior executive – including Geoffrey Howe, Norman Lamont, Kenneth Clarke, John Major, Peter Lilley, Michael Heseltine and Michael Howard – to Parliament and Cabinet – following her election cemented that inseparable bond, which has lasted ever since.
Read a tribute from the Bow Group published in a Spanish national newspaper here.
Read about the laying of a wreath from the Bow Group at Lady Thatcher’s private residence here.
Bow Group President Sir John Major said:
“The 1980s was an extraordinary decade, and Margaret Thatcher overshadowed it in a quite remarkable way.
I think people forget now what a groundbreaking figure she was, as the first female Prime Minister and as an absolutely conviction politician, who saw a problem and was determined to solve it whatever the difficulties might be.
She had a background, a hinterland, that most of her predecessors hadn’t had, and that enabled her to form that remarkable connection she did with so many people in middle income, in middle England, who felt much the same way she did about how the country had declined, and how they wished to see it resurrected.
What she was about was extending liberty and freedom to as many people as possible, those who had privilege shouldn’t hang onto it, they should try to extend it, and she wished to extend privilege.”
Bow Group Chairman Ben Harris-Quinney said:
“It is with great personal and professional sadness that we meet the passing of our greatest leader in Margaret Thatcher.
The Bow Group’s connection and work with Baroness Thatcher formed an integral part of the organisation’s past and will now be enshrined in history. Even now it is clear the immense impact on the United Kingdom and the world that that work has had.
I had the personal honour to spend time with Margaret Thatcher, and she was without any doubt the most incredible human being, both in terms of her generosity of spirit and fearsome ability.
We will endeavour to do all we can to serve her memory and legacy for generations to come, it is a legacy that conservatives and Britons forget at their peril.”
Bow Group Head of Media Donna Edmunds said:
“As the first female Prime Minister, Lady Thatcher proved that women could compete with men on equal terms. She rose to the top and lead a successful and historical government for over a decade, through the sheer force of her will and without any help from positive discrimination measures such as all-female shortlists or quotas.
She should be remembered not as a feminist figure, but rather as a figure who embodied true equality. Her success was entirely independent of her status as a woman. To me, as a woman in politics fighting to be heard on my own terms, I find that very inspiring.”