Is there perhaps an axiom, for politics, femininity, or both, here: Beware a woman who never changes her hairdo; she is probably incapable of ever changing her mind?
I remember very clearly that I was tucking into a dish called “bangers and mash” in a London pub when Maggie Thatcher sauntered into my life, and altered its direction. It was 1979 and someone came in with the news that Britain had just elected its first woman Prime Minister, a Tory. Many years later I wrote in one of my books: Normally the election of Mrs. Thatcher would have been of little personal concern other than my customary liberal’s lament at furtherance of the rightward course of political leadership around the world. In this case, however, the “Iron Lady’s” accession to high office had pulled the rug from under my research sabbatical. The national development tax legislation I had been studying had been installed by the now defeated Labor government. Mrs. Thatcher took little more than a few days to send the tax law, and my research project, into the “dustbin.” Coincidentally, I reprised recently the piece in which that quote appears in these pages, posting it on the eve of her passing.
I had very little idea of Maggie Thatcher was until that day in 1979. My very first impression of her was that her coif reflected perfectly her ideological posture—like an iron hairdo, it would hold form in a Force 12 gale of political opposition. The more I learned about her the more I disliked her and, of course, when she ideologically “hooked up” with Ronald Reagan (another politician with Force 12 hair), showed support and friendship with the likes of Pinochet in Chile, Suharto in Indonesia and other political scumbags, called Nelson Mandela a “terrorist,” and shit on the British working class, dislike grew to utter contempt. But that’s her political legacy, and there is plenty of commentary, analysis, and historical examination of that. Had she and Reagan conceived an ideological love child, it would have been George W. Bush, stupid, obdurate, self-righteous and insensitive to the human costs of their policies. Of course, today, she is receiving (not here) much of the same post mortem hagiographic bullshit that was heaped on Reagan.
Yet, in the way that “when life serves one lemons, make lemonade” I might “owe” Maggie Thatcher a debt of gratitude. When I informed Patty that my sabbatical research was over pretty much before it started, she reminded me that I had been ruminating for some time on making a shift from my emphasis in urban public policy to my intent at some time to shift to my interest in relating my interest in cities and urban life to the arts and humanities. After all, the Nixon years, the Vietnam War, and to subsequent OPEC – assisted recessions, had pretty much killed American urban public policy. Thatcher killed progressive British tax policy in the space of the weekend. Maybe this was the time to make a move. We had our apartment in London, and so I dashed off a letter to my Dean, explaining what had happened and indicating that I changed my sabbatical research to what I called “the art of urbanism” or a study of the ways in which painters through history have portrayed cities and urban life. I could start right there in London, where the National Gallery, the Tate, and the Courtauld galleries contained many relevant examples. (And it was a excuse, as well, to leave earlier for Europe, where numerous other museums and galleries awaited.) This resulted not only in a substantial manuscript (and several journal articles) which will soon be published, but led to two other books that will be published this year.
Lady Iron Hair nudged my life again a decade later when I was a visiting Professor Associé at the University of Paris. I was renting a room from a English lady who I called “Madame M” who cooked wonderful meals for me, but read Le Figaro and the The Telegraph* and quoted from them to me about her admiration for the UK’s political dominatrix as I ate. I left earlier than I planned and rented a little studio where the cuisine dropped in quality, but I could digest them better as I read the IHT.
Another decade later I encountered one of Maggie’s “Iron Lady” behaviors when I went ashore at Port Stanley, Falkland Islands. There a little bit of resolute residue of the erstwhile British Empire clings tenaciously to its windy surface the way Maggie’s locks hold their wavy form. There was something really pathetically stupid about the whole affair; the inept Argentines, formerly so cozy with those Nazis for whom they provided refuge, and Britannia acting as if they actually still “rule the waves” and truly need sovereignty over this outdated fuel and provision station in the South Atlantic in the late 20th C—all to provide Lady Iron Hair a pair of iron balls to anchor that “do.”
After that** I really didn’t have all that much occasion to recollect about Maggie Thatcher in the intervening years, until Meryl Streep’s amazing portrayal of her in the movie The Iron Lady(2011). She did come to mind recently while I was watching a political discussion program on Australian television, in which a woman commentator remarked that there should be a law that requires that “at least one woman sits” on every board and commission or other public decision-making body because, as clearly as I can recollect her justification, a woman would have a moderating, compromising effect upon its deliberations. I would tend to agree, but if memory serves me Maggie Thatcher was anything but moderate, and certainly one of the most uncompromising politicians of our time.
So far as I know there has been no connection made between Thatcher’s demise and another news item that reported a poll in which Hillary Clinton would clobber any current potential opponents. Could it be that America might get its first woman head of state next election? If so, I will be keeping an eye on her political positions . . . and the other eye on her hair.
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©2013, James A. Clapp (UrbisMedia Ltd. Pub. 4.10.2013)
*E.g. The Telegraph requiem headline Apr 09: “Baroness Thatcher: a champion of freedom for workers, nations and the world”. “Freedom of workers???!!!” Jesus, they actually wrote that.
**I suppose it counts as yet another “contact” with Thatcherism that I was in Hong Kong, which she was instrumental in “handing over” to the PRC in July 1997. Fittingly, I was studying the handover on another sabbatical leave, which was where I started with her.