Speeches, etc.

Margaret Thatcher

Interview for Barnet Press

Document type: Speeches, interviews, etc.
Venue: Finchley
Source: Barnet Press, 15 September 1978
Journalist: Margaret Rowe, Barnet Press
Editorial comments: Exact time and place uncertain.
Importance ranking: Minor
Word count: 1272
Themes: Autobiographical comments, Autobiography (childhood), Autobiography (marriage & children), Executive, Parliament, Civil liberties, Conservatism, General Elections, Foreign policy (USSR & successor states), Media, Women, Famous statements by MT (discussions of)

The heir apparent becomes a patient lady-in-waiting

Eight years ago when this newspaper interviewed Mrs. Margaret Thatcher, she stated: “There won't be a woman Prime Minister of Britain in my life-time …” Today she is poised to achieve what then seemed an unattainable goal. But in this exclusive interview on the eve of the election that never was, she speaks to reporter Margaret Rowe, not about what she's cooking up for Mr. Callaghan, but about the politics of her domestic life.

Within 48 hours of the Prime Minister's announcement that there would be no autumn General Election, Mrs. Margaret Thatcher, Leader of the Opposition, told me: “There is no point in getting impatient and frustrated. It must come within the year. I have just had to wait quite a time patiently. I can wait a bit longer.”

Naturally she thought it would have been much better had an election date been set because so many big problems faced the nation. A party needed a clear run of several years ahead to cope with them.

Was there any particular piece of legislation she would like to get through when her party came to power, I asked her, “We have our priorities,” she said.

“Legislation won't put the world to rights. There is too much of it, too restrictive legislation.”

I talked to Mrs. Thatcher in her Finchley constituency on Saturday, the day following her broadcast and televised reply to Mr. Callaghan.

The night before she had returned from her Midlands tour where she had almost lost her voice. But there was no trace of huskiness when I spoke to her.

She spent the afternoon in Finchley and held a surgery until eight o'clock. There had been little chance of a lie-in that morning: “I had to unpack, get breakfast, cook lunch, before coming here,” she said.

When my sheaf of prepared questions fluttered all over the floor, Mrs. Thatcher complimented me: “Women journalists always come prepared,” she declared. “It reflects the organisation and method they have at home.”

Her always neat and correct appearance declares her tidy approach to life. “I prefer to be tidy. My Denis Thatcherhusband is but the children aren't. It's so much easier when you have a large house with plenty of cupboard space. We are pushed for space in our small London house and I would like a large kitchen.”

Her time off is minimal so she has domestic help but no housekeeper. She feels a housekeeper would find life in the Thatcher household very difficult “as we are all in and out at different times. Breakfast is the only regular meal we have together.”

She tries to get one day or weekend off per month, but in this last year she has had only a weekend about every six weeks.

And when Mrs. Thatcher isn't out working, she is at home coping with correspondence and the inevitable pile of paperwork.

“Then there are my clothes to see to and the airing cupboard to sort out—everything gets shoved on top of everything else.” she complained.

She has the modern working wife's Godsend—a freezer. “I try to cook two or three things at the same time to have dishes to put in the fridge or freezer in reserve,” she explained.

I asked her if she believed in the view that behind every successful woman stood a tolerant husband. “They would have to have a tolerant husband, they couldn't do it if there was friction at home, They would use up so much energy because of the friction.”

She asked about my husband and when I told her he was at home caring for our three daughters, she instantly apologised and said had she known I did not usually work on a Saturday, she would have organised an interview at the House for me on a working weekday.

She believed most husbands accepted that wives might wish to return to part-time work after rearing a family. How could we get more women in public life? “Only by example,” she replied.

The reason there were so few women in Parliament was pure geography. She was lucky in having a London constituency; it was not so easy if you held a Scottish seat.

“I would not have wanted to leave my children for three or four days a week. They would have missed me and I would have missed them,” she declared.

Would she have any bias towards women if she formed a Cabinet? There are so few women in Parliament, she replied, but she would certainly make a point of promoting any promising women.

When reminded of an interview she gave to this newspaper in August, 1970, in which she stated: “There won't be a woman Prime Minister of Britain in my lifetime because the inbuilt prejudices are too entrenched,” she retorted: “What would you have expected me to say …?”

Things have moved, she added, and the time occurred which made it perfectly all right for her to stand for the party leadership.

Mrs. Golda Meir was the nearest thing to a Western women premier. “She was a tremendous Prime Minister, at a time when her country was in great trouble,” she said. It was nothing after that for a Western woman to become Prime Minister.

Had Mrs. Thatcher been born around the same time as Mrs. Meir she considered it “quite possible” she would have been a non-militant suffragette.

As a child she did not dream of being even an MP let alone possibly Prime Minister.

“They were not paid.” she said. “It was not possible for me to contemplate it until members were paid enough to keep them going.”

She knew she wanted to go to university. Her father, self-educated, left school at 13 and as everyone now knows built up a successful grocery business.

“Obviously his dreams were for me to go to university,” she said.

Her family belonged to the Methodist Church and she recalled there were always lots of people from overseas in their home.

From them she heard about faraway places. “India always fascinated me. At one time I wanted to join the Indian Civil Service to see what we could go out and do there to help,” she remembered. “My Alfred Robertsfather said that by the time I wanted to go out and do that, there wouldn't be one, and how right he was.”

I asked her if she thought a British government could give any concrete help to the Russian dissidents and she countered: “I thought you said there wouldn't be any political questions!”

But she did outline a couple of ways in which Britain, along with other governments, could perhaps influence the Soviet Government and pointed out that the Russians were very sensitive to constant disapproval.

The door of our room opened and someone intruded to remind us that the allotted half-hour was up and the first batch of constituents had already arrived to see their MP.

Did she mind the intrusion into her private life that being a public figure entailed? “If you have the main thing you want in life, you must accept the drawbacks. You and I are jolly lucky to be doing what we want to. Some people have to take any job.” Because she has no time for hobbies, work has become her hobby.

“If you weren't you, Mrs. Thatcher, who would you like to be?” was my final question. She laughed. “I never think in that way. One might have dreamt when one was younger, but when you get older, you become so absorbed in your own work.

“I might as well get on with what I am. When people are young, they think you have wonderful, glamorous, dashing lives. As you get older, you know there is no such thing.

“There is a tremendous lot of hard work, that is the way to success, a personal success of achievement and of happiness.”