BRITAIN: A Tough Lady for the Tories

“To me it is like a dream, that the next name in the lists after Harold Macmillan, Sir Alec Douglas-Home and Edward Heath is Margaret Thatcher.” With those uncharacteristically emotional words, the coolly competent M.P. for Finchley accepted her triumph as the first woman ever to head a political party in Britain. Winning seven votes more than the mandatory majority of 139, Mrs. Thatcher, who had toppled former Prime Minister Edward Heath from his ten-year reign as Conservative Party chief the week before, soundly defeated a formidable array of four male challengers. Her leading opponent, Party Chairman William Whitelaw, drew only 79 votes.

There was no time for lavish celebrations, however. “We must get down to work instantly,” said the hard-driving Mrs. Thatcher. But she did pause to phone her husband, successful, self-effacing Oilman Denis Thatcher. Daughter Carol, 21, was in the middle of law exams at the time of her mother’s victory, while her twin brother Mark, a London accountant, was also too busy to be reached until later in the day.

The odds makers who had originally predicted a third-ballot victory for amiable William Whitelaw apparently underestimated the intensity of anti-Heath feeling within the party—a sentiment that damned Whitelaw, who was one of the former Prime Minister’s closest party associates. Said one Tory backbencher: “The constituencies were pro-Heath, but in the parliamentary party there were just too many people who couldn’t stand him any longer.”

Although his election defeats and faltering economic policies were significant factors, in many cases the antipathy to Heath was based on personal rather than policy differences. “He never knew how to soothe people’s egos,” said another Tory veteran. “He made enemies needlessly when a bit of patronage, a knighthood to flatter an ego or satisfy the social ambitions of a disgruntled wife, was all that was needed.”

One irony of her victory is that in many ways, Margaret Thatcher seems to be Ted Heath’s female Doppelgänger. Although her garden party hats and porcelain-voweled laments over “the twilight of the middle class” belie it, Mrs. Thatcher shares Heath’s relatively humble background—the one the daughter of a Lincolnshire grocer, the other the son of a Kentish carpenter. Both have been characterized as being almost frostily reserved and unassailably self-confident. Both owe their political rise to impressive performances as Tory spokesmen on financial affairs, Thatcher in the past few months, Heath in the early ’60s. The difference, however—and some fear that it may prove to be a disastrous one for the Tories in the next general election—is that her outlook is several degrees to the right of Heath’s. She also has no experience in foreign affairs. When asked her opinions in matters of world diplomacy and defense at a press conference last week, Mrs. Thatcher tartly replied: “I am all for them.” Such brevity may be the soul of wit, but it is nonetheless disconcerting in a prospective Prime Minister. Mrs. Thatcher is the first to admit that she is “not an expert in all fields,” and she intends to appoint a Cabinet that will provide balance to her own expertise in domestic affairs.

Tory Credo. The more immediate concern of the party’s liberal wing, however, is the fear that Mrs. Thatcher’s aggressive championing of middle-class values may alienate working-class voters. Under the leadership of Macmillan, Home and Heath, the Conservatives had increasingly modified their traditional commitment to free-market policies, accepting a degree of both social welfarism and state interference in business. Mrs. Thatcher wants to reverse that trend and spearhead a return to a more traditional Tory credo: “I believe that a person who is prepared to work harder should receive greater rewards and keep them after tax. I believe that we should back the workers and not the shirkers; that it is not only permissible but praiseworthy to want to benefit your own family by your own efforts.”

That bravura statement of Tory faith earned her a standing ovation when she preached it to the annual convention of Young Conservatives recently. But Mrs. Thatcher’s zealous championship of individual initiative may not go down well in the depressed towns of the industrial north and Scotland—the two areas where the party must gain strength if it is ever to return to power.

“The choice of Margaret Thatcher is the greatest gamble in the history of the Tory Party,” said one former Conservative Cabinet minister. “We will either win magnificently or lose disastrously. I see nothing in between.” Her right-ward-ho spirit might have more appeal to voters weary of social and economic complexities than her liberal colleagues imagine. But to hedge the bet, they are already taking measures to prevent Mrs. Thatcher from stacking her shadow cabinet with fellow right-wingers.

Tory liberals were particularly adamant in opposing the appointment of Sir Keith Joseph as shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer. Sir Keith blundered away his own chance for party leadership by delivering some ill-considered public remarks last fall about what he called the irresponsible breeding habits of Britain’s lower classes (TIME, Nov. 11). More than Mrs. Thatcher, Sir Keith is a rigid monetarist and an outspoken critic of the welfare state, a position that the Labor Party has used to picture him as a defender of mass unemployment and social misery.

On her first day as party leader, Mrs. Thatcher fixed herself a boiled egg for breakfast in her tony Flood Street house in Chelsea. Then she went to face ten party elders, including Whitelaw and Heath’s shadow Chancellor Robert Carr, who warned her that they would refuse to serve in the shadow cabinet if she appointed Sir Keith Chancellor. Since Whitelaw accepted Mrs. Thatcher’s offer of party deputy leadership later in the week, it is assumed that Sir Keith will have to settle for a less sensitive portfolio.

Mrs. Thatcher’s offer to Heath of a shadow cabinet post was taken as further evidence of her willingness to mute party conflicts. Calling at his Wilton Street house—still under repair after a pre-Christmas I.R.A. bomb blast—she renewed her invitation to have him join her as shadow Foreign Secretary. As she knew in advance that he would, he declined, stating a preference for a less conspicuous backbench perch—perhaps in the hope that if things go badly for Mrs. Thatcher he will be recalled to party leadership.

Thin Smile. The critical scrutiny that Mrs. Thatcher can expect to receive from her own party will hardly compare to the dressing-down Labor will try to inflict upon her as leader of the opposition. Perhaps exhausted by the tension of the past two weeks, she seemed unprepared to deal with Prime Minister Harold Wilson’s irrepressible gamesmanship in their first parliamentary encounter. Admitting a “deep gulf between her and me in political philosophy,” Wilson said that he nevertheless “looked forward to the informality and, if I may say so, the intimacy of our meetings behind [the House Speaker’s] chair.” As male members roared at this chauvinist double-entendre, Mrs. Thatcher’s polite fixed smile seemed to wear a little thin. But she is unlikely to be caught off balance often. Even senior Labor M.P.s concede that with her rapier-sharp forensic skills, she is likely to prove a very formidable opponent at the dispatch box.