This is an extract from my new book MEMORIES OF MARGARET THATCHER, which is published this week. A new extract will appear at 9am every day this week. The book contains 215 such essays by people from all walks of life who encountered the Iron Lady. You can order a signed copy of the book HERE
By Carol Thatcher
For a workaholic, No 10 was the perfect home: a staircase of just 17 steps led from the private flat to the prime minister’s study on the first floor. It had to be the shortest commute in London. The flat quickly dispelled the popular image of grand living. It was converted out of attic rooms during Neville Chamberlain’s time. When it was portrayed in a Bond film, we all looked enviously because it was much more glamorous than the real thing.
I recall domestic arrangements being very do-it-yourself. Often, guests who came up to the flat for an early-evening gin and tonic would find one or other of my parents co-ordinating glasses, with one of us racing down the stairs to the catering kitchen to fill up the ice bucket from the machine there because no one had thought to refill the ice trays in our own freezer. My father wasn’t keen on ice in drinks, though. “Dilutes it,” he used to claim.
My mother regarded food simply as fuel and had no claims to being a foodie. The late playwright Ronnie Millar, who used to come in for speech-writing sessions often on a Sunday evening used to raise his eyebrows and mutter: “Lasagne again.”
My mother had total tunnel vision when it came to work. As kids, my brother and I were watching a pop music show on TV while she was doing constituency paperwork in the same room. I asked if she wanted me to turn the volume down. No, she replied, she hadn’t realised it was on.
When I was at boarding school she was meticulous about turning up to school functions but always had a file of paperwork to sign or read when there was a lull in proceedings.
I think she was the most practical, efficient and organised person I have known. I once read that she was described as “fanatically tidy” while I was “fanatically messy”. I couldn’t argue.
On the evening of Friday 2 April 1982, my father was downing a gin and mixer in the drawing room of the flat at No. 10, when a message was delivered by a member of the Prime Minister’s staff. Argentina had invaded the Falklands. Now, Denis prided himself on his geography, but this caught him out. ‘I remember looking at The Times Atlas of the World to find out where the bloody hell they were – and I wasn’t the only one.’ Denis was already in fighting mood. ‘As an ex-soldier I thought: how the hell are we going to get a force 8,000 miles away? I looked at the distances and it was a logistical nightmare – but I had no doubt that we had to do something.’
An emergency session of the House of Commons was called and the Prime Minister’s own survival was in doubt. I had never seen my mother on her feet in the House of Commons as Prime Minister and it occurred to me that, if things were as bad as they appeared, this might be my last opportunity. I slung on some clothes, caught the Underground to Westminster and joined the queue for the public gallery.
My mother later described the mood of the House as ‘the most difficult I ever had to face’. She began solemnly, but then her voice took on a harder edge. ‘It is the government’s objective to see that the Islands are freed from occupation and returned to British administration at the earliest possible moment.’
There were several interjections, including one by Edward Rowlands, Labour MP for Merthyr Tydfil, who blanched at the PM’s reference to Southern Thule, which was occupied in 1976 when a Labour government was in power. He said it consisted of ‘a piece of rock in the most southerly part of the Dependencies which is completely uninhabited and which smells of large accumulations of penguin and other bird droppings’.
As I left the public gallery, my mind was filled with farcical images of bird shit and scrap-metal dealers. It made the cries of shame seem rather over the top.
Back at No. 10, I gently opened the door of the sitting room, not quite knowing what to expect. I genuinely feared that my parents might be moving out of No. 10 within days. A few months earlier, my mother had gone round the flat with little sticky dots marking anything that was ours as opposed to HM Government’s. The idea was that, if we had to move in a hurry, the removal men would find their job easier.
‘Hello,’ I said cautiously. She was sitting on a gold-coloured velvet sofa. There was no sign of doubt; this was Britain’s first female Prime Minister auditioning for the part of war leader. ‘Are you OK?’
‘Fine,’ she said, stuffing her hands into the pockets of her dress. ‘We’re down but not for long. I’ve just been downstairs and told Peter [Carrington] and John [Nott] that we’re going to fight back.’
By the following morning, her resolve had hardened even further. Having been to the local church near Chequers, she marched purposefully across the Great Hall and announced: ‘I’m going back to London. I know we can win. I know we can get them back if only I had six strong men and true. And I don’t know if I’ve got them.’
During the first few days of the crisis, my father saw very little of Margaret. She didn’t need reassurance – at least, not from her husband, who shared her views entirely. If it had been down to Denis, he would have dispensed with the diplomatic foreplay and evicted the ‘Argies’ at the first opportunity. ‘From the word go, I said: “Get them off!” I never had any doubts that we were going to win but it was such an enormous operation.’
I was working for the Daily Telegraph at the time and would drop into No. 10 occasionally to pick up mail and hopefully see my mother. She was rarely home, but one weekend I found her sitting on the floor in the drawing room surrounded by peace plans – one brought back by Francis Pym, the new Foreign Secretary, another from Al Haig; there was even a proposal from Chile. They all had a conciliatory tone, suggesting things like ‘interim administrations’ and ‘mutual withdrawals’. The Prime Minister wasn’t prepared to ‘bargain away the freedom’ of the Falklanders and insisted: ‘I’m not agreeing with anything until they get off.’
And get off they did. On a Monday night two months later, I was driving down Ebury Street when I heard my mother’s voice on the car radio. ‘There are reports of white flags flying over Port Stanley,’ she said, and I took my hands off the wheel and cheered. Slamming on the brakes and parking, I listened to the rest of the speech, feeling absolutely elated.
My main emotion was relief for my mother. Although I had seen very little of her, images of her leaving No. 10 dressed in black, on her way to give bad news to the House, showed the strain she was under.
Denis wasn’t in the gallery for that statement. Instead, he waited in the Prime Minister’s room and they went back to Downing Street together, saying goodnight to the policemen on the door of No. 10. ‘We went inside, and as we walked past the famous bulldog-pose portrait of Winston Churchill by Salisbury, hanging in the anteroom to the Cabinet room, I swear the great man bowed and said “Well done, girl”.
