Low Church made it easier for the Methodist in me to make the transition. Anyway, John Wesley regarded himself as a member of the Church of England to his dying day. I did not feel that any great theological divide had been crossed.
Weekends, therefore, provided me with an invaluable and invigorating tonic. So did family holidays. I remembered what I had enjoyed — and not enjoyed — about my own holidays at Skegness. My conclusion was that for young children nothing beats buckets and spades and plenty of activity. So we used to take a house on the Sussex coast for a month right by the side of the beach, and there always seemed to be other families with small children nearby. Later we went regularly to a family hotel at Seaview on the Isle of Wight or rented a flat in the village. Crossing the Solent by ferry seemed a great adventure to the children who, like all twins, had a degree of (usually) playful rivalry. On the way down to the coast in the car we always passed through a place called ‘Four Marks’. I was never able to answer Mark’s question about who these four were. Nor could I think up a satisfactory response to Carol who thought that it was all unfair and that there should also be a ‘Four Carols’. Not to be outdone, Mark pointed out that it was no less unfair that Christmas carols had no male equivalent.
In 1960 we had planned to take the children abroad for the summer holidays to Brittany. But at the last moment Mark caught chickenpox and to everyone’s great disappointment the trip had to be cancelled. To compensate, still more adventurously, we decided to go skiing at Lenzerheide in Switzerland at Christmas. None of us had ever skied before, so we joined a ski club in Sloane Square and took a course in skiing from Lillywhites before we went. The holiday was a great success, and we went back to the same hotel year after year. I loved the scenery and the exercise. And I loved the hot chocolate and pastries afterwards even more.
It is a cliche, but no less true for all that, that in family life you have to take the rough with the smooth. Knowing that you have a family to turn to is a great strength in politics, but the other side is one’s emotional vulnerability to their suffering. I was always worried about Mark, who at that time seemed to catch every germ that was going, including pneumonia one winter at Lenzerheide. One of the worst days of my life was when it became clear that he had appendicitis and I had to rush him to the nearby hospital. I spent so much time with him in the weeks which followed that I began to worry that Carol might feel left out. So I bought her a magnificent teddy bear which was christened Humphrey. Whatever Carol thought of her new friend, I became very attached to him, and indeed brought him with me to Downing Street. Only later did he sadly disintegrate when, dismayed by his grubby looks, I tried to wash him.
It is hard to know whether one worries more about one’s children when they are within reach or far away. I wanted the twins to be at home when they were young, though I was reconciled to their going to boarding school later. Unfortunately, the nearby day school to which Mark went had to close in 1961, and Denis persuaded me that it was best that he should go to Belmont Preparatory School. At least Belmont was just on the edge of Finchley, so I could take him out to lunch. Also I knew he was not too far away in case of emergencies. But then, of course, not to be left out, Carol decided that she wanted to go to boarding school as well, and did so two years later. The house seemed empty without them.
By now there was another emptiness in my life which could never be filled, and that was the loss of my mother, who died in 1960. She had been a great rock of family stability. She managed the household, stepped in to run the shop when necessary, entertained, supported my father in his public life and as Mayoress, did a great deal of voluntary social work for the church, displayed a series of practical domestic talents such as dressmaking and was never heard to complain. Like many people who live for others, she made possible all that her husband and daughters did. Her life had not been an easy one. Although in later years I would speak more readily of my father’s political influence on me, it was from my mother that I inherited the ability to organize and combine so many different duties of an active life. Her death was a great shock, even though it had not been entirely unexpected. We were all staying with my sister’s family in Essex when my mother fell ill: Denis and I drove her back to Grantham for an emergency operation. But she was never really well again, and died a few months later. Even young children have a keen sense of family grief. After my mother’s funeral, my father came back to stay with us for a while at ‘Dormers’. That evening when I turned back the coverlet of his bed, I found a little note from Mark on the pillow: ‘Dear Grandad, I’m so sorry Granny died.’ It was heartbreaking.
LAW-MAKING FOR BEGINNERS
I was very glad, however, that both my parents had seen their daughter enter the Palace of Westminster as a Member of Parliament — quite literally ‘seen’, because the press contained flattering photographs of me in my new hat on the way to the House. My first real contact with the Conservative Parliamentary Party was when on the day before Parliament opened I went along as a member of the 1922 Committee — the Party committee to which all Conservative backbench MPs belong — to discuss the question of the Speakership of the House. I knew only a relatively small number of the several hundred faces packed into that rumbustious, smoky committee room, but I immediately felt at home.
Everyone in those early days was immensely kind. The Chief Whip would give new Members a talk about the rules of the House and the whipping system. Old-stagers gave me useful hints about dealing with correspondence. They also told me that I should not just concentrate on the big issues like foreign affairs and finance, but also find one or two less popular topics on which I could make a mark. Another piece of good practical advice was to find myself a ‘pair’, which I promptly did in the form of Charlie Pannell, the Labour MP for Leeds West.[8] I had met him years earlier when he lived in Erith, in my old Dartford constituency. He was exactly the sort of good-humoured, decent Labour man I liked.
The Palace of Westminster seems a bewildering labyrinth of corridors to the uninitiated. It was some time before I could find my way with ease around it. The Tea Room, the Library and the main committee rooms were all points of reference for me. There were modestly appointed rooms set apart for the twenty-five women Members — the ‘Lady Members’ Rooms’ — where I would find a desk to work at. Neither taste nor convention suggested my entering the Smoking Room. My formidably efficient secretary, Paddi Victor Smith, had a desk in a large office with a number of other secretaries where we worked on constituency correspondence. But the heart of the House of Commons was, even more than now, the Chamber itself. Early on, I was advised that there was no substitute for hours spent there. Finance and Foreign Affairs Committee meetings might be more informative. The weekly 1922 Committee meetings might be more lively. But it was only by absorbing the atmosphere of the House until its procedures became second nature and its style of debate instinctive that one could become that most respected kind of English politician, a ‘House of Commons man’ (or woman).
So that is what I did. I took my pre-arranged place in the fourth row back below the gangway — where thirty-one years later I chose to sit again after I resigned as Prime Minister. The House itself was — and still is — a very masculine place. This manifested itself above all, I found, in the sheer volume of noise. I was used to university debates and questions at the general election hustings, yet my brief previous visits to the Visitors’ Gallery of the House had never prepared me for this. But when I remarked on it to a colleague he just laughed and said, ‘You should have heard it during Suez!’ Masculinity, I soon found, however, did not degenerate into male prejudice. In different ways I had on occasion been made to feel small because I was a woman in industry, at the Bar and indeed in Tory constituency politics. But in the House of Commons we were all equals; and woe betide ministers who suggest by their demeanour or behaviour that they consider themselves more equal than the rest. I soon saw with appreciation that sincerity, logic and technical mastery of a subject could earn respect from both sides of the House. Shallowness and bluff were quickly exposed. Perhaps every generation of young men and women considers that those it once regarded as great figures had a stature lacked by their equivalents in later years. But I would certainly be hard put now to find on the backbenches the extraordinary range of experience and talents which characterized the House of Commons then. Almost whatever the subject, there would be some figure on either side of the House who would bring massive, specialized knowledge and obvious intuition to bear on it — and be listened to with respect by front and backbenches alike.
As it happens, I had very little opportunity during my first few months as an MP for the relaxed acquisition of experience of the House. With 310 other Members I had entered the Commons ballot for the introduction of Private Members’ Bills. Never previously having so much as won a raffle, I was greatly astonished to find myself drawn second. Only the first few Private Members’ Bills have any chance of becoming legislation, and even then the Government’s attitude towards them is crucial.
