Margaret Thatcher: The Autobiography (22 page)

At another level, however – the level of day-to-day human experience in government – the explanation of what happened is to be found in the forces which buffeted us and in our reactions to them. We thought we
were well enough prepared to face these. But we were not. Little by little we were blown off course until eventually, in a fit of desperation, we tore up the map, threw the compass overboard and, sailing under new colours but with the same helmsman, still supremely confident of his navigational sense, set off towards unknown and rock-strewn waters.

The squalls began early. Within weeks of taking office the Government had been forced to declare a State of Emergency
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as a national docks strike began to bite. At the same time a Court of Inquiry was set up to find an expensive solution. Although the strike evaporated within a fortnight, it was an ambiguous triumph.

The following month the crisis was international. On Sunday 6 September terrorists from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) hijacked four aircraft (none of them British) and demanded that they be flown to Jordan. Three of the hijacks were successful, but on the fourth – an Israeli plane en route to London – the hijackers were overpowered by security men. The surviving terrorist, Leila Khalid, was arrested at Heathrow.

The PFLP demanded her release, and just before Cabinet met on Wednesday 9 September they hijacked a British aircraft in order to bring more pressure to bear. The plane was flying to Beirut as we met. It was explained to Cabinet that we had already acquiesced in an American suggestion to offer the release of Leila Khalid in return for the freedom of the hostages. Over the next few weeks Cabinet discussed the question many times as negotiations ran on. Meanwhile, Jordan fell into a state of civil war as King Hussein fought the Palestinians for control of his country and the Syrians invaded and occupied much of the north. Ted resisted any British involvement on the King’s side and was certain that we were right to negotiate with the PFLP. Though it went against the grain to release Khalid, in the end the deal was made. In due course all the hostages were released, though the hijacked aircraft were blown up by the terrorists, and King Hussein survived the events of ‘Black September’ – barely but triumphantly.

But by then the Government had already suffered a blow from which, perhaps, we never fully recovered. In mid-July Iain Macleod had gone into hospital for a small abdominal operation. It had been a success and he had returned to No. 11 for a few days’ rest. At about midnight on Monday 20 July my telephone rang. It was Francis Pym, the Chief Whip. Iain had suffered a heart attack that evening and had just died. He was only fifty-six.

I felt the blow personally, for Iain had always been a generous and kind man for whom to work. But I also immediately recognized that we had lost our shrewdest political intellect and best communicator. How Iain would have performed as Chancellor I do not know. But if one accepts that the worst mistakes of economic policy derived from Ted’s overruling the Treasury, it is reasonable to suppose that matters might have turned out better if Iain had lived. He was succeeded by Tony Barber, a man of considerable intellectual ability, who by and large had an unhappy time at the Treasury. The economic problems of the next few years were founded in this transition.

The Cabinet which met after Iain Macleod’s death was a sombre one. Around the Cabinet table already sat nearly all of those who would be my colleagues over the next four and a half years. Their personal qualities would be severely tested. Tony Barber was an old if not particularly close friend from the Bar, an able tax lawyer, but not someone to stand up against Ted. Reggie Maudling, Home Secretary until his resignation over the Poulson affair in 1972,
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was still interested in and had strong views about economic policy. By contrast, he was less than fascinated by his new brief. He was unlikely to oppose any shift back towards a more interventionist economic policy, which indeed he had always favoured.

Alec Douglas-Home had returned effortlessly to his old Foreign Office brief where, however, plenty of effort was soon required in giving effect to our promises made in Opposition to lift the arms embargo on South Africa and in trying to devise an affordable way of retaining a British military presence east of Suez. He was unlikely to take much part in domestic political affairs now. Quintin Hailsham had found his ideal role as Lord Chancellor, beginning a long spell in that office under Ted and then me, where he managed to combine his old sense of mischief and
theatre with the sedate traditions of the Upper House. Peter Carrington was Defence Secretary, a post for which he was well suited and which he filled with aplomb. I knew that he was close to Ted. He doubtless became still closer when later as Party Chairman and Energy Secretary he had a crucial role in dealing with the final miners’ strike which precipitated the general election of February 1974. He was one of Ted’s ‘inner circle’.

Keith Joseph, by contrast, though a senior Cabinet figure and someone whose views had always to be taken seriously, was certainly not part of that circle and was never, so far as I know, invited to join it. Having been appointed to be Secretary of State for Social Services, Keith’s compassionate, social reforming side had become uppermost at the expense of his more conservative economic convictions, though he retained a profound distrust of corporatism in all its forms. His passion became the need to tackle the problem of the ‘cycle of deprivation’ which condemned successive generations to poverty. Like me, Keith had been given a high-spending ‘social’ department, and there was a natural opposition between what he (also like me) wanted for his own preferred programmes and the requirements of tight public expenditure control. Whether by chance or calculation, Ted had ensured that the two most economically conservative members of his Cabinet were kept well out of economic decision-making, which was left to those over whom he could wield maximum influence.

John Davies, the former Director-General of the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) (who knew nothing of politics when he was summoned after Iain Macleod’s death to become Minister of Technology), certainly fell into that category. John was someone I liked, but his warmest admirer would have been hard put to make a case for his handling of the turbulent industrial politics which would now become his responsibility. John also represented ‘business’, a concept which Ted, with his latent corporatism, considered had some kind of ‘role’ in government.

With Tony Barber and John Davies, Robert Carr was, as Employment Secretary, the third key figure responsible for economic strategy under Ted. He was a good deal senior to me and we had different views and temperaments. He was a decent, hard-working though not a colourful personality. But he had a difficult, arguably impossible, brief in trying to make the flawed Industrial Relations Act work. His reputation as a left winger in Conservative terms was less useful than some might have expected; trade unionists used to regard left-wing Conservatives not as more compassionate but merely as less candid. As Employment Secretary
at the time of the first (1972) miners’ strike and Home Secretary at the time of the second (1974), few people faced greater difficulties during these years.

One who did was Willie Whitelaw as, successively, Leader of the House, Northern Ireland Secretary and finally Employment Secretary at the time of the three-day week. We seemed to have little in common and neither of us, I am sure, suspected how closely our political destinies would come to be linked. Since Education was not a department requiring at this time a heavy legislative programme, our paths rarely crossed. But I was already aware of Willie as a wise, reassuring figure whose manner, voice and stature made him an excellent Leader of the House. Willie’s bluff public persona, however, concealed a shrewd political intelligence and instinct for managing men.

After Iain Macleod’s untimely death, Geoffrey Rippon was given responsibility for negotiating the terms of our entry into the European Economic Community. Although we had superficially similar backgrounds, Geoffrey and I were never close. It always seemed to me that he tried to overwhelm opponents with the force of his personality rather than with the force of his argument. This may have been because Ted had given him the task of getting the best deal he could in negotiations with the EEC – and that deal was not always in our best long-term interests.

My impression was that the two members of Cabinet Ted trusted most were Jim Prior and Peter Walker. Both had proved their loyalty, Jim as Ted’s PPS in Opposition, and Peter as organizer of his 1965 leadership campaign. Jim was Agriculture minister, a post which his farming background and rubicund features helped him make his own, before becoming Deputy Chairman of the Party under Peter Carrington in April 1972. Peter Walker’s thirst for the ‘modernization’ of British institutions must have helped draw him closer to Ted. He soon became Secretary of State for the huge new Department of the Environment, where he embarked with vigour upon the most unpopular local government reforms until my own Community Charge – and at the cost of far greater bureaucracy. Later he would go to the other conglomerate, the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI). Jim and, still more so, Peter were younger than me, but both had far more influence over the general direction of government. Although their political views were very different from mine, I respected their loyalty to Ted and their political effectiveness.

The other members of Cabinet – Gordon Campbell at Scotland, George Jellicoe as Lord Privy Seal and Leader of the Lords, Peter Thomas,
a close parliamentary neighbour and friend, as Secretary of State for Wales and Party Chairman, and Michael Noble briefly at Trade – did not figure large in discussions. I therefore found myself with just one political friend in Cabinet – Keith.

But for all the difficulties which were quickly upon us that summer and autumn of 1970, such melancholy reflections were still far from our thoughts. Indeed, Ted Heath, Tony Barber, Robert Carr and John Davies set out on the course of radical reform with impressive zeal; and the rest of us in the Cabinet were enthusiastic cheerleaders.

First, the Government embarked with a will on cutting public spending. Discussions began at the end of July. A target was agreed of £1,700 million net reduction in planned spending by 1974/75, and Ted circulated a paper on the economy to show his commitment to the strategy. The cuts were to fall most heavily on industrial spending, though as already noted I had my own departmental spending battles at Education. Investment grants were ended. The Industrial Re-organization Corporation (IRC) would be closed down. Aircraft and space projects would be subject to the closest scrutiny. Even with the reprieve of the hugely expensive Concorde project, largely on European policy grounds, it was an impressive freemarket economic programme. And it made possible a tax-cutting budget in October, which reduced the standard rate of income tax by 6d, down from 8s.3d in the pound (just over 41p), and made reductions in corporation tax to take effect at the beginning of the next financial year.

Nor was there any delay in bringing forward the other key feature of our economic programme – the Industrial Relations Bill. The framework of the Bill was already familiar: this was one of the areas of policy most thoroughly worked out in Opposition and we had published our proposals in 1968. The main principles were that collective bargaining agreements should be legally enforceable unless the parties to them agreed otherwise, and that the unions’ historic immunities from civil action should be significantly narrowed and confined to those whose rule books met certain minimum standards (‘registered unions’).

Cases brought under this legislation would be dealt with by a new system of industrial courts and tribunals, headed by a branch of the High Court – the National Industrial Relations Court (NIRC). The Bill also gave new powers to the Secretary of State for Employment, when negotiation had failed, to apply to the NIRC either for an order deferring industrial action for up to sixty days – a ‘cooling off’ period – or for one requiring a secret ballot of the workers involved before a strike.

There was a good deal in the Bill that actively favoured trade unionism, for all the hostility it encountered on the Left. For the first time in English law there would be a legally enforceable right to belong (or not to belong) to a trade union. There would be statutory protection against unfair dismissal. Finally, the Bill would repeal provisions that made it a criminal offence for gas, water and electricity workers to strike during the lifetime of their contracts.

At the time I was a strong supporter of the Bill, although I had doubts about particular parts, such as the measure on essential services. We were all conscious that the previous Labour Government had backed off from its
In Place of Strife
proposals for trade union reform under a mixture of union and Party pressure. We were, therefore, doubly determined to make the changes required.

In retrospect, the philosophy of the Bill was muddled. It assumed that if the unions were in general confirmed in their powers they would discipline their members industrially, reducing wildcat strikes for instance, and use their industrial strength in a regulated and orderly fashion. But it also contained provisions to strengthen the powers of individuals against the unions. So the Bill was in part corporatist and in part libertarian.

Finally, we naively assumed that our opponents would play by the same rules as we did. In particular, we imagined that there would not be either mass opposition to laws passed by a democratically elected government or mass infringement of the criminal law, as in the miners’ strike of 1972. We did not recognize that we were involved in a struggle with unscrupulous people whose principal objectives lay not in industrial relations but in politics. It was later, as Leader of the Opposition, that I realized how far the extreme Left had penetrated into trade union leaderships and why that ‘giant’s strength’, of which the Tory pamphlet had spoken in the late 1950s, was now being used in such a ruthless manner. The communists knew that they could not be returned to Parliament, so they chose to advance their cause by getting into office in the trade union movement. And the fact that both the Wilson and Heath Governments had stood up to the unions and then lost, increased their influence more than if we had not challenged their power in the first place.