She was hard-line and hard-headed. She was, quite famously, “not for turning.” She took on the unions and won, took on Argentina and won, took on the left and won. Three times.

Lady Margaret Thatcher, Britain’s first and only female prime minister, died Monday after a stroke. She was 87 and had been in declining health for years.

In Britain, Thatcher is both a beloved and divisive figure. She was, and is, adored by the right for her steadfast belief in the free market and personal responsibility, for her skeptical stance on Europe, and for her opposition to communism.

But her perceived lack of sympathy for Britain’s have-nots, her inflexible position on Northern Ireland and especially her steely opposition to unions still resonates in many parts of the country.

Born the daughter of a grocer in Lincolnshire, Thatcher was first elected to the House of Commons in 1959. Two decades later, she was leader of the Conservative Party and prime minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

After the 1979 election, with her husband, Dennis, at her side, Thatcher paused before walking in the famous black door of 10 Downing St. and quoted St. Francis of Assisi: “Where there is discord, may we bring harmony.”

While the 11 years Thatcher would govern Britain would be far from harmonious, they were extraordinarily significant.

“She didn’t just lead our country,” said David Cameron, another Tory prime minister. “She saved our country. “And I believe she’ll go down as the greatest British peacetime prime minister.”

Thatcher faced down trade unions, sold off a multitude of state-owned companies, sent troops to fight in the Falkland Islands, saw the end of the Cold War and was ultimately the longest-serving British prime minister of the 20th century.

She also governed a sometimes divided and unhappy nation through difficult times: a lengthy and vicious miners strike, unemployment over three million, and ongoing violence and upheaval in Northern Ireland.

Thatcher, who won an unprecedented three general elections for the Tories, was ultimately ousted by a rebellion in her own party, rather than by the electorate, and left No. 10 in 1990.

“Very few leaders get to change not only the political landscape of their country but of the world. Margaret was such a leader,” said former prime minister Tony Blair.

On the global stage, she formed strong relationships with U.S. President Ronald Reagan, Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney and even Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev — about whom she had received favourable reports from another Canadian prime minister, Pierre Trudeau.

Thatcher is survived by her son, Mark, and daughter, Carol. Sir Dennis died in 2003.

On Monday, Gorbachev said Thatcher’s relationship with him allowed for a “change in the atmosphere between our country and the West and to the end of the Cold War.”

Prime Minister Stephen Harper, in his statement, said the period of “peace and prosperity … that followed must therefore rank as one of her great and lasting gifts to this generation.”

“She was a conviction politician and when she encountered a crisis, she delivered the tough medicine,” Foreign Affairs minister John Baird told The Star from Israel. “She was an inspiration for freedom around the world.”

The “Iron Lady” — her nickname was bestowed on her by the Soviet press — was known for her steely will and determination, best illustrated by her famous retort when pushed on whether she would do a “U-turn” on a policy: “You turn if you want to. The lady is not for turning.”

In her memoirs, Thatcher wrote that she learned much of what she needed to run the country from watching how her father ran his grocery store.

“Before I read a line from the great liberal economists, I knew from my father’s accounts that the free market was like a vast sensitive nervous system, responding to events and signals all over the world to meet the ever-changing needs of peoples … with a kind of benign indifference to their status.”

Thatcher’s resolve on Northern Ireland was tested shortly after she took office as prime minister. Irish Republican Army prisoners went on hunger strike to protest conditions in prisons. The leader of the opposition, Michael Foot, asked Thatcher to relent. She refused.

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“What the terrorist prisoners wanted was political status, and they were not going to get it,” she wrote.

Shortly after that debate, the leader of the hunger strikers, Bobby Sands, died. (In all, 10 of the hunger strikers died.)

“From this time forward, I became the IRA’s top target for assassination,” she recalled later.

And the IRA nearly succeeded. In 1984, a bomb was planted in the Brighton hotel where Thatcher was staying during the Conservative Party’s annual conference. Five people, including two members of parliament, died in the attack. Thatcher was not injured.

That same year Thatcher faced trouble on another front: organized labour. Plans to close a number of state-owned mines sent thousands of workers to the picket lines, but Thatcher stood firm against the National Union of Mineworkers and its firebrand leader, Arthur Scargill. The strike would eventually last 51 weeks.

“What the strike’s defeat established was that Britain could not be made ungovernable by the Fascist Left,” Thatcher wrote. “Marxists wanted to defy the law of the land in order to defy the laws of economics. They failed, and in doing so demonstrated just how mutually dependent the free economy and a free society really are.”

A statement posted Monday to the union’s website upon news of her death said: “Margaret Hilda Thatcher is gone but the damage caused by her fatally flawed politics sadly lingers on. Good riddance.”

Thatcher’s clash with unions still smarts in parts of Britain, where she – and her party – remain deeply unpopular. In 1981, she was ranked as the least popular British leader of all time, a rating which improved when she dispatched British warships to the south Atlantic to recapture the Falkland Islands, which had been invaded by Argentina.

“This was terrible; totally unacceptable,” Thatcher wrote. “I could not believe it. These were our people; our islands.”

Her longtime press secretary, Bernard Ingham, said the decision to take Britain to war “required enormous leadership.”

“This was a formidable undertaking, this was a risk with a capital R-I-S-K, and she demonstrated her leadership by saying she would give the military their marching orders and let them get on with it,” he said.

On Monday, flags at Buckingham Palace, 10 Downing St. and Parliament were lowered to half-mast. The Queen said she was saddened by the news and would write privately to Thatcher’s family.

A date for Thatcher’s funeral has not yet been set but it will likely take place early next week. She has been granted a ceremonial funeral — a step below a full state funeral — with military honours, which will be held at St. Paul’s Cathedral. Cremation will follow.

Thatcher is survived by her children, Carol and Mark. Her husband of more than 50 years, Sir Dennis, died in 2003.

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