Margaret Thatcher: The Authorized Biography

by Charles Moore

  Many people in the 1970s were toying with market-based solutions to the problem of council houses and the idea was current in Tory circles, so it would be an exaggeration to say that Mrs Thatcher was introduced to what turned out to be one of her most successful policies by her first boyfriend, but it has a grain of truth.

  Tony Bray had been right to detect a hardening of Margaret’s seriousness about a political career. Her opportunity came with the Conservative Party conference in Llandudno in early October 1948. Margaret was to go, as a representative not of Colchester but of the Oxford Conservative Graduates’ Association. She looked forward to the conference keenly and wanted to dress appropriately. She went shopping in London and visited Bourne and Hollingsworth and Peter Robinson: ‘I decided I couldn’t possibly go to Llandudno with the “communal” coat [this seems to have been a garment which the two sisters shared] as the only top-coat I had … so I drew some savings certificates out and bought a fine light-weight black wool swagger. It’s of a rather distinctive design,’ she wrote to Muriel,35 and sketched a picture of it for her (‘I’ve drawn it rather stunted’). The coat cost £9 11s 6d. As so often, Mar-garet added, ‘(Don’t mention new coat to parents).’

  As she prepared for the conference, Margaret had no clear thought that it would produce any development in her career. In August, indeed, although she also applied for new jobs in London, she had sent off an application to the Colonial Office in pursuit of her childhood ambition of working abroad as a civil servant in the Empire, sought referees and also put her name on the Overseas Scientific and Technical Register.36 Such appointments would have kept her out of politics. And when she did reach Llandudno, she found the conference more disappointing than the one at Blackpool which had so excited her (see Chapter 3). ‘The level of speaking was very low,’ she told Muriel,37 a view which may perhaps have been connected with the fact that, to her disappointment, she was not asked to speak for the motion which her association had submitted, calling for the retention of the special parliamentary seats for the universities and the City of London which Labour was pledged to abolish.

  What did happen, though, is that the twenty-three-year-old Margaret fell in with an old Oxford mentor and friend, John Grant, a director of Blackwell’s the booksellers, and a man she looked up to: ‘I always enjoy talking with him. He’s quite the most mentally mature person of his age (34) that I know.’ At Llandudno, she had dinner with him on the Wednesday, and lunch and dinner with him on the Friday. On this last occasion, ‘we had a long discussion over personal and political affairs and a job for me. We went on talking until 2.30 am.’38 She discussed with Grant, among other things, the fact that she had no money to be a parliamentary candidate and that, because of this, she had not even tried to get on the party’s central list of approved candidates.39

  John Grant was the man who that week gave Margaret the introduction which was to launch her political career. According to Margaret’s published account, at some point on the Friday Grant happened to be sitting next to John Miller, a builder who was the chairman of Dartford Conservative Association. Dartford, a Kent town by the Thames on the eastern fringes of London, was a strong Labour seat. Miller told Grant that the association was looking for a candidate because their existing one, a Major Grubb, had withdrawn. Grant immediately recommended Margaret Roberts to Miller. Miller objected that ‘Dartford is a real industrial stronghold. I don’t think a woman would do at all,’40 but agreed that he and his wife Phee and their association’s Women’s Chairman should lunch with Grant and Margaret on Llandudno pier the next day (in that era, the party conference did not end until Saturday afternoon). The lunch took place and Margaret made a very favourable impression. Nothing definite seems to have emerged from it at the time. Indeed, in her full description of the conference in her letter to Muriel, Margaret makes no mention of the meeting with the Dartford dignitaries. But before the end of the year it had borne fruit.

  Dartford invited Margaret to a preliminary interview in London on 30 December 1948. She got through to the final selection in Dartford, and on 31 January 1949 at the Royal Bull and Victoria Hotel was chosen, defeating the four men on the shortlist. Ken Tisdell, a Young Conservative who was present at the selection, said that she was ‘streets ahead of anyone else’.41 Living in the only constituency in the area where the Labour majority was safe, Dartford Conservatives were looking for a fighter and were prepared to take risks. For them, it was a positive advantage that Margaret was a woman, and a young woman at that. The Young Conservatives, in particular, identified with her, and felt that she expressed their hopes and fears.42 ‘They wanted to choose someone different,’ said Lady Thatcher five decades later, ‘someone with the chance of attracting attention.’43

  Although selection of a candidate without the prior approval of the party list was somewhat unusual, Conservative Central Office sensibly did nothing to impede Margaret’s progress. Instead, it sought to put an enthusiastic stamp on Dartford’s choice. On the very day after her selection, Margaret saw Beryl Cook, the party’s area agent (whom she quickly came to love and refer to as ‘Auntie Beryl’). Miss Cook reported at once to Central Office, ‘I was tremendously impressed and think that she is a winner.’44 She also saw Marjorie Maxse, the party’s Women’s Chairman. Miss Maxse also gave Central Office an enthusiastic account. She described Margaret as ‘very attractive-looking with a quiet efficiency which should stand her in good stead’. She noted that her ‘platform knowledge and speaking ability were far above those of the other candidates’. ‘She wants’, added Miss Maxse, ‘a salary of £500 a year and would like a job in some big chemical firm like the [sic] ICI … She is particularly keen on Empire subjects as well as ordinary bread-and-butter politics.’45

  To complete the formal process for her adoption, Margaret supplied Central Office with five references. The least informative and most pro-forma was from Alport. The rest glowed. They came from her friend John Grant, from the admired David Papillon in Colchester, from Susan Brace, a neighbour in Grantham and the sister of the future Conservative MP Sir John Tilney,* and from Lord Balfour of Inchrye, a former air minister. ‘A grand young candidate,’ wrote Balfour laconically. ‘Speaks well. Good-looking. Keen, knows her subjects. Watch and encourage.’46 John Grant declared that Margaret ‘more than anyone else … was responsible for the resurgence of OUCA after the war, despite the fact that she is considerably younger than the men she was leading’. His ‘despite’ might better have been replaced with ‘because of’, since it was precisely with older men that Margaret could lead most successfully. Grant added that Margaret ‘gets on well with men (without resorting to the more obvious feminine arts!) and appears to be able to avoid unpopularity with her fellow women’. The fullest reference came from Mrs Brace:

  I cannot exactly say how long I have known her, but certainly since she was a child. She took a surprising interest in politics even then, and I was astonished at her grasp of affairs and her facility in communicating her views … For some years I served on the local Town Council with her father, who is exceptionally intelligent and able. Altogether her ‘background’ is that of ‘public service’ at its best, coupled with a very superior intellect and the anxiety to work hard for principles in which she believes.

  *

  For Margaret, her selection for Dartford was an even greater moment than her entry into Oxford. It revealed to her the extent of her political talents, threw her into the combat she always enjoyed and set her on the course of her life. It led to her marriage, and it made her intensely happy. In old age, she was not someone who necessarily enjoyed reminiscence, but memories of Dartford would always cause her eyes to light up. More immediately, Dartford also helped to get her out of something of a rut. The autumn and winter of 1948 in Colchester had not been particularly successful. She was still worried about money and unable to find a job which would take her to London. In late summer, she ran into trouble in her digs. In January, Mrs Macaulay had moved house to 17 Oxford Road, and Marga
ret, with characteristic domestic enthusiasm, had helped her clean, paint and distemper the new house. But in the course of the year, relations had deteriorated: ‘it happened like this,’ Margaret wrote to Muriel:

  the children have been getting very cheeky lately … If ever we dared to speak sharply to them, she [Mrs Macaulay] ticked us off and not the children. Last Sunday, however, Hayward-Smith [another lodger] did complain, and she lost her temper thoroughly, went off at the deep end and told him to go on Saturday … She asked in a belligerent tone if we [Margaret and Kay Stokes] had any complaints to make about the children, and we mentioned a couple of things – she was furious, told us that her children were as well-behaved as any in Colchester and if we thought that – then Hayward-Smith was going and the same thing applied to us as well.47

  With a certain eagerness to take Mrs Macaulay at her word, fed up with ‘atmospheres’ in the house and being taken for granted about doing the washing up, Margaret and Kay decided to move, and said so to Mrs Macaulay, who became overwrought. ‘She broke down, said she had a £50 overdraft at the bank and that she had had two miserable years ever since her husband died and had tried to do the best for the children …’ Margaret’s reaction was very characteristic: ‘we felt really sorry for her. However it didn’t blind us to the fact that if she had a fifty pound overdraft it is her own fault as she has no idea how to spend money.’48 Margaret and Kay took matters into their own hands and moved to 19 Lexden Road, temporary lodgings, in search of a place of their own to rent. There Margaret could give her own entertainments, but they were not always successful. On one occasion she invited a local Young Conservative round for supper to ‘discuss Christianity and Conservatism’, but ‘he turned out to be a bit of a bore. He’s rather inclined to talk as if he’s in the pulpit half-the-time, and he’s very self-righteous. He does the right thing because it’s the right thing to do – not because he spontaneously wants to do it. He didn’t go until 2 o’clock and I was very bored with him by then.’49 Despite her own strict moral standards, Margaret already evinced a preference for rather more raffish men. She and Kay fell in with actors at the local rep and went with them to a party with dancing to ‘a darned good radiogram’. ‘To our amazement when we arrived Mrs Macaulay was there … I think she was considerably shaken to see us, – especially with such debonair looking men and obviously the envy of the whole party.’ Mrs Macaulay looked ‘rather tarty – not so much in dress as in behaviour and of course her figure doesn’t help.’50 By Christmas, she and Kay had found a flat of their own at 42 Cambridge Road, which Margaret was keenly decorating: ‘I have got half-a-yard of peach material – almost an exact match to the set Mummy gave me, and have made a deep frill … It looks lovely – most expensive in fact.’51 But the unsuccessful job hunt continued and Margaret began to resent Kay for nosiness: ‘I hate anyone knowing half of my private affairs … In many ways she is an intensely jealous person and will try and belittle anything I do.’52

  But it was hard for anyone to belittle Margaret’s achievement in being selected for Dartford aged twenty-three. She leapt at the chance, and her thoughts turned, as so often, to clothes. Two weeks after her selection, she wrote to Muriel: ‘I’m going down to Dartford this week-end to stay with the Millers. Hope Mummy will get my housecoat done as soon as possible though I know she is very busy but if I am going down to stay with various officials in the constituency I shall have to look nice from skin outwards and from head to heel the whole 24 hours. There are some quite nice utility nightdresses around at 20–25/- [shillings] …’ Margaret had gone out and ‘bought a very cheap wine hat which I took all the tawdry trimmings off and put one big grey pom-pom in their place’.53 She noted eagerly all the reactions to her Dartford selection, especially one:

  I haven’t seen David Papillon since the Dartford news came out but messages go back and forth through Kay. I gather he is saying … what a pity such a charming girl should be lost to politics! She’ll find it very heavy-going, wonder if she’ll stay the course. The what a pity such a charming girl lost to politics – such an unnatural life, should have stayed at home, sentiments have been re-echoed and in a way, I suppose they are complimentary.54

  Margaret liked to bank such praise, but if she herself felt any of the qualms about a political career for a woman that so many voiced, she never recorded them.

  Instead, she looked forward to her adoption meeting, the occasion when, having been selected, she was formally proclaimed as the candidate. Then, as now, adoption meetings were foregone conclusions. Their purpose was to assemble a large crowd and present the prospective candidate to the association, the constituency and the press. Margaret’s was called for 28 February 1949 at Electricity House, Erith. She went home to Grantham the weekend before to prepare herself, her wardrobe and her speech. The only new thing she could afford for the meeting was a black hat.55 She had a new haircut but not, to avoid expense, a perm: ‘I think I’d better start in the constituency with a hair-style now rather than change it in a few weeks.’ And she expressed anxiety of a happy, almost childlike kind about the meeting: ‘I hope everything goes well. I know they are going to give me a bouquet at the end.’56

  Shortly before the great day, however, another significant event, unrelated to Dartford, took place. ‘On Monday evening,’ Margaret wrote to Muriel, ‘I went to dinner with a Scotch farmer who has a place around these parts. He came to the 39–45 group and introduced himself to me. He’s quite a keen Conservative worker in the Dovercourt area where his farm is.’ At the 39–45 Group party, the man asked Margaret if she would speak at one of their village meetings. ‘A few days later he turned up at Lawford Place [the offices of BX Plastics] and asked to see me! Excuse – he wanted to let me know about a debate that had been arranged. I still said I didn’t know my plans. Then a day later he ’phoned and asked me to go out to dinner with him – when could I go, any night would suit him …’ He got his way:

  Eventually I said yes and we dined at the George. He’s about 35 and has a kind of naïveté that only Scotsman [sic] can have. I expected to be bored to tears but in fact he was really rather sweet with quite a sense of humour. He practically presented his credentials to me. His farm is worth £25,000, he has 3000 £1 shares of ICI now standing at 47/-, a thousand of something else, five hundred of this and that and so on and so forth. And he paid surtax last year. And being a Scotman [sic] he left a ninepenny tip for the waiter. I could have fallen through the floor. That’s how people with money keep it! He’s had a new Rover on order for three years. He bought a refrigerator a few months ago. He’s having two new sheds built at a cost of £900. All this – over dinner!

  Her suitor was pressing:

  He drove me home in his present rather old car – and got quite ardent on the way! I said I couldn’t possibly fix another definite date so he’s going to ’phone me! The funniest part is that although I have been introduced to him twice, I can never catch his name and still don’t know it! His people are farmers … He speaks with a frightfully Scotch accent. I’m afraid he’s going to be an awful nuisance. But I’d rather like to see his farm as a matter of curiosity. I gather the farmhouse is three hundred years old. From what I can make out two of his sisters live with him.57

  Before Margaret had found out the name of her Scottish farmer, Dartford had welcomed its new Conservative candidate. Four hundred people appeared at the electricity showrooms, and only one member opposed the adoption of Miss Roberts. According to the Erith Observer, the chairman, John Miller, revealed, perhaps rather tactlessly, that four prominent local businessmen had been sounded out for the candidacy and had declined. He praised Margaret, saying that she ‘was sincere about her faith and was brilliant’. Then Margaret herself spoke. ‘She stressed’, says the paper, ‘that Imperial Preference [free trade within the Empire, and tariffs outside it] was still the cornerstone of Conservatism.’ She said that during the war ‘members of the Empire … came across the world to fight for the Mother Country,’ so now was the time
to ‘fight the economic war’ with the help of our imperial allies. There was no advocacy of the free trade of which, in theory at least, she was later to become an advocate. In sticking up for Imperial Preference, Margaret was taking a rather old-fashioned Tory position which descended from Joe Chamberlain through Neville Chamberlain. She was identifying with pre-war bourgeois right-wing views in a way that showed independence from the attitudes of the current party leadership. She also declared, as she was so often to do in later years, that ‘The Government should do what any good housewife would do if money was short – look at their accounts and see what was wrong.’58 Then her father, who had travelled from Grantham for the occasion, spoke. He told the audience that ‘by tradition his family were Liberal, but the Conservative Party today stood for very much the same things as the Liberal Party did in his young days.’ A Young Conservative was quoted as saying that they were all ‘terribly bucked’ that a young person had been selected.59

  The success of the meeting is attested to by all surviving people who attended it. Margaret’s enthusiasm, knowledge and panache made an overwhelmingly favourable impression. She knew that she had done well. She wrote to Muriel to describe the scene, though making no mention of their father’s speech. ‘It was a thrilling affair,’ she wrote. ‘People who had come to be very critical were all won over by the end of the evening. They gave me a lovely bouquet of pink carnations, blue irises, blue grape hyacinths and prunus blossom.’ ‘When the meeting was over,’ she continued,