Other woman in Mrs T’s No 10 tells her secrets

Feminists often criticised margaret thatcher for ‘betraying’ her sex by not appointing more female ministers. Britain’s first woman prime minister promoted only one woman to her Cabinet — Baroness Young, who was Leader of the Lords for less than two years before being sacked in 1983.

However, it is little known that mrs t chose another woman to one of the most senior posts in her government. she gave Caroline slocock the key no 10 role as the first ever female private secretary for a Pm. indeed, she was the only other woman in the Cabinet Room when mrs t resigned.

now, five years after thatcher’s death, slocock has written a book titled People Like Us: margaret thatcher And me — a reference to the Pm’s oft-quoted phrase ‘very ordinary people like us’, about her own background as the daughter of a Lincolnshire grocer.

A Left-leaning english Literature graduate from University College London, slocock did not share all thatcher’s values. indeed, her post-no 10 career has seen her be chief executive of the Refugee Legal Centre and also chief executive of the equal Opportunities Commission.

the latter organisation favours positive discrimination to help women advance in the workplace. For her part, mrs t most certainly did not.

slocock was, though, an admirer of the iron Lady and says she treated some staff ‘like family’.

Her book is based on diaries she kept while in Downing street.

intriguingly, she says she believes that had thatcher been a man, ‘it would have ended very differently’ — presumably that the Pm would not have lost her job as a result of a coup by a group of weak male Cabinet ministers who struggled to cope with a woman boss.