Speeches, etc.

Margaret Thatcher

Remarks showing children around No.10

Document type: Speeches, interviews, etc.
Venue: No.10 Downing Street
Source: BBC Sound Archive: OUP transcript
Editorial comments: Between 1000 and 1100. The children were winners of a competition run by BBC1’s Saturday Superstore, on which MT had appeared in January. Material from the visit was broadcast on 14 February 1987.
Importance ranking: Trivial
Word count: 1795

MT

There we are. Right. Hello, Benjamin, come in. Welcome to No. 10. Katerina, lovely to have you. Come along in. Come along, David.

Girl

Hello, Prime Minister.

MT

Now, just look. This is No. 10. You haven't seen it from the inside before. And this is the first impression you get, and I hope you think that it feels like a sort of historic house. That's Walpole, our first Prime Minister, and that was Pitt the Elder. And if you were coming to see me as a great president of state or prime minister, we'd go over to this fireplace and we'd stand and we'd have our pictures taken. Shall we do that? [‘Yes’ and laughter]. You sometimes see it. You'll recognise the fireplace by those plates there and by that, er, clock. So you'll be in the picture in future.

Girl

There's some lovely china up there, Prime Minister.

[Babble of voices.]

MT

Yes, some china… very historic. And that great watchman's chair is always here. It's an historic chair. And that great big grandfather clock. So this is the entrance and then let's now take you to see the inside. It's much bigger than you think and we'll take you up to the room where we're going to talk about more things. It's called the Pillared Room. Let's go through. This first part of the journey on a long corridor. There you are.

[Break in tape.]

MT

Do you see that portrait up there? That is King George II who bought this house and gave it to the first Prime Minister, and so I thought, we managed to find a portrait of him, and I thought we should put him there and we should always remember him. And, of course, it was in this room, although we haven't got it laid out like this because… that'll only take thirty-six round it. We can put a great big horse-shoe table in here and get seventy people.

Visitor

Seventy?

MT

Yes, seventy. So that's why I call it the big dining room. And on our 250th anniversary of Downing Street, the Queen came to dinner here and we had all living [end p1] Prime Ministers, which included the Earl of Stockton, who's alas just died, and we had the surviving relatives of previous Prime Ministers who had died, and there were representatives of eleven Prime Ministers all together.

Girl

Good Lord.

Visitor

And it was in this room.

Girl

That's amazing

MT

Wasn't it fantastic?

Girl

So many.

MT

Yes, because someone who'd lived here at the time of Lloyd George, and Ramsay Macdonald, still descendants, but who were living here when their relative was Prime Minister. It was in this room. And then, when you hear we have a State visit and they have great big banquets at Buckingham Palace, we have a lunch here usually on the Wednesday. It'll be in this room. That table will have gone again and a big horse-shoe table all around. And it's really rather beautiful. It's a very beautiful dining room.

Girl

So these apartments are purely … purely used for business, not for your own family?

MT

Yes, all of these apartments that you see now, these rooms which are very grand, are all for official duties and important people like you.

Girl

The star visitors, yes! [laughter].

MT

In days gone by … Did you see a programme about No. 10? Albeit some… They did a programme about half a dozen Prime Ministers. And again they came and they reproduced some of our rooms in a studio to do it. In those days, they used to live in these big rooms and they had staff and their staff used to be upstairs in the attic. These days these rooms are only used officially. We live differently. We live much, much more simply. We don't have any live-in staff and so we have the flat upstairs which used to be for the staff.

[Break in tape.] [end p2]

MT

Now, this is known as the Ante-room, the side room to the Cabinet Room, and, if any of you were interested in being politicians, then on a Thursday morning if you were a cabinet minister you'd come in through that door right at the end of the corridor—No. 10, Jimmy's just opening it—you'd walk down this long corridor and you'd come in here and you'd all wait in here, putting down your heavy red boxes with all your papers in, and talking among yourselves until you were ready to have the cabinet meeting. I might be in there. I might have gone in through another entrance, or I might have been seeing someone upstairs, come down the stairs and then straight in here. So this… You're going into the Cabinet Room where all the great decisions of history have been taken. So come along. Let's have a look. There! You see, it's not a very elaborate room. It's quite a modest room. And you see, it's got this very special shaped table.

Girl

Is there any reason for that shape, Prime Minister?

MT

Yes, there is. I think it was either during… I think it was during Anthony Eden 's time and it used to be one of those long oblong tables, and then the Prime Minister, always sits in the middle, discovered that he really couldn't see who was at the end. So it became shaped in, so that if you're sitting there, you just look up and if someone signals they want to speak you can see them. And I think it's perhaps better, although, as you see, again it's not a very grand table. It's one covered in brown baize and I just long to get a nice mahogany top to it again. What? Yes, you were saying?

Boy

What's that?

MT

That tells me my engagements for the day.

Girl

How does it do that?

MT

Er, there's a little, um, there's a long sheet of engagements the other side of it.

Girl

Oh, I see, I see.

Young Child

But do you have any burglar alarms in Downing Street?

MT

Oh, yes, it's covered with them, dear. Burglar alarms and every other sort of alarm. Absolutely covered with them. [end p3]

Young Child

Have you ever had burglars?

MT

Have we ever had burglars? Oh, I think we'd better not say things like that, had we? [laughter] We did have somebody who got onto the roof, which was quite widely publicised, but all the alarms went off and he was jolly soon down.

Girl

Look at these beautiful…

MT

Now, these are blotters. You see, I told you I'm here in Number 10 not only as Prime Minister but as First Lord of the Treasury, so you'll find every blotter has ‘Cabinet Room—First Lord’, ever single one. We ought to have them… they look very much nicer when they're closed, but everyone uses them open…

Girl

They're all ready for action now.

MT

And I sit there.

Boy

And where do you sit?

MT

I sit over there. There are two places really where you can sit on a big table like this. Either from the middle or at the end. We find it very much better to sit at the middle. You're right in the centre of things. You get a good view of everyone who's sitting here and you can see people there. And the Chief Whip tends to sit…

Girl

There's beautiful silver in the middle.

MT

We have some nice silver. It has been given to us over the years.

Girl

But what is that little box for, Prime Minister?

MT

That really is just for all of the office things, the clips, the things that you need.

Girl

Oh, I see. A pencil case!

MT

[end p4]

Yes. And this comes from the time of Pitt.

Boy

The candlestick?

MT

The candlestick, yes, in the days before you had electricity. And these two—the candlesticks with the very big square base—they belong to a set which really should live in the Treasury. We have them here as I'm First Lord of the Treasury, but there are eight others. The tall ones were given to us by … Anthony Eden, and so we keep those on the table. These two small ones were given to us during my time by the United States. The 200th anniversary of the Treaty of Paris which is after… you know, when we became great friends and… [voice fades].

MT

No, I don't dread them. They're… they're the times when we have the interesting and difficult decisions to take, which always… The most interesting time in politics is when you're making the plans for the long-term future, stretching out into the future. Because you've got to decide what you're going to do, if it involves having new laws. Then you've got to get people in and say, “This is what we want to do. Please will you put it in to what is called a Bill” —and that's not easy. Then it's got to start it's way through Parliament. It'll take about a year to get through Parliament. So it takes quite a long time. There's a lot of discussion.

Girl

How long are your meetings in here, Prime Minister?

MT

It depends. I wouldn't… Normally cabinet meetings are not more than two, two and a half hours.

Girl

It's plenty long enough, isn't it?

MT

Plenty long enough, but we might have, we might have a cabinet committee meeting, because you see, when you've got a meeting of twenty-one people, you can't do a lot of the detailed work. So a lot of the preparatory work, and sometimes the final decisions, are taken in cabinet committees. So we have a big committee of the cabinet called the Economic Committee, a big one called Home Affairs, a big one called Overseas and Defence. And those can… those can deal with a great deal of business and they report to cabinet, and the really big decisions have to come to cabinet to be taken. By that time, everyone will be thoroughly familiar with them, because they might have been on a committee or the department will have been involved in a lot of discussion. Would you like just to sit down? I think we'd just be better sitting down. There we are.

Young Child

[end p5]

Mrs Thatcher?

MT

I must tell you, cabinet meetings aren't a bit like Yes, Prime Minister [laughter].

Boy

Do the positions, of, say, the Chancellor change or do they always sit in set places?

MT

Ah, you actually sit by seniority, not necessarily by office but by seniority, so yes, they can change.