Sir Bernard Ingham was the forthright Yorkshireman who was Margaret Thatcher’s chief press secretary from 1979 until 1990.
With his magnificent eyebrows and a pugnacious face perfectly suited to scowling, Sir Bernard became the public face of Thatcher’s rumbustious relations with the press.
A former Guardian labour reporter who stood for election as a Labour councillor in Leeds – but was heavily defeated – he first met Mrs T while working in the then Department of Energy soon after she was elected in 1979. At the meeting, she asked officials how was she going to live with Arthur Scargill and the miners. She did not receive an answer but she did ask Ingham what he was doing, to which he replied “energy conservation”. Not long after, he got the call from No 10: would he be her press secretary?
Speaking to Reaction, Sir Bernard explained how Thatcher – who seemingly never read the newspapers and rarely watched TV – told him when he accepted the job that she “couldn’t care less about his political ideas but wanted someone to explain her policies to the public.” Which he did, through the good and the bad times from the explosive bust-up with Arthur Scargill during the miners strike to the poll tax and Lady Thatcher’s handbagging of Europe. Often taking the repercussions on the chin himself, he had more than his fair share of scrapes with the press.
Incarcerated at home during lockdown – which he is enjoying – the 87 year-old is now writing down the almost hour-by-hour record of his time at No 10 from the years 1983 to 1985. He has already written up his diaries into three other books, and this latest one is provisionally entitled “Banana skins and the NUM”. He also writes a weekly column for the Yorkshire Post.
What better person to ask about the government’s banana skin moment surrounding Conservative Prime Minister, Boris Johnson and his chief consigliere, Dominic Cummings?
Maggie Pagano: Do you think the Prime Minster was right to stick by his adviser ?
