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- Number One, So Why Try Harder
The Discrete Charm of Mrs Thatcher
Words Sophie Grove
MARGARET THATCHER’S MOTHER
was a dressmaker. In the tomes
and psycho-biographies
published since Lady T’s
premiership, her seamstress
matriarch gets short shrift.
Thatcher eulogised her dad,
Afred Roberts – the Methodist
alderman and grocer-supremo
– at every opertunity. He taught
her public oratory, the art of
thrift and installed in her the
tenets of common sense that
became Thatcherism. But it is
unlikely Alfred knew much
about brooches, punctilious
make-up and rouge. Perhaps
it’s Beatrice Roberts who can
take credit for Thatcher’s
iron-clad imagine, perfect
tailoring and
faultless presentation?
Thatcher’s look has
been parodied, impersonated
and ripped to shreds; but it
worked. Even Vivienne
Westwood thought as much.
“for me, Margaret Thatcher has
always been one of the world’s
best dressed people. Her
politics were appalling, but her
look gave her incredible
presence.” Said the fashion
designer and provocateur.
Westwood dressed as Thatcher
for the cover of tattler in 1958
under the slogan “This woman
was once a punk”, written in
cut-out typography. The
designer’s curious spin on
Thatchers identity was on of
the most probing satires of the
day. The uncanny resemlence
made readers double-take and
showed how theatrical the
leaders attire really was. It
revealed her as both a brand
and a quintessential woman.
Her royal-blue suiting was a
uniform of authority akin to
admiralty stripes. Yet she never
donned anything masculine.
Thatcher invented power
dressing and was only caught
out in trousers once, according
to her daughter, Carol (and
even then only because she
was on an oil-rig and didn’t
want the men to see her linge-
rie). Her uber-feminine attire
was a form of armour in the
mean world of Whitehall, her
arsenal made up of feminine
tropes. Her handbag , that
truncheon she often wielded in
meetings, was her baton of
feminine power on the world
stage.
Sensuous is the last
term you would expect to be
applied to Lady T. To many she
is the war-mongering Premier,
the power-napping insomniac,
the woman who, after five
people were killed in a IRA
bomb attack on a Brighton
hotel, took to the podium the
next day unfazed by the
carnage and delivered a
speech about the
nations economy.
Thatcher was often
pronounced to be an honorary
man, so much so that the
Carlton Club (Pall Mall’s stuffi-
est Conservative hang out)
gave her full membership –
despite the strict ban on
women that lasted until 2008.
But she wasn’t one of the boys
and she was in no sense a
neutered figure. Her most
recent biographer, Claire
Berlinksi (There Is No Alterna-
tive. Why Margaret Thatcher
Matters, Basic Books) was
astonished to hear from
contemparies that Thatcher
would commonly slink into
rooms, slip off her shoes and
snuggle into an easy chair with
her feet tucked underneath
her. She would flirt and banter
in the cabinet meetings. “She
did that on camera. In public,
she was never anything but
impeccable,” says Berlinski.
Privately, Thatcher saw herself
as sexy. The former Labour MP
for Birkenhead. Frank Field,
recently told the Liverpool
Echo how Thatcher would
invite groups of left-wingers to
her study for a night-cap. Field
witnessed a slightly sizzled PM
plant “a smacking kiss” on the
lips of the then-MP for Walton
Eric Heffer and describe him
as “my favourite Socialist”
Clearly there were some
sexual power-politics at play.
In his biography the author
Hugh Young described one
minister’s exchange with
Thatcher after a newspaper
had noted her ‘sexy’ voice (a
husk that was actually the
result of a cold.) Jim Prior
remarked to the Prime Minister
that the papers had written she
had developed a sexy voice.
Margaret’s reply was a telling
insight into her identity: “And
what makes you think I wasn’t
sexy before?”
Frisson was key to her
diplomatic approach. Her
famous rapport with President
Reagan went far beyond their
common passion for
free-market economics. The
two were “great friends.”
Margaret once called him “the
second most important man in
my life” (second only to her
husband, Denis). The public
watched the couple sparkle for
years in each other’s presence.
Reagan was amused by her
bossy, British tone. In one Cabi-
net meeting Reagan report-
edly took a call from Margaret
and held up the telephone as
she hectored down the line as
he exclaimed to his
colleagues, “isn’t she marvel-
lous!” Her stern, matronly act
was the antithesis of his laid
back ex-actor attitude. He was
notoriously relaxed and work
shy. She was a workaholic
empiricist. But to many there
was an element of romance in
the friendship. Satirical posters
of the time show Thatcher in
Reagan’s arms in a Hollywood
parody of Gone With The Wind.
And experts continue to
ponder the impact their chem-
istry had on history. “of course
I can’t prove it,” says Anneke
Ribberink, a Dutch Proffesor of
Social Sciences and scholar of
Thatcher, “but in her relation-
ship with Reagan there was
something else. Not only as
politicians, not only because
they were both right-wing, but
a relationship between man
and woman.”
To label Thatcher a flirt
doesn’t do justice to her canny
political instincts. “Thatcher
used different notions of
femininity in a subliminal way
to garner power,” says Berlin-
ski. “She played not only on her
sexuality but on the authority
of the mother, the archetype of
woman as a warrior figure, the
stern school mistress, the
matriarch. She used them at a
subterranean level.” Thatcher’s
chameleon-like ability to
inhabit different archetypes
was political gold dust. She
took the Madonna-Whore
dialectic and spun it on its
head: She was regal and even
glamorous (at diplomatic
events she was the fragrant
vision of 1950’s housewife (She
often spoke of recipes and
running a home and was
photographed playing piano
with her doting husband,
Denis, and twins Mark and
Carol.) But she was also
warrior-like (during the first
Gulf war she filmed in an army
jeep, flanked by the union jack,
her Laurence of Arabia-style
head dress billowing in the
wind.) War gave her a chance
to embody an iconic role –
somewhere between Churchill
and Queen. One painting at
RAF Northholt, ‘The Right
Honourable Margaret Thatcher
And Her Advisors In
The Falklands Conflict’ shows
her as an almost Madonna-like
figure, surrounded by a
tableau of ‘advisors’, swathed