Thatcher: Passing of a political giant loved and hated in equal measure

Yet all agree Baroness Thatcher was a transformative figure who revolutionised the political landscape at home and was pivotal in transforming it on the global stage.

A fatal stroke, suffered as the 87-year-old convalesced at the Ritz Hotel in London yesterday, ended the life of this giant of 20th-century politics.

David Cameron, who cut short a trip to Europe, said she was "the greatest British peacetime prime minister".

Labour leader Ed Miliband described her as a "unique figure" who had "reshaped the politics of a whole generation" while First Minister Alex Salmond said she was a "truly formidable prime minister whose policies defined a political generation".

Tony Blair, the former prime minister, noted: "Very few leaders get to change not only the political landscape of their country but of the world. Margaret was such a leader. Her global impact was vast."

US President Barack Obama said the "world has lost one of the great champions of freedom and liberty and America has lost a true friend".

Former Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev said: "We were able to reach mutual understanding and this contributed to changes in atmosphere between our country and the West and to the end of the Cold War. Margaret Thatcher was a great politician. She will remain in our memory and in history."

However, the ability of her uncompromising brand of politics to cause deep division was also evident in the reaction to her death. More than 200 people celebrated in Glasgow's George Square after the announcement.

They chanted "Maggie, Maggie, Maggie, dead, dead, dead" and a piper played while some danced and stamped on images of the late prime minister.

Respect Party MP George Galloway tweeted "Tramp the dirt down" after the Elvis Costello song of the same name which attacked Mrs Thatcher.

Paul Kenny of the GMB union said she would be remembered for her "destructive and divisive policies".

Paradoxically, her refusal to yield on home rule unwittingly played a role in ushering in devolution and creating the pathway to next year's independence referendum.

As Canon Kenyon Wright, who played a pivotal role in the Scottish constitutional convention, notes in a letter in The Herald today, Mrs Thatcher was in many ways "the mother of the Scottish Parliament".

Equally, her unbending style helped usher in New Labour and Mr Blair.

Labour's last prime minister, Gordon Brown, said she would be remembered not only as Britain's first female prime minister and the longest-serving of the 20th century, "but also for the determination and resilience with which she carried out all her duties throughout her public life".

Tomorrow, Westminster will be recalled from its Easter recess to enable MPs and peers to pay tributes. All the main parties have suspended campaigning for the English local elections.

Downing Street said a ceremonial funeral with full military honours would take place at St Paul's Cathedral next week, but some Tory MPs have demanded a state funeral.

In 1979, when the grocer's daughter from Grantham came to power, she was determined to transform a Britain dubbed "the sick man of Europe" into an open, dynamic economy.

The role of the state was reduced and that of the free market increased. The City of London was liberalised; the consumer society was writ large.

In her famous Sermon on the Mound at the Church of Scotland's General Assembly in 1988, she sought to justify her political and economic outlook, saying: "It is not the creation of wealth that is wrong but the love of money for its own sake."

Her policies meant thousands of people were able to buy their own council house and buy and sell shares in utilities, which were turned from public to privately run services.

Mrs Thatcher's initial unpopularity was fed by rising unemployment, which would top three million, but she famously insisted: "The lady's not for turning."

Her fortunes were dramatically changed by victory in the Falklands War, and a reviving economy coupled with Labour's lurch to the left helped the Tories go on to win landslide victories in 1983 and 1987.

For her supporters, Mrs Thatcher's tough, unbending leadership was best demonstrated by her stoic response to the IRA's failed assassination attempt at the Brighton conference in 1984.

Many centres of heavy industries, such as coal and steel, gradually closed with the economy becoming based more on services. Where Ted Heath and Harold Wilson had failed to curb the might of the trade unions, she was determined to succeed.

The industrial conflict was at its most intense with the miners' strike of 1984 when communities from Scotland to Yorkshire and South Wales joined the battle against the Government; the scars are still felt today.

Public anger also spilled on to the streets when, years later, the Tories introduced the poll tax. Resistance was strong in Scotland where it was implemented first. John Major, who succeeded Mrs Thatcher as prime minister, would go on to scrap it.

Internationally, she was dubbed the Iron Lady in her fight against the Soviet Union and she found a political soulmate in Ronald Reagan, the US President.

During her 12 years in office Mrs Thatcher shifted the political axis to the right across much of Britain and yet in Scotland there was an instinctive reaction against her policies.

Indeed, Scottish devolution, having failed to take hold in 1979, did so in 1999 in what many saw as the result of a cumulative reaction against Thatcher-inspired policies.

Now, much of the SNP's pitch for next year's independence referendum is based on a rejection of the policies of another Tory Westminster Government – albeit one in coalition – and an emphasis on the proposition that social values in Scotland are different to those in England.

It was Mrs Thatcher's forthright, uncompromising nature that had propelled her through so much, which ultimately led to her downfall by alienating her colleagues, first with the resignation of Michael Heseltine and then the departures of Nigel Lawson and Geoffrey Howe with Europe, as ever, being a catalyst.

Ill health in recent years kept her out of the public eye, but the impact of her legacy – politically, economically and socially – is still being felt today.

The huge changes she engendered mean we are, in many senses, all Thatcher's children.