662. Britain in the 70s: The Rise of Thatcher (Part 1)

19:32Dominic Sandbrook:pinstripe suit with brill creamed hair uh who perhaps has a little glint in his eye that's very much what she likes so she did have a boyfriend at Oxford called Tony Bray she loved dancing. So when she was prime minister, one of her great passions was to dance with Ronald Reagan. And she loves fashion, doesn't she? Yeah, she really likes fashion. So there's letters in Charles Moore's biography, letters that she's writing to her sister saying, I'd really like to get these new shoes, these glamorous new shoes, but I know that our father would not approve. So there is a little bit of tension there with her father.

20:03Dominic Sandbrook:The one thing she doesn't, I mean, what she doesn't have, she doesn't have any sense of irony or the absurd. A fun aspect of her life and career she's completely oblivious to double entendres yeah so she was campaigning once in putney and she saw a man carrying a big wrench and she said to the press corps goodness i've never seen a tool as big as that so they all start laughing and she just doesn't understand why they're laughing and then the best one is she went to the falklands in 1983 when victory had been secured and there was a big sort of field gun and they said would you like to sit on this field gun and fire some rounds like just you know in the very direction of argentina or whatever and she said she was tempted then she said to them but mightn't it jerk me off and again everybody's sort of not a dry eye in the house it's sometimes said of her that she's a philistine uh a lot of her critics said this in the 80s the writer jonathan rabin said she regarded books art and ideas as just so much black forest gato so 70s i know but i regard black forest gato as a good thing i think that's a compliment anyway she likes classical music she liked chopin she liked beethoven she liked bark we know from letters in the archives that in the 70s as leader of the opposition i don't think kemi badenock is doing this she read dostoevsky's demons she had cursed as darkness at noon she had le carré she read kipling salts and it's in she wrote harold bloom didn't she famously read the day of the jackal twice is that right i mean

21:31Tom Holland:i've never heard that i think she read it all the way through and then she wanted to she read it again to try and work out the plot wow you know so a kind of engineer perhaps a kind of you know

21:40Dominic Sandbrook:scientist's perspective to see yeah to see how it worked to see the chemical composition of it yeah

21:45Tom Holland:i mean just on the topic of music you you must know her favorite beatles song money or tax man

21:52Dominic Sandbrook:tell star tell star which of course was not by the beatles yeah that's insane but she probably likes it because she would like she would say i'd like popular music before the long hair yeah she's that probably the issue before the long hair and the singing in fact correct so i've sort of shot down a couple of the criticisms that she's a philistine or whatever or that um you know she's not very clever what is absolutely true however is that she doesn't have any real sense of imagination or empathy. Almost all her biographers, everybody who worked with her, said this was the massive weak point. That basically, Margaret Thatcher did not really understand, certainly not on an emotional level, what it was like to be different from her, what it was like to be poor, to be insecure, what it was like actually not to be ambitious and to be intimidated by people saying you should pull yourself up by your bootstraps or to be unlucky.

22:45Dominic Sandbrook:Or to lose your job. To lose your job, exactly. The thing that always, I think, captures her better than anything else, it's a passage in Matthew Parris' memoir. Matthew Parris, Times columnist, worked for her in the 1970s. And there's a point when he says to her, they meet at some party, and he says, I'm going off to the Desolation Islands. I think Aubrey and Maturin go to the Desolation Islands, don't they, in Master and Commander stories. He says, I'm going to the Desolation Islands on a trip. And she said to him, I know why you want to go. You want to go thousands of miles to some remote and dangerous place and climb to the top of a mountain and to say, here I am in a wild and dangerous place, miles from anywhere, look at the moon and the stars.

23:23Dominic Sandbrook:That's exactly why he wants to go. And she said, take my advice, dear. Don't bother. You can see the moon and the stars from Spaulding. And that, I think, completely captures. There's a sort of a limit, a narrowness to her. You know, for all her strengths, there's a lack of imagination. She would not be a terribly fun person, I think, to sit next to at a dinner party. Probably more fun than Theresa May. Yeah. I mean, she's read Dostoevsky. You could talk to her about Dostoevsky. So let's get back to the story. She leaves Oxford, becomes a research chemist, actually, for the Lions Ice Cream Company at one point.

23:57Dominic Sandbrook:She tries to find a safe seat in the House of Commons. She's highly thought of. The local agent in Dartford, where she stood in 1950 and 1951, said she was an amazing young woman with experience and knowledge far beyond her years, outstanding inability and has in addition a most attractive personality and appearance and one of the people who agrees with this is a businessman who meets her in dartford who is called dennis thatcher and he's divorced uh he's much older he's 10 years older but they get married and they have twins mark and carol she retrains as a barrister she becomes the tour candidate for finchley in 1959 she transforms herself in the course of the 50s from the sort of methodist grammar school girl to a more of a home counties Tory sort of mother, wife and mother.

24:44Dominic Sandbrook:So she's got her kids at private school. She goes to the Church of England. She has this new accent, kind of cut glass accent. And she has these very extravagant hats. In fact, it's her hats that people associate with this period more than anything else.

24:57Tom Holland:Her accent does occasionally break through, doesn't it? So famously, she said of, was it Neil Kinnock that he was frit, which was a granthamism.

25:06Dominic Sandbrook:Yeah, but that's virtually the only time. There's never a hint that she's actually not from the south of England, really. The one thing, obviously, that's holding her back is the issue of her being a woman. And I think, actually, during her premiership, people almost underrated how important this was to her political identity. She's obviously not a feminist. She disdains feminism, and feminists, by and large, hated her. but she's very unusual in being a working wife and mother she always stuck up for working women so in the 1950s she wrote in for the young conservative journal and she said you know if a woman has ambition she should be able to use her talent to the full isn't that a feminist perspective well you might say that it was yeah i mean she said at one point men who disdain working women should remember their daughters would almost certainly have to go out to work you know this is the world we are moving into.

26:00Dominic Sandbrook:I don't see that as being an unfeminist perspective. No, of course. I don't see it as unfeminist either. I think in lots of ways, she's the embodiment of the social and cultural changes that are massively expanding the horizons of British women between the 1950s and the 1980s. The thing is, of course, she doesn't like activists of any kind, really. And she doesn't like progressive do-gooders. So she doesn't sit well with the kind of women's lib movement of the 1970s her being a woman is both a strength and a weakness first of all it means that she stands out from all the boring men in gray suits i mean that is a huge thing for you if you're a politician everyone immediately recognizes you and you stand apart because she's a woman though it means that people always talk about her hats her outfits you know uh what she's how she's getting on as a mother or this kind of thing rather than her political opinions and because she's a woman her tory colleagues take her much less seriously and dismiss her ideas and the the paradigmatic example of this is the person who is the leader in the late 1960s and 1970s which is ted heath and the funny thing about this is that heath and thatcher are pretty similar in some ways they're both from modest provincial um backgrounds they both went to grammar school they both went to oxford they're both slightly humorless ambitious, impatient, kind of self-made.

27:23Dominic Sandbrook:The difference, I think, is that Heath, who's a bit older, his background is more humble. He's the son of a Kentish builder. And his mother was a lady's maid, wasn't he? His mother was a lady's maid, exactly.

27:33Tom Holland:Lady's maids are always notorious as snobs.

27:35Dominic Sandbrook:They're very snobbish, exactly. And he is very keen to play down his background and basically turn himself into a kind of Balliol-educated, upper-crust Tory, hence his mad voice that he has, that sort of strangulated voice. strangulate it yeah that's what the the adjective that's always used isn't it um his fun funness for yachting for classical music these are all kind of upper class tastes that he affects he never ever talks about his background thatcher is not embarrassed by her background perhaps because it was a little bit more respectable she glories in the middle class identity she hates the sort of what she calls the establishment the tweedy country gents who despise her and so she is much more obviously a sort of bourgeois champion than than heath is now heath has known her since 1949 he doesn't like women and he doesn't really like her but he is told when he becomes tory leader you need a statutory woman that was the expression and he asked his friends who shall i pick and they said what about margaret thatcher she's the brightest if he said okay fair enough and willie Whitelaw his friend said to him once she's there we will never get rid of her and he was of course quite right now that tells you something about the way in which she's viewed generally so part of this is her class so Whitelaw said she was governessy Francis Pym another Heathite she was a corporal not a cavalry officer Christopher Soames what was he Churchill's grandson or something called her a jumped up housemaid this is a very very common and the sort of the Heath inner circle.

29:09Dominic Sandbrook:People sneering at her because of her class. Her politics part of this, being right-wing at this point, the late 60s, early 70s, is seen as a bit gauche, a bit déclasse. Because the vibe in the Tory party at this point is paternalist, is it? Exactly. It's more paternalist. It's more, you know, this is the modern world, having multiple phones in your office with which you can ring trade union leaders and agree a mutually beneficial deal. Tipping your gamekeeper, making sure he's all right. Yes. at christmas exactly exactly and not and not sort of glorying in your in your achievements or your wealth or your the fact that you have you know hauled yourself up by your bootstraps which is a bit common buying your own furniture yes it's buying your own furniture exactly and it's also her style a lot of men just don't like her style which is quite abrasive and sharp so woodrow wyatt in the sunday mirror in 1969 he ended up being a big fan of her but this stage he was not anti-feminists may feel she is the sort of thing that happens if you allow women to go into politics.

30:10Dominic Sandbrook:Her air of bossiness, her aptitude for interfering can be very tiresome and irritating to easygoing men who do not always want to be kept up to scratch, particularly by a female. That last bit absolutely captures the sort of golf club vibe of the late 60s and 70s, doesn't it? Anyway, Heath becomes prime minister in 1970. She becomes his education secretary. Education was traditionally seen as. That's what you get the little ladies to do. Yeah. You know, education or health, the kind, caring jobs. The civil servants of the Department of Education by and large hated her. They were Oxford-educated public school men themselves.

30:48Dominic Sandbrook:One of them said she was like a very well-spoken nanny, which tells you where he was coming from. She had a totally unoriginal mind. She was really quite narrow. Her permanent secretary was called the excellent name of Sir Will.

31:04Dominic Sandbrook:so william pyle so william pyle he said she was narrow-minded emotional impossible to argue with she lives in a world apart unaware of how most of the population lived the knowledge of history was nil so these are obviously former public school boys they don't want some midlands you know grammar school girl who did chemistry to come and tell them what to do horrible and this was widespread even in the cabinet so whenever she was speaking in the cabinet heath would people

31:32Tom Holland:say heath would drum impatiently on his blotter because heath is notoriously rude that's something that listeners have to keep in bear in mind he's insanely rude he is the rudest man ever to have

31:44Dominic Sandbrook:been prime minister but actually the rudeness is quite common so reginald maudling who was his home secretary who was like a man who what's he he used to drink a pint of du bonnet and gin for breakfast, which is very, very 70s Britain. He called it, and I quote, that bloody woman who never listens, that bitch. And that's basically, that's the conversational tenor of Ted Heath's Tory party. And just to reiterate, she is the only woman in the cabinet. Yes, exactly. So you can imagine, basically, the cabinet breaks up. They all go off to a gentleman's club and drink Dubonnet and gin and get absolutely wrecked and talk about the Second World War and, you know, being kind to the trade unions.

32:22Dominic Sandbrook:and and she's on her own she has to go back home to the twins and whatnot knowing that they're all talking about her and saying that bloody woman she never listens but i suppose she can console

32:32Tom Holland:herself by um snatching milk out from the hands of little children so this is her one brush of

32:38Dominic Sandbrook:fame as education secretary she scrapped free school milk for children between the ages of seven and eleven and everyone said she was the milk snatcher and this is a totally mad and confected issue because the Wilson government, the Labour government of the 60s, had already scrapped free school milk for 11 to 18-year-olds. This was basically the next step. Most kids hated this free school milk anyway, and it was a hangover from the 40s meant to deal with the Depression. I mean, the idea that they were giving out all this free school milk, I think it's bonkers anyway. Thatcher's Education Secretary, here's the thing that may surprise listeners.

33:11Dominic Sandbrook:She is much more mainstream and indeed, in some ways, much more progressive than you might expect. She closed more grammar schools and turned them into comprehensive schools. Later, you know, a great kind of Tory issue that how terrible this was.

33:26Tom Holland:So grammar schools, just to explain for people, are selective, selected on ability, but inevitably because ability is honed by money.

33:37Dominic Sandbrook:Yeah.

33:37Tom Holland:The accusation is that it's a kind of a scam for middle class parents with sharp elbows.

33:42Dominic Sandbrook:Exactly. And so in the 60s and 70s, a lot of these selective schools were turned into comprehensive schools in which everybody went. And this was a great shock to the sort of Tory press and whatnot. She persisted with this program and closed more grammar schools than any other minister in British history.

34:01Tom Holland:And she didn't bring them back, did she, when she became prime minister, really?

34:05Dominic Sandbrook:I mean, the grammar schools are still an issue today, isn't it? if you want to churn something out for the Daily Mail, bring you back grammar schools. Oh, really? Yes. I don't think I've ever written a column about bringing back grammar schools. But it was always in the locker, waiting. Anyway, I think this is an example of something that people get massively wrong about Thatcher. They see her as this red-blooded ideologue, fighting tooth and claw for what she believes to be right, never giving up, never giving ground. This is total rubbish. she is a pragmatic career politician she sits in ted heath's cabinet while he's throwing money around pumping money into the economy doing deals with the unions all of this going into europe and she never says a word against it not a squeak of protest she just basically goes along with it

34:54Tom Holland:is that because she she feels that she's bound by collective responsibility of the cabinet or

34:59Dominic Sandbrook:yeah partly partly but also she's a politician it's her it's her job in a way to to you know she's she she wants to thrive in the party she wants to get on she wants to lots of politicians do this you accommodate yourself a little bit to the mood of the moment i mean when she's having a drink with in private she probably says i wonder if we're you know um going a little bit too far down the corporatist road, but she's not one to rock the boat, basically. She's actually, amazingly enough, given how she later runs the government, she's a team player at this stage. And when Heath loses in February 74, so he loses that first election of the year, he promotes her.

35:41Dominic Sandbrook:He gives her a really big job, Environment Secretary, which covers planning and housing and things like that. The Tories use her in the second election of the year in October, more than any other minister except Heath. And she has a very un-Thatcherite policy. She will cap your mortgage interest rate at 9.5%, irrespective of wider interest rates or the state of the economy. Otherwise, they will basically rig the interest rates, which is not something you would expect from a free marketeer at all. Anyway, the Tories lose that election in October, and the verdict is generally that she's done very well and she's been their big star.

36:18Dominic Sandbrook:and actually some papers say you know if ted heath were ever to go she could be a dark horse candidate i mean she's never realistically going to win but she could have her hat in the ring and do quite well who knows and i quote sunday times she's a real contender despite the apparent handicap that she is a woman and at this point it is seen as that very unlikely that a woman could lead she has said so herself so there's a children's program she went on in 1973 val meets the vips that's it and they meet celebrities and she's the celebrity and a child says would you like to be prime minister and she says i would not wish to be prime minister dear i have not enough experience for that job and this is only two years before she becomes party leader and before that she told the local newspaper in finchley where she's an mp there will never be a woman prime minister in my lifetime the male population is too prejudiced again quite a feminist perspective well yeah i guess so and i think she absolutely believes that everyone knows her dream is to be chancellor she basically is rachel reeves only slightly funnier is she funnier i mean she's i mean you no one can be less funny than rachel reeves i mean imagine you went to a stand-up night and it was like rachel reeves and margaret thatcher on the bill your heart would sink so oh my god anyway so what changes so in october 74 heath has lost two elections in nine months and the taurus are down to 36 everybody thinks that heath is going to resign he kind of has to resign now he's lost loads of elections but heath is the world's most stubborn man and he has no intention of resigning he thinks well i was right the british people were wrong i should be given another chance in which they can redeem themselves and he's weirdly given his rudeness he inspires tremendous loyalty from his lieutenants so the obvious person to succeed him would be his lieutenant willie whitelaw we'll talk about in the second half but none of them what have the sort of um have the ruthlessness to challenge him so he does make one concession he says i'll put myself up for re-election in january and a challenger will only need two nominations so any tory mp could plausibly challenge him now there is one Tory MP who everyone thinks will challenge him.

38:31Dominic Sandbrook:And this is his former secretary at the Department of Health and Social Security, who is Sir Keith Joseph. Keith Joseph had been a sort of conventional minister. But then in 74, he had a massive conversion experience. He said, I was wrong about everything. We've been wrong as a party. We haven't been properly conservative. We should embrace free market liberalism. And I will stand against Ted Heath. But then Keith joseph a little bit like enoch powell goes to birmingham which you should never do as a politician and gives a speech that destroys himself he says a human stock is threatened by working class mothers who are unfit to have children so they are giving birth to the delinquents of the future and we should give these classes of people loads of birth control so that they will stop having children sterilize them is this the implication well it's i mean it's not a good It's not a good look, basically.

39:29Dominic Sandbrook:This destroys him. Private Eye, the satirical magazine, referred to him henceforth as Sashith, which I think is an excellent name. Anyway, on the 21st of November, Sashith went to see his campaign manager and said, I've changed my mind. Obviously, I've disgraced myself. I'm not going to stand after all. And his campaign manager said, Keith, if you're not going to stand, I will, because somebody who represents our viewpoint has to stand. and this of course is Margaret Thatcher and four days later she goes to see Ted Heath in the House of Commons and she says to him Ted I'm going to stand against you in the leadership election and Heath being Heath he doesn't even bother to get out of his chair he just shrugs and he says you'll lose

40:14Tom Holland:huge drama and we will be finding out after the break you know is he right or does Mrs Thatcher emerge as leader of the Conservative Party and ultimately Prime Minister Any one way to find out? Join us after the break.

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42:18Tom Holland:Hello, everyone, and welcome back to The Rest is History. the excitement is wild because margaret thatcher despite being a woman and despite not having gone to an expensive public school has announced her intention to stand for leadership of the world's oldest political party and clearly everyone thinks this is mad including her own husband dennis who must be out of your mind woman you haven't got a hope yes yeah that's the encouragement you want thank you darling um and dominic the press are they are they rallying behind her or do they also

42:54Dominic Sandbrook:think this is mad they think it's mad as well actually so i mentioned woodrow wyatt of the sunday mirror he said the taurus will never elect a limited bossy self-righteous and self-complacent

43:03Tom Holland:woman because you're right he does become a massive fan of hers and a kind of courtier so it reflects well on mrs satcher that she doesn't bear a grudge yeah although she did hold grudges

43:12Dominic Sandbrook:actually but clearly not towards basically if people bend the knee she's like trumpian in that way if you bend the knee she's delighted so um even the the right-wing press the daily express derrick marx she is totally out of touch with anybody but carefully corseted middle-class middle-aged ladies enoch powell so enoch powell who at this point has basically left the conservative party he is you know seen as a bit of a forerunner of thatterism but he said they wouldn't put up with those hats and that accent which coming from him yeah well he did wear a hat did he no he didn't but he did have an entertaining accent but she has a few things going for her number one she has a very very smart campaign manager oh yeah erie neve so this is a tremendous character so erie neve is an old etonian who was captured by the germans outside calais in 1940s the Germans advance through France.

44:07Dominic Sandbrook:And he was imprisoned at Kolditz Castle. He escaped brilliantly during a theatrical production put on by the prisoners of war at Kolditz Castle. They tunneled underneath the stage, I think. And he and another bloke, a Dutchman, had, when they were making costumes for this play, some of the costumes they'd secretly made were German guards' uniforms. They tunneled under the stage. They escaped out of the stage, went back into the sort of castle grounds. They put on these uniforms, homemade. Then they walked through the lodge of the castle, kind of saluting the guards, kept walking, walked all the way to a railway station, got various trains, and basically ended up walking across the Swiss border.

44:51Dominic Sandbrook:It's an incredible, incredible story. You know, he was a massive, massive war hero. Because he spoke German, he was the person at the Nuremberg trials who read the indictments to the Nazi war criminals. so that's that's a nice twist so then he became Tory MP and everyone sort of said what an amazing bloke this is escape from cold hits and then in 1959 he had a heart attack Heath was at that point the chief whip of the Tory party and when Erie Neve came back to work after his heart attack Heath said to him you'd better get out of politics you're finished I mean he literally said you're finished so rude incredibly rude and Erie Neve was very offended by this he never gave Heath and he basically said to himself one day i will get my revenge on that absolute shit of a man which he does and he does yeah because he takes over margaret thatcher's campaign he says look i'll run your campaign for you the way he does it he organizes little groups of tory mps to have tea with her now heath would never do this because he's so rude and so sort of haughty but she has tea with these people and you know nods and smiles at them and whatnot and the other thing that erine neve always does that people say is a master stroke as though it had never occurred to anyone to do this before i mean i don't think it's that but obviously it is a considered a great master stroke whenever people ask him how she's doing he says oh she's doing terribly she'll never win but if you could lend her your vote that would be very helpful especially if you would like a really big heavyweight like willie whitelaw on the second ballot why don't you lend the philly yeah vote for the philly give the philly your vote go on she's doing very badly margaret would love your vote and actually loads of people say oh go on then yeah fair enough so that's part of it but she's also i think profiting from something deeper which is a more profound shift on the right of british politics so people like sir keith joseph and indeed margaret thatcher and indeed e not powell speak for a lot of tory mps and tory activists and tory voters and also intellectuals and people sort of right-wing adjacent who have been very disappointed with ted heath's government these are familiar accusations to us today they say he's been too weak he's been too soft he's been too moderate he's part of a socialist consensus he's sucked up to europe he's sucked up to the trade unions he's spent too much money he hasn't been a real conservative and you can get away with this sort of thing if you win but heath has lost two elections in nine months.

47:22Tom Holland:Because presumably that brands his kind of conservatism as a conservatism for losers. People don't want it.

47:28Dominic Sandbrook:Yeah, completely. If you're not red-blooded and then you don't win, what's the point? You might as well just fight and lose for what you believe in.

47:36Tom Holland:That's what they say. Do you think Mrs. Thatcher's image as a nanny who, of course, gives medicine? Yes. Do you think that helps?

47:43Dominic Sandbrook:Totally. I think it's a very astute point. I think this is one of the roles that she plays. There are several good biographies of Margaret Thatcher. The most famous ones are the Charles Moore ones. But the one before that was John Campbell. And he had a passage there where he talked about the different roles that she would play. You know, Nurse Thatcher, Nanny Thatcher, the housewife, all these different things. And Nanny Thatcher is one of the most common and the most appealing. I think there's a particular kind of man, frankly, who quite likes it. But also, I think it's when the country is not doing well to basically say, I will sort it out.

48:17Dominic Sandbrook:I will give you the medicine you need. That's quite a good card to play, I think.

48:23Tom Holland:Well, people say that about British politics now, that someone needs to stand up and say, it's all a terrible mess. This is what we've got to do. Harsh medicine. Of course.

48:30Dominic Sandbrook:Exactly.

48:31Tom Holland:And there's a kind of masochist strain that people quite like that.

48:34Dominic Sandbrook:Exactly. And there's definitely an appetite on the right for more kind of red meat. So it's a lovely letter, I think, to the Times by Sir Alec Douglas Hulme, the former prime minister's brother, William. and he said it's time for a tory who's not ashamed who will let you buy your rolls royce and cigars if that's what you want and send your boys to eton and if any man attempts to say you nay salute him with two fingers in the shape of an inverted v sign so there's this there's this sort of instinctive emotional thirst for more robust more more obviously conservative politics but there's also an intellectual more ideological side to it so since 1955 a think tank called the institute for economic affairs has been arguing that britain has gone much too far down the road to socialism and it's been calling like a voice in the wilderness for privatization of nationalized industries for cutting the welfare state for bringing back free market economics kind of laissez-faire economics that you would have found in the 19th century under the sort of Gladstone administration and whatnot.

49:43Dominic Sandbrook:And part of this is the adoption of a new creed, which in some ways is quite an old creed, which is monetarism. In very simple terms, monetarism is basically the government should stop messing around in the economy, stop taxing and spending, stop worrying about unemployment, just concentrate on the one thing, your one priority, which is regulating the money supply to keep inflation down because inflation is the real evil. And this is the brainchild of the Chicago economist Milton Friedman. He comes to Britain. He gives a lecture about it in 1970. The audience has loads of Tory MPs, also loads of Labour MPs.

50:18Dominic Sandbrook:So Jim Callaghan, who we'll be meeting later in the series, is very interested in this kind of stuff. And by 1974, this message resonates with lots of Tories. They are saying, you know what, we've gone completely wrong. We've been taxing and spending far too much. We've been trying to intervene in the economy and save lame duck industries and stuff. We should just leave the economy alone. Stop spending so much money. Just worry about inflation.

50:41Tom Holland:And not worry about unemployment.

50:43Dominic Sandbrook:Exactly. And not worry about unemployment. The person who'd really made himself the champion of this was Sir Keith Joseph. But he's now out of the ring and it falls to Thatcher. And his supporters rioted Thatcher. But she's very clever about how she packages this because her campaign is as much about what we would now call vibes as it is about ideas. So first of all, the fact that she's a woman is really important. She basically markets herself as the champion of the middle class housewife, who's basically the person who does the shopping and has to worry about the family budget.

51:17Tom Holland:She is also, you know, you talked about the role she plays. She is presenting herself as the housewife who will sort out the national budget. Yes, exactly. balance the books, not spend too much on the shopping or whatever.

51:30Dominic Sandbrook:So it actually ticks two boxes. On the one hand, she says, I'm like voters. I'm normal. I'm ordinary. I'm not a, you know, I am a career politician, but I'm kind of not because I'm also a wife and mother. And on the other hand, as you say, it means that she can talk about complicated economic issues in very domestic terms. It gives her the kind of tools to do it. So an interview with the Mirror before the first ballot. I'm a very ordinary person who leads a very normal life I enjoy it Seeing that the family have a good breakfast And shopping keeps me in touch She knows the price of a pint of milk Exactly She actually gets the mirror, journalist and photographer To come and watch her do the housework Oh she wears a kind of frilly pinny doesn't she Yes she literally does the housework And the piece says you know she did this She did the shopping, she did the laundry And after that she had to tidy up the Tory party Polish off Ted Heath and give Britain a good spring cleaning.

52:23Dominic Sandbrook:With Margaret Thatcher, it's sometimes a bit hard to tell whether she wants to be Prime Minister or Housewife of the Year. And that, of course, is a very useful card to play if you're pitching yourself as the outsider who's going to clean things up. Now, ironically, the Guardian of all newspapers said that she was all image and no substance. Well, they've changed their mind on that, haven't they? They did change their mind on that. But actually, that's not right. There is clearly substance there. all her interviews and all her articles and stuff she says she stands for traditional middle class tory politics individual freedom individual prosperity law and order private property all of this kind of thing now heath and his whenever heath and his camp read this they kind of wince and laugh they say she's selfish she'd make us narrow-minded she'd make is too middle class.

53:17Dominic Sandbrook:So one of Heath's aides was a young MP called Douglas Hurd, who goes on to be one of Mrs. Thatcher's most reliable ministers. And he said at the time to the journalist Hugo Young, he said she can never win. She's limited by her narrow horizons, no vision, no broad sweep and inability to put herself in others' shoes.

53:36Tom Holland:So he is fabulously posh, isn't he? He's Eton, foreign office all of that but in the long run when mrs thatcher uh resigns and he runs to succeed her he feels obliged to court the uh the votes of the tory mps by affecting to be a tenant farmer

53:56Dominic Sandbrook:which is a which is a ludicrous pretension yeah exactly exactly so it's a sign of how profoundly

54:04Tom Holland:mrs thatcher is going to upend the kind of social standards of the conservatives completely and it

54:09Dominic Sandbrook:never occurs to i guess people like douglas heard in um 1975 or the other people around him in ted heath's court you know they think they are the tory party but actually the tory party more broadly activists voters are much more like margaret thatcher than they are like douglas heard well there are more middle class people than there are upper class people exactly most people even in the Tory party didn't go to Eton. So this is going to be a problem. So anyway, we come to the first ballot, which is Tuesday, the 4th of February, 1975. Of course, everybody knows that Heath will win. Every Tory paper predicts that Heath will win, and only one Tory paper, the Mail, explicitly supports Thatcher.

54:55Dominic Sandbrook:There's a good omen for Heath as well. The gods are with him, because in that morning's times madame to swords the waxworks have published the result of their annual visitors survey and in the list of political heroes of visitors to madame to swords heath has come second and he's been beaten only one man has the power to beat ted heath and that man is henry kissinger

55:19Tom Holland:i mean henry kissinger very dodgy behavior in uh southeast asia but edward heath he abolished all counties traditional counties so what's wrong with the british people voting for that yeah mad why is

55:32Dominic Sandbrook:he so high that's unbelievable but i mean here's the so when you filled in the survey when you went to mad at the swords you had to say who your hero was but also you had to name people who inspire hate and fear i love this so in third place richard nixon weird that kissinger is in one list and Nixon the other. I think people have got that wrong. Second, Adolf Hitler. I mean, he's a bad man. I don't think we can argue with his placing, though I think he should be first because the first place is Harold Wilson. Oh, really? Do you think Harold Wilson was a worse man than Hitler?

56:08Tom Holland:No, because, well, I mean, the point of comparison, they both liked wearing very tight shorts, didn't they?

56:16Dominic Sandbrook:I knew that would come up. I absolutely knew. Also, Hitler ran a tighter ship in his bunker than Wilson did in Downing Street. There's none of the nonsense about lunch.

56:26Tom Holland:Well, listen, Dominic, we're spiralling off. I think Wilson doesn't belong in that list. I agree with you. I think Hitler is worse than Wilson.

56:34Dominic Sandbrook:Right. Well, anyway, this is the omen for Heath. He's done well in this poll, so it's looking good. The vote is held in Committee Room 14 in the House of Commons. Heath votes at three o 'clock, and then he goes back to his office to wait with his cronies. and his campaign manager, Tim Kitson, goes off to get the final figures. The suspense mounts. They're all sitting there, Heath kind of glacial and brooding as he always is. Then the door opens and Kitson comes back in. And it's terrible news. Heath has won 119 votes. And Thatcher, the filly, has won 130. They can't believe it. Heath's mate, Lord Hailsham, bursts into tears.

57:10Dominic Sandbrook:But it's lucky that Edward Heath is going to take it well, isn't he? yeah well he doesn't he doesn't give anything away he's totally impassive i mean he's always impassive he just pours himself a massive glass of whiskey and just sort of sits there like an easter island statue now in the thatcher camp there's a mood of absolute amazement and jubilation so they they're in airy neves flat in westminster you can see the footage online um on youtube there's an itv reporter interviewing dennis thatcher say how do you feel about he says delighted terribly proud wouldn't you you know dennis can't believe it thatcher's very gracious actually she says uh she's very sad for ted heath he's had an enormous achievement to be leader so long one must thank and applaud him for it but she then says well i'm not i haven't won yet because there's got to be a second second round when other tories will pile in interestingly the assumption particularly in downing street we haven't mentioned the labor government at all they think she won't win so harold wilson says to his aides he fears thatcher especially as a woman because it'll be hard to know how to argue with her you don't want to look like you're being patronizing but he says the conservative party won't be willing to have her as leader and willie whitelaw will win on the second ballot so the second ballot's a week later and now willie Whitelaw is in the ring and Willie Whitelaw is your absolute textbook casting agency supplied 1970s Tory politician isn't he he's got kind of oyster eyes hasn't he yeah he's got massive bags under his eyes I mean the bags under his eyes are bigger than his eyes great ruddy cheeks yeah he's a big man he's from the Scottish landed gentry he went to Winchester he went to Trinity College Cambridge he was a tank commander in Normandy he led his battalion all the way into Germany

59:00Tom Holland:because this is something we talked about in our 1974 episode that all these politicians you know they could they can be very fat they can be very spindly they all wear thick kind of glasses but they had all been insanely brave in the war and taken out kind of panzer divisions with single-handedly and things storm beaches they combine an absolutely jaw-dropping resume between

59:25Dominic Sandbrook:1939 and 1945 with a then a 20-year record of sort of shambling incompetence yeah whiskey

59:33Tom Holland:ill-fitting suits yeah useless legislation yeah exactly and he he's been leader of the house of

59:40Dominic Sandbrook:commons for heath he was the first ever northern ireland secretary basically he was britain's pro-consul in Belfast. And then he handled the miners strike in 1974. He's been basically the go-to man for Heath's Tory government. And he's very shrewd. He's very experienced. He's very kind of affable. But he has this shambling and sort of woolly consensus man, blancmange image. For years, everyone had thought he would be Tory leader. He'd been the future England captain of Tories. But because he's been so loyal to Heath for so long, he now enters with a massive handicap because he looks like a coward compared to thatcher thatcher's dared to challenge heath and he didn't which is ironic because of course he's not a coward at all his record exactly given his record of bravery as the telegraph says it um it looks as though a herd of faint hearts left it to a courageous and able woman to topple a formidable leader and then ganged up to deny her

1:00:34Tom Holland:just reward and so here we see her get taking on the image of boadicea which will also be a crucial

1:00:39Dominic Sandbrook:one exactly uh well as one Tory MP said the choice between Thatcher and Whitelaw is a choice between a woman and an old woman and I will vote for the woman you know because he's seen as bumbling and all of this kind of thing so the vote is held on Tuesday the 11th of February and the result comes through at four o 'clock Thatcher has won 146 votes Whitelaw has won 79 the others who've all thrown their hats in the ring and on dribs and drabs and unbelievably something that no one expected even you know a couple of weeks ago margaret thatcher is the leader of the conservative party whitelaw is dumbstruck by this he burst into tears when he heard the news and he said later the worst thing was that his elderly mother could never forgive him for losing to a woman which tells its own story most of the sort of grandees in the tory party were absolutely appalled as one party vice chairman put it my god the bitch has won and a lot of young mps because a lot of people who join the tory party is kind of rising stars at this point are heath people they're paternalists they think that to be modern is to be you know more on the left of the party i I guess.

1:01:55Dominic Sandbrook:A lot of these people who end up becoming her ministers in the 1980s are really shocked when she wins in 75. People like Kenneth Clark or Norman Fowler or Paul Channon, who was the transport secretary in the 80s. He said at the time, she's a right wing fanatic who could never win over the middle ground. And what's the reaction of Labour to her victory? They think it's a tremendous laugh. So Marcia Williams, great to have her back on the show, Harold Wilson's tyrannical secretary. She later remembered seeing all the ministers laughing and slapping each other on the back and saying, well, the next elections will be as good as one.

1:02:30Dominic Sandbrook:It's a foregone conclusion. This mad woman will never win. Wilson himself was very miserable. He said, oh, I have to learn new tricks to beat a woman. And then characteristically, he poured himself a stiff brandy, which he will be doing a lot in this series. but actually the most interesting one is the one prominent labor woman was a politician called barbara castle who um had been uh in charge of the relations with the trade unions in the late 60s and had also been transport secretary introduced i think the seat belt is uh barbara castle's great innovation and a lot of people had said of barbara castle maybe she will be the first woman prime minister because she's a sort of real socialist firebrand and her politics are completely different from Thatcher's.

1:03:13Dominic Sandbrook:But she writes in her diary, I've had a growing conviction that this would happen. She's so clearly the best man among them. I can't help feeling a thrill, even though I believe her election will make things much more difficult for us. I've been saying for a long time that this country is ready, even more than ready, for a woman prime minister. And of course, she's right. Actually, to me, the most surprising thing is Thatcher's reaction. Because if you go online, you can see her interview with Michael Cockrell of the BBC. And he says, how do you feel? So So she's just one. She's in the flush of victory.

1:03:44Dominic Sandbrook:And she says it's a sign of the sort of the human being behind the sort of iconic image. She says, to think that one is the next name after a long line of very, very distinguished names. Because my goodness, Edward Heath, Alec Douglas Holm, Harold Macmillan, Anthony Eden. And then, of course, the great Winston. It's like a dream, really. Wouldn't you think so? I almost wept when they told me. i did weep yeah this is the style that basically her admirers adore and her critics loathe the sort of slightly syrupy you know she's very good at this this sort of stuff so she's another tory leader just as we i know this has been a very long episode but just a couple of things about what it actually means afterwards a lot of people said it was a fluke that basically history could have worked out in lots of different ways you know ted heath could have resigned earlier somebody else could have stood against him.

1:04:41Dominic Sandbrook:Keith Joseph might not have made that mad speech and then she'd never have stood which is sort of true. There are ways in which history could turn out differently but there are definitely deeper factors. So just to whiz through some of the deeper factors. It's interesting when you look at the vote. The Tory MPs who voted for Heath tend to be public school boys, landed gentry, MPs from Scotland and Wales. Do you know who they're like? They are. They're Rory Stewart. That's his constituency. And her supporters are more likely to come from the south of England to have gone to grammar schools, not public schools.

1:05:17Dominic Sandbrook:So they're more middle class, less posh. They're Essex men. Yes, they're on the right of the party.

1:05:22Tom Holland:So like Norman Tebbett. Exactly. Who I think he is an MP at this point, is he? Yes. He's called the skinhead, isn't he? The Chingford skinhead. The Chingford skinhead.

1:05:32Dominic Sandbrook:Exactly. They are more, they're self-made. Their politics are more aggressive. their politics are more they would they would say no doubt we are true tories and these poshows are actually just weak yeah so it's estate agents not owners of estates exactly estate agents have taken over from the estate owners they're aspirational they've worked for their success and they don't feel guilty about it so there's a class element there's an ideological element which is the resurgence of this free market liberal tradition that has been underplayed since 1945 because the post-war Tory leaders have been so keen to banish memories of the Depression.

1:06:12Dominic Sandbrook:And her critics, sort of on the left of the Tory party, like Serene Gilmore, who wrote a book about it in the 80s, said she's actually not really a conservative. She's not a proper conservative. She's that most hideous of things, a Gladstonian liberal who believes in free markets and all of this. And I think this is actually, I think this is has been part of the Tory brand. Everything that she's saying, Baldwin and Chamberlain and Disraeli, I don't think they'd have really argued with all this stuff about low taxes, standing on your own two feet, blah, blah, blah. I think it's actually the Heath-eye period that's the aberration rather than the Thatcherite one.

1:06:55Dominic Sandbrook:But the two things that I think are really distinctive about Thatcherism, first of all, I think it has a big populist element to it. And that housewife thing that we mentioned is a big part of it. grantham is a big part of it the grocer's shop the grammar school a lot of things that she had once tried to leave behind because they're not really she wanted to be more respectable but now she glories in them they're very useful to her so she boasts i mean here's an interview she gives with world in action she says they say where do your values come from she says they well they come from my life experience from going to an ordinary state school having no privileges at all except they're perhaps the ones that count most a good home background with parents who are very interested in their children and in them getting on and all of this thing she says again and again i'm a plain straightforward provincial i've got no hang-ups about my background i know what it's like running a house i know what it's like having to live within a budget i know what it's like having to cope no Tory leader before her could have said this if Harold Macmillan had said this people would have laughed at him yeah Winston Churchill yeah he's not going to say that but but it's so

1:08:04Tom Holland:influential that then you get Douglas Hurd pretending to be a tenant farmer and you know Kemi Bate not going on about how she worked in McDonald's and things I mean it's absolutely what

1:08:12Dominic Sandbrook:you have to do now it's a political star that had long been very popular in America but not in Britain I would say the other thing is something else she gets from Grantham and that's the Methodism and actually this to me I think this is one of the absolute defining things of Thatcherism is the tone the moralistic evangelical tone yeah and the low church tone rather than the high church tone completely margaret roberts as a girl had to say grace before every meal she had to go to chapel three or four times on sundays her father as a lay preacher went on and on and on about hard work individualism thrift clean living all of this and this is what i think makes her politics different there is a moralism to it a low church moralism that is totally unlike anything that any other tory leader says before her so in the in 1984 an interview with the times i am in politics because of the conflict between good and evil.

1:09:06Dominic Sandbrook:And I believe that in the end, good will triumph. I mean, Ted Heath could have lived to the age of 10 ,000, and he would never have said anything like that. It's unthinkable.

1:09:16Tom Holland:Also, I mean, what's interesting is that it's giving to the left what the left often gives to the right. It's casting the left as evil and the right as virtuous. And usually it's the other way around.

1:09:29Dominic Sandbrook:Completely it is. I mean, you see this reflected in her archives, which are online at Thatcher Foundation website, which is brilliant, by the way, this amazing digital archive. You can see all the notes that she would handwrite for her conference speeches, and they'd be full of all the stuff about the evils of socialism, good versus evil, what the great religions of the past teach us, what life is struggle. Her speechwriters would cut all this. They'd say, God, this is bonkers. But it would find its way in one way or another. And I think you're absolutely right. She thinks socialism is not just wrong.

1:10:06Dominic Sandbrook:She thinks morally it's evil. It's corrupting. And people in 70s Britain, they're used to thinking socialists are well-meaning and idealistic. Maybe they're a bit deluded, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Well, she doesn't think that. She doesn't think they are well-meaning and idealistic. She thinks that they're doing the devil's work. yeah and that's what makes for her admirers it's so invigorating and for her critics i mean if you're on the left right and you're used to thinking yourself of yourself as the good is to be told actually you're not you're the bad people it's insulting and it's why i think one reason why people take it so personally um when she sort of wades into battle and talking of people taking

1:10:49Tom Holland:it personally what about edward heath aka the incredible sulk so the day after she won she went

1:10:58Dominic Sandbrook:to see heath in belgravia at his house and um she said you know it's a courtesy call ted would you serve in a senior position under me and her aides told the press afterwards that heath had deliberately stacked books on all the chairs and made it impossible for her to sit down so he sat down but she had to remain standing which says it all about ted heath i mean if there's anyone else you wouldn't believe it but with him it sounds absolutely plausible and he spoke to her only in monosyllables so he just said no yes goodbye whatever and he then embarks on this unbelievably spectacular sulk so at the end of the year willie whitelaw tried to organize a reconciliation he said you know why don't you um get together have a meeting and come together for the good of the party in the country he said no and he said to him thatcher and her supporters are traitors they will destroy the party and destroy britain two years after that another of their friends peter carrington said to him i think you should try harder to be a good loser and i think you should make a real effort now to rehabilitate yourself and go around telling everybody how great you think margaret thatcher is and the wonderful account he stared at him and i quote absolute amazement and said why on earth would i do that i don't think she's any good i'm much better i should be there still and basically he lives this for the next for the rest of his life

1:12:25Tom Holland:he's still sulking even after she's kind of yeah stopped being prime minister even after you know she's an elderly woman heath is still nursing his hatred and he will never ever ever give it up

1:12:37Dominic Sandbrook:which is very amusing, I have to say. But the thing is, a lot of people agreed with Ted Heath in the 70s. They agreed that he was better and that he should still be there. You know you did that introduction. I mean, that really did capture how she spoke in the Commons when she made her debut as Tory leader. Everyone said she was very pale and nervous. She was hesitant or gabbled and then was shrill. And Wilson said the very first PMQs, Wilson drank three glasses of brandy to steady his nerves, then went in and absolutely wiped the floor with her. She was no good at all. And there's a lovely description two months later by Wilson's aide, Bernard Donoghue, who wrote a fantastic diary and we'll be quoting from him a lot in the next few episodes.

1:13:22Dominic Sandbrook:He said of Prime Minister's questions, the only interest is to see Margaret Thatcher sitting there petrified like a rabbit in front of a stoat and Ted Heath sitting, waiting stonily in the corner with no sign of life until harold puts the boot into mrs thatcher when a wintry smile crosses his face so this sets the tone really for the next six months i mean we talked about kemi badenock and her rocky start as leader of the opposition thatcher's start is very very rocky in the first six months her approval rating fell by half from 64 to 35 And by the summer of 1975, a lot of people are saying she's obviously a mistake.

1:14:02Dominic Sandbrook:She's a dud. Peace friend, Lord Carrington, says to his pals, she, you know, mark my words, she will be gone by Christmas. But will she? Because everything is about to change. The economy is heading towards the rocks. Britain is about to hold its first ever referendum on whether to leave the European community. and the Prime Minister, Harold Wilson, is planning to walk out of British politics at a point when the international money markets are about to lose confidence in Britain as a going concern and to leave Britain teetering on the brink of financial oblivion.

1:14:41Tom Holland:God, unbelievable excitements. And on top of that, Dominic, am I not right in saying that you have the sex pistols lurking in the wings?

1:14:50Dominic Sandbrook:Yeah.

1:14:50Tom Holland:The long hot summer of 1976.

1:14:53Dominic Sandbrook:Yeah.

1:14:54Tom Holland:And I imagine that there'll be all kinds of insane shambolic goings on in Downing Street. So all of that to look forward to. The Rest is History Club members, of course, can hear the next three episodes right now. Our newsletters, they'll be thudding into your inboxes anytime soon. Loads of 70s content. And if you would like to join the Rest is History Club and you're not already a member, then of course you can go to the rest of history.com and sign up there but in the meanwhile thank you dominic thanks everyone for listening bye-bye goodbye

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