American Rhetoric: Movie Speech

"The Iron Lady" (2011)

MP Margaret Thatcher Addresses the House of Commons

Speaker of the House: Order! Order! The Right Honourable Lady the Secretary of State for Education.

MP Thatcher: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Right Honourable Gentleman knows that we have no choice but to close the school because -- because his union paymasters have called a strike deliberately to cripple our economy. Teachers cannot teach when there is no heating, no lighting in their classrooms, and I ask the Right Honourable Gentleman, whose fault is that?

Shadow Minister: Methinks the Right Honourable Lady doth screech too much. And...if she wants us to take her seriously she must learn to calm down.

MP Thatcher: If the Right Honourable Gentleman could perhaps attend more closely to what I am saying, rather than how I am saying it, he may receive a valuable education in spite of himself.

Shadow Minister: Why has -- Why has this Conservative government failed? Why has it forced so many in the public sector into taking strike action to save their own jobs? Minister, the breakdown in essential public services -- in transport, in electricity, in sanitation -- is not the fault of the trades unions...but of this Conservative government in which you so shamefully serve.