Margaret Thatcher were officially denied by William Heseltine, the Private Secretary to the Sovereign. Thatcher later wrote: "I always found the Queen's attitude towards the work of the Government absolutely correct ... stories of clashes between 'two powerful women' were just too good not to make up." Thatcher's economic policy was influenced by monetarist thinking and economists such as Milton Friedman and Alan Walters. Together with Chancellor of the Exchequer Geoffrey Howe, she lowered direct taxes on income and increased indirect taxes. She increased interest rates to slow the growth of the money supply and thereby lower inflation, introduced cash limits on
Margaret Thatcher minister. In 1976, Thatcher gave her "Britain Awake" foreign policy speech which lambasted the Soviet Union for seeking world dominance. The Soviet Army journal "Krasnaya Zvezda" ("Red Star") rebutted her stance in a piece entitled "Iron Lady Raises Fears" by Captain Yuri Gavrilov (alluding to "Iron Chancellor" Bismarck of imperial Germany). "The Sunday Times" covered the "Red Star" article the next day, and Thatcher embraced the epithet a week later; in a speech to Finchley Conservatives she compared it to the Duke of Wellington's nickname "The Iron Duke". The metaphorical sobriquet followed her throughout her political career, and has since