First Thatcher ministry First Thatcher ministry Margaret Thatcher was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 4 May 1979 to 28 November 1990, during which time she led a Conservative government. She was the first woman to hold that office. During her premiership, Thatcher moved to liberalise the British economy through deregulation, privatisation, and the promotion of entrepreneurialism. This article details the first government Thatcher led at the invitation of Queen Elizabeth II from 1979 to 1983. Following the vote of no confidence against the Labour government and prime minister James Callaghan on 28 March 1979, a general election was called for 3
Diana Gould – Margaret Thatcher exchange she telephoned Tam Dalyell, a Labour MP who had been pressing for information about the sinking, and asked him to brief her. Thatcher and Sue Lawley, the anchor, were in the BBC's Lime Grove Studios in Shepherd's Bush, west London, where the prime minister took questions from 18:25 until 19:00. Gould, in the BBC's Bristol studio, was the fourth member of the public to be invited to speak. "Mrs. Thatcher," she asked, "why, when the Belgrano, the Argentinian battleship, was outside the exclusion zone and actually sailing away from the Falklands, why did you give the orders to sink it?"