Inside the mind of the Iron Lady
In a battered blue notebook being sold this week, she poured out her true thoughts on feminism (she WAS one) and John Major (couldn’t abide him!)
AT FIRST glance, it seems like an ordinary pocket notebook that many of us possess.
But look a little closer and you will notice that the cover has a logo of the supersonic jet Concorde.
Indeed, it is one of many complimentary notebooks given to passengers who travelled on the plane with British Airways when it was in operation between 1976 and 2003.
And this particular passenger was rather special: Margaret Thatcher.
She used the pages to make notes — written in her distinctive blue felt-tip and often underlined in school-mistressy red for emphasis.
It wasn’t a diary, and the entries aren’t dated. Instead, Mrs Thatcher’s thoughts and quotations come in random order, with a fresh page for a fresh thought or quotation.
At one point, she flipped the notebook round — intentionally or unintentionally — and started writing from the back. That means the writing in the back half is upside down.
The book is a remarkable piece of history, containing her innermost thoughts during the years after she stepped down as prime minister. And it will surprise her critics — for it shows her to be a feminist and even quotes communist Karl Marx.
Fascinatingly, they reveal she was still deeply bitter at having been the victim of a coup by cowardly Cabinet ministers who urged her to stand down in 1990.
They show how she was smarting about the policies of her successor, John Major — a man she had groomed, having appointed him her chancellor and foreign secretary.
Her notes give a unique insight nsight into the mind of Britain’s greatest est peacetime prime minister: r: her unshakeable belief in n the power of women; her er views on the importance of small government; and d the value of sensible household ere finances.
Although the jottings are disjointed and often brief, ef, the Thatcherite ideology gy shines through and remained ned unchanged after her fall all from power.
Later this month, the notebook is to be sold (for r an estimated £25,000) by Peter eter Harrington Rare Books at the ABA Rare Book Fair in Batn. Battersea, South-West London.
There’s no date inscribed d in the book but John Ryan, n, a cataloguer and bookseller, eller, believes most of the notes were written in 1995, five years after she was turfed out of No 10.
Reading them today, it’s s possible posanger to understand her anger and pain at having been forced to resign as prime minister, er and watching the Major government struggle against a resurgent Labour under Tony Blair.
Some sections show how she felt the Tories had abandoned the principles she employed to rebuild Britain. Speaking of Labour and the Conservatives, she despairingly wrote that ‘neither camp stands FOR anything’.
She added: ‘Differences between parties are narrowing [narrowing is underlined]. Tendency towards pragmatism.’
She also moaned that her Margaret’s musings: Mrs Thatcher jotted quotes from sources as varied as Karl Marx (left) and George Bernard Shaw. Above, the notebook’s protective case — made for a later owner free-market values, which had the Victorian political philosopher helped reinvigorate the UK Thomas Carlyle, ‘ history is the economy, had been dropped in biography of great men’, to which favour of more state control: ‘Alas, she adds, ‘and women’, clearly with in the West, political leaders cling her own legacy in mind. to the belief that govt. can manage Manuscripts by Thatcher are the economy directly’. rarely owned by private individuals.
Other passages give an insight Most of her papers are held in into her thoughts about her place the archive of Churchill College, in history. She cites the dictum of Cambridge. This notebook was co considered among personal p possessions si not destined for fo the archive, however, ev and is being sold so anonymously. Many M of the notes we were made in preparation rat for speeches. Sh She writes of the Pilg Pilgrim Fathers, the 17t 17th- century settlers of A America, saying: ‘ For Fo every Pilgrim Fat Father there must hav have been a Pilgrim Mot Mother who worked and suffered alongside the m men, and who ultimately mate brought about the success s we share as Than Thanksgiving.’ Sim Similarly: ‘Small business ness often o owed a great deal to the business shrew shrewdness of the wife.’ Warm Warming to this theme — and d giving i i th the lie to the Leftist claim that she was not a feminist, but downplayed the role of other women in government while only promoting male ministers, she writes: ‘Many more women can do men’s [underlined] jobs than men could do women’s jobs — bringing up a family . . . ‘This was even more true in the days before the transformation of equipment for the kitchen and home generally. In a way, the advance of technology transformed the lives of women — vacuum cleaners, refrigerators, washing machines . . .’
In other words, she was saying that while women could excel in a male world of business and commerce and, yes, politics, men could not possibly have coped with the domestic chores expected of women.
America, too, is at the forefront of her thinking. She praises her great ally, Ronald Reagan, writing: ‘Reagan and MT. Same beliefs. Same direction.’
‘ Ron Reagan, decisive at Reykjavik,’ she writes, referring to the 1986 Iceland summit between the U.S. president and his Russian counterpart Mikhail Gorbachev, which was instrumental in bringing an end to the Cold War.
On the same page, she refers to her own great triumph in the Falklands War of 1982: ‘Falklands issues fundamental.’
Other entries explain Mrs Thatcher’s belief in the importance of the special relationship between Britain and America.
She wrote: ‘Part played by history [ underlined] and language [ underlined]. Correspondence between Franklin Roosevelt [the U. S. president during World War II], Churchill.’
This was a reference to coded cable traffic between the two men from the outbreak of the war,
‘History is the biography of great men — and women’
through America’s entry in December 1941, until Roosevelt’s death in 1945.
Thatcher’s fundamental belief in the enduring importance of democracy is prominent. She writes: ‘Your role in democracy does not end when you cast your vote in an election — it applies daily — the standards and values that are the moral foundations of society are also the foundations of our lives.
‘Once that is accepted, democracy is essential to preserving freedom.’
She follows that with the quote from the 19th-century historian Lord Acton, ‘Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.’ Acton’s aphorism was one of many favourites. Others copied into the notebook include those of U.S. humorist and author Mark Twain, such as: ‘ Never prophesy, especially about the future.’
It was a quote she used in a speech titled Challenges Of The 21st Century, which she made in Taiwan in 1996.
SHE told her audience: ‘We shall only get the best out of the 21st century if we learn the lessons of this one, which itself has been one of dramatic change — most of which could not have been foreseen.
‘Indeed, I remember Mark Twain’s advice, “Never prophesy, especially about the future!” ’
Another favourite was the Irish writer George Bernard Shaw. On the notebook’s first page, Thatcher wrote: ‘The love of economy is the root of all virtue. 1903 G. B. Shaw.’
Ever eclectic in her sources, but perhaps surprisingly, she quotes Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels’s Communist Manifesto. ‘On what foundation is the present family, the bourgeois family, based?’ she writes, copying their words, ‘On capital, on private gain . . . The bourgeois family will vanish as a matter of course with the vanishing of capital!’ The exclamation mark is Thatcher’s own.
Marx was quoted in order to compare his views with others much closer to Mrs Thatcher’s heart. She said: ‘Contrast Pope Pius XI, “The family is more sacred than the State, and men are begotten not for the earth and for time but for heaven and eternity.” ’
The papal words chime with one of Thatcher’s most famous quotes: ‘There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first.’
Again and again, Thatcher’s core philosophy resonates in the notebook. Often, she makes comparisons between high politics and voters’ everyday lives.
Quoting the English 18th-century preacher Thomas Fuller, Mrs Thatcher, the daughter of a devout Lincolnshire Methodist, wrote: ‘Better to have a hen tomorrow than an egg today — Thomas Fuller 1732.’ She then adds an old Chinese proverb: ‘Though you live near a forest, do not waste firewood.’
Waste, needless to say, was one of Thatcher’s great bugbears.
Among her quotes and notes for speeches are charming insights into her everyday life. While staying at a hotel in Dallas, Texas (visiting her son Mark, who at the time was married to his Texan first wife, Diane Burgdorf), she carefully lists the tips for the hotel staff. ‘Tip on behalf of all the party $200,’ she writes.
Intriguingly, she noted the cost of having her hair done — $170.
This unique piece of British history has been compared with the Little Red Book, the quotations of China’s Communist leader Chairman Mao — but the values in Maggie’s Little Blue Book will undoubtedly stand the test of time much longer.