Statement from the Tonbridge & Malling Conservative Association on the death of Margaret, The Baroness Thatcher (as issued on 8/4/2013)
The Tonbridge & Malling Conservative Association has learnt with great sadness of the death this morning of Margaret Thatcher.
She was our Party Leader for fifteen years, and Prime Minister for eleven - probably the greatest Prime Minister of the second half of the twentieth century.
She brought to an end the period of British decline and reignited the British spirit of free enterprise, freeing the nationalised industries, and opening the economy to competition and choice. She was a colossus on the world stage. She worked with Ronald Reagan to defend freedom, with Mikhail Gorbachev to dissolve the Soviet Union and set those republics free, and she was ahead of her time in assessing the likely results of the centralising enthusiasm of the European Union, and its ill-fated currency project. Her firm stand over the Falklands resulted in the islands' restored freedoms, but also led to the fall of the Argentine military dictatorship, and the restoration of democracy across Latin America. Above all she was a shining example for women wishing to serve in public life.
Our Member of Parliament, Sir John Stanley, was her Parliamentary Private Secretary when Leader of the Conservative Party, before she became Prime Minister, and so this constituency had a close connection with her. We are united in mourning her passing, and in our determination to follow in her footsteps to fight for the causes she so effectively espoused.
Jacques Arnold
Chairman