Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Foreign policy of Margaret Thatcher

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was redirect to Margaret Thatcher#Foreign affairs. This does not prevent later recreation (under this or another title) as soon as somebody puts in the work to make a decent subarticle out of it per WP:SS; it's uncontested that the topic is notable. Sandstein 11:52, 31 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Foreign policy of Margaret Thatcher

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I personally would like to see this article expanded, rather than deleted, but so far it seems the prospects are unlikely. A lot of her foreign policy pertaining to areas outside the realms of the Soviet Union and Communism are omitted, and even I (as a personal admirer) can see that a lot of the text is likely a little biased in her favour. I tried reformatting the article layout a couple of months ago, but retrospectively I cannot bring myself to confidently believe that that's enough. This article probably should be redirected to Margaret Thatcher#Foreign affairs, similar to how Foreign policy of Tony Blair redirects to the relevant section at Tony Blair. Perhaps a merge of some of the contents could be possible. --Nevé –selbert 23:05, 23 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Politicians-related deletion discussions. North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 08:35, 24 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of United Kingdom-related deletion discussions. North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 08:35, 24 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Politics-related deletion discussions. North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 08:35, 24 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of History-related deletion discussions. North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 08:35, 24 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Delete – As it stands, this article has a short paragraph and a long quote. The short paragraph is much less informative than the current contents of Margaret Thatcher#Foreign affairs and her long foreign policy speech belongs in Wikiquote or Wikisource. Nothing to save here. — JFG ^talk 10:39, 24 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

To avoid breaking incoming links, I naturally support a redirect to Margaret Thatcher#Foreign affairs instead of outright deletion. — JFG ^talk 12:46, 24 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

As noted by another contributor, Premiership of Margaret Thatcher is also a good target for redirect. However it is organized chronologically without a dedicated "Foreign policy" section. — JFG ^talk 06:47, 28 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Keep This is fairly obviously an article with potential for expansion. That doesn't mean I think that it's particularly good in its current state. Mr Stephen (talk) 23:13, 25 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]
xx changed my mind xx it will eventually be much longer. It's basically a stand-alone topic with a large RS literature. Rjensen (talk) 23:15, 25 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]
- delete I now feel that the article is not needed because we have a better locale to build upon, Premiership of Margaret Thatcher. Rjensen (talk) 05:38, 28 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Keep, or redirect. With respect, Nevé, why bring this to AFD if your desired outcome is to redirect it? Sounds like this would be better discussed on the article's talk page. Nobody doubts that this is an appropriate subject with lots of potential of a encyclopaedia article, so why delete it? A Train^talk 16:41, 26 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I think what we want is an article on the foreign policy of the Thatcher administration. This frees up the article to cover many many topics that she was not deeply involved in. Currently there is no good place to cover them. Rjensen (talk) 17:19, 26 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@A Train: If there was a Wikipedia:Articles for redirection route, I would have chosen that. However, the first thing that came to my mind was to follow what happened with the Iron Lady situation.--Nevé –selbert 20:00, 26 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Keep. I'll admit that the article does need improvement, but articles about the foreign policies of major governments are a thing we accept and keep — Category:Foreign policy by government has 14 other sibling articles already. I'll acknowledge that for the most part they exist more for recent/current governments than they do for older ones, but some older ones that loom large in political history (Kennedy, Reagan, Mitterrand, B. Clinton) do also have them, and there's hardly any question to be had that Thatcher's in that league. (The new/old inconsistency isn't so much about older foreign policy being less notable in principle; it's just that because it's a topic that requires digging into old microfilms and books and such rather than simply throwing two sentences and a web URL into the article every time some new piece of news happens, people aren't as diligent about doing the work as they are for current leaders like Obama or Putin or Modi.) We should flag this for improvement, certainly — just for starters, quite a bit of the content at Margaret Thatcher#Foreign affairs could quite legitimately be copied and/or outright moved here to help expand this — but "foreign policy of a national government" is a perfectly reasonable and perhaps even expected topic for a spinoff article separate from the leader's main biography, so duplicating content that's already in her bio isn't a reason in and of itself to not have this. Bearcat (talk) 17:23, 27 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I cannot see any good reason at all to move information from Margaret Thatcher#Foreign affairs to this article; the #Foreign affairs section is reasonably sized and should not be reduced. I would like this article to be expanded (absolutely), but nobody seems to want to volunteer. The last thing I want is for this article to remain stagnant. There should be information on her approach towards Latin America (Falklands) and Africa (Apartheid), and her attitudes in relation to European integration (single currency) and Irish issues (hunger strike), etc. From reading the article alone, I would think that her foreign policy was totally dominated by containing the threat of Communism.--Nevé –selbert 21:19, 27 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Redirect to Margaret_Thatcher#Foreign_affairs for now. The target section is getting long, and if someone develops the topic further it could be broken out into a separate article (this one). But as things stand right now, there's no need for two articles. The section in the target area covers this quite well. K.e.coffman (talk) 07:05, 28 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I agree, REdirect -- the present article is too brief to be useful, thought the bibliography might be. Peterkingiron (talk) 17:54, 30 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.