Margaret Thatcher

Why Queen Elizabeth’s accession matters

(Getty)

This week, the United Kingdom is celebrating 70 years of Queen Elizabeth II on the throne. The Spectator has come across this fascinating article, written by a young Margaret Thatcher, celebrating her accession. It was published in the Sunday Graphic on 17 February 1952. Thatcher just a few months older than the Queen. As Margaret Roberts, she had already been the youngest woman candidate in the last two general elections and had just married Denis Thatcher in December of 1951. At the time of writing, she was studying for the bar.

A young Queen, the loveliest ever to reign over us, now occupies the highest position in the land. If, as many earnestly pray, the accession of Elizabeth II can help to remove the last shreds of prejudice against women aspiring to the highest places, then a new era for women will indeed be at hand. We owe it to the Queen — and to the memory of her father who set her such a wonderful example throughout his life — to play our part with increasing enterprise in the years ahead.

I hope we shall see more and more women combining marriage and a career. Prejudice against this dual role is not confined to men. Far too often, I regret to say, it comes from our own sex. But the happy management of home and career can and is being achieved. 

The name of Mrs Norman Harper, wife of a Liverpool surgeon and mother of a three-year-old daughter, may mean little to many of you. But the name of Miss Rose Heilbron QC whose moving advocacy in recent trials has been so widely praised is known throughout the land. Unless Britain, in the new age to come, can produce more Rose Heilbrons — not only in the field of law, of course — we shall have betrayed the tremendous work of those who fought for equal rights against such misguided opposition.

The term ‘career woman’ has unfortunately come to imply in many minds a ‘hard’ woman

The term ‘career woman’ has unfortunately come to imply in many minds a ‘hard’ woman, devoid of all feminine characteristics. But

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