Awkward animosity or a regal role model? On the anniversary of Margaret Thatcher winning the Conservative party leadership, were the rumours of a tense relationship with Queen Elizabeth II true?
It's a real-life drama that played out in Season Four of The Crown, but 50 years after Margaret Thatcher was voted in as Tory party leader, what was her relationship with the late Queen Elizabeth really like behind the scenes?
Margaret Thatcher are said to have had a somewhat frosty relationship, but are the rumours of a feud really true?
Getty Images
It’s often cited as a ‘frosty’ relationship: two female leaders, born only five months apart, but with very different views on society. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and Queen Elizabeth II reportedly had many tensions during their joint tenure, alongside some very conflicting views. Gillian Anderson and Olivia Colman brought this most British of power dynamics to light in season four of The Crown. But was it really handbags at dawn between the two?
Many former politicians, civil servants and courtiers who observed first-hand the Queen’s relationship with Margaret Thatcher agree: it was a rather ‘difficult’ one. The Queen and Margaret Thatcher were very different women with dissimilar backgrounds who had to unite during what is now seen as one of recent history’s most turbulent periods.
Some suggest that it was the Queen Mother, who passed away in 2002, who was the Royal Family’s biggest advocate of Margaret Thatcher’s hard right politics rather than the Queen who British historian Ben Pimlott once said, is, ‘in her own way, a bit of a leftie.’
The Queen reportedly had anxieties about her divided nation during the Thatcher years. Between March 1984 and March 1985, more than half the country's 187,000 miners left work in what was the biggest industrial dispute in post-war Britain in an attempt to prevent mines from closing.
Margaret Thatcher and Queen Elizabeth in Zambia
Bettmann
Thatcher opposed the strike and wanted to reduce the power of the trade unions. She imagined it would end swiftly due to pressure from miners' wives, suggesting that they should tell their men to be sensible but many women became actively involved. The Queen, however, reportedly expressed sympathy for the wives.
There is also often reference to the Queen and Thatcher disagreeing over sanctions against apartheid South Africa, Thatcher in opposition to sanctions, and the Queen in support.
Personality-wise, the two women were different too and according to their courtiers, the Queen is said to possess a dry wit, while Thatcher was said to lack a sense of humour.
A new Greek princess, a dazzling tiara, and a right royal guest list: Everything you need to know about Prince Nikolaos and Chrysà Vardinogiánni's wedding
By Ben Jureidini
Read More
In a 2014 Amazon Prime documentary entitled, The Queen and her Prime Ministers, the narrator claims their relationship was ‘awkward at times.’
In the documentary, the late royal journalist Judy Wade talks about a time when Thatcher was keen to find out what the Queen was wearing to an event they were both attending so they wouldn’t clash, which supposedly sparked a response from the Palace that said: ‘Don’t worry, the Queen never notices what other women are wearing.’
Bernard Ingham, Thatcher’s former Chief Press Secretary, claimed she was ‘extremely respectful of the monarchy’ and perhaps ‘too punctual’ when it came to her weekly audience.
The relationship between the two is said to have been ‘awkward at times’
Getty Images
The documentary’s narrator continued: ‘Whenever she went to see the Queen, Mrs Thatcher always arrived a quarter of an hour too early for her weekly audience and every week the Queen let her wait for 15 minutes.’
Anthony Sampson, a well-connected journalist of the era wrote in 1982: ‘The relationship is the more difficult because their roles seem confused. The Queen's style is more matter-of-fact and domestic while it is Mrs Thatcher (who is taller) who bears herself like a queen.’
Some, however, believe that the relationship was not as fraught as it is often portrayed.
According to British playwright Moira Buffini whose 2013 play, Handbaged, grabbed headlines for examining the relationship between the Queen and Thatcher on stage, the Queen was actually a role model for Thatcher. In an interview with The Guardian ahead of its release she said: ‘The hats, the gloves, the coats were all her aspiring to look like the woman she admired. She aspired to be regal.’
Fundamentally, the relationship between any PM and the Queen tends to be a secretive one, and there are amazingly few references to the Queen in Thatcher's voluminous memoirs.
In the Amazon documentary, BBC broadcaster Michael Cockerell said: ‘In the end, I think they did get on, and I think Mrs Thatcher came to value the advice the Queen gave her.’
While royal biographer Hugo Vickers suggested that the Queen was said to be ‘very upset’ in the way Thatcher was ousted. In November 1990, she resigned as head of government and party leader after Michael Heseltine launched a challenge to her leadership.
It’s also worth noting that Thatcher's funeral was the first PM's funeral attended by the Queen since Churchill. The Queen also honoured Thatcher with The Order of Merit just two weeks after she resigned.