Margaret Thatcher: The Authorized Biography (88 page)

It is also true, however, that the budget row contained the seeds of most of the problems which were to become toxic by the end of the 1980s. The experience confirmed in Mrs Thatcher a constant irritation, even a deeper resentment, at the way the EEC worked. Again and again, on memos she received through the course of the negotiations, she would scribble exclamations of exasperation (‘The more I read the more appalled I become’)
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or worse. On one from Geoffrey Howe about EEC rules on how refunds should be approved, she wrote: ‘No – the procedure is ridiculous. Its whole purpose is to demean Britain.’
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For her, the encounter with the EEC was
a series of mostly unpleasant surprises in which she discovered that more powers had been ceded than she had realized. And she found it hard to resolve the conundrum of all negotiation in the EEC: how much should a matter of principle, such as national independence, be sacrificed for a specific, material advantage or for the Foreign Office concept of ‘influence’?

In the relatively quiet months after the Brussels deal of 30 May, John Nott, the Trade Secretary, wrote her a thoughtful note about future strategy towards the Community. He said that the whole process had brought out ‘deep but genuine differences of opinion about the Community among colleagues’. In his view, ‘far too much power already resides in the institutions of the Community’: ‘own resources’ should not be increased, and the CAP must be reduced. He added: ‘One of the misfortunes for me of the Budget negotiations was that we had very nearly achieved this objective [reforming the CAP] as a result of French threats, but we lost the opportunity when we accepted a temporary settlement.’
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Mrs Thatcher underlined these words twice and put three ticks beside them. Nott had identified what it was that she had not liked about Carrington’s deal in Brussels – the sense that any victory, however good in its specifics, was always bought by the longer-term sacrifice of Britain’s best interests.

No sooner had Mrs Thatcher confronted the leaders of Europe in Dublin in November 1979 than she began to prepare for her first visit to the United States as prime minister. Her instinctive sympathy with the United States was as ingrained as her instinctive distance from Continental Europe. She was already an object of considerable interest and admiration in America. But she nevertheless lacked a powerful ally among the political elite in Washington. Her cordial relationship with Ronald Reagan was something she hoped might bear fruit in the presidential contest due the following year, but at this stage it was not even clear that he would be the Republican candidate. Her relationship with President Jimmy Carter, though correct, was not close. Mrs Thatcher had originally wanted to visit in September, but Carter put her off, pleading a hectic schedule. When Zbigniew Brzezinski, the National Security Advisor, advised the President to call Mrs Thatcher to discuss the date change personally he demurred, telling Brzezinski to deliver a message via the State Department instead.
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The two respected one another, but they did not particularly like one another, and they certainly did not agree on many of the key issues of the day, especially how to deal with the Soviet Union.
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There was also a question in
the minds of both leaders about how much effort should be put into their relationship. In the United States administration, the idea was abroad that Britain no longer mattered very much. A CIA report sent to Carter in October noted the United Kingdom’s ‘now largely secondary political, economic, and military role’ and declared that ‘The “special relationship” between the United States and the United Kingdom, finally, has lost much of its meaning.’ The report added, unpresciently, ‘Insofar as the Thatcher government is interested in expanding that role, it apparently intends to do so in an EC more than an Atlantic framework.’
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For her part, Mrs Thatcher was conscious of the weakness of the Carter presidency. On 4 November, the US Embassy in Teheran was occupied by Islamic extremists, described as ‘students’, and the Embassy staff taken hostage. There then began a long, carefully calibrated humiliation of the American presidency by Iran. This, combined with economic weakness and the energy crisis – the spot price of Saudi oil was three times higher at the end of 1979 than it had been at the beginning of 1978 – drained the Carter administration’s will and occupied its every waking moment. ‘The Oval Office had become a black hole from which the President rarely escaped,’ recalled Jim Rentschler, a National Security Council staffer. ‘Everything was set aside to focus on the hostage crisis, so the Anglo-American relationship was not exactly “on hold”, but it was largely left to the bureaucracy to manage.’
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The briefing to the President from the Secretary of State, Cyrus Vance, in advance of Mrs Thatcher’s visit reveals a mild unease, both about the personal rapport between the leaders and about the issues they might discuss. Among the principal objectives of the meeting, Vance noted, would be to ‘Enhance … your personal relationship with its strong-minded Prime Minister’ and to ‘Get a reaffirmation of British support for SALT II [Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty] ratification.’ By way of ‘setting’, Vance explained that ‘The British economic situation will get worse before it gets better,’ but described the Thatcher government as being ‘well-placed to ride out the storm, since it has a 43 seat majority in the House of Commons … The Labor Party is in disarray.’ He also pointed out that there were some Tory suspicions because of the closeness of Carter to Jim Callaghan: ‘the Thatcher government has shown its willingness to make decisions on matters of interest to the US more independently than the Callaghan government.’
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For her part, Mrs Thatcher was concerned above all to make a favourable general impact during her visit. In this regard she was unimpressed by the first schedule of events proposed by the Foreign Office. ‘She does not regard the day’s programme as a whole as sufficiently interesting,’ noted a memo from Downing Street.
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Extra meetings at the Pentagon and with British businessmen were duly added. Breaking with her usual determination to travel with a minimal entourage, for this visit Mrs Thatcher had a range of expertise on tap. As well as her No. 10 staff and Foreign Secretary, she brought with her not only the Cabinet Secretary but also the permanent secretaries from both the Foreign Office and the Ministry of Defence. There were important issues to discuss, such as American support for the modernization of the British nuclear deterrent and progress in the Rhodesian negotiations, but none, at this point, was critical. What the still new Prime Minister needed to do was to establish herself as a player on the Washington stage. At the British Embassy on the night of her arrival, 16 December, the Ambassador, Sir Nicholas Henderson (commonly known as ‘Nicko’),
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noted with surprise and pleasure how much she listened to her Foreign Secretary, Lord Carrington. The party discussed whether or not Britain should support the United States in its plan to seek Chapter Seven powers (which could include sanctions or even the use of military force) from the United Nations Security Council over the hostage-taking in Iran. Mrs Thatcher, influenced by pressure at home about British interests in Iran, was doubtful. It was Carrington who took the strong line: ‘Leaning forward on the sofa, Peter Carrington said, “Margaret, you have got to say, yes. You have got to do so.” ’
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Mrs Thatcher did not clearly indicate then and there which way her mind would go on this subject.

The next morning, the Prime Minister was received in solitary splendour by the President and First Lady on the White House lawn, with military honours. At the arrival ceremony, she immediately praised Carter for the way he was dealing with the ‘agonizing problem’ of the hostages, and went on: ‘At times like this you are entitled to look to your friends for support. We are your friends. We do support you. And we shall support you. Let there be no doubt about that.’
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The ceremony had been a ‘great emotional experience’, she told Carter privately, stressing that when it came to Iran
‘everything the British Government could do to help they would do’. If Carter wanted action under Chapter Seven, she would support him: ‘No other course of action was thinkable.’
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Afterwards, she expanded on this to the waiting press, confirming that she would back a Chapter Seven resolution.
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Although there was really no new policy involved, the force of her words had an immediate effect. ‘Warm Words on a Wintry Day; Thatcher Vows to Back Iran Sanctions’ was the
Washington Post
headline the next morning. The
Daily Telegraph
reported her ‘tremendous personal success with President Carter and the American public’.
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Zbigniew Brzezinski looked at the matter more realistically: ‘There was an arrival ceremony for Mrs Thatcher at the White House. She made quite an impression as a tough-minded lady. She had a good meeting with the President, but in my view the President was not sufficiently forceful in pressing her over economic sanctions against Iran. I followed this up with her myself, but felt that the President was not particularly pleased that I had intervened and pressed her for a commitment.’
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Carter’s aides were acutely aware of the need for tangible British support. ‘If it is perceived that we cannot get full British cooperation on voluntary steps with Prime Minister Thatcher in Washington, the credibility of allied support will collapse,’ warned Jody Powell, Carter’s Press Secretary, privately.
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Brzezinski was thus eager for Britain to implement some sanctions against Iran even before going to the UN under Chapter Seven. Mrs Thatcher did not want to take this step, nor was she ready to give America anything very specific. But as she had set such a supportive tone, this mattered less than the Americans might have feared.

At lunch at the British Embassy that day, Mrs Thatcher was able to announce, impromptu, that a constitutional settlement for Rhodesia had just been initialled at Lancaster House. The
New York Times
the next day noted that she had been considered ‘a tyro in diplomacy’ when she first reached No. 10, but ‘The Margaret Thatcher who arrived yesterday for her first American visit as Prime Minister is being received as the most effective British statesman (she would scorn “stateswoman”) since Harold Macmillan, the fabled Supermac.’
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That afternoon, Mrs Thatcher went to Capitol Hill, where her reception was almost rapturous. Henderson recorded that one senior Senator told him three times how marvellous she had been and said: ‘ “I do not recall any visitor to the USA who has made such an impact.” I asked whether he was referring to visitors to Congress. “No,” he replied, “I mean any visitor anywhere to the United States.” ’
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At the White House dinner which he gave for her that night, Carter applied a quotation from
Pickwick Papers
to Mrs Thatcher: ‘She knows what’s what, she does.’ There was a faint feeling that the President found this quality in her irritating.

The following morning, Mrs Thatcher flew to New York where she was freer to indulge in the ‘hot-gospelling’ at which she excelled. She told a lunch at the Foreign Policy Association that ‘Self-questioning is essential to the health of any society. But we perhaps have carried it too far and carried to extremes of course it causes paralysis. The time has come when the West – above all Europe and the United States – must begin to substitute action for introspection.’ She reminded her audience that her enemies had called her the Iron Lady and said, ‘They’re quite right – I am.’
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Without being guilty of any diplomatic incorrectness, Mrs Thatcher was supplying a gap in the rhetoric and attitude of the West which many Americans felt had been created by Carter’s vacillation. At a dinner that night given by David Rockefeller and attended by grandees like Averell Harriman, Alexander Haig
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and Henry Kissinger, Mrs Thatcher cast aside her notes and spoke extempore. Brian Urquhart, an Englishman who was then the UN Under-Secretary-General for Special Political Affairs, wrote: ‘she evoked an almost revivalist atmosphere with a ringing assault on socialism and on generally unsatisfactory behaviour throughout the world. When she was done, ancient bankers staggered to their feet to foreswear 1776 and suggest that she ought to be the President of the United States. She was urged to tell the United States, then in the throes of the hostage crisis, where it had gone wrong. Along with the other Brits present, I was acutely embarrassed.’
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Urquhart’s snooty reaction was typical of the majority of the British official classes throughout Mrs Thatcher’s time as prime minister, but his account gives an accurate picture of the emotions stirred among the American audience. Even within the administration, Mrs Thatcher appealed to people who felt that their own country’s leadership was lacking. Jim Rentschler recalled: ‘Carter did not loom large in personal strength. Bob Blackwill [a colleague on the National Security Council staff handling European issues] came out of a meeting that included both Carter and Thatcher: “In that room there was one giant and one pigmy,” he said, “and the giant was female.” ’
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The conclusion of the Lancaster House Agreement over Rhodesia was by and large not Mrs Thatcher’s doing. She felt little natural warmth towards the process, indeed a fierce distaste towards Joshua Nkomo and even more towards Robert Mugabe. But, having decided to leave the entire negotiation to Carrington, and to put her confidence in him, she behaved, almost always, correctly. Robin Renwick, the head of the Rhodesia desk, remembered, ‘She
was excellent at Lancaster House, because she refused to intervene at all. We explained to her that she mustn’t act as a court of appeal for disgruntled participants … She said, Carrington and the FCO are going to do this and no one should go behind Carrington’s back.’
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At the party conference in October, when rebellion threatened, she led a standing ovation for Carrington. As the talks progressed, she left the daily negotiations entirely to her Foreign Secretary, who briefed her each night on progress. Within the privacy of No. 10, these briefings often led to vigorous exchanges, as Michael Alexander recalled: ‘Her role was to be rather extreme, to criticize all the participants all the time. (So much so that I did not keep a record of these nocturnal discussions. They would not have done her reputation much good!) “I won’t have it; I won’t do it” and “Absolutely not!” “Why not propose this new approach, or that, to Muzorewa or Nkomo?” Peter would then go back to Lancaster House and say that the Prime Minister was giving him a hard time and that the participants had better agree to whatever he proposed “for fear of something worse”.’
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After one such evening session, faced with intransigence from Ian Smith, Renwick briefed the US Embassy that Mrs Thatcher had been in a ‘feisty, militant mood’. She was determined to move the conference forward, the Embassy reported to Washington. ‘If Carrington does not succeed, Prime Minister Thatcher is prepared to take Smith on herself.’
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Mrs Thatcher also sent regular updates to President Carter. The Americans remained suspicious of British intentions, fearing that a fully democratic solution would somehow be avoided. Carter, coming from a Southern state, always felt the pressure from black activists in the Democratic Party for whom the issue of Rhodesia seemed not unlike the issue of slavery itself: such people were impatient with the compromises which might be required to achieve a peaceful transition, and unfriendly towards the British.