Thatcher (13 page)

All this in the shadow of the hunger strikes by Republican prisoners seeking for recognition that they were prisoners of war. Asked on television whether she was willing to see an ‘endless procession of young Irish men die', she replied:
That is a matter for those who go on hunger strike and those who are encouraging them to do so. I am not urging them to go on hunger strike. I am urging them not to die. I am urging them to choose the way of life and not the way of death. What I am saying and I believe I have the whole population behind me, I am saying I will not give political status or special category status to people who are in fact criminals and who are the enemies of society
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Her ruthlessness was breathtaking. 1981 was the year that mainland Britain saw riots in Brixton and Toxteth, her personal popularity was at an all-time low, there were 73 deaths in Ireland, and seven hunger strikers died. The strike was finally called off in October. Was this a victory? It impressed the American government, but American money continued to flow to the IRA. It ensured her reputation for determination but Bobby Sands, the first striker to die, became a martyr to the Republican cause. Public opinion had seen young Irish men die, and blamed her. Furthermore Haughey supported General Galtieri during the Falklands War.

In her second term, Fitzgerald returned as Taoiseach. Disappointed in Haughey, Margaret Thatcher got on better with him. In 1983 she authorised the preparation of secret proposals to end the impasse. On 17 December of that year, the IRA left a bomb outside Harrods department store in London, killing three shoppers and two policemen. But Margaret Thatcher was becoming more aware of the nuances of the Irish situation, and beginning to believe with her customary passion that the law-abiding constituency of nationalistic Catholics should be represented and reconciled with the British state. Northern Ireland was also straining her special relationship with Ronald Reagan – with Irish Catholic in his own background, he was susceptible to the American lobby that saw Britain as a colonial power in Ireland. Also, much as she disliked the Foreign Office, she was swayed by their argument that no solution could be found without the support of all of the Northern Irish population.

This could all have been derailed by the bomb at the Grand Hotel in Brighton on 12 October 1984 during the Conservative Party conference. She was extremely lucky to escape that attack without serious injury. Millar, who had just left her after a session on her speech, describes her sitting very still in the secretaries' room –
I think that was an assassination attempt, don't you?
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she said finally. Her first thought had been for Denis, who was asleep in the bedroom and unhurt. In her memoirs, she talks about the importance of the lights remaining on. For some months afterwards she slept with a torch by her bed.
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She refused to be taken to Number 10 for safety that night. She had a copy of her speech, rescued by Millar and the secretaries – she was determined to give it. Her personal assistant, Cynthia Crawford, had collected some clothes – Margaret Thatcher was still in the ball gown she had been wearing earlier. Denis had dressed and collected a spare pair of shoes, worn later by the American Ambassador who had lost his. She slept that night in a twin room at the police training college in Lewes, with Crawford. Denis shared a room with the detectives. She woke up to the six o'clock news, and saw images of Norman Tebbit and his wife injured and trapped in the rubble. She was interviewed by the BBC and at 9.30 exactly she was walking onto the conference platform. Many of the people with her had lost their clothes, but Marks and Spencer's had opened early and it was an impressive turnout that opened that day of the conference.

She had spent the night adapting the speech –
We removed most of the partisan sections of the speech: this was not a time for Labour-bashing but for unity in defence of democracy
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On the other hand there were tough sections on law and order that could stay. I knew, she said in her memoirs,
that far more important than what I said was the fact that I, as Prime Minister, was there to say it
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She was there to say it, looking immaculate and never faltering. It was a performance worthy of the Britain she knew and admired, the Britain that had survived worse bombing than this during the Blitz. After the conference she went to the hospital to visit the injured. From there she spent ‘hours' on the phone to find doctors with the expertise they needed – in the end, she found a doctor from El Salvador with earthquake experience. Then it was back to Chequers – faster than she had ever been driven in her life and with a full motorcycle escort. Emma Nicolson, an admirer of the early Thatcher, felt she was never the same again after the bomb. She became locked away from people, unable to see and hear and touch her admirers.

In the short term, relations with Ireland were difficult. A unified Ireland was out. Confederation of the two states was out. Joint authority was out. There would be no derogation from sovereignty. But, in November 1985, the Anglo-Irish Agreement was signed. The deal gave the Irish Republic a consultative role in Northern Ireland, setting up an inter-governmental conference of ministers and civil servants with its own secretariat. No future changes would be made without a democratic vote. It was a bargaining position to maintain security, not the end result either side wanted. It failed to deliver cross-border cooperation on security, and the ‘war' with the IRA continued. In 1987, she prevailed on Douglas Hurd to ban the broadcasting of the voices of Sinn Fein or the IRA. This was a double-edged sword – broadcasters used actors to speak the words, and by so doing increased the credibility of the comments. By 1993, she was convinced that the Agreement had been a fundamental mistake. She argued for an alternative, but neither had an alternative nor had the time in office to find one. Successive governments had not found a better approach, and despite her intentions rather than because of them the Agreement has been the foundation of a slow process leading to peace.

When she left government, Margaret Thatcher had reached a conclusion to many of the big issues of her day. The Falklands rumbled on, and future events in Rhodesia discredited the Mugabe government, but neither of these were a direct result of her intervention. Only her issues with the European Union have proved insuperable. Her views were well known. She had spoken in favour of a union for free trade, and been blind to the potential of any other union, from the earliest days of Heath's government. She bent in other areas – for instance in the need to consult Nationalists in Northern Ireland, or not to recognise Bishop Muzorewa's government in Rhodesia, but she never changed her view of Europe. The big questions of Europe – how far Britain should be part of the European Union, or indeed what the purpose of the European Union was – are still not agreed by the Conservative Party. Margaret Thatcher was obdurate, but for some parts of her period of office sufficient members of the party agreed with her to make her position tenable if not secure. In the end, the final argument with Howe over the single currency was the catalyst that ended her government. Perhaps if it had not been Europe it would have been some other thing, and certainly she was unpopular in the country and with the party. It almost seems unfair that the policy that unseated her was one of the clearest and most straightforward parts of her personal manifesto.

 

Part Three

 

Leaving office was hard for Margaret Thatcher. She would never again be the centre of power and attention. There is no obvious role for an ex-prime minister, now 66 years old but with no intention of retiring. It might have been easier if she had been overthrown in an election – then she would have been prepared to move out of Downing Street. As it was, her daily routine and importance vanished overnight. She saw the Cabinet's advice to stand down as treachery. Her exit from Downing Street was tearful. Cynthia Crawford began packing immediately, but the flat had to be emptied quickly. She had one last weekend at Chequers to collect all the personal belongings of 11 years of Thatcher residency. Her last duty, as she describes it in her memoirs, was to ensure that John Major rather than Heseltine succeeded her.
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He was duly elected leader after the second ballot, and she left Number 10 on Wednesday 28 November with a typical farewell speech for the cameras –
Now is the time for a new chapter to open and I wish John Major all the luck in the world
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– and set off to start a new life in Dulwich, in the house she and Denis had bought overlooking the Dulwich and Sydenham golf course.

Public honours followed. In December 1990, she was granted the Freedom of Westminster, an honour previously only given to Winston Churchill. The Queen awarded her the Order of Merit – the highest honour that is in the royal gift. There can be only 24 members of the order at any one time – Laurence Olivier had died, leaving a vacancy for Margaret Thatcher. In 1992, she was created Baroness Thatcher, of Kesteven in the County of Lincolnshire, and entered the House of Lords. In addition, Denis Thatcher was given a Baronetcy (ensuring that their son, Mark, would inherit a title). But honours do not substitute for a job, and there simply was no job for her. With some prescience, in 1987, she said of cabinet ministers who were shuffled out of office:
But also there is one other thing which has bothered me such a great deal. It is the only job, I think in the United Kingdom, under which you do not get any severance pay or notice at all. I must say I find this inhuman
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At first she had no staff, and could not even answer the thousands of letters arriving to offer her sympathy. She was essentially an unemployed workaholic. She was very unlikely to take herself out of the public eye – even if the public, who had loved her and hated her with passion over the course of her career but had never been indifferent, would have let her.

She was not retiring to a family home or to close relationships with her children. She adored Mark and would not hear a word against him, but the relationship had cooled over the last few years. He left Harrow in 1971 with just three O-levels, did not go to university and failed his accountancy exams three times. He went through a series of short-term jobs, and has been the subject of allegations and litigation over questionable business dealings. In 1994, he went to live in South Africa and has rarely returned to England. He has been linked to controversial dealings abroad, and was arrested on suspicion of involvement in planning a coup in Africa. That year, Margaret Thatcher defended him publicly, and visited him and met her 18-month-old granddaughter for the first time while collecting an honorary degree in Houston. She has seen little more of Carol Thatcher, who has recently appeared on reality television shows, and has been quoted as saying that Mark was always the favourite.
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She got excellent A-levels, studied Law, and then left for Australia to work as a journalist. She is in a long-term relationship, but has given Margaret Thatcher no grandchildren. During a period of bad publicity for Mark she jetted in to London to support her mother, but such visits are rare. In 1998, Margaret Thatcher was coming close to regretting the lack of family closeness – so different from her own early childhood above the shop:
All one's thoughts were to have a nice house for the family... We see them at Christmas. My greatest delight is when my daughter in law sends me photographs of the grandchildren
. But when her interviewer suggested she had paid for her professional success by losing contact with her children she backtracked:
Look, you can't have everything. It has been the greatest privilege being Prime Minister of my country... Yes I wish I saw more of my children... And I haven't lost my children. They have their own lives. I took a different life
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And indeed she may not have known or expected anything else. She was certainly Alfred Roberts' favourite daughter, and included in his daily life as a child. But there are few pictures of her children with their grandparents. If a grandmother or grandfather on either side had been available, would the children have gone to boarding school so early? When talking about women entering work, she also talked about the need for another carer – in her childhood, there was a grandmother and the shop workers to help with the two girls.