The Iron Lady

the whole campaign – ‘an inspiring sight’, she told Patricia Murray, ‘and one which I will never forget’.²¹ Mrs Thatcher entered the hall to the strains of Hello, Dolly, rewritten by Millar and recorded by Vince Hill:

Hello, Maggie,
Well, hello, Maggie,
Now you’re really on the road to Number Ten…

With this event, wrote the Daily Mail, ‘the barn-storming, star-studded traditions of American politics arrived in Britain’.²²

She spent the rest of that day working on her final TV broadcast which went out on Monday evening. She spoke solemnly for ten minutes direct to camera, stressing the need for a change of direction and her own deep sense of responsibility, promising – in a phrase she had already tried out several times during the campaign – that ‘Somewhere ahead lies greatness for our country again’.²³

On Sunday night, after recording her final broadcast, she shyly asked Ronnie Millar if he had by any chance thought of a few words that she might say on the steps of Downing Street if it should turn out that she needed them. At that stage he would not tell her what he had in mind.²⁴ Three days later, at her last press conference, a journalist asked her about the G7 summit conference coming up in June. ‘I have got it in my diary,’ she replied crisply.²⁵ There is no doubt that she was genuinely confident. ‘She looks more powerful’, Jean Rook noted in the Daily Express, ‘and her soaring ambition and huge mental span are beginning to show.’²⁶ The final opinion polls all showed the Tories clearly ahead – the margins ranging from 2 per cent (Gallup) to 8 per cent (London Evening Standard ).

The polling day headlines hailed her expected victory. ‘The Woman Who Can Save Britain’, trumpeted the Daily Mail; ‘Give The Girl A Chance’, urged the Daily Express; while the Sun, urging Labour supporters to ‘Vote Tory This Time – It’s The Only Way To Stop The Rot’, looked forward to ‘The First Day of the Rest of Our Lives’.²⁷ Yet up to the last minute she was still nervous that it might all be snatched away. She talked anxiously during the day of Thomas Dewey, the American presidential candidate who had appeared to have the 1948 election for the White House sewn up before Harry Truman unexpectedly pipped him at the last.²⁸ Jim Callaghan – a solid incumbent who had never expected to become Prime Minister but had turned out surprisingly popular – was not unlike Harry Truman.

By the time Mrs Thatcher and Denis arrived at Barnet Town Hall for her own count just before midnight it was clear that she would be Prime Minister, with an adequate if not overwhelming majority, though she still made a point of not claiming victory until she had 318 seats. In the end the Conservatives won 339 seats to Labour’s 269, with the Liberals holding 11, the Scottish and Welsh Nationalists reduced to 2 each and the various Ulster parties 12, giving an overall majority of 43. Yet at just under 44 per cent her share of the total vote was the lowest winning share – apart from the two inconclusive elections of 1974 – since the war. (Heath in 1970 had won 46.4 per cent.)²⁹ Her fear that she might lose her own constituency was, of course, groundless. When her result was declared at 2.25 a.m. she had doubled her majority to nearly 8,000:

She arrived in triumph at Central Office around 4.00 a.m. still only admitting that she had moved from ‘cautiously optimistic’ to ‘optimistic’. She was punctilious in thanking all the party workers who had helped in the campaign. Eventually she beckoned Millar into a corridor. ‘I think it’s going to be all right,’ she said cautiously. Now would he tell her what she should say on the steps of Number Ten? Millar offered her the supposed prayer of St Francis of Assisi – it was actually a nineteenth-century invention – beginning ‘Where there is discord, may we bring harmony…’

The lady rarely showed deep feelings but this… proved too much. Her eyes swam. She blew her nose. ‘I’ll need to learn it,’ she said at length. ‘Let’s find Alison and get her to type it.’³⁰

She returned home around 5.15 a.m. for a few hours’ sleep but was back at Central Office by 11.30 a.m. to hear the final results and await the call to the Palace. When the telephone rang it was not Buckingham Palace but Ted Heath, ringing to offer his congratulations. Mrs Thatcher did not go to the phone, but quietly asked an aide to thank him. Eventually, soon after three o’clock, the call came. After an audience with the Queen lasting forty-five minutes she arrived in Downing Street around four o’clock as Prime Minister.

The words that Millar gave her to intone on the steps of Number Ten sounded uncharacteristically humble, consensual and conciliatory:

Where there is discord, may we bring harmony;
Where there is error, may we bring truth;
Where there is doubt, may we bring faith;
And where there is despair, may we bring hope.

Actually the second and third lines bear a more didactic interpretation than anyone noticed at the time. Mrs Thatcher had no time for doubt or error: she was in the business of faith and truth. But for a woman with a reputation for plain speaking she had a remarkable gift for clothing harsh ideas in deceptively honeyed words.

St Francis’s apocryphal prayer was not the only piety she uttered on the steps of Downing Street. She also seized the chance to pay tribute to Alfred Roberts.

Well, of course, I just owe almost everything to my own father. 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. And it’s passionately interesting to me that the things that I learned in a small town, in a very modest home, are just the things that I believe have won the Election. Gentlemen, you’re very kind. May I just go…³¹

And so the grocer’s daughter entered Number Ten.

10 The Blessed Margaret

‘Where there is discord…’

MARGARET Thatcher entered Downing Street on 4 May 1979 carrying an extraordinary weight of public expectation, curiosity, hope and apprehension. Her achievement in becoming the first female leader of a major Western democracy lent her an unprecedented novelty value. Even when she led in the polls there had remained a lingering doubt whether the British electorate, when it came to the point in the privacy of the voting booth, would really bring itself to vote for a woman Prime Minister. Conceding defeat, the outgoing James Callaghan made a point of acknowledging that ‘for a woman to occupy that office is a tremendous moment in this country’s history’.¹ It represented, as a writer in the Guardian put it, ‘one small step for Margaret Thatcher, one giant stride for womankind’.²