First Thatcher ministry May 1979. The Winter of Discontent had seen the Labour government's popularity slump during the previous four months, and the opinion polls all pointed towards a Conservative victory. The Tories won the election with a majority of 44 seats and their leader Margaret Thatcher became Britain's first female prime minister. Thatcher inherited some of the worst economic statistics of postwar Britain. The nation was still feeling the effects of the numerous strikes during the recent Winter of Discontent. Inflation had recently topped 20%, and unemployment was in excess of 1.5 million for the first time since the 1930s. Thatcher's monetarist
Roger Thatcher the sheer size of total effort required for the operation. Thatcher was required to delete three queries from the census after personally meeting to discuss the matter with then-Prime Minister of the United Kingdom Margaret Thatcher. In 1981, Thatcher found that over the prior thirty-year-period, the number of individuals alive to reach the age of 100 had increased by a figure of sixfold. At a 1981 meeting in Sussex held by the Medical Journalists Association, Thatcher presented the findings from his research and called the results "spectacular". He reported that in 1971 there were less than 300 people in the