Margaret Thatcher: The Authorized Biography
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In the course of the following year, Mrs Thatcher tried for several seats. She declined to be considered for City of London and Westminster, telling Kaberry that she lacked the necessary distinction for such a seat, while at the same time putting herself forward for South Kensington.85 She applied, unsuccessfully, for Beckenham and for Hemel Hempstead, and she flogged round the speaking circuit. ‘I spoke at a women’s afternoon meeting in North Kensington on Tuesday,’ she wrote to Muriel while in the process of buying their new house in Farnborough. ‘It went very well indeed – but what is the use of it’s [sic] going well in a bad constituency?’86 Her best chance seemed to be at Maidstone, where her benefactor Alfred Bossom was stepping down. Here, in March 1958, she made it on to the shortlist of three, her main rival being John Wells, ex-Eton, Oxford and submarine service during the war. Although the president of the local association reported to Central Office very favourably of the woman candidate with a ‘tendency to the right of centre’ (‘A fine brain – great “appeal” – This lady should surely be in Parliament soon’), the report from the area agent makes it clear why she lost the selection to Wells:
Mrs Thatcher spoke next, and went straight into politics, leaving only a very short time at the end of her talk for her tactics in nursing the seat. She was asked about her ability to cope as a Member, having in mind the fact that she had a husband and a small family, and I do not think her reply did her a lot of good. She spoke of having an excellent nanny and that as a Member she would have the mornings free (quite ignoring the fact that Members have committees in the mornings). She also spoke of having the weekends free, and made no reference to spending time in Maidstone at the weekends.* She did say she would have to give up the Bar.87
It was all very discouraging. On her merits, Mrs Thatcher seemed to do well every time, only to lose because of her sex. And then came Finchley.
In March 1958, the elderly and somewhat inactive Member, Sir John Crowder, announced his retirement from Finchley, in suburban north London, at the next election. Mrs Thatcher put in her name, and was shortlisted, receiving the largest number of votes. But she did not allow herself to express high hopes. Writing to Muriel on 3 July, eleven days before the final selection, she began her letter with other matters. Denis, she said, had had to engage in the unpleasant sacking of the long-standing works superintendent because ‘he just doesn’t pull with the team,’ and now he was in Africa (Entebbe, Uganda) on a big business trip. She worried about him: ‘As Denis usually loses about 10 lbs on one of these trips, I hope he won’t look too thin when he returns.’ Then she mentioned the contest: ‘Once again I have been shortlisted for a “safe” constituency. This time it is Finchley, which has a Conservative majority of 12,000. Three of us are on the final list† and we have to go down on Monday evening 14th July for the final selection. I expect the usual prejudice against women will prevail and that I shall probably come the inevitable “close second”.’88
On the night, the ‘usual prejudice’ was certainly present. Even Derek Phillips, who, as the Young Conservative representative at the final selection, might have been expected to favour innovation, said to himself, ‘If there’s a lady, I shan’t be voting for that lady.’89 And John Tiplady, a postman who many years later became chairman of the Finchley Association, went along with his wife, who said she would never vote for a woman.90 There were some, particularly women, who stuck by that view. Many, however, were won over. As Mrs Thatcher rather flirtatiously wrote to Donald Kaberry afterwards, ‘… I wore the outfit you said I was to wear the night I was finally selected,’91 the ‘black coat dress with brown trim’ and small black hat92 which she had been wearing when she called on him in April. John Tiplady noted her ‘striking appearance’ which he contrasted favourably with that of her rival, Thomas Langton, a local man and holder of the Military Cross, whom he remembered as a ‘one-legged brigadier’. A director of the Gestetner copying company whispered to Tiplady, ‘We’re looking at a future Prime Minister of England.’93 Derek Phillips thought she looked ‘very smart’, and was ‘very much a true Conservative’. She seemed to have the ‘more modern outlook’ that they were looking for.94 The absence of Mrs Thatcher’s husband, still on business in Africa, made a notable contrast with the presence of the wives of the three men, but not one that necessarily harmed Margaret. There was something exciting about this good-looking, well-dressed thirty-two-year-old woman all alone and speaking with such force. In the first round, she came top, with Langton only one vote behind her. In the play-off between the two of them, she won by forty-six votes to forty-three. That, at least, was declared result. But Bertie Blatch told his son Haden that night: ‘She didn’t actually win. The man did, but I thought, “He’s got a silver spoon in his mouth. He’ll get another seat. So I ‘lost’ two of his votes and gave them to her.’95 So Mrs Thatcher probably (unknowingly) won her way to Parliament through fraud. The absent, uncontactable Denis learnt of her victory by chance: ‘I’d had a lot to drink and I staggered aboard the plane. I had to change in Kano in Nigeria and on the seat was the Evening Standard of the night before. I … turned over a couple of pages and there was this tiny little paragraph announcing that Margaret Thatcher had been adopted as Conservative candidate for Finchley. I’ve always said that it was bloody lucky that I was away because it was a close-run thing and if they’d taken one look at me they would have said, “We don’t want this pair.” ’96 The Standard headline which Denis saw said ‘Tories Choose Beauty’.97
It was customary for the association’s executive to endorse the chosen candidate unanimously, but in Mrs Thatcher’s case it did not. A few, unreconciled to the idea of a woman, held out against her. The deputy area agent, Miss Harris, who had earlier predicted that a woman would not be selected, reported Mrs Thatcher’s victory to Central Office and added that ‘Unfortunately there were a handful who refused to give a unanimous vote at the end.’98 This opposition, though now tiny, survived even Mrs Thatcher’s triumphant adoption meeting on 31 July. A knot of five, whom Lady Thatcher was to describe as ‘one woman and her little coterie’,99 refused to vote for her adoption.100 In her letter to Kaberry, Mrs Thatcher wrote: ‘I am learning the hard way that an anti-woman prejudice among certain Association members can persist after a successful adoption meeting.’101
The adoption meeting was Mrs Thatcher’s first chance to present herself, via the press, to the voters of Finchley. She more than succeeded. ‘The Conservatives of Finchley and Friern Barnet’, declared the Finchley Press, which, being owned by the Conservative chairman, Bertie Blatch, knew which side its bread was buttered, ‘have armed themselves with a new weapon – a clever woman.’ ‘Clad in restrained black and gold and with a small black hat’ (the same outfit as at the selection?), the new candidate had given a ‘clear-cut appraisal of the Middle East situation, weighed up Russia’s propagandist moves with the skill of a housewife measuring the ingredients in a familiar recipe, pinpointed Nasser as the fly in the mixing bowl … no one could accuse her of throwing her womanhood at the audience.’ The paper said, erroneously, but capturing the prevailing mood, that ‘If any had come to oppose – they went away converted.’102 The Finchley Times reported Mrs Thatcher’s attack on the ‘despotism’ of the trade unions: ‘A man’, she said, ‘should have the right Not to strike if he does not wish to. We must regulate trade unions and protect the individual worker.’103 The paper carried more explanation of her position on the Middle East: ‘In the Iraki [sic] revolt the people who were brutally murdered were Arabs. In any discussion on the Middle East we must take into consideration the State of Israel, because we were mainly responsible for its existence.’104 The reason that the Middle East bulked larger in Finchley than in most British electoral contests was that the constituency had a substantial Jewish vote. At the time of Mrs Thatcher’s selection, the Liberals had benefited from a row about attempts to block the admission of Jews to Finchley Golf Club, which insisted on prospective members stating their religious affiliation. This was tho
ught to reflect badly on some Conservatives. And there was some anti-Semitic feeling in the association at the time. The outgoing MP, Sir John Crowder, is supposed to have complained that Conservative Central Office was trying to impose a choice on the constituency between ‘a bloody Jew and a bloody woman’.* According to John Tiplady, the meeting which selected Margaret Thatcher was held on a Friday night so that orthodox Jews would be unable to attend.105 This is not in fact the case – the meeting took place on a Monday – but Tiplady remembered it thus, suggesting that some sort of ill feeling did, indeed, exist. Not long after she had been adopted, Mrs Thatcher sought to mend the fences. Writing to Central Office on 17 September 1958, she discussed the problem:
For reasons with which I need not bother you, the Jewish faith have allied themselves to Liberalism and at the last local election won five seats from the Conservatives on our council. We are now finding great difficulty in making headway in these areas, particularly in Hampstead Garden Suburb. As Finchley has had a Liberal MP in the past we are naturally apprehensive and are now making great efforts to further the Conservative cause. I fear the division [that is, the constituency] as a whole has not been very dynamic in the past.106
Although the Jewish population was probably not the 25 per cent of the Finchley vote which Mrs Thatcher mentioned in the same letter, being in fact a fifth or less, it was nevertheless highly significant, indeed essential, for any candidate requiring the support of the middle classes. Through her Finchley experience, Mrs Thatcher conceived a strong admiration for Jewish values. Jews, she later declared, are ‘one of the most scholarly races’, and ‘They also are the people of the Old Testament: how can you believe in the New unless you believe in the Old?’107 She was attracted, too, by their very active sense of community – ‘My, they were good citizens’ – which expressed itself in ‘not just talking, but doing and giving’. And she liked their entrepreneurial virtues, seeing Jews as ‘natural traders’ who managed ‘positively to get on by their own efforts’.108 During her premiership, she was often closer to Jewish religious leaders, notably the Chief Rabbi, Immanuel Jakobovits, whom she ennobled, than to Christian ones. But in her early days in Finchley she looked on Jewish matters in a more matter-of-fact way: she needed Jewish votes and she thought the Tories were sacrificing them unnecessarily. As we shall see, although her relationship with the Jewish community was fundamentally harmonious and productive, Mrs Thatcher did sometimes find Finchley Jews irritating. What is clear, however, is that she approached them without the prejudices which existed in some sections of her party, and they responded warmly. Helped, as she records in her memoirs,109 by Ted Heath, who was then Chief Whip, Mrs Thatcher drafted in senior Conservative MPs to speak on her behalf. Notable among these was Sir Keith Joseph,* later her greatest political ally, MP for Leeds North East, and the most important Jewish Conservative of his generation. He came to speak for Mrs Thatcher in Finchley in February 1959.
Anyone can see, in retrospect, that Mrs Thatcher was certain to hold Finchley for the Conservatives at the next election, whenever it came. This moderately prosperous, petit-bourgeois, owner-occupied, suburban constituency was a safe Tory seat, and ideally suited for its chosen candidate. Although the phrase was not used at the time, Mrs Thatcher was upwardly mobile, and so was Finchley. Besides, the political wind had been blowing in the party’s favour. Harold Macmillan had replaced Eden as prime minister in January 1957 and set his course on expansionary policies. The era of post-war austerity was well and truly over, replaced by what, when it returned in the 1980s, was sometimes disparaged as ‘bourgeois triumphalism’. David Kynaston, the social historian of post-war Britain, cites an advertisement for New Zealand butter which appeared in Woman magazine in the first week of 1957, as capturing the spirit of the age. ‘Good food and plenty of it, full employment, well furnished homes – today’s generation knows what Good Living really means!’ ran the text, before praising the ‘natural golden colour’ of the butter.110 Although Macmillan himself, born in the nineteenth century, seemed a rather old-fashioned, Edwardian figure, and even played up to this image, he was adroit at managing the politics of prosperity. It was he who, as housing minister, had made and fulfilled his party’s pledge before the 1951 election, to build 300,000 council houses a year. It was Macmillan who, on 20 July 1957, made a famous speech in which he declared: ‘Indeed let us be frank about it – most of our people have never had it so good. Go around the country, go to the industrial towns, go to the farms, and you will see a state of prosperity such as we have never had in my lifetime – nor, indeed, in the history of this country.’ It was true. The average real pay for industrial workers had risen by 20 per cent since the Tory victory in 1951. Earlier in the same year, Macmillan had written to an official at Central Office: ‘I am always hearing about the Middle Classes. What is it they really want? Can you put it down on a sheet of notepaper, and I will see whether we can give it to them.’111 As the general election of 1959 approached, he seemed to have found the answer.
In the very same ‘never had it so good’ speech, Macmillan himself had raised the question, ‘Is it too good to last? … can prices be steadied while at the same time we maintain full employment in an expanding economy?’ In the next decade, this question would come to dominate politics, but, in the late 1950s, people tended to think that it could be postponed. In January 1958, Macmillan’s Treasury team, led by the Chancellor, Peter Thorneycroft,* and including Enoch Powell, had resigned in protest at the government’s reluctance to hold back public spending adequately (the disputed sum was a mere £50 million), saying that profligacy would lead to inflation. Macmillan dismissed the resignations as ‘little local difficulties’, and more or less got away with it. The resignations much later came to be seen as harbingers of monetarism, and were much admired by Thatcherites, but at the time they did not achieve their purpose. As the 1959 election drew near, the headline rate of inflation remained below 3 per cent. Macmillan’s political approach to public spending seemed to be vindicated.
In the budget of 1959, the Chancellor cut the standard rate of income tax from 8s 6d (42.5 pence) to 7s 9d (38.5 pence) and reduced purchase tax and the duty on beer. In September of that year, Macmillan called an early and quick election, for 8 October. The manifesto asked, ‘Do you want to go ahead on the lines which have brought prosperity at home?’ and ‘Do you want your present leaders to represent you?’, questions which represented confidence or complacency, according to taste. ‘Life’s Better Under the Conservatives’, was the slogan, and so, in an immediate and directly material sense, it was. In later years, Mrs Thatcher looked back critically. In 1979, she told Macmillan’s official biographer, Alistair Horne, that ‘I think part of our post-1959 problems arose from an extremely over-generous Budget in 1959.’112 But at the time she was mainly content to go with the political flow.
One of Mrs Thatcher’s best political gifts, born of a rather surprising lack of self-confidence and a female conscientiousness, was never to take anything for granted. If her party risked complacency, she did not. She campaigned ferociously hard. At the annual general meeting of the Finchley Conservatives on 23 March 1959, the chairman, Bertie Blatch, praised her for the fact that she had fulfilled 130 requests to speak since her adoption less than eight months earlier.113 Compared with her first campaign at Dartford, Mrs Thatcher was more circumspect in advancing her personal views, and she was happy enough to join in her party’s boasting about its ever-growing spending, but she nevertheless put down a few markers for what would later be called Thatcherism. Speaking at a public meeting in Friern Barnet on 3 April 1959, she addressed herself to the anxiety that, despite the increase in material prosperity, there seemed to be little moral advance. ‘If one desires above all to build a responsible society of responsible citizens,’ she asked, ‘how can Parliament bring it about?’ To the small extent that it could, firm standards and the pursuit of excellence were the keys. She told her audience that she supported the use of the birch for those crime
s of violence committed ‘for the sheer love of brutality’. She was also tackled on the emerging question of comprehensive schools. While saying that some comprehensives might turn out to be very good, Mrs Thatcher made it clear where her sympathies lay: ‘We never believe in throwing out what tradition and experience have proved to be very good indeed, and replacing this by something as yet in the experimental stage.’114 At her election adoption meeting on 21 September, she emphasized the simple verity which was so often to stand her in such good stead: ‘The whole of our future at home and abroad depends on our having a solvent society,’115 a doctrine to which Macmillan paid only formal obeisance. There is nothing, however, to suggest anything dangerously unorthodox in the views of the thirty-three-year-old parliamentary candidate. Although to the right of her party’s leader, she endorsed the middle-way, unideological expansionism of the ‘never had it so good’ era. Her election address for the poll which Macmillan had called for 8 October categorized the main issues as ‘Your Home … Your Job … Your Children … Your Defence … Your Vote’, and offered a conventional mixture of security, prosperity and high spending. The respect in which the candidate for Finchley stood out was not ideological: it was because she was already a bit of a star – through her sex, her looks, her dynamism and her air of being, true blue though she was, something new for the Tory Party, a persuasive meritocrat. ‘The business of the working class is on its way out,’ she told an interviewer in the Evening News during the campaign. ‘After all, aren’t I working class? I work jolly hard, I can tell you.’116 And somehow she induced the (female) interviewer to declare, ‘she is, without question, an absolute honey.’117