Margaret Thatcher was the UK's first women prime minister. She came to Office in May 1979 and remained until her resignation in November 1990, making her the longest continually serving prime minister in 150 years.

Margaret Roberts was born on 13th October 1925 in the small town of Grantham in the north of England. Her father left school at fourteen. He worked his way into the grocery business until he owned his own shop, above which the Roberts’ family lived. Her mother, Beatrice had been a seamstress. Alfred and Beatrice gave birth to another daughter, Muriel, in 1929. The sisters were brought up in a serious, practical and religious environment.

Margaret was educated at Kesteven & Grantham Girls’ School, before proceeding to Oxford University to read chemistry. In 1943 Margaret became the president of the Oxford University Conservative Association, the first women to hold the position.

After several unsuccessful attempts to become a Member of Parliament, Margaret married Denis Thatcher, a wealthy businessman of the chemicals industry, in 1951.

In 1959, Margaret Thatcher was elected member of parliament for Finchley, near London. Unusually, parliamentarians took favour to the bill proposed in her maiden speech in the House of Commons, 1960, which duly became legislation. Within two years she had been appointed parliamentary secretary at the Ministry of Pensions.

Following Edward Heath’s election as Prime Minister in 1970, Thatcher was promoted into the cabinet as the Secretary of State for Education. She made some highly controversial moves that quickly earned her the title of ‘the most unpopular women in Britain’. She scrapped the entitlement of primary school children to free milk, giving way to the nickname ‘Thatcher, Milk Snatcher’.

Following Heath’s election loss in 1974 due to a bitter dispute with the trade unions, Thatcher was elected leader of the Conservative Party in February 1975. Together with Keith Joseph and John Hoskyns, she began the task of understanding what she perceived had gone wrong with the British economy. She called for a reversal of socialism, less state intervention, less taxation, less public expenditure, more individual power and responsibility, more competition, more private ownership.

On 4th May 1979 Margaret Thatcher won the general election and became Britain’s first women prime minister, with a Conservative majority of 44 in the House of Commons.

In November 1990, following a high-profile resignation from Commons Leader Geoffrey Howe, former cabinet member Michael Heseltine stood against the Prime Minister in the Conservative Party leadership ballot. Only just surviving the first round, and persuaded that a second attempt would result in a humiliating defeat, Margaret Thatcher resigned on 22nd November 1990.