Liz Hoggard, author and journalist
The Iron Lady is not a hagiography. But nor is it a political biopic. The film is filtered through Margaret Thatcher's consciousness, from her 10-year bid to win her first parliamentary seat to the sheer physical assault of entering the macho House of Commons. It's very much her story. The film's director Phyllida Lloyd has described the treatment as operatic. We see a woman who has sacrificed everything for politics. Who can barely live in the real world when the party dismisses her. For Lloyd (a veteran theatre director), her story is like a female King Lear.
- The Iron Lady
- Production year: 2011
- Country: UK
- Cert (UK): 12A
- Runtime: 104 mins
- Directors: Phyllida Lloyd
- Cast: Alexandra Roach, Anthony Head, Harry Lloyd, Jim Broadbent, Meryl Streep, Olivia Coleman, Olivia Colman, Richard E Grant, Roger Allam
But for me it is too soon – too dangerous – for such an abstract treatment of recent events. Meryl Streep inevitably makes Maggie a radiant figure – even I found myself cheering the brainy grocer's daughter who battles the snooty Tory men. But where is the rational opposition to her policies in the film? Union leaders are presented as sexist thugs, poll tax protesters as a wild rabble banging on her car (which never happened). What I don't find is the despair my generation felt in the early 1980s. We felt oppressed by a Tory government which specialised in union-bashing and BBC-baiting, told the unemployed to get on their bikes and introduced the homophobic Section 28 legislation. If you were different in any way – female, gay, black, student, working class – you felt marginalised.
Peter Lilley, Conservative MP and member of Margaret Thatcher's Cabinet in 1990
You are right that the film is not a hagiography. But I suspect we were both surprised that it was not a hatchet job. Given the stranglehold the liberal intelligentsia normally exercise both in Hollywood and the UK, how did they miss this chance to bury their hate figure alive? Above all, how could Streep – the epitome of a Liberal Democrat – let the side down? The film portrays Thatcher, accurately in my experience, as driven by what Shirley Letwin diagnosed as the "vigorous virtues" (fortitude, courage, principle) yet capable of normal human emotion – love for Denis and, with maternal blindness for her son. This conflicts with the view nurtured on the left that she was driven by hatred, cruelty and love of privilege. The only cruelty she displayed was to the Wets and Geoffrey Howe. The less important you were, the kinder she was. I recall her tearing a strip off Howe for raising interest rates, then being full of solicitude to me (a humble speech writer at the time) since she deduced from my black tie I had come from a funeral.
In regretting the film's failure to portray the "despair my generation felt", you attribute your feelings to an entire generation and assume that anyone who was "female … or working class felt marginalised". Writers can pretend that two-thirds of the population were opposed to the government but it would be more difficult for a film to ignore the fact that Mrs T kept getting re-elected. Her great success was to demonstrate that the liberal intelligentsia was out of touch with the people it purported to speak for.
LH: Interestingly, there has been revisionism among feminists about how hard it was for her to be taken seriously at the beginning. In 2005 the Women's Library held an exhibition with documents from the period – the misogyny and class snobbery were shocking. These days we are used to seeing strong women – Angela Merkel, Christine Lagarde – so it's easy to forget. I don't believe for a minute the makers of The Iron Lady (all good feminist women!) have any intention of offering us Tory propaganda on a plate. But the danger of showing the struggle a character undergoes is that it makes them too appealing. You feel sympathy for one person in a particular situation rather than engagement with the consequences of their behaviour for unseen millions. In contrast, a film like Made in Dagenham, about the strike that paved the way for the Equal Pay Act of 1970, was a humbling piece of social history, not just a diva performance.
PL: Your remarks about the film-maker's feminism and revisionism about Thatcher among today's feminists are fascinating. The film does almost co-opt her for the sisterhood. But at the time, feminists hated her because she did not play the role of the victim nor attribute her success to the movement. She simply proved herself superior in energy, ability and determination to her male colleagues. She saw gender as completely irrelevant to whether policies were right and wrong, sensible or foolish.
You didn't rise to my bait about why Mrs Thatcher drove the leftish intelligentsia to "despair", apart possibly from your remark about neglecting the "consequences… for unseen millions". People still accuse her of deliberately causing unemployment. No country ever escaped from socialism, syndicalism and inflation without grievous pain, any more than a drug addict can quit without cold turkey.
LH: I agree, Peter, that politicians rarely decide to "cause" unemployment. But they operate a hierarchy of need, and woe betide anyone who slips off the list. A woman who once claimed "there is no such thing as society" can have little understanding of human frailty. We all get ill, uncertain, grow old. Which is why I find the end of the film so affecting – it breaks the greatest taboo, the one the party faithful can't bear to accept about their heroine. It's brave to make a Hollywood film about dementia. The treatment is both dignified and unflinching. How early did her illness start? Is that why she seemed so autocratic (even to her own party) in the final days of leadership? Or does power itself diminish you? Of course, these scenes are fictionalised, though both Streep and scriptwriter Abi Morgan read Carol Thatcher's memoir, A Swim-on Part in the Goldfish Bowl – where she revealed that her mother had to be reminded of her husband's death over and over again. Dementia is the great, painful topic for our generation. The Iron Lady starts off being a film about a singular woman, love or loathe her. And ends up being about us.
PL: You are right – the film's ending is certainly moving . I am sorry you wheel out her phrase "there is no such thing as society"; as always misrepresented as denying mutual obligation when the transcript reveals she was saying the reverse – we cannot offload our obligations to each other on an abstraction called "society". As for not understanding human frailty, she was remarkably tolerant (however disapproving) of the frailty of her colleagues, from Cecil Parkinson onwards, and never exploited opponents' personal weaknesses. Her hopes that citizens would rise to the challenge of greater freedom were largely fulfilled. Politicians do not "operate a hierarchy of need". They try to win votes by satisfying people's needs – so they do not casually let people "slip off the list" into unemployment if there is any alternative. Reality was harsh, and the intelligentsia, for whom in [US economist] Tom Sowell's phrase "reality is optional", convinced themselves it was Mrs T who made it so. Mercifully, this is a realistic film which affords her critics little succour.
The Iron Lady is released on 6 January. Dangerous Women: The Guide to Modern Life by Clare Conville, Liz Hoggard and Sarah-Jane Lovett is pulished by W&N
Comments
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4 January 2012 3:46PM
Is accuracy important?
This is a drama, after all.
4 January 2012 3:52PM
Well, on the other hand, at least it's not Braveheart.
4 January 2012 3:52PM
I shall make a point of not watching this film. The very thought of it brings back horrible memories of life in South Yorkshire while she was doing her bit for her paymasters.
4 January 2012 3:52PM
Now can we have a film that portrats Thatcher as she was and not a money-spinner designed to make the posionous palatable.
4 January 2012 3:54PM
Yes, but it's never the rich who get the pain.
4 January 2012 3:54PM
You didnt like Braveheart?
FFRRREEEEDOOOMMM etc? No?
4 January 2012 3:56PM
In fact if I asked someone what this film is like and they said its exactly like Braveheart I would definitely go and see it.
As it is, its about a witch, so I wont.
4 January 2012 3:58PM
So there was no mention of her support for the Contras in Nicaragua and her provision of former SAS troops and other miltary personnel in activities that killed not only Nicaraguan nationals, school teachers and coffee plantation workers but overseas aid workers as well.
Not only UK residents will be celebrating the end of this mad bitch.
4 January 2012 3:59PM
After the police charge on 18 June 1984 at Orgreave (an event as despicable as Peterloo), my friends and I organised a dinner for the following year on the same date. .
We drank to the humiliation of Thatcher and vowed to keep doing it every year until she died.
The woman is loathed for what she did to ordinary working men and women and no amount of whitewash will ever remove the stain she has left behind.
I fully intend to dance in the streets when she shuffles off her mortal coil.
4 January 2012 4:00PM
Historical piffle it might be but that doesn't make it any less watchable - IMO of course.
4 January 2012 4:01PM
Peter Lilly ate that journalist alive.
4 January 2012 4:01PM
if it upsets the left then i hope it wins a oscar !
4 January 2012 4:01PM
Heard a discussion of the film, and how acculturate the portrayal is, on Radio 2 this afternoon.
Almost every caller had contempt for Thatcher, some of really quite nasty including a man who said he would have shot her if he could have got hold of a gun during the miner's strike. There was much talk of dancing on her grave, etc.
The only person who had a good word for her was a senile old bat who seemed to think Thatcher had "beat the Irish" when she was prime minister.
Personally, I'm with the majority of the Radio 2 callers, and it seems every one I speak with is of the same opinion. She was very bad for this country. She ruined our industry and her government has resulted in a split in the UK which will end in an independent Scotland.
So just who DID vote for her?
4 January 2012 4:02PM
+1 for Braveheart
Lifts kilt and waves hairy arse towards Whitt
4 January 2012 4:02PM
1979: Tories 43.9%
1983: Tories 42.4%
1987: Tories 42.2%
Looks like a pretty consistent two thirds opposed to me.
4 January 2012 4:03PM
That's a statement of the bleeding obvious. If you have money behind you, you can ride trouble out much more easily.
You make Lilley's point even better: it's the poor that suffer the grievous pain whist escaping from socialism, syndicalism and inflation.
4 January 2012 4:03PM
Errr, because Hollywood and "the UK film industry" aren't beholden to the liberal intelligentsia?
"The King's Speech" anyone?
4 January 2012 4:03PM
Kid's stuff mate.
4 January 2012 4:04PM
Prefering an alternative doesn't always mean 'opposed to'.
4 January 2012 4:04PM
If it upsets the right I hope it doesnt!
Nah Nah, and indeed, Na Nah Nah
4 January 2012 4:06PM
Actually, I liked Braveheart as a film. Particularly the scenes where Edward I tosses a clueless git out of a tower window and where the Scots line up and flash their naughty bits at the English. But as history, it's utter rubbish.
4 January 2012 4:07PM
It was rated 15.
Far be it from me to question what you allow your children to watch but I have called social services.
4 January 2012 4:07PM
(puts on deep voice of movie trailer voiceover man)
The Iron Lady - coming to cinemas soon
Certificate 18 - contains scenes of a Conservative government that some people may find distressing
4 January 2012 4:11PM
Lordy, hasn't the Guardian discussed this enough yet ?
4 January 2012 4:12PM
Peter Lilley
Maybe, just maybe, that's because the 'liberal-media-conspiracy-theory' is utter bullshit.
And maybe, for the second question by Lilley, it's because the term intelligentsia would be stretching it a bit when talking about Meryl Streep.
4 January 2012 4:13PM
"liberal intelligentsia" Aaaarghhh ! I'm cut to the quick.
4 January 2012 4:15PM
Above all, how could Streep – the epitome of a Liberal Democrat – let the side down?
Are you sure about those capitals? How is Meryl Streep A Lib Dem? She's American.
She's also hugely popular, has a promising future and possesses a certain amount of professional integrity, none of which applies to Lib dems.
4 January 2012 4:15PM
I've not seen the film but I find the idea of Thatcher as a refreshingly plucky woman taking on the male establishment hard to believe.
She was apparently hugely able and accomplished as a young woman and held impeccably right wing opinions, which were no doubt even more right wing in private and when she was young. The constituency grandees were probably chuffed to get her on board.
For me the attraction of the film is in its Ozymandias stylings - comparing Thatcher in her pomp, dominating the Mother of Parliaments, to the isolated old woman of today (a point made well in Hoggard's closing sentences).
4 January 2012 4:15PM
wilfela
<quote>After the police charge on 18 June 1984 at Orgreave (an event as despicable as Peterloo).</quote>
Peterloo:
15 killed
650 injured
Orgreave:
0 killed
51 miners injured
72 police injured
Shrill hyperbole doesn't help. Neither did a union leader who put himself before the needs of the miners.
And no, I'm not a Thatcher fan.
But neither am I a fan of this knee-jerk, and often ignorant, hatred of her either.
4 January 2012 4:17PM
If more proof were needed that she was hated, we heard it there from Mick Jagger.
4 January 2012 4:17PM
bill4me
"Prefering an alternative doesn't always mean 'opposed to'."
Exactly!
A fact that many seem to conveniently forget when it suits their argument.
4 January 2012 4:19PM
I have no intention of going to see this film about a woman who frittered away north sea oil revenue on tax breaks for her wealthy pals, destroyed British industry, brought in the bankers and service 'industiries' took us into a pointless war and started selling off all our assets. We are still paying the price.
Besides I find Meryl Streep and her ilk pretentious. and irritating.
4 January 2012 4:19PM
Well, what about Braveheart then? ;-)
I dont really get why people think Hollywood should stick to every historical detail.
Sometimes history can be really boring.
That said, it does do my head in if you have read the book and you find out they left out parts you thought were brilliant.
4 January 2012 4:19PM
It might be fun to see a Braveheart-esque film about Thatcher. I can just see it where Thatcher takes personal command of the British forces and storms the beaches in the Falklands. Not to mention when she then leads a commando raid into Beunos Aires and single-handedly captures the junta government.
4 January 2012 4:20PM
I believe any ticket purchaser in Scotland is immediately being put on suicide watch as they are obviously near the edge and needing something to just give them that extra nudge required.
4 January 2012 4:21PM
i like it.
Mel Gibson as Heseltine
4 January 2012 4:22PM
without Mrs T so many of todays well know liberal intelligentsia would not be millionaires and would be paying a tax rate of 98% as was the top rate of tax before MT
so they have a lot to thank her for , and i suspect secretly they do, there is a lot of money to be made out of playing socialist.
just look at some of these peoples lifestyles,
anyway can't wait to see it, .
4 January 2012 4:23PM
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4 January 2012 4:24PM
"Looks like a pretty consistent two thirds opposed to me."
"Prefering an alternative doesn't always mean 'opposed to'."
Equally voting Tory didn't mean you liked all their policies or her.
I look forward to the party.
4 January 2012 4:25PM
Meryl Streep would have made a better Heseltine than a Thatcher!
4 January 2012 4:28PM
The most loathed PM of her time (outside the coutere of her sopish Conservative ilk) I think it will be only the Americans who see her as some 'proud and tough' negotiator, ah the Americans and their media...I remember meeting an American once who thought Thatcher was 'great' I asked him why 'well she and Reagan stopped Communism' really!!!!! Then I went and gave him a bio of her achievements and he quickly curtailed away, even the Communism myth I blew out of his bathtub waterered brain, so I guess this film will only serve the idiotic Americans who see her as a hero then.
4 January 2012 4:30PM
Very true.
Im thinking Steven Seagal for Nigel Lawson in his more rotund days.
The bonus? His inclusion would guarantee multiple repeats on Channel 5.
4 January 2012 4:30PM
Peterloo was an attack on ordinary people by a government who were seeking to repress.
So was Orgreave.
4 January 2012 4:30PM
Went to the cinema yesterday and had to suffer a preview of this film, in a cinema in central Scotland, within the authority where the miners' strike started and within a country which was used as a guinea pig for the council tax, with the awareness that this woman had few seats to worry about losing up here.
The very thought that this film which will, inevitably, portray her as some heroic figure battling against prejudice in order to achieve the premiership, showing her opposition outside of parliament as misogynists and thugs (as referred to in the article), makes me feel nauseous.
4 January 2012 4:31PM
The only PM of her time?
4 January 2012 4:31PM
Careful timing innit, she could go any week now. They'll make a fortune from this, and the moment she pops her clogs it'll be on telly all around the world.
In even the film industry, this sort of Deep(Shallow) Tory Cyncism abounds.
Abounds!
What a lovely word.
4 January 2012 4:32PM
I refuse to see a film about this evil auld bitch, but surely it'd be smarter to do this after the film was released so people who want to talk about how the film portrays her can talk about it?
4 January 2012 4:35PM
Forgive the repost
TheExplodingEuro 30 December 2011 10:46AM I do love “Thatch!” I don’t mean I love Margaret Hilda Thatcher – the person. She never struck me as being very nice. What I mean is that I love “Thatch!” the mythical Left-Wing bogeyman that was created by an unholy alliance of Ben Elton, Arthur Scargill, Derek Hatton and General Galtieri. “Thatch” is an unambiguous hate figure. Pure, distilled evil. Not human. So reviled that some people claim they can’t even think about going to see a film about her without feeling physically sick. That kind of hysterical public demonstrativeness belongs in North Korea I would have thought. Surely we are better than that? Apparently not. People on here rage against the tabloids, but are apparently happy to accept a simplistic, ultra-tabloid assessement of a PM who was demonstrably more complex than that. The facts speak fro themselves, so they must be ignored. People come on here to tell us that Liverpool will party when she dies. How nice. Doesn’t the fact, mentioned in the article, that she ignored the advice she was given and arranged extra funding, make a difference to that? Apparently not. People rage that she destroyed our manufacturing base, even though she didn’t. People rage and rage against “Thatch,” competing to proclaim their hate for an elderly woman stricken with dementia. They talk of dancing on her grave. How nice. That’s why I love “Thatch.” She shows the Left for what they really are – shallow, bitter, twisted, angry, hate-filled, unthinking and intellectually barren fools. Thanks Maggie!
4 January 2012 4:35PM
A lovely bit of fantasy with a midget painted blue trying to kill the Prisoner.
4 January 2012 4:36PM
Aged thirteen I bet a friend 20p that she wouldn't get elected in 1979 because she was a woman. To my eternal shame I had this unspoken hope that a sexist culture would come to the rescue of the left. So, for me there's nothing new in being conflicted about Thatcher as a woman because it was always there.
Ideologically the disaster that was Thatcher is really encapsulated by Peter Lilley where he says
because Thatcher established the meta-political conditions which still allow the assumptions supporting this statement to pass as the truth.
It was about half way through the second of her terms that I found I couldn't listen to here voice any more and would rush to turn off the radio or TV as soon as she opened her mouth. I won't be seeing the film.