Did a Catholic conservative pave the way for the Trump presidency? Lucy Lethbridge on TV’s new dramatisation of recent history, Mrs. America

Did a Catholic conservative pave the way for the Trump presidency? TV’s new dramatisation of recent history, Mrs. America

In March 2016, a 92-year-old woman wearing a bright pink jacket joined the Republican candidate on stage at a primary rally in St Louis, the city of her birth. He had, she said, “the courage and the energy … to do what the grassroots want him to do. Because this is a grassroots uprising.”

The woman was Phyllis Schlafly, the conservative Catholic campaigner who became an icon of the Republican Right; she died six months after that appearance in St Louis, after waging a war against liberalism, feminism and globalism that spanned nearly three quarters of a century.

This week saw the launch of a new drama series on BBC2, Mrs. America (two episodes on 8 July), which revisits the political and cultural backdrop to the 1972 campaign that led to Schlafly’s derailment of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) to the American Constitution. It finds a landscape that is both a radical contrast to today and – with its knotty questions of gender and female empowerment looking now differently knotted – surprisingly similar. It is also the story of the feminist campaigners who opposed Schlafly. Forceful, intelligent women thrashing out ideas about freedom and equality: bring it on! And what a cast! Cate Blanchett as Schlafly, Rose Byrne as Gloria Steinem, Margo Martindale as Bella Abzug, Uzo Aduba as Shirley Chisholm and (scene-stealingly) Tracey Ullman as Betty Friedan.

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