Shadow Cabinet of Margaret Thatcher Cabinet ceased to exist upon her becoming Prime Minister following the 1979 general election. Thatcher announced her first Shadow Cabinet on 18 February 1975. On 15 January 1976, Thatcher reshuffled the Shadow Cabinet. Pym returned as Shadow Agriculture Minister, displacing Jopling. George Younger was dropped from the front bench, and he was replaced by Gilmour at Defence; Whitelaw, the Deputy Leader, added Gilmour's Home Affairs portfolio to his Devolution. John Biffen replaced Jenkin as Shadow Energy Secretary, and Jenkin took Health from Fowler, who was demoted to be a Shadow Transport Minister (which was not in Shadow Cabinet and was
Denis Thatcher Denis Thatcher Sir Denis Thatcher, 1st Baronet, (10 May 1915 – 26 June 2003) was a British businessman and the husband of Margaret Thatcher, who was the first female Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. The first man married to a British prime minister, he is the last person outside the British royal family to have been awarded a hereditary title, which he was granted in 1990. Thatcher was born in Lewisham, London, as the first-born child of a New Zealand-born British businessman, Thomas Herbert "Jack" Thatcher. At age eight he entered a preparatory school as a boarder in Bognor