The voice screeches out once more on the television. It's now 1990, the Iron Lady has been in power for 11 years. Surely her time is coming to an end??? She seemed to be fully supported by a roaring crowd at the Conservative Conference in October that year, though . . .
When Margaret Thatcher resigned on November 22nd 1990, a long chapter in Britain's political history was closed for good, for newer generations to look back on and such an event would provide any artist or photographer inspiration for a painting or a photograph, such as this one.
The above image is how many people remembered and still remember her nowadays - television pictures, either in this, her real life form, or in her Spitting Image form:
The sight of the iron lady in this form was a regular sight on British TV screens throughout the mid-1980s, as Central Television's ITV programme Spitting Image attracted regular viewing figures of around 15 million by 1989. Politicians of all colours and celebrities were lampooned in rubber or latex puppet form.(Image reference: http://i269.photobucket.com/albums/jj59/AidanLunn/Margaret%20thatcher%20Spitting%20image/Thatcherspitimg5.jpg)
To me, the image of Mrs Thatcher on this TV suggests to me that this is how many remembered seeing her, as already suggested. It also suggests to me that she purposefully decided to stay only seen on TV and not seen in real life by the general public, which to me is linked to her wish to separate the gap between rich and poor i.e. not wishing to interact with "the proles".
Also, to me her appearance on this Mitsubishi (?) TV set suggests a little about her popularity at the time and her eventual downfall. On the screen, she appears rather miserable, possibly suggesting to the viewer that Mrs Thatcher herself knows that it won't be long before she is seen exiting 10 Downing Street and the fact that she only appears on this single lone TV set in the picture suggests that she was alone in her wish to remain Prime Minister after a leadership challenge triggered by Michael Heseltine after the resignation of Sir Geoffrey Howe earlier in November 1990. Also, the colour of the wall in the background behind the TV reflects the colour of the political party that was in power at the time and that Margaret Thatcher led - blue was and still is the Conservative party colour, although the party's distinctive "torch" logo is absent from this image.
(Image taken from http://www.ligali.org/images/logos/logo_tory.jpg)It also, vaguely suggests to me the style of economics she favoured, which I will explain. During her initial election campaign in early 1979, Margaret visited Japan to see how their economic model works, as she was looking for an economic model to base our economic model on once she had changed it (she pledged to destroy trade union power and totally revolutionise Britain's economy. While the manufacturing sector declined under her premiership, it was the fact that in Japan, there were hardly any striking workers or trade union problems that appealed to her the most, and this is how she wanted Britain's workforces to be. The television in the first picture above was made for (not by) a Japanese trading company - Mitsubishi Ltd, a sort of irony in that this TV was made under the economic model that 11 years earlier, Thatcher wanted to adopt for Britain. By this time, foreign, particularly European and Japanese-made electronics were flooding the home and professional electronics market here in Britain, with products from companies such as Bang and Olufsen, Telefunken, Philips, Finlux, Nokia, Sony, Sanyo, Toshiba, Hitachi, JVC and Casio becoming ever popular, while the once-popular British brand names of such products such as Pye, Murphy, Bush, ITT, Deccacolour (otherwise known as "Decca"), Ferguson, Thorn-EMI etc were sold off to foreign electronics manufacturers (such as Pye to Dutch supergiant Philips or Ferguson to JVC of Japan and then passed on to Thomson of France) or were simply closed down as they could no longer cope with the increasing competition from overseas.
(Images taken from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Decca_Logo.svg, http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/8/80/Pye_logo.svg/200px-Pye_logo.svg.png, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Philips_old_logo.svg, & http://pocketcalculatorshow.com/walkman/etc/)
The framing of the image is worth an essay in itself, but i shall put it simply: this picture is an image within an image i.e. a TV screen image on a photographic image.
The first image, i.e. the image of the TV showing Mrs Thatcher doesn't show much, but it shows enough to suggest that this is in the living room or "lounge" of the average householder. They are probably either working class or lower-middle-class, judging by the age of the TV if this image was taken nearer the end of Thatcher's downfall. if they were middle-class or even upper-class, then they probably wouldn't have kept a TV for 10-15 years. (I collect old TVs and can usually place the age of a TV based on its design - this TV has no remote and the layout of the front panel suggests to me that this is pre-1990, as that is when TVs stopped being designed with the speaker and control panel to the side of the screen, instead being placed underneath). The TV has a wooden shell with black plastic front panel, although I cannot tell if it has an electronic tuner (and thus has a remote or not) or if it is one of the older-style colour TVs with a number of channel presets that are manually tuned (i.e. via thumbwheels or small screws).
The first image manages to give the impression of the surroundings and the possible place in the class system that the owner is in while also managing to keep the viewer's attention on the TV and the person on its screen.
The second image i.e. the one being shown on the TV screen shows only mrs Thatcher, and there is so little detail shown of the background that it is unknown where exactly she is, although judging by the style of the framing, I would say that she may be making a speech on stage at a conference of some sort, maybe a Conservative party conference.
But how can this image be applied to modern politics? Simple. Look at Gordon Brown's popularity with his party. There are many within his own party, New Labour, who see him as a liability to them winning the next general election, planned for the 6th of May this year. The same thing was what brought down Mrs Thatcher in 1990 - her party saw her as a liability to them winning the next general election (planned for 1991 but deferred to 1992 to give her replacement, John Major, time to settle in and gain the electorate's confidence) and promptly forced her out by holding a leadership contest.
A similar image with Gordon Brown at either the 2007, 2008 or 2009 Labour party conference on a TV set set against a red background (red/cream seems to be the fashion in many middle-class living rooms nowadays). An older TV might even be used to show the image of the current prime minister, to show how out of date he is. In my opinion, he seems to be wanting to turn Labour back around to the old-fashioned pre-1994 Labour, instead of Tony Blair's post-1994 New Labour, in which many of the Tory party's policies were adopted and adapted to fit Labour's political ideology. There have also been accusations that the current prime minister is out of touch with voters, the old TV representing the fact that the TV's owner is out of date or out of touch with technology.
(Image taken from http://www.gillatt.org/labour/images/rose-
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