People Like Us: Margaret Thatcher and Me

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People Like Us: Margaret Thatcher and Me

People Like Us: Margaret Thatcher and Me

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Price: £4.995
£4.995 FREE Shipping

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Caroline began when “you could see these rifts developing on Europe”. The Chancellor and the Foreign Secretary, Nigel Lawson and Geoffrey Howe, were key figures at odds with the PM. The poll tax hadn’t helped, and there was friction over the UK joining the European Exchange Rate Mechanism. Something had to give. The book is arranged under headings like “Margaret Thatcher’s Court”, “Margaret Thatcher and Gay Men” and “Girl Power or Twisted Sister?”. It gives almost as much weight to domestic detail as to political drama and in doing so conveys a real sense of what it was like to work in No 10. One of the points of the book is that people think Margaret Thatcher was just a bully – they see her as that handbagging Spitting Image puppet – and actually she was being bullied as well behind the scenes, and she was giving as good as she got. For all its faults, this portrayal of Margaret Thatcher drills down to the essence of her character. If you can get past the “truth decay”, which seeps into the scenes conjured up in creator Peter Morgan’s mind, there are certainly some truths which cannot be ignored.

Caroline set up Civil Exchange in 2011. She is also a founding member of A Better Way, a network hosted by Civil Exchange which is committed to improving services and strengthening communities. She is a co-convenor of the network.

We fell in love talking about civil service reform! (Truly)

They encouraged me to apply for a permanent job for more money – so I did. The first real job I got was with the NHS Staff Commission, overseeing the ’73/74 reorganisation (nothing changes) of the NHS into regional and area health authorities. I became the chief aide to the chairman, Sir Richard Hayward, who was a tremendous political operator. It was all good material for a novel about power politics.” I was at her side as she travelled around Britain, I saw her dress down her ministers in private and I was the only other woman in the Cabinet room when she broke down in tears, as she resigned. I wrote an account two years ago of our relationship and the person I saw up close, in People Like Us: Margaret Thatcher and Me, because I wanted to put the record straight on her as a woman.

John says: “We fell in love on either end of civil service phones, talking about civil service reform. Caroline was in the Cabinet Office and I was at DWP (Department of Work and Pensions). It was the sheer vulnerability of this woman, surrounded by men and round this coffin-shaped table – telling them the end had come. And, basically, the reason she had to face this decision was they’d told her so. Secondly, I recognise in Anderson’s performance that sharpness and steeliness that would cut right to the heart of the matter and deliver cruel blows in a low and deadly voice. Like Margaret Thatcher, Gillian Anderson has no need to shout to get her point across.She speaks on many different platforms on civil society matters, including abroad, and is a regular commentator in the media. Caroline believes one of Margaret Thatcher’s biggest problems was that her identity had, during her political rise, been constructed “almost entirely on the advice of men. She changed the way she dressed: it was more power-based; looking a bit more like a man. She abandoned dresses with bows, on the whole, and she adopted this more androgynous profile.” We talk about poverty and income inequalities but some places are very much richer in social infrastructure than others and this also makes a real difference to personal health and well-being, equality and opportunity. I didn’t mention I didn’t agree with the change she was making, because I didn’t agree with her politics! But I really did think the civil service needed shaking up. We agreed on that. I think she thought ‘Yes, this is somebody who wants to move mountains, like me’, so she took me on.” It seemed Margaret Thatcher had, whether formally or through the vibes she gave off, created a bar on the promotion of women. As Caroline says, “the word had gone out, at least for a period, that she would not work with a woman”.



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