Margaret Thatcher: The Authorized Biography (168 page)

*
‘A new verb has entered the Washington lexicon,’ declared the
New York Times
. ‘It is said to be possible to “Thatcherize” an economy. The verb is not precisely defined, but many see it as a bad thing to do. Since “Thatcherization” bears a conservative label, some people fear that our new conservative President will lead us down the same disagreeable path.’ (
New York Times
, 1 Mar. 1981.)

*
Although Henderson’s manoeuvring annoyed the sticklers for protocol, Allen and others realized that the President’s attendance at this return dinner (and others) could have its advantages. This would be one way, suggested an NSC memo, to ‘underscore the substantive importance’ Reagan placed on US relations with key allies, and signal a break with the discord in the transatlantic alliance seen in the recent past. (Rentschler to Tyson, ‘Thatcher Visit and Related Thoughts’, 26 Jan. 1981, 5. Official Working Visit of Prime Minister Thatcher of United Kingdom 02/26/1981 (1 of 8), Box 4, Charles Tyson Files, Reagan Library.)

*
In the same month, Labour produced a policy document entitled ‘The People and the Media’, calling for legal controls on what newspapers could publish. Such threats, combined with the damage done to newspapers by trade union practices, made the press far more hostile to Labour than it would otherwise have been, and more keen to lead the charge for Mrs Thatcher. In February 1981, Rupert Murdoch, who already owned the
Sun
and the
News of the World
, bid to buy
The Times
and the
Sunday Times
, a takeover which John Biffen, the minister responsible, eventually approved. Until that time,
The Times
and the
Sunday Times
had become increasingly disenchanted with Mrs Thatcher. But once Murdoch gained full control, until almost the end of her time in office, she was supported by his papers, as well as by Rothermere’s Associated Newspapers, the Telegraph group and Express Newspapers. This assisted her enormously. Comment in later years has suggested that it was controversial or underhand of Biffen not to refer the purchase to the Monopolies and Mergers Commission. This is not the case, because
The Times
was loss-making, and the vendors and senior editorial staff welcomed the sale to Murdoch. What is true, however, is that Mrs Thatcher entertained Murdoch to lunch at Chequers on 4 January 1981 to discuss the bid. The official record (B. Ingham, Note for the Record, 4 Jan. 1981, Margaret Thatcher Foundation) does not indicate that she formally agreed to support him, but it is fair to assume that, informally, she did. As Murdoch put it, ‘Probably because of the political stance of the
Sun
, she knew where I stood. I’m sure Biffen must have got instructions or just read the tea-leaves’ (interview with Rupert Murdoch).

*
Only one Conservative MP, Christopher Brocklebank-Fowler, actually joined them.

*
David Young (1932–), educated Christ’s College, Finchley and University College London; director, Centre for Policy Studies, 1979–82; special adviser, Department of Industry, 1980–82; chairman, Manpower Services Commission, 1982–4; Secretary of State for Employment, 1985–7; for Trade and Industry, 1987–9; Deputy Chairman, Conservative Party, 1989–90; created Lord Young of Graffham, 1984.

*
Leonid Brezhnev (1906–82), General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, 1964–82.

*
Elie Kedourie (1926–92), educated Baghdad, LSE and St Antony’s College, Oxford; lecturer, then Professor of Politics, LSE, 1953–90; author of
The Chatham House Version
(1970).

†
Anthony Powell (1905–2000), novelist, author of the
Dance to the Music of Time
sequence; Companion of Honour, 1988.

‡
V. S. Naipaul (1932–), novelist; knighted 1990; Nobel Prize for Literature, 2001.

§
Philip Larkin (1922–85), poet and novelist; Companion of Honour, 1985.

*
Rodric Braithwaite (1932–), educated Bedales and Christ’s College, Cambridge; head of Planning Staff, FCO, 1979–80; Minister, Washington Embassy, 1981–4; Deputy Under-Secretary, FCO, 1984–8; Ambassador to Soviet Union, 1988–92; knighted, 1988.

†
Christopher Mallaby (1936–), educated Eton and King’s College, Cambridge; head of Arms Control, Soviet and Eastern European Planning Departments, FCO, 1977–82; Deputy Secretary to the Cabinet, 1985–8; Ambassador to West Germany, 1988–92; to France, 1993–6; knighted, 1988.

‡
Mrs Thatcher held two further discussions on the Soviet Union with the FCO gurus in 1980. In February, over lunch at Chequers, she had them argue directly against the ‘irregulars’, represented by Hugh Thomas, Michael Howard and Elie Kedourie. Rodric Braithwaite was later told that she felt the FCO team had ‘come out on top’ (interview with Sir Rodric Braithwaite).

*
Nicholas, 4th Lord Bethell (1938–2007), educated Harrow and Pembroke College, Cambridge; MEP for London North West, 1975–94; for London Central, 1999–2003.

†
In January 1980, at the suggestion of Lord Bethell, she saw the dissident Alexander Ginzburg in Downing Street.

‡
John Coles (1937–), educated Magdalen College School, Brackley and Magdalen College, Oxford; private secretary to the Prime Minister, 1981–4; Ambassador to Jordan, 1984–8; High Commissioner to Australia, 1988–91; Deputy Under-Secretary, FCO, 1991–4; Permanent Under-Secretary and head of Diplomatic Service, 1994–7; knighted, 1989.

*
This was a concern she had discussed at length with Ronald Reagan during their meeting in November 1978 (interview with Peter Hannaford).

*
INF were often also referred to as Theatre Nuclear Forces (TNF), or more properly Long-Range Theatre Nuclear Forces (LRTNF).

*
The Foreign Office had earlier advised her to refuse to attend the exhibition and to plead a prior engagement. She had replied, with her strict Methodist honesty: ‘Please do not give prior engagement as a reason unless it is
wholly true
.’ (Visit by the Soviet Minister of Foreign Trade Mr Patolichev, 23 May 1979, Prime Minister’s Papers; document consulted in the Cabinet Office.)

*
OD was the Overseas and Defence Committee of the Cabinet. It was there, rather than at full Cabinet, that most business relating to the Cold War was transacted.

†
In fact, in April Mrs Thatcher gave her rather reluctant blessing to a European-wide effort to impose sanctions on Iran in sympathy with the United States. An agreement was reached, but when it came to a vote in the Commons on 20 May a backbench rebellion forced the government to back down. This failure to enact the EEC-agreed sanctions earned Britain considerable resentment in Washington, DC.

*
Edwin Meese (1931–), campaign chief of staff for Ronald Reagan, 1980; counsellor to President Reagan, 1981–5; US Attorney-General, 1985–8.

*
Andrei Sakharov, the Nobel Prize-winning physicist, internally exiled shortly after the invasion of Afghanistan.

†
Yuri Orlov, the Soviet nuclear physicist turned dissident who, after pressing for Soviet adherence to the Helsinki Accords, was arrested in 1977 and consigned to a gulag in Siberia.

*
In the end Carrington managed a trip to Moscow in July 1981 on behalf of the EEC during the British presidency. ‘I don’t think she was terribly pleased,’ he recalled, ‘but I think I got away with it’ (interview with Lord Carrington).

*
Richard Perle (1941–), Assistant Secretary, International Security Policy, Department of Defense, 1981–8; member, Defense Policy Board, 2001–4.

†
‘Linkage’ required Soviet actions in one sphere to be rewarded or punished by Western actions in another. As neighbours to the Soviet bloc, Western European nations favoured the development of a working relationship with the Soviets in areas such as trade and arms control. They felt that disagreements, such as those over human rights, should not be allowed to spoil the more positive spheres of the relationship. Hardliners in Washington, by contrast, argued that it was wrong to try to work with the Soviets in one sphere when their actions in another were unacceptable.

*
A theory has grown up that adopting this language was the culmination of a State Department ploy to outmanoeuvre the Pentagon, in which Mrs Thatcher was complicit (see Richard Aldous,
Reagan and Thatcher: The Difficult Relationship
, W. W. Norton, 2012, p. 41, and Geoffrey Smith,
Reagan and Thatcher
, Bodley Head, 1990, p. 48). This does not seem to have been the case. Both Richard Allen and the NSC staffer involved, James Rentschler, denied it outright. British officials have no memory of the incident, Mrs Thatcher never made this claim and the official papers do not support it. Mrs Thatcher’s view was known, but there is no evidence that she colluded with the State Department to shift Reagan’s position.

*
The concept of a ‘zero option’ originated with Helmut Schmidt’s Social Democratic Party, but the version worked up by Perle and adopted by Reagan led to a tougher posture than the West Germans had ever envisaged.

*
Kenneth Adelman (1946–), US Ambassador and Deputy Permanent Representative to UN, 1981–3; Director, Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, 1983–8.

*
In addition to the Diego Garcia deal, Britain also agreed to pay a nominal $100 million towards R & D costs and to cover the cost of manning air defence systems at US bases in the UK. In later years, the ceding of Diego Garcia became extremely controversial because of the effective expulsion of the local population.

†
Caspar Weinberger (1917–2006), born in California; lawyer; Director of Finance, California, 1968–9; counsellor to the President, 1973; US Defense Secretary, 1981–7; Hon. GBE, 1988.

*
In his biography of Mrs Thatcher, John Campbell asserts that in an effort to win over the doubters the Cabinet were treated to a two-hour presentation on the merits of D-5 by the MOD official Michael Quinlan (John Campbell,
Margaret Thatcher
, 2 vols, Jonathan Cape, 2000, 2003, vol. ii:
The Iron Lady
, p. 187). This is not the case. According to the late Sir Michael Quinlan this presentation did not take place. He had, in fact, left the MOD earlier. (Interview with Sir Michael Quinlan.)

*
Karol Wojtyła (1920–2005), Pope John Paul II, Archbishop of Kraków, 1964–78; elected pope, 1978.

†
Lech Wałe˛sa (1943–), co-founder and chair, Solidarity trade union, 1980–90; President of Polish Republic, 1990–95.

‡
Mrs Thatcher’s personal affection for the Polish cause was strong. When she came into office, a dispute arose about ministerial attendance in London at the annual commemoration of the Katyn´ massacre in 1940 in which Soviet troops had massacred 4,000 Polish officers. Fearing the wrath of the Soviet bloc, and arguing that it was not certain whether the Russians or – as the Soviets claimed – the Nazis had murdered the officers, the Foreign Office counselled against representation. Mrs Thatcher, who had sent Airey Neave on her behalf to the ceremony before she came into office, replied: ‘I do not agree … that is why Airey Neave attended last year.’ (Lever to Alexander, 10 Sept. 1979, Prime Minister’s Papers, Defence: The Katyn memorial; document consulted in the Cabinet Office.)

*
In early correspondence Reagan had addressed Mrs Thatcher as ‘Madam Prime Minister’, graduating to ‘Dear Margaret’ in early August 1981. The attempt to reach an even greater level of intimacy through moving to ‘Maggie’ (first seen in October 1981) no doubt led to wry smiles in No. 10, as no one close to Mrs Thatcher ever called her by that name. Realizing the error, Reagan reverted to ‘Dear Margaret’ for his next letter and retained this salutation for almost all of their subsequent correspondence.

*
Mrs Thatcher was familiar with the idea of defeating the Soviet Union by economic means. At the end of 1980, Hugh Thomas and Leonard Schapiro had furnished her with a paper called ‘A Western policy towards the Soviet economy’, which advocated ‘economic warfare’ to exploit Soviet weakness. She told Thomas that she was attracted to the idea but did not feel in a position to accept it (‘A Western policy towards the Soviet economy’, 31 Dec. 1980, THCR 1/10/17; interview with Lord Thomas of Swynnerton.)

*
See
Chapters 23
and
24
.

†
William Clark (1931–), Chief of Staff to Governor Reagan, Sacramento, 1966–9; Justice, Supreme Court of California, 1973–81; US Deputy Secretary of State, 1981; National Security Advisor, 1982–3; US Secretary of Interior, 1983–5.

*
Michael Deaver (1938–2007), Assistant to Governor Reagan during 1960s; Deputy Chief of Staff to the President, 1981–5.

*
The Reagans were also mortified lest the great trip be compromised: ‘Nancy was very unhappy with me because I had blown that,’ said Deaver (interview with Michael Deaver). Reagan wrote to Mrs Thatcher to apologize for the leak.

*
After Haig had offered the invitation via Nicko Henderson, Judge Clark sought, unsuccessfully, to withdraw it (Nicholas Henderson,
Mandarin:
The Diaries of an Ambassador, 1969–1982
, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1995, pp. 477–9). Clark cited scheduling difficulties, but having just persuaded Reagan to extend the sanctions he may have been disinclined to expose the President to Mrs Thatcher’s objections. Haig, of course, had the opposite motive.

*
Robert ‘Bud’ McFarlane (1937–), counsellor, Department of State, 1981–2; Deputy National Security Advisor, 1982–3; National Security Advisor, 1983–5.

*
George Shultz (1920–), educated Princeton University; US Secretary of Labor, 1969–70; Director, Office of Management and Budget, 1970–72; Secretary of the Treasury, 1972–4; Secretary of State, 1982–9.