May 3, 1979: The Thatcher Revolution

May 3, 1979: The Conservative Party wins Great Britain's national election, gaining 62 seats and a majority in the House of Commons. This makes the Conservatives' Leader, Margaret Thatcher, Britain's 1st female Prime Minister.

The Conservative Party, a.k.a. the Tories, have long been known in Britain as "the natural party of government." That, of course, is elitism. But, after 5 years of Labour Party government, and Britain sinking deeper into an economic abyss -- one that had lasted pretty much since the previous Tory takeover, in 1970, leading to the last Labour win, in 1974 -- things weren't getting any better.

The Tories, backed by many of the country's leading national newspapers, ran a populist campaign, convincing the working people of the country that the party of the rich could help the poor, while the party that proclaimed Socialism was to blame for all their problems. The people bought it: Except for staunch Labour areas like North London, Liverpool, Manchester and Newcastle in England; Cardiff and Swansea in Wales; and Edinburgh and Glasgow in Scotland, the Tories pretty much swept the country. Labour's leader, James Callaghan, was out, and Thatcher was in.

She talked as tough as any male politician, and became known as the Iron Lady. She cracked down on the country's labor unions, and sent more troops into Northern Ireland to strike back at the Irish Republican Army -- as if the IRA weren't already playing defense against paramilitary groups funded by the Labour leaders of the previous British government.

In 1982, when Argentina took back the nearby Falkland Islands, a British colony, Thatcher sent the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force to take them back. They did so in only 71 days. This wild success, with "only" 255 deaths, made her even more popular.

And, like Ronald Reagan, elected President of the United States in 1980, she cut taxes for the rich, and the economy built a "paper prosperity," in which the country once again seemed to be doing well on the surface. But cultural depictions of 1980s Britain since she left office -- including films like Billy Elliott, TV shows like Ashes to Ashes and In the Long Run, and the This Is England film and TV series -- revealed that, for people who weren't well off, things hadn't changed all that much. As The Who said a decade earlier, "Meet the new boss: Same as the old boss."

But the toughness that "Maggie" showed (including surviving an assassination attempt in Brighton in 1984), and the veneer of prosperity she brought, made her enormously popular with British conservatives. But anybody to the left of center despised her.

She built a strong rapport with Reagan, and, together, they dominated the world stage in the 1980s, until Reagan left office due to the two-term limit in 1989, and Thatcher was forced out by an intraparty squabble in 1990, having won 3 general elections, and becoming the longest-lasting Prime Minister in over 150 years. (Others had served longer than her 11 1/2 years, but not consecutively.)

But America and Britain are different. In 2004, when Reagan died, America's liberals held their tongues for a week, until the funeral, not talking about the damage Reagan had done. In 2013, when Thatcher died, half of Britain was deeply saddened, and the other half cheered.

As I said, many national newspapers are conservative, especially the tabloids, including The Sun, the Daily Express, the Telegraph (a.k.a. the Torygraph), and the Daily Mail (known as the Daily Fail for its poor journalism and the Daily Heil for its politics). Britain's biggest leftist newspaper, the Daily Mirror, did not mince words with its front page, nor did it lie.

Oddly, the leading portrayals of her, through 2002, have been by Americans: Meryl Streep in the 2011 film The Iron Lady, and Gillian Anderson in the 2020 season of the Netflix TV series The Crown.

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May 3, 1979 was a Thursday. There were 6 Major League Baseball games were played that day:

* The New York Mets lost to the San Francisco Giants, 7-5 at Candlestick Park in San Francisco.

* The Milwaukee Brewers beat the Toronto Blue Jays, 5-4 at Milwaukee County Stadium.

* The Minnesota Twins beat the Detroit Tigers, 7-6 at Metropolitan Stadium in the Minneapolis suburb of Bloomington, Minnesota.

* The Houston Astros beat the St. Louis Cardinals, 4-1 at Busch Memorial Stadium in St. Louis.

* The San Diego Padres beat the Montreal Expos, 10-2 at San Diego Stadium (later Jack Murphy Stadium and Qualcomm Stadium). Dave Winfield went 1-for-4 with a home run.

* And the Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Philadelphia Phillies, 5-2 at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles. Mike Schmidt hit a solo home run, and Pete Rose went 2-for-3 with an RBI. But that was all the runs the Phils got off eventual National League Rookie of the Year Rick Sutcliffe, who outpitched Steve Carlton.

Football was out of season. The NBA and the World Hockey Association were each between rounds of the Playoffs. The NHL was in its Stanley Cup Semifinals. Both series were in Game 4, and both games went to overtime. The New York Islanders beat the New York Rangers, 3-2 at Madison Square Garden. Bobby Nystrom scored the winning goal, 3:40 into overtime. But the Rangers would win the next 2 games to take the series.

In the other series, the Boston Bruins beat the Montreal Canadiens, 4-3 at the Boston Garden. Jean Ratelle scored the winner, 3:46 into overtime. But the Canadiens would win the series in overtime of Game 7, and then beat the Rangers for the Cup in 5 games.