Home > Susan Hill

Friday 10 February 2012

It's the wimmin innit?

Thursday, 11th March 2010

No, it isn’t.

I was about to write about Mesdames Brown and Cameron when I read David Blackburn’s blog today on the same subject and thought I must turn to something else. Then I changed my mind. There is no reason why there should not be two of us writing about the political wives and anyway, I`m a woman and so have a different take on these matters. I hope.

I am pretty sure that I go back further than anyone else around here so I can clearly remember seeing the gracious and beautiful Clementine Churchill sitting in an open car beside the man with the cigar and the hat, making a V sign. She nodded and smiled but did not wave herself, presumably so as not to attract any attention away from her husband. Those were the days. After that there is a pale blue blur of other gracious PM’s wives – Clarissa Eden, Lady Dorothy Macmillan. There must have been a Lady Home but I can recall nothing of her, which means she was even less visible.

Remember Mary Wilson ? She wrote poetry and came across as modest, charming and, well, ordinary but so far as I recall she said nothing much in public and certainly not about her husband and his job. There was no Mrs Heath of course but there was a Mr Thatcher all right -you don`t forget Dennis in a hurry, but you do not remember him for any part he played in politics, because he didn`t, he played golf and was a general prop and stay and good egg. For her part, Mrs T never tried to play the Dennis card by dragging him into the limelight. He was always, as they say now, ‘there for her’ but otherwise got on with his own life.

Nice Norma Major was the last of the shadowy spouses, clearly disliking any sort of spotlight accidentally falling on her, as wife, mother, loyal party woman - and that was it.

And then along came Cherie. If only Cherie had stuck to the day job, at which she is ferociously good, but no, not content with tat or even just being endlessly photographed holding hands with Tony, she started to have very public opinions about politics and a full-on presence on our screens and newspaper pages. That was when people began to be a leeetle bit annoyed, because we had not elected Cherie yet somehow we seemed to have got her, she was one of those non-negotiables who came with the man, and yet wanted to be listened to in her own right. Maybe it was because she was also, apart from Glenys Kinnock, the first of the Big Political Job wives to be brought up in the era of aggressive feminism.

And now we have Sarah Brown and Samantha Cameron. I am sure they are both good wives as they are undoubtedly good mothers. But why should they be of interest to us otherwise? We do not want television programmes about them and their lives - or rather, some people may, but only as part of the general froth-on-the-box, not as part of a General Election campaign. We are not electing them. They are irrelevant, to the voters, to their husband’s campaigns, the political parties, everything. This is not a personality contest between the wives, or a beauty one or a career one. Sarah B and Samantha C should be non-issues and for the public side of their husbands’ lives, invisible.

I am pleased if they are an ever present help to Gordon and David, though Mrs Brown, whom I used to admire, has annoyed me a lot lately by this sucking up to models and luvvies. I admired Mrs Cameron, as the mother of a disabled son who always and everywhere made him as visible a part of her family as her other children, but she annoys me because of her job, selling ludicrously expensive stationary to people for whom W.H.Smith is not good enough and designing immorally expensive handbags. There now, that’s the former Labour voter in me coming out, so Mrs Cameron and I have something in common after all.

This election, more than any election for a very long time, is about extremely serious issues. It will and ought to be decided not on who has a little windmill on their chimney pot or who shouts at his secretary, but on the desperate state of the British economy and how we may be in an even more seriously bad state a couple of years down the line. We owe a terrifying amount of money with little apparent idea as to how we may pay it back and could well be in as parlous a mess as Greece if things are not managed properly.

So Mesdames Brown and Cameron are less than irrelevant to it and we should not allow the media to con us into believing otherwise.

By the way, it is a measure of the supreme irrelevance of the Lib Dems that I do not even know if Nick Clegg has a wife and certainly not what her name is. Which actually, if you think about it, is a big point in his favour. And in hers.

Previous Back to Susan Hill Next

Actions: Print this article | Email to a friend | Permalink | Comments (18)

Post this entry to: del.icio.us | Digg | Newsvine | NowPublic | Reddit

Post comment

Sarah AB

March 12th, 2010 6:23am Report this comment

I feel very sorry for these women who are probably nudged into doing various things by PR people etc and tend to get criticised whatever line they take. Actually it's *because* I'm a feminist that I didn't think Cherie Blair should have been so visible in her role as PM's wife. I am contemplating voting Labour - but I have no problem with Samantha Cameron's job even though I'm not likely to buy her products. I believe Nick Clegg's wife is called Miriam and she is Spanish. I am slightly annoyed that I know that though!

Eddie

March 12th, 2010 7:41am Report this comment

All these women are unelected and have power without responsibility - and then the usual wimmin call them role models! Why? They just got lucky when they married a man who became president/PM! Michele Obama was NEVER elected!

Of course, if it's the other way round, the men are mocked - cf D. Thatcher - without whose dosh Mme T would not have had a political career anyway. Much as I hate Herr Harman, her hubby also gets lampooned in a way a woman would not be.

But of course, democracy is just bribery really and ANY party that gets the socalled middle class vote (ie those with mortgages) and the women's vote wins. Every time. Ask Hitler... Women are always more conservative, puritanical, religious and judgmental of both men and women than men are - so expect lots of feminine charm n smarm from all the WAGs to get the female vote. So predictable...

Nicholas

March 12th, 2010 11:53am Report this comment

"I am pretty sure that I go back further than anyone else around here"

Can you remember the forty-something match sellers with First World War medals on London's streets? If you can't you don't.

Bunnykins

March 12th, 2010 2:42pm Report this comment

HEAR!HEAR! Susan. Absolutely spot on. Alas the concept of modesty has been dragged through the mud and stamped upon with jack boots. I'm not sure I feel very sorry for these two women. They are both articulate and intelligent whom, I'm sure are quite capable of standing up to the ghastly PR brigade. The fact that they choose not to, speaks volumes about their perceived importance.

SUSAN HILL

March 12th, 2010 6:22pm Report this comment

Nicholas. I certainly remember war injured with one legs selling matches, and wearing medals. Whether they were WW1 medals I wouldn't care to say.

Fergus Pickering

March 12th, 2010 11:28pm Report this comment

What is an immorally expensive handbag, Susan? You mean it costs a lot of money. Like a Ferrari, an immorally expensive Ferrari, or caviare, immorally expensive caviare, or perhaps an immorally expensive painting by David Hockney. Then there are immorally expensive houses in the country. Got one of those, have you? Go on, buy the bag. You know it makes sense.

Verity

March 13th, 2010 12:48am Report this comment

I couldn't agree more that the wives are irrelevant.

Don't forget, Dave's an ex-pr man - not exactly a background with much heft. And also, don't forget that he tried to force his family on the public once before, when he was first bafflingly manipulated into the leadership position, and he set up a webcam in his kitchen so the little people could gaze through the window and watch the people of Notting Hill eating their breakfast and hear them chatting.

And pestered editors with photo ops for their disabled child.

I have no objection to Samantha Cameron selling very expensive items. I like entrepeneurs, so I wish her well in that endeavour. But that she is married to David Cameron is of no interest. Neither is their family. Cameron exploited that disabled child, in whom I also had not a shred of interest.

Desperate politician: bring on the props. Do tricks. Like speaking without notes.

I judge Dave by the programme he is offering for the recovery of Britain, and I judge that it is no programme at all. It is self-serving and destructive to our nation.

(As an aside, I think the British don't understand the role of First Lady in the US. It's a formal position. It has a salary, it has premises and it has staff and it has an annual budget. It's a genuine, formal position. It's not another way of saying "the president's wife".

(One of the Roosevelts named his daughter Alice as First Lady. Another president, a widower, I believe, named a family friend to this official and budgeted-for position. People should quit thinking that because the Americans speak English they follow our traditions. They do not. They have their own. That's just an aside.)

Eddie

March 13th, 2010 10:43am Report this comment

Wow what a scam! A woman gets lucky and marries a man who becomes president so becomes 'first lady' - and she gets PAID for that? Despite that fact she has is utterly unelected and may well be a moron? And staff? And respect? And a formal position? Legalised corruption and prostitution, non? My god...

Nice to know some countries are even worse than ours in their women and celebrity-worship...

SUSAN HILL

March 13th, 2010 10:52am Report this comment

Fergus. The hugely mortgaged house in the country, like everyone else.

Nicholas

March 13th, 2010 11:05am Report this comment

Susan, it depends when you saw them. If it was before 1939 the medals were almost certainly 1914-18 (or South African War). Very often these men were as smartly turned out in civilian clothes as their straightened circumstances allowed.

After 1945 they could have been 1939-45 medals but to my recollection there were not so many crippled ex-servicemen to be seen selling matches on the streets of London post-war.

Verity

March 13th, 2010 4:06pm Report this comment

Eddie: Wow what a scam! A woman gets lucky and marries a man who becomes president so becomes 'first lady' - and she gets PAID for that?

Well, yes. Just as the President’s unelected Chief of Staff gets paid. And his unelected press officers get paid.

Despite that fact she has is utterly unelected and may well be a moron? And staff? And respect? And a formal position?> What business it is of yours how the Americans run their country?

Legalised corruption and prostitution, non? My god...

You’re nuts.

Fergus Pickering

March 13th, 2010 5:20pm Report this comment

I own mine, Susan, but then it's not in the country and it's not very big.

hadrian

March 13th, 2010 7:27pm Report this comment

So, Fergus, you own your own home, do you? Well done, join the club! However unless you inherited your pile I'd guess you did have a mortgage at one stage, just like most of the rest of us! As for a house in the country- what's so objectionable in that? We've got to live somewhere and who can blame a person for actually daring to like rural beauty as opposed to some urban districts? Personally we're quite content where we are in a pleasant, pretty nondescript little semi but if someone gave me a fortune I'd very possibly feel the urge to get a little house in Penzance, my favourite place.

Fergus Pickering

March 14th, 2010 1:04pm Report this comment

I'd like to live in the country too, Hadrian, and I don't grudge Susan her nice house, which she obtained through her own efforts. Why did you suppose I thought otherwise, Hadrian. Of course I had a mortgage once, though, being very old, the mortgage was quite small because the house was quite cheap. Cheap houses are something we will never see again, like decent schools.

SUSAN HILL

March 14th, 2010 2:05pm Report this comment

Fergus. Thanks. I`m glad you don't begrudge us what we both - for it is a married house, as it were - have worked very hard for. Nor is it, by large country house standards, a large country house, it's a farmhouse and the farm was a working one until 25 years ago. Posh it ain't, huge it ain't but in the most beautiful spot it certainly is and very fortunate we are to live here.

Anon

March 14th, 2010 8:36pm Report this comment

The wives are being paraded because they've finally realised women vote so the wives are to show the policians' "touchy-feely" side (which shows they don't understand how women vote...).

Nick Clegg's wife and mother of his son is Miriam.

Verity

March 15th, 2010 11:20pm Report this comment

Anon - Agreed. These strategists are such trite linear thinkers that they seem to really think that women will vote for a man because of anything his wife does or says. They're so stupid.

Also, that they wheeled out Samantha Camera smacks of desperation because it is, frankly, a low-rent thing to do. And not what one would expect of an Etonian.

I understand they even wheeled his mother on. Thank God I didn't watch it.