Margaret Hilda Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher, LG, OM, PC, FRS (born October 13, 1925) is a British politician and the first woman Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, a position she held from 1979 to 1990. She is a member of the Conservative Party and still the figurehead for a brand of politics known as Thatcherism involving reduced government spending and privatization of government owned industries. Even before coming to power she was nicknamed The Iron Lady in Soviet propaganda, an appellation which stuck.