Britain Awake
1976 speech by Margaret Thatcher / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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"Britain Awake" (also known as the Iron Lady speech)[1] was a speech made by British Conservative Party leader Margaret Thatcher at Kensington Town Hall, London, on 19 January 1976. The speech was strongly anti-Soviet, with Thatcher stating that the Soviet Union was "bent on world domination" and taking advantage of détente to make gains in the Angolan Civil War. She questioned the British Labour government's defence cuts and the state of the NATO defences in parts of Europe. Thatcher stated that a Conservative government would align its foreign policy with the United States and increase defence spending. She also congratulated Malcolm Fraser and Robert Muldoon for their recent election as prime minister of Australia and New Zealand, respectively, but warned of the risks of a potential communist victory in the upcoming 1976 Italian general election. Thatcher urged the British public to wake from "a long sleep" and make a choice that "will determine the life or death of our kind of society".
The speech was reported on in the Soviet press, including by Yuri Gavrilov in the Krasnaya Zvezda who dubbed Thatcher the "Iron Lady", a term also used afterwards by the news agency TASS. The Soviet reporting, including the nickname, was discussed in a Reuters story that Western outlets picked up. The British press adopted the term as a mark of the strength of Thatcher's anti-communist stance, and she approved of its use.