Woman's Hour - Margaret Thatcher - 40 years on from her election as PM

Episode Date: May 1, 2019

It is 40 years since the UK elected its first woman Prime Minister on May 3rd 1979. We’re marking this moment in our political history with a look at the late Margaret Thatcher. She remains a deeply controversial and divisive figure, admired by many and disliked by others. We explore her symbolic importance as a female leader and look at her impact on women’s lives. Jenni Murray discusses how women’s participation in politics, society and the economy changed throughout the 1980s. We hear from those who met her and discuss why some continue to feel conflicted about her legacy.Presenter: Jenni Murray Producer: Ruth Watts Interviewed guest: Julia Langdon Interviewed guest: Caroline Slocock Interviewed guest: Anne McElvoy

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BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hello, Jenny Murray welcoming you to Wednesday's edition of the Woman's Hour podcast. Forty years ago, on the 3rd of May 1979, the UK elected its first woman Prime Minister. She, of course, hated the concept of a woman Prime Minister. And whenever I asked her how she dealt with being a woman Prime Minister and coping with all the references to her gender, whether it was the handbag or the hat, she would say, Jenny, I am not a woman Prime Minister, I am THE Prime Minister. Well, today we devote the whole programme to the late Margaret Thatcher. Why were feminists delighted and appalled

at her election, almost in equal measure? And what is the legacy for the rest of us after a new generation of young men, one of my sons included, said as it was announced John Major was to take over, but mum, I thought Prime Minister was a woman's job. On May 4th, as Mrs Thatcher came to Downing Street for the first time, she was interviewed for PM. There was much less security in those days and no gates. And the whole day's news buzzed with the excitement, shock and surprise at what had just happened. Have you got any thoughts, Mrs Thatcher, at this moment

about Mrs Pankhurst and your own mentor in political life, your own father? Well, of course, I just owe almost everything to my own father. I really do. He brought me up to believe all the things that I do believe, and they're just the values on which I fought the election. And it's passionately interesting to me that the things which I learned in a small town,

in a very modest home, are just the things which I believe have won the election. I would want to congratulate Mrs Thatcher on becoming Prime Minister. It's a great office, a wonderful privilege, and for a woman to occupy that office is I think a tremendous moment in the country's history. Madam, a great moment?

Yes, a great moment, yes. What's the best thing about it? Well, I really don't know. A woman Prime Minister, I'm sure. A very great moment. Perhaps the greatest moment in my life so far. Exactly, yes, I echo those sentiments. Marvellous. Why the excitement? Why the excitement here today?

Well, I just feel that perhaps we're coming back to sanity now and the country will be ruled as it ought to be ruled. People will do things for themselves instead of expecting others to do it for them. And the importance of a woman Prime Minister? Oh, I don't really know. She'll probably get down to the brass ropes of things, I think. Do you think she'll do a good job?

Yes, I'm sure she will. Yes. I'm sure she can't do it much worse. Do you think, finally, John, that she'll be a good Prime Minister? I was very interested to hear from one of the people that knows her well that she would be a different sort of Prime Minister. And he said that with a twinkle in his eye. And I said, but is she going to be good? And he said, she's going to be all right.

Well, joining us for the whole of today's programme are three women who lived through the period and knew the Prime Minister well. In 1989, Caroline Slocock became Mrs Thatcher's private secretary and the first woman to be private secretary to a prime minister. She's the author of People Like Us, Margaret Thatcher and Me. Anne McElvoy is senior editor at The Economist and Julia Langdon was Lobby Correspondent for The Guardian and from 1984 was Political Editor of The Daily Mirror. What, Julia, do you recall of that day, the 4th of May,

when the result was announced? Well, I was in Finchley Town Hall and it was enormously exciting. I'd been covering the election in Yorkshire and Lancashire, where there were a lot of crucial seats. And we have to remember that the exciting thing about it was the unknown aspect of having a woman as the candidate who might become prime minister. But let us remember remember governments lose elections and we knew that the Labour Party was in very serious trouble James Callaghan's government had been limping for for almost since he had taken over in 1976 we'd had the winter of discontent the government was

hugely unpopular and what had to be weighed in the balance was whether having, electing a woman as the leader of a party who was led by a woman, whether this was going to happen. So it was hugely exciting and eventually, of course, Mrs Thatcher's own constituency. It was terrific. And then we bussed down to Smith Square and Conservative Central Office and those who are old enough will remember the photographs of Mrs Thatcher waving from the first floor windows.

Anne, what do you recall of the day? So I was still at school. I was in secondary school in North West Durham. So a long way from Finchley in every possible sense and clearly not a Conservative area. The only language was Labour. And so I do remember that the Labour Party was in trouble and that that had seeped through, you know,

even to sort of teenage consciousness. And that there was a great ambiguity. There was, I think, certainly in my own household, I would guess that my mother, for the first time, voted Conservative. She'd had it with the Labour Party, she'd had it with the unions. She was in the health service and she thought they were too dominant. My father was sort of Labour to the core into his dying day. And so there was this whole sort of sense, which I think was going to go on,

of a new fragmentation and a new divide around this person. But on the day, I just remember thinking we have the first female prime minister. And I remember thinking that was very exciting. So I was a bit like that nightmare kind of child in a Carol Churchill play who thinks it's actually, wow, this is a wow moment. Caroline? Well, I was at university into my first year of my PhD on American fiction of the Vietnam War.

And, you know, somebody who spent a lot of time in the Virago bookshop in Camden Town. And, you know, I watched this on television and I suppose I felt sick, you know, because this was such a sort of intellectual and political turning point for the country. And I wasn't really registering her as the first female. I mean, obviously, I was, you know, like everybody,

aware that she was the first female prime minister. But what really affected me was her voice. I hated that speech that she gave, you know, the St. Francis of Assisi prayer. She just seemed so inauthentic and false in her presentation, so very different from how I imagined the next wave of sort of feminist power would be. And you would then go on much later. Presumably you would not have written that speech for her at that time.

No, it was actually written by Ronnie Miller. But no, you know, little did I know as I was sort of cycling around on my bicycle in Camden, that I was going to end up working for her and really having to kind of come to terms with someone who I regarded as a bit of a demon. Now, we heard a moment ago a woman in the street expressing her confidence that a woman in that position would simply get on with it, get down to the grassroots and be better than any that had gone before. But what generally was the response to a woman entering Downing Street and holding such power for the first time in the UK's history. Juliet, how did you observe her establishing herself and making it clear

to her cabinet that a woman would not be a weak leader? She'd had a few years as leader of the opposition. She had not been very popular in the House of Commons. Callaghan had kicked her around quite a lot during Prime Minister's questions. She wasn't liked, I don't think, publicly. She was particularly associated with having taken away schoolchildren's milk when she was Education Secretary. Mrs Thatcher, the milk snatcher she had been known as. She also had this very imperious manner. And we heard in the clip you played at the top of the programme,

the voice which Caroline understandably found irritating. She had had elocution lessons, of course, out of Grantham, but she hadn't yet had her voice lowered by the public relations that she embarked upon. So although it was an exciting time for women, she wasn't a popular figure. And I think the Conservative Party were very nervous about her. I knew her male colleagues, and I think they thought they would teach her a lesson,

and I think they learned pretty quickly that they weren't going to be able to. But her cabinet leaked. She did say at one point in her autobiography that the cabinet very early on had treated her like the cleaning lady. How would she have responded to that? Well, as anybody would, I mean, as any politician would, she obviously had to show them that she meant what she said, but she had difficulty controlling them, particularly between 79 and 82. That was a very hard time for her.

The economy didn't go well, things were not easy, and she had a lot of, well, we can look at them different ways, but people who did not share her politics. Do you remember the wet, wet, wet? She used to write wet. She scrawled it in the margins of her cabinet minutes. And she got rid of those people in a clear out in her first reshuffle. Now, Caroline, you joined the civil service in the early 80s.

What did you make of her from your perspective of actually having to work for her government? My first job was in the Department of Employment and I ended up there because I couldn't get a job as an academic which is what I hoped to do because Margaret Thatcher had cut the grants to arts departments. So it's quite ironic that I was in the Department of Employment and what I saw was this extraordinary cultural change that she was creating across the civil service. I mean, the Department of Employment was the creation of labour. You know, it was really there for the trade unions. And Norman Tebbit was bringing in a whole succession of legislation,

which was curbing union power. And what I also saw and became part of slightly later was how she was bringing in business disciplines into government and trying to force it to become much more efficient and much more like business. I took forward something called the Next Steps Agency Project which was part of that but it was like turning a massive juggernaut round. And what I realised when I went into number 10 later on in my career was that, you know, there was this woman with about 100 people, far fewer than currently in number 10, it's a much bigger operation nowadays, really taking on the whole of government, you know, not just taking on the wets in her cabinet, but taking on the whole of the establishment. An thing to do and she did it really well you know I think she had lots of techniques but

you know one of them was just this sort of sheer grit and determination of just never giving up there was some strong cultural reactions to her and spitting image made much of her she was a target of the the satire boom that that happened in the early 80s how much do those responses tell us about her it's interesting isn't it because you look back on it now and think golden age of satire and spitting image margaret thatcher and the cabinet with norman tebbett there in his sort of black leather, as a sort of thug beating up the poor wets. So you were just talking about absolutely golden moments of satire. Also, she had the features.

One has to say she had the features for satire. She had quite sharp features, those intense eyes. She was very, very good to draw or to represent. But I do think when you look back on it now, so much of it would not pass muster on the sexism test. I was fascinated. Julia reminded us very well about the reaction to her voice. Of course, voice is incredibly important in politics.

People have to retrain their voices and get better at making their case. But a lot of it was a complaint that her voice was a woman's voice and therefore it had to be changed. And I think some of that kind of when I look back now to what was sort of acceptable to say and remain acceptable even among people whose values would generally have been that you should you know should not treat women differently you should not kind of ask them to be men but thought it was perfectly all right to portray her as some kind of inhumane female so I do think there was a very double-edged feeling

about the time. What were your feelings about going to Downing Street? Well, you know, it was, I had very mixed feelings about her. I think looking back now, I realise that in some ways I had, despite the fact I was a feminist, you know, I had quite a kind of sexist view of her. You know, I saw her as headmistress the fact I was a feminist, I had quite a sexist view of her. I saw her as headmistressy. I was very affected by the spitting image view of her as a sort of old hag, sort of in men's clothing.

And the word had gone out over a long period of time that she would not accept a woman in my role. And the Department of Employment was in charge of equalities legislation, decided to just ignore that and put me forward. So, and, you know, incredibly, she interviewed me and she gave me the job. But, you know, I was terrified of her because of that, because I thought she hates women. And just really not knowing what to expect. And the woman that I found was actually very different from the woman, you know, the spitting image uh you know um puppet uh and all that did you find what was well I mean you know the first my first experience of her when she interviewed me was she came down you know from

the flat above number 10 as it was then uh with a bowl of blue hyacinths and she said Caroline I brought these down for you and she set them them down between us as she interviewed me, that kind of blue fragrance. She was much more empathetic and sympathetic than one might imagine, but particularly with people with whom she wasn't in some kind of power struggle. She loved, you know, I think she loved the company of men, like many women do. And I think she enjoyed being the centre of attention.

And I think she was, you know was she liked the men around her but I think she also liked those powerful men on the international stage but when it came to men who were threatening her I think she could be quite aggressive and I think it's that problem really of how do you assert your power and it's very difficult for women

more difficult then, even still difficult now to be aggressive because in men that's seen as authoritative and in women it's very difficult for women, more difficult then, even still difficult now, to be aggressive because, you know, in men that's seen as authoritative and as a woman it's seen as bullying. Julian, I know you travelled with her on overseas trips. What were attitudes to her in different cultures? Oh, well, how long have you got? I mean, in Africa they thought she was the queen and wherever we, they thought she was the queen. And wherever we travel, people thought she was the queen. I went with her on her first trip to the Soviet Union, which was a remarkable one. And she was incredibly glamorous there. If I could just go back a little bit, I just want to say she did manage to modernise herself quite quickly in terms of the cultural aspect of what she looked and sounded like.

When she first arrived she had pussycat bows at the neck and I remember a quote because I used it mercilessly about her saying that when she came in at home she'd put there was a piece, she was saying

how incredibly efficient she was at running the household and how we all ought to be like that and she'd put the supper in the oven before I took my hat off And who doesn't do that? I mean it's just such an image, but of course if we think back 40 years

the women in the Tory party at that time at the Conservative conferences, they were all still wearing hats. What did they make of her in Germany? Because you were a student in Germany and then worked in Germany for a while and of course Germany's had quite a

long senior woman in power since then. What did they make of her? Well, when I first went to Germany, I suppose, for my school days and beginnings of student days, it was Helmut Schmidt, a very pragmatic social democrat who you would have thought would

have been aligned on security because he was fighting this big battle over security. He was very pro-NATO. A lot of Germany wasn't. It's all there in sort of Deutschland 83, Deutschland 86 territory. And he said, she's a great prime minister for the 19th century. So it was interesting, this view that she was sort of historic and monumental, but he was of that era, that sort of Schmidt-Brandt era

when politics was sort of, you know, you were supposed to get close to the people. And I think he just couldn't get along with it. And Helmut Kohl came after. That's really the period that I then started to cover as a journalist at the fall of the wall where she then plays a role because she opposes the unification of Germany a huge mistake in my book not that she was listening to me but that was you know very much she distrusted Germany and that was partly because she could not get along with Helmut Kohl they were two alike they both had you played that clip about the lower middle class background the aspirational values but they they were fighty you know it's like two putting two uh two scorpions in

the jar there they could not get along at all well thank you very much for the moment still to come in today's program the problem mrs thatcher presented to the feminist movement great the pm was a woman but did it have to be a woman who said she was not a feminist? And her legacy, what impact did she have on opportunities for the rest of us? Now, earlier in the week, you may have missed a few treats from the Woman's Hour Archive in 1979, including me sounding incredibly posh, and yesterday Val Law, who was a constituency agent in Lancashire in 1979. You can find the podcast by downloading the BBC Sounds app. Now let's just remind ourselves of the period during which she ruled, 11 years from 1979 to 1990,

a time when it became more respectable for a woman, even if she had children, to continue to work or at least return when they were at school. Of course, Mrs T had never stopped working during the youth of her twins. Here's her answer to my question about helping with childcare coming up in a moment. Get back, say come back now. Get back to where you once belonged, I say. Get back, get back. I had always had the idea the thing to do was to keep working even for only part-time so that you kept your brain ticking over.

But it was hard. In many parts of the country, services for the under-fives have been allowed to disappear. I mean, curiously, there are now less than half the places in public nurseries than there were in 1945. Get back, get on back Get back, get back to where you once belonged Two celebrated working mothers highlighting the problems women face when they return to paid employment after a career break.

And yet this is supposed to be a golden age for women returners. The drop in the number of school leavers coming into the job market should mean that employers will be actively seeking and encouraging women who want to return. In January, Women's Hour, with support from the Employment Department Group, launched its Back to the Future initiative, offering help and advice. There have been eight conferences for would-be returners, held all over Britain, which have been broadcast on Woman's Hour. And on each of those days

there's been a free and confidential helpline available, with 70 advisors to take your calls. And that was all from the Woman's Hour archive and by the way, the woman in the middle was Princess Anne. Now, there's no doubt Mrs Thatcher's election presented a dilemma for the feminist movement. You'd hear mutterings about her lack of enthusiasm

for the provision of childcare when she'd had a rich husband to pay for her nanny, not a privilege available to most women. But at the same time, there was delight that a woman had made it to the very top. And why has the charge that she was no feminist been made so often? And how fair is it? Well, it's fair to the extent that she made clear herself that she didn't see herself as being part of or a product

of the 60s and 70s feminist wave and the ideology or the dominant ideology of feminism uh as sort of collectivist endeavor would not have appealed to her where i think it is not fair is the argument and i still hear it quite a lot it's in the way it's kind of back with the new and very reactive politics around us is that she somehow doesn't count because she wasn't a feminist of the approved stamp, because I think that's a limiting view of feminism. And I think she clearly was, and I think she said feminist, as Charles Pearl, her very close advisor, said to me, of course, the problem was not that she didn't think women were as good as she thought women were generally

better. So she had a kind of old-fashioned view that men needed women to boss them around. But either way, she makes such an impact as a woman in power. I remember the sheer longevity of her time, well over a decade, the three terms. She absolutely is a powerful woman who changed the country and changed the settlement. So I think to say, oh, we're not going to counter. What good is it her being there as a character character says in the play, I was just watching last week, if it's her, is, I think, a bit puny. And you don't have to be a Thatcherite to think that that possibly is not a very good way of looking at her.

Julia, what was the impact of her speaking about her father? We heard in that very first interview on the day that we found out that she was Prime Minister, she spoke about her father, she didn't enter into conversation about Pankhurst, and then we know that she dismissed her mother. How did that influence the way the feminist movement saw her? Well, her mother was not an important figure in her life. Her father had taught her that she could do anything and had encouraged her. However, don't let's forget, there's a clip somewhere of her saying to a group of schoolchildren,

I don't think a woman will be prime minister in my lifetime. So she didn't actually, early on as a politician, she didn't think she was going to get there. She, I think, surprised herself with the way in which she cut through the middle. The Tory party, of course, when she got the leadership, she was the least worst option in a way, in the way that these things happen. She was not seen as a feminist. The Labour party thought she represented everything that was awful about the Tory woman. But she did help women in her way. I mean, she was extremely nice to me. And as I know Caroline will tell us from her very close involvement,

she was immensely kind to people. I once was on her plane when I was pregnant and I made the worst mistake of my life. She said, come and sit and lie on my bed, dear, on a five-hour flight or something. And I thought, five hours? And I said, oh, I'll be all right here on the floor, thanks, Mrs Thatcher. And stayed in the riffraff cabin with my colleagues.

I mean, what an idiot of me. I mean, had I taken that opportunity... You could have had so many stories from that. Nevertheless, at the time, I was very pregnant and I was happier with myself and not with her. But she was extremely nice to me. Caroline, she spoke often about the importance of the individual and their families.

How did that sit with you? You've already declared that you were a feminist, are a feminist. I think it's part of why feminists have had a difficulty with her. And I wrote several speeches with her about Women 1 to the 300 group, which is about getting equal numbers of women in Parliament. She was very sincere, very sincere about the importance of equality and the value that women would bring

if there were more of them in power. But she only appointed one woman to the Cabinet. Exactly. She was full of contradictions in this respect and I think I've thought about it a lot and I think it's true that she did not support women.

And these speeches that we wrote about women quite quickly gravitated to the family and the importance of family life. And I think she had inside herself, you know, contradictory feelings about the value of women working, but also the importance of the family as a conservative. And she very much wanted to preserve family life and actually told me that she thought that women shouldn't be working with very young children unless they had what she called a treasure at home. But I think a lot of women, in fairness, do struggle with this sense of guilt about being a mother. I'm a mother, too. And, you know, have we done damage to our children? So and as a conservative, that was her focus. But of course, it was very it was swimming against the tide of history.

You know, her son divorced, her daughter never married. You know, it was it was swimming against the tide for women. But did she not share the politics of the second wave of feminism at all? Or was it simply that she was a different generation? I think she believed in equality. In that sense, she was a feminist. But what she didn't believe in is collective action. And I think Anne put her finger on that precisely. She believed in individual power,

and her view was that if you were good enough, you'd get on. And women didn't need a helping hand. And she didn't put a ladder down. Yeah, and she certainly didn't. And I heard a story, which only very recently, from the head of the policy unit, Brian Griffiths, who'd managed to get one woman in, the first woman into the policy unit under her, you know, under her period and had asked her, you know, if that would be all right. She said yes. But then he came back to us, you know,

let's get a second woman in. And she said, Brian, I think we should do see how the first one does, don't you? You know, that's really treating women like an alien species. It is, but I think... Sorry, Jodie. No, I was going to say, is it fair to judge a woman politician differently from the way that we would judge a man? Why would we expect her to be different just because she's a woman? It's a really good point. And I think one of the things I was just thinking of in the back of what Caroline was saying was,

hang on, the fact that the policy unit was overwhelmingly male and actually remained so for many, many years was also because a lot of men had made it that way. So she was, and I think we're a little bit in danger of being ahistorical. A lot of workplaces thought like that, that you could have, and certainly a lot of journalism, when I came into it,

you'd have one woman on the top team, but you don't want two, because God knows what will happen then, you know. You know, they'll fight each other or there'll be some sort of thing that you can't control. So don't forget that she was, as well as having her own views, which were contradictory, Caroline, you're completely right about that. But I think it was very much more the way that things rolled then.

I think I would say, I think she was very contradictory. It was interesting that point, which is quite a stinging one from Princess Anne. She was not good on anything to do with childcare, maternity leave, all of those things that were coming out of this sort of equal rights legislation that Labour had put forward. That wasn't where her focus was. She was somehow conflicted between her conservatism, which wanted women to stay at home and keep the family together,

and her free market liberalism, her sort of classical liberalism, which was all about aspiration and opportunity. So you tend to find that critics go down one of the two roads. But in fact, she was a bit of a funny mixture of both. That's also what made her so electable. Well, the odd thing is, as emerged in an unpreviously recorded interview that we found this week from a Conservative publication, is that she said herself that she regarded herself as a drudge

when she was working at home. Oh, yes, I've seen that. Yes, it was in the newspapers. When she was having twins, after she had twins, she said, I regarded myself as nothing more than a drudge. But I quickly found that with a bit of organisation, I could fit in eight hours' work a day. And the point is this issue that if you can do it, you're good.

And it was the one, you know, I can do it, therefore anyone can do it. I'm not going to help anybody else necessarily. Well, by 1990, Mrs Thatcher's time in Downing Street was over. She became Baroness Thatcher. And when she died in 2013, there was lots of discussion about what

her legacy had actually been. There was a reluctance to erect memorials to her in Westminster and in Grantham, although there will be a statue in her hometown despite protests. So what did she actually achieve, and what effect did her prominence during the 80s have on the advancement of women in politics and the workplace, simply because she was there? Caroline, how significant was her premiership as an example? Would women's participation in education and the labour market have happened without her being there? I think she was influential with women.

She said herself that she received thousands of letters from women when she became Prime Minister, congratulating her and seeing her as a role model. And clearly what did happen over the 80s and the 90s and the years that followed is that more women have gone into positions of power. I think the problem with Margaret Thatcher is that we haven't fully embraced her as a woman, partly because of the issues that Anne was talking about, the kind of ultimate sexism.

You know, we've seen her in that special category of women who, like Elizabeth I, you know, a sort of not really a woman, more a man, more balls than a man. Or as Robert Cecil said about Elizabeth I when she died, more than a man and something less than a woman. So we haven't actually seen her as a role model. In fact, it's worked the other way around, that there's still this kind of lingering view that powerful women have to leave their femininity at the door and that she's a kind of shining example of that. So she hasn't been quite the role model she should be. And I don't think we've celebrated her

achievements, which were considerable in getting to that position and holding it for so very long and being so influential. We haven't celebrated it enough as women. And individual taxation was one of the important things that she did. A woman being taxed separately from her husband, it was introduced by her. Would the feminist argument have figured in her thinking? I find it difficult to think that she sat down with that kind of budget coming up and thought, what am I going to do here for the feminist cause? I don't think she thought that at all.

But I do think she thought it was simply common sense and she had a very sort of dominating sort of idea of what common sense was. And obviously it excluded some things that others would think were common sense but women who go to work should be taxed separately she had a sense of herself and it'd be interesting what we what you made of that carol i think she both saw herself as part of that marriage with dennis he was absolutely key to being there for so long and supporting and sometimes balancing her but i think she would

simply say well if a woman is out there doing different things and bringing in her own income, she should be taxed separately. And I could see her just going down that line as a matter of course. What do you think? When I wrote the speech for her to the 300 group, she told me to include independent taxation as a critical thing. And she did see it as part of equality. Juliet, it was some seven years after her

that women joined the Commons in significant numbers, and that originally was under Tony Blair. What was her legacy for women in politics, do you think, encouraging more to come in? Yes, and she showed it could be done and she showed that she was an extremely competent and capable Prime Minister, whether or not she was a woman.

I mean, her femininity, which was considerable, by the way. We haven't really mentioned her femininity. But I think one thing we've missed out here, we want to look at the political overview. She was hugely disliked because of her industrial policies. She completely closed manufacturing industry. She put a whole generations of people out of work.

And then there was the miners' strike. Now, these are large groups of industrial people who still resent her legacy and don't look at it in terms of men or women. They look at it as a Conservative Prime Minister who rendered their lives less happy. Caroline, you worked on some of the policies. How do you look back on things like that? I completely agree. When I was, before I went to number 10, I worked in the Manpower Services Commission in Sheffield and I learned to drive where the old steel mills were there with their shattered windows, you know, completely dead. And when I was working for Margaret Thatcher, I was going out on visits with her and sort of seeing the new world that was rising. We went to Canary Wharf and we went to the top of the highest building

and looked down in wonder at all that she was creating, if you like. You know, it's the, that, you know, the rise of service industries in the South and that prosperity and the collapse of manufacturing in the North, which is, you know, we're still living in that world. And, you know, I think Brexit is partly an expression, actually, of that legacy. I think it's been very damaging. There are quite thatch-right parts of the country also vote for Brexit and prosperous parts of the country as well, which I think we can't just forget. But her legacy, Anne, is still so hugely contested.

Why does it show no sign of resolving? Because she's a monumental figure. And monumental figures are more likely to produce that polarisation than those. You go, sort of, John Major. Yeah, was he quite good? Or why in the end did it not work out? You know, remind me. So that would be a perhaps unfair comparison.

And he was coming at the end of a very long period of her rule. I think the reason is if you've got 30 years of British politics, there's only two people running them, Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair. And John Major, uncomfortably, sandwiched in the middle. Let's not forget that Tony Blair, sorry, that John Major won that election in 92, which Mrs Thatcher would never have won. Yes, true enough. But I mean, let's do another show on John Major. But see, I think this monumentalism of Tully's...

Tony Blair basically accepts the Thatcherite settlement. He never goes out and gives a speech. He takes it forward. He nuances it. He tries to deal with the parts of the country, including my own. It felt very, very hard done by the North East, I mean, by Mrs Thatcher.

And I think, but nonetheless, broadly, the settlement goes on. The ruin to David Cameron modernises it a bit, a bit greener, a bit younger, a bit more, you know, sort of digital. And it's only really when we come to the present period that you see that sort of shattering in politics being remade. So that's one reason. The other is simply, as we can't really agree on where she stands, but we know that she's in some way important. There's a kind of discomfort of if I put up a statue in my town or part of London, will I get into trouble? So I think there is still, she still makes people nervous, but in a way, I don't think she'd have minded. Caroline, what would you say is behind the failure to put up a statue of her in Parliament

Square, the first female prime minister in this country? Well, you know, I think that the first female that was put up in Parliament Square was a good choice. But I do think... And it was only last year. And it was only last year. After a high lot of... But I do think that, you know,

part of the reason why she excites such strong feelings, you remember people were burning effigies of her as a witch when she died in 2013. Yeah, that's nicely said. It is because she's a woman. I think culturally we find it very hard to come to terms with powerful, truly powerful women. And we haven't come to terms with Margaret Thatcher,

and it doesn't help that I think we're still seeing the world through her eyes. Shockingly, people, even myself, who's not a political supporter, I think within politics, a lot of the things which she established, the small state, the enterprise economy, home-owning democracy, these have become

norms. But when she first came to power in 1979, they seemed slightly loopy. But they've become the cultural norms and I think she hangs over us as a powerful female figure. If she was a man, I think there would be a statue up there, undoubtedly. Will this same sort of thing happen to any of the male prime ministers of recent years, that they can elicit such vitriol? Julia?

Well, Tony Blair's doing quite well at eliciting vitriol, I mean for his part in the Iraq war, I mean he's a very unpopular figure in the Labour Party I'd just like to tell a little anecdote about when Mrs Thatcher left office and I had lunch with a cabinet minister who arrived from a cabinet

meeting and said it, the first one under John Major and said how different it was because there wasn't any of that nagging. Where's my legislation? Why haven't you got one? It's so sexist there. I know, it was terrible. I was talking to Julia Langdon,

Caroline Slowcock and Anne McElvoy and we have unsurprisingly had a lot of response from you. Andrea said, I was a fervent feminist, I thought, but although pleased to see a woman in the top job, I took it as unread that she would of course have to step aside should the country face a war. When the Argentinian army took over the Falklands, I even wondered which of the cabinet would step up. I am embarrassed to recall this memory. Eileen said, I met Mrs Thatcher when she visited the Occidental offices in Aberdeen, immediately after Piper Alpha with Armand Hammer.

She seemed genuinely kind, sympathetic and interested in my role during the emergency. I had not been particularly a fan until then. Her intensity during our conversation and her knowledge impressed me, thoroughly enjoying today's programme. Jan said Mrs Thatcher did not have a feminist bone in her body. She destroyed mining communities in the north of England and showed no sympathy for the women struggling to keep their communities and families together. She came on a visit to the school where I taught. She was only interested in meeting the mainly male senior management team.

Helena said, I do feel as a Prime Minister Mrs Thatcher made a massive difference to all the poor income households, enabling them to buy their council houses. We as a family encouraged our carer as recently as last year to buy her council house when we discovered how much rent she was paying to the council. I feel as a Prime Minister Mrs Thatcher made a huge difference to this country and made it a better place. Someone who didn't want us to use a name said, just heard your piece on the 79 elections and I too was a first-time voter. It's no exaggeration to say that I've lived with regret ever since. I was brought up in a non-conformist Christian home which didn't vote, believing that

the outcome of elections was best left to God. But that's not why I regret voting. No, firstly, I voted because a boyfriend told me to. He couldn't because he was away from home, so I would be voting for him. Yeah, right. I'd like to say that was the last time I did something because a boyfriend told me to, but I would be lying. I think I'm over that now. Secondly, he told me to vote Conservative and I did. Never again. I sometimes feel I was personally responsible for the entire debacle of the 1980s Thatcher government. The upside though is that guilt has made me try to compensate by voting left of centre in every election, general, by-election and local since. Mystic b said many women of her generation wanted to be more like men because men held the power i can't stand her policies or legacy but she was our first female

pm labour my party has never had a female leader ludicrous ill parmenter said she consciously took on male trays to fit in and support with the patriarchal system, and she denied the need for feminism. Men accepted her as a leader because she shared values and ideologies that privileged male people over females. Rebecca McKnight said not agreeing with her political views and decisions gets intertwined and confused with, in my view, her positive attributes. Thatcher was a scientist, barrister, mother, politician, a hard-working, trend-setting female at the top of her profession. Beverly Thomas said Margaret Thatcher did nothing for women. It was under Labour that we first saw

the percentage of women coming into politics go up, more women given cabinet positions. Under Labour, various initiatives were set up to support working women, definitely not via Thatcher. Tanya said, just by being there, making decisions and getting on with the job, I think she did help to push women on. So what if she didn't wear pink? Not all women like pink. And Lucy Nithsinger said she succeeded in a man's world by being stronger and tougher than the men. I can admire her hard work and courage,

but I don't want that to be the model for successful women or men. We need a politics that values compassion and supports the vulnerable across society. So thank you for all your very varied comments on the Thatcher era and her impact. Now tomorrow I'll be talking to Leah Harvey and Aisling Loftus about taking on the roles of Hortense and Queenie in the theatrical adaptation of Andrea Levy's Small Island. It begins its run at the National Theatre. And the author Natalie Haynes joins us to talk about her new novel, A Thousand Ships.

She reimagines the story of the Trojan War from an all-female perspective. That's tomorrow, two minutes past ten. Do join me if you can. Bye-bye. Oi, you. While you're here, have a listen to this, would you? Forest, forest, forest. An environmental thriller for BBC sales.

I'm so sorry. Meet Pan. Oh, I did. She lives a few centuries from now, after a data crash that wiped out most records of life. Shonk! So when she finds an old recording of a rainforest, she has no idea what it is.

Forest 404, nine-part thriller, nine-part talk, nine-part soundscape. Starring Pearl Mackie, Tanya Moody and Pippa Haywood with theme music by Bonobo. Subscribe now on BBC Sounds. Subscribe now on BBC Sounds. Subscribe now. I'm Sarah Trelevan, and for over a year, I've been working on one of the most complex stories I've ever covered. There was somebody out there who was faking pregnancies.

I started, like, warning everybody. Every doula that I know. It was fake. No pregnancy. And the deeper I dig, the more questions I unearth. How long has she been doing this? What does she have to gain from this? From CBC and the BBC World Service, The Con, Caitlin's Baby.

It's a long story, settle in. Available now.