BRITAIN: A Tough Lady for the Tories

"To me it is like a dream, that the next name in the lists after Harold Macmillan, Sir Alec Douglas-Home and Edward Heath is Margaret Thatcher." With those uncharacteristically emotional words, the coolly competent M.P. for Finchley accepted her triumph as the first woman ever to head a political party in Britain. Winning seven votes more than the mandatory majority of 139, Mrs. Thatcher, who had toppled former Prime Minister Edward Heath from his ten-year reign as Conservative Party chief the week before, soundly defeated a formidable array of four male challengers....

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