Extract from The Goldfish Bowl
Married to the Prime Minister 1955-1997 (with Cherie Booth)
Chapter 4 - MARY WILSON
Moving into No 10 was not an easy transition. Unlike her predecessors, she had no experience of high Ministerial office, and no familiarity whatsoever with the workings of the Civil Service machine or of living in an official government residence. But she was determined to do the job well, guided by a powerful sense of duty: ‘If you’re going to do it, you must jolly well do it to the best of your ability, or you’re a bit of a wimp.’ She told a reporter: ‘Of course, in the beginning, everything seemed strange…. I got thrown in at the deep end.’ ‘It was tougher at first than I thought it would be. I remember the first few days when I was physically sick every morning with the nervous tension involved. But slowly one gets used to it. When you’re Prime Minister’s wife you’re very much on your mettle.’ She was ‘inclined to flap a little’ if she felt she was not doing the job properly – ‘I make a mistake and then I wake up about three in the morning and start to think about it…. I wish I were more like Harold. If Harold woke up at three in the morning, he’d say, “Good Lord. It’s three o’clock in the morning. What am I doing awake?” And he’d turn over and go back to sleep at once.’
It was a wrench to abandon her home. As Mary fitted into the larger No 10 machine, she felt control of her private life slipping from her: ‘It’s difficult, because you’re translated from being a wife, mother, gardener, cook in your own little kingdom and plonked in that flat up there – you can’t even hang a picture on the wall without asking permission of the Ministry of Works. And it is a big thing. And proud as you are of your husband and think it’s absolutely wonderful, you yourself have to do it and it isn’t easy.’
There was no-one there to guide her through the maze. Like all Prime Minister’s spouses, Mary had to find her own way around. Nobody showed her the ropes. She invariably had to ask. The atmosphere was not unwelcoming, she says, ‘except that I couldn’t get to know anything’. She was upset that she didn’t get her own letters – ‘they used to go down to the office down below, and …they said, “Well, Mrs Attlee always let her letters go down below”, and I said, “Well, I want my own letters.” So consequently I got all the death threats and everything, but I did have my own letters to go through for myself. They used to send picture of graves, and “your husband will…’” At their first Christmas, the Wilsons were told that they personally had to pay for all Christmas cards and stamps; only after probing did they discover the previous custom – that the official machine paid for all cards except those to their political and personal friends.
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As Prime Minister’s wife, Mary saw her role as ‘supporting Harold as far as I could, in every way I could, if I could. But it wasn’t defined. Everybody has to make up their own minds what to do.’ She went to the House of Commons every Tuesday and Thursday to watch Harold from the Ladies Only Speaker’s Gallery at Prime Minister’s Question Time and was there during major debates. At meetings and Party Conferences, her function was ‘to be there. To be with him. On the platform. In the background. I don’t think of my function as a positive one,’ she told a reporter. It was the role of a Prime Minister’s wife ‘to be unobtrusive at times of crisis, to be as wise as a serpent, harmless as a dove’.
She had no wish to take an active part in his everyday political life. ‘Harold’s work was Harold’s work, and it didn’t involve me in that sense,’ she says. ‘There are plenty of people around to advise him and discuss important things with him’, she told a reporter. ‘Sometimes I ask him questions… At the end of the day he is sparkling and stimulating. He likes me to ask him questions because he positively enjoys telling me the answers.’ Attacks on Harold upset her, be they from the press or members of his own party, and she could be fiercely partisan, refusing to speak to people who had undermined him, even though she had concluded early on that, unlike her, he loved a row: ‘Harold is aggressive, you see. He’s never more himself than when he’s hitting out. He likes a good stand-up fight. After a first class fracas, he comes in looking as if he’s had a day off on the golf course.’
They understood each other well: ‘They actually thought the same things about people and used to have a laugh with the same jokes about the person concerned. She was a perfect foil for him,”’Marcia Falkender says. One Labour Party Official, Tom McNally, found her serene – ‘a very quiet and self-effacing but substantial presence in his life’. A later aide, Bernard Donoughue, thought she provided a ‘total respectability, total sense of decency. All those nonconformist values which he was brought up with, she demonstrated.’ Harold recognised her contribution, once suggesting to his Press Adviser, Trevor Lloyd Hughes, that they should let the press know that ‘Mary is my secret weapon’, an idea eventually turned down but nevertheless keenly felt by Wilson. It was his way of saying that he appreciated what she did behind the scenes. Though not effusive about Mary in public, Harold was fiercely loyal: he wanted to say to the press, ‘Watch out, lads… if you attack Mary, you’re attacking me.’
Mary did not make political speeches: ‘because I thought, in the first place, I wasn’t responsible to any constituency, and in the second place, I didn’t want to criticise, throw a spanner in the works in any way, so I kept quiet. I don’t mean to say I didn’t think.’ Even though she did not always support the policies, and was against Britain’s entry into the Common Market, for instance, she never publicly disagreed with him: ‘I thought, well, his job’s hard enough as it is. He doesn’t want me saying things…I thought, no, just don’t be there, just abstain. For goodness sake, don’t make it harder for him.’
This did not mean that she toed the Party line and she made friends across the political spectrum. When MP John Stonehouse was in disgrace pending charges of fraud (having contrived his own disappearance on pretence of drowning) Mary, who considered him a friend, warmly shook his hand when they met in public: ‘It was so funny, because I said to Joe Haines (Wilson’s Press Secretary) and Harold. “Oh I’ve been photographed shaking hands with – I never thought”. And you could see the wheels going round in their heads – “How is this for publicity, is this good? Is this bad?” I never thought about it…. Because it’s so rotten thinking oh, better not, just in case, better not to speak to him although he hasn’t been sentenced yet. Well, that’s why I’ve got so many friends who go to prison, it seems,’ she laughs, ‘I like rogues, you see. That’s my trouble.’ Regardless of party affiliation, she admired good speakers including Churchill, Nye Bevan, Michael Foot. Northern Ireland MP, Ian Paisley, though a ‘terrible man’, preached ‘a fiery sermon – just the sort of sermon my father used to preach.’ Conservative MP Enoch Powell: ‘used to bring the sentence round and finish it nicely – beautiful.’
Chapter 6 - DENIS THATCHER
The Conservatives under Margaret Thatcher won the election by a comfortable majority of 43. Denis went with her to the constituency count, then drove down for celebrations at Conservative Central Office, where he waved and smiled proudly behind a jubilant Margaret. Next afternoon, (4 May) at 3pm the family were gathered at Conservative Central Office waiting for the call to Buckingham Palace. ‘Margaret sits down once more in the upright chair. Presently she kicks off her shoes and flexes her toes; they play nervously with her high-heeled court footwear. Denis wonders aloud if she has the Palace confused with a Hindu temple. She cuts him short with a look but steps back into her shoes,’ Ronnie Millar recorded. When the call came, she ‘reappears in her most business-like manner. “Right. We’re off,” she says briskly. “Prime Minister,” says her son, Mark. “Not yet, dear,” “No,” from Denis, “the car might break down”.’ At the Palace, Denis, Carol and Mark waited in an ante-room attended by ladies in waiting, while Margaret went though the ceremonial with the Queen.
On their return to Downing Street filled with surging, cheering crowds, Denis watched from the No 10 doorway as Margaret stepped forward to the waiting microphones to deliver her controversial St Francis of Assisi speech: ‘Where there is discord, may we bring harmony, where there is error, may be bring truth, where there is doubt, may we bring faith, and where there is despair, may we bring hope.’ Cameras flashed as they both waved then turned inside to be greeted by applause from those assembled in the hall, before Margaret disappeared with her political staff: ‘Denis, Mark and I were suddenly surplus to requirements and no-one quite knew what to do with us. The Callaghans had not yet moved out of the Prime Minister’s private flat above Number Ten, and my parents wouldn’t move in for another month. “A car will take you back to Flood Street,” a messenger told us,’ Carol recalled. Denis departed to their flat at Scotney Castle for the weekend and that evening he settled down to his favourite supper of baked beans on toast.
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They moved into the No 10 flat on June 4. From then on, Denis’s golf clubs were a fixture (and possibly a statement of his semi-detachment ) in the hall. He valued his independence. With the Downing Street officials’ activity centred on his wife, ‘I never asked them to do anything for me, ever, ever, ever,’ he said. Denis ‘had developed a confidence that he would do exactly what he wanted to do, and would not allow any officials to get in his way. He would do it quite nicely, and he might joke at them and he might even say, “Oh come on, get out of my way, I want to get out of here”, but it wouldn’t be personal,’ Harvey Thomas, recalls. He did not expect or want to be taken into account by the Downing Street officials: ‘He was very independent, very undemanding, he didn’t want to be a nuisance’ Robin Butler, Cabinet Secretary, says, though he was viewed as ‘part of the team’ surrounding Mrs Thatcher. But his friend, Bill Deedes, says ‘I thought they didn’t treat him very well, quite honestly [It was] slightly like Buckingham Palace. Slightly – the Monarch, and nothing else counts. There were occasions when he was treated very much as if he was almost a non-figure while she was here – “the Prime Minister is the Prime Minister and her spouse is nothing to do with us.’”
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Denis made sure he kept up a busy social life outside politics. Denis disappearing over Horse Guard Parade to lunch or dinner at one of his clubs was a regular sight at No 10 – ‘out of the front door and into the night, wearing his black cloak and cane, a sort of Dracula figure,’ Charles Powell remembers. He insisted on walking everywhere or he travelled by tube or bus on his Senior Citizens pass. Few people stopped him on public transport, though when he was accosted in a bar in Berkeley Square by a drunken man who announced, ‘you’re Denis Thatcher,’ he said, “‘I’m absolutely bloody sick of this! I know I look like him, but I’m sick to death of people mistaking me for him. Go away!” So it ended up that this chap kept bringing people up to us to say, “I’d like you to meet this man who’s not Denis Thatcher,”’ Tim Bell recalls.
To his great regret, on arrival at No 10 he was advised (by Conservative Central office) to get rid of his elderly Rolls Royce which he loved driving, but it was thought that such a symbol of wealth would damage Mrs Thatcher’s image. He exchanged it for a modest battered Ford Cortina: ‘Gave us nightmares. Denis wasn’t always abstemious and now and again the damn thing would appear with dents in it and Special Branch would set out to investigate what he had hit on the way,’ says Charles Powell. Denis adamantly rejected Security protection, except for one brief period of high alert, because: ‘he refused to accept that he was a proper public figure, and it would look as if he was exaggerating himself. “Nobody’s going to waste the price of a bullet on me”. When the security gates were erected at Downing Street, he was furious about that. It was as though he was being put in prison, being locked up,’ Tim Bell says, while at Chequers, ‘he used to walk through the “Magic Eyes”, quite deliberately and set the alarms off. He’d go and practice his pitch and putting and deliberately do it so that the ball would break all the security barriers.’
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As Prime Ministerial spouse in what everyone saw as a very close marriage, Denis was the stable element, the solid, undemanding presence in her life: ‘It came to him naturally to be subsidiary to the woman whom he enormously admired and was prepared to do anything to help,’ Bill Deedes, observed. He paid attention to Margaret and it was clear to all that he idolised her: ‘He’d always keep saying what a wonderful Prime Minister she was, and that she was just great. He was so much in love with her, that was very obvious, and it was very touching really…. On the other hand, he was never really possessive…..He was just so devoted to her that if she wanted something then he would just do it. I think he was also very aware that she was a great figure on the world stage, and she deserved nothing less,’ one adviser says. Margaret reciprocated with ‘huge respect for Denis as a person. She never dismissed his view. He was seen as a person with a real point of view that had to be addressed and thought through.’ She was obviously very fond of him, according to Tim Bell, and they were ‘very, very affectionate – a sort of 1950’s affection. They didn’t kiss and cuddle, but they touched hands and they would sit close together and walk with each other and he’d put his arm through hers and she’d put her arm through his.’
His calming influence made a great difference to the tension level. Denis, as with other spouses living in the hothouse, saw this as part of his role: ‘I could smooth her down when she was crisis ridden. To some extent I could bring her back to reality – they [her close political aides] can get divorced from what the hell’s going on, you know. I was talking to different people all the time, so I was in a different ball-game.’ Robin Butler, Cabinet Secretary, as well as many other officials, knew his value during tense late-night sessions: ‘When there was real trouble and she was rampaging about something,’ and it would go on till two in the morning: ‘Denis would sit there in the corner of the room, when he’d obviously clearly love to be in bed. And he was the only person who could say, at just the right moment – he always knew the right moment to say it, “Now, my dear, I don’t think this is going to get any easier tonight, why don’t we pack it up now and have a look at it in the morning?” And she would say, “All right, then”.’
His common-sense and irreverence provided a safety valve: ‘She would say, “Well, Denis, he is the Prime Minister of France, I do have to” – “it doesn’t alter the fact that he’s a complete pain in the arse!” And this was a great relief for her, that somebody was [so] non-deferential,’ Tim Bell recalls. ‘With his dry sense of humour and slow smile, he had the knack of de-fusing a panic,’ their daughter Carol says. “‘Come off it, love,” he’d say when she was in the middle of a tantrum, “let’s get relaxed”, and offer her a drink. Sometimes when a storm was brewing, someone from the Private Office would give Denis prior warning so that he could batten down the hatches.’ Margaret once told a reporter: ‘When I’m in a state, I have no-one to turn to except Denis. He puts his arm round me and says, “Darling, you sound just like Harold Wilson”. And then I always laugh.’