The Real Iron Lady (12 page)
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Authors: Gillian Shephard
Any minister who has faced a hostile House of Commons, with no way of knowing how the day will end, will recognise the courage with which Margaret Thatcher faced her destiny in that fateful debate.
The final word is given to Douglas Hurd, who records Margaret Thatcher's heroic stoicism at the end of her prime ministerial career.
I have a vivid memory of Margaret Thatcher at President Mitterand's banquet at Versailles after the signing of the CSCE Treaty [Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe Treaty] in the last week of her premiership. She carried herself magnificently that evening, even though she had in her handbag the results of the first ballot in which she failed to achieve a knockout blow against Michael Heseltine.
She must have known it was the beginning of the end. Not for a moment did her demeanour betray that to those watching her on the international stage. That is courage.
T
o read the comments of people who knew her at Oxford, one would never have thought that Margaret Roberts would have become the dazzling premier who fascinated the British press, an American, a French and a Russian President, and whose sobriquet, the Iron Lady, became known across the world.
Pamela Mason, a contemporary of Margaret Thatcher's at Somerville, remembers âa plump bonny girl, quite well covered. She had brown hair and brown eyes â she gave a brown impression, more like a woman of forty than a girl of eighteen.' Another Somervillian, Hazel Bishop, described Margaret Roberts in Brenda Maddox's
Maggie
as âbrown haired, plumpish, with a voice that she had worked on and used with great care. She never seemed young.'
A fellow undergraduate, also at Somerville, was Sheila
Browne. She went on to become a distinguished fellow at St Hilda's College in Oxford, where she taught me medieval French and was also my moral tutor. Sheila Browne eventually became the Senior Chief Inspector of Schools and was in that post at the same time as Margaret Thatcher was Education Secretary. It was also the time when I was a schools inspector in Norfolk, and had professional as well as personal contact with Miss Browne. I was intrigued by the fact that she and Margaret Thatcher, who had known each other at Somerville, were now both working in the Department for Education. Miss Browne told me that she and Margaret Thatcher had, when they were undergraduates, shared a bedroom after a dance, but that at that time, Margaret Roberts was not particularly memorable. Miss Browne, as told in John Campbell's book
Margaret Thatcher,
formed the later impression that Margaret Roberts was a âdeeply insecure young woman, concerned above all to do the right thing'. And Janet Vaughan, Principal of Somerville from 1945, explains to John Campbell why she did not invite Margaret Roberts to social occasions at weekends. âShe wasn't interesting, except as a Conservative. If I had interesting or amusing people staying with me, I would never have thought of asking Margaret Roberts â except as a Conservative.' In other words, a not very interesting specimen of an alien and unacceptable breed. Leaving aside this dreadful example of a peculiarly Oxford type of narrow-mindedness, later to flower into the university's decision not to award an honorary doctorate to Britain's
first, and so far only, woman Prime Minister, one is forced to conclude that her time at Oxford was not Margaret Thatcher's finest, or happiest, hour.
Even within the embrace of the Oxford University Conservative Association (OUCA), where she was eventually elected president in 1946, a great achievement for a woman, she was not remembered as a brilliant performer, but rather as a very ambitious but conventional political thinker.
What made the difference was her first experience of live politics, as an OUCA representative at the 1946 Conservative Party Conference. She was entranced. For the first time in her adult life, she felt surrounded by people who thought as she did. There was a place for her. She could see her way forward.
By the time she was selected to fight her first seat, Dartford, at the tender age of twenty-three, she was completely transformed. Comments from Dartford voters recalled by the late Bob Dunn included glowing tributes to her looks, her ability, her quickness to answer and her extraordinary capacity for hard work. Others remarked on her capacity for leadership in preparing for her first election campaign, and the sheer energy she devoted to it. Although she, and everyone else, must have known that she could not win such a safe Labour seat, she inspired members of the Association with her own enthusiasm for the fight. During the campaign itself she was absolutely tireless in her preparation for the election, campaigning,
canvassing, speaking at meetings, sustained by excitement and her own ambition. She had found her niche. During the election campaign, which in those days featured many public meetings, she drew huge crowds; everyone wanted to see her.
Janet Fookes first encountered the name of Margaret Roberts when she was
going out with a young man whose father was one of the leading Conservative agents in the country. Having seen her soundly defeated in a selection procedure, he observed to his son that âwomen don't make it in politics'. The next time she hove into my sight it was the early 1960s, and I was at a Conservative lunch in the Queen's Hotel, Hastings. Margaret was the guest speaker, now a thrusting young MP who made a confident speech on the theme of âPolitics is the Art of the Possible'. I reckon this pragmatic approach was to be the distinguishing hallmark of her entire parliamentary career. It was simply that what others thought was impossible, Margaret considered possible.
There is no doubt that the arrival of Margaret Thatcher, the newly elected MP for Finchley, in the House of Commons in 1959 made an electrifying impact. After all the difficulties she had had to get selected as a woman, once she was elected, she enjoyed an enormous amount of attention from the press and media because she was a woman.
Jill Knight remembers:
From the very start, she had steadily built up an enviable reputation among colleagues from all parties. Her maiden speech was unique, for she used it to introduce her own Private Member's Bill. She was able to do this because she had gained a top place in the annual ballot for Private Members' Bills, What made her speech doubly memorable was that she went from start to finish without a note.
She was constantly reported in the
Evening Standard,
doing radio and television interviews, being asked about her clothes, her home, her children, her views on anything and everything. One can only imagine how her fellow male colleagues felt about it all. But her charisma was undoubted. The brown girl of the Oxford days had gone, and in her place was a woman whose presence made itself felt as soon she walked onto a platform or into a room. She was full of fervour and passion. Politics had turned her on.
Everyone who has worked with Margaret Thatcher knows how much she relished the challenge and excitement of elections, the long days packed with activity and change, the hourly need for decisions, great or small, and the thrill of campaigning out on the street. There was not a moment to be wasted, she would note with satisfaction, urging everyone, âLet's get on with it.'
Jean Lucas was a Conservative Party agent, eventually becoming Chairman of the National Society of Agents in 1980. She has kept a record of some of the events in her long and successful professional life, including the by-election in 1975 that saw the Conservative Peter Bottomley elected
in West Woolwich. She believes that âMargaret Thatcher was the first leader to see it as her job to support candidates in by-elections.'
Virginia Bottomley, Peter's wife, also has memories of that by-election and the electrifying part played in it by Mrs Thatcher.
My first encounter with Margaret Thatcher was in 1975 as the dutiful wife of the by-election candidate in West Woolwich. Peter had fought the seat on two previous occasions in 1974. The MP, Bill Hamling, died. Peter had hung on assisting the constituency in the aftermath of the two defeats. Suddenly he found himself fighting the first by-election since Margaret Thatcher's election as party leader. Her arrival in the constituency was full of anxiety and excitement. I walked with her round the streets as a 27-year-old ingénue. She was formidable, intimidating and impressive. The Conservatives, Peter, and Margaret won the by-election.
Sarah Joiner describes Mrs Thatcher's first campaign as leader of the Conservative Party in 1979. She gives a vivid picture of the details of a political campaign and of the powerful leadership given by Mrs Thatcher to every aspect of it.
I was appointed as personal assistant to Roger Boaden, the European Elections Officer at Conservative Central Office (CCO) in February 1979. I was just nineteen. We were co-ordinating the national activities of the candidates for the first direct elections to the European
Parliament. A few weeks after we started working together, Roger came back from a meeting to announce that the general election had been called, and that he was to be the organiser of the leader's election campaign tour. This was because he had previously organised campaign tours for Ted Heath. We gained a deputy for Roger B., another Roger â Roger Pratt, and a second secretary, Jane Pitcher.
It was our job to coordinate every aspect of getting Mrs T. and her entourage around the UK to meet party members and the public, minute by minute during the campaign.
While Mrs T.'s speechwriters and policymakers were in different parts of CCO, we inhabited an eyrie at the top of Smith Square painted in screaming yellow. We also adopted the trio of police officers assigned to Mrs. T.'s personal protection into our already cramped space during the times they were in the building with her. It was unnerving to see their holster guns when they took their jackets off, but you got used to it quite quickly.
Most of my time was spent typing endless sheets of detailed programme notes and checking detail. It was all highly confidential and every copy was numbered and issued only to those on the âneed to know' list. The information literally tracked Mrs T. every minute of the day. I clearly remember typing things like:
â08.01 Door opens at Flood Street'
â08.03 Mrs Thatcher in car, moves off towardsâ¦'
We detailed every handover from police force to police force along motorways and at county borders, we scheduled hair appointments, dress fittings, meal breaks, hotel arrangements, the names of key âmeeters and greeters'; everything was listed on the sheets.
On many occasions Mrs T. would come to sit with us in our yellow
offices. She usually came on her own or with only one or two others. She was always cheerful and professional, in that wonderful âhead girl' way, jollying us along when we were about to collapse. Such energy made us determined to keep up. I remember her perching on my desk one evening explaining to me that yellow was just the colour to keep us all awake and motivated. Pale green, she declared, was quite hopeless as it dulled the senses. When I was typing yet more amendments to a speech, she made me a cup of tea.
I remember Roger B. being cross when we had to change the official cars used to transport Mrs T. The reason was because the car boots were not big enough to lay her dresses out flat inside, to keep them in pristine order. Roger B. went off muttering furiously that this had to be a âwoman thing', as all previous leaders, who of course had been men, just put their suit bag in the boot without a fuss.
During the campaign Mrs T. acquired a coach nicknamed the battle bus, all decked out in party colours. On the day of its delivery to Smith Square, the press were invited to see it in action. As Mrs T. sat on the seat dictating a note to Jane, I bashed away at a typewriter set up on the table between us. The bus slowly circled the square as photographers snapped away.
I was formally introduced much later to Mrs T. at a national rally, and she knew without prompting who I was and what I did. She asked after my parents, Trixie and Kevin Gardner, and if we still had our home in north Cornwall. I was impressed because she always thanked her backroom boys and girls.
Sarah Joiner added in conversation that Mrs Thatcher always packed the sleeves of her dresses and jackets with
tissue paper. âIt keeps them in shape, you see. I always do it, and you should, too.'
Harvey Thomas has other memories of the organisation involved in this election campaign.
All of us who worked on the âadvance party' for Mrs T.'s visits and travel were dedicated to protecting her and projecting her. Sometimes we had to move quickly to stop others taking advantage. On a visit to Alton Towers, we had worked through a very careful route and plan for the whole visit. The Special Branch were of course with us, and everything had been approved for her personal wellbeing, for the political presentation and for security. It was only when I was walking alongside her and the hosts, and realised we were edging in the wrong direction that I quickly spoke to the boss and pointed this out. He said, âWe thought we would take her on the big roller coaster.' I grabbed a Special Branch colleague and together we made it clear that that was not part of the plan, and in the space of twenty to thirty yards we had reverted to the right route. She would have done whatever we arranged, but it would have been very uncomfortable not to say embarrassing for her to be put on a roller coaster, half the time upside down.
I think it was the sense of duty that actually helped her to deal with many situations by just getting on with it. In the 1979 election, during my very early time with her, we were on an election visit to a farm near Ipswich. Before any of us could do anything, the farmer had thrust a baby calf into her arms. Looking back at the video of the occasion, her face takes on a determined look and instinctively she turned to the cameras and said, âDon't expect me to hold this for twenty minutes while you take pictures.'
Michael Brunson in
A Ringside Seat
sets this occasion in context.
It was clear that this style of campaigning with its heavy emphasis on the photo-opportunity would be used in the election. Our two travelling cameramen never lacked for a picture. The Leader of the Conservative Party tasted chocolates in Birmingham, butter in Aberdeen, and tea without milk or sugar at a tea factory in Newcastle. She had wires stuck all over her as her heart was checked in Milton Keynes and she waved two shopping bags around in Halifax, to show, she said, how much a pound had bought under the Tories six years earlier, and how much less it was now buying under Labour. Most famously of all, she cuddled a calf in a field near Ipswich. It was that last incident which came to symbolise the whole new approach to campaigning. It was all meant to tie in with whatever the theme of the day was supposed to be, presumably something to do with agriculture. But the whole operation seemed so outrageously over the top that it produced plenty of criticism that it was simply a picture for the sake of the picture alone ⦠Mrs Thatcher not only posed but also began to answer questions with the young animal still clasped to her bosom. In my commentary later, I described the event, with considerable understatement and with not a little irony, as probably the first time that a major British politician had ever conducted a news conference in the middle of a field, while holding a farm
animal. So agitated did Denis Thatcher become that he was heard to remark, âIf we're not careful, we'll have a dead calf on our hands.' Indeed, for several days afterwards, I and several others of the travelling reporters made regular enquiries about the calf's health, in the hope of an even more spectacular dénouement to the whole business, but it was not to be. The calf, in the true spirit of Thatcherism, survived.
