Mr Wijat's friend Magic Rabbit 
One Sunday recently while staying in London, I took a stroll in the gardens of Temple, the insular clod of quads and offices between the Strand and the Embankment. It's kind of a luxury rent-controlled ghetto for lawyers and barristers, and there is a beautiful tailors, a fine chapel, established by the Knights Templar (from which the compound takes its name), a twee cottage designed by Sir Christopher Wren and a rose garden; which I never promised you.
My mate John and I were wandering there together, he expertly proselytising on the architecture and the history of the place, me pretending to be Rumpole of the Bailey (quietly in my mind), when we spied in the distant garden a hunched and frail figure, in a raincoat, scarf about her head, watering the roses under the breezy supervision of a masticating copper. "What's going on there, mate?" John asked a nearby chippy loading his white van. "Maggie Thatcher," he said. "Comes here every week to water them flowers." The three of us watched as the gentle horticultural ritual was feebly enacted, then regarded the Iron Lady being helped into the back of a car and trundling off. In this moment she inspired only curiosity, a pale phantom, dumbly filling her day. None present eyed her meanly or spoke with vitriol and it wasn't until an hour later that I dreamt up an Ealing comedy-style caper in which two inept crooks kidnap Thatcher from the garden but are unable to cope with the demands of dealing with her, and finally give her back. This reverie only occurred when the car was out of view. In her diminished presence I stared like an amateur astronomer unable to describe my awe at this distant phenomenon.
When I was a kid, Thatcher was the headmistress of our country. Her voice, a bellicose yawn, somehow both boring and boring – I could ignore the content but the intent drilled its way in. She became leader of the Conservatives the year I was born and prime minister when I was four. She remained in power till I was 15. I am, it's safe to say, one of Thatcher's children. How then do I feel on the day of this matriarchal mourning?
I grew up in Essex with a single mum and a go-getter Dagenham dad. I don't know if they ever voted for her, I don't know if they liked her. My dad, I suspect, did. He had enough Del Boy about him to admire her coiffured virility – but in a way Thatcher was so omnipotent; so omnipresent, so omni-everything that all opinion was redundant.
As I scan the statements of my memory bank for early deposits (it'd be a kid's memory bank account at a neurological NatWest where you're encouraged to become a greedy little capitalist with an escalating family of porcelain pigs), I see her in her hairy helmet, condescending on Nationwide, eviscerating eunuch MPs and baffled BBC fuddy duddies with her General Zodd stare and coldly condemning the IRA. And the miners. And the single mums. The dockers. The poll-tax rioters. The Brixton rioters, the Argentinians, teachers; everyone actually.
Margaret Thatcher visiting British troops on the Falkland Islands in 1983: the war was a turning point in her premiership. Photograph: taken from picture library
Thinking about it now, when I was a child she was just a strict woman telling everyone off and selling everything off. I didn't know what to think of this fearsome woman.
Perhaps my early apathy and indifference are a result of what Thatcher deliberately engendered, the idea that "there is no such thing as society", that we are alone on our journey through life, solitary atoms of consciousness. Or perhaps it was just because I was a little kid and more interested in them Weetabix skinheads, Roland Rat and Knight Rider. Either way, I'm an adult now and none of those things are on telly any more so there's no excuse for apathy.
When John Lennon was told of Elvis Presley's death, he famously responded: "Elvis died when he joined the army," meaning of course, that his combat clothing and clipped hair signalled the demise of the thrusting, Dionysian revolution of which he was the immaculate emblem.
When I awoke today on LA time my phone was full of impertinent digital eulogies. It'd be disingenuous to omit that there were a fair number of ding-dong-style celebratory messages amidst the pensive reflections on the end of an era. Interestingly, one mate of mine, a proper leftie, in his heyday all Red Wedge and right-on punch-ups, was melancholy. "I thought I'd be overjoyed, but really it's just … another one bites the dust …" This demonstrates, I suppose, that if you opposed Thatcher's ideas it was likely because of their lack of compassion, which is really just a word for love. If love is something you cherish, it is hard to glean much joy from death, even in one's enemies.
Perhaps, though, Thatcher "the monster" didn't die yesterday from a stroke, perhaps that Thatcher died as she sobbed self-pitying tears as she was driven, defeated, from Downing Street, ousted by her own party. By then, 1990, I was 15, adolescent and instinctively anti-establishment enough to regard her disdainfully. I'd unthinkingly imbibed enough doctrine to know that, troubled as I was, there was little point looking elsewhere for support. I was on my own. We are all on our own. Norman Tebbit, one of Thatcher's acolytes and fellow "Munsters evacuee", said when the National Union of Mineworkers eventually succumbed to the military onslaught and starvation over which she presided: "We didn't just break the strike, we broke the spell." The spell he was referring to is the unseen bond that connects us all and prevents us from being subjugated by tyranny. The spell of community.
Those strikes were confusing to me as a child. All of the Tory edicts that bludgeoned our nation, as my generation squirmed through ghoulish puberty, were confusing. When all the public amenities were flogged, the adverts made it seem to my childish eyes fun and positive, jaunty slogans and affable British stereotypes jostling about in villages, selling people companies that they'd already paid for through tax. I just now watched the British Gas one again. It's like a whimsical live-action episode of Postman Pat where his cat is craftily carved up and sold back to him.
The Orgreave miners' strike in 1984. Photograph: Alamy
"The News" was the pompous conduit through which we suckled at the barren baroness through newscaster wet-nurses, naturally; not direct from the steel teat. Jan Leeming, Sue Lawley, Moira Stuart – delivering doctrine with sterile sexiness, like a butterscotch-scented beige vapour. To use a less bizarre analogy: if Thatcher was the headmistress, they were junior teachers, authoritative but warm enough that you could call them "mum" by accident. You could never call Margaret Mother by mistake. For a national matriarch she is oddly unmaternal. I always felt a bit sorry for her biological children Mark and Carol, wondering from whom they would get their cuddles. "Thatcher as mother" seemed, to my tiddly mind, anathema. How could anyone who was so resolutely Margaret Thatcher be anything else? In the Meryl Streep film, The Iron Lady, it's the scenes of domesticity that appear most absurd. Knocking up a flan for Denis or helping Carol with her algebra or Mark with his gun-running, are jarring distractions from the main narrative; woman as warrior queen.
It always struck me as peculiar, too, when the Spice Girls briefly championed Thatcher as an early example of girl power. I don't see that. She is an anomaly; a product of the freak-onomy of her time. Barack Obama, interestingly, said in his statement that she had "broken the glass ceiling for other women". Only in the sense that all the women beneath her were blinded by falling shards. She is an icon of individualism, not of feminism.
I have few recollections of Thatcher after the slowly chauffeured, weepy Downing Street cortege. I'd become a delinquent, living on heroin and benefit fraud.
There were sporadic resurrections. She would appear in public to drape a hankie over a model BA plane tailfin because she disliked the unpatriotic logo with which they'd replaced the union flag (maybe don't privatise BA then), or to shuffle about some country pile arm in arm with a doddery Pinochet and tell us all what a fine fellow he was. It always irks when rightwing folk demonstrate in a familial or exclusive setting the values that they deny in a broader social context. They're happy to share big windfall bonuses with their cronies, they'll stick up for deposed dictator chums when they're down on their luck, they'll find opportunities in business for people they care about. I hope I'm not being reductive but it seems Thatcher's time in power was solely spent diminishing the resources of those who had least for the advancement of those who had most. I know from my own indulgence in selfish behaviour that it's much easier to get what you want if you remove from consideration the effect your actions will have on others.
Is that what made her so formidable, her ability to ignore the suffering of others? Given the nature of her legacy "survival of the fittest" – a phrase that Darwin himself only used twice in On the Origin of Species, compared to hundreds of references to altruism, love and cooperation, it isn't surprising that there are parties tonight in Liverpool, Glasgow and Brixton – from where are they to have learned compassion and forgiveness?
The blunt, pathetic reality today is that a little old lady has died, who in the winter of her life had to water roses alone under police supervision. If you behave like there's no such thing as society, in the end there isn't. Her death must be sad for the handful of people she was nice to and the rich people who got richer under her stewardship. It isn't sad for anyone else. There are pangs of nostalgia, yes, because for me she's all tied up with Hi-De-Hi and Speak and Spell and Blockbusters and "follow the bear". What is more troubling is my inability to ascertain where my own selfishness ends and her neo-liberal inculcation begins. All of us that grew up under Thatcher were taught that it is good to be selfish, that other people's pain is not your problem, that pain is in fact a weakness and suffering is deserved and shameful. Perhaps there is resentment because the clemency and respect that are being mawkishly displayed now by some and haughtily demanded of the rest of us at the impending, solemn ceremonial funeral, are values that her government and policies sought to annihilate.
I can't articulate with the skill of either of "the Marks" – Steel or Thomas – why Thatcher and Thatcherism were so bad for Britain but I do recall that even to a child her demeanour and every discernible action seemed to be to the detriment of our national spirit and identity. Her refusal to stand against apartheid, her civil war against the unions, her aggression towards our neighbours in Ireland and a taxation system that was devised in the dark ages, the bombing of a retreating ship – it's just not British.
I do not yet know what effect Margaret Thatcher has had on me as an individual or on the character of our country as we continue to evolve. As a child she unnerved me but we are not children now and we are free to choose our own ethical codes and leaders that reflect them.
Russell Brand - what the hell do you know about Margaret Thatcher's mothering skills?
Margaret Thatcher's mothering skills have been called into question by Russell Brand. Apparently a woman can't dole out cuddles to her children at home and be a 'warrior queen' in the workplace. Get with the times, writes Emma Barnett.
Margaret Thatcher with her twins, Carol and Mark Photo: Daily Telegraph#
4:16PM BST 10 Apr 2013
Margaret Thatcher: coverage in full
Margaret Thatcher obituary
Margaret Thatcher death: latest reaction
Margaret Thatcher obituary
Margaret Thatcher death: latest reaction
Well Carol and Mark Thatcher must be feeling a heck of a lot better now. Russell Brand, yes that greasy-haired leering man the BBC once rapped the knuckles of, has offered his sympathy to them.
What with it only being two days after their mother suffered a stroke and died, dear reader you could be forgiven for assuming Brand was offering his condolences during a rambling (albeit pretty well-written) post on The Guardian’s Comment is Free section. However, you would be wrong.
Instead, a loose-lipped Brand is telling the world how he has always pitied Baroness Thatcher’s children, for simply being her offspring. In the last 48 hours, since the Iron Lady’s death was announced, I have had many a strip torn off me on national TV, radio and of course on Twitter, for daring to suggest that Lady Thatcher was a feminist icon – whether she liked it or not.
And unlike the spineless ‘Ginger Spice’, Geri Halliwell, who deleted her respectful tweet marking Britain’s only female Prime Minister’s death (post a torrent of digital hate), I have continued to advance my position – abuse and all.
But thankfully, during all of my spirited debates on this topic, I am happy to report that no one has dragged up Lady Thatcher’s mothering skills as a point of contention. In fact, one thing people have in common on both sides of the Thatcher divide, is they wish to discuss her politics and legacy – not her ability to parent.
Moreover, the one thing even the most left-wing feminists cannot disagree with, is just how much Lady Thatcher is being remembered for being a Prime Minister (not a female Prime Minister) and her political decisions, as opposed to how she managed to ‘have it all’.
However, Brand just suitably lowered the tone with his contribution – something he is a pro at. He writes: “For a national matriarch she [was] oddly unmaternal. I always felt a bit sorry for her biological children Mark and Carol, wondering from whom they would get their cuddles.
“"Thatcher as mother" seemed, to my tiddly mind, anathema. How could anyone who was so resolutely Margaret Thatcher be anything else? In the Meryl Streep film, The Iron Lady, it's the scenes of domesticity that appear most absurd. Knocking up a flan for Denis or helping Carol with her algebra or Mark with his gun-running, are jarring distractions from the main narrative; woman as warrior queen.”
Well I hate to break it to you Russell, but warrior queens can also be good mothers. And those women doing full-time jobs up and down the country, and then coming home and knocking up their significant other a flan, while tending to the children’s homework, would beg to differ with your cheap summation.
As my Telegraph colleague, Judith Woods, writes today: “the outside world meddles in family dynamics at its peril. Lady Thatcher was a pioneering politician and a working mother before the term had even been properly coined”.
Only she, Denis (her beloved husband of 52 years), Carol and Mark have the right and knowledge to comment on her capacity as a mother. And even then, it’s not really any of our business – as much as we enjoy prying on famous people’s private lives.
Tony Blair is another hugely controversial British Prime Minister – and yet at no point when his political decisions are hotly debated, does anyone opine whether they felt sorry for his large brood in some dire need of cuddles – while he waged war in Iraq.
We need to move beyond the idea that a tough woman in the workplace cannot be a loving person in the privacy of her own home. While Brand is feigning an odd concern for where Carol and Mark Thatcher got their cuddles from, he could also do with updating his views of women’s multifaceted natures.
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Margaret Thatcher: 'Yes, I wish I saw more of my children. But I can’t regret’
Lady Thatcher was seen by colleagues as a 'caring and loving’ mother – but the pressures of her role had a far-reaching impact on her family
Margaret Thatcher with her twins, Carol and Mark Photo: Daily Telegraph
When Margaret Thatcher came to power in 1979, she crisply observed: “Any woman who understands the problems of running a home will be nearer to understanding the problems of running a country.”
Viewed through the refracting prism of political life today, such remarks seem old-fashioned, naïve – laughable, even. Redolent as they are of maternal homeliness and domestic prudence, they are the sort of un-PC sentiments that would make any modern female politician, drilled in the stubborn dogma (some would say myth) of Westminster egalitarianism, wince.
But, as it transpired, Baroness Thatcher really was a new broom, sweeping through the nation determined to diligently balance budgets, declutter sclerotic national industries, and make Britain once again fit for purpose.
She saw no shame in making mention of her roles as wife and mother as well as leader; there are precious few MPs today whose first television interview would be conducted with their six-year-old twins sitting on the arm of the chair. But while her incontrovertible legacy as prime minister is in no doubt, her family life is more opaque.
Certainly, her marriage was a happy one. She met and married her husband Denis, a wealthy, divorced businessman, in 1951. From the outset he was aware of her fierce ambition and, easygoing by nature, was happy to pursue his business interests under the media radar.
Paradoxically, his portrayal as a gin-soaked reactionary in the Dear Bill letters of Private Eye worked in his favour, according to the couple’s daughter, Carol. Pigeonholed in public perceptions as a harmless buffoon, he didn’t distract or indeed detract from his wife’s high profile.
Carol and her twin, Mark, were born in 1953, when their mother was 27. Having studied chemistry at Oxford, she was training to be a barrister when she became pregnant, but with typical resoluteness, posted off her exam application from the hospital ward so as to ensure that she would qualify for the Bar. The family lived in Chelsea and the twins were installed in the nanny’s room – something that wasn’t unusual, given their wealth and status.
Within six years, Margaret had, by dint of talent and determination, entered an exceedingly male-dominated Parliament. After her barnstorming maiden speech in 1960, the aforementioned BBC interview took place with her twins. When her suitability for a front-bench career was mooted, she demurred. “Certainly until these two are a little older I couldn’t take on any more political responsibilities,” she said, and it was a decade before she became Education Secretary in the Heath government.
From the outset, Carol and Mark were very different. But Carol, now 59, has been outspoken about what she perceived as overt favouritism towards her brother, the elder twin by two minutes: “Mark was certainly the star.”
Yet in her book A Swim-On Part in the Goldfish Bowl, she depicts a traditional, even-handed childhood; her mother filling rolls for picnics and taking pains to personally wallpaper her children’s rooms. There were riding lessons and ski trips. Lady Thatcher’s press secretary, Bernard Ingham, recalls: “She’d often say 'weekends are for the family’”, and while he concedes that she was not a conventional parent, “she was certainly a caring and loving mother”.
But Carol has written: “As a child I was frightened of her. I always felt I came second of the two. Unloved is not the right word, but I never felt I made the grade.” Mark was sent to boarding school at the age of eight and Carol claims she was dispatched to prep school a year later as “there wasn’t much point in running a household for one child”.
She recently revealed in a BBC documentary that: “All my childhood memories of my mother were just someone who was superwoman before the phrase had been invented. She was always flat out, she never relaxed, household chores were done at breakneck speed in order to get back to the parliamentary correspondence or get on with making up a speech.
“You couldn’t distract her… she had tunnel vision in term of what ever she was doing.”
Carol, who was easily the brighter of the twins, may not have been close to her mother, but onlookers say her inference that she was somehow loved less did not chime with reality.
Former Cabinet minister Jonathan Aitken had a relationship with Carol when he was a fledgling MP and she was in her early twenties. He remembers that once, when the couple’s planned holiday was jeopardised by a three-line whip, requiring all Tory MPs to vote, Mrs Thatcher (then leader of the Opposition) quietly rearranged parliamentary business so as not to disappoint her daughter.
Carol went on to study law, then moved to Australia. She established a successful media career, although after splitting from Aitken she did not go on to marry or have children.
“I’ve written books. I won I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here!, but nobody will ever know me for being anything other than Margaret Thatcher’s daughter, so at the end of the day whatever I did was never good enough,” was her bruising verdict. It’s a painfully harsh judgment, but one, it must be remembered, that she makes on herself. It’s impossible to know whether her self-esteem issues stem from nature or nurture.
Mark, meanwhile, was not so prone to self-doubt. Having failed his accountancy exams, he gained something of a reputation as a playboy. When he went missing for six days in 1982 in the Sahara while driving in the Paris-Dakar rally, his mother was beside herself.
By the late Eighties he was a wealthy businessman – something that has puzzled commentators. Although there has never been any implication of financial impropriety, the consensus seems to be that, at some level, he enjoyed the benefit of his connections. His first marriage ended in divorce. His children, Amanda and Michael, live in Texas, with their mother, Diane, while he lives in Spain with his second wife.
He gained notoriety for his role in an attempted coup in Equatorial Guinea; his co-conspirator, Simon Mann, was sent to jail, but he plea-bargained and received a four-year suspended jail sentence and a fine.
“I see him. We maintain contact,” his sister says of their relationship. “We do not have Sunday lunch together, not like other families. But then we never did. Just because you’re related it doesn’t necessarily mean you see a lot of them. You need to have something in common.”
Perhaps it was this ongoing iciness that prompted Lady Thatcher to comment at a meeting with Tory grandee Lord Spicer in April 1995: “If I had my time again, I wouldn’t go into politics because of what it does to your family.”
This shocking admission was revealed in a set of diaries by Lord Spicer published in The Sunday Telegraph last year, but whether it was an off-the-cuff comment or a sincerely held belief isn’t known.
Subsequently, she told Saga magazine, in more measured tones: “Look, you can’t have everything. It has been the greatest privilege being prime minister of my country… Yes, I wish I saw more of my children. We don’t have Sunday lunch together; we don’t go on holiday skiing any more. But I can’t regret. And I haven’t lost my children. They have their lives. I took a different life.”
Lady Thatcher was devastated in 2003 by the death of Denis after 52 years of marriage. And in recent years, as her health deteriorated, friends observed that her children did not visit as often as they might.
Asked about her mother’s complaints of not seeing her grandchildren more often, Carol’s response was unflinching. “A mother cannot reasonably expect her grown-up children to boomerang back, gushing cosiness, and make up for lost time,” she responded. “Absentee mum, then gran in overdrive is not an equation that balances.”
Harsh words, but the outside world meddles in family dynamics at its peril. Lady Thatcher was a pioneering politician and a working mother before the term had even been properly coined. Retrospective feelings of guilt, or circumspection over the sacrifices demanded by the office of prime minister, would not be so very surprising.
And as the nation she led – and the foreign leaders she influenced – prepare for her funeral, there will be ample opportunity to pay tribute to Lady Thatcher, both as public figure and private person.
Margaret Thatcher was kindly, careful – and convinced she was always right
Gillian Reynolds on radio tributes to Baroness Thatcher and her own encounters with the Iron Lady.
Margaret Thatcher, pictured in 1975
Margaret Thatcher was kindly, careful – and convinced she was always right
Gillian Reynolds on radio tributes to Baroness Thatcher and her own encounters with the Iron Lady.
Margaret Thatcher, pictured in 1975
3:54PM BST 09 Apr 2013
Margaret Thatcher: coverage in full
Margaret Thatcher obituary
Margaret Thatcher death: latest reaction
Margaret Thatcher obituary
Margaret Thatcher death: latest reaction
Windy and cold in the north, warmer in the south. After 24 hours of programmes about the life and achievements of our first female Prime Minister I have come to the conclusion that anything said about Margaret Hilda Thatcher, 1925–2013, shows the same divisions in the country as the weather forecast. Your view of both will vary according to where you’re from.
I was listening to Radio 3 when I first heard of Baroness Thatcher’s death on Monday. It was just before 1.00pm. The bulletin that followed was, as is the way on Radio 3, short and clear. But this was a historic moment, one where the whole nation pauses to reflect so I retuned to Radio 4 and The World at One. It felt like a visit to the undertaker’s parlour. The presentational tone was reverently unctuous, as if the script were written by manuscript nib. The most vivid contributor was Lord Bell, close Thatcher adviser to the end, who spoke of her warmly, saying we would not see her like again. He sounded close to tears.
It was understandable. It isn’t easy to separate personal feeling on such an occasion. Yet it can be even harder for a listener. The emotional churn that comes when what you are hearing does not correspond with your own view is apt to find voice. It once did over gardens walls, it still does on radio phone-ins. It fires up Twitter and Facebook, explodes in kitchens and cars. “No,” we shout, “it wasn’t like that.” Then we sit and wonder whether, really, it was.
Radio, as the hours went on, certainly offered substantial food for thought. Whoever had planned the formal programmes to mark Baroness Thatcher’s death had done an impressive job. Peter Riddell, once political correspondent for The Times, now Director of the Institute for Government, presented Monday night’s Potency and Paradox (produced by Simon Coates), an hour of views from inside the corridors of power. Evidently, as some of the speakers are also now dead, the interviews had been collected over quite a long time but the range was impressive, including former members of Thatcher cabinets, advisers, civil servants, people who had been part of her closest circle.
Riddell’s thesis, diligently explored, is that there was always a paradox of head and heart within her politics. It showed in her personal kindness and compassion, it defined her political convictions. Early on, she could be persuaded, as Lord Carrington revealed. Yet the more dominant she became, the more isolated she was.
Andrew Neil’s special Radio 4 programme yesterday morning (produced by Paula McGinley) was built from voices of ordinary people, some who had known her in her earliest political career, some who only knew her public persona. Neil added in his own fond personal memories, of her friendship and guidance, his admiration for her courage, his regrets.
This was an unusual programme, a tapestry of everyday opinions, memories, insights. An innocence came out in the story of how she was desperate for nylons to go to her first Buckingham Palace garden party and, back in austerity 1951, the only way to get them was on the black market so that’s where her constituency worker got them. Not that young Margaret Roberts would have countenanced such a thing. Determined, brave, convinced, kindly but, as even Neil said, dangerously deaf to dissent.
Today yesterday, having only room for a bit of sports news alongside so many memories of Baroness Thatcher, ended with a brilliantly chosen trio of columnists, Sir Simon Jenkins former editor of The Times, Sir Max Hastings former Daily Telegraph editor and Eleanor Goodman, Channel 4’s former political editor. I think Hastings’s final thought should be framed and put on every newsroom wall. “Prime Ministers can only do what they do at the time.” In other words, yesterday never comes back.
I interviewed Mrs Thatcher twice. First in a constituency office in Warrington in 1975 when she had just been elected party leader. The second time was in Downing Street in 1986, when Michael Heseltine had just left the Cabinet and dangerous rumours were flying. She was everything these programmes said: kindly, careful and dauntingly convinced she was right about everything.
Baroness Thatcher: how she transformed a nation's finances
Margaret Thatcher oversaw a revolution in the way people invested in the stock market and property
The 1980s saw a boom in the number of private shareholders Photo: GETTY
One of Margaret Thatcher's lasting legacies was to turn Britain into a nation of private shareholders.
Justin Urquhart Stewart of Seven Investment Management said: "This was an era of popular share ownership. People might have only owned shares in a couple of companies but this was the first time they held shares and made money from them."
Before the 1980s a small elite – of around 3 million people – owned shares privately. But the number boomed with the privatisation of state-owned utilities such as British Telecom and British Gas.
Mr Urquhart Stewart said that by the end of the 1980s there were almost 12m private shareholders in the UK, a number that would rise still higher with the demutualisation of the building societies, which started in 1989 when Abbey National floated on the stock market. Many others followed in the late 1990s.
Adrian Lowcock of Hargreaves Lansdown added: "In the 1970s just 7pc of people in Britain owned shares directly. By the end of the 1980s a quarter did."
These privatisations were hugely popular. When British Telecom was sold in 1984 two-fifths of the shares sold went to the general public, most of whom were novice investors. Around 2.1 million people invested in the company; they saw the value of their holdings double on the first day, such was the demand for the shares.
The British Gas privatisation in 1986 proved to be just as popular, backed by a TV advertising campaign urging viewers to "Tell Sid" about the offer.
According to Brian Dennehy of Fundexpert.co.uk, 4 million people applied for the shares, of whom 1.5 million received an allocation. Many sold their shareholdings within the first few days for a handsome profit.
Those that held these shares for the longer term have also seen good returns in many cases. According to the Brewin Dophin, British Gas has proved to be the most profitable of these privatisations. An investment of £100 would have been worth £1,246, by the end of 2011 – an increase of 1146pc. This is just the capital gain and does not include the value of any dividends paid. This is a far bigger gain than the growth in the stock market over this period.
These were two of the most high-profile privatisations. But during this period ordinary investors were able to buy shares in Cable & Wireless, British Aerospace, Britoil, Jaguar, British Steel, Rolls-Royce and British Airways – to name but a few.
The chart below shows how some of the popular privatisations have performed relative to the stock market.
A spokesman for Brewin Dolphin said: "In the 1980s, the Thatcher Government successfully developed the policy of selling nationalised industries into private ownership, or privatisation as it became known. However, back then the notion of selling national assets to the public was largely untested and there was uncertainty whether the public would support the issues.
"Thankfully this was not the case. In 1984, BT was the first well known public sector company to be sold and private investors welcomed the offer. More than 2 million people participated, keen to purchase the discounted shares offered at a price of 130p.
"This performance is impressive when you consider the renowned underinvestment in assets prior to privatisation, and the higher levels of staffing at the time of flotation. However, while not actually given away, they were deeply discounted floats and when the companies were exposed to the full force of competition they certainly improved their performance, resulting in very rapid growth from a low base."
Mr Dennehy said: "At the time, Only Fools and Horses was topping the TV ratings. Del Boy's catchphrase of 'this time next year we'll be millionaires' was also a mantra from the Thatcherite generation."
But it wasn't just the privatisations that encouraged wider share ownership. At the same time the Government made it more tax-efficient to hold shares by introducing personal equity plans (or Peps) in 1986.
Initially these plans allowed people to shelter £6,000 in a tax-free environment, by investing in investment funds, or later up to £3,000 in a "single company" Pep.
But many novice investors also learnt the hard way that share dealing wasn't a one-way bet, with the stock market crash of 1987. However, share prices recovered relatively quickly compared with subsequent booms and busts of the past decade.
Property
Ray Boulger of John Charcol said that as far as the housing market was concerned the Right to Buy scheme was Margaret Thatcher’s biggest legacy. This fuelled a significant increase in the proportion of people who were able to buy their own home.
But other factors helped reform the housing market over this period. It is easy to forget that when Mrs Thatcher became Prime Minister the UK still had exchange controls after the previous Labour Government’s mismanagement of the economy resulted in the humiliation of the UK having to go to the IMF for a bail-out in 1976.
Lifting exchange controls and opening up the UK capital markets had a far reaching impact on the UK economy, and this helped transform the mortgage market during the 1980s. That decade saw several new lenders enter to UK market and new types of mortgage becoming available. Instead of mortgage queues being the norm, borrowers saw the benefit of competition with an increasing choice of different rate options, such as fixed and capped rates, which had been almost unheard of previously.
Mr Boulger said: "Lenders actually had to start competing for business rather than most borrowers having to decide which lender to start saving with in order to qualify for a standard variable rate (SVR) mortgage a couple of years later. Until the early 1980s most banks were not active in the mortgage market and nearly all mortgage lending was done by the much larger number of building societies which then existed. The Building Societies Association operated a cartel, resulting in most lenders charging the same rate. This of course would be illegal today!
Until the mid 1980s it was impossible to raise capital by remortgaging and as until then nearly all lenders charged the same rate there was no point in remortgaging to get a better, or different, rate. Therefore until that time the remortgage market didn’t exist."
Pensions
Tom McPhail, the head of pensions research at Hargreaves Lansdown, said it was "impossible to overstate" the impact that Lady Thatcher had on Britain’s retirement saving culture.
"Back in the early 1980s, we still had a relatively paternalistic pension system, with the state and employers between them providing individuals with a guaranteed retirement income, risk free," he said. "Job mobility was relatively low compared to today, meaning that the final salary pension structure made sense for both employers and employees."
He added: "Through her battles with the unions, the privatisation programme, the abolition of compulsory pension scheme membership and the introduction of personal pensions, successive Thatcher governments fundamentally changed the entire social context. We now have a system of pensions which is largely based on private provision and, while the workplace still plays an important role, individuals’ retirement prosperity is more dependent today than at any time for decades upon the personal decisions which they choose to make.
"This emphasis on individuals bearing responsibility for the decisions they take, aided and supported by their employers, is a direct legacy of Lady Thatcher."
Key privatisations Mrs Thatcher’s premiership
1980 Amersham International Medical Diagnostics – £71 million
1981 Cable & Wireless – £71 million
1982 Britoil (BNOC) £549 million
1983 Associated British Ports £22 million
1984 British Telecom – £3.9bn for treasury
1984 Enterprise Oil – £392 million
1984 Jaguar – £294 million
1985 Trustees Savings Bank (TSB)
1986 British Gas – £5.43bn
1987 British Airways £900m
1987 Rolls-Royce £1.3bn
1987 British Airports Authority £1.28bn
1987 British Petroleum (sold in tranches)
1988 British Steel
1989 Regional water companies – £5.1bn
1990 National Power & Powergen – £2.23bn
1990 Scottish Power and Scottish Hydro Electric – £2.88bn
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