A more solemn occasion was the announcement to the school of the death of King George V on 21 January 1936. The following day Margaret was one of a group of pupils who went down to the Guildhall to hear the proclamation of the new King, Edward VIII.
The school Log Book also provides a portrait of the local events that affected the lives of its 291 children in Margaret Roberts’ last year. Epidemics of flu, measles and whooping cough disrupted school attendances, which at one stage fell to eighty-two. An accident on the railway killed the father of two of her contemporaries. Her class performed an Empire Day play for the whole school ‘and patriotic songs were sung’.35 A second-hand wireless set was brought for £2 and adjustments were made to its volume so that all pupils could listen to it.
School milk became available for sale in one third of a pint sealed bottles. The cost was a halfpenny per bottle. On Monday mornings pupils were asked to bring ‘tuppence ha’penny’ to pay for their week’s supply of milk. This was a memory that resonated with Margaret when as Secretary of State for Education she became embroiled in the ‘Milk Snatcher Thatcher’ furore after cancelling free milk for schoolchildren.#
The most important event in the life of the young Margaret came on 13 July 1936. On that day, the school Log Book recorded: ‘A scholarship has been granted to Margaret Roberts, as although she is very young (10 years 6 months) her work was exceptionally good.’36
It meant that she could go to the best grammar school in the town, Kesteven and Grantham Girls’ School (KGGS). Her achievement was expected, but when the results came through she recalled feeling ‘pretty elated’.37
This success was the turning point in the early life of Margaret Roberts.
FATHERLY INSPIRATION
When she entered No. 10 Downing Street for the first time as Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher paused on the doorstep to respond to a reporter’s question about her father Alfred Roberts. ‘Well, of course, I just owe almost everything to my own father,’ she said, ‘I really do. He brought me up to believe all the things I do believe and they’re just the values on which I’ve fought the election …’38
In a moment of supreme elation, this filial piety was as touching as it was justified. For any study of Margaret Roberts’ early years confirms that her relationship with her father was the force that shaped her character and inspired her ambition. There were at least four areas where his example made a profound impact – on her education at home; on her spiritual values learned at the Methodist Church; on her first experiences of politics; and on the development of her personality that was greatly influenced by his principles.
Alfred Roberts started life wanting to be a teacher. This career was denied him by financial difficulties in his family. He had to leave school at thirteen in order to earn a living. But he made up for the education he missed by forming a lifelong habit of wide reading.
One of the passions of Alfred’s life was to make sure that his daughters were better educated than himself. In this endeavour Margaret became the proverbial apple of her father’s eye. Maybe she filled the place of the son he was thought to have longed for. Or perhaps her bookish, argumentative temperament appealed to Alfred’s own penchant for reading and politics. Having been denied his vocation to be a teacher, he found it in his tutoring of Margaret.
A shared love of poetry was an important ingredient in their father–daughter relationship. Alfred had a well-tuned ear for the rhythms and cadences of the English language. He venerated the Oxford Book of English Verse. Margaret was made to learn many of its poems by heart. When she won first prize at a local festival in 1934 it was for declaiming Walter de la Mare’s ‘The Listeners’, after much paternal coaching. Her father also taught her to recite many lines from Victorian poets, which conveyed a moral message.
Two stanzas Margaret learned in childhood and often quoted in adulthood were:
Does the road wind up-hill all the way?
Yes, to the very end.
Will the day’s journey take the whole long day?
From morn to night, my friend.
(Christina Georgina Rossetti, ‘Up-Hill’)
The heights by great men reached and kept
Were not attained by sudden flight,
But they, while their companions slept,
Were toiling upwards through the night.
(Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ‘The Ladder of St. Augustine’)
There was plenty of ‘toiling upwards through the night’ in Margaret’s childhood, which at times seemed hard, even to her. She was not allowed to go out and play with other children. Her nose was kept to the grindstone of extra studying, reading or poetry learning. On one occasion she wanted to go for a walk with friends. Her father refused his permission, telling her ‘Never do things just because other people do them’.39
These words may have upset Margaret on the occasions they were first said to her, but later in life she praised her father for his stern remonstrance. ‘In fact, this was one of his favourite expressions,’ she recalled, ‘used when I wanted to learn dancing, or sometimes when I wanted to go to the cinema, or out for the day somewhere. Whatever I felt at the time, the sentiment stood me in good stead.’40
The example and teachings of Alfred Roberts were the stars his younger daughter steered by. Some commentators, notably the biographer John Campbell, have argued that this paternal contribution to her upbringing has grown in the telling. As Campbell puts it, ‘Margaret was very much less devoted to her wonderful father while he was alive than she became to his sanctified image after he was dead.’41
This view might be sustainable if it was applied only to the political career of the future Prime Minister. That was nurtured by other father figures to whom she was grateful. But Alfred Roberts alone was responsible for her spiritual upbringing and her moral compass. As a father, lay preacher and mentor he was by far the greatest influence in laying the foundations on which she built her life. As she put it: ‘We were taught what was right and what was wrong in very considerable detail. There were certain things you just didn’t do, and that was that. Duty was very, very strongly engrained into us. Duties to the church, duties to your neighbour and conscientiousness were continually emphasised.’42
Duties to the church had a high priority. Alfred and Beatrice were devout Methodists. They had met at the Bridgend Road Mission Chapel in one of the most deprived areas of Grantham. By the time Margaret was born they had become regular attendees at the more socially elevated Finkin Street Church close to the centre of the town. This was a citadel of Wesleyan Methodism in the 1930s, for it had refused to join the Methodist Union of 1932. The outstanding feature of the church was that it was said to be ‘a powerhouse of good preaching … you had really arrived as a preacher when you were asked to give a sermon at Finkin Street’.43**
Alfred Roberts had undoubtedly arrived, for he was not just a respected deliverer of good sermons; he was the senior lay preacher of the area. His official title was Circuit Steward, which meant that he was responsible for organising preachers for the thirty-two Methodist chapels and churches on the Grantham circuit. He gave many sermons in them himself, travelling around the towns and villages of Lincolnshire in a church car known as ‘the circuit taxi’. Margaret sometimes accompanied him. On one occasion she criticised him for putting on his ‘sermon voice’. But she became an admirer of his preaching, later praising his sermons for having ‘intellectual substance’.44
A small number of Alfred Roberts’ sermons have survived in his old notebooks.45 They justify his daughter’s comment. Despite some misspellings (‘beleif’; ‘desease’),46 which were understandable in a man who left school at thirteen, they display a theological understanding that was broadminded and original. He was liberal in his doctrine, claiming no monopoly of wisdom for Methodism, and quoting from a wide range of secular writers.
Listening to a father’s sermons, however worthy, might seem heavy weather for a young girl. But even at an early age, Margaret Roberts was a femme
sérieuse, particularly in her religious observance. Every Sunday she attended four events at the church, sitting in the family pew four rows down in the centre left aisle. Her day started with morning Sunday school at 10.30, followed by the morning service at 11 o’clock. Alfred Roberts called this ‘The Sandwich Service’ because it had three layers of spiritual nourishment: hymn, prayer, hymn; Bible reading, hymn, Bible reading; and sermon, Bible reading, hymn.47
Just in case this might not be enough religion for one day, Margaret went back to Finkin Street at 3 o’clock for afternoon Sunday school where she often played the piano. Sometimes she went back again for the Evening Service at 6.30 or she went out with her father to hear one of his sermons on the circuit. Not surprisingly, Margaret sometimes found this Sunday routine ‘too much of a good thing, and on a few occasions I remember trying to get out of going’.48 But her flashes of youthful rebellion were balanced by a genuine commitment to the teachings of her church, even if not to its repetitive services.
Spiritual values, as proclaimed by Methodism, were important in Margaret Thatcher’s childhood. She knew her Bible. She loved singing Charles Wesley’s hymns; particularly ‘Lo, He Comes with Clouds Descending’; and ‘And Can It Be That I Should Gain’.49 She learned the Methodist Catechism by heart. Her signed copy of this sixteen-page document, price ‘Threepence Net’, has survived complete with interesting underlinings on repentance. She could quote, in later life, texts and sayings from the sermons of her father, her headmistress Miss Gladys Williams and a leading Grantham Congregationalist Minister, Reverend Henry Childe. All this activity may not have turned her into John Wesley’s ideal of ‘a soul on fire’, but it suggests an inquiring and energetic mind which took spiritual values and teachings seriously.
Alfred Roberts was a political, as well as a spiritual, leader of his community. Two years after Margaret was born, he was elected to the Grantham Town Council, on which he served for the next quarter of a century. Although he stood as an Independent Ratepayer candidate, according to his daughter Muriel, ‘He was always a Liberal at heart’.50 But by the 1930s he had become a staunch Conservative. In the general election of 1935, he gave ten-year-old Margaret her first experience of politics, using her as a runner who carried voting slips from the Tory tellers outside the polling station to the nearest committee room. She also folded leaflets for the Conservative candidate Sir Victor Warrender who held the seat by a reduced majority. He made a good impression on his young election helper. ‘He was rather a handsome man. When he spoke, you listened … He understood that personality attracts votes,’ she recalled in old age.51
Aside from the excitement of electioneering, Margaret took a keen interest in her father’s life as a Councillor and Town Mayor and also in the wider responsibilities he undertook. At various times in her early years he was President of Rotary, President of the Chamber of Trade, Chairman of the Workers’ Educational Association and Chairman of the National Savings Movement. Alfred’s leadership of these local voluntary organisations must have given Margaret a sense of the value of community and public service.
Having the right values was as important to Alfred Roberts as holding public office. He mingled his Methodism with his politics. ‘Individual responsibility was his watchword, and sound finance his passion’ was Margaret’s summary of his philosophy, as she recalled how often her mother would tell her: ‘Your father always sticks to his principles.’52
One unusual principle Alfred Roberts passed on to his second daughter was the importance of being certain. Like him, she was determined to stick to what she was sure was right. Unlike him, she could become abrasive and angry in support of her opinions. By all accounts he was a gentle, tolerant figure. Although he could sometimes be stubborn, in general he was consensual as a councillor and non-judgemental as a man. There are no stories of him having aggressive arguments let alone blazing rows with anyone in Grantham. But in this area of life, even in her schooldays, Margaret was noticeably different from the father she revered as a role model.
REFLECTION
Something is missing from the accepted and official accounts of the early life of Margaret Roberts. This is because they emanate largely from herself.
By the time journalists began to track down details of her upbringing – from 1975 onwards, when she became Leader of the Opposition – she was able to airbrush from the record most of the sharp edges in her childhood she presented in her own writings and interviews. The Iron Lady liked to control the narrative of her early life with an iron grip. She had an over-developed desire for privacy on family matters, discouraging her elder sister and other relatives from discussing them. Even her children were kept poorly informed about her growing up years in Grantham.
As a result, the authorised version of Margaret Roberts’ youth has a sanitised feel to it particularly as recorded in the opening chapter of her memoirs A Provincial Childhood. At first reading this is a stilted account of the upbringing of a mild child. There are a few hints of the electrifying qualities, positive and negative, which were to make her such a polarising figure in British politics and on the world stage.
Also edited out of the authorised version were the social and economic insecurities that troubled the young Margaret. In class-conscious Grantham the Roberts family were tradesmen. This put them well down the ladder from the better-off county and commercial families in and around the town. Margaret was never regarded as ‘one of us’ by the posher customers she served from behind the counter in the North Parade shop. Her frugal upbringing, her home-made clothes and her social status as the daughter of a shopkeeper were likely to have made her feel inadequate when visiting the homes of her school contemporaries who came from these higher echelons of Lincolnshire life.
As for the local grandee, Lord Brownlow, Margaret went on annual school picnics in the grounds of Belton, his stately home on the edge of Grantham. She was noticed by him and by other members of the Cust family†† for her personality, intelligence and good service in the shop. But, being ‘in trade’, she was not invited to a meal at Belton until becoming Prime Minister nearly half a century later.‡‡
The social boundaries of Grantham in the 1930s, together with the exclusions, tensions and feelings of insecurity they must have produced, are not mentioned in Margaret Thatcher’s account of her childhood in her memoirs or in later interviews. Without them, the picture of her early years is incomplete. So is her self-portrait of her youthful personality. These omissions raise interesting questions.
At the height of her powers, her critics thought that Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher showed flaws in her character. She sometimes displayed a belligerent temperament that could explode into anger. She was a bully towards some of her senior colleagues. She bore grudges. She gave an impression of lacking compassion for the poorer members of society. She took instant likes and dislikes, which rarely altered. She could be gratuitously rude to ministers and civil servants who she thought were flannelling. She was indifferent, often to the point of rank discourtesy, towards other women – including ministerial wives she found uninteresting. Some thought these flashes of offensiveness and over- assertiveness stemmed from insecurities buried deep within her. Even if this charge sheet seems exaggerated, it would be strange if none of the failings that gave rise to it ever surfaced during her youth.
The paradox is that it was the clash of good and bad forces in her nature that gave the future Prime Minister such a formidable personality. It was unfortunate that the grit in the oyster of her inner feelings should have been carefully suppressed by the time she came to write and speak publicly of her formative years.
Answering an interviewer’s question during the 1983 general election about what she had learned in her childhood, she replied:
We were taught to work jolly hard. We were taught to prove ourselves; we were taught self-reliance; we were taught to live within our income. You were taught that cleanliness is next to godliness. You were taught self-respect. You were taught always to give a h
and to your neighbour. You were taught tremendous pride in your country.53
Even though this is the authorised version, it is true. But it may not be the whole truth. The suspicion remains that the young Margaret Roberts was more rebellious, more argumentative, more insecure and more disagreeable than her self-portrait as a dutiful daughter suggests. Her sharpest clashes came with her strong-willed mother. They also came when she fought her grammar school headmistress. What seems likely is that scenes of angry confrontation must have been part of her personality when a child, just as they were part of her personality as Prime Minister.
That said, the positives of her upbringing far outweighed the negatives. Thanks to the extraordinary discipline and determination she showed in her early years, she was destined to climb far above the horizons of Grantham, a town which was itself rising in importance because of the war.
________________
* Martha is described in the King James Bible as ‘cumbered about with much serving …’ (Luke 10:40).
† ‘Mum was not the slightest bit tactile,’ Mark Thatcher told me in 2005 (Jonathan Aitken, Heroes and Contemporaries, Continuum, 2006, p. 135).
‡ The official Report of this exchange in the House of Commons records Margaret Thatcher as saying ‘Frit’ only once. But I, and many others present, heard her using the word with high excitement three times. Even great Hansard nods.
# See Chapter 6.
** On a visit to Grantham, I met Denhys Lambley, Senior Lay Preacher at the Wesleyan Methodist Finkin Street Church. This is the church that the Roberts family attended when Margaret was growing up.
†† An exotic rumour, much discussed by Tory MPs in the aftermath of the 1975 leadership election, suggested that Margaret Thatcher might be the daughter of the Hon. Harry Cust. He was a scion of Belton, the younger brother of Lord Brownlow, and a notorious womaniser. Cust was widely believed to be the father of Lady Diana Cooper, who had allegedly inherited his piercing blue eyes. She enjoyed fanning the speculation that the Prime Minister might be her half-sister. However, since Harry Cust died eight years before Margaret Thatcher was born, the rumour was demonstrably nonsense.
Margaret Thatcher: Power and Personality Page 4