Politics
How Margaret Thatcher was urged to soften ‘hectoring, strident and bossy’ image
Margaret Thatcher was warned to soften her Iron Lady image and display a more caring side, newly released documents show. Her chief press secretary Bernard Ingham wrote a carefully worded memo to the former prime minister setting out her “natural assets” against her “weaknesses” ahead of the party conference in 1985. The five-page memo, published as part of the latest release of her personal files, is diplomatically worded but says that by her second term she had gained a public image as “hectoring, strident and bossy”. However, it seems to have had little impact on her approach as she shied away from using words such as “compassion” and “caring” in the speech she went on to deliver.
Her public image was so fixed that she couldn’t win - if she had suddenly shown a softer side, people would not have believed it
Chris Collins, Margaret Thatcher Archive Trust
In the memo, Ingham began by praising her in a list of bullet points including describing the prime minister as a “decisive, strong-minded person” and “someone who is clearly going to be very hard to beat”. But his three point list of her negatives begins by stating that the government would benefit from a fall in unemployment, before highlighting two personal flaws. These read: “A more general insensitivity: a belief that you do not care for people - all of this linked with so-called 'cuts’.” It was followed by: “A hectoring, strident, bossy, dictatorial personality (which does not survive an encounter with you).”
Just comfort yourself with the thought that wherever you go on tour it is the women, of all ages, who want to hail you as their equivalent of the female four-minute mile, however they vote.
Bernard Ingham memo
