68

As the years rolled by, even politicians with the most meagre interest in the Beatles felt obliged to drop their names, just to show they were in touch. On 11 October 1969, celebrating her tenth anniversary as an MP, Margaret Thatcher spoke at her Finchley Conservative Association Ball. Over the past ten years there had, she said, been many changes in society: ‘In 1959 we had not heard of the Beatles or David Frost, there was no permissive society and no hippies.’ Though she was probably unaware of it, the previous week John and Yoko had been recording ‘Don’t Worry Kyoko (Mummy’s Only Looking for Her Hand in the Snow)’, the B-side of the Plastic Ono Band’s ‘Cold Turkey’, just a few miles away, in Abbey Road.

‘But some things have not changed,’ she continued. ‘Right is still right and wrong is wrong … It is the good news which should be broadcast, and in Finchley there is a lot of good news.’ She then paid tribute to the Finchley Chrysanthemum Society for ‘producing bigger and better blooms’.

Eighteen years later, Mrs Thatcher was preparing to fight her second general election as prime minister. Keen to harness the skittish youth vote, her aides lined up an interview with Smash Hits, a magazine with an estimated readership of 3.3 million, its average reader being fifteen years old.

A week before the interview, Mrs Thatcher’s aide Christine Wall wrote her a briefing note, suggesting topics that the interviewer, Tom Hibbert, might raise. They included ‘any pop star/film star heroes you had as a youngster’, ‘your feeling about today’s stars’ and ‘your position on drugs’.

Under the heading Points to Make, Ms Wall advised: ‘It is worth mentioning that a degree of teenage rebellion is part of growing up,’ and ‘Teenagers have long been anti-establishment whatever the political persuasion of the Government of the day,’ adding that ‘You may not enjoy the interview. Mr Hibbert may ask superficial questions which betray a lack of understanding. The challenge of the interview will be for you to demonstrate that just because you are not part of the pop scene, you are still in touch with youngsters and understand their needs …’

On the morning of the interview, she handed Mrs Thatcher a further memo:

PRIME MINISTER

YOUR INTERVIEW WITH SMASH HITS

You asked for some examples of contemporary and past popular music. Here are some suggestions:

CURRENT POP CHARTS

At Number 1 and 2 in the singles charts at the moment are two American ‘soul’ songs both hits in the sixties and now hits again 20 years later. At No. 1 is ‘STAND BY ME’ by BEN E. KING. At No. 2 is ‘WHEN A MAN LOVES A WOMAN’ by PERCY SLEDGE … I attach the latest Top Ten chart list.

Music from the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical ‘PHANTOM OF THE OPERA’ continues to do well in the charts. The soundtrack album is at No 1 in the LP charts and the single ‘MUSIC OF THE NIGHT’ sung by MICHAEL CRAWFORD is now at No 34 in the singles charts after being in the top ten …

A bizarre paragraph reminded Mrs Thatcher that ‘Two of the most recent BIG BAND HITS are “PASADENA” by the TEMPERANCE SEVEN in the 1960s and “THE FLORAL DANCE” by THE BRIGHOUSE AND RASTRICK BRASS BAND in the 1970s.’ Punk was also mentioned. The only other musical phenomenon to be accorded its own briefing note, seventeen years after they had split up, was:

THE BEATLES

Probably the two most famous BEATLES songs amongst many hits are YESTERDAY which has been recorded by hundreds of people including FRANK SINATRA AND ELVIS PRESLEY and ALL YOU NEED IS LOVE which was performed live in front of 64,000,000 people on TV in 1968.

When the big day came, Mrs Thatcher did her best to show that her finger was on the pulse of youth. Having offered Hibbert a glass of water (‘It’s Malvern Water. British! We only serve British!’), she rattled through most of the points on the memo, even mentioning ‘When a Man Loves a Woman’, big bands, and punk (‘I know we have got the punks. The punks spend a lot of time and money on their appearance’).

When Hibbert asked if she would have been very upset if her children had formed a pop group, she replied, ‘No, I should not have been at all upset … I would have been much more concerned if they did not do anything. Mark did, as a matter of fact learn the guitar.’ He was not particularly good at it, she added, ‘but he had quite a musical sense, and they all listened to – heaven knows, we had all the latest pop records – there were the Beatles in our time you see, and they are very interesting and they are just coming back because their songs were tuneful. I remember “Telstar”, lovely song, I absolutely loved it.’

‘Telstar’, Hibbert politely pointed out, was not by the Beatles but by the Tornados.

‘The Tornados, yes, then we had Dusty Springfield, but the Beatles I remember most of all. They had to have this thing on all day, I said [to her children], “The pair of you, did you have to listen to that?” but it became part of the background.’

On 31 May 1990, six months before being squeezed from office, Margaret Thatcher paid a visit to Abbey Road, to celebrate the eightieth anniversary of the EMI studios. While there, she posed for photographs, playing the drums in the studio and walking across the famous zebra crossing on the road outside. ‘I loved the songs of the Beatles,’ she told journalists. ‘They were sheer genius both in the way they performed and in some of the songs they wrote.’

But five years into her retirement, she had grown less enamoured of the Beatles’ influence. In her autobiography she complained of ‘a whole “youth culture” of misunderstood Eastern mysticism, bizarre clothing and indulgence in hallucinatory drugs’.

Trinity Mirror/Mirrorpix/Alamy Stock Photo

‘I found Chelsea a very different place when we moved back to London in 1970,’ she continued. ‘I had mixed feelings about what was happening. There was vibrancy and talent, but this was also in large degree a world of make-believe. A perverse pride was taken in Britain about our contribution to these trends. Carnaby Street in Soho, the Beatles, the mini-skirt and the maxi-skirt were the new symbols of “Swinging Britain”. And they did indeed prove good export earners. Harold Wilson was adept at taking maximum political credit for them. The trouble was that they concealed the real economic weaknesses which even a talented fashion industry and entrepreneurial recording companies could not counter-balance. As Desmond Donnelly remarked, “My greatest fear is that Britain will sink giggling into the sea.”’