Margaret Thatcher: Power and Personality (72 page)

Within the priesthood of nuclear warfare specialists, Margaret Thatcher’s obsession with maintaining a high level of nuclear deterrence looked exaggerated. For, in reality, the concept had never been seriously threatened. To those who understood its technical complexities, SDI was never likely to be deployed, and unlikely to bring about the abolition of all other nuclear weapons. ‘Star Wars’ technology was for starry-eyed believers in a futuristic world, which existed only in a few people’s imaginations in 1986. Yet the most devoted of these imaginative visionaries was the President of the United States. His simple faith led him to call Gorbachev’s bluff with absolute conviction at Reykjavik. And the bluff worked magnificently.

SDI had only ever been a cosmic gambling chip. But because Reagan played it so convincingly, the Soviet Union realised they had lost the game disastrously.
After Reykjavik, Gorbachev knew his country could not afford to join an arms race in space. His dialogue with Margaret Thatcher had been instrumental in persuading the Soviet leader that Reagan meant business both in his toughness over SDI and in his sincere desire for meaningful disarmament. Partly by chance, and partly by the force of her personality, Margaret Thatcher had been the most effective intermediary between East and West at a pivotal moment in history.

If there was a moment when the Cold War ended, it can be dated at the turn of the year 1986–1987. Out-bluffed at Reykjavik, Gorbachev accepted that the Soviet Union could no longer pay the bills with money it did not have, for increasingly expensive and sophisticated nuclear armaments. Instead, he knew he had to embark on a plan B consisting of a new reform programme domestically and a new foreign policy internationally. It was no coincidence that he wanted to discuss and do this business with Margaret Thatcher.

STAR PERFORMANCE IN MOSCOW

Margaret Thatcher’s four-day visit to Moscow, which began on Saturday 28 March 1987, was the stuff of which diplomatic legends are made. Its iconic television imagery struck a mysterious chord with the peoples of the Soviet Union, and may have made a deeper contribution to the coming collapse of communism than anyone realised at the time.

More concretely, her thirteen hours of talks and meetings with Mikhail Gorbachev forged an extraordinary bond between the two leaders. Their impassioned arguments flowed like molten lava, and the political landscape of East–West understanding began to shift. Whether measured by its short-term impact or by its long-term implications, this was the most important Anglo-Soviet summit in twentieth-century history.

Because of the dialogue that had been progressing since the Chequers Sunday lunch of December 1984, Margaret Thatcher was granted unusual latitude in the arrangements for her visit. ‘She was my guest. I told her she could go anywhere she wanted, and see anyone she chose to see’, recalled Mikhail Gorbachev. ‘In the spirit of
glasnost
[openness] there were no restrictions on her.’
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No such freedom had been granted to any Western visitor since the creation of the Soviet Union. Determined to make the most of it, Margaret Thatcher’s
opening request was to be allowed to inspect the headquarters of the country’s Anti-Ballistic Missile system in Krasnogorsk. The Russian Defence Ministry said ‘yes’, but the schedulers at 10 Downing Street had to drop the plan because the travelling time would have taken the Prime Minister out of Moscow for too long. But even without a tour of the top-secret ABM bases, her visit was packed with symbolic, visual and political breakthroughs, most of them live on world television.

Much thought went into Margaret Thatcher’s wardrobe for Russia. She had three key helpers on this sartorial side – Carla Powell, Cynthia Crawford and Margaret King, Fashion Director of Aquascutum. Of these, the most daring and amusing was Mrs Powell. ‘You have big boobs like mine’, she told the Prime Minister, ‘so you need a new look with high padded shoulders to set them off.’ In search of this new image, Carla scoured boutiques and brought to No. 10 the designer Victor Edelstein. He created the first prototypes, at cost price, of the colourful dresses, coats and jackets with regally high padding around the neck and shoulders, which became part of the Thatcher legend. Mrs Powell introduced her compatriot Vanda Ferragamo, who designed special shoes for the Prime Minister’s very narrow feet. Another Italian friend, Olga Polizzi, daughter of Lord Forte, offered advice. Carol Price, the wife of the American Ambassador, contributed some transatlantic chic for the Prime Minister’s new look. The result was a wardrobe that helped Margaret Thatcher to project herself as a superstar on the world stage.

From the moment she arrived at Moscow Airport in a black fox fur hat and tailored black coat she radiated the aura of a Hollywood Czarina. The vast bouquet of red roses presented to her as she stepped onto the tarmac added the final touch of colour and so accentuated the elegance of her look. Well over a hundred million Soviet viewers watched her arrival on state television. Some of them talk about it to this day, explaining how the presence of a strong woman Prime Minister on Russian soil evoked ancestral memories of Catherine the Great.

The first full day of Margaret Thatcher’s visit was Sunday 29 March. She began it by driving fifty miles north of Moscow to the Russian Orthodox Monastery of Zagorsk. The melodious richness of the monks’ chants, the gold and purple vestments of the priests, the veneration of icons, the lighting of candles and the swinging censers pouring forth clouds of incense were, as she put it, ‘A far cry
from the Sunday service at Finkin Street Methodist Church in Grantham’.
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But she took part in the spiritual fervour of the liturgy, at least to the extent of lighting a candle before the shrine of St Anthony and kneeling to say prayers at the high altar. All this was filmed live on television; a diplomatic first for a communist system which was still suppressing or at least restricting the Christian religion. ‘You would think the Russians would not have been delighted by [this],’ said the British Ambassador, Sir Bryan Cartledge, ‘but they took it on the chin.’
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After the monastery, it was off to a Moscow housing estate where she was cheered by thousands as she came out of a ‘typical’ family home. Next stop was a supermarket whose largely empty shelves presented her with a buying problem. She solved it by purchasing a tin of pilchards – ironically a dish for which she had developed an aversion from the days of her Oxford landlady’s unappetising fish breakfasts. In the evening she attended the Bolshoi Ballet’s performance of
Swan Lake
, followed by a small private dinner with Mikhail and Raisa Gorbachev. The atmosphere was relaxed, with the Soviet leader in a joke-cracking mood. ‘Why didn’t you bring your son Mark?’ he asked his guest. ‘There are plenty of deserts here for him to get lost in.’
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The formal seven hours of Thatcher–Gorbachev talks covered a wide range of subjects including the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, arms control, economic reforms and the emigration of Soviet Jews to Israel. But the substance of the agenda was transcended by the style in which it was discussed. Bryan Cartledge observed:

She and Gorbachev charmed each other. He found her very charming and she found him very charming, and they got on like a house on fire. To an extent which gave rise to some pretty risqué Russian jokes at the time … There can never have been a case where two heads of government so radiated a kind of chemistry between them. You could see sparks flying off. They both liked talking. They both liked the sound of their own voices. They were both very difficult to interrupt. But they both managed to interrupt each other, and they had met their match.
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With two such political pugilists going hammer and tongs at each other, the match was spectacular even if it had no clear winner. But away from the formal talks, Margaret Thatcher scored victory after victory in the eyes of the Soviet public. From giving a lunch party for anti-government dissidents to drawing
huge crowds, she was a magnet for attention and often adulation. Her greatest triumph was her television appearance.

To universal surprise, Gorbachev agreed that the Prime Minister could give a broadcast live on television that would be free from censorship. ‘Yes, I took a risk, but it was my deliberate choice because I wanted her and everyone else to see that my policy of
Glasnost
was not a trick,’ recalled Gorbachev, ‘and by participating in the programme she was actually helping me to prove that our openness was working.’
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The programme was a huge surprise to both the Soviet government and the Soviet viewing public. The broadcasting authorities had expected her to deliver a monologue to camera, like one of their own leaders. But Margaret Thatcher enjoyed the cut and thrust of lively argument. So she insisted on her chosen format, which was to be questioned as if she was on a Western political talk show, by three Moscow journalists, two of whom were former army generals.

These interviewers were ponderous and long-winded in their party-line questions. They were not expecting a spontaneous debate in which the British Prime Minister would challenge them, contradict them and barely let them finish a sentence without forceful interruption. In a section of the programme devoted to nuclear weapons, one of the generals tried to raise the issue of an accidental outbreak of nuclear hostilities, asking to know who would be in charge of the West’s Pershing missiles.

Margaret Thatcher replied:

One moment
! There are more nuclear weapons in the Soviet Union than any other country in the world. You have more intercontinental ballistic missiles and warheads than the West. You started intermediate weapons; we did not have any. You have more short-range ones than we have. You have more than anyone else and
you
say there is a risk of nuclear accident?
One moment
!

The three stooges could not cope with this kind of combative debating on live television. After a while, they subsided into softer territory, asking personal questions about her diet, her work habits and how she coped with so little sleep. Even on these anodyne subjects her frankness seemed remarkably refreshing to Soviet viewers, not least to Mikhail Gorbachev who was watching the live broadcast in the Kremlin. He recalled:

I had to give full credit to Margaret. My reaction to the programme was that our three journalists lost out – totally. She won almost every point that was raised. Some of the people around me thought we had given her too much freedom but ‘no’, I said – ‘that’s
Glasnost
in action’.
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The wider pubic applauded the freedom of this memorable broadcast. As the British Ambassador reported:

The Russians were absolutely captivated by this. For weeks afterwards people would come up to me and say ‘Your Prime Minister is so wonderful. We’ll never forget that debate on television. She told us things we didn’t know, and she showed us how it should be done’.
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Margaret Thatcher emerged from her Moscow visit with the stature of an icon. The effects of her symbolism blazed a trail for some of the key freedoms that were becoming crucially important in the populist struggles that were taking place inside the Soviet Union. In her ground-breaking television interview she had personified the values of free and open debate, even in the sensitive area of nuclear security. She had given encouragement to freedom of religion, and hope to freedom of emigration. On these and other areas of policy she was able to change the Soviet mindset, as Gorbachev has obliquely acknowledged:

Mrs Thatcher was not an easy partner for us, and her fierce anti-communism would often hinder her from taking a more realistic view on various issues. Still, one must admit that in a number of cases she was able to substantiate her charges with facts, which eventually led us to review and criticise some of our own approaches.
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REFLECTION

Margaret Thatcher’s political intimacy with Gorbachev came from an early recognition that, for all their ideological differences, they were kindred spirits. They were both outsiders, loners, buccaneers and fighters against the system they had inherited in their respective countries. Strong in their beliefs, they each had gifts of engagement that involved passionate argument without personal quarrelling.

At another level there was, in the view of some observers, a frisson of flirtatious sexuality in their relationship. For there were moments during their
meetings and joint appearances when Margaret Thatcher could turn on an electrifying femininity, manifested in slightly coquettish forms of speech, moves and gestures. This was noticed by aides close to Gorbachev, such as Ambassador Leonid Zamyatin who observed how the Prime Minister showed off her legs to good advantage: ‘Mrs Thatcher had a definite womanish feeling towards Gorbachev.’
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It was amplified with jokes that were more ribald than diplomatic by thousands of ordinary Russians on the street. Gorbachev–Thatcher ‘chemistry’ was a topic of humour and gossip for years after the Moscow visit.

In the field of substantive achievement, Margaret Thatcher believed she was playing a pivotal role in world history by her efforts to build bridges of understanding between Reagan and Gorbachev. No other American President and no other Soviet Chairman ever had the benefit of such an effective intermediary as Margaret Thatcher. She enlarged the area of confidence between the superpowers by the energy of her efforts to explain their leaders one to the other.

Always she was first and last America’s ally, yet she combined this with being Gorbachev’s only Western confidante. The value of the contribution showed up in many phases during the thawing of the Cold War: before and after Geneva, before and after Reykjavik, and in the immediate run-up to the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty of December 1987.

On 7 December, when Gorbachev was on his way to Washington to sign this treaty, he stopped off for a two-hour lunch with Margaret Thatcher at RAF Brize Norton. It was a valuable preliminary canter over the jumps he would have to take at his summit with Reagan. The Prime Minister gave the Soviet leader a difficult time over Afghanistan, human rights and what would happen after the INF Treaty. She did not appear to make much progress, but when she telephoned her report on the conversation to the Oval Office, President Reagan expressed satisfaction that the Prime Minister had ‘clearly softened him up’.
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