Margaret Thatcher: The Autobiography. Margaret Thatcher
take him out to lunch. Also I knew he was not too far away in case of emergencies. But not to be left out, Carol decided that she wanted to go to boarding school as well. The house seemed empty without them.
By now there was another emptiness in my life which could never be filled, and that was the loss of my mother, who died in 1960. She had been a great rock of family stability. She managed the household, stepped in to run the shop when necessary, entertained, supported my father in his public life and as Mayoress, did a great deal of voluntary social work for the church, displayed a series of practical domestic talents such as dressmaking and was never heard to complain. Like many people who live for others, she made possible all that her husband and daughters did. Her life had not been an easy one. Although in later years I would speak more readily of my father’s political influence on me, it was from my mother that I inherited the ability to organize and combine so many different duties of an active life. Her death was a great shock, even though it had not been entirely unexpected. Even young children have a keen sense of family grief. After my mother’s funeral, my father came back to stay with us for a while at ‘Dormers’. That evening when I turned back the coverlet of his bed, I found a little note from Mark on the pillow: ‘Dear Grandad I’m so sorry Granny died.’ It was heartbreaking.
I was very glad, however, that both my parents had seen their daughter enter the Palace of Westminster as a Member of Parliament – quite literally ‘seen’, because the press contained flattering photographs of me in my new hat on the way to the House. My first real contact with the Conservative Parliamentary Party was when on the day before Parliament opened I went along as a member of the 1922 Committee – the Party committee to which all Conservative backbench MPs belong – to discuss the question of the Speakership of the House. I knew only a relatively small number of the several hundred faces packed into that rumbustious, smoky committee room, but I immediately felt at home.
Everyone in those early days was immensely kind. The Chief Whip would give new Members a talk about the rules of the House and the whipping system. Old-stagers gave me useful hints about dealing with correspondence. They also told me that I should not just concentrate on the big issues like foreign affairs and finance, but also find one or two less popular topics on which I could make a mark. Another piece of good practical advice was to find myself a ‘pair’, which I promptly did in the form of Charlie Pannell, the Labour MP for Leeds West.* I had met him years earlier when he lived in Erith, in my old Dartford constituency. He was exactly the sort of good-humoured, decent Labour man I liked.
The Palace of Westminster seems a bewildering labyrinth of corridors to the uninitiated. It was some time before I could find my way with ease around it. There were modestly appointed rooms set apart for the twenty-five women Members – the ‘Lady Members’ Rooms’ – where I would find a desk to work at. Neither taste nor convention suggested my entering the Smoking Room. My formidably efficient secretary, Paddi Victor Smith, had a desk in a large office with a number of other secretaries where we worked on constituency correspondence. But the heart of the House of Commons was, even more than now, the Chamber itself. Early on, I was advised that there was no substitute for hours spent there. Finance and Foreign Affairs Committee meetings might be more informative. The weekly 1922 Committee meetings might be more lively, but it was only by absorbing the atmosphere of the House until its procedures became second nature and its style of debate instinctive that one could become that most respected kind of English politician, a ‘House of Commons man’ (or woman).
So I took my pre-arranged place in the fourth row back below the gangway – where thirty-one years later I chose to sit again after I resigned as Prime Minister. The House itself was – and still is – a very masculine place. This manifested itself above all, I found, in the sheer volume of noise. I was used to university debates and questions at the general election hustings, yet my brief previous visits to the Visitors’ Gallery of the House had never prepared me for this. But when I remarked on it to a colleague he just laughed and said, ‘You should have heard it during Suez!’ Masculinity, I soon found, however, did not degenerate into male prejudice. In different ways I had on occasion been made to feel small because I was a woman in industry, at the Bar and indeed in Tory constituency politics. But in the House of Commons we were all equals; and woe betide ministers who suggest by their demeanour or behaviour that they consider themselves more equal than the rest. I soon saw with appreciation that sincerity, logic and technical mastery of a subject could earn respect from both sides of the House. Shallowness and bluff were quickly exposed. Perhaps every generation of young men and women considers that those it once regarded as great figures had a stature lacked by their equivalents in later years. But I would certainly be hard put now to find on the backbenches the extraordinary range of experience and talents which characterized the House of Commons then. Almost whatever the subject, there would be some figure on either side of the House who would bring massive, specialized knowledge and obvious intuition to bear on it – and be listened to with respect by front and backbenches alike.
As it happens, I had very little opportunity during my first few months as an MP for the relaxed acquisition of experience of the House. With 310 other Members I had entered the Commons ballot for the introduction of Private Members’ Bills. Never previously having so much as won a raffle, I was greatly astonished to find myself drawn second. Only the first few Private Members’ Bills have any chance of becoming legislation, and even then the Government’s attitude towards them is crucial.
I had only given the most general consideration to the topic I would choose, but I now had just a week to make up my mind, for the Bill had to be tabled by 11 November.
As a result of an industrial dispute in the printing industry, which began in July 1958, a number of Labour-controlled councils in big cities had denied normal reporting facilities to journalists working on provincial newspapers involved in the dispute. This had highlighted a loophole in the law which many councils used to conceal information from the general public about their activities. The press had a statutory right of admission only to meetings of the full council, not to its committees. By the device of resolving to go into committee, councils could therefore exclude the press from their deliberations. And besides these ‘committees of the whole council’ there were many other committees which were closed. Large sums of ratepayers’ money could be spent – or mis-spent – without outside scrutiny. Nor did members of the public themselves have the right to attend any council or council committee meetings.
My own interest in the question stemmed partly from the fact that it had come to a head because of socialist connivance with trade union power, partly because I knew from Nottingham, not far from Grantham, what was going on, and partly because the present situation offended against my belief in accountability by government for the spending of people’s money. The 1959 Conservative manifesto had contained a promise ‘to make quite sure that the press have proper facilities for reporting the proceedings of local authorities’. Having read this, I imagined that a Bill to do just that would be welcome to the Government. I was swiftly disillusioned by the whips. Apparently, nothing more than a code of practice on the subject had been envisaged. This seemed to me extremely feeble, and so I decided to go ahead.
It quickly became clear that the objection to a measure with teeth came not from ministers at the Ministry of Housing and Local Government but rather from officials, who in turn were doubtless echoing the fierce opposition of the local authorities to any democratic check on their powers. Henry Brooke, the Cabinet minister in charge, was consistently sympathetic. Each Private Member’s Bill is placed under the supervision of a junior minister who either helps or hinders its progress. My Bill was given to Sir Keith Joseph, and it was in examination of the tedious technical intricacies of the measure that I first got to know Keith.
I learned a great deal in a very short time from the experience of devising, refashioning and negotiating for my Bill. Partly because the issue had been a live one for a number of years, but partly also because of senior Members’ kindness towards a new Member, I was able to rely on invaluable assistance from backbench colleagues. Sir Lionel Heald, a former Attorney-General, gave me the benefit of his great legal experience. I learned from him and others the techniques of legal draftsmanship, which were generally the preserve of the parliamentary draftsmen.
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