Why Maggie’s rise to power ‘had nothing to do with feminism’

MARGARET Thatcher’s success in becoming the first female prime minister was ‘utterly unrelated’ to the feminist movement at the time, claims a top historian.

Sir David Cannadine said she never saw herself as a campaigner for the rights of women.

Speaking at the Chalke Valley History Festival he listed her nicknames, from the grocer’s daughter to the Iron Lady to Attila the Hen.

He said: ‘No male prime minister has ever been known by so many soubriquets – was this sexism, celebrity, or both?’

Sir David, editor of the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography and a professor at Princeton, added: ‘For the whole of her married life, Thatcher was in an overwhelmingly man’s world.

‘From a modern perspective it is important to notice that she only reached the top by seeming to suppress the tender, nurturing quali- ties often associated with wives and mothers.

‘She was combative and competitive. She scorned consensus and compromise, and she constantly emphasised her will power, determination, tirelessness, and courage.

‘Indeed as a party leader and a prime minister, she seemed to be not so much a real woman, but a male type. Thatcher was no rahrah gung-ho feminist, it was all a fluke accident really ... although a very extraordinary accident. But she never saw herself as campaigning for woman ...

‘So the fact she became the first woman prime minister is utterly unrelated to the fact that in Britain there was something called the feminist movement going on at the same time.’

He added: ‘As a woman of power there was no one in modern British history with whom Thatcher can be compared.’