Certain pictures do indeed tell a thousand words for some people, as one did for me in the EE last week.
Flushed with her general election victory earlier in May 1979, Britain’s first female PM rightly looked chuffed wi’ hersellie visiting the (now doomed) Shell HQ at Tullos. I suspect she was on her way to a weekend at Balmoral for her maiden visit as oor Lizzie’s first minister – and the start of a’ the tantalising theories about The Clash Of The Handbags.
The reason for my perfect recall is that I’m pretty sure the photo was taken the day after I had my first and only contact with she who was to become known as The Iron Lady – loved or loathed during her 11 years in power.
Scroll back to the beginning of the 1970s, and I was already developing a reputation as a wayward women’s libber, protesting at a’thing vaguely unequal, misogynistic even, about the office and its menfolk. (They ended up proodly wearing matching: “I am a Chauvinist Pig” ties. Pigs.) Even some ageing female colleagues raised my ire.
Sent to Edinburgh to interview South Aberdeen Tory MP and Scottish Office minister Lady Tweedsmuir, along with a pucklie other Scottish hackettes. When questions started, I was shocked to hear them firing off guff like: “Which hairdresser do you use in London?” and: “What’s your favourite make-up?” When Mo – hot off her journo course – had the temerity to ask about a major controversy in her constituency, you could hear the intakes of shocked breath from the assembled women’s featurettes.
A descending, condescending drawl
So, of course I admired Thatcher – though deffo not her politics – for having broken the glass ceiling and hit the top. I was looking forward to coming face to face with her when I was sent to cover her press conference after opening the Brechin bypass.
My editor was adamant I’d ask the question everyone in the Neest wanted to know: how come wee Brechin got its new road and there was still no plan for the long-campaigned one for Stonehaven? Probably nae mair than 10 reporters at the Q&A, me the only woman. We were warned she was running late, so everything needed to be speeded up or cut short; me tiddlin’ masellie lest I didnae get in my question.
Maggie was, as ever, trying to come across as charm itself with that maddeningly complaisant tone and attitude. She sort of half-flirted with the men, none of whom proffered particularly difficult questions.
Finally, I got my tongue in: “When is Stonehaven going to get its bypass, which is so much more urgently needed than this one?” Reader, I promise this happened. She looked at me, I suspect a taddie annoyed, dipped her heidie to one side – as if pitying me – and started with a softly spoken: “My deeeear…” in a descending, condescending drawl.
Surely not! Not the female who’d just conquered a man’s world? No such patronising address to any of the men? As my blood boiled, I contemplated pitching another question starting: “Hey, quinie…”
Meanwhile, Thatcher’s response to my question was dire: “We drove down through Stonehaven today and the A90 is a beautiful road running alongside the sea. Why would you want a bypass?” Dammit, I never got to respond. Nor ca’ her “quinie”.
Moreen Simpson is a former assistant editor of the Evening Express and The Press and Journal, and started her journalism career in 1970
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