I'M JUST ANOTHER WORKING MOTHER

Peter Simmonds, Political Editor, finds the Premier is not the retiring type

It was one of those suddenly hot autumn afternoons. As the clouds cleared over London. Mrs Thatcher stepped out on to the lawns at the rear of No. 10.

On the other side of the high brick wall the ducks were swimming and waddling in St. James Park, totally oblivious to what the Prime Minister had in mind for them.

Each spring for years past, a family of mallards has left the lake in the park to nest in the back garden of 10 Downing Street before marching back with the newly-hatched brood in the early summer.

Now their way of life is to change. As I stood with her on the lawns Mrs Thatcher suddenly gave orders for a pond to be sunk so the ducks would stay all year round—Wilberforce, the No 10 cat permitting.

The gardener David O'Connell—tall, young and very deferential—followed the line of the Prime Minister's outstretched arm, and quietly suggested that perhaps the corner of the garden she had in mind would be a little too shady, too close to the tree.

She took his point but was insistent that a pond there must be. She wanted the ducks to stay.

Somehow it seemed both natural and appropriate that life even for the ducks, should have to change in Mrs Thatcher's Britain.

After all there is not one of us now whose life has not been altered or touched by this woman who celebrates her sixtieth birthday next Sunday.

Upstairs in her study, she settled into an armchair and considered what this birthday—the normal age of retirement for women—meant to her.

You never think of yourself as 60 she said. Just as when you are 50 you don't think of yourself as that, or even think of yourself as 40 when you are 40.

“They are things that happen to someone else—but not to you. No, 40 or 50 or 60 don't happen to oneself. You are just as vigorous and energetic.

People are astonishingly vigorous at 60, 70, 80—sometimes older than that. Winston Churchill had not even become Prime Minister until he was 66.

Birthdays, she said, were artificial date-lines and life did not come in artificial segments.

For a few moments the Prime Minister sparred gently with me, countering each veiled suggestion that perhaps at 60 she might be considering her future.

She responded that at No. 10 experience was cumulatively valuable especially in international affairs. And as for the pressures that six years as Prime Minister put on her, why, that was no different for her and Denis than for many other married couples.

‘Just remember she said a little sharply you are making me out as something totally unusual. Just remember many, many married women work. Some even have families to look after as well, though mine flew the nest a long time ago.

Many married women with a career work extremely hard because you have your career, you have to keep your house going, you have to think ahead.

‘And yet you wouldn't say they were working the entire time or never have time to sit down; never have time to talk; never have time to have friends in; never have time to go out.’

It was no different for her and Denis—each with their own life, but flopping down together at the end of each day to talk about each other's day.

She and Denis were just back that day from their flat at Scotney Castle in Kent where together they had turned the place upside down, turning it out from top to bottom—merely because it needed doing. Enormous fun; all sorts of things thrown out.

That night they would be off to Chequers together, where she would raid the fridge in the kitchen for something quick to cook.

She insisted that there was time too, for the walking they both enjoyed; for the occasional night at the theatre: for visiting friends and having them round; for Denis 's voluntary work for the Disabled Sports Foundation and hers for the NSPCC. For music, too—‘operas and what I would call the less-esoteric classical music,’ Mahler and Tippett.

The new, £400,000 five-bedroom home in Dulwich, South London, which she and Denis were buying did not signal thoughts of retirement either—rather the self-interest of two Conservatives who know that bricks and mortar are one of the best investments.

‘Let me make it clear,’ she said, ‘I don't like being without an owner-occupied house and immediately we got rid of the Chelsea house before Christmas, I started to look for another.

“The family house is by far your largest asset. Having one in or very near to the capital city means you have to watch out that if you don't sell and buy within a reasonable time, then your money is not going to buy the same kind of house as you had. You cannot delay too long.”

She and Denis wanted an open plan house and it had not been possible to convert the Chelsea home.

What she and Denis had really wanted in a new home, she revealed, was an old property to renovate. ‘But the ones we found which would have been lovely, would have taken an enormous amount of money to do up, and we are not in a position to do anything ourselves.

It would have required a fantastic amount of time and supervision which we just could not give.

‘So we had to go ahead with this one in Dulwich. It is just on the golf course, which suits Denis, and it will be only a few minutes away from Westminster and Downing Street, which suits me.’

It is a fact that some Tory MPs believe that their chances at the next General Election would be enhanced by a new leader and they point out that the 13 years of Tory rule from 1951–1964 saw no fewer than four Prime Minister.

I remarked that she had now been Prime Minister for something over six years. ‘It's not very long is it?’ she interjected quickly. On the contrary. I replied the British were not used to having the same Prime Minister for so long.

Her eyes narrowed, the smile hardened and suddenly I felt like a figure in a Bateman cartoon—“The man who dared to suggest that Mrs Thatcher should retire’.

She leaned forward. ‘Walpole was here for 21 years— Salisbury for about 13.’

Of course, I reminded her, Earl Derby was a Conservative Prime Minister for 22 years in three spells. Surely she wasn't going for that record?

She replied slowly. “Twenty-two years is, I think, a little long.”

But Britain and the world today were different from the days of Walpole. Salisbury and Derby. I suggested. She readily agreed: everything was much faster moving, communications were almost instant.

And, I insisted, fashions change. Again the icy stare.

‘I think politics is about more than fashion. Politics is about the way you want to go; whether you want Government to have a bigger and bigger part of your life and therefore you have a lesser and lesser say in your own destiny, and fewer and fewer fruits of your own efforts’.

She had seen bad mid-term opinion polls before the last General Election and a strong Alliance third force. The voters were not now choosing between policies and from the other parties she had not yet seen any constructive proposal that would appeal to voters.

As for the Social Democrats here her voice went very angry and bitter, their leaders had been in Callaghan 's Labour government which did everything it could to stop Britain going in the direction she was now taking it.

Now the Social Democrats are trying to jump on her bandwagon her party's bandwagon, and saying that she was right in the very policies they, Callaghan and the union leaders, had fought against. [end p1]

But, she said, they did not have guts. It didn't take guts to jump aboard her bandwagon—but starting a bandwagon off as she had—that took guts, that took stuffing, that took spine.

Slowly, deliberately, she explained how because she is a woman, her ambitions for Britain are and always had been long term, how six years as Prime Minister were not long for her and for what she had in mind.

Women naturally took a long view. Women had children and were interested in what sort of world they would grow up in.

‘It's a longer term view—not merely looking to this week or next week—but getting the children into nursery school, then school; what the head teacher is like; what kind of career they will have; their capabilities and aptitudes. You are always thinking much longer term.’

So however we see Mrs Thatcher, we know now how she sees herself—as Mother Britain. And mothers always say they know best.