How Thatcher’s enemies were the making of her
After taking us through the ascendancy, and early days, of Britain’s first female prime minister, the latest instalment of BBC Two’s magisterial series Thatcher: a Very British Revolution considered what defined her most: the battles she fought.
Of course, Mrs Thatcher would not be so celebrated as the Conservatives’ warrior queen if she had not won those battles. And this episode focused on how she faced enemies like the Argentinians, the IRA and Arthur Scargill’s militant National Union of Miners, with time to dwell on how she brought Russia in from the cold under its new leader Mikhail Gorbachev. In short, it chronicled the forging of the Iron Lady.
We picked up the story in 1982, with anti-tory protests rife and Mrs Thatcher’s poll rating so low that she was the most unpopular prime minister since records began – a record that Theresa May will relate to. Events gave Mrs Thatcher a chance to show Britain how much it needed her, starting when Argentina seized the Falkland Islands that year. This was where the programme got into its stride, drawing on the accounts of the ministers and officials who were in the room at the time. And so we were told about her instinctive response: raging
about the “disgrace” of “these fascists” taking British territory and telling her generals “we have to take them back”. The contributors gave a blow-by-blow account of her response, ranging from Michael Heseltine, who recalled how she presided in cabinet, to her officials who described the sleepless night she had as “our boys” went into battle.
These insider accounts allowed us to gain a real sense of what Bernard Ingham – Mrs Thatcher’s chief spinner – called her “indomitable determination”. Her anger about the militant miners was clear, as well as her sangfroid in response to the Brighton bombing as she decided – after the failed attempt on her life – that the show must go on.
The enemies that Mrs Thatcher took on proved to be the making of her as prime minister, so it is fitting they framed an episode in this series. At the start, a member of her private office quoted from a poem by Charles Mackay that Mrs Thatcher liked so much she kept in a scrapbook, “You have no enemies you say? Alas! My friend, the boast is poor… If you have none, small is the work that you have done.” And it ended with the Iron Lady telling an interviewer: “Do you really want a leader who doesn’t know what she wants to do, hasn’t got any views, doesn’t attempt to lead? If so you don’t want me!”
Her closing remarks were prescient, as it was not the enemies we saw in the episode that brought down her premiership, but those around her cabinet table. It’s safe to say Hezza’s thoughts will be riveting in the final few episodes. Asa Bennett
Tonight sees the much-heralded arrival on our screens of 63 Up, the latest chapter in the 7 Up series, following a group of children from the age of seven, at seven-year intervals through their lives. So, at ITV Towers, the executives must have been thinking: “How can we create a soaraway curtain-raiser for this worthwhile piece of social observation that makes it all seem more showbizzy, more mass-market, more… well, more ITV?”
The answer was 7 Up & Me, which took famous faces – ranging from Richard E Grant through Eamonn Holmes to Baroness Tanni Greythompson – and filmed them watching episodes from the past 63 years: a weird and unconvincing combination of 7 Up and Gogglebox. The result was very mixed (to put it kindly). Actor Michael Sheen was one of the better contributors. “All those children are dressed like 60-year-olds,” he observed about the seven-year-olds from 1964. “They hadn’t invented children yet, had they?”
Despite some of the star names taking part, much of it was banal. When the Sixties programme showed anguished seven-year-old Bruce at pre-prep school, saying, “My heart’s desire is to see my daddy, who is 6,000 miles away,” then, honestly, what does it add to have actor John Thomson telling us: “He just misses his dad, you know what I mean?” Just imagine the stuff on the cutting-room floor.
However, let’s not be too hard on the celebrities. If any of us were filmed watching a TV programme, we would come out with trite remarks. But the fact that the producers included comments like that shows how little they had to work with. Instead, it all felt as if it had been put together with an air of “this will have to do”. 7 Up deserves better. Terry Ramsey
Thatcher: a Very British Revolution 7 Up and Me