Margaret Thatcher tendency to override collegiate opinion, contributed to discontent within her party. Thatcher removed Geoffrey Howe as Foreign Secretary in July 1989 after he and Lawson had forced her to agree to a plan for Britain to join the European Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM). Britain joined the ERM in October 1990. On 1 November 1990, Howe, by then the last remaining member of Thatcher's original 1979 cabinet, resigned from his position as Deputy Prime Minister, ostensibly over her open hostility to moves towards European Monetary Union. In his resignation speech on 13 November, Howe commented on Thatcher's openly dismissive attitude to
Margaret Thatcher Yugoslav conflicts; she recalled the pain of needing to tell her mother repeatedly that her husband Denis was dead. In 2006, Thatcher attended the official Washington, D.C. memorial service to commemorate the fifth anniversary of the 11 September attacks on the US. She was a guest of Vice President Dick Cheney, and met Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice during her visit. In February 2007 Thatcher became the first living British prime minister to be honoured with a statue in the Houses of Parliament. The bronze statue stands opposite that of her political hero, Sir Winston Churchill, and was unveiled on