Margaret Thatcher: The Authorized Biography

by Charles Moore

  All this was true. Cardinal Basil Hume, for the Roman Catholics, objected to the service being for the ‘liberation’ of the Falklands and did not want combatants to read any lessons. Dr Kenneth Greet, for the Free Churches Federal Council, was entirely opposed to the war and therefore to any form of celebration. The left-wing Dean of St Paul’s, Dr Alan Webster, objected to the idea of a ‘thanksgiving’ service at all and wanted one of ‘reconciliation’, suggesting that the Lord’s Prayer be said in Spanish. All this dismayed the Ministry of Defence, who naturally wanted the armed forces prominently represented. At one stage some clerics suggested they would not take part in the service if members of the armed forces read the lessons. Furious, Mrs Thatcher ‘threatened to make this known in parliament and therefore publicly’.246 The conservative Bishop of London, Dr Graham Leonard, told her privately that ‘even when the form of Service had been agreed, there was no guarantee that the Dean of St Paul’s would follow it. On past form, he might well insert changes and additions at the last moment.’247 Dr Leonard advised her to seek the help of the Archbishop of Canterbury (‘or even the Queen’) to prevent this.

  Mrs Thatcher was infuriated by these clerical attitudes. When it was reported to her that the Dean wanted the Lord’s Prayer in Spanish ‘her eyes widened in absolute horror,’248 and at the suggestion that it should be a service of reconciliation rather than thanksgiving she struck the table a tremendous blow and exclaimed scornfully ‘A service of reconciliation!’ ‘All Christians stay away,’ whispered Clive Whitmore to David Goodall, who was trying to co-ordinate matters with the Roman Catholics.249 She was so angry that at the relevant meeting of OD(SA) she ordered her threat to publicize the attitudes of the clergy to be put into the official minutes. Going through the proposed text, she put her wiggly line against a prayer which asked God for the will to build defences against poverty, hunger and disease ‘instead of against each other’.250 In the end, the necessary compromises were reached and servicemen read various biblical sentences. But there was such a lack of trust between Downing Street and the clergy that when, on the proof of the service sheet, a printer’s error had reduced the word ‘thanksgiving’ (which now headed a section, rather than appearing as part of the title of the service) to rather small type, the MOD official co-ordinating the arrangements had to obtain a ‘personal assurance’ from the Dean that this would be corrected.251

  At the service, which took place at the end of July, Mrs Thatcher arrived ‘looking absolutely like a thundercloud’252 and was seated, as she had requested, in a fairly humble place. It was widely reported the next day that she had been enraged by the sermon of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Runcie, which had called for reconciliation. But this was not the case. ‘She gripped my hand,’ he remembered, ‘and said “Well done.” ’253 What upset her was the fear that the armed services might be denied proper thanks and the spiritual comfort that these would provide. It was the Queen, in fact, who put her finger on the problem with the service. ‘I don’t think you should ever leave a Christian service feeling sad,’ she said to the Archbishop. ‘The service was not well arranged for that reason.’254 Mrs Thatcher herself summed it up: ‘The Thanksgiving part was virtually dropped from the Service. But because of the presence of the Queen and all the Royal Family – the superb pageantry of the military band – trumpeters, the service was a great comfort to the bereaved and that mattered more than anything else.’255

  The secular celebrations were less awkward. On 12 October, 1,250 representatives of the Task Force marched to Guildhall, with a fly-past of helicopters and aircraft. Then there was lunch inside. The top brass sat with the Prime Minister and the Lord Mayor at the high table, the officers and other ranks at the lower tables. When Mrs Thatcher rose to speak, ‘Suddenly, before she could say anything, there was a standing ovation from the floor, started by the boys. The other politicians couldn’t believe what was happening. When Mrs Thatcher had quietened everyone down, she said “It is I who should be down there, thanking you.” ’256 The night before, at No. 10, Mrs Thatcher gave dinner for the Lord Mayor and about 120 of those most involved in the Falklands victory. In her speech after dinner, she quoted the Duke of Wellington: ‘There is no such thing as a little war for a great nation.’ She spoke of ‘the spirit of the Falklands’ and went on, ‘Or is it the spirit of Britain which throughout history has never failed us in difficult days?’257 ‘She spoke like Queen Elizabeth I,’ remembered David Goodall. ‘She looked like Queen Elizabeth I!’258

  So many people had been invited to the dinner that there was no room for spouses at table: instead they were invited for post-dinner drinks in the drawing rooms. Because all the main players in the Falklands crisis had been men, Mrs Thatcher was the only woman at dinner. After the toasts which followed her speech, and the reply from Lord Lewin, the Prime Minister rose in her seat again and said, ‘Gentlemen, shall we join the ladies?’259 It may well have been the happiest moment of her life.

  Illustrations

  1. ‘I just owe almost everything to my father’: Margaret with her father, Alfred Roberts, c. 1927.

  2. Beatrice Stephenson as a young woman. ‘After I was fifteen we had nothing more to say to each other’, Margaret remembered sorrowfully.

  3. Margaret in the class of 1934 at Huntingtower Road County Elementary School in Grantham, aged nine.

  4. The family grocery shop, North Parade, Grantham. ‘If you get it from Roberts’s … you get – THE BEST’.

  5. The girls who matriculated at Somerville College, Oxford, in 1943. Margaret Roberts is third from left, back row.

  6. Tony Bray, Margaret’s first love, outside the Radcliffe Camera, Oxford. He was an undergraduate at Brasenose College. ‘He’s a weird-looking chap to cart around the place,’ she wrote to her sister Muriel.

  7. The wedding breakfast of Margaret’s schoolfriend Shirley Ellis (née Walsh) in Grantham in 1947. Margaret sits on the further table to the right, in a distinctive little hat.

  8. Tony Bray in the uniform of the 5th Royal Inniskilling Dragoon Guards, probably in 1946: ‘a cavalry regiment, green trousers, all the rest of it’.

  9. Anti-socialist siren: Margaret Roberts, the new Conservative candidate, plays the piano to voters in the Bull Inn, Dartford, 1949.

  10. Margaret the scientist, working for J. Lyons, the food company. This picture was published at the beginning of the 1950 general election campaign: she was the youngest candidate for any party.

  11. Margaret’s first ever election address in Dartford, 1950. She cut the Labour majority by 6,000.

  12. Looking up to Lord Woolton, the Conservative Party Chairman, at a briefing for the 1951 general election campaign at Church House, Westminster. Her rapport with older, powerful men is already evident.

  13. The bridesmaid at her sister Muriel’s wedding in April 1950. Muriel married Margaret’s former boyfriend, William Cullen. Alfred Roberts is in the middle, Beatrice Roberts on the right.

  14. Robert Henderson outside Buckingham Palace after being invested with the CBE in 1947 for his services to medicine. ‘I think we are both getting very fond of each other,’ Margaret wrote, ‘– in fact more than that.’

  15. The power of the handbag. Margaret Roberts, as candidate, queues for the autograph of the actress Patricia Dainton at a Dartford fête in 1951. The bag with her initials on it was given to her by Willie Cullen.

  16. The story of the bag: Margaret tells Muriel why she will ‘have to hang on with William for a while longer now!’

  17. ‘Not a frightfully attractive creature’ – Margaret gives Muriel her impression of first meeting Denis, ‘a Major Thatcher … (age about 36, plenty of money)’, after the night of 28 February 1949.

  18. Denis and Margaret after their engagement, which was concealed from Dartford voters in the 1951 general election.

  19. Margaret and Denis cut the cake at their wedding reception at 5 Carlton Gardens, the house of Sir Alfred Bossom, 13 December 1951. Her hat was modelled on that of Georgiana, D
uchess of Devonshire, in Gainsborough’s portrait.

  20. Married love: Denis fastens his wife’s necklace at Dormers, Farnborough, Kent, where they moved just before Christmas 1957.

  21. The twins: Mark and Carol were born 14 August 1953. Denis, who was watching cricket at the Oval, did not know his wife had been expecting twins until they had been born.

  22. Waving them away: Mark and Carol leave Dormers for school, 1959. Mrs Thatcher is not taking them to school herself.

  23. Gardening at Dormers, but not dressed for the part. Mrs Thatcher liked her flowers bright but orderly.

  24. At home with Mark and Carol, 1961. There are few records of her relaxing with her children.

  25. The new Member for Finchley arrives to take her seat in the House of Commons, 20 October 1959.

  26. In October 1961, Mrs Thatcher was one of the first of her parliamentary intake to achieve ministerial office, as parliamentary secretary at the Ministry of Pensions and National Insurance. She is reading the parliamentary order paper.

  27. Meeting the first Minister under whom she served, John Boyd-Carpenter. He noted her ‘quick-trained barrister’s brain’.

  28. ‘Women about the House’: a Sunday Times Magazine cover, 21 June 1964, about female Members of Parliament. Mrs Thatcher is at the back, and at the top.

  29. Mother in the Cabinet: Margaret plays to her family in their house, The Mount, Lamberhurst, after the Conservative election victory of June 1970.

  30. The Secretary of State for Education. Despite being called ‘milksnatcher’, Mrs Thatcher was better than most politicians at talking to children. Here she is at the London American School in 1971.

  31. Ted Heath called an emergency Cabinet to discuss President Nixon’s anti-inflation economic measures in August 1971, hence Mrs Thatcher’s almost holiday wear in Downing Street.

  32. With a portrait of Ted Heath in 1973. Her part in his downfall was yet to come.

  33. As environment spokesman offering a cap on mortgage rates, Mrs Thatcher played an unexpectedly large part in the general election campaign of October 1974. Beside her at an election press conference are Lord Carrington (party Chairman) and Ted Heath.

  34. ‘My cupboard is not a hoard in any sense of the word’: ‘Maggie’ the housewife fends off accusations of hoarding by showing her larder to the cameras during the leadership challenge to Heath, December 1974.

  35. A head start: Mrs Thatcher at the hairdresser Chalmers of Mayfair, 31 January 1975. Eleven days later, she became leader of the Conservative Party.

  36. Round-one knock-out: Mrs Thatcher tries to calm the press after defeating Heath in the first ballot of the leadership election, 4 February 1975.

  37. Wife, mother, Leader: the Thatchers celebrate her victory in the second ballot, 11 February 1975, outside the house of William Shelton, one of her campaign managers.

  38. The victor on The Jimmy Young Show on BBC Radio 2. Young gave her just the right platform.

  39. This is the only known example of Mrs Thatcher holding the torch for Europe. She is wearing a jersey carrying the flags of all the member states of the EEC during the campaign for a Yes vote in the referendum on whether Britain should stay in the Community, March 1975. Winston Churchill presides.

  40. Friendship off the cuff. The first meeting between Mrs Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, April 1975. From their rapport when both were out of office much later success flowed.

  41. ‘Dad did hold a soft spot for Auntie Margaret’: Willie and Muriel Cullen and their elder son, Morton, receive the Thatchers at their farm Foulton Hall, Essex, in the late 1970s.

  42. Never off duty: Mrs Thatcher consults her watch while on holiday with the Morrison family on the isle of Islay in August 1978. Beside her is Peter Morrison, who would become her parliamentary private secretary at the end of her time in office. She is dressed more for work than for the Scottish islands: she could never see the point of holidays.

  43. The famous Saatchi poster often supposed to have appeared during the election campaign of May 1979 was actually launched in the late summer of 1978. Here Mrs Thatcher speaks vehemently above it at a local government conference in March 1979.

  44. The notes for Mrs Thatcher’s St Francis of Assisi speech given on the steps of No. 10. The ‘HM’ referred to at the beginning is Her Majesty the Queen. The ‘AN’ at the bottom is Airey Neave.

  45. ‘Where there is despair, may we bring hope’: Mrs Thatcher enters 10 Downing Street for the first time as prime minister, 4 May 1979. To the extreme left is the broadcaster Jon Snow.

  46. The Prime Minister removes an offending piece of fluff from the collar of Norman St John-Stevas, leader of the House of Commons, before the State Opening of Parliament, May 1979. Early in 1981, she would remove him too.

  47. On the front line: Mrs Thatcher in the uniform of the Ulster Defence Regiment, visits ‘bandit county’ in South Armagh, Northern Ireland, after the murders of Lord Mountbatten and of eighteen British soldiers at Warrenpoint, 19 August 1979. Her appearances in uniform had a great impact.

  48. ‘You turn if you like – the lady’s not for turning’: Mrs Thatcher holds to her course of economic austerity at the party conference, October 1980.

  49. In the Princes Gate siege in May 1980, the SAS successfully rescued hostages held by terrorists in the Iranian Embassy in London, killing their captors. This bold action became a favoured metaphor for the Thatcher style of government.

  50. The Patterson family look a little nervous as Mrs Thatcher has tea in their council house, August 1980. The Pattersons were the 12,000th tenants of the Greater London Council to exercise their ‘right to buy’ – one of the most popular, though controversial, of all Mrs Thatcher’s measures.

  51. The Brixton riots, April 1981. Mrs Thatcher’s critics said her policies caused them. She sympathised with the looted shopkeepers.

  52. Mrs Thatcher listens with displeasure as Ted Heath furiously attacks government politics at the party conference of October 1981. The vehemence of his attack probably made ministerial rebellion against her more difficult.

  53. In January 1982, Mark Thatcher was briefly lost in the North African desert. It was the only time when officials found Mrs Thatcher too upset to do her work properly. Leaving a meeting in the Imperial Hotel, London, she shed a tear.

  54. Margaret and Denis at Chequers. ‘I am glad that Chequers played quite a part in the Falklands story,’ she wrote. ‘Winston had used it quite a lot during World War II.’

  55. ‘Rejoice’ – Mrs Thatcher celebrates the recapture of South Georgia, the first victory of the Falklands War, with John Nott, Secretary of State for Defence, at her side, on 25 April 1982.

  56. This famous picture of Royal Marine commandos captured the improvised courage of the Falklands campaign. British troops ‘yomped’ to victory – and saved Mrs Thatcher’s premiership.

  57. At the Falklands Commemoration Service at St Paul’s Cathedral, October 1982, Mrs Thatcher is standing with Admiral Lord Lewin, Chief of the Defence Staff, whom she trusted and admired. She was outraged at attempts by the St Paul’s clergy to avoid giving thanks for the Falklands victory.

  58. Mrs Thatcher tours the streets of Strasbourg with President Valéry Giscard d’Estaing and Chancellor Helmut Schmidt for her first European summit, June 1979. She hated it.

  59. Arriving at the first session of the Tokyo G7 summit in June 1979, with the US President Jimmy Carter. Their relationship was polite but not warm.

  60. En route to Tokyo, Mrs Thatcher stopped at Moscow airport and had her first meeting with the Soviet leadership, in this case the Prime Minister Alexei Kosygin. Both leaders enjoyed their verbal joust.

  61. With the Queen at the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Lusaka, October 1979. There was a problem of ‘Who’s the star?’

  62. Mrs Thatcher thought she would be physically attacked when she arrived in Lusaka. Instead she was charmed. This picture of her dancing with the Zambian President Kenneth Kaunda enraged the Tory right.
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  63 and 64. The Thatchers visited India in April 1981. It suited Margaret better than Denis.

  65. Welcoming Indira Gandhi to Downing Street, 1982. The two prime ministers enjoyed the chance to talk about problems with their children.