Margaret Thatcher In Her Own Words | Extended Interview With Miriam Stoppard | Timeline

Like other working women, Margaret Thatcher leads a double life, wife and mother and iron lady. How does she fit the two halves together? For people who are so much in the public eye, it must be quite difficult to protect your private self from the public view. Have you grown a second skin, developed a second skin that protects you? No, it's practically impossible. You're quite right. Practically impossible to protect your private self from public view. And you don't grow a second skin. Everyone says, well, you must, you must kind of put on an armour. No matter how tough some of my colleagues in politics, if there's anything horrid said about them, it wounds them. You can see, you can see it does. And of course it hurts and wounds oneself. The only kind of protection you can grow is if you know horrid things are being written by a particular paper or person, not to read them. Because if you do, well, you do think about it and you really have got other more important things to think about. If you didn't have some kind of protecting mechanism, surely there are things in the press like cartoons and parodies and caricatures, they would really hurt quite a lot. Well, caricatures are different. You know, I've roared with laughter at caricatures of other people. And I really think some of myself are rather good. Caricatures are different. They have something else. They're not just malicious. They have a cleverness about them, you know, a genuine cleverness or a wit. I mean, that's fantastic. And you like that? When someone, someone was interviewing me once and said, do you know that some, where you're called that bloody woman? I had no idea. And it bothered me for a time. And I thought, good heavens, whatever sort of picture have they got? But then I just put it out of my mind and carried on. But it wasn't very nice at the time. Caricatures, they're really funny. Have you ever seen a caricature or a cartoon and recognised something in yourself that you really hadn't realised before? What I noticed is that whatever I wear, they were caricature. I'm now always caricature with quite large bows. I often wear bows. They're rather softening. They're rather pretty. So do a lot of other people wear bows. Always bows. Usually a large nose. I think a little bit larger than it is. A double chin. I have to watch that I don't get too much bigger double chin. And I remember once when I was Secretary of State for Education, I wore a rather smart hat. It suited. It looked, I suppose, like a bit like a radar bow with great big stripes on. It was a very smart hat. The fact was, it would have done for an actress, but it wasn't quite right for a politician. I learned that lesson ever since. If you're going to wear a smart hat, wear very plain. And for about six months after, if ever they caricature me, it was in this blessed hat, this radar bow. I've never worn one like it since. Now, much plainer. Other sides of public life that you really enjoy, that you really like? You have the chance to see some things that you absolutely love. I mean, to go to things which you see on television, which were a dream in your mind from a child. You didn't see them on television then. Well, you go to great state banquets, state occasions. I had always wanted to go to the Lord Mayor's Banquet at Guildhall. I never thought I would be there. Do you remember they were always broadcast when we were young? Well, when I was young, always broadcast, unless it was television. The Royal Academy dinners were always broadcast, and we always listened to them. And one had a dream in one's mind of what they were like, these great people in the city who had so much power. And then you go. And I remember in my first speech saying, look, I remember how much we looked up to the city, how powerful, how great it was. And then you go, and you realize that it's a lot of people like you, and how other people are expecting things of you. Do you think your upbringing prepared you for the kind of life that you've had to lead? All my upbringing was to instill into both my sister and I a fantastic sense of duty, a great sense of whatever you do, you're personally responsible for it. You don't blame society for anyone. Society isn't anyone. You're personally responsible. And you must make up your own mind. That was very, very strong, very strong. I remember my father sometimes saying to me, if I said it was so-and-so's doing something, can't I do it too? You know, children don't like to be different. And him being very stern, you make up your own mind what you're going to do, never because someone else is doing it. And he was always very stern about that. It stood one in good stead. You've referred to the importance of your upbringing, to your politics and your philosophy. Can you tell me a little bit about your home? What was it like? Well, home really was very small and we had no mod cons. And I remember having a dream that the one most thing I, one thing I really wanted was to live in a nice house, you know, a house with more things than we had. When you say no mod cons, what do you mean? We had not got hot water. We only had a cold water tap. We had to heat all the hot water in a copper. There was an outside toilet. So I, when people tell me about these things, I know about them. I know about them. But everything was absolutely clean, bright as a new pin. And we were taught cleanliness was next to godliness. And yes, I often used to get down and polish the floor. We had lino on the floor because both the floor and the old-fashioned mahogany furniture had to be clean. It was absolutely imperative. And yes, everything had to be washed and washed and washed again. And we did a bake twice a week. My mother was very busy. This is where I learned to be busy. My father was very busy. We used every hour of every day. So it was activity always, activity always. And we worked. And because my father, he read. He read a great deal and therefore we read. Every Saturday, I used to go up to the public library every Saturday morning to get two books. One would be about the current affairs of the day. It might have been biography. It might have been about politics. And one would have been perhaps a novel for my mother. And we always read those books. As I got older, we read the books and we always talked about them every single Saturday. And the librarian knew I would come and say, I've saved this for your father and you to read. And then in those days, you know, the shop was open until nine o'clock on a Saturday night, eight o'clock on Friday night. And people would come in and a grocery shop wasn't just a place where you bought groceries. You talked. And so we talked about the affairs of the day. And I can remember talking about the rise of Hitler and how worrying it was. Now, this is in a grocery shop in a small town. And when I hear politicians saying people won't understand that, I say, don't you believe it? We understood it all. And we talked about it. In your house, how lively was the discussion? Did you actually argue with your father? Did you stand up for yourself? Oh, yes. Oh, yes. We argued and we were taught to argue. This was part of it. Yes. Never forget, you must make up your own mind. You must learn to examine things. You must learn to think about them. Oh, yes. We were taught to argue and we did. What good qualities do you think you inherited or learned from him? Well, I suppose this kind of integrity, this kind of this, you first sort out what you believe in. You then apply it. You then must argue your case. But you don't say, well, I'm going to do it because someone else is. And always you don't compromise on things that matter. There's something you never compromise on. Likely. Other things you do. Well, sometimes I'm called inflexible. I am inflexible about certain things. You're inflexible in defense of freedom. You're inflexible that the rule of law must be applied. Otherwise, it's chaos or anarchy. You'd always, you'd be always, you help the police because the police can't do their job unless they get back up. You, you, we did demonstrate. You don't strike. You discuss things. You don't strike. You discuss things. You pay your tax on time and so on. Because this is how society is run. Do you think you inherited any of his faults? My father, I suppose I have a lot of faults. We all have. I think I inherited so much that was good from him. And the other thing is you, my goodness me, you never buy anything you can't afford to buy. Never. But you live according to your means. Oh, many, many is the time I can remember my mother saying when I said, oh, my friends have got more. Well, we're not situated like that. And I used to say, and you accepted situated like that. One kicked against it. Of course, one kicked against it. They had more things than we did. Of course, one kicked against it. But I mean, when you grow up yourself and have a family and your other children want things that others have, I can still hear my mother. Well, we're not situated like that. Or when you went out to buy something and you're going to actually have new covers for the city, that was a great event. To have new covers for the city was a great expenditure and a great event. So you went out to choose them and you chose something that were really rather lovely, something light with flowers on. My mother, that's not serviceable. And how I longed for the time when I could buy things that weren't serviceable. I find myself now thinking when I buy new covers, goodness me, that'll show that I had too much. You know, you have just exactly the same things. Reaction, yes. You're very nationalistic, I suppose. You're very proud. Very patriotic. You're a patriotic family. Immensely patriotic. But so were the people. We lived, we lived, look, we were patriotic. Everyone was patriotic. It didn't matter how little you had. No, no. One of the first things I remember was the great silver jubilee of 1935, the silver jubilee of King George V and Queen Mary. And our town was decorated with blue and yellow streamers, which was the color of our town, and with red, white, and blue. And we all listened in to the great service at St. Paul's. We heard the great commentaries of the great things going to St. Paul's. And everyone took part, and there was a great bonfire. You see, in a small town there were always things like that. There were sports among all the schools on the playing fields, and you all went together. And I remember that our job as our school, our little primary school, Huntingtower Road Primary School, and I still have letters from pupils who are with me, was to form the M of the grandson. So one school did the G, another did the R, we did the M. And we had to get it absolutely right, and we rehearsed. But you see, there were always things going on, always things. So we were never bored. Oh, do you know, I'm so glad I was brought up that way. It was a much more wholesome upbringing. We, you know, you weren't a spectator society, you were doers. And don't you find you'd give your own children, try to give your own children what you haven't had. For us it was rather a sin to enjoy yourself by entertainment. Do you see what I mean? Life wasn't to enjoy yourself, life was to work and do things. My father had not had an education, because I told you he had to go out early, but he was the best red man I ever knew. He gave me the education, self-education he'd never had. I tried to give my children, as well as the education, a little bit more amusement, a little bit more to play every sport, so that wherever they went they could play sports, and perhaps you weren't allowed to go to theatre very much. So, well, that was one's upbringing. Can I just talk about your mother for a minute? Mother was marvellous, yes, go on. She was very practical, you see, Daddy taught me, we discussed with my father, but she was very, very practical and we gained a lot from her, but she worked. I mean, you say I work, I do, but so did my mother, we all worked, we all worked. Did she take part in family, the kind of education that your father was giving you, did she take an equal part in that? No, not so much, no, no, Mummy didn't get involved in the argument, she'd probably gone out the kitchen to get the supper ready. What examples did your mother set you, as opposed to your father? Oh, Mummy backed up Daddy in everything, as far as you do what is right. She was terribly proud, I mean, she would just say to me sometimes, your father had a very difficult day in council, standing up for his principles. This, again, I knew, very difficult day, standing up for his principles, and he was chairman of the finance committee, and my goodness, our town never got into debt. My goodness me, every money was spent carefully, nothing spent extravagantly, and eventually, he was on the council for such a long time, and eventually became an alderman, we don't have aldermen now, and eventually when the political complexion changed, they threw him off being an alderman. Did your mother, she served to protect him though? Yes, he always got maximum support from his family, but I remember when my father was turned off that council, making a speech for the last time, very emotional, in honour I took up this gun, in honour I let down, that's how he felt. Religion's always played an important part in your life, hasn't it? You've spoken about it already, did you feel that that was, and you did a lot of, you fulfilled a lot of social duties as well, that were part of your religion, did you feel that the religion was, was a social duty, or was it something much more fundamental? Well, it was something much more fundamental, again, because it was made fundamental, and it went through everything in life, but again, it made one just a little bit apart actually, from one's fellows, from one's school fellows, because none of my school fellows went to church as much as we did, and that was one thing I remember, please can I go for a walk with my school friend on Sunday afternoon? Oh no, you go to Sunday school. Will everyone else go for a walk on Sunday afternoon? No, you go to Sunday school, and to some extent, you know, it can be slightly overdone, I don't think my parents realised that you can be slightly overdone, to some extent you kick against it. When you were 17, 18, you were preparing to go to Oxford, you were going to leave your home behind, did you, as early as that, have a very clear view that politics was what you wanted to do? No, because it wasn't possible in those days, you remember Members of Parliament weren't paid very much, I was always going to have to earn my own living, and so it just didn't open up as a possibility, it was not really until Members of Parliament got enough to keep them, that I could possibly have thought of becoming an MP, although I remember vividly one occasion when we were at university and home for the Christmas recess, and one of my school friends was also at Oxford, and we had a party in her house, and very after the party, you know that stage when you always go into the kitchen and sit down and just talk about things, I remember one person, having been talking to me about politics, just saying, what you'd really like to do is be an MP, wouldn't you? And I said yes, but I don't know whether it's possible, but that was the first time when I can remember it vividly, it sort of clicked immediately, yes, that is what I would really like to do. People say, are you interested in politics, were you interested in politics then? I was more than interested in it, it was a kind of fascination, and it was partly because we had done all of this reading and discussing, partly because they were cataclysmic times with the rise of Hitler and that war, and how could it be that having learned so much from history, a tyrant had still come to power, and we still had to enter upon war to beat him, so it was a total fascination, I couldn't get away from it, that's much more the real thing. Did you have a clear idea of the sort of man that you wanted to marry? No, no, I wonder if one ever does, or is it just that it's so long ago? A clear idea, no, don't you meet someone and fall in love with them? I don't think there's any point in going around with a specification, six feet two inches tall, nice dark curly hair, brown velvet voice, kind, tall, lean, athletic, that's no good, it's the person, the personality you fall in love with, it's no good, specification's no good. You say fall in love with, was it love at first sight? No, no, no, no, I knew, Dennis and I knew one another a very long time. Was there a kind of contract between you, not necessarily defined, but that obviously he was going to encourage you, and that he would stand by you? He was marvellous, he always did, he always did because he thought it'd be an awful pity if both that talent and experience were wasted. That's a rather modern thought for those times, isn't it? I suppose so, I suppose, but he did, he was marvellous, I mean he never said well now look you'll give up everything, stay at home the whole time. Do you think he was rather unusual in taking you on? Perhaps very brave. Yeah but it was kind of new to have a woman doing all those things, and a lot of men said oh we want the little woman to stay at home, so I suppose he was. I think perhaps in those times he was. Don't forget, we'd come through a wartime period when women did a lot, but it was unusual for, I think, a professional man with women who also had a profession to do it. Yes, yes. Did marriage give you confidence? Did Dennis's sort of experience, broader experience than yours, give you confidence? You know it's funny you should say that. I think it must have done, because I remember giving a party, having had about six months and one of my friends coming, and we automatically fell back into talking about other things, and all of a sudden it dawned on me that this was the biggest thing in one's life, now kind of sorted out, and therefore one turned one's mind both to other things. Is that a strange thing to say, that I was what 25, 26 when we were married, that it was, I mean one recognized that to choose a partner for life is really the biggest thing in life. Do you think you could have ever married a man who didn't go along with the idea that you'd have a career? I think there would have been a clash sooner or later. You know you have to work this out, as you know in your own life, you have to work it out between your husband and yourself, who's going to do what, but yes it did. I hadn't quite thought of it in those terms before. Perhaps it's because you've had the same experience. Yes it did give one a new confidence, because there was still a feeling about at that time that you didn't get married, you were a little bit odd. Yes. And I suppose that somehow that would translate. I don't I don't think that is true at all. But you took your bar exams, and were successful, and became embarrassed, and you went back to work very quickly after having your twins. Now did you receive a lot of criticism from your colleagues? No I didn't, but again I remember that they arrived, and they were very small, and going to need a lot of looking after, and of course you know something, you do change when you've had children. Oh yes. It is the biggest change which occurs to you in your life, and really for the first time in your life, you and your husband are both living for another human being, and something, someone else matters to you far more than you yourself, far more. I mean you give everything that they should have a good start, and it is a great physical, and mental, and emotional change which comes over you. And I remember looking at these two being so relieved that the doctor had managed to get both of them, because there was some doubt whether he could, and thinking now this is fantastic. Now if I'm not careful, I'm never going to make an effort to get back to a sort of intellectual pursuits. I'm just going to be so overcome with this, that I'm not going to do, continue with law, or politics, or anything, and I really ought to be able to do both. Children were born in August. We won the Ashes that year too. I remember, where was Dennis when we won, when the children were listening, listening to the match at the Oval. We won the Ashes that year, and I, it was August 15th, and I thought I've got to do something to ensure that I do go back to work at the bar, and so I from the hospital wrote off to Lincoln's Inn for my finals papers for my bar exam, which were to take place in December, and I knew that once I'd done that and entered, pride would make me work hard for it to get them, but it was, it was quite, it was a fantastic emotional change, and it was a conscious decision that I really must, must both look after the children and do something else as well. You make it very hard on yourself, but you made it even harder in fact, because you then became an MP when they were six, and I gave up the law. You cannot do three things in life, I will tell you. You cannot both pursue a legal career, and be a member of parliament, and run a home. You can do two things, and many men do two things. They have a business career, and a member of parliament. A woman can do two things. You can have a constituency parliamentary, and run a home. You can't do three. But even then... Not while you've got a family. I, but I was going to ask you this. Most women who work do feel guilt about leaving the children behind, and when yours was six, you became an MP. Did you feel guilty? I made, I was, I was dead lucky. Everything in my life happened to go right. I'm the first to say that had I been chosen to say, fight a Yorkshire seat, and my husband had a job in Yorkshire, I don't think that I could have left my home on Monday morning, come down to Westminster, and returned on Thursday night. I was not that kind of mother. In what ways does the fact that you're a woman, um, affect the way that you see the job? Do you know, that's a question I find very difficult to answer. Um, I've never been a man, Prime Minister, so I don't know quite what it would be like. But I do think women take a slightly different approach. First, women, by their very nature, I spoke of the miracle of birth. I spoke of the birth of your children affecting your life more than anything else, because your children matter far more to you than anything that happens to you. Therefore, you automatically think long term, not only what is immediate, but long term, what sort of world are they going to grow up in? What can I do to influence that? Well, what can I do to train them for it? What can we do to see that their education is right? What can one do to see that they're good citizens? Automatically, partly one's own upbringing, partly this thing. Women have this special relationship with life. Then, too, you're very practical. Don't just talk about what we've got to aim for. How? How? Tell me how? How are we going to do it? It causes roars of laughter sometimes when I say to Geoffrey, how? How? How? And they're saying, are you saying how with an e or h-o-w? How? How are we going to do it? Not just what, but how. Got to have a method. Will it be practical? Uh, and then you automatically, even now I automatically, if I'm entertaining people to lunch, automatically get up and clear their plates away or say, do you mind stacking? Um, because it's just second nature. You're very much working in a man's world. Um, do you ever feel like an outsider? No, I don't. And I think it is that having been trained for whatever subject I was in, whether it was science, whether it was law, I've always felt the equivalent of anyone else who was trained in that subject. And so I haven't noticed it. It doesn't, it doesn't bother me. The only thing, it can be an advantage wherever I go in the world. Um, even though I just walked down the street, uh, people will say, will recognize me. I went to Indonesia. Uh, I didn't think I would be known there. I went to university there and the students were, were, were shouting, uh, Thatcher, Thatcher, strong leader, Thatcher, strong leader, Thatcher. They knew. And, and, and, and the only book on the street, Thatcher. Uh, I remember in Italy, uh, someone said, marvelous, delicious, Mama Thatcher, Mama Thatcher, absolutely wonderful. And then here in English speaker was a Maggie. Look, it's Maggie. So you are known and you're really rather pleased, rather surprised still, because frankly, you know, they can have quite a lineup of men politicians and they won't be able always to say which one was which, but they, they, they, they do know. And in that sense, it gives, it gives you an advantage. Well now, even in the cabinet though, you're, it's still a one woman band in the cabinet, isn't it? No, no, no, it isn't. I don't know where people got this idea from that, that, that they're all yes men. Believe you me, they're not. I wish they were a bit more sometimes, but still. No, partly because I, we've always argued things through, very much argued things through, and we still do. We still do. But, uh, would you like more women on the cabinet with you? Yeah, we've got to have more women in parliament first. Yes, there will be. I know exactly who will be the next one to come on. Uh, we're doing very well. Do you see any contradiction in saying that women are equal, the sex, sexes don't matter, best person for the job, and then saying that women have, um, special knowledge, special experiences that enriches their contribution? No, I don't, I don't see any contradiction, because I think there are two things there. The one is in your professional capacity, and then there's another in your fundamental nature. And there is, um, because of the fundamental difference between men and women, there does have an emotional difference. First, um, that I say we go through the miracle of birth, and are particularly near, therefore, to children. Um, but secondly, you know, so often, women are left having to cope. And that has an effect, because women always somehow, if they are left to cope, can cope. And so there are these two factors. In a way, they're both related. But somehow, women cope. And, you know, the whole world can be falling around your ears, and someone will get up and carry on. Well, I better make a cup of tea. Now, come on, just sit down. Come on, get up, dust yourself down. You start dusting the children down, wiping their face, stopping their tears, finding a chair. Have you had enough to eat? Or, and you start set about setting the world to rights again. But you can cope during a crisis. I have often said, it is, it is the daily, the ordinary daily load, which, in a way, can take more out of you than a crisis, because a crisis, the adrenaline flows. And the test is whether you can take the ordinary daily responsibility. And that, in the end, is what you have to do here. And I'm always very pleased when people say to me, but there have been many, many men who've come in, and they've looked a bit more worn and torn after six years than you do. And again, I think, well, if you've been through looking after children when you're young, and keeping a house going, and everything else, you do just keep going. And there is a difference between men and women in that way. And just be proud of it. Right. You did say that there are moments when the crisis is over, or when the work has taken its toll, that you do feel, oh, I'm very tired. What do you do in those situations? Well, you just come in, and you just flop down. And you just talk to your family, or say, when Falklands was over, never would I forget that night. You didn't realize the enormity of the burden, until it was over. Can you remember what you did? I came back here, and there were people outside waiting and cheering, and so one went to be with them. And then I came back in here, went straight upstairs to our little sitting room, and just flopped, just flopped the fantastic relief that there weren't any more young men whose lives were at risk. Because that's what one had 257. There weren't any more. There weren't any more days when someone was going to suddenly ring up or come up with terrible news. You see, while it was on, almost nothing else mattered. You had to carry on with other things. But this is perhaps, people don't realize the whole strain you are under, because of the young, and people's lives at stake, and because of their courage, and because we wouldn't be free, unless through the ages there'd been people who'd been prepared to lay down their lives for it. Can I just be a little more personal about that? There was a time when your son was in danger, and he was lost in the Sahara. Did you find any conflict about your worries as a mother? But you had to go on and do your job as a Prime Minister. One went on, yes, one went on doing it. And I remember, again, the agony in the back of your mind, and I remember I had to do a cabinet, and I remember this quietly sending down a message saying, would you please go to everyone just before I go down and say, please, do not mention anything to me. Then I went in and carried on with cabinets as if nothing had happened. But if anyone had mentioned anything to me, I would have found it acutely difficult. But the days when I thought I was never going to see him again, and that's how I knew what the Falklands mothers were going through, and that's how I knew how although they kept hope alive, how terrible they felt when I was lucky they weren't. One of your most famous sayings is that you thought there'd never be a female Prime Minister in your time. That's quite right. I did. I did. I couldn't see people choosing a woman Prime Minister. But you know, we talk far too much about labels. Some people, you know, try to map out their lives. I can remember some of my young contemporaries, the doctors saying, I'm going to be Prime Minister. That was the one thing I never said, because I didn't think I'd have the chance. But I didn't. But just take what opportunities are available to you and grasp them with both hands. Are you excited, though, by the idea that you are the first woman in number 10? Does it still excite you? I am terribly excited to be here. It is the most fantastic privilege. I still, every time I come in, I am still thrilled to be here. Still thrilled. I don't think of myself as the first woman Prime Minister. I am still thrilled to be the person who is in here.