History will remember former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher for relentlessly facing down communism and helping to turn back more than three decades of socialist advance in her country.
But it was Thatcher’s embrace of British Jews and insistent promotion of Jews in her Conservative Party that inspired an outpouring of tributes from Jewish and Israeli leaders following her death on April 8. She was 87.
Thatcher, who suffered from dementia in her later years, died peacefully after suffering a stroke, her spokesperson said.
Thatcher’s tenure as prime minister, from 1979 to 1990, helped thrust Britain back onto the international stage following its post–World War II political turmoil.
For the country’s Jews, however, the naming of at least five of their number to Cabinet positions and her determined pushback against anti-Jewish grumbling among the Conservative Party’s backbenchers made what once was laughable imaginable: the possibility of a Jewish prime minister.
“Lady Thatcher was always extremely supportive and admiring of the ethos of the British Jewish community,” said Vivian Wineman, president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews.
In the 1930s, Thatcher’s family took in an Austrian Jewish refugee. In 1959, Thatcher was elected to Parliament representing Finchley, a north London constituency with a large Jewish population.
“She counted a number of Jews among her closest advisers and confidants, and at one point nearly a quarter of her Cabinet were of Jewish origins,” Wineman said.
Moshe Maor, a Hebrew University political science professor, said Thatcher admired the British Jewish community’s self-reliance, an ethos she endorsed as she dedicated herself to weaning Britons off public assistance.
Thatcher elevated Britain’s late chief rabbi, Immanuel Jakobovits, to the House of Lords and turned to him so often for spiritual reinforcement he became known as “Thatcher’s rabbi.”
Thatcher’s rule coincided with social changes among the country’s 350,000 Jews. Once proudly working-class, British Jews by the 1980s had become increasingly middle-class, alarmed at the leftward lurch of the leadership in the Labor Party.
“She got on quite well with Jews,” Wineman said. “She said once that she thought she probably had more constituents in Tel Aviv than in Finchley.”
Thatcher never hesitated to advance the careers of talented young Jews in her party, among them Leon Brittan, a secretary of trade; Nigel Lawson, a chancellor of the exchequer; Edwina Currie, a health minister; Malcolm Rifkind, a secretary of state for Scotland; and Michael Howard, a secretary of employment.
Rifkind went on to become foreign minister. Howard became home secretary and then opposition leader, burying forever the notion that a British leader had to come from the country’s official faith, Anglicanism. That precedent helped set the stage for the ascension of the current leader of the Labor Party, Ed Miliband, the son of Polish Jewish immigrants.
Thatcher also earned kudos for her robust foreign policy and maintaining strong ties with Israel at a time of tension between the Jewish state and other European nations.
“She was truly a great leader, a woman of principle, of determination, of conviction, of strength; a woman of greatness,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement of tribute. “She was a staunch friend of Israel and the Jewish people.”
Thatcher was President Ronald Reagan’s indispensable partner in squeezing the life out of Soviet hegemony. In 1983, she told leaders of the Soviet Jewry movement that she would do “absolutely everything” to support their cause, which dovetailed with her hostility toward communism.
Thatcher did not shy away from taking on Israeli leaders. She tussled with Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin over his refusal to deal with Palestinian leaders and the bombing of the Iraqi nuclear reactor in 1981, calling him the “most difficult” man she had to deal with. n
JTA correspondent Cnaan Liphshiz contributed to this article.