In search of the real Iron Lady

Whether loathed or revered, Margaret Thatcher is now a figure of myth who defies efforts to humanise her. Which is why Meryl Streep’s soft-focus celluloid Maggie fails to convince

JUST LISTEN to the noise that a sighting of Margaret Thatcher can still generate. Phyllida Lloyd's The Iron Ladyonly reached cinemas yesterday, but the media has been chewing over the largely feeble biopic for months. Near-contemporaries such as Shirley Williams and Norman Tebbit were unearthed to express their opinions on Meryl Streep's superficially impressive central performance. Left-wing pundits have called the picture a whitewash. Voices from the right have argued that, by showing the contemporary Thatcher in a state of advanced dementia, the film-makers are guilty of intrusion and exploitation.

Imagine for a moment that Lloyd had decided to make a film about Edward Heath or Harold Wilson or John Major; it seems unlikely the article you are currently reading would have been commissioned. Baroness Williams and Baron Tebitt would never have got their daytrip to the local Odeon.

The Deal, The Queenand The Special Relationship,Peter Morgan's trilogy of films about Tony Blair, did stir up a degree of media chatter. But the only one of those dramas that escaped TV for the big screen had more to do with a certain long-serving head of state than it did with any mere first lord of the Treasury.

With the exception of Winston Churchill – who, having fought a proper war, counts as a special case – no British prime minister of the 20th century generates such strong emotions.

Why is this so? A superficial glance at the records might lead you to the conclusion that “the Thatcher effect” is merely a symptom of longevity. Being the longest serving prime minister of the 20th century, the grocer’s daughter was, surely, always going to cast the mightiest shadow. Yet this thesis ignores the fact that, even while in office, Thatcher dominated common discourse like no other UK premier.

Just consider her impact on popular culture. Somewhat inconveniently, the punk movement came together under a Labour government. When, however, the country finally got rid of Jim Callaghan and passed Mrs Thatcher the sceptre, a ready-made protest movement was waiting expectantly in the alleyway. Want a bit of post-Falklands fury? Try How Does It Feel to Be the Mother of a Thousand Dead?by the indestructible, stubbornly tuneless Crass.

“Iron Lady with your stone heart so eager that the lesson be taught,” they bellowed. “It was your decision to have those young boys slaughtered. ”

A bit too aggressive? Well, attend the subtler, more slippery sounds of The Beat. That band's Stand Down Margaretremains one of the most infectious protest songs ever written. "I see no chance of your bright new tomorrow," Dave Wakeling warbled. "Our lives seem petty in your cold grey hands. "

The post-punk brigade wouldn't let it go. As late as 1989, a year before Thatcher's defenestration, Elvis Costello, in Tramp the Dirt Down,his most notoriously intemperate song, was gleefully imagining the prime minister's death. "Because there's one thing I know, I'd like to live long enough to savour," Costello mused. "That's when they finally put you in the ground. I'll stand on your grave and tramp the dirt down. "

One of the most unavoidable objects in student flatland of the 1980s was a satirical poster featuring Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan posing as the romantic heroes of Gone With the Wind. “She promised to follow him to the end of the earth,” the slogan said beneath a giant mushroom cloud. “He promised to organise it!”

The 1960s were, we are told, the decade of protest. Peruse the lyrics of contemporaneous British rock groups and you will, however, find little mention of Heath, Wilson or Macmillan (The Beatles did refer to two of those prime ministers in George Harrison's Taxman, but only to complain that both were being equally unkind to unlucky rich people). Anthony Eden got a soaking from satirists during the Suez crisis but, gone in a trice, the old loon never came close to making the same cultural impact as Thatcher.

The truth is that the policies of no previous prime minister had quite such a powerful effect on individual citizens.

For decades, citizens found themselves unable make any meaningful connections between the windy pronouncements of senior ministers and the circumstances of their own lives. Now, the UK had a prime minister who – for good or ill – was actually going to change things. Generating one of the era’s great political ironies, the thrifty daughter of a small businessman twirled the economic wheels in such fashion that manufacturing industries perished while vulgar young gamblers in double-breasted suits made unnecessarily huge fortunes. For the first time in 40 years – since Clement Attlee’s Labour government ushered in the welfare state – the UK citizen could actually smell, taste and touch the effects of his or her vote in the last general election. If you worked in a northern factory it could mean a trip to the Job Centre. If you sold sugar futures in the square mile it could mean a new Lamborghini. The main reason Thatcher triggered such attention was that she did something.

From 1945 until 1979, a reasonably stable consensus existed between the two main British parties. The Conservatives might take a little less from the rich than their Labour counterparts, but the progressive tax system remained largely unmolested. The NHS was not attacked. Nationalised industries remained in state control. Heath and Wilson may have cordially loathed one another but, as far as some members of the public were concerned, the distinctions between the two men were largely cosmetic. Harold smoked a pipe. Ted sailed a boat. What was that you said about the Retail Price Index? Certain members of the British public have never quite got over the shock of electing a prime minister who wasn’t just an obliging clone of the one who came before. They may never make that mistake again.

After an embarrassing Caledonian interregnum, shiny, bland Blair passes the baton to shiny, bland Cameron. The beats are becoming eerily predictable again. Thatcher was, of course, also an extraordinarily odd-looking creature. After all those suited men in square glasses, the British public were now offered this powder-blue, heavily lacquered caricature of a provincial maiden aunt.

She had a degree in chemistry from Oxford. She qualified as a barrister. She had listened closely to such terrifyingly intelligent – if borderline deranged – political thinkers as Keith Joseph and Arthur Seldon. But she always came across a little like the angriest woman at a Lincolnshire bring-and-buy sale. Streep, as expected, does a decent job of imitating that strange, slightly tortured voice: the sound of a broken lawnmower constantly failing to engage its dying engine. But there's something wrong with this Maggie. There's a softness at the edge of the features. There's a hint of humour to the performance. This Thatcher just seems a little too like a human being. Meryl is not the first actor to stumble when attempting to bottle this rare poison. Janet Brown offered an altogether too melodic impersonation of Thatcher on the Mike Yarwood show during the early years. In one of the few television pieces wholly supportive of Thatcher, Ian Curteis's much-delayed The Falklands Play, Patricia Hodge made her seem just a little too posh. Two recent TV movies (both far better than The Iron Lady) offered impressive turns from very different actors: Andrea Riseborough was seductive in The Long Walk to Finchley; Lindsay Duncan was unflinching in Margaret.

But none of these actors came close to catching the essence of Thatcher. One problem stems from the thickness of Thatcher's promotional carapace. As The Iron Ladyreminds us, media minders such as Gordon Reece moulded the voice and the hair into less dowdy versions of their original, East Midlands incarnations. Actors find themselves playing the creation rather than the person inside.

The insurmountable difficulty, however, remains the near-mythical nature of Thatcher's public image. Punk bands have bellowed about her. Angry Trotskyites have staged plays above pubs featuring grotesque variations on her persona. A near divine version of Margaret turns up in Alan Hollinghurst's fine novel The Line of Beauty.

The iconography is now so pervasive and powerful that the real woman has – for actors, writers and artists – become almost impossible to extract. You may as well attempt to make a film about Santa Claus or The Easter Bunny. Never mind. Streep is still going to win that Oscar.