Who was Margaret Thatcher's father? Everything you need to know
THE CROWN season 4 is streaming on Netflix now and viewers are curious to know more about Margaret Thatcher. Throughout the series she mentions her love for her father but who was he?
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Gillian Anderson portrays the first female Prime Minister of the UK, Margaret Thatcher in The Crown season four. Throughout the series, she credits her father for her work ethic but who was he? Express.co.uk has everything you need to know.
Who was Margaret Thatcher’s father?
Margaret Thatcher was the daughter of Alfred Roberts and Beatrice Ethel.
Thatcher’s father Alfred Roberts, was an English grocer, local preacher and politician.
He also served as a part-time Justice of the Peace, president of the Chamber of Trade, President of Rotary, a director of the Grantham Building Society and of the Trustee Savings Bank, chairman of the local National Savings Movement, a governor of the local boys' and girls' grammar schools and chairman of the Workers' Educational Association.
Roberts served as alderman of Grantham from 1943 to 1952 and was the mayor of Grantham from 1945 until 1946.
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Due to his bad eyesight, Roberts was unable to enter the family trade of shoemaking.
He found employment as a grocers assistant in Oundle, Northamptonshire in his early teens.
Roberts then moved to Grantham in Lincolnshire, where he worked as an apprentice in the greengrocers
He married Beatrice Ethel Stephenson in May 1917 and had two daughters, Muriel Cullen and Margaret Hilda.
In two years later, he bought the grocery shop he worked as an apprentice in and in 1923, he opened a second shop.
After a successful career, Roberts retired and sold his business but continued to reach.
Sadly, Thatcher’s mother Beatrice and Roberts wife died in 1960 and he married his second wife was Cissie Miriam Hubbard in November 1965.
Roberts died on February 10, 1970, just four months before Edward Heath became Prime Minister.
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It was Heath who appointed Robert’s daughter Margaret to the cabinet, setting her on the path to becoming Prime Minister of the UK in 1979.
Speaking to The Guardian in 2013, a former visitor to Robert’s store, Alan Bennett, revealed Thatcher’s father told him his daughter could become prime minister ‘if she set her mind to it’, 30 years before she entered Downing Street.
He said: “He [Mr Roberts] simply remarked in answer to some observation, ‘That girl could be prime minister if she set her mind to it’.
At the time, Thatcher was working as a research chemist at Oxford University and served as president of the Oxford University Conservative Association.
Bennett said: “He [Roberts] would have been so proud [of Thatcher].
“In retrospect, it seems that although circumstances perhaps limited somewhat his sphere of influence to more local community matters, his example and industry were setting a pattern for others to build on.
“What would he have thought of this present election triumph?”
The Crown is streaming on Netflix now