Thatcher (8 page)

Meanwhile, the Labour majority in Parliament was shrinking. In March 1976, Harold Wilson resigned and was replaced by Jim Callaghan. She was no more successful in the House against Callaghan than she had been against Wilson, appearing nervous and gauche in the face of his huge experience. But within weeks he gave her the opportunity to cause real trouble. There was a close-run vote on the devolution of Scotland, which the government might lose. Many MPs had pairing arrangements and therefore were not voting, but the government would be one vote short at the crucial lobby. Government whips seized a reluctant Labour pair, and pushed him through the voting lobby. This would have been a bad breach of parliamentary etiquette at any time, but the vote won by the single disputed vote nationalised the aircraft and shipbuilding industries. The Conservatives immediately called off pairing and all other business arrangements with the government. Callaghan was forced to re-run the vote, but now it was an outright victory and nationalisation continued.

The state of the economy was worsening. The sterling crises of 1976 forced the government to impose spending cuts that Margaret Thatcher had to support, and gave Callaghan the chance to remind electors that Margaret Thatcher and Keith Joseph had been high spenders in Heath's government. By March 1977 only a Liberal/Labour pact kept Callaghan in government. It was becoming a real possibility that the Conservative Party would be in power and Margaret Thatcher would be Prime Minister. The party conference in September would be a crucial test of her leadership, and economic policy still divided the Shadow Cabinet. The paper before the conference was
the right approach to the economy
– she described it as a rather
unhappy compromise document
.
¹²
The conference passed without major incident, but the issue of how to deal with the unions did not go away. Geoffrey Howe made a speech in January 1978 attacking the role of trade unions in Britain, but without Shadow Cabinet endorsement. Margaret Thatcher made a much less precise attack a few days later, saying:
The counterpart of the withdrawal of government from interference in prices and profits in the private sector which both we and you want to see, is inevitably the -withdrawal of government from interference in wage bargaining. There can be no selective return to personal responsibility
.
¹³
The speech was made to Scottish industrialists. Innocuous as it sounds, it drew huge criticism from the press and from economists – a mark, perhaps, of how far there was to go for the new philosophy to be understood, much less accepted.

It was not just economic policy that set Margaret Thatcher apart from many, if not most, in her party and led to division in the Shadow Cabinet. On immigration, she spoke about
colour-blind capitalism
in which she placed her faith. This was not the multi-culturalism of mainstream thinking: in this, as in issues of class or gender, Margaret Thatcher's credo was that people were worth something as individuals, and should be supported for their individual contribution, not because of their membership of a group. She was not in favour of Scottish devolution, which was a Heath pledge and a Callaghan/Wilson policy. She was ‘ridiculously intransigent', as one senior Shadow Cabinet colleague despaired, against proportional representation when Lord Hailsham warned that the first-past-the-post system resulted in ‘elective dictatorship'.
¹⁴
She was as adamantly opposed to a coalition government as she had been at the end of Heath's time in office.

It is tempting to see Margaret Thatcher during these years in the way in which she described herself in her memoirs, as a lone voice in the wilderness, single-mindedly preparing her party to follow her into government. Like many other things though, emergent Thatcherism was clearer in what it was against rather than what it was for, and less cohesive and coherent than it appeared. Some strands were clear, on both personal and political lines. Margaret Thatcher hated socialism, although she admired individual socialists like Clement Attlee. She reacted against collectivism emotionally – to her, it was the antithesis of the solid middle-class values that she saw and prized in Grantham. She hated the politics of socialism, with its emphasis on collective workers' rights and government responsibility for intervention. She believed what she had read of Hayek and Solzhenitsyn who both saw the mechanisms of socialism as akin to those of slavery. She saw the work of Friedman and monetarist economics as the way forward, but was not yet able either to see or speak about how they might be implemented. Indeed, she may not have completely understood the concepts she was organising in her escape from socialism – certainly, her memoirs do not indicate the kind of theoretical understanding that would have made this possible. She was not an economist, she was a lawyer with the ability to master vast bodies of knowledge, but not necessarily great breadth of vision. Allied with economic fervour were a raft of beliefs and prejudices translated into policy. Absolute individualism can lead to individual policies: Margaret Roberts had seen widows forced to buy bruised fruit in her father's shop, and so, when cutting welfare, she protected widows' benefits. It did not occur to her that benefits as a whole should be protected, any more than it would have occurred to Alfred Roberts to give widows the bruised fruit from his shop for free. It was this difficulty in joined-up thinking, as much as the new ideas she was developing, that lead to uncertainty in her party.

But ready or not, united or not, the Conservative Party was soon to be embroiled in an election. They expected it to be called in October 1978, but at the last minute Callaghan changed his mind. This was a welcome reprieve for the Conservatives – the summer of 1978 was perhaps the lowest period of the opposition years, with polls showing them lagging in popularity. Callaghan's stewardship was steady and conservative in a non-political sense. It was Margaret Thatcher, with her hatred of socialism, who seemed to be extreme. Her personal popularity rating was consistently lower than Callaghan's. The economic outlook was improving, and the April budget brought tax cuts.

But deferring the election turned out to be a bad move for the Labour Party. In January 1979, the lorry drivers went on strike, presaging the ‘Winter of Discontent' with refuse collectors' strikes, miners' strikes, transport strikes, and even gravediggers' strikes. Margaret Thatcher's tough line on unions began to gain credibility in the party and in the country. In March, Margaret Thatcher forced a vote of no-confidence in the government. The announcement of a May election was inevitable. That March was perhaps the only time in her hard working and responsible life that Margaret Thatcher, preparing to give a television interview, became unavailable at the last moment. Two days after the announcement she was preparing for her first election address when she was told that a bomb had gone off under a car in the garage of the House of Commons. Airey Neave was dead. He was her friend and had supported her during her bid for leadership and the opposition years. Unlike the death of Ross McWhirter in 1975, whom she knew and liked and which had resulted in her being given police protection, this death was closer to home.

The 1979 election was Margaret Thatcher's one chance – and despite the loss of Airey Neave, she grasped it with both hands. This was the election where Saatchi and Saatchi used their famous advertising ‘Labour isn't working' over pictures of an increasing queue at the labour exchange. She dominated the press campaign – making a point of reaching voters wherever possible. With Denis at her side, she rode the campaign bus and grabbed every photo opportunity available. But the key to this election was the new toughness in her manifesto about reform of trade union law. In the wake of the ‘Winter of Discontent', and perhaps to the surprise of the Conservatives, Margaret Thatcher won the election and was Prime Minister.

Part Two

 

At 53 years of age, Margaret Thatcher was the first woman leader of a major Western democracy. She was proud of being the first chemist to do so. She represented a new political dawn – the first post-war prime minister to enter the job with a political philosophy that was actively opposed to collectivism. As Peregrine Worsthorne put it, she was the first political evangelist to occupy Downing Street since Labour's post-war landslide. She had spent 20 years in Parliament, but had held only one post in government.

The call from the Palace came at about 2.45 in the afternoon. There had already been celebration at Central Office, freesias everywhere, and a big chocolate cake shaped like the door of Number 10. Margaret Thatcher drove to the Palace with Denis. They returned in the Prime Ministerial car, and this time the guards saluted her. She was able to practise what she wanted to say as she walked through the crowds to Downing Street. Her opening speech is famous:
I know full well the responsibilities that await me as I enter the door of No. 10 and I'll strive unceasingly to try to fulfil the trust and confidence that the British people have placed in me and the things in which I believe. And I would just like to remember some words of St. Francis of Assisi which I think are really just particularly apt at the moment. ‘Where there is discord, may we bring harmony. Where there is error, may we bring truth. Where there is doubt, may we bring faith. And where there is despair, may we bring hope'... . And finally, one last thing: in the words of Airey Neave whom we had hoped to bring here with us, ‘There is now work to be done'
.
¹
And work there was! Over the years, Margaret Thatcher had schooled herself to sleep for only four hours a night. Watching the election results she had only a couple of hour's rest.

The Downing Street staff met her at the door. There were familiar faces in the Cabinet Room including Carol Thatcher, back from Australia for the election. Alison Ward, her constituency secretary was there and so was Cynthia Crawford, her personal assistant. Margaret Thatcher's personal staff were concerned about which office to occupy: so was Mrs. Thatcher, with cabinet offices. The press expected a list of the new Cabinet within about 24 hours, and she needed to move fast. This was the first and last Chinese takeaway of her period in Number 10, eaten by about 15 of her closest advisers as they put together the new government.

Some appointments were obvious. Geoffrey Howe was a true believer in monetarist economic policy, and was duly appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer. He became the longest serving member of her Cabinet. Keith Joseph, Margaret Thatcher's
closest political friend
,
²
went to Industry. Willie Whitelaw, who had pledged his loyalty to Mrs Thatcher, the party and the economic policy in 1974 and never withdrew it, Became Deputy Prime Minister. Margaret Thatcher called him
a big man, in character as well as physically
.
³
He was established with the Conservative ‘old guard', and could have gathered enough of a following to cause real trouble. Instead, he became the lynch-pin of her first government.

Some people were necessary to retain party unity – Jim Prior was an important symbol, appointed to negotiate with the unions.
Yet there was no doubt in my mind that we needed Jim Prior... Jim was the badge of our reasonableness
.
⁴
Although he had serious reservations about a monetarist cabinet, Peter Walker became Minister of Agriculture although he had made no secret of his opposition to her economic strategy.
His membership of the cabinet demonstrated that I was prepared to include every strand of Conservative opinion in the new government, and his post that I was not prepared to put the central economic strategy at risk
.
⁵
By 11 p.m. the list of Cabinet members was complete, and the Thatchers were driven home to Flood Street for some sleep. Margaret Thatcher was back early on Saturday to see the members and to oversee their ‘swearing in'. Monday was a Bank Holiday. The first meeting was held on Tuesday afternoon. The Thatcher years had begun.

Mrs Thatcher also needed to move into Number 10. When she arrived, the area outside the Cabinet Room looked
rather like a down-at-heel Pall Mall club
.
⁶
This could be changed at once by using furniture from the rest of the house. More long-term alterations followed – original works of art instead of copies, her own collection of porcelain outside the flat, silver borrowed from Lord Brownlow to sparkle in the dining room. The private study was re-papered in cream, the better to show pictures. Flowers were displayed right up until the Thatchers left, 11 years later. Life ‘above the shop' suited Margaret Thatcher. The flat at Number 10 is always described as ‘poky', and is under the eaves in the rooms that would have been the servants' quarters in the original house. Denis and Margaret did not need domestic help. The deep freeze was always stocked, and there was always something to ‘cut at' in the fridge, though it is unlikely either of the Thatchers organised such things. Margaret Thatcher did tidy up the clutter, and cook eggs and cheese, or ‘Bovril toast'. Often, she would be fixing something to eat at 11 o'clock at night. She no longer needed the family breakfast: now, she would have toast, water and Vitamin C.

With the Cabinet in place, then came the programme. The overall majority of 43 allowed Margaret Thatcher to claim a mandate for her policies, and ensured that they would be passed by Parliament. The election result showed a division in the country. In the south, Conservatives had 186 seats compared to Labour's 30. In the north, Labour held 107 seats to the Conservatives' 53. The majority was sufficient, though, for Margaret Thatcher to begin the work that her convictions had led her to. Her economic policy took absolute priority through this first government.