Margaret Thatcher stole my milk

A book I saw in an Oxfam recently - with a brilliant cover.

Margaret Thatcher’s face, 10ft high, sailed past me the other day while I was waiting to cross the road. I shuddered at the sight, so close to my own face. Thatcher was plastered across the side of a double-decker bus as promotion for the new film The Iron Lady, which was released on January 6 and sees Meryl Streep take on the former Prime Minister.

Yesterday, I braced myself and went to watch the film. By coincidence, yesterday also saw current Prime Minister David Cameron state that UK film industry should only invest in “commercially successful films” – rather than pledge support to art films and help expand the UK film industry: an industry already at risk after the UK Film Council was abolished by Cameron’s government last year. The way things are going, the UK will soon no longer have a discernable film industry, rather it will have a poor cousin of Hollywood, albeit from the wrong side of the family.

But back to The Iron Lady. It’s a film so heavily weighted with problems that it’s difficult to know where to start. So here’s a quick list:

- Meryl Streep. She’s a fabulous actress but she is wrong as Mrs Thatcher. You can plaster Meryl in as much ageing make-up and cement hairspray as you want, you can dress her in (expensive-looking) dowdy blue dresses and old-fashioned jewels… but Meryl will always look beautiful and glamorous. Neither of which are words anyone could realistically use to describe Maggie. Meryl’s accent is also patchy – at times perfect Thatcher, at other times Miranda Priestley.

- Phyllida Lloyd. This is the woman who previously directed Meryl in the box office musical smash Mamma Mia, based on the Abba musical. And now she’s directing Meryl in a political biopic. I was just waiting for Pierce Brosnan to appear, and start singing the Chicken Song from Spitting Image.

- The atmospherics of the film. From the opening scenes of a doddery old lady going to her corner shop to buy milk, to her return to her wealthy, staffed house, you know this is going to be one of those warm, cuddly British films. The subtle lighting, the crisp sound, the softness of the speech… they’re the same effects used by Working Title to repeatedly popular effect in their resurgence of contemporary heritage cinema. None of which reinforce what I know of the baroness.

And this is what I know of Thatcher Thatcher, Milk Snatcher (the subject of playground chants up and down the country):

I was born in 1978, the year before Margaret Thatcher came to power. I was 12 when she was ousted in 1990. I remember the name ‘Thatcher’ being discussed over the kitchen table, and being thrown out of the television and radio. I remember the gloomy talk at school about the Falklands, the upset for friends whose dads were fighting, and the celebrations when the war was finally won. It wasn’t until I was older that I learned what the letters ‘IRA’ stood for, but I always knew they were a terrifying bunch of people with bombs – bombs targeted mainly at Thatcher and London. I remember the woman being re-elected, and I remember her being ousted when John Major came in. I remember the Spitting Image puppet of Thatcher, and then of Major eating his peas in black and white. Before that, I remember waking up one morning to be told that the Berlin Wall had been pulled down the previous night. More than anything, I remember the Lloyds crash of 1989 – a disaster that still affects my family.

I also fondly remember the mini bottles of room temperature milk with blue plastic straws that we used to have every morning at school. One of us would be dispatched to the school canteen to come back with the crate full of rattling glass milk bottles to be distributed to the class. I remember how that warm milk tasted, sucked up through my straw. And then I remember it no longer being there anymore. Thatcher Thatcher, Milk Snatcher.

Clearly, the memories of a 12-year-old are limited and are going to be affected by the influence of a closed world: parents and teachers. But Thatcher has continued to afflict the society she famously claimed didn’t exist. As I’ve grown older, I’ve learned more about her and how to recognise her shadows and entrails creeping over our current economic and societal miseries.

When I was in my 20s I had a relationship with a man who was 15 years older than me, and who had always been politically active. This meant he was 16 when Thatcher came to power in 1979 and 27 when she resigned – and this meant his experiences of living under Thatcher were removed from my playground ones.  Looking through his 1980s photo albums, he told me about living in London squats, living on the dole, Rock Against Racism marches, Clash concerts on the other side of the Westway, working in the crèche at peace camps… He positively hated Thatcher. Retrospectively, to a naïve 20-something me with a lot to learn, it looked romantic, but it wasn’t.

Stand down, Margaret

And that’s the problem with The Iron Lady. They’ve looked back on Thatcher’s life and cast a romantic glow on it. Maggie’s relationship with husband Dennis is the central driver of the film’s narrative – showing her as an ambitious young politician who falls in love with a kind businessman: a man who supports her drive to succeed, who dotes on their children (even if she doesn’t), and who loves his wife ‘MT’ (empty) unconditionally. Margaret’s grief for the long-dead Dennis is the device that holds the narrative threads together, attempting to show a vulnerable old lady with possible dementia who is lonely without her partner.

I’m now married to a man from Belfast who grew up used to his schoolbus being searched by police for bombs every day when it went past City Hall.  Having now learned about The Troubles (recent and local history was not on the curriculum at my schools), I know that Northern Ireland also experienced the awful weight of Thatcher, but in a different way to England. In England we experienced her negative interference, bad policies and blinkered views to detrimental effect. But it was worse in Northern Ireland. Thatcher refused to negotiate with terrorists, so the political prisoners in Northern Ireland, the men on hunger strike (as exemplified in Steve McQueen’s staggering 2008 film Hunger) were left with their demands and requests going unanswered, and prisoners starved to death because she refused to intervene. Thatcher did nothing. Not one thing. She rarely even visited Belfast. The IRA were notably most active during Thatcher’s reign of non-negotiation, but it was John Major who began the peace process with Sinn Fein. Major could do with a little more applaud for repairing some of the damage done by Thatcher.

The Iron Lady spends so much time focussing on the Maggie and Dennis love story that it leaves itself little time to dwell on the hideous policies this astonishingly ratchety woman was responsible for: eradicating socialism; supporting capitalism; cutting income tax for very high earners from 83% to 40%; privatising state industries and state housing; pushing for Victorian family values; national recession; endless inner-city riots; bringing down the mining industry. Oh, and pitching our men into a bloody and pointless war just so she could win a second term.

More than anything I am concerned that younger generations, who know little or nothing about Thatcher, will not only look at The Iron Lady and think this is an accurate portrayal of a toxic leader, but they will also think she looked as glamorous as Meryl. There are some who have said it is unkind to make this film while Thatcher is alive. However, I don’t understand why – this film does a better job of making Margaret Thatcher seem like a normal human being than even Max Clifford could.

The Suffragettes’ Wood

Adela Pankurst and Annie Kenney in the arboretum, 1910 - photo from bathintime.co.uk

Inevitably, the combined ordeals of prison and forcible feeding would take its toll on Britain’s suffragettes, and when they were released from the jails they would need time to recover. And many of these women would go to Eagle House in Batheaston, Somerset, to recuperate as guests of the supportive Blathwayt family.

In addition to offering rest and respite, Linley and Emily Blathwayt created a three-acre arboretum on their land in tribute to their political guests – most notably Yorkshire-woman Annie Kenney (who eventually made her home just a few streets away from where I am currently typing this in Clifton, Bristol). This fascinating and unique project was developed between 1909 and 1912 and saw more than 60 women plant a tree in the specially cultivated plot. Those who had undergone hunger strike and forced feeding were invited to plant a conifer, and non-militant suffragettes planted holly bushes. And the planting of each was accompanied by a special ceremony in which the suffragette in question would dress in her finest clothes and her awarded suffrage jewellery.

Annie and Kitty Kenney, Florence Haig, Mary Blathwayt and Marion Wallace-Dunlop
- photo from bathintime.co.uk

The ceremonies and the development of the arboretum were documented on camera by Colonel Blathwayt, who also ordered iron plaques for each plant to record the date of planting, type of species, and name of the woman being honoured. Long forgotten after the arboretum fell to ruin in the middle of the last century, these photographs and many of the plaques were recovered in the attic of Eagle House when it was being prepared for sale. In 2002, Bath historian Dan Brown archived the photos (there are around 250 available to view here), and in 2011 – with Canadian academic Cynthia Hammond – he curated an exhibition celebrating the centenary of the Suffragettes’ Wood (for International Women’s Week, held at Bath Central Library). The exhibition catalogue – Suffragettes in Bath: Activism in an Edwardian Arboretum – is still for sale through Brown’s website, and I strongly advise getting a copy.

Brown and Hammond’s catalogue is liberally illustrated with glossy, black and white photos, all meticulously referenced in the accompanying essays, and together the book builds a vivid picture of the creation (and destruction) of this extraordinary political project of the last century. That the arboretum was allowed to become overgrown and abandoned is sad enough, but it is particularly tragic that there was seemingly no objection to the arboretum being bulldozed by property developers in the 1960s.

The suffragettes fought a crucial fight for women and men the world over, and it is vital that we never forget what those strong women did on our behalf. The decision to commemorate these women with an arboretum was a grand and beautiful gesture by the Blathwayts, and should have been a lasting memorial for centuries to come. In the end, the arboretum survived only a few decades before the actions of these remarkable women was brushed aside and bulldozed. This is very sad.

Those interested in the history of women’s activism in the South West may also be interested to know that Hammond has a book published next month on this: Architects, Angels, Activists and the City of Bath, 1765-1965 (Ashgate).

Overview of 'Annie's Arboretum' in 1909 - photo from bathintime.co.uk

Registered sex offender Chris Langham to visit Bristol cinema

The Cube Microplex (an independent, community media centre in Bristol's Stokes Croft - an area known locally as The People's Republic of Stokes Croft due to its commitment to promoting community and artistic values) is a valued and treasured alternative media venue in Bristol. The Cube hosts all manner of exciting events, performers and puts on any number of interesting nights. As a Bristolian, I love The Cube. 

But I was really stunned to hear that later this month (January 30, 2012), they are welcoming registered sex offender Chris Langham to take part in a masterclass about filmmaking. I'm sure no one needs reminding that in 2007 he was convicted for downloading filmed child abuse pornography. I know there are a number of people in Bristol who are horrified about this event and have contacted The Cube direct to complain, myself among them - and I've pasted my email below in case anyone else wants to send it, or modify it and send their own version.  

The email address is cubeadmin@cubecinema.com.

--

I see on your listings that you are screening Black Pond for three nights, a new film featuring Chris Langham. And that he is coming to attend an event at the Cube on Monday, January 30.

I was really shocked to see that you are not only screening a film starring a convicted paedophile, but also that you are inviting him to your cinema for patrons to ask questions about filmmaking. It was only in 2007 that Chris Langham was found guilty and convicted on 15 counts of paying to download images and films of filmed child abuse. He did not attempt to deny these charges, and has rightly served time in prison for them as well as being made to sign the register of sex offenders. However, the fact he has spent time in prison for these offences does not make up for the fact that he committed them in the first place.

That The Cube can now sweep this appalling behaviour under the carpet and now welcome Langham into its cinema as if nothing has happened upsets and offends me. I had understood The Cube to be a community-minded venue with a conscience, so your decision to include a man found guilty of accessing filmed child abuse (a known sex offender) really grates with me.

Please could you let me know your reasoning for including a man who was found guilty, and admitted his guilt, of this despicable and hateful crime in your listings, and worse, inviting him to your cinema to take part in a masterclass?

I ask you to please reconsider having him or his film on your schedule, and I will certainly be thinking again before attending any future events at the Cube (a unique community arts venue that I treasure and value in Bristol), as clearly you don’t have the principles I thought you had.

That Langham has been included on your listings at all disappoints me. And if The Cube doesn’t address the complaints about his inclusion (and ideally act to cancel his film’s screening, and certainly cancel his personal appearance), I for one will be taking my custom elsewhere.

Virginia Nicholson – Millions Like Us: Women’s Lives in War and Peace 1939-1949

Following a cast of brave women from 1939 to 1949, Virginia Nicholson’s comprehensive book thoroughly explores the complexities of the Second World War from the point of view of the millions of women who not only kept the home fires burning, but also cracked Hitler’s codes, nursed victims at Belsen, and learned to fly planes.

Millions Like Us (Penguin, £25) is at no times sentimental, but is consistently engaging with its narratives of real women and their lived experiences, driving the narrative through very real situations – from the shortage of sanitary towels, to backstreet abortions and grieving for lost loved ones. Nicholson’s book hammers home the point that women were more than just homemakers, they were also instrumental in joining up and fighting the fight.

What becomes most apparent, though, is the disregard with which these astonishing women were treated by men. Many of these women suffered sexism, rape and abuse at the hands of men who belittled (or felt belittled by) the amazing work these women were proving themselves capable of. Despite enlisting women into the forces, there was a written rule that denied women the right to kill – which, of course, men could do. And when peace was announced, it was assumed that these women – women who had proved themselves to be more than equal to their male kin – were expected to meekly slot back into the kitchens and forget the trades they had learned. Yet, of course, many did not want to.

Nicholson’s book charts in a sympathetic way, through the narrative of real women she has retrospectively interviewed, the decade around the Second World War. From the horror experienced by women when war broke, to the sterling way they coped with the hardships at home and the horrors on the battlefields, and then the shock and lacklustre response when peace was announced – perhaps most shocking of all, the announcement of peace was not the relief everyone assumed, because nothing could ever be the same again. Families faced homelessness and poverty, and rationing continued for years afterwards. Plus the skills women had learned (from code-breaking to farming the land) didn’t translate so well into the post-war jobs market.

Nicholson’s exhaustive book is compiled with great care, complete attention to detail and confirms what a talented and empathetic writer she is. Her book makes clear that among the many atrocities of the Second World War was the abhorrent abuse women endured at the hands of misogynist men, and the great strides women made in the absence of men in a retrograde world that was exclusively a male zone. 

The paperback edition of Millions Like Us (£9.99)
is published on March 15, 2012.