Former Britain Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher dies after suffering stroke

Former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher has died after suffering a stroke.

"It is with great sadness that Mark and Carol Thatcher announced that their mother Baroness Thatcher died peacefully following a stroke this morning,” Thatcher spokesperson Lord Bell said in a statement.

Thatcher, an outspoken woman known to many as "The Iron Lady," was 87. She led Britain's Conservatives to three election victories from 1979 to 1990, the longest continuous period in office by a British prime minister since the early 19th century. Alongside former U.S. President Ronald Reagan, Thatcher battled against communism and saw the Berlin Wall get torn down in 1989.

On Monday, British Prime Minister David Cameron cut short his trip to several European countries after the announcement of Thatcher's death.

"We have lost a great leader, a great prime minister and a great Briton,'' Cameron said in a statement.
Buckingham Palace said Queen Elizabeth was sad to hear the news of Thatcher's passing, adding that she would be sending a private message of sympathy to the family today.

During 11 bruising years as prime minister, Thatcher transformed her country by a ruthless dedication to free markets and infuriated European allies. She transferred large chunks of the economy from the state hands to private ownership.

"The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people's money," she once said, according to Reuters.

Thatcher retired from public engagements in 2002 following a series of small strokes, and was only occasionally seen in public since then.

To her fervent admirers, battling Maggie was an icon, a national savior who ended Britain's post-World War II cycle of confrontation and decline -- eclipsed as a 20th-century British leader only by Winston Churchill.

Her vehement critics, however, saw her as a bellicose figure at home and abroad, a destroyer of industries and, with it, a way of life.

She was a sharply divisive figure even within her Conservative Party, especially on the issue of European integration; the party declined into a bickering shambles after she fell from power.

Between 1979 and 1990, her governments sold a string of nationalized industries into private ownership, crushed the once-mighty labor unions, defeated Argentina in the Falkland Islands war and preached military readiness to the Western alliance.

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The Full Speech:

Margaret Thatchers Last Performance As Prime Minister

Part 1