She knew she had most of the people in the Hall in the palm of her hand.
“I was a very lowly cog in Harold MacMillan’s pre-war administration. I was the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Pensions, at the very foot of what some commentators disparagingly call the ‘greasy pole’ of politics. I had never had more than a glimpse of the higher echelons of the Government; in fact I can honestly say that I hardly thought at all about what it must be like to hold senior ministerial positions. My detractors to the right,” he waved in the direction of Enoch Powell and his comrade, Nigel Birch, “and my friend to my left,” Iain Macleod nodded, “held high office in the years before the war as did my predecessor, Ted Heath. But what happened was not their fault. Just as the hard decisions I have had to take in the last few weeks have nothing to do with my being a woman, or any motivation to disparage and undo the traditions of our democracy. We are fighting for our survival and sometimes I think too many of my former colleagues in politics still think they are living in some kind of pre-October 1962 bubble. I am living in the real World, ladies and gentlemen. The real World that you all have to live in; and that you have been living in since that night in October 1962. I doubt if very many of my pampered, privileged detractors could survive without their customary privileges in that World. In Government House everybody lives by the same ration standard enforced in this town. I can look people in the face in this town because I’m hungry a lot of the time. I’m cold a lot of the time. Yes, I bought some new dresses when I was in America! Would you have your leader, the person who speaks for you abroad, dress like a pauper? How many of you — not the people who came down here from the Midlands — how many of you who live in Cheltenham could afford, or get hold of the expensive suits Mr Powell and Mr Birch are wearing? My opponents tonight have castigated me for most of the crimes committed under the sun since time immemorial. But neither of them has ever sought to speak to me face to face, or to converse with me like a normal human being. If they had sought such a dialogue, this confrontation would never have happened. My Government has two objectives. Only two!”
The Angry Widow morphed slowly back to Margaret Thatcher, the mother and housewife who had trained to be an industrial chemist and then a barrister, unknowingly preparing for a radically different destiny. Her tone became almost conversational for all that it boomed and echoed around the old auditorium as the public address levels fluctuated.
“First, we must survive.” She paused, her gaze roving across anonymous faces. “Our first duty is to survive as a nation and as a people and to carry forward into the future the values we hold dearest. Foremost among those values is our love of Parliamentary democracy and our loyalty to our Sovereign Monarch, Queen Elizabeth. If we must fight again we will fight. I will fight to my dying breath to ensure that we survive. If I have to turn this country into an armed camp to survive that is what I will do. But we must survive. And to survive we must be ready, willing and prepared to fight. My Government will fight!”
This sobered the hall.
“Second, it is not enough just to survive. My opponents accuse me of cultivating a cult of personality. I don’t think I am a second Boadicea, ladies and gentlemen,” she protested, quirking a forced smile. “I am a mother, I was a housewife and most days I wish I still was but like so many women I am a widow, and every day I mourn the one I lost, as you must the ones you have lost. I came into politics to make things better. Ladies and gentlemen, I intend to make things better.”
She had to wait for quietness for nearly a minute.
“My Government is settled upon recalling Parliament to sit in Oxford not later than the last day of February this year. At that time Mr Powell and his friends can vote democratically, on my future and on the future of our country. But I tell you one thing; the day when one class or vested interest could determine the fate of us all is gone forever!”
This time she had to struggle against the ongoing ovation to continue.
“There will be by elections for all vacant, surviving Parliamentary constituencies during the next year. Parliament will sit every month until the next General Election which will be held before the end of 1965. I will not have petty self-appointed demagogues pretend that they speak for my people!”
Fortuitously, Cheltenham Town Hall was stoutly built and the roof did not come off. To her right a small group of Powellites stood, arms crossed in murderous silence staring at the ideological apostates all around them. The Angry Widow fixed them in her sights; deciding that they were a rather well-fed, well-dressed little clique in the pale, shabby mass populating most of the hall.
Did I really just say ‘my people’?
“One day we will rebuild the shattered cities. In a decade from now we will have rebuilt the Houses of Parliament and we will have reclaimed our great capital city, making it once again the premier metropolis of the Commonwealth. Only when we have healed ourselves can we heal Europe and repay our Commonwealth brothers and sisters for the bounty of Operation Manna. Whatever appearances to the contrary, we are bound to our former colonies around the globe more strongly, more profoundly than ever we were in the days of Empire. We must survive and we must rebuild. Every hand must be turned to the reconquest of our broken lands and to the regeneration of hope for generations to come!
The man with the gun didn’t emerge from the ranks of the ruddy-cheeked, well-fed outraged Powellites. The ragged, bearded man in his thirties had been sitting in the third row from the stage, one seat in from the central isle on the right hand side of the auditorium.
He was perhaps fifteen feet away from Margaret Thatcher when he fired the first shot.
Should I duck?
The Prime Minister’s Royal Marine Commando bodyguards had strict orders not to open fire in a crowd; their Sten Guns were loaded but were for show only. There had been a heated debate about that; she had held firm. Her life was only one life and she didn’t want an inadvertent bloodbath on her conscience just because somebody ‘sneezed at the wrong time’ in her vicinity.
The muzzle flash of the gun, some kind of old-fashioned revolver was very smoky, she observed idly as her assassin fired a second shot. Her senses were at once frozen and impossibly heightened. She watched the circular chamber of the weapon rotate.
Below her the Marines were throwing bemused and terrified bystanders aside in their desperation to come to grips with the gunman.
Four shots.
And another, that’s five!
Margaret Thatcher hadn’t heard a thing; not the concussion of the gun firing or the screaming, the chairs scraping, over-turning and the bodies flinging themselves out of the way.
She watched with a kind of academic, disinterred curiosity as two hulking AWPs bowling into the gunman. He went down as if he’d been hit by a speeding express train; the Flying Scotsman, perhaps.
“Prime Minister! Prime Minister!”
Margaret Thatcher blinked back to reality. Slowly, her brain began to register real rather than super-slowed time. She struggled to focus for a moment.
Enoch Powell had taken a hold of her elbow.
“Margaret?” He asked worriedly, his single eye clouded with alarm and concern. “Prime Minster, are you all right?”
She half-turned, looking down the length of the rapidly clearing hall.
Two Royal Marines were dragging the unconscious body of the unsuccessful assassin away.
Iain Macleod was slowly picking himself up off the stage where he’d dived for cover, eying the unlikely sight of his crippled former friend, Enoch Powell supporting his detested adversary. Given where the Member of Parliament for Wolverhampton South West now stood, it was obvious that he’d made a futile, but nonetheless gallant effort to place himself between the Prime Minister and the gunman.