The Irish Independent Reviews my Margaret Thatcher Biography

This article first appeared in the Irish Independent

A kinder look at Margaret Thatcher: the lady’s not for turning into a monster

By Ellis O’Hanlon

Broadcaster Iain Dale’s new book on the UK’s first female prime minister offers an intelligent, nuanced take on a woman who has too often been reduced to a caricature

Social media wasn’t around in the 1980s. That was probably for the best.

People think politics is toxic now, but Margaret Thatcher divided opinion back then every bit as violently as President Trump does today.

Little has changed in the more than a decade since the former Tory prime minister died.

As Iain Dale puts it in this new book: “Most people who lived through the Thatcher era are incapable of a dispassionate assessment of her record.” He has given it a go anyway.

His aim is to “introduce Margaret Thatcher to a new generation of readers who either were not alive when she was PM or had not reached adulthood by the end of the 1980s”, and to explode some of the myths that cling to her.

The book is not meant to cover every aspect of her life and legacy, good or bad. For that, there is former Daily Telegraph editor Charles Moore’s official life, which runs to more than 2,000 pages across three volumes.

This book, with its deceptively simple title, is under 200 pages and can easily be read at a sitting; but it packs in a lot in a short space.

Thatcher was one of those conviction politicians who “had a clear sense of what the country’s problems were, and thought they knew how to solve them”. At the same time, she was a pragmatist whose mind could be changed – at least until, after three general election victories, she had been in power too long and lost her sixth sense of when to switch course.

She was dubbed the “Iron Lady” by Russian media, an intended insult which she embraced and made part of her brand; but while often ruthless in politics, she was invariably kind to the families of colleagues and to staff in Downing Street, where she lived for 11 years.

Margaret Roberts, as she was born, was a serious, churchgoing child from a lower middle-class background who doesn’t seem to have had much fun or made friends easily.

That she ‘didn’t blink’ during the 1981 IRA hunger strikes further cemented an impression of ‘cruelty and inflexibility’ in many eyes on this side of the Irish Sea; but Dale clearly believes that she ‘couldn’t’ back down

She won a scholarship to Oxford to study chemistry, but her real interest was politics, and she threw herself into the university’s Conservative Association. It was Friedrich Hayek’s book The Road to Serfdom that most influenced her thought; the radical free market economist laid the blame for many of society’s problems on excessive government interference.

At the age of 33, at the third time of trying, Thatcher entered parliament as one of only 25 female MPs. In those days, politicians didn’t get expenses, so she had to pay for a secretary from her salary, as well as all her clothes. Women in public life have always needed a bigger wardrobe than men. Marriage to wealthy businessman Denis Thatcher gave her social status and financial security. He loyally championed her at every step.

In 1961, she became the youngest-ever female minister, but despite always impressing in every job she was given, she candidly told a young boy on TV in 1973 that she didn’t think there would be a female PM in her lifetime.

The author recalls running up the stairs two years later at the age of 12 to tell his grandmother, who was ill in bed, that Mrs Thatcher had won the Tory leadership contest. She burst into tears, “because she couldn’t believe that a woman could ever lead a political party”. It’s a touching illustration of how historic it was.

The whispering campaign to oust Thatcher started almost immediately, but she was ready for it. “She knew that establishment forces in the political, economic and media worlds would be set against her” and that “a large part of her own party would oppose her.”

By 1979, voters had tired of the “semi-permanent state of chaos” into which the UK had fallen, and she became the country‘s first female PM.

Strangely, Dale’s book becomes a little less compelling after that, perhaps because the woman herself fades into the background, to be replaced by talk of inflation, monetary policy and public sector borrowing requirements – all important topics, but quite dry all the same.

Thatcher’s main aim once in power was to dismantle the “charade of managed decline” that had united the Tory left and Labour right for years. To that end, she had to take on the unions that in effect ran the country during the 1970s, and force Britain to embrace the “enterprise economy”, most notably by privatising a raft of industries.

The author does not shirk from admitting the pain that these reforms caused in parts of the country where heavy industry went into decline and unemployment initially rose sharply.

He still believes that her greatest achievement was the sale of council houses, which gave many working-class voters the chance to own their own homes for the first time.

If there is one thing for which Thatcher is remembered, of course, it is the Falklands War.

The behind the scenes story of how the decision was made to send a Royal Navy task force to the south Atlantic to repel Argentina’s invasion of the isolated islands is fascinating.

Thatcher had little expertise in foreign affairs when she became leader. War was forced on her; but she never wavered when it was. She didn’t try to micromanage the campaign. She left that to the armed forces. After the islands were taken back, she handwrote letters to all 255 British soldiers and three Falklanders who died, “often in floods of tears as she did so”.

There is also a chapter on Northern Ireland, which details Thatcher’s efforts to weaken the IRA whilst authorising back channels to talk to them, paving the way for the peace process.

Her commitment to the union seems to have been one of duty rather than sentiment. “Northern Irish affairs just didn’t interest her in the way that other policies did,” writes Dale.

She initially got along quite well with Charles Haughey (she was “always prone to be charmed by a suave rogue”), but the Falklands proved a turning point there too. Haughey tried unsuccessfully to turn European allies against Britain over the war. Thatcher “never forgave him, and was delighted when he lost power”.

That she “didn’t blink” during the 1981 IRA hunger strikes further cemented an impression of “cruelty and inflexibility” in many eyes on this side of the Irish Sea; but Dale clearly believes that she “couldn’t” back down. No doubt others will take issue with that verdict.

The account of how she was finally ousted from power is surprisingly moving. The years afterwards are perhaps even more poignant.

One friend said that Thatcher “never had another happy day” after leaving office. Dale even suggests she went through “some form of PTSD-related psychological experience”.

She subsequently suffered a series of debilitating minor strokes. In her “twilight years”, her declining memory and frailty meant that she appeared little in public. The death of Denis in 2003 was a terrible blow. On April 8, 2013, she died after another stroke. She was 87.

What is interesting is how much genuine affection, as well as respect, Thatcher inspired in those around her. It goes against the somewhat hard public image that still attaches to her – but then that is one of the many contradictions about her which fascinate the author.

Iain Dale, a prolific writer on topical issues who also presents a three hour news and political show four evenings a week on radio station LBC, writes throughout in a fluid, readable, intelligent style.

He is scrupulous in detailing his subject’s faults as well as her virtues, while ultimately holding her in high regard, saying that he was “privileged” to attend her funeral.

His book does not, nor does it try to, replace meatier tomes on the same subject, but it deserves a place on the shelf alongside them.

If younger people can tear themselves away from TikTok and Instagram long enough to read it, they will undoubtedly come away with a more nuanced opinion of a rare and complex and formidable woman who has too often been reduced in this exhaustingly witless and dogmatic age to a one-dimensional monster.