By AFP
London : Former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher has been admitted to a London hospital where she is in a “stable” condition, its spokeswoman said Saturday.
Thatcher, 82, is expected to spend the night at Saint Thomas’ Hospital in central London, to which she was reportedly driven from her home in the capital late Friday for precautionary tests.
Britain’s first female premier, nicknamed “the Iron Lady”, has appeared in public less and less frequently after doctors banned her from addressing large audiences in 2002. She has suffered a series of minor strokes which figures close to her say have affected her short-term memory.
A hospital spokeswoman said in a statement: “We can confirm that Baroness Thatcher has been admitted to St Thomas’ Hospital and is expected to remain in hospital overnight for observation.
“Her condition is stable and she is speaking to the medical staff who are caring for her.” A spokeswoman for the Conservative Party, which she led from 1975 to 1990, added: “We have been in touch with her office and we wish her well.”
Sporting her trademark bouffant hairstyle and handbag, Thatcher forced through sweeping changes during her premiership between 1979 and 1990, advocating individualism and the breakdown of Britain’s class system.
At home, she is a divisive figure, hailed by the right who say she revived the economy by clamping down on trades unions and crushing a major strike by northern English miners protesting pit closures in 1985.
But the left accuse her of heavyhandedness and intransigence, saying her reforms helped to unpick the fabric of society, particularly in traditional manufacturing heartlands such as northern England.
Abroad, she forged a close personal and political relationship with US president Ronald Reagan in the Cold War stand-off with the Soviet Union.
Her popularity soared when she sent troops to the Falkland Islands in 1982 after Argentina’s invasion and Britain secured victory in two months.
She survived a bomb planted by the Irish Republican Army (IRA) during the Conservative Party’s annual conference in Brighton, southern England, in 1984, which came close to killing her and her ministers.
Ultimately, though, it was her perceived inflexibility which brought her down — her resistance to closer European ties was a key trigger to a revolt within the Conservatives which led to John Major taking over from her in 1990. She spent longer in Downing Street than any other British premier in the 20th century and is still an icon for the right wing of the Conservatives, now Britain’s main opposition party, to this day.
After leaving the top job, Thatcher was appointed to the unelected upper chamber House of Lords as Baroness Thatcher of Kesteven. She wrote best-selling memoirs and gave lucrative lecture tours worldwide. Her husband of 52 years, businessman Sir Denis Thatcher, died in 2003.