After Iraqi president Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait on August 2 1990, the then British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher famously told the first President George Bush: “Don't go wobbly on me now George!” The “Iron Lady” urged Bush to meet the crisis with resolve and to build a coalition to remove the Iraqi dictator's forces from Kuwait. At the time Thatcher seemed all powerful, her position unassailable. And yet by the time the Gulf crisis erupted into military conflict in mid-January 1991, she had been ousted from power by her Conservative colleagues and replaced by John Major. Once it came, the ending of Thatcher's premiership was swift. Over a period of 10 days she went from being the most powerful woman in the world to being a tearful figure glimpsed in the back of a car being driven away from Downing Street. Thatcher's fall from power is now the subject of a 110-minute drama, “Margaret,” premiered last Thursday on BBC2 TV. The drama's title shows that its emphasis is on the woman behind the Iron Lady image. Thatcher is played by one of Britain's most acclaimed actresses, Lindsay Duncan (58). Duncan does not attempt to impersonate Thatcher, but brings a fine-boned slender elegance to the role. She shows a vulnerable side to Thatcher, alongside her fury at what she saw as her betrayal by colleagues. Duncan has said in interviews that she “hates” Thatcher's political record, and yet she gives a generally sympathetic portrayal. The play humanizes Thatcher and shows the chinks in her armor. In a touching performance Ian McDiarmid conveys the devotion and kindly supportiveness of her husband Denis. Towards the end a distraught Thatcher realizes she will have to leave her position and weeps at the breakfast table while Denis comforts her. He tells her: “They don't deserve you. They never have.” The drama is implicitly critical of Thatcher's role as a mother and shows her differing attitudes towards her twin children, indulgent towards Mark but neglectful of Carol. A statement from writer Richard Cottan at the beginning of the drama says that “most of the dialogue and many of the scenes are the invention of the author.” His script is believable and “Margaret” plays out like a thriller, with a constant racking up of tension. Thatcher's position before her downfall was less secure than it might have appeared. She had alienated some of her cabinet colleagues by her imperious style and by her inflexible attitude towards Europe and the exchange rate mechanism. Her policies had caused social unrest and riots within Britain. The key event that triggered her departure from Downing Street was the resignation of the Deputy Party Leader, the mild-mannered former Foreign Secretary Geoffrey Howe. His resignation speech of 13 November 1990 to the House of Commons was quietly devastating. Afterwards Thatcher says furiously: “He talks about a conflict of loyalty: what about loyalty to me?” Denis warns her: “Be careful love. They scent blood.” Duncan captures the way in which those things that had given Thatcher power as a politician – her determination and single-mindedness and courage – became obstinacy and inflexibility. Howe's resignation speech led to a leadership challenge from Michael Heseltine. At the time of the first round of voting Thatcher defiantly refused to cancel a trip to Paris to attend a summit of the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, which was intended to mark the end of the Cold War. The result of the first ballot came while she was in Paris. To her dismay she failed to get a large enough majority to beat off the leadership challenge, making a second round of voting necessary. Support from cabinet colleagues ebbed away. One by one they came to see her, some urging her not to stand in the second round. The story is told partly through flashbacks. We see how Thatcher had become leader of the party 16 years in 1975 earlier in a challenge to former Prime Minister Ted Heath. A 1981 flashback shows Heseltine becoming concerned over the harshness of her social policies. When he observes that some of those in deprived areas live in “appalling squalor”, Thatcher sarcastically asks when he became “such an expert in deprived areas”. There are glimpses of the grocer's daughter when she tells her aide Cynthia Crawford how she thought her parents had always wanted a boy and how as a child she “had to fight to be heard”. Every now and then a young girl's voice, perhaps that of the young Margaret, quotes The Law of the Jungle from Rudyard Kipling's “Jungle Book”: “For the strength of the Pack is the Wolf and the strength of the Wolf is the Pack.” One of the pleasures of “Margaret” is seeing members of the cast of around 40 actors playing politicians of the day. John Sessions portrays Geoffrey Howe with uncanny accuracy. Robert Hardy captures to perfection Willie Whitelaw, while Oliver Cotton is a wild-eyed unruly-haired Heseltine. Thatcher's urbane private secretary Charles Powell is played by James Fox. John Major, played by Michael Maloney, engages in a carefully ruthless game and withdraws to his home for a supposed problem with infected wisdom teeth. The only one of Thatcher's colleagues currently active in House of Commons frontbench politics is Kenneth Clarke, who recently became shadow secretary of state for business. Played by Kevin R McNally, Clarke is the first of her colleagues to advise her not to stand in the second ballot. She says: “I appreciate your candor.” In May it will be thirty years since Thatcher became the first woman prime minister in the Western world. There is currently a reappraisal of her premiership. How far do Britain's current dire economic problems lie in the Thatcher era, with its emphasis on deregulation, rampant individualism and a despising of the poor? Thatcher, now 83, is in a frail state. She has had a series of strokes, and last year her daughter Carol wrote about her mother's dementia. But her image retains the power to provoke strong emotions. The White Cube Gallery in Hoxton Square, East London, is hosting until the end of March the ‘White Riot' exhibition of works by Matt Harvey. The show is dominated by “Maggie”, a relief portrait of Thatcher made up of more than over 15,000 plaster cast objects. The artist intends it to be as provocative as his notorious portrait of the child murderer Myra Hindley in the Royal Academy's Sensation exhibition of 1997.
