Margaret Thatcher: Power and Personality

by Aitken, Jonathan

  This was a purpose that would have appealed to Alfred Roberts, who became a governor of the school in 1941, and also to his ambitious younger daughter. Margaret was inspired by the scholarship, the infectious enthusiasm and the sermons of Gladys Williams; one of which she quoted some forty-seven years after it was preached.

  Coming out of a Sunday service in Kent in 1976 with Margaret Thatcher, she remarked to me that the vicar’s sermon, which had featured a Roman centurion, was ‘very ordinary’.† She then continued, ‘Very ordinary indeed – at least when I think of the greatest sermon I ever heard.’

  ‘What was that?’ I asked.

  ‘It was the sermon preached at the service to mark the retirement of my old headmistress,’ declared the Leader of the Opposition, ‘and it was about a centurion, too. My headmistress took as her text the words: “For I also am a man under authority.”20 She explained in the most inspired terms how the centurion who said that was absolutely confident of his own authority, but he also had absolute trust in his higher authority.’21

  A few months after hearing this sermon, Margaret Roberts was in angry conflict with the senior authority of KGGS, her new headmistress, Miss Dorothy Gillies.

  Miss Gillies was a classicist from Edinburgh, described by one former pupil as being ‘rather fierce … with a Morningside accent just like Maggie Smith in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie’.22 According to the official history of KGGS Miss Gillies was ‘a perfectionist and a disciplinarian’.23 These qualities should have given her a natural rapport with the disciplined perfectionist who was destined to become her most famous pupil. Not so. Their clashes became a school legend.

  The problem was that Miss Gillies’ career guidance and Miss Roberts’ career ambition came into headlong collision. Their first disagreement came when Margaret informed her headmistress that she intended to get to the top of a career stream in the British Empire that was notoriously difficult for women to succeed in. ‘She told me that she wanted to enter the Indian Civil Service,’ recalled Dorothy Gillies. ‘I expressed surprise and pointed out that, like almost every other walk of life at that time, it was male-dominated. Margaret replied: “All the better for it. If I succeed, my success will be all the more creditable”.’24

  Entering the Indian Civil Service was a high hurdle for academic as well as gender reasons. The ICS examination was fiercely competitive. Passing out near the top of the list opened a golden road to the glittering prizes of the Raj. It was a first-class ticket to the realm of viceroys, governors, judges, administrators and district officers on the sub-continent. But Miss Gillies was right to warn that no woman had ever climbed near the top of this imperial ladder. Although Margaret Roberts was to be admired for disregarding the warning of sex discrimination difficulties, she showed little political discernment in her desire to proceed down the Indian Civil Service route. It took the paternal guidance of her father to point out, with the perspective of the 1940s, that India was unlikely to go on being governed by a British civil service. Eventually, after a family argument, Margaret dropped the idea.

  The flame of her ambition also burned in the direction of winning a scholarship to Oxford. Only nine KGGS girls had achieved this in the thirty-two-year history of the school, but one candidate in the year above her, Margaret Goodrich, had recently secured a scholarship at Lady Margaret Hall. Margaret Roberts wanted to emulate her friend’s success. But Miss Gillies rather patronisingly thought she would not be up to it. When the headmistress tried to discourage her pupil from making the attempt, a furious row took place: ‘She’s trying to thwart my ambition,’ complained Margaret.25

  The thwarting nevertheless continued. The Somerville examination required Latin as a compulsory paper. The headmistress firmly pointed out that although KGGS taught First Steps in Latin (the basic textbook) to its junior forms, advanced lessons in this subject were not part of its sixth-form curriculum. Margaret no less firmly replied that the problem could be overcome by taking private lessons in Latin. These had been organised for Margaret Goodrich. Miss Gillies refused the same arrangements for Margaret Roberts on the grounds that she would be studying advanced Latin over a year too late, so could not possibly achieve the standards required by the Somerville College examiners in two terms. This led to another argument that ended in defeat for Miss Gillies. Margaret was allowed to attempt the impossible, but only if private lessons could be arranged for her outside school hours. Even this concession was said to have been reluctantly granted to the daughter of Alfred Roberts solely because he was about to become Chairman of the Board of Governors of KGGS.‡

  According to her Grantham contemporary Malcolm Knapp, Margaret herself organised her extra-curricula Latin lessons by knocking on the door of a neighbour at No. 55 North Parade. He was V.R.W. Waterhouse, a schoolmaster with a big nose, which brought him the nickname of ‘Beaky’ at King’s School in Grantham.

  ‘Beaky’ Waterhouse was not a classics master, but he knew his Latin. So, when Margaret Roberts asked him, ‘Can you teach me enough Latin to get me into Oxford?’, he responded positively, striking a deal for tuition payments with her father.26 As a private tutor, ‘Beaky’ did a good job. For after some twenty weeks of his intensive coaching, Margaret was judged to have reached a sufficiently high standard of Latin to be capable of passing an Oxford paper in the subject. One up to Miss Roberts, and one down to Miss Gillies.

  The battle of wills between the headmistress and her combative sixth-former gave some interesting signposts to the latter’s personality. They showed that Margaret could be fearless in argument and dedicated in application. These qualities gave her confidence that ‘doing the impossible’ was not necessarily as hard as the conventional wisdom suggested. Yet these positive aspects were balanced by one negative side of her personality. For the episode later revealed that Margaret could bear grudges.

  In the Thatcher archives at Churchill College, Cambridge there exists an undated speaking note about her education at KGGS. It consists of bullet points in her adult handwriting under the heading ‘Fortunate School’. The purpose of the bullet points is to draw a comparison between her two headmistresses. The subheading ‘Miss Williams’ is followed by favourable points such as ‘set out to achieve the highest values’. In stark contrast, the name ‘Miss Gillies’ is accompanied by just two words; ‘obstacles overcome’.27

  These back of the envelope jottings may have been used as speech notes for Margaret Thatcher’s return visit, as Prime Minister, to KGGS in 1982. On this occasion she poured praise on the virtues of Miss Williams, but conspicuously failed to make any mention of Miss Gillies. At least this was an improvement on Margaret Thatcher’s behaviour towards her second headmistress when she first came back to the school as a newly elected MP in 1960. In the view of other old girls present, she caused extreme offence by snubbing Miss Gillies and gratuitously correcting her former headmistress’s rendering of the Latin grace.28 Margaret Goodrich, who also attended the evening, commented on her friend’s rudeness: ‘That very small thing turned the entire dinner party away from her. It was a very silly thing to do.’29

  For her part, Miss Dorothy Gillies bore these demonstrations of resentment with dignity. However, in her retirement she gave a glimpse of her feelings when she told one former pupil: ‘I believe I had an influence on all my girls – but not on Margaret Roberts.’30

  The battles with Miss Gillies may well have acted as a spur to the seventeen-year-old Margaret. She spent the last five months of 1942 studying intensively for the Somerville examination, which she sat in December. The result seemed to her ‘something of a blow’31 because she was not awarded a scholarship. But as a consolation prize she was offered a place at Oxford for the academic year commencing in Michaelmas term, October 1944.

  The consolation prize was a huge achievement. However, it had disadvantages in comparison to a scholarship. Fees would have to be paid by her father; her entrance to the university would be postponed for a year; and under wartime regulations she would only be
permitted to take a two-year Oxford degree before being called up to do her military service at the age of twenty. These constraints were a disappointment but, as she put it, ‘there was nothing I could do about it’.32

  Margaret Roberts somewhat reluctantly enrolled for another year at KGGS. She was appointed joint head girl in the third-year sixth form. ‘I hope that she will show wisdom in the allotting of both time and energy to her work during the coming months, in order that she may do herself full justice,’33 wrote Miss Gillies in a disparaging comment on a pupil who had just won a place at Oxford.

  Luck came to the rescue. Six weeks after the term started, a telegram arrived from Somerville. One of the new entries of arriving undergraduates had dropped out, so an unexpected place at the college was on offer. It was accepted with alacrity. In the first week of October 1943, a few days short of her eighteenth birthday, Margaret Roberts left home in Grantham and headed for Oxford University.

  REFLECTION

  ‘I would not have been in No. 10 but for this school,’34 declared Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher when she came back to KGGS in 1986 to open Roberts Hall, named after her father in recognition of his long service as Chairman of the Governors. In 1992, she paid her alma mater an even greater tribute when she took her title, Baroness Thatcher of Kesteven, from her school rather from her home town and birthplace.

  Despite these retrospective compliments, Margaret Roberts did not have a smooth ride throughout her five years as a KGGS pupil. The change of headmistress upset her, so much so that she developed an angry and confronta- tional attitude towards Miss Gillies. The disruption to school classes caused by ‘Operation Double Shift’ reduced Margaret’s access to good teaching. There must have been times when the bleak war news and the bombing raids on Grantham unsettled her.

  Against this background, her achievement in winning a place at Oxford looks all the more outstanding. She had shown a remarkable capacity for hard work and a granite determination to overcome the obstacles put in her way. Her success was well deserved.

  There were, however, two lingering doubts that hovered over her grammar school years. One concerned her relationships with other girls. Although the evidence is mixed, there were signs that she found it difficult to develop a good rapport with many of her KGGS contemporaries; to some she seemed dismissive towards them. In later life this characteristic was to cause similar problems with her female contemporaries in politics. In both settings Margaret was a loner with no apparent inclination to become ‘one of the girls’.

  A second area of concern was that as a schoolgirl she tried to cram in too much, too fast. This was partly a product of the wartime regulations governing education and the call-up dates for military service. For Margaret Roberts these pressures resulted in her applying to Oxford when she was sixteen. She arrived there as an undergraduate when she was seventeen. This was probably too early, but she was never one to let the grass grow under her feet when it came to seizing the moment.

  ________________

  * Women’s Voluntary Service, later the Women’s Royal Voluntary Service.

  † Throughout her life Margaret Thatcher was often critical of preachers. Delayed for lunch one Sunday at Chequers because the sermon had been too long, she told her guests: ‘That’s one vicar who will never be a bishop’ (AC: Interview with Lord Bell).

  ‡ Alfred Roberts was Chairman of the Board of Governors of KGGS from 1943 to 1969.

  3

  Oxford, boyfriends and political ambition

  EARLY UNHAPPINESS AT OXFORD

  Margaret Roberts had an unhappy start to her life as an Oxford undergraduate. That was surprising. To the majority of its students, the university is a welcoming and exciting place, especially for those who have fought as hard as she did to get there. From the outset she found Oxford ‘cold and strangely forbidding’.1 Her disenchantment did not lift until she was well into her second year.

  There was no single reason why she should have felt disillusioned with her early time as an Oxonian. Perhaps she went up too young. She was lonely, homesick and hard up. Also, she had chosen to read chemistry – a subject which did not capture her imagination, and required long hours of isolation in the lab. But the strongest negatives related to the insecurities of her personality. She was overawed by the atmosphere of Oxford. She was patronised by the dons and smarter students at Somerville. She was unlucky in her first love.

  These negative sources of her unhappiness were balanced by interesting positives, although they took time to develop. She became a successful student politician, grinding tenaciously through the tedium of college membership administration of the Conservative Party, until in her fourth year she was elected President of the Oxford University Conservative Association (OUCA).

  In addition to politics, she participated in extra-curricular activities that ranged from choral singing to Methodist preaching. In her second year she had a serious relationship with one boyfriend, and was admired by others. She went down with a good second into an immediate job. Yet, for all these accomplishments, the impression remains that she was out of sorts with Oxford, and that her personality jarred with it. This was an antipathy that later became mutual when, in 1985, Oxford refused her an honorary degree. Her relationship with her university was never an easy one.

  It did not help her early days at Oxford that the city was lacking in its usual joie de vivre because of the dislocations of war. Many young men had deferred their studies to join up. The era of blackouts in the quadrangle and boarded-up stained-glass windows in the college chapels may have made the wartime intake of undergraduates feel more fearful than joyful. But the major problem for Margaret Roberts as an undergraduate was her loneliness.

  There was no obvious explanation for why she should have felt lonely. She had a room in Somerville, and took her meals with other students in college hall. But she was slow to make friends, privately troubled by suppressed feelings of insecurity. These came out in a revealing conversation with the one familiar face to her at Oxford, Margaret Goodrich. She recalled Margaret Roberts asking her ‘Don’t you wish you could say you had been to Cheltenham or somewhere, instead of KGGS?’2

  Another contemporary and fellow chemist who noticed these insecurities was Pauline Cowan. ‘Margaret and I were known to be among the poorer members of the college. We came from a similar sort of state education background, in my case Glasgow School for Girls, and it was easy to feel patronised by the better off students. I think we both felt the Cheltenham clique looked down a bit on us.’3

  Margaret’s insecurities were compounded by a growing sense of isolation. Early in her time at Oxford, the Goodrich parents, visiting their daughter, made an impromptu call on the fellow Grantham girl who a few months earlier had seemed such a gregarious visitor to their home. They found Margaret Roberts alone in her room,* despondently toasting a crumpet and manifestly unhappy. Late in life she admitted her feelings in this period, telling the author Tricia Murray: ‘I was always rather homesick. I think there would be something very wrong with your home life if you weren’t just a little.’4

  The homesickness and the insecurity made her first year fairly miserable. For the first and last time in her life she did a great deal of walking. This was a solitary activity, taking her on lonely perambulations along the banks of the Cherwell, or around the parks. She later claimed that on these walks she was ‘enjoying my own company and thoughts’.5

  This seems improbable, given her lifelong aversion to fresh air and exercise. Also her weight was going up, perhaps another indication of unhappiness. The combination of a sweet tooth and easy access to the confectionery in her father’s shop had made her a noticeably plump schoolgirl. As an undergraduate, she became even plumper. In her second year at Oxford she tipped the scales at 150 lb, which is overweight for a young woman student only 5 feet 5 inches tall.

  Another problem was money. Alfred Roberts’ finances were stretched by having to pay the full Oxford fees for his daughter’s tuition, board and lo
dging. So Margaret had precious little cash to spare for luxuries or student frivolities. When her chemistry tutor, Dorothy Hodgkin, discovered how difficult it was for her pupil to make ends meet, a modest bursary from Somerville was quietly arranged. This was supplemented by further grants from an education trust and by occasional earnings from work in vacations. After a stint as a temporary science teacher in the long vacation of 1944, she saved up enough money to buy her first bicycle – a near necessity for getting to labs and lectures on time in Oxford.

  Hard work always came first in the life of Margaret Roberts, but it is not clear how much she enjoyed her studies. She read chemistry with her usual diligence. But her tutor Dorothy Hodgkin detected that ‘she was not absolutely devoted to it’,6 adding: ‘I came to rate her as good. One could always rely on her producing a sensible, well-read essay and yet there was something that some people had that she hadn’t quite got.’7

  The Principal of Somerville, Dame Janet Vaughan, was more dismissive of Margaret Roberts’ academic abilities. ‘I mean nobody thought anything of her. She was a perfectly good second-class chemist, a beta chemist.’8

  Dame Janet’s condescension extended from science to the social and political inadequacies of her college’s most celebrated graduate:

  She wasn’t an interesting person, except as a Conservative. I used to entertain the young a great deal, and if I had amusing, interesting people staying with me, I would never have thought really of asking Margaret Roberts because she wasn’t very interesting to talk to, except as a Conservative.9

  The damning with faint praise tone of these retrospective assessments, recorded by the BBC forty years after Margaret Roberts left Oxford, were clearly affected by donnish distaste for her politics as a Tory prime minister. She was better and more fairly judged at the time. She worked hard enough to achieve a decent second, even though she was sick with flu during her finals and had to take some of her most important papers in bed rather than in the examination schools. Her academic record qualified her to spend a fourth year at Oxford doing the research that upgraded her BA into a BSc.10