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HM The Queens and the Rt Hon Mrs Thatchers, Sarah Moyle, Helen Reuben, Emma Ernest, Jane Quinn. Pictures: Manuel Harlan Handbagged Wolverhampton Grand ***** Margaret Hilda “milk snatcher” Thatcher. She was the Marmite of British Prime Ministers, you either loved her or hated her, there were no half measures, she created polarisation long before the trolls, with their IQs struggling to reach double figures, infected today’s social media. She was also, unwittingly, half of the hit comedy duo Mags and Madge, not that either of them realised it at the time . . . if at all, what a laugh they were and luckily it is all chronicled by Moira Buffini in her memoir, the handbag tag being their simple symbol of power. The format is simple. We have the Queen, played by Helen Reuben, and Emma Ernest as Mrs Thatcher, and a record of their regular meetings. Simple. Except that is then, when they happened. What about now, looking back on it all, how it might have happened, or should have happened? So, enter Sarah Moyle as the Queen and , on Press night, Morag Cross as Mrs T crossing . . . handbags . . . after the dust has settled of course, with their more . . . acerbic recollections of events. And as then and now share the same stage we are treated to both views, constitutionally reserved, and let it all rip at the same hilarious time, with the two selves of each other often correcting or reminding themselves of what really happened . . . or not. In the spirit of inclusion and diversity we also have a whole cast of men . . . but only two actors . . . we don’t want to get carried away, there is a budget to consider, and Thatcher and the Queen were both notoriously careful with money. There is Cassius Konneh who pops up as an oh so helpful footman, the old windbag himself, Neil Kinnock, Kenneth Kaunda and . . . Nancy Reagan? Hey, it’s a job, don’t knock it. He is also the Queen’s Press Secretary Michael Shea who fell from grace, somewhat fatally, after being revealed as the source of a long, long feature in The Sunday Times in 1986 which claimed the Queen was dismayed and displeasured by Mrs Thatcher’s policies and attitudes . . .his claim he had been misreported was . . . let's just say he was to leave royal service soon after. While Dennis Herdman gives us Ronald Reagan, Peter Carington, Arthur Scargill, the Dirty Digger Rupert Murdoch, and Geoffrey Howe. Dennis Healey’s famed dead sheep, Howe, who was to savage Thatcher, quietly and unassumedly in a modest, softly spoken resignation speech in the commons delivered with scalpel like efficiency clothed in good grace and manners. His intervention brought her crashing down.
Arthur Scargill's chances were limited with TWO Mrs Thatchers on his case Herdman was also husband Dennis, who rose to fame not so much from being the spouse of a Prime Minister but as a star of Private Eye with his imaginary Dear Bill letters in every edition for five years, written to his imaginary golfing chum by Richard Ingrams and John Wells. Oh, and he gave is a memorable line, just the one, from The Duke of Edinburgh. The talented male contingent are glorious fun and at times act as the conscience of the play, relating the consequences and uglier side of the Thatcher years, with its social unrest and poll tax riots, union attacks, and beyond our shores, the changes happening in the world order. So, where to start . . . for those off the planet at the time Thatcher was the longest serving Prime Minister of the 20th century and was the first woman to hold the position, and by one of those quirks of fate thrown up from time to time, the second woman was also the shortest serving. She was also the eighth to have served under Queen Elizabeth II, after Winston Churchill, Eden, Macmillan, Alec Douglas-Home, Wilson, Heath, Wilson (again) and Callaghan with the Queen having seven more to deal with after Thatcher. What her majesty thought of her latest Prime Minister is . . . uncertain. Under our constitutional norms, the winner in a general election, in 1979 it was Thatcher, is appointed Prime Minister by the monarch and invited to form a government with a weekly audience arranged to keep the sovereign up to date. Convention has it that the monarch does not openly involve themselves in politics while the incumbent First Lord of the Treasury, to give him, or her in this case, their Sunday title, does not divulge the conversations, formal or otherwise with their employer, in this case the Queen. There were rumours of disagreements, even clashes, after all here were two strong opinionated women, but convention and discretion ruled, tradition and British values demanded no less, so we are grateful for the chance for a fly on the wall record, even if the wall, and the record, are, should we say, a little short on actuality . . . Twelve years on from her death Thatcher is still the darling of sections of the Conservative party, quoted, often wrongly, in arguments from the right, and awarded a status matched only by Winston Churchill, yet she created divisions in society which still exist 40 years on. There are still once thriving mining communities in the north which see the police as sworn enemies of the people and where any Tory enters their run down streets at their peril – the ingrained legacy of her yearlong war against miners. All our pits might have gone but the anger still remains. Yet even her enemies, and there were many, would grudgingly admit she acted not for personal gain or profit but out of a conviction that what she was doing, rightly or wrongly, was the best for the country, it was her vision of a greater Britain. So, did a grocer and methodist preacher’s daughter from Grantham and a Queen, perhaps the wealthiest woman in the world, paying no tax and wanting for absolutely nothing, agree on Thatcher’s free marketeer philosophy and belief in trickle-down economics? And that doesn’t even touch foreign policy, Thatcher was not a supporter of what was becoming the inevitable independence for the pariah white ruled state of Rhodesia. It had been refused independence by Harold Wilson in 1964-65 when its then white minority prime minister, Ian Smith, refused to allow voting rights to be extended to the African population. The Queen, as head of the Commonwealth, was happy to welcome Zimbabwe into the fold. Then there was another Commonwealth crisis with South Africa and apartheid in the 1980s with Thatcher opposing sanctions imposed by the Commonwealth and the European Economic Community. As in Zimbabwe, Thatcher saw the native African opposition and likely new governments as Marxist terrorists while the Queen . . . convention ruled out her political involvement but there were always speeches at official dinners and the annual Christmas broadcast where words and themes could be measured and interpreted. Never enough to criticise nor, more pointedly, support . . . at least not openly. There was the Falkland’s War when the special friendship with the USA was strained when Reagan did not initially back his soulmate in the conflict, and her decision to allow the US to use RAF bases to launch attacks on Libya did not earn applause on the world stage, while the fall of the Berlin Wall and reunification of Germany was welcomed . . . with reservations. There is a solid core of world and British events running through the play which covers them with delightful and laugh out loud humour, but it is a play that poses questions especially for those who lived through the Thatcher years, reviving memories from her days as Education Secretary scrapping free school milk, to her selling off state owned industries and her battles to neuter trade unions. For younger audience members it is a wonderful history lesson dressed up in glorious humour taught by a brilliant cast bringing Mags and Madge, young and old and a stageful of men to magical life. A real thinking man’s . . . . or woman’s (sorry ma’ams) comedy. Directed by Alex Thorpe, the Queen will be granting an audience to Mrs T to 01-03-25. Roger Clarke 25-02-25 Handbagged will be holding another audience in the Midlands at Coventry Belgrade, 29 April - 3 May 2025 |
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