Thatcher at 100: Lavish celebrations to remember the Iron Lady’s life, leadership and legacy

Kemi Badenoch is expected to mark the 100th anniversary of Margaret Thatcher’s birth after paying a series of glowing tributes to her at the Conservative Party conference.

The Tory celebrations, 100 years after she was born on 13 October 1925, include a glittering dinner at the historic Guildhall in the City of London attended by a galaxy of A-list celebrities and veteran Tory grandees.

The Conservative leader led the tributes to Lady Thatcher at the party’s conference in Manchester, declaring in her opening speech: “As one of my great predecessors, Margaret Thatcher, put it: ‘The facts of life are Conservative’.”

Later in the speech, she added: “In the 1980s, Margaret Thatcher broke the cycle of high inflation, low growth and trade union strife, giving Britain back her national pride and economic strength.”

And responding to a Sky News YouGov poll suggesting half of Tory members don’t want her to lead the party into the next election, Ms Badenoch claimed she was being criticised just like Baroness Thatcher was when she became opposition leader in the 1970s.

“Pretty much everything that I’m experiencing now, she did,” she claimed in an interview when she was asked about attacks on her leadership and bad poll results. “She was written off.”

At the Guildhall dinner, the invited celebs range from national treasure Joan Collins to cricket legend Ian Botham and from Downton Abbey creator Julian Fellowes to bestselling author Jeffrey Archer.

The principal speaker is Sir Mark Thatcher, who – according to the organisers – will be speaking for the first time ever in public about his mother’s life, leadership and legacy.

Thatcher-era ministers present will include former Tory leader Michael Howard, former chancellor Norman Lamont and Kenneth Baker, whose cabinet posts included party chairman and home secretary.

The black-tie dinner for 500 guests, organised by the Margaret Thatcher Centre charitable project, is taking place 100 years to the day after the Iron Lady’s birth and at a venue she knew well.

It was at the Guildhall that Lady Thatcher spoke at the annual Lord Mayor’s Banquet a dozen times during more than a decade as prime minister, including her famously defiant speech with cricketing metaphors just 10 days before she quit in 1990.

“I am still at the crease, though the bowling has been pretty hostile of late,” she declared. “And in case anyone doubted it, can I assure you there will be no ducking the bouncers, no stonewalling, no playing for time. The bowling’s going to get hit all round the ground. That is my style.”

She was responding to the resignation of Sir Geoffrey Howe, her ally turned assassin, who hit back the following day in an onslaught in the Commons that has been claimed to be the greatest parliamentary speech of all time.

Insisting there was no monopoly of cricketing metaphors, Sir Geoffrey told MPs: “It’s rather like sending your opening batsmen to the crease only for them to find, the moment the first balls are bowled, that their bats have been broken before the game by the team captain.”

With one lethal speech, the “dead sheep” so brutally ridiculed by his Labour rival Denis Healey had turned into a roaring lion and Lady Thatcher was finished.

Yet by 1990 she had won three general elections, survived the 1984 Brighton bomb, defeated Argentina in the 1982 Falklands war and Arthur Scargill in the 1984-85 miners’ strike and privatised dozens of major nationalised industries.

She was born 100 years ago above the corner shop of her father, Alfred Roberts, a Methodist lay preacher and town councillor, on the corner of North Parade and Broad Street, Grantham, in Lincolnshire.

In the Commons in 2020, culture minister John Whittingdale, previously her political secretary, said of a visit to the Coronation Street set when she was PM: “She was particularly keen to visit Alf Roberts’ corner shop because of course her own father was Alfred Roberts, who ran the grocer’s shop in Grantham.”

Describing her early years in her autobiography, The Downing Street Years, she wrote: “I had grown up in a household that was neither poor nor rich. We had to economise each day in order to enjoy the occasional luxury.

“My father’s background as a grocer is sometimes cited as the basis for my economic philosophy. So it was – and is.”

At the Tory conference, the ghost of the Iron Lady hung heavily. Her legacy and references to the 100th anniversary of her birth were everywhere: life-size cardboard cut-outs, biographies, gift mugs, tea towels, a display of outfits worn by her and her famous quotes all over the walls.

Whittingdale, now Sir John and a veteran backbench grandee, was much in demand for anecdotes about his former boss and he didn’t disappoint. At one event, he told of her team’s attempts to persuade her to make a joke in her 1990 conference speech about the Monty Python “dead parrot” sketch.

The idea was to mock the Liberal Democrats’ “bird of liberty” symbol, but she didn’t get the joke and at one point said to her advisers: “Just who is this Monty Python?”

Nevertheless, she delivered the gag with aplomb. “This is an ex-parrot,” she said of the Lib Dems in her speech. “It is not merely stunned, it has ceased to be, expired and gone to meet its maker.”

On the eve of Ms Badenoch’s big speech, Sir John told Sky News how on the night before Lady Thatcher’s conference speeches she would make endless changes to the script until as late as 2am.

“The poor typist didn’t use a word processor, so every time it changed she had to type the whole thing again,” he said. And asked by Sky News if all party leaders stay up until the small hours making changes to their conference speech, he replied: “No!”

Although it’s the most lavish and spectacular, the Guildhall dinner is just one of many events to celebrate the anniversary. The following evening, her acclaimed biographer Charles Moore and Michael Portillo are promising an insider’s portrait of her life at the Royal Geographical Society in London.

Now more famous for his TV railway journeys, Portillo began working for the Conservatives in 1976, a year after she became Tory leader. He briefed her in the 1979 election and went on to be a special adviser, whip, and minister in her governments.

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Last week, Sir Mark and Carol Thatcher travelled to Budapest for the unveiling of a striking iron statue marking her 100th anniversary and commemorating her role in fighting communism and ending the Cold War.

And at Sloane Street Auctions in London later this month, Baroness Thatcher’s final portrait is being auctioned, along with further contents of her London home, at the third sale of her furniture and effects.

The portrait photograph, taken by Alistair Morrison in the main drawing room at her home in Chester Square, was the final portrait for which she sat. The sale also includes a portrait of Baroness Thatcher in her full Order of the Garter robes.

In Grantham, where a statue of Lady Thatcher was erected in 2022, 100th anniversary events this month include a special postcard exhibition, walking talks by a local historian, a display in the town’s library and talks by former Tory minister Edwina Currie and Gyles Brandreth.

But it’s not just friends and supporters who are praising Lady Thatcher as they mark the anniversary. At the Tory conference, her old foe Michael Heseltine, who walked out of her cabinet in 1986 and challenged her in 1990, was full of praise.

“Margaret Thatcher’s greatest achievement was to help create the European Single Market,” Lord Heseltine, now 92, said at a European Movement fringe meeting.

“It was a privilege beyond measure to serve in the Conservative government that was elected in 1979 and led our country for 18 continuous years.

“That government, first under Margaret Thatcher, has been portrayed as a right-wing administration. But however much that may suit the most zealous of my colleagues, the truth was often very different.

“My experience in introducing development corporations, building a new east end of London and at the same time acting as a sort of clerk of works in restoring confidence in Liverpool must rank as one of the most interventionist ministerial experiences in peacetime ever.

“The point is that was all under Margaret Thatcher. I remember no criticism from her. She was, in truth, much more practical than doctrinal.”

At an earlier event, the chairman of the Tory backbench 1922 Committee, Bob Blackman MP, also recalled that when Lady Thatcher became opposition leader in 1975 she struggled initially, patronised not just by Labour prime ministers Harold Wilson and James Callaghan but also by the Tory establishment, he said.

Yet in 1979, the ’22 chairman declared, she led them to victory in the first of her three general election triumphs.

Yes. But unlike Kemi Badenoch, in the 1970s Mrs Thatcher did not have the threat that the Conservatives now face from Nigel Farage.