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ecame Prime Minister, her sister wrote an article saying that Margaret had never worn
anything but patent leather court shoes and she packed them even for stays at Balmoral.
On her first visit there as Minister for Education, Patrick Plunket and a lady-in-waiting
had taken the Thatchers out for a walk. Mrs Thatcher had no country shoes and had to
be forced to put on a pair of the towering lady-in-waiting’s hush puppies with multiple
pairs of socks. It was a battle of wills. ‘I didn’t know how determined she was,’ the
courtier recalled. On another occasion she actually managed to get her into a pair of
green Wellington boots. Mrs Thatcher did not relish the resolutely outdoor life which the
family led at Balmoral. ‘The royal family’, a courtier said, ‘will go out in weather you
wouldn’t put a dog out in.’ It was noted that when the time came to leave Balmoral, Mrs
Thatcher would be poised, suitcases packed well ahead of time, longing for the off.
Denis Thatcher and the Duke of Edinburgh had a good deal in common beyond their
roles as consorts, enjoying golf-club jokes over a drink and seeking solace in each
other’s company at such occasions as Commonwealth conferences. Elizabeth and Mrs
Thatcher were not entirely comfortable with each other on a social basis, perhaps
because Mrs Thatcher regarded royalty not just with loyalty but with reverence. ‘She had
a rather exaggerated respect for the institution of monarchy,’ a friend said. ‘Nobody
would curtsey lower – no one would be more supportive of the monarchy even when it
was engaged in attacking her. She had great sympathy for any of the royal family who
got into trouble. Even if it was their fault, it never was as far as she was concerned.’
Elizabeth enjoys people with a sense of humour, which Mrs Thatcher manifestly does not
possess. Elizabeth remained puzzled by her and was once heard to enquire, halfhumorously,
‘Do you think Mrs Thatcher will ever change?’
Both the Palace and loyal Thatcherites protest that the two women got on very well,
but the indications are that while Elizabeth was always perfectly professional and
correct in her relations with her Prime Minister, in her heart of hearts she did not like
her or approve of all the changes she was making in the fabric of Britain. In the
company of Commonwealth leaders who were also old friends, she would refer to her
(as did leading anti-Thatcherites) as ‘that woman’. The widest area of divergence
between them, as with Edward Heath, was over the Commonwealth, and in the late
1970s and 1980s that meant principally the questions arising from inter-racial conflict
in southern Africa. ‘The Queen was sympathetic to the Black cause in Rhodesia and
southern Africa,’ the Hon. Lee Kuan Yew, Senior Minister of Singapore, wrote. 14
For the past fifteen years successive Foreign and Colonial Secretaries and heads of
government had been preoccupied with the settlement of the situation in Rhodesia since
in 1965 the white minority Government under Ian Smith had unilaterally declared
independence from Britain. Britain, still theoretically responsible for the territory, had
imposed sanctions on Rhodesia, but had hitherto failed to reach a settlement. In an
effort to placate international hostility and produce a semblance of legality, Smith had
held elections in the spring of 1979 which had returned a black Prime Minister, Bishop
Abel Muzorewa, but Muzorewa was widely regarded as merely a Smith stooge, the black
nationalist leaders having been excluded from the electoral process and the civil war