God and Mrs Thatcher (8 page)

Alfred Roberts throws down his robes as he is voted off the council in favour of Labour councillor Audus

After more than twenty years of service, Roberts had been unceremoniously booted off his beloved council. Margaret Thatcher famously wept when she recounted this story in a TV interview in 1985, calling it a ‘tragedy'.
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Years later, after her own traumatic demise, she returned to those events in 1952: ‘I thought my father's example was so wonderful. So hurtful, but so wonderful, and so dignified … I didn't forget it.'
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WHEN, IN
1987, Margaret Thatcher clumsily uttered the immortal words, ‘There is no such thing as society', she handed a gift to her critics. ‘There is no such thing as society because Margaret Thatcher has destroyed it' came the reply. But her explanation that followed is perhaps more revealing:

Here Thatcher was evoking a concept of civil society (those mediating institutions between the individual and the state), which had legitimate intellectual roots on both the left and right. Admittedly though, Thatcher had a very narrow understanding of what constituted civil society. It was characteristically middle class, socially conservative and religiously inspired, with no room for co-operatives, unions or solidarity of any kind. Nonetheless, on this subject, Thatcher spoke not from an ideological perspective but personal experience for it was exactly what she had witnessed first-hand as a child.

Grantham had a vibrant and extensive network of charities, philanthropists and associations. The logo of local engineering firm, Ruston & Hornsby, adorned the fire engines, the library was built courtesy of the Carnegie Trust, while Grantham's Rotary, the Chamber of Trade and local philanthropists provided the ‘bread and circus' events. Associational culture certainly thrived in inter-war Grantham, but while it may not have been party-political or denominational, it was certainly class-based. The power and initiative lay very much in the hands of the bourgeoisie, with some paternalistic injection from the local landowners, while Grantham's poor remained silent and compliant beneficiaries. Grantham's civic life, much like its politics, was chiefly the means by which local dignitaries such as Alderman Roberts were able to exercise their public service, forward their interests and satisfy their religious conscience. One such occasion was the week-long Civic Centenary Celebrations in June 1935 to commemorate 100 years of Grantham council. Organised by the Chamber of Trade, it seems to have had less to do with celebrating the town and more to do with keeping the tills
ringing with events such as a ‘shopping week', a window-dressing competition and a ‘buy British goods' day. The ten-year-old Margaret, then a pupil at Huntington Primary School, took part in a parade of children singing a hymn composed by local parson, Rev. E. Stancliffe, entitled ‘Grantham's Jerusalem':

Margaret Thatcher remembers being ‘immensely proud of our town; we knew its history and traditions; we were glad to be part of its life.'
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But, as the daughter of Alderman Roberts, she had a unique view of its importance and her family's place within it. She witnessed Remembrance Day, for example, from the windows of the Guildhall ballroom as she watched her father take part in the procession with his fellow councillors. Her attitude may have been different had he fought and been parading in his uniform.
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In 1937, the town centre was once again adorned in flags, festoons and bunting for the Coronation of George VI, which Alfred Roberts had orchestrated as head of the council's celebration committee. Grantham residents were treated to a week-long series of events which included brass bands, a classical music concert, religious services (naturally both Anglican and Methodist), a coronation carnival with acrobats and jugglers and a firework display culminating in a live outdoor radio broadcast of the coronation. It is worth remembering that during that summer of 1937, as the twelve-year-old Margaret was watching jugglers in Grantham Dysart Park, Michael Foot, then a journalist at the
Tribune,
was busy keeping the various strands of the left together under the ‘Unity Campaign', while the young Edward Heath was observing the rise of National Socialism in Germany, attending the Nuremberg Rally and coming face-to-face with Goering, Goebbels and Himmler. If Foot was always the left-wing intellectual holding the movement together, Heath, forever the internationalist, then Margaret Thatcher was always the provincial girl. It is through such formative experiences that one's political values are formed and future battles are forged.

Margaret Thatcher may have later rhapsodised about Grantham's civic life, but, as a child, the cinema clearly held more allure and attraction. By the 1930s, Grantham could boast four cinemas, the grandest of which, the State Cinema, was said to have a staircase like that out of a Busby Berkeley musical. Finkin Street Church tried in vain to compete by establishing its own film club, although the content was strictly regulated and attendees had to endure a sermon and hymns as part of the show. Margaret Roberts was in no doubt where she would rather be. She later recorded how, as a child, she was ‘entranced with the glamorous world of Hollywood', the historical epics of Alexander Korda and the dramatic heroines played by Barbara Stanwyck, Greta Garbo and Ingrid Bergman, as well as the musicals of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers: ‘I roamed to the most fabulous realms of the imagination. It gave me the determination to roam in reality one day,' she wrote in her memoirs.
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This was her first taste of Americana and she revelled in it.

British actors do not appear in her list of favourites nor does she reference the visit to Grantham of arguably the biggest British film star of the 1930s, Lancashire lass Gracie Fields. Thousands of Granthamsonians reportedly turned out to hear Field's Rochdale roar from her hotel window but not the Robertses. Admittedly, it is hard to imagine Alderman Roberts and his daughters parading through the streets of Grantham leading a chorus of ‘Sing As We Go!' Anti-Americanism may have stirred in Conservatives such as Enoch Powell and writers
such as J. B. Priestley, but not Margaret Thatcher. She may have always been a ‘little Englander', but Thatcher was someone who from an early age eagerly embraced all the romantic possibilities of the new American empire.

One American import, in which her father was heavily involved, was Rotary International. Started by a small group of businessmen in Chicago in 1905, Rotary migrated to Britain in 1911 and by 1939 had 400 clubs with 20,000 members and Prince George as its patron. Rotary explicitly forbade partisan and sectarian affiliations and encouraged social and commercial responsibility as well as an active engagement in local, national and international affairs. Alfred Roberts had helped establish the Grantham branch in 1931, later becoming its president in 1935. Of her father's attachment, Thatcher wrote in her memoirs: ‘The Rotary motto, “Service Above Self”, was engraved on my father's heart.'
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Its ethic certainly complemented Roberts's faith with its emphasis on service and individual effort for the greater good. At its annual dinner in 1934, the
Grantham Journal
recorded the toast delivered by Rotarian C. Bispham:

C. Bispham had articulated in 1934 what Margaret Thatcher had tried to do in 1987 with her ‘no such thing as society' comment. This was the ‘living tapestry', or at least how Margaret Thatcher understood it.

Given the international nature of Rotary's organisation and spirit, it is perhaps unsurprising that events on the European continent soon dominated the weekly luncheon discussion. Not long after Hitler came
to power, Rotary hosted a presentation from a Professor H. Brose of Nottingham University who had just returned from Germany. Brose was clearly impressed, remarking that ‘everybody was clothed and fed' and there was no sign of the ‘unemployed about the streets', as in places such as Nottingham. Welcoming the rise of fascism as an antidote to communism, Brose reassuringly concluded that Britain had nothing to fear from Germany's ‘defensive rearmament' and that having read
Mein Kampf,
he considered Hitler ‘extremely straightforward and sincere'.
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Four months later, local cinema owner J. A. Campbell visited Germany as part of the British Rotary delegation. Like Brose, Campbell believed fascism preferable to communism and was pleased to report that Hitler, whom he had heard speak at a rally, looked favourably on Rotary even though Campbell remarked that it was below its normal strength because of the ‘boycott of the Jew'.
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It is not until 1939, seven months before war broke out, that we hear what Alfred Roberts thought of all this. By this time, Rotary had been banned in Germany and international events were conspiring towards war, even though the people still clung to Chamberlain's promise. Roberts praised the man who had gone to Munich ‘armed only with a neatly-rolled umbrella with his mind made up and his will intent on peace'. Roberts, though, coupled this with a stark warning that although fascism may suit Germany there were fundamental principles that all should adhere to: ‘Justice, truth and liberty'. For Roberts, the primacy of the latter was paramount: ‘Liberty in its proper realm and sphere [is] vital … principles [are] greater than personality, and more important than any form of government.'
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Roberts's take on international affairs undoubtedly hardened during the war. In one of his first speeches as mayor in 1945, entitled ‘From Bombing to Building', Roberts judged that in a nuclear age it was imperative that those who adhered to the Christian Gospel ‘blast their way through the barricades and the obstacles of evil which opposed the peace of the world'. Offering a reassessment of Chamberlain, he
concluded: ‘We were becoming a race of sentimentalists … in trying to appease an aggressive people.' Now was no time for pacifism or compromise, he affirmed, but upholding moral truth against the Soviets: ‘They have got to be made to understand quite firmly and definitely that what they ask for is wrong.' In light of Margaret Thatcher's Manichaean approach to international affairs it may be that her father's dismissive take on what he termed the ‘stupid sentimental type of diplomacy' had some influence.
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In the run up to the war, the troubles in Europe impacted in a very direct way on the Robertses' household. Following Hitler's absorption of Austria in 1938, the family agreed to give sanctuary to Muriel's Jewish pen pal, seventeen-year-old Edith Muhlbauer. Edith clearly considered Grantham rather dull, while the locals reportedly found her cosmopolitan and quixotic. She smoked tobacco, wore beautiful clothes and make-up and was said that Alfred Roberts feared that she might turn into ‘one of those girls in Amsterdam'. It appears not to have been a happy encounter on both sides; Edith only spent a few weeks at the Robertses before going to live with Mr Wallace, the dentist, and eventually travelling to South America to live with her aunt.
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Margaret Thatcher later claimed that Edith's tales of persecution in Austria were the origins of her life-long sympathy for the Jewish community. This may have been true, but much more likely was that her encounter with Edith was yet another reminder that there was a bigger world outside Grantham.

The war inevitably impinged on Grantham life like it did on most British towns. With the introduction of rationing, Roberts may have found his role in the community enhanced, but he also must have felt the creeping tentacles of the state intruding on his business more than ever before. Margaret Roberts lived out her teenage years during wartime, but while those on the battlefields quickly realised that Germans were also human beings, to her they were the anonymous enemy buzzing in the sky or the ‘strutting brownshirts' demonised
in newsreels.
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The scene of Thatcher's wartime experience that is often depicted is of her doing her homework sheltered under a rickety kitchen table during air raids as her father fulfilled his duties as chief welfare officer directing Grantham's civil defence. The town was indeed a target for the Luftwaffe, with seventy people killed and approximately 200 people injured as a result of raids. Grantham was certainly of strategic importance, with its railway depot, RAF base and armaments factory, BMARC, yet it appears to have been hit more than most provincial towns.