4Q THE SATURDAY EVENING POST November, '75

MARGARETTHATCHER

BRITAIN'S FIRST LADYPRIME MINISTER ?

"In politics if you want anything said, ask a man;if you want anything done, ask a woman."

London—A financial adviser left the room. Mrs. Margaret Thatch-er, Leader of Her Majesty's Opposition, relaxed, sat down, shuck-ed her shoes and put her stockinged feet on the tweed settee inthe sunniest corner of her long, paneled office in the Palace ofWestminster. Earlier in the afternoon she had spoken in thedebate in the Chamber of the House of Commons on the pre-vious week's European referendum.

The debate was the first, experimental radio broadcast fromthe Chamber. Its editing, though, had not satisfied Mrs. Thatcher."Too noisy, too confusing," she said. She had, nevertheless,shrewdly used the moment to compliment her party's recentlydeposed leader Edward Heath on his role in taking Britain intoEurope before a national audience not usually so attentive to theproceedings of the House. Mrs. Thatcher is not a politician tomiss an opportunity for conciliation.

She had spent the past four months, since a decisive win inFebruary's elections for the Conservative Party leadership, cam-paigning almost continuously in the country. Now, however,apart from an urge to put her feet up after an unusually hotworking day, she showed no other obvious signs of exhaustion ordiminished enthusiasm. Excluding Mr. Heath, four of the fivemen who stood against Mrs. Thatcher in the leadership contesthave now accepted posts in her Shadow Cabinet.

Though she denies it, Mrs. Thatcher is a unique phenomenonin British political life. By a combination of opportunism, deci-siveness and tactical skill, she became, aged forty-nine and havingearlier been only the second Conservative woman Cabinet Minis-ter, the first woman to lead a British political party. Every Toryleader since Arthur Bonar Law in 1922 has led a government, andif this trend continues, she will (possibly around 1980) makehistory as Britain's first woman Prime Minister.

Face to face, she is smaller and better looking than her photo-graphs. She long ago abandoned the hats which, in the eyes ofopponents, caricatured her as the southern English Tory lady fitonly for garden parties and opening country fetes. She is betterdressed, dramatically slimmer, and her hair, set once a week,several shades fairer than when she entered Parliament sixteenyears ago.

She fixes the questioner with sharp gray-blue eyes, sits straightand answers carefully in a tone softer than her authoritarianpublic voice. (She was taught elocution as a girl.) She tends to beimpatient with imprecise questions and sharp with opponentswho abandon an argument before her. A good listener, she rarelyrepeats herself and dislikes being told anything twice.

In her first regional tours as party leader, during which shedrew crowds as regularly as the royal family (everyone is curiousto see Mrs. Thatcher), she passionately restated the old Torygospel of initiative, self-reliance and the free-market economy tosupporters dispirited by the loss of two successive general elec-tions and the subsequent confused dissension over Mr. Heath'sleadership.

Judging from the crowds who mobbed her in Edinburgh (Tory

Margaret Thatcher, chemist, lawyer, M.P.,potential prime minister, haggles with a con-

stituent over the gap between political promisesand the hard tealities of workaday London.

support had been dwindling rapidly in Scotland), she has suc-ceeded in reassuring at least some of these grass-root supporterswho felt themselves increasingly ignored by Mr. Heath's Londonpolicymakers. Many felt the party's severe moral defeat in Febru-ary 1974 had been unnecessarily precipitated by their Govern-ment's stubborn resistance to the striking miners' union on thebasis of an unworkable prices-and-incomes policy.

As Mr. Heath's controversial Education Secretary, Mrs.Thatcher was asked in the less unsettled political climate of 1973if she wanted to be Prime Minister. "No, I shouldn't," she re-plied. "I'm quite often asked this. I think the first woman PrimeMinister in this country will have quite a difficult time. I don'twish to be that person and I don't think there's any chance ofit."

Why did she change her mind two years later? A new style ofleadership, she said, rather than new policies, was needed. Sincefor reasons of loyalty no front-runner was willing to stand againstMr. Heath at the beginning of a bitter, possibly three-round lead-ership contest, she felt obliged to do so herself. She has denied,however, any calculated ambition. A combination of opportunityand duty presented itseJf and she took it.

She agreed with Adlai Stevenson's dictum that "self-govern-ment is for those who have learned self-discipline," with theimplication that the leaders of the self-governing must have thediscipline to act decisively.

Apart from Norman St. John-Stevas, former Minister of Arts^and Sir Keith Joseph, a former Housing Minister and now herchief policy advisor, none of Mr. Heath's Shadow Cabinet votedfor Mrs. Thatcher in the first ballot. A majority of the ShadowCabinet believed that Mr. Heath had to go but favored a concilia-

THE SAJVRD/IY EVENtNC POST 41

tory leader like Mr. William Whitelaw, the architect of the power-sharing compromise between Catholics and Protestants in North-em Ireland.

Mrs. Thatcher clinched the leadership by a huge poll of back-bench MP's in the first ballot. Some, fearing Mr. Heath's survivalmore than Mrs. Thatcher's seemingly improbable victory, votedfor her hoping, with the Shadow Cabinet, that in the second orthird ballot a man like Whitelaw would emerge the eventual win-ner. However, so large was Mrs. Thatcher's majority in the firstballot that by the second round she had gained an unbeatablemoral advantage.

Mrs. Thatcher's steady, but largely unremarked, preparationfor the Tory leadership began in the early Sixties when, as theyoung, assured new Member of Parliament for suburban Finch-ley, north London, she caught the attention of Prime MinisterMacmillan who quickly gave her a junior post in the then Minis-try of Pensions. ("Dogsbody" was her later description of thejob.)

For Mrs. Thatcher, the middle-class daughter of a dressmakerand a small-town storekeeper, this appointment exactly suitedher talents. Before her election to Parliament, experience as abarrister in that most exacting branch of jurisprudence, tax andpatent law, had given her a keen appetite for the minutiae ofpension legislation.

One Minister whom she served at the time remembered herimpressive grasp of complicated details. "She used to deal withrather delicate personal matters with immense tact," he said."There was no doubt that she was bound for higher things."

Margaret Hilda Thatcher was born in 1925 above the family'sgrocer's store in the market town of Grantham, some hundred

By John Pym

miles north of London in the flat fen country of Lincolnshire.Her father, Alfred Roberts, the son of a bootmaker, was a book-ish Methodist lay preacher who sat on the local council and laterbecame town mayor. He was the shining example of the sort ofperson—hard-working, judicious, high-principled—with whomMargaret, the second of his two daughters, was later to identifyherself.

"We were brought up in a very religious background. Therewas more than just having to work to live, there was work as aduty," she once said. "Caring for others ran very, very strongly,so there was a tremendous amount of voluntary work." Mr.Roberts, who had started as an apprentice grocer at the age of

The House of Commons leaves the leader ofthe Conservative Party little lime for her ownhouse in Finchley, a wealthy neighborhood ofbarristers, brokers and surgeons.

7H£ SATURDAY EVENING POST November, '75

twelve, retired with two of his own storesin Grantham. Their home, though withouta bath or hot running water, was spotless.

Margaret, a pretty girl with bobbedhair, was in her turn a shining example ofthe person her father might have been hadhe not been forced to leave sehool andearn a living.

Although Sunday papers were forbid-den, the Roberts home was always full oflibrary books and political discussion. Ayear ahead of her age at elementaryschool, Margaret was at the top of hergrammar school every year but one {whenshe was second). Games captain and agood hockey player, Margaret would havebeen head girl had she not won a scholar-ship to Oxford to study chemistry.

Her sister Muriel recalled those years:"Margaret set her sights on Oxford andDad backed her. Her head-mistress said it would be im-possible because the schooldidn't teach Latin, but Mar-garet wasn't deterred. Sheturned up at school one daywith a check from Father tocover the exam fee to Somer-ville College. Then she soughtout the classics master at theboys' school and took the five-year Latin course in less than ayear to pass the exam."

Oxford opened her life. Shehad never been to a dance be-fore going up. Although thedebating club, the OxfordUnion, was barred to womenin her day, as president of theuniversity Conservation Asso-ciation Miss Roberts found nodifficulty controlling her com-mittee of recently de-mobbedsoldiers.

Mrs. Thatcher's first directpolitical activity for the Con-servatives had been foldingpamphlets in Grantham Hallduring the 1935 general elec-tion. But it was not until Mar-garet came home from Oxfordone Christmas vacation justafter the war that a Parliamentary careerwas proposed.

"I remember the moment quite clearly.I was making coffee in the kitchen withfriends after a party—that's what one didin those days. Someone said, *Of courseyou'll go into politics, won't you?' And itoccurred to me that, of course, I would."But that had to wait. Graduating fromOxford with second-class honors, she hadto earn a living and took a job in indus-trial research. Although the chemical in-dustry seemed to have a bright future inthe postwar years. Miss Roberts's realambition was to study law.

At the age of twenty-four, working inManningtree, Essex, on ways of fixing anew sort of plastic to metal and wood, shewas adopted as prospective Tory candi-date for the safe Labor seat of Dartford,across the Thames in the neighboringcounty of Kent. She at once moved to

rooms in Dartford, commuting daily toher job and campaigning in the evenings.She nursed the seat through two generalelections, creditably pushing up the Con-servative poll.

Denis Thatcher, a wartime major in theRoyal Artillery, ten years her senior andat the time director of his family's paintfirm, was a member of Dartford Conser-vative Association. They met when heoffered her a lift after a meeting. (Was itlove at first sight? Mrs. Thatcher wasasked later. "No, there were two electionsto fight first.") He and Margaret marriedtwo weeks before the 1951 election, afterwhich she resigned the constituency andthey moved to a London apartment.

After studying law in her spare time,another research job and a period as per-sonal assistant to the director of the Joint

Iron Council, Mrs. Thatcher was called tothe Bar at London's Lincoln's Inn in1954, a few months after the birth of hertwins Carol and Mark.

When she finally entered Parliament in1959 for the secure Conservation seat ofFinchley, Mrs. Thatcher was the first ofher contemporaries to be given a juniorministry. The Tories lost the 1964 elec-tion, and for the next six years she was afront-bench Opposition spokesman onhousing, economic affairs, power andtransport. But it was as Education Secre-tary that she caught the British public'sattention for the first time.

Apart from the notable maiden speechin the Commons, which she used to intro-duce her own Private Member's Bill forthe admittance of the press to local coun-cil committee meetings, in the SixtiesMrs.Thatcher spoke on none of the majorissues of social reform. Though she voted

consistently for the abolition of hangingand in favor of the abortion bill, sheopposed divorce reform and did not voteon homosexual law reform. She remainedsilent on Home and Foreign Office affairs.

She was most at home dealing withfinance; and perhaps her greatest victoryas Education Secretary was boosting theschool building program by preventing theTreasury from drastically cutting herDepartment's budget. This achievementwas, however, overshadowed in the publiceye by a highly unpopular decision (whichshe had opposed in Cabinet) to end freeschool milk to children under eleven. Thiseconomy was designed to raise nine mil-lion pounds ($21 million) a year towardthe replacement of dilapidated nine-teenth-century primary schools.

Nowadays, with her children off herhands (Carol is following hermother into the law), Mrs.Thatcher's family life is lesshectic. Had she ever had diffi-culty bringing up a family andworking full time? "No, but Iwas fortunate in having myhome, constituency and theHouse of Commons in a smalltriangle."

Mrs. Thatcher, who at themoment writes all her ownspeeches, manages on four orfive hours of sleep a night anddoes most of her politicalbackground work in the smallhours. To clear her mind shereads detective novels. Shegets up around 6:30 a.m. toprepare breakfast for her hus-band, now a retired director ofa large oil company, who de-liberately keeps well out ofthe political limelight. Beforebecoming Tory leader, sheliked to organize the runningof their London home in Chel-sea, shopping and on occasionpainting and decorating it her-self.

Mrs. Thatcher does not be-lieve that being a good-looking

woman greatly influenced her career. Shedenies, too, ever having met anti-feminismin the Tory Party. She has little tradi-tional reverence for men. *'Oh, that's atypical man's question." How had shebecome leader? "Merit," she repliedsharply. "In politics, if you want anythingsaid, ask a man," she told a predominant-ly male press conference. "If you wantanything done, ask a woman."

Mrs. Thatcher is clearly confident ofreaching 10 Downing Street. But, whileshe hopes to remain Conservative leaderfor the next fifteen to twenty years, sorapidly did she achieve the position thather exact political stand on many issues,particularly foreign affairs, is less clear.Her past links her to the right.

Mrs. Thatcher objects on principle topublic enterprise and has in the past talk-ed of reducing the public sector of the

Continued on page 86

86 THE SATURDAY EVENING POST November, '7S

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Thatchercontinued from pa£e 43

economy. The food and housing sub-sidies used by the Labor Govern-ment, she believes, conceal with dis-astrous effect the true cost of re-sources. "It enables us to be morewasteful than we otherwise wouldbe. Where a firm makes a profit, thisis an indication that the resources itis using are providing a service that'svalued by its customers. Where afirm loses money, this is an indica-tion that the resources could be bet-ter used by other industries."

The needy should be given aframework of support, while self-respecting people should be encour-aged to stand on their own feet, and,if they wish, to own their homes andpay their own medical bills and puttheir children through school.

"The way to get more personali nvolvement and participation,"

Mrs. Thatcher said in 1968 and stillfirmly believes, "is to make the Gov-ernment reduce the area of decisionover which it presides and conse-quently leave the private citizen toparticipate by making more of hisown decisions. What we need now isa far greater degree of personal re-sponsibility and decision."

She receives formidable briefsfrom her advisers, and is reluctant toai^ue in the House or in public unlessshe has marshaled all pertinent factsfor the attack. She won a notablevictory in this respect during theCommons debate on the 1966 Bud-get, in preparation for which sheread every Budget and Finance Billspeech of the preceding twentyyears. Women in British politicallife, Mrs. Thatcher observed, are notallowed to make mistakes. S

Lite Before the Mastcontinued fron\ page 58

to the taffrail that same afternoon,with a round turn and two half-hitches, by its best painter. Of courseI expected the vessel would drag theboat down with her, for I had noknife to cut the painter. There was agang board in the boat, however,which lay fore and aft, and I thoughtthis might keep me afioat until someof the fleet should pick me up. Toclear this gang board, then, and get itinto the water, was my first object. 1ran forward to throw off the lazypainter that was coiled on its end,and in doing this I caught the boat'spainter in my hand, by accident. Apull satisfied me that it was all clear!Someone on board must have castoff this painter, and then lost hischance of getting into the boat by anaccident. At all events, I was safe,and 1 now dared to look about me.

My only chance of seeing was dur-ing the flashes; and these left mealmost blind. I had thrown the gangboard into the water, and I now call-ed out to encourage the men, tellingthem I was in the boat. I could hearmany around me, and, occasionally,I saw the heads of men, struggling inthe lake. There being no proper placeto scull in, I got an oar in the afterruUock, and made out to scull a lit-tle, in that fashion. 1 now saw a manquite near the boat; and, hauling inthe oar, made a spring amidships,catching this poor fellow by the col-lar. He was very near gone; and I hada great deal of difficulty in gettinghim in over the gunwale. Our jointweight brought the boat down solow that she shipped a good deal ofwater. This turned out to be LeonardLewis, the young man who had help-ed me to clew up the fore-topsail. Hecould not stand, and spoke with dif-ficulty. I asked him to crawl aft, outof the water, which he did, lying

down in the stern sheets.1 now looked about me, and

heard another; leaning over the gun-wale, I got a glimpse of a man, strug-gling, quite near the boat. 1 caughthim by the collar, too; and had todrag him in very much the same wayI had done with Lewis. This provedto be Lemuel Bryant, the man whohad been wounded by a hot shot, atYork, while the commodore was onboard us. His wound had not yethealed, but he was less exhaustedthan Lewis. He could not help me,however, lying down in the bottomof the boat, the instant he was able.

For a few moments, I now heardno more in the water; and I began toscull again. By my calculation, Imoved a few yards, and must havegot over the spot where the schoonerwent down. Here, in the flashes, Isaw many heads, the men swimmingin confusion, and at random. By thistime, little was said, the whole scenebeing one of fearful struggling andfrightful silence. It still rained; butthe flashes were frequent, and lessfierce. They told me, afterward, inthe squadron, that it thundered aw-fully ; but I cannot say 1 heard a clap,after 1 struck the water. The nextman caught the boat himself. It wasamulatto, from Martinique, who wasMr. Osgood's steward; and I helpedhim in. He was much exhausted,though an excellent swimmer; butalarm nearly deprived him of hisstrength. He kept saying, "Oh! Mas-ser Ned—oh! Masser Ned!" and laydown in the bottom of the boat, likethe two others; 1 taking care to shovehim over to the larboard side, so as totrim our small craft.

1 kept calling out to encouragethe swimmers, and presently I hearda voice, saying, "Ned, I'm here, close

Continued on pmie 99