Margaret Thatcher senior member of the party and former Minister of Defence, as Foreign Minister in 1979. Although he was considered a "wet", he avoided domestic affairs and got along well with Thatcher. The first issue was what to do with Rhodesia, where the five-percent white population was determined to rule the prosperous, largely-black ex-colony in the face of overwhelming international disapproval. After the collapse of the Portuguese Empire in Africa in 1975, South Africa, which had been Rhodesia's chief supporter, realised that country was a liability. Black rule was inevitable, and Carrington brokered a peaceful solution at the Lancaster House conference
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