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Durham E-Theses Durham E-Theses Margaret Thatcher's politics: the cultural and ideological forces of domestic femininity PRESTIDGE, JESSICA,DAWN How to cite: PRESTIDGE, JESSICA,DAWN (2017) Margaret Thatcher's politics: the cultural and ideological forces of domestic femininity, Durham theses, Durham University. Available at Durham E-Theses Online: http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/12192/ Use policy The full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-prot purposes provided that: • a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in Durham E-Theses • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders. Please consult the full Durham E-Theses policy for further details. Academic Support Oce, Durham University, University Oce, Old Elvet, Durham DH1 3HP e-mail: [email protected] Tel: +44 0191 334 6107 http://etheses.dur.ac.uk 2 Jessica Prestige Margaret Thatcher's politics: the cultural and ideological forces of domestic femininity Abstract In December 1974 Margaret Thatcher hung up her hat and put on an apron. Despite being a wealthy, professional woman, it was as a lower-middle class ‘housewife’ that she won the Conservative party leadership in 1975 and the general election in 1979. This raises significant historical questions. What was it about a ‘housewife’ identity that was believed to suggest the necessary qualities of a political leader? It also emphasises the centrality of gender to Thatcher’s leadership image. This thesis will explore the cultural, ideological and political significance of Thatcher’s femininity, with a particular focus on the rich and varied resonances of domestic femininity. Although a considerable body of literature analyses Thatcher’s status as Britain’s first female Prime Minister, the majority of work focuses on her failure to either promote ‘women’s issues’ or to improve women’s political representation. The conservatism of Thatcher’s feminine image is frequently presented as a manifestation of the regressive social attitudes that shaped Thatcherite policy on ‘women’s issues’. Emphasis on Thatcher’s opposition to the feminist movement has discouraged a more nuanced understanding of the changing role femininity played in the construction of her public personality. As this ‘public personality’ was a product of multiple influences, focus on Thatcher’s public image facilitates a wide-ranging study that considers diverse cultural and political contexts. Overemphasis on the prescriptivism of Thatcher’s domestic image risks undermining the extent to which it reflected popular and political values, assumptions and prejudices. It also underestimates the extent to which Thatcher’s feminine authority constituted a political problem. By examining gendered responses to Thatcher’s leadership in political institutions, among her staff and colleagues, in popular culture, among women and within ‘the women’s movement’ this thesis will consider the ways in which femininity functioned as part of a strategy for managing the presentation of unprecedented female power. 1 Margaret Thatcher’s politics: the cultural and ideological forces of domestic femininity Thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy January 2017 Jessica Prestidge History Department, Durham University 2 Table of Contents List of illustrations 4 List of abbreviations 5 Statement of copyright 6 Acknowledgment 7 Introduction 8 1. Shopping basket election: Thatcher as housewife 23 2. Establishing a context 56 (a) Mary Whitehouse 59 (b) Shirley Williams 83 3. Thatcher and Feminism 106 4. Gender Dynamics as Spectacle: Thatcher and her men 128 5. Thatcher and Downing Street 152 Conclusion 174 Bibliography 180 Appendix 190 3 List of Illustrations Figure Description and location Page 1 ‘Remind Him of Anyone?’, cartoon showing Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn, 189 The Times, 21 July 2016 2 Front page of the Sun, 12 July 2016 189 3 Thatcher photographed in Halifax during the 1979 general election campaign. 190 Image reproduced across the press. See MTFW: 103857 4 Michael Cummings cartoon of Thatcher in the kitchen at the time of the 190 Conservative party leadership election, Daily Express, 1 December 1974 5 Conservative party newspaper adverts, 1978/9. See Conservative party poster 190 collection within Conservative Party Archive [CPA]: http://bodley30.bodley.ox.ac.uk:8180/luna/servlet/ODLodl~6~6 6 A photograph of Thatcher’s cabinet taken in May 1989, reproduced by C. 191 Newman, ‘Labour women open up about Margaret Thatcher’s legacy’, the Telegraph online, 17 April 2013. 7 Conservative party posters from 1975 and 1987. See Conservative party 191 poster collection, CPA. 8 Keith Waite, cartoon of Mary Whitehouse and Margaret Thatcher, Daily 192 Mirror, 29 April 1985 9 Ronald Giles, cartoon of married couple, Daily Express, 6 October 1981 192 10 Michael Cummings, cartoon of Margaret Thatcher, David Steel and Shirley 193 Williams, Daily Express, 11 November 1981 11 Gerald Scarfe image of Thatcher as a bloodied axe, 1983, National Portrait 193 Gallery [NPG] website, NPG 6476 12 Bork Boxer cartoon of Geoffrey Howe, 1987, NPG 5920 193 13 Satirical poster of Thatcher and Reagan produced by the Socialist Workers 194 Party, reproduced by N.Wapshott Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher: a political marriage (London, 2007) 14 Gerald Scarfe, image of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan engaged in 194 sexual activity. Originally published in 1985. Reproduced in G.Scarfe, Milk Snatcher (Durham, 2015) 4 List of abbreviations CND Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament CPA Conservative Party Archive MRA Moral Rearmament MTFW Margaret Thatcher Foundation Website NEC National Executive Committee NVALA National Viewers and Listeners Association ODNB Oxford Dictionary of National Biography SDP Social Democratic Party WI Women’s Institute WLM Women’s Liberation Movement 5 The copyright of this thesis rests with the author. No quotation from it should be published without the author's prior written consent and information derived from it should be acknowledged. 6 Acknowledgement My greatest debt in writing this thesis is to my supervisors, Professor Ludmilla Jordanova and Professor Philip Williamson, whose generous support has far surpassed their responsibilities. The award of a doctoral scholarship from Durham University made the thesis possible, and the helpful advice of many archivists made the research process all the more rewarding. Particular thanks must go to Andrew Riley at Churchill College, whose knowledge of the Thatcher papers is daunting but invaluable, and whose interest in the subject made trips to Cambridge particularly enjoyable. I am grateful also to Nigel Cochrane at Essex University and Darren Treadwell at the Labour Party archives. 7 Introduction In 1979 Margaret Thatcher was advised to decline an invitation to debate with James Callaghan on television, not because her advisors thought that she would lose, but because they feared that in victory she would remind hostile male viewers of their wives. This is not the sort of problem with which previous party leaders had to contend. As a student at the University of Oxford her gender prevented her joining the Oxford Union, by this time an established training ground for politicians. She failed to secure nomination as the Conservative parliamentary candidate at Orpington, Beckenham, Hemel Hempstead and Maidstone in the 1950s, with many of her interviewers of the view that it was inappropriate for a woman with young children to pursue a demanding, political career.1 Having won nomination for Finchley, a number of members remained unreconciled to the idea of a woman politician and stubbornly refused to endorse her candidacy. Upon announcing her candidacy for the Conservative party leadership she was accused of ‘quartering the party’ by introducing ‘women’s lib’.2 As leader of the Conservative party her gender prevented her gaining full membership to the Carlton Club; her honorary membership was offered only after ‘considerable grumbling among the baffled clubmen’.3 Regardless of Thatcher’s own pronouncements to the contrary, her gender constituted a political problem, and her leadership cannot be understood without a keen appreciation of the extent to which being a woman imposed political and cultural obstacles to the acquisition and enactment of power. However, her gender also provided Thatcher with discursive opportunities unavailable to her male predecessors or colleagues. This thesis will explore the ways in which Thatcher’s femininity – and her domestic femininity in particular – operated as a political force, arguing that the cultural and ideological resonances of domesticity are a crucial context for understanding Thatcher’s public image. Against Lisa Filby’s recent claim that with the death of Thatcher in 2013, ‘Thatcherism had finally been laid to rest’, I would suggest that the Iron Lady is yet to be confined to ‘history’.4 All historical writing, of course, is in some sense a reflection of the present, but this seems to be particularly true of the discourses surrounding Margaret Thatcher. After Theresa May’s election to the Conservative leadership earlier this year, the politics of Thatcher’s femininity have become particularly relevant. To announce May’s leadership in July, The Sun published a front page article featuring a large image of the new Prime Minister’s leopard print kitten heels. The headline provocatively read ‘Heel, boys’. Fetishisation of female power was similarly a hallmark of media responses to Thatcher, although the 1 See area agent for Maidstone report in C. Moore, Margaret Thatcher the Authorised Biography: Volume I (London, 2013),pp.133-134. 2 Letter to Thatcher, 24 November 1974, Churchill College Cambridge, Thatcher Archive: THCR 1/1/6 3 H. Young, One of Us (London, 1989), p.304. 4 L. Filby, God and Mrs Thatcher: the battle for Britain’s soul (London, 2015), p.xx. 8 Sun’s headline in 2016 received more visible criticism than would have been likely in 1979.
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