welll ... we did have Enoch Powell, who was a serious figure and a rallying-point for the right. I strongly suspect that he could have easily been a politician of the stature of Le Pen. But he ended up spending sixteen years hanging around as an Ulster Unionist, never quite accepting that the Tory Party had f**ked him off.
I think that's a bit harsh on Thatch. She fought the Falklands war, and she was as right-wing as hell when it came to union busting. But I don't recall her ever personally, herself, saying anything particularly objectionable about immigrants or black Britons, even in the aftermath of the Brixton and Toxteth riots. This was always left to figures like Tebbit who certainly weren't on the fringes of the party, but nor were they near the centre of power. I guess what yer man might have meant is that Thatch certainly had the kind of huuuge personality cult that tends to build up around far right leaders.
Otoh, I was not old enough to vote in the 1980s so I might have missed some nuances, particularly in the early half.
best dd
___________________________________________________________ Yahoo! Photos – NEW, now offering a quality print service from just 7p a photo http://uk.photos.yahoo.com