Thatcher (16 page)
The size and shadow of her legend as an individualistic politician makes the divide between those who love her and those who hate her one of fervour rather than sense. As Andrew Anthony said, âThatcher herself remains one of the few political symbols guaranteed to separate us into the ideological tribes of left and right: in the one instance with a kind of visceral loathing, in the other a braying pride.'
22
But the practical and economic result of her one-woman crusade, carried out with courage and skill as well as obstinacy and impatience, has been to change the landscape of British politics, British expectations, and British daily life in as radical a way as Attlee's post-war government introduced collectivism.
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âMargaret Thatcher... carried the authority of her office always with her. It was in her handbag,' Douglas Hurd said in an interview in 1996. âNo wonder some ministers were actually physically sick before going to meetings with a piece of business likely to be on the receiving end of the most famous handbag in world political history. Julian Critchley cannot have known quite what he was starting when he wrote as early as 1982 that “She cannot see an institution without hitting it with her handbag.”'
Mrs Thatcher was both self-aware and quite unrepentant about these traits. On one occasion she opened a ministerial meeting by banging the celebrated bag on the table and declaring
Well, I haven't much time today, only enough time to explode and have my way!
And when she failed to get her way she was furious.
Why
won't
they do what I want them to?
, she fumed to a member of the Cabinet Secretariat once ministers had left after a particular fractious Cabinet committee meeting.
Mrs Thatcher had no idea of what it was like to be on the receiving end of that handbag and the cumulative resentment it could generate, to the point where some, even some of the other big beasts in the ministerial jungle (Heseltine in 1986, Lawson in 1989 and Howe in 1990), could take it no more. Howe, whom (according to Lawson) she âtreated as a cross between a doormat and a punchbag', said of her outburst in her memoirs against Heseltine's alleged breach of collective responsibility over Westland: âComing from the past mistress at marginalising Cabinet committees and deciding issues in bilaterals, this is quite a statement.' In such matters Mrs Thatcher was quite without self-irony. And she was unrepentant to the end and beyond the end. In her televised memoirs, screened in the autumn of 1993, she was as fiercely a conviction person as she had been when talking to Kenneth Harris over fourteen years earlier.
I think sometimes the Prime Minister should be intimidating
, she told Denis Blakeway.
[Peter Hennessy:
The Prime Minister
(Penguin, London: 2000), p 401f]
CHAPTER 1: MR ROBERTS' DAUGHTER
1.
Margaret Thatcher,
The Path to Power
(HarperCollins, Oxford: 1995) p 3, hereafter
The Path to Power
.
2.
The Path to Power
, p 5.
3.
The Path to Power
, pp 23â4.
4.
The Path to Power
, p 24
5.
Quoted in
The Path to Power
, p 7.
6.
The Path to Power
, p 31.
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CHAPTER 2: TRANSITIONS
1.
Hugo Young,
âOne of Us': a biography of Margaret Thatcher
(Macmillan, London: 1989) p 16.
2.
Young,
âOne of Us'
, p 16.
3.
The Path to Power
, p 40.
4.
Hartmut Kopsch, âThe Approach of the Conservative Party to Social Policy during World War II', unpublished University of London Phd. Thesis, 1974.
5.
The Path to Power
, p 44.
6.
The Path to Power
, p 77.
7.
The Path to Power
, p 96.
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CHAPTER 3: TAKING ON THE PARTY
1.
The Path to Power
, p 106.
2.
Denis Healey,
The Time of my Life
(Michael Joseph, London: 1989) p 487.
3.
Quoted in J Campbell,
Margaret Thatcher Vol.1.The Grocer's Daughter
(Jonathan Cape, London: 2000) p 129.
4.
Quoted in Campbell,
The Grocer's Daughter
, p 135.
5.
House of Commons, 19 April 1961 [Vol.638, cols.1226â32].
6.
Jean Mann,
Women in Parliament
(Odhams: 1962) p 31.
7.
Daily Telegraph
23 October 1969.
8.
Margaret Thatcher,
The Downing Street Years
(HarperCollins, London: 1993) p 423, hereafter
The Downing Street Years
.
9.
Hugo Young and Anne Sloman,
The Thatcher Phenomenon
(1986) p 23.
10.
Speech opening a Conservative fashion show, 2 October 1963, reported in Finchley Press, 11 October 1963.
11.
Russell Lewis,
Margaret Thatcher
(Routledge and Kegan Paul, London: 1975) p 32.
12.
Margaret Thatcher: complete public statements 1945â1990. Database and Compilation © OUP 1999. This title contains material reproduced by consent of Baroness Thatcher, HMSO, and other owners listed on the disk. UDN: 62_015 19 March 1962 â Speech to Finchley Conservatives.
13.
The Path to Power
, p 136.
14.
Margaret Thatcher: complete public statements 1945â1990. Database and Compilation © OUP 1999. This title contains material reproduced by consent of Baroness Thatcher, HMSO, and other owners listed on the disk. UDN: 66_022.
15.
The Path to Power
, p 139.
16.
Margaret Thatcher: complete public statements 1945â1990. Database and Compilation © OUP 1999. This title contains material reproduced by consent of Baroness Thatcher, HMSO, and other owners listed on the disk. UDN: 84_280 Madge Green,
Woman's Weekly
. The interview was published on 6 July 1985.
17.
The Path to Power
, p 155.
18.
Young,
âOne of Us'
, p 69.
19.
BBC radio interview, 28 November 1974.
20.
The Path to Power
, p 213.
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CHAPTER 4: THATCHER EMERGING
1.
R Blake,
The Conservative Party from Peel to Major
(Heineman, London: 1997) p 300.
2.
The Path to Power
, p 307.
3.
Given in Campbell,
The Grocer's Daughter
, p. 348.
4.
The Path to Power
, p 308.
5.
Campbell,
The Grocer's Daughter
, p 352.
6.
Quoted in Campbell,
The Grocer's Daughter
, p 352.
7.
John O'Sullivan, NRO Sir Denis, R.I.P. A prince among supporting players dies. June 27, 2003, 9:45 a.m. http://www.nationalreview.com/jos/jos062703.
8.
Campbell,
The Grocer's Daughter
, p 354.
9.
The Path to Power
, p 294.
10.
The Path to Power
, p 311.
11.
Campbell,
The Grocer's Daughter
, p 353.
12.
The Path to Power
, p 404.
13.
Speech for Conference for Management in Industry, 9 January 1978.
14.
Campbell, p 362.
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CHAPTER 5: THATCHERISM AT HOME
1.
4 May 1979 â remarks on entering Downing Street. Margaret Thatcher: complete public statements 1945â1990. Database and Compilation © OUP 1999. This title contains material reproduced by consent of Baroness Thatcher, HMSO, and other owners listed on the disk. UDN: 79_240.
2.
The Downing Street Years
, p 26.
3.
The Downing Street Years
, p 27.
4.
The Downing Street Years
, p 28.
5.
The Downing Street Years
, p 28.
6.
The Downing Street Years
, p 23.
7.
House of Commons 15 May 1979 [Vol.967, cols. 73â87].
8.
The Downing Street Years
, p 122; Campbell, p 168.
9.
Young,
âOne of Us'
, p 83.
10.
Quoted in J Campbell,
Margaret Thatcher Vol 2: The Iron Lady
(Jonathan Cape, London: 2003), p 168, hereafter Campbell Vol 2.
11.
Carol Thatcher,
Below the Parapet: The Biography of Denis Thatcher
(HarperCollins, London: 1997), p 201.
12.
The Downing Street Years
, p 342.
13.
IRN interview, 28 November 1980.
14.
Speech to Conservative Rally in Harrogate, 9 June 1987.
15.
Campbell, p 374.
16.
The Downing Street Years
, p 414.
17.
House of Commons, 30 October 1990 [Vol 178, cols 869â92].
18.
Quoted in Campbell, Vol 2, p 721.
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CHAPTER 6: THATCHER ABROAD
1.
Speech at âYouth for Europe' Rally, 2 June 1979.
2.
The Downing Street Years
, p 64.
3.
Young,
âOne of Us'
, p 187.
4.
Interview for
The New Yorker
, 30 September 1985.
5.
The Downing Street Years
, p 74.
6.
Speech to Mid-Bedfordshire Conservatives, 30 April 1982.
7.
The Downing Street Years
, p 157.
8.
Young,
âOne of Us'
, p 347.
9.
Radio interview (phone-in) for the BBC World Service, 30 October 1983.
10.
Interview for
The Daily Mail
, 4 November 1983.
11.
House of Commons Statement, 15 April 1986.
12.
Interview for
The New Yorker
, 30 September 1985.
13.
Campbell, Vol 2, p 283.
14.
Campbell, Vol 2, p 296.
15.
Campbell, Vol 2, p 298.
16.
Interview for
The New Yorker
, 30 September 1985.
17.
Sir Robert Renwick, interviewed on âThe Last Europeans', Channel 4, 1995.
18.
Radio interview (phone-in) for the BBC World Service, 30 October 1983.
19.
Press conference in Hong Kong, 4 December 1984.
20.
It is likely that responsibility for this lay with the Irish National Liberation Army rather than the IRA.
21.
Speech at Kensington Town Hall, 19 January 1976.
22.
Campbell, Vol 2, p 420.
23.
Quoted in Garrett Fitzgerald,
All In A Life
(Macmillan, London: 1991) p 261.
24.
22 May 1980, Joint written statement after Anglo-Irish Talks, The Times. Margaret Thatcher: complete public statements 1945â1990. Database and Compilation © OUP 1999. This title contains material reproduced by consent of Baroness Thatcher, HMSO, and other owners listed on the disk. UDN: 80_121.
25.
Letter to the Reverend Ian Paisley, Anglo-Irish Summit, 10 December 1980.
26.
TV interview for BBC, 28 May 1981.
27.
Campbell, Vol 2, p 431.
28.
The Downing Street Years
, p 380.
29.
The Downing Street Years
, p 382.
30.
Campbell, Vol 2, p 434.
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CHAPTER 7: AFTER THATCHER
1.
The Downing Street Years
, p 860.
2.
The Downing Street Years
, p 861.
3.
Interview for
Women's Own
, 23 September 1987.
4.
Daily Express
, 7 December 2005.
5.
Saga Magazine
, 28 August 1998.
6.
Campbell, Vol 2, p 755.
7.
Margaret Thatcher Speech receiving Freedom of City of Westminster, 12 December 1990.
8.
Keith Joseph Memorial Lecture, 11 January 1996. Margaret Thatcher: complete public statements 1945â1990. Database and Compilation © OUP 1999. This title contains material reproduced by consent of Baroness Thatcher, HMSO, and other owners listed on the disk. UDN: 96_001.
9.
Keith Joseph Memorial Lecture, 11 January 1996. Margaret Thatcher: complete public statements 1945â1990. Database and Compilation © OUP 1999. This title contains material reproduced by consent of Baroness Thatcher, HMSO, and other owners listed on the disk. UDN: 96_001.
10.
3.03.89 Remarks outside Downing Street, 3 March 1989.
11.
Speech to Finchley Conservatives, 10 November 1990.
12.
Figures from National Statistics Office, http://www.statistics.gov.uk, visited 31 March 2006.
13.
Margaret Thatcher Speech receiving Freedom of City of Westminster, 12 December 1990.
14.
Child Poverty Action Group â âPoverty, the Facts'.
15.
Margaret Thatcher Speech receiving Freedom of City of Westminster, 12 December 1990.
16.
Margaret Thatcher Speech receiving Freedom of City of Westminster, 12 December 1990.
17.
Margaret Thatcher Speech receiving Freedom of City of Westminster, 12 December 1990.
18.
Margaret Thatcher Speech receiving Freedom of City of Westminster, 12 December 1990.
19.
The Path to Power
, p 64.
20.
Interview for BBC Radio 4 âAnalysis', 14 January 1972.
21.
Interview for Central TV, 18 June 1986.
22.
Andrew Anthony, âThatcher's legacy: no more Us and Them',
The Guardian
5 May 2004.
Year:
1979
Premiership:
4 May: Margaret Thatcher becomes Prime Minister, aged 53. European Elections. Lusaka Commonwealth Meeting began (ended 8 August). IRA murders Mountbatten and 18 soldiers (Warrenpoint). Exchange controls abolished. Dublin European Council: budget row begins. USSR invades Afghanistan.