IN his wide-ranging 1993 book, The Hollow Drum: Scotland Since the War, Arnold Kemp, the editor of the Glasgow Herald, looked back at many of the politicians he had met or interviewed. Among them was Margaret Thatcher.
One episode recalled by Kemp was Thatcher’s visit to the Glasgow Herald’s then office in Albion Street, in January 1983, on the occasion of the paper’s bicentenary.
“When she visited The Herald ... she gave a display of personal magnetism that made us realise, if we had been sufficiently obtuse not already to have done so, that here was a politician of the highest class”, Kemp wrote.
Not everyone in the building wanted to meet the Prime Minister, however. “The machine room’s union representatives had made it clear that she would not be welcome in the press hall. The management was perfectly willing to disregard this statement but Downing Street indicated it would prefer not to be the cause of any embarrassment. The machine-room was omitted from the itinerary”.
Thatcher arrived late from a Glasgow Chamber of Commerce bicentenary dinner. Newspaper executives greeted her on her arrival in Albion Street. Kemp’s deputy Harry Reid, a Thatcher fan, kissed her hand. He did so to win a wager with his wife; nevertheless, the PM seemed highly delighted.
“Then she toured the building. In editorial she kicked off her shoes and chatted with the news desk, the reporters and the subs. In the composing room she knocked them cold. These old trade unionists leapt about in great excitement. She posed for their photographs.”
She even found time for a very brief discussion of Adam Smith with one of the leader writers.
“Her visit was regal, more so than that of the Queen some weeks later”, Kemp records. “She talked to all the waitresses in the boardroom before departing. The next day the machine room put in an official complaint: why had she not visited them?”
Read more: Herald Diary
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