The utter strangeness of Margaret Thatcher

In 1979 only six women had ever served in the Cabinet, and I bet you can't name more than three of them

I have no recollection of Jim Callaghan. I was only three when Margaret Thatcher defeated him in 1979. She became the dominant political personality of my childhood, directing battles I half-understood: the Falklands war, the miners’ strike, privatisations, the poll tax. And perhaps that blinded me to just how strange she was, how absolutely unprecedented. A few other countries had elected female PMs, but she was the first woman to do the job in Britain, and the first whose name was associated with a political philosophy.

‘And then I said to Ronnie…’ Thatcher and Nancy Reagan at the White House in February 1981, shortly after Ronald Reagan became president. White House Photographic Collection/ National Archives Catalog

Look at this extraordinary photo of Thatcher and her first Cabinet. She’s positioned herself directly in front of an 18^th century portrait of a female aristocrat in a wig and flowing silk. Thatcher’s dress is belted and utilitarian. The implication is clear and it is radical. You looked at her: you obey me.

Presenting Jam Tomorrow (now More Jam Tomorrow) has brought home to me just how negligible an influence women had on politics in the late 20^th century. The 1970s were a breakthrough for women, but hardly any of them held positions of power during that decade: equal pay did not mean equal influence. Time and again I found that many of the biggest and most consequential projects and decisions — Suez, Concorde, even whether to approve the Pill on the NHS — were debated and decided by men.

But what about Barbara Castle? What about Shirley Williams? Yes, they had Cabinet jobs in the 1960s and 1970s, promoted to lead the health and education departments. But they were exceptional. Only six women served in the Cabinet between 1945 and 1979. In one of the recent Origin Story podcasts on Thatcherism, Dorian notes that Thatcher was only selected as MP for Finchley because the local constituency chair took pity on her and rigged the vote. It was ironic, given her refusal to give women any special treatment. But it was also enraging: the future of a talented woman hanging on the whim of a man whose name has long since been forgotten.

At the turn of the century, King’s College London held a seminar on the history of North Sea oil and gas to which the politicians, civil servants, businessmen, scientists and economists who made the crucial decisions were invited. Only one woman was involved, and she was the editor of the subsequent report. That is not a criticism of King’s. It reflected the reality of the time. In earlier series, I redressed the balance a bit with episodes on contraception, women’s magazines and women’s football (the latter by Jade Bailey). But the high politics? Only Thatcher really got to it.

Almost all these men are now dead. In More Jam Tomorrow I draw a lot on Hansard to evoke what parliamentarians were thinking. We hear from many MPs and peers (usually voiced, brilliantly, by Seth Thévoz). Only very rarely, and not for want of searching, are the speakers women. We rightly pay attention to women’s neglected contributions to 20^th century politics, yet there are entire swathes of post-war history for which women held almost no responsibility or agency.

At my home, Thatcher’s exceptionalism was not a point in her favour. It was understood that she was cruel, malevolent and an object of loathing. To my father, she was that bloody woman. My mother especially hated her voice, wincing when she heard it. Normally it had an painstaking, authoritative quality, but occasionally Thatcher would adopt a soothing tone that affected Mum like nails on a blackboard. Perhaps the oddest thing, given she was 53 when she became PM, was how Thatcher projected a kind of domination that was both matriarchal and (if you were that way susceptible) sexual. The pattern had been set when she stopped milk for older primary school children in 1971 and became both Lady Macbeth and Mother — for mothers give the milk, but one day they take it away.

She was 65 when François Mitterrand compared her mouth to Marilyn Monroe’s and her eyes to Caligula’s. The comment is still chilling. Thatcher was feminine and yet capable of cruelty. She was a pioneer among women, but not a feminist. No ordinary woman, as women were understood to be in 1979, could possibly have been elected prime minister. Men sought the explanation for her exceptionalism in her femininity. But that could never adequately explain it, because no woman had ever acquired so much power except through birth or marriage.

The first episode of series 4 of More Jam Tomorrow is about the long, ponderous history of the Channel Tunnel, a project repeatedly halted by war, budgets and British paranoia. At one point a politician compares England to a virgin whose ‘reputation’ would be fatally pierced by the phallic intrusion of a tunnel. There is just one woman’s voice in the episode. It is the one that finally gives permission for the project to go ahead. It belongs to Margaret Thatcher. Many people loathe her, and I understand why. But I cannot hate her: she fascinates me too much for that.

Episode 1 of More Jam Tomorrow is out now.

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