Rethinking Thatcher and Europe. An alternative reading

The goal of this doctoral dissertation is to establish the raison d’être of the policy options that Margaret Thatcher adopted on European integration in the years of her premiership. She was the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1990, years of major developments in European integration. The thesis wishes to clarify the expectations Thatcher had over the European Community and the decisions she took as British Prime Minister about the integration process through archival research and by placing Thatcher’s European options within the broader context of the 1980s. I aim to show that she balanced ideology and pragmatism when reacting to the positions of the other European leaders, often very different from hers, and to the proposal and decisions of the main institutions of the Community. This research is original to the point it deconstructs the mainstream narrative of Thatcher as Eurosceptical and reconstructs a more comprehensive and nuanced outlook of her as British Prime Minister, pragmatic in her adapting to circumstances but not incoherent in her overall attitude.