The Fall of Thatcher - the remainer

03/14/19 • 28 min

John Gummer was there in the cabinet room when Thacther resigned and afterwards helped write her speech defending herself in a vote of no confidence against Neil Pinnock. She would often warn him as a pro-European that she was about to go off on an anti-Brussels rant - but remains convinced she would have voted remain. For all the history of her as an ideologue, he remembers an intensely pragmatic Prime Minister.

Previous Episode

The Fall of Thatcher - The Brighton Bomb

John Wakeham was summoned at the last minute to try and save Margaret Thatcher's premiership. He was in charge of her campaign for six hours - long enough to learn she was doomed. His main job was to make sure she knew exactly how bad things were. It was a difficult task - given the friendship between them partly caused by the Brighton Bomb, which killed is wife Roberta.

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The fall of Thatcher - Inside the Bunker

Barry Potter and Dominic Morris were private secretaries to Margaret Thatcher at the time of her fall. They were in the room when she stumbled through her resignation statement to cabinet. And they supported her in the painful days afterwards as power flooded away from the Iron Lady. As officials rather than politicians, they provide an all too human perspective on the end of her days in Downing St.