Thread by @labour_history

‘Thatcher The Stockpiler’

How Margaret Thatcher’s larder and British attitudes towards food hoarding almost ended her bid to be Tory leader

A thread 👇

In September 1974, Thatcher gave an interview to Pre-Retirement Choice magazine about her shopping habits in the era of high inflation.

She told them of her top tips for housewives:

'I, for the first time in my life have started steadily buying things like tinned food.'

She told readers to stock up on protein such as ‘ham, tongue, salmon, mackerel, sardines’ - and tinned fruits because a 'sugar shortage will eventually work through to tinned fruit’.

She pointed to the sharp price rise in honey and sought value in tinned ham in comparison to wages

‘£2000 a year might not be worth much but a tin of ham is still a tin of ham’

Two months later, Thatcher challenged Heath for the Tory leadership.

Heath’s campaign managers tried to organise a smear against her by alluding to her hoarding

Dennis Skinner accused her of “filching little tins of salmon from supermarkets and taking them out of the pensioners' mouths.”

He asked Mr Wilson to extend the wealth tax to include food hoarders.

Thatcher went on the attack by ‘flinging wide the door of her larder’

‘I resent being called a hoarder'

‘And to prove that she isn't, she listed the contents of her stockpile’

Mrs Thatcher's reply to them all: ‘I have been misunderstood, badly misunderstood.’

‘I resent being called a hoarder’

'I urged people to look to the future, and I think that this policy is a sound one. I am astonished at the criticism that greeted the article. Absolutely astonished!’

'I keep a good stock of food at home for several reasons. The main one is that with prices shooting up, it seems to me to be an eminently prudent piece of housekeeping’

‘And when we use up a tin of salmon or a jar of marmalade I tend to buy two more. It is all a case of gradually, steadily building up a comfortable supply.’

The Express reported that her best buy has been Bovril. ‘I paid 91p a 1lb. jar and now it would cost well over a pound.’

Mrs Thatcher declared that spending money in this way was much better than on bingo or smoking and hat she estimated that her profit from long-term shopping was about 3p or 4p a tin.

'Sometimes I cannot get to the shops but when I do I take notice of special offers. When I see an offer, I snap it up’

However there remained much criticism of her for doing so. The National Housewives' Association – a 20,000 strong body claimed

‘We are horrified and we plan to visit Mrs Thatcher and tell her so’

‘She is setting a very bad example to the country's women. It creates a feeling of panic and unsettles people.’

‘We will demand that she gives her tinned goods to pensioners’

A senior lecturer in chemistry at Birmingham University warned:

‘The gravity of this should be appreciated by Mrs Thatcher, who has a degree in chemistry from Oxford. She more than anyone else, should realise the very real dangers of storing tinned food for long periods.’

However, the president of Tesco's, backed Mrs Thatcher's policy of stocking up:

He said: 'The price of canned food—fruit, salmon, and so on—will go up double as soon as present stocks run out. I think Mrs Thatcher is very sensible'

When, during a Commons debate Chancellor Denis Healey said she should ‘hoard the lot’ in relation to public spending, she replied:

‘I am not as successful as the Chancellor at hoarding houses. If I could, I would’

END