Thatcher celebrates leadership win and IRA hunger strikes suddenly end
This week in 1975 and Margaret Thatcher was celebrating after winning the Tory leadership race. “Won’t it be nice to have a woman Prime Minister?” Her spontaneous remark to a group of women visitors to the Commons revealed the driving ambition beneath the cool exterior that won for Mrs Thatcher the Tory leadership.
She routed four contenders at the second ballot stage with a total of 146 votes — a startling 67 votes ahead of her nearest rival, William Whitelaw. Mr Whitelaw had 79 votes, James Prior and Sir Geoffrey Howe had 19 votes each and John Peyton had 11 votes.
The IRA prisoners’ hunger strike ended suddenly after a weekend in which the most seriously ill of them came close to death.
A statement was issued shortly after 3pm from the Irish Republic Publicity Bureau signed “P. O’Neill,” the usual pseudonym for IRA statements. This said the hunger strike had ended after “discussions on a confidential basis” between the prisoners and the prison authorities.
Also this week and the Queen was to refund £150,000 of a £420,000 increase in the state contribution towards the cost of running the Royal Household. Announcing in the House of Commons, the Prime Minister attempted to defuse a threatened row by Left-wing Labour MPs over the proposal to increase the Civil List to £1.4 million. Mr Wilson said that the Queen had offered to make the contribution from her own resources “in view of the current economic situation”.
The Italian Constitutional Court cut into the national abortion controversy by declaring abortion legal when the mother’s physical and mental health were in serious danger. But it ruled that such abortions were permissible only if the danger could not otherwise be avoided, and it instructed Parliament to take the “necessary precautions” to ensure abortions were not performed without proper medical evidence that the danger was genuine and grave.