FULL Margaret Thatcher Interview with Miriam Stoppard On Polarising Personality | Our History

like other working women margaret thatcher leads a double life wife and mother and iron lady how does she fit the two halves together for people who are so much in the public eye it must be quite difficult to protect you a private self from the public view um have you grown a second skin developed a second skin that protects you no it's practically impossible you're quite right practically impossible to protect your private self from public view and you don't grow a second skin everyone says well you must you must kind of put on an armor no matter how tough some of my colleagues in politics if there's anything horrid said about them it wounds them you can see you can see it does and of course it hurts and wounds oneself the only kind of protection you can grow is if you know horrid things are being written by a particular paper or person not to read them because if you do will you do think about it and you really have got other more important things to think about if you didn't have some kind of protecting mechanism surely that there um are things in the press like cartoons and parodies and caricatures they would really hurt quite a lot well caricatures are different you know i've roared with laughter at caricatures of other people and i really think some of myself are rather good caricatures are different they have something else they're not just malicious they have a cleverness about them you're not a genuine cleverness or a wit i mean that's fantastic and you like that when someone someone was interviewing me once and said do you know that some where you're called that bloody woman i had no idea and it bothered me for a time and i thought good heavens whatever sort of picture have they got but then i just put it out of my mind and carried on but it wasn't very nice at the time carrick good job so they're really funny have you ever um seen a caricature or a cartoon and recognized something in yourself that you really hadn't realized before what i notice is that um whatever i wear they will caricature i'm now always character with quite large bows i often wear bows they're rather softening they're rather pretty so do a lot of other people wear both always bows usually a large nose i think a little bit larger than it is a double chin i have to watch that i don't get too much bigger double chin and i remember once when i was um secretary of state for education i wore a rather smart hat it suited it was looked i suppose like a bit like a radar bow with great big stripes on it it was a very smart hat the fact was it would have done for an actress but it wasn't quite right for a politician i learned that lesson ever since if you're going to wear smart hat wear very plain and for about six months after if ever their caricatured it was in this blessed hat this radar bowl i've never worn one like it since enough much plainer other sides of uh public life that you really enjoy that you really like you have the chance to see some things that you absolutely love i mean to go to things which you see on television which were a dream in your mind from a child you didn't see them on television then well you go you go to a great state banquet straight state occasions i had always wanted to go to the lord mayor's banquet at guild hall i never thought i would be there do you remember they were always broadcast when we were young well when i was young always broadcasters nursing was television the royal academy dinners were always broadcast and we always listened to them and one had a dream in one's mind of what they were like these great people in the city who had so much power and then you go and i remember in my first speech saying look i remember how much we looked up to the city how powerful how great it was and then you go and you realize that it's a lot of people like you and how other people are expecting things of you do you think that your upbringing prepared you for the kind of life that you've had today all my upbringing was to instill into both my sister and i a fantastic sense of duty a great sense of whatever you do you're personally responsible for it you don't blame society for anyone society isn't anyone you're personally responsible and you must make up your own mind that was very very strong very strong i remember my father sometimes saying to me if i said it was so-and-so's doing something can't i do it too you know children don't like to be different and him being their stern you make up your own mind what you're going to do never because someone else is doing it and he was always very stern about that it stood one in good stead you you've referred to the importance of your upbringing to your politics and your philosophy can you tell me a little bit about your home what was it like well at home where it was very small and we had no mod cons and i remember having a dream that um the one most thing i one thing i really wanted was to live in a nice house you know house was more things than we had when you say no mod cons what do you mean uh we had not got hot water we only had a cold water tap we had to heat all the hot water in a copper um there was an outside toilet so i when people tell me about these things i know about them i know about them but everything was absolutely clean bright as a new pain and we were taught cleanliness was next to godliness and yes i often used to get down and polish at the floor we had lino on the floor because both the floor and and the old-fashioned mahogany furniture had to be clean it was absolutely imperative and yes everything had to be washed and washed and washed again and we did a bake twice a week my mother was very busy this is where i learned to be busy my father was very busy we used every hour of every day activity always activity always and we worked and because my father he read you read a great deal and therefore we read every saturday i used to go up to the public library every saturday morning to get two books one would be about the current affairs of the debt might have been biography it might have been about politics and one would have been perhaps a novel for my mother and we always read those books as i got older we read the books and we always talked about them every single saturday and the librarian knew i would come so i saved this for your father and you to read and then in those days you know the shop was open until nine o'clock on a saturday night eight o'clock on friday night and people would come in and a grocery shop wasn't just a place where you bought groceries you talked and so we talked about the affairs of the day and i can remember talking about the rise of hitler and how worrying it was now this is in a grocery shop in a small town and when i hear politicians saying people won't understand that i say don't you believe it we understood it all and we talked about it in your house how lively was the discussion though did you actually argue with your father did you stand up for yourself yes oh yes we argued and we were taught to argue this was part of it yes never forget you must make up your own mind you must learn to examine things you must learn to think about them oh yes we were taught to argue and we did what good qualities do you think you inherited or learned from him well i suppose this this this kind of integrity this kind of this you first sort out what you believe in you then apply it you then must argue your case but you don't say well i'm going to do it because someone else is and always you don't compromise on things that matter that's something you never compromise on other things you do well sometimes i'm called inflexible i am inflexible about certain things you're inflexible in defense of freedom you're inflexible with the rule of law must be applied otherwise there's chaos or anarchy you would always you'd be always yet you help the police because the police can't do their job unless they get back up uh you you we didn't demonstrate you don't strike you you discuss things you don't strike you discuss things you pay your tax on time and so on because this is how society is run do you think you inherited any of his faults my father i spoke i have a lot of faults we all have i think i inherited so much that was good from him and the other thing is you um my goodness me you never buy anything you can't afford to buy never but you live according to your means of many many of the time i can remember my mother saying when i said oh my friends have got more well we're not situated like that and i used to say and you accept not situated like that one kicked against it course one kicked against it they had more things than we did of course one kicked against it but i mean when you grow up yourself and have a family and your other children want things that others have i can still hear my mother but we're not situated like that or when you went out to buy something and you're going to actually have new covers for the city that was a great event to have new covers for city was a great expenditure and a great event so you went out to choose them and you chose something look really rather lovely something light with flowers on my mother that's not serviceable and how i longed for the time when i could buy things that weren't serviceable i find myself now thinking when i buy new covers goodness me that'll show the dirt too much you know you do you have just exactly the same things reaction yes you're you're very um nationalistic i suppose you're very proud very patriotic you're a patriotic family oh immensely patriotic but so were the people um we lived we lived look we were patriotic everyone was patriotic it didn't matter during how little you had no no one of the first things i remember was the great silver jubilee of 1935 the silver jubilee of king george v and queen mary and our town was decorated uh with blue and yellow streamers which was the color of our town and with red white and blue and we all listened into the great services and paul's we heard the great commentaries of the great things going to some polls and everyone took part and there was a great bonfire you see in a small town there were always things like that there were sports among all the schools on the playing fields and you all went together and i remember that our job is our school our little primary school hunting tower primary school and i still have letters from people who are with me was to form the m of the grantham someone scored in the g another did the uh we did the m and we had to get it absolutely right and we rehearsed but you see there were always things going on always things so we were never bored oh do you know i'm so glad i was brought up that way it was a much more wholesome upbringing we you know you lit you weren't a spectator society you were doers and don't you find you'd give your own children try to give your own children what you haven't had for us it was rather a sin to enjoy yourself by entertainment do you see what i mean life wasn't to enjoy yourself life was to work and do things my father had not had an education because i told you he had to go out early but he was the best red man i ever knew he gave me the education self-education he'd never had i tried to give my children as well as the education right a little bit more amusement a little bit more to play every sport so that wherever where they went they could play sports and perhaps to um you weren't allowed to go to theater very much uh so well that was one's upbringing can i just talk about your mother for a minute mother was marvelous yes go on but i was going where i was going to she was very practical you see daddy taught me uh we discussed with my father but she um was very very practical and we gained a lot more but she worked and you say i work i do but so did my mother we all worked we all worked did you take part in in family the kind of education that your father was giving you did she take an equal part in that no not so much no no mommy didn't uh get involved in the argument she's probably gone out the kitchen to get the supper ready what examples did your mother set you as opposed to your father oh mommy backed up daddy and everything as far as you do what is right she was terribly proud i mean she would just say to me sometimes your father had a very difficult day in council standing up for his principles this again i knew very difficult danger standing up for his principles and he was chairman of the finance committee and my goodness our town never got into debt my goodness me every money was spent carefully nothing spent extravagantly and eventually he was on the council for such a long time and eventually became an alderman we don't have aldermen now and eventually when the political complexion changed they threw him off being an alderman did you mind that was such a tragedy he always got maximum support from his family i remember when my father was turned off that council making a speech for the last time very emotional in honor i took out this gun in honor i laid down that's how i felt religion's always played an important part in your life hasn't you've spoken about it already did you feel that that was and you did a lot of you fulfilled a lot of social duties as well which were part of your religion did you feel the religion was was a social duty or was it something much more fundamental um well it was something much more fundamental again it it because it was made fundamental and and it went through everything in life but again um it made one just a little bit apart actually for from one's fellows um from one school fellows because none of my school fellows went to church as much as we did and that was one thing i remember um please can i go for a walk with my school friend um on sunday afternoon oh no you go to sunday school well everyone else goes for a walk on sunday afternoon no you go to sunday school and to some extent you know it can be slightly overdone i don't think my parents realize that you can be slightly overdone to some extent you kick against it when you were 17 18 you were preparing to go to oxford um you were going to leave your home behind did you as early as that have a very clear view that politics was what you wanted to do no because it wasn't possible in those days you remember members of parliament weren't paid very much i was always going to have to earn my own living and so it just didn't open up as a possibility it was not really until members of parliament got enough to keep them that i could possibly have thought of becoming an mp although i remember vividly one occasion when we were at university and and home for the christmas recess and one of my school friends was also at oxford and we had a a party in her house and very after the party you know that stage when you always go into the kitchen and sit down and just talk about things i remember one person having been talking to me about politics just saying what you'd really like to do is be an mp wouldn't you and i said yes but i don't know whether it's possible but that was the first time and i can remember it vividly it sort of clicked to me yes that is what i would really like to do people say are you interested in politics were you interested in politics then i was more than interested in it it was a kind of fascination and it was partly because we had done all of this reading and discussing partly because they were cataclysmic times with the rise of hitler and that war and how could it be that having learned so much from history a tyrant had still come to power and we still had to enter upon war to beat him so it was a total fascinating i couldn't get away from it that that's much more the real thing did you have a clear idea of the sort of man that you wanted to marry no no i wonder if one ever does or is it just that it's so long ago a clear idea no don't you meet someone and fall in love with them i don't think there's any point in going around with a specification six feet two inches tall nice dark curly hair brown velvet voice kind um tall lean athletic that's no good it's the person the personality you fall in love with it's no good specifications no good you say fall in love with was it love at first sight no no no no i knew dennis and i knew one another a very long time was there a kind of contract between you not necessarily um defined but that obviously he was going to encourage you and that he would stand by he was marvelous he always did he always did because he thought it'd be an awful pity if both that talented experience were wasted that's rather modern thought for those times isn't it i suppose so i suppose but he did he was marvellous i mean he never said well now look he'll give up everything stay at home the whole time do you think he was rather unusual in taking you on perhaps very brave but it was kind of new to have a woman doing all those things and and a lot of men said oh we want the little woman to stay at home so i suppose he was i think perhaps in those times he was don't forget we'd come through a wartime period when women did a lot but it was unusual for i think uh professional men with with women who also had a profession to do it yes did marriage give you confidence did dennis's sort of experience broader experience than yours give you confidence well you know it's funny you should say that i think it must have done because i remember giving a party well have you made about six months and one of my friends coming and we we automatically fell back into talking about other things and all of a sudden it dawned on me that this was the biggest thing in one's life now kind of sorted out and therefore one turned one's mind both to to other things is that a strange thing to say that i was what 25 26 when we were married that it was and one recognized that to choose a partner for life is really the biggest thing in life do you think you could have ever married a man who didn't go along with the idea that you'd have a career i think there would have been a clash sooner or later you know you have to work this out as you know in your own life you have to work it out between your husband and yourself who's going to do what but yes it did i hadn't quite thought of it in those terms before pepsi because you've had the same experience yes it did give one um a new conference because there was still a feeling about at that time that you didn't get married you're a little bit odd yes and i suppose that um somehow that would translate i don't i don't think that is true at all but you you um took your bar exams and was successful and became embarrassed and you went back to work very quickly after having your twins now did you receive a lot of criticism from your colleagues no i didn't but again i remember that they arrived and they were very small and going to need a lot of looking after and of course you know something you do change when you've had children it is the biggest change which occurs to you in your life and really for the first time in your life you and your husband are both living for another human being and something someone else matters to you far more than you yourself far more i mean you give everything that they should have a good start and it is a great physical and mental and emotional change which comes over you and i remember looking at these two being so relieved that the doctor had managed to get both of them because there was some doubt with he could and thinking now this is fantastic now if i'm not careful i'm never going to make an effort to get back to sort of intellectual pursuits i'm just going to be so overcome with this that i'm not going to do to continue with laurel politics or anything and i really ought to be able to do both children were born in august we won the ashes that year too i remember where was dennis when we won when the children were just born listening listening to the match of the oval we won the ashes that year and i it's august 15th and i thought i've got to do something to ensure that i do go back to work at the bar and so i from the hospital wrote off to lincoln's inn for my finals papers for my bar exam which were to take place in december and i knew that once i'd done that and entered pride would make me work hard for it to get them but it was it was quite it was a fantastic emotional change and it was a conscious decision that i really must must both look after the children and do something else as well you make it very hard on yourself but you made it even harder in fact because you then became an mp when they were six and i gave up the law you cannot do three things in life i will tell you you cannot both pursue a legal career and be a member of parliament and run a home you can do two things and many men do two things they have a business career and a member of parliament a woman can do two things you can have a constituency parliamentary and run a home you can't do three but even there not well you've got a family but i was going to ask you this most women who work do feel guilt about leaving the children behind and when yours were six you became an mp did you feel guilty i made i was i was dead lucky everything in my life happened to go right i'm the first to say that had i been chosen to say fight a yorkshire seat and my husband had a job in yorkshire i don't think that i could have left my home on monday morning come down to westminster and returned on thursday night i was not that kind of mother in what ways does the fact that you're a woman um affect the way that you see the job do you know that's a question i find very difficult to answer um i've never been a man prime minister so i don't know quite what it would be like but i do think women take a slightly different approach first women by their very nature i spoke of the miracle of birth i spoke of the birth of your children affecting your life more than anything else because your children matter far more to you than anything that happens to you therefore you automatically think long term not only what is the immediate but long term what sort of world are they going to grow up in what can i do to influence that well what can i do to train them for it what can we do to see that their education is right what can one do to see that they're good citizens automatically party ones enough bringing partly this thing women have this special relationship with life then two you're very practical don't just talk about what we've got to aim for how how tell me how how are we going to do it causes rules of laughter sometimes when i say to jeffrey how how how and they're saying are you saying how with an e or h o w how how are we going to do it not just what but how got to have a method will it be practical uh and then you automatically even now i automatically if i'm entertaining people to lunch or automatic get up and clear their plates away or say do you mind stacking um because it's just second nature you're very much working in a man's world um do you ever feel like an outsider no i don't and i think it is that having been trained for whatever subject i was in whether it was science whether it was law i've always felt the equivalent of anyone else who was trained in that subject and so i haven't noticed it it doesn't it doesn't bother me the only thing it can be an advantage wherever i go in the world um even though i just walk down the street people will say well recognize me i went to indonesia i didn't think i had been known there i went to university there and the students were were shouting uh thatcher tatcher strong leader thatcher strong leader thatcher they knew and and and and the only work on the streets thatcher i remember in italy uh someone said mother delicious mama tatcha moment wasn't it marvelous absolutely wonderful and then here in english speaker i would say maggie look it's maggie so you are known and you're really rather pleased sort of surprised still because frankly you know they can have quite a lineup of men politicians and they won't be able always to say which one was which but they they they do know and in that sense it gives you an advantage well now even in uh the cabinet though you're it's still a one-woman band in the cabinet isn't it no no no it isn't i don't know where people got this idea from that they're all yes men believe you me they're not i wish they were a bit more sometimes but still no partly because we've always argued things through very much argued things so and we still do we still do but uh would you like more women on the cabinet with you yeah we've got to have more women in parliament first yes they will be i know exactly will be the next one to come on uh you're doing very well do you see any contradiction in saying that women are equal the sex sexes don't matter best person for the job and then saying that women have um special knowledge special experiences it enriches their confidence no i don't i don't see any contradiction because i think there are two things so that one is in your professional capacity and then there's another in your fundamental nature and there is i mean because of the fundamental difference between men and women that does have an emotional difference first um that i say we go through the miracle of birth and are particularly near therefore to children um but secondly you know so often women are left having to cope and that has an effect because women always somehow if they are left to cope can cope so there are these two factors in a way they're both related but somehow women cope and you know the whole world can be falling around your ears and someone will get up and carry on well i better make a cup of tea now come on just sit down and come on get up dust yourself down you start dusting the children now wiping their face stopping their tears finding a chair have you had enough to eat or and you start set about setting the world to rights again but you can cope during a crisis i have often said it is it is the daily the ordinary daily load which in a way can take more out of you than a crisis because of crisis the adrenaline flows and the test is whether you can take the ordinary daily responsibility and that in the end is what you have to do here and i'm always very pleased when people say to me but there have been many many men who've come in and they've looked a bit more worn and torn after six years than you do and again i think well if you've been to looking after children when you're young and keeping a house going and everything else you do just keep going and there is a difference between men and women in that way you said that just be proud of it right you you did say that um there are moments when the crisis is over or when the the um work has taken it still that you do feel oh i'm very tired what do you do in those situations well you just come in and you just flop down and you just talk to your family or say when falkland was over never would i forget that night you didn't realize the enormity of the burden until it was over can you remember what you did i came back here and there were people outside waiting and cheering and so one went to be with them and then i came back in and went straight upstairs to our little sitting room and just flopped just flopped the fantastic relief that there weren't any more young men whose lives were at risk because that's what one would live with 257 there weren't any more there weren't any more days when someone was going to suddenly ring up or come up with terrible news you see why it was on almost nothing else mattered you had to carry on them with other things but um this is perhaps people don't realize the whole strain you are under because of the young and people's lives at stake and because of their courage and because we wouldn't be free unless through the ages there'd been people who've been prepared to lay down their lives for it can i just be a little more personal about that there was a time when your son was in danger and he was lost yes in the sahara did you did you find any conflict about your worries as a mother but you had to go on and do your job as a prime minister one went on yes one went on doing it and i remember again the agony in the back of your mind and i remember i had to do a cabinet and i remember this quietly sending down a message saying would you please go to everyone just before i go down and say please do not mention anything to me then i went in and carried on with cabinets if nothing had happened but if anyone had mentioned anything to me i would have found it acutely difficult but uh the days when i thought i was never going to see him again and that's how i knew what the falklands mothers were going so and that's how i knew how although they kept hope alive how terrible they felt when i was lucky they weren't right um one of your most famous sayings is that you thought there'd never be a female prime minister in your time i did i i did i couldn't see um people um choosing a woman prime minister but you know we talk far too much about labels some people you know try to map out their lives i can remember some of my young contemporary doctors saying i'm going to be prime minister there was one thing i never said because i didn't think i'd have the chance but i didn't but um just just take what opportunities are available to you and grasp them with both hands are you excited though by the idea that you are the first woman in number 10 does it still exist i am totally excited to be here it is the most fantastic privilege i still every time i come in i am still thrilled to be here still thrilled i don't think of myself as the first woman prime minister i am still thrilled to be the person who is in here [Music] [Applause] you

Channel: Our History

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Id: zfF4Kcjlus4

Length: 33min 0sec (1980 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 23 2021