by Sue Corbett
Once more Britain’s relations with the European Community and Thatcher’s tendency to stand apart from her own Government were at the root of the immediate problem. At the Rome meeting of the European Council in October 1990, Britain and the Prime Minister were isolated yet again, this time over the content and timing for stages two and three of the proposed economic and monetary union. Thatcher reacted with angry brio, declaring that she would simply veto any future EMU treaty. She accused foreign heads of government of living in “cloud-cuckoo-land”. Her anger boiled over in the House of Commons on October 30, when she went beyond the parliamentary statement agreed with her Foreign Secretary and Chancellor of the Exchequer and made a wide-ranging attack on the European Community, accusing its Commission of trying to “extinguish democracy” in Britain. Some Cabinet colleagues were appalled. The Conservative Party (particularly at Cabinet level) was still basically pro-European, although it contained a vociferous minority opposed to any further strengthening of links with the EU. Thatcher’s passionate attachment to sovereignty was proving increasingly unacceptable to many ministers and was clearly destabilising the Cabinet. Her senior colleagues were agreed that good relations with the EU were crucial to Britain’s foreign and economic policy.
Two days later, on November 1, Sir Geoffrey Howe, the Deputy Prime Minister and Leader of the House of Commons, resigned. His letter of resignation referred to growing differences from Thatcher over the EU. This move shook the party, leading to speculation about a possible leadership bid. More devastating than his resignation itself was his subsequent resignation speech in the House of Commons on November 13. It was such a spirited personal attack — and from one who was generally so mild-mannered — that it stunned Thatcher. He said that her attitude to Europe, especially on EMU, was straining Cabinet government and risked damaging the national interest. The speech left Thatcher increasingly beleaguered, and made inevitable a more serious challenge to her leadership in the annual election. This time there was to be no “stalking-horse”, but a beast of real pedigree. Heseltine was catapulted into the contest by the exuberance of Howe’s parliamentary attack.
The election was held on November 20, when Thatcher was in Paris, at a summit meeting of the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe to discuss the post-Communist future of Eastern Europe. The Prime Minister won the ballot by 204 votes to 152, but was four votes short of the necessary 15 per cent majority that would have settled the matter. Her supporters pointed out that in the second ballot she would need a simple majority of the 372 MPs — only 187 votes, or 17 fewer than she had just won. She had no doubts about fighting on and promised to campaign more vigorously. But Heseltine’s vote plus abstentions significantly exceeded expectations.
It was clear that at least 40 per cent of MPs wanted a change. Heseltine’s promises to alter the style of government, review the poll tax (which was already taking its toll on Conservative prospects) and adopt a more positive approach to Europe attacked Thatcher at her weakest points. Her campaign had been poor, although she felt that her prime ministerial duties and the need to appear confident limited the extent to which she could campaign.
In addition her advisers took too much for granted or were too abrasive in their approach. But in any circumstances it would have been uphill work. Many MPs, including those passed over or dismissed over the years, had reason to feel aggrieved about her. Above all, many also felt that they simply could not win another election under her leadership. For them, if not for her, it was clear that the Iron Lady was showing metal fatigue.
More significantly, many Cabinet ministers quickly decided that she would lose in the second ballot to be held a week later, or would win so narrowly that her authority would be fatally undermined and that she would still have to step down. Some of these were alarmed at the prospect of a Heseltine succession and wanted to have a wider choice in the ballot. But Hurd and Major still refused to enter the race and again signed her nomination papers.
Thatcher’s support was weakening the whole time. She consulted her Cabinet individually; most expressed doubts about whether she could win, and some argued that she should throw in the towel straight away. Though the party in the country unsurprisingly remained loyal, she decided that without the strong support of the Cabinet she could not fight on.
It was time to depart, and she announced this to a meeting of the Cabinet on November 22. With typical courage she then went to the House of Commons to speak in a confidence debate. It was a rousing performance, a reminder of her gallantry, flair and conviction. She had not tired of her mission, but those whom she had led had tired of her.
Thatcher resigned as Prime Minister on November 28, leaving Downing Street, a little tearfully, though with the partial satisfaction of knowing that she was not to be succeeded by Heseltine but by her own favourite, Major, who had defeated Heseltine and Hurd in the parliamentary ballot to follow her.
Life out of office was initially miserable. Like her predecessor, Heath, she seemed disorientated by the loss of power. But with typical gumption she threw herself into establishing a foundation (named after her) to support business training projects in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union and the establishment of a chair of Enterprise Studies at Cambridge University. She toured the world, speaking for large fees in the foundation’s name and to its great financial benefit. She remained immensely popular in several countries, particularly the US, Japan and Eastern Europe. She was the symbol of the defeat of communism and the triumph in the 1980s of market economics.
She returned sporadically, and not always helpfully, to the political fray. Her support for Major waned as he set out on a more pragmatic European policy than her own. She allowed her own more nationalist opinions to seep out into the public domain, and became ever more forceful, outspoken and extreme in her denunciations of the moves towards political and monetary union in Europe.
The division over Europe that had helped to end her years in office yawned ever wider within the Conservative Party, which had once regarded itself as the pro-Europe party.
Thatcher plainly admired the style and determination of Tony Blair, who crushed John Major’s Conservatives in the 1997 election, and he for his part seemed content from time to time to be compared with her as a strong leader. She regularly revisited some of the issues that had dominated her years in office; for example she gave strong support to the development of democracy and the protection of the rule of law in Hong Kong as promised in the treaty she had signed with China. In 1999, in her first conference speech since her resignation as leader, she defended General Augusto Pinochet, the former dictator of Chile, who was held in Britain after his arrest in 1998.
When Thatcher joined the campaign trail for the 2001 general election, she was followed closely by the media. After several minor strokes, however, it was announced in 2002 that she would cut back her heavy schedule.
By this time she was set to have a permanent place in the House of Commons, after a rule change meant that an 8ft marble statue, for which she posed with her familiar handbag, could be placed there during her lifetime. When on display at Guildhall, however, it was decapitated by a man with a cricket bat, and so was withdrawn from public view. It was to be placed outside the House of Commons chamber, opposite Winston Churchill.
Thatcher received all the greatest honours that her country could bestow. She became a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1983, received the Order of Merit in 1990, was made a Baroness in 1992 and joined the Garter as a Lady of that Order in 1995.
She remained a political star until deep into her retirement from full-time politics. Like the greatest divas she could be temperamental and difficult but she was always able to rise to the great occasions, not because of her ability as an orator but because of the passionate strength of her convictions.
She was driven by those beliefs to tackle the task of halting and reversing her country’s decline and to ensure that it played its full part in defending the freedoms of the democratic Wes
t. Her record and her personality will be the subject of continuing controversy. But no one will ever doubt her sincerity and her courage, and most will concede that the far-reaching changes she made would have been impossible without her.
Her husband predeceased her. She is survived by their twin children, her daughter Carol and her son Mark, who has inherited his father’s baronetcy.
Baroness Thatcher, LG, OM, FRS, Prime Minister, 1979-90, was born on October 13, 1925. She died on April 8, 2013, aged 87
MAVIS BATEY
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GARDEN HISTORIAN WHO FOR DECADES KEPT SECRET HER DRAMATIC WARTIME ROLE IN DECODING THE GERMAN ENIGMA CIPHERS AT BLETCHLEY PARK
NOVEMBER 15, 2013
In 1999, acquaintances of the garden historian Mavis Batey — then 77 — were astounded to see her on Channel 4’s series Station X, describing the vital work that she and the other Enigma codebreakers did at Bletchley Park in Buckinghamshire during the Second World War. All those years later, it was astonishing to learn that this grey-haired Englishwoman, whose interests were garden history, walking, birdwatching and the works of Jane Austen, had played a key role in cracking the Enigma ciphers that were vital to Britain’s victory in the Battle of Matapan in 1941 and in the Double Cross deception plan for the D-Day landings in 1944.
Bletchley Park’s codebreakers had all been sworn to secrecy at the time. Impressively, no hint of the true nature of their work had leaked out until, in 1974, Group Captain Frederick Winterbotham was allowed to publish his account of their activities in his book The Ultra Secret. Other authors followed suit, and Batey’s role began to be known. It was not until Batey’s 1999 television appearance, however, that many of her colleagues in the garden history world became aware of her remarkable past.
It was as Mavis Lever, a teenager not long out of convent school, that Batey had been recruited at the outbreak of war in 1939 to work for the Government Code and Cypher School in London.
There she began by checking the personal columns of The Times for messages that might have been placed by spies. At the time she had been midway through a German degree at University College London, which she was doing not from any inkling of what was to come but because of love of the German Romantics nurtured at school and on holiday in the Rhineland.
The notion that her German might after all be useful in the world of wartime intelligence at first somewhat excited her, as she admitted later, and she had momentary visions of a Mata Hari-like existence. The realities of what she was called to do had none of that kind of febrile glamour, but were of fundamental importance to the winning of the war by the Allies. Her German was a valuable asset for the job to which she was transferred in April 1940: deciphering enemy radio messages at the school’s top-secret codebreaking establishment, Bletchley Park.
The Germans’ confidence in the impenetrability of their wartime codemaking was understandable because the Enigma machines which encoded their radio messages could each be set in as many as 159,000,000,000,000,000,000 ways. Reasonably, they believed that only the destination machine, similarly set, would be able to unscramble each communication. They were proved wrong by the ingenuity and dedication of a remarkable band of mathematicians, crossword enthusiasts, chess players and linguists who would pore over the intercepted radio messages looking for patterns, such as repetitions, that might provide a clue to the way each individual machine had been set.
Batey was assigned to Dillwyn Knox’s research unit, later to be known as the ISK (Intelligence Section Knox), which operated from a cottage on the Bletchley Park site. Her efforts there were unrelenting. “You would have to work at it very, very hard,” she recalled years later, “and after you had done it for a few hours you wondered whether you would see anything when it was before your eyes because you were so snarled up in it. But then, of course, the magic moment comes when it really works and there it all is, the Italian or the German, or whatever it is. There is nothing like seeing a code broken. That is really the absolute tops.”
Dramatically, she played a major role in the first big success of Knox’s team when, in March 1941, they decoded the ominous message, “Today’s the day minus three”, which told them the Italian Navy was up to something.
Batey and her colleagues worked frantically for the next three days and nights, decoding with more than usual urgency every Italian Navy intercept that came in. Sleep was a secondary concern, and it was at 11pm on the last evening that Batey finally decoded an exceptionally long message, detailing the Italians’ plan to intercept a British convoy en route from Egypt to Greece. Helpfully, the Italians had even included the positions of all their ships.
Elated, Batey sped out into the pouring rain to get the message sent to the Royal Navy’s Mediterranean Fleet, under Admiral Sir Andrew Cunningham. Forewarned at his HQ in Alexandria, Cunningham threw enemy agents off the scent by ostentatiously going ashore with his overnight case and golf clubs. He then nipped back to his fleet, which consisted of three battleships, four cruisers and an aircraft carrier, under cover of darkness, and took the Italians by surprise. After slowing down Admiral Riccardi’s ships with air attacks, Cunningham’s fleet closed with them, opening fire at 10.25 pm on March 28. The damaged Italian battleship Vittorio Veneto managed to escape, but Cunningham’s force sank three heavy cruisers, two light cruisers and two destroyers in what became known as the Battle of Matapan.
Admiral Cunningham later visited Bletchley Park to congratulate Batey and her colleagues and to see the original intercept. Years later, an embarrassed Batey recalled that, while there, he fell victim to the young codebreakers’ high spirits, going away with his uniform besmirched with whitewash.
Perhaps the Bletchley operation’s biggest single coup, though, was to break into the Enigma cipher used by the Abwehr (German Secret Service). For this, again, Batey was part of Knox’s team, and worked with another colleague, Margaret Rock. The British Secret Intelligence and Security Services MI6 and MI5 had identified most of Germany’s spies in Britain and in neutral capitals. Most of them were thought to have been turned, and were successfully being fed with false information about D-Day, namely that the main landings would be in the Pas-de-Calais, not in Normandy. It was vital to know whether the Abwehr had swallowed this information as the truth.
The cracking of the Abwehr Enigma by Knox and his team enabled a stream of scraps of information to be fed to the German High Command which convinced Hitler that the Pas de Calais was the intended destination of the Allied invasion. As a result he retained two divisions to reinforce this area.
It was not until the 1970s that Batey was able to tell her own children about her codebreaking. She was luckier than some in that she could discuss those wartime days with her husband, the mathematician Keith Batey, because he, too, had been a member of Knox’s team. They were married in 1942. At the end of the war, Batey was still only 24, but her husband’s diplomatic career and her role as a wife and mother left her no time to complete her degree. By the 1960s, however, Keith Batey was based in Oxford and his wife was making good use of the Bodleian Library. As in the war years, she was still busily making connections, this time historical ones, researching landscape and garden history and identifying Nuneham Courtenay, where the Bateys lived, with the 18th-century Deserted Village of Oliver Goldsmith’s poem.
Articles for Country Life and Garden History followed, as did many books: most recently, in the autumn of her 80th year, Indignation! The Campaign for Conservation, a study of the past and future of the conservation movement, written with David Lambert and Kim Wilkie for Kit-Cat Books.
By 1970 Batey was a part-time tutor with Oxford’s department of external studies, teaching landscape and garden history to summer school students. She became honorary secretary of the Garden History Society in 1971, and, nearly 30 years later, was still helping to organise, and speaking at, its annual joint conference on landscape history with what by then had become Oxford’s department for continuing education.
Despite her painstak
ing archival research, she was no dry academic, but an eloquent public speaker, charming and warm-hearted whether on or off the lecture platform, and with a mischievous sense of humour. Called in by the BBC to provide a list of historically correct plants for the 1995 television dramatisation of Pride and Prejudice, she recommended shrubberies of robinia, dogwood, guelder rose, euonymus, philadelphus and sweetbriar roses, but then chortled over the BBC’s mistake in giving Darcy’s house, Pemberley, a great expanse of artificial water where Jane Austen had described a feature of tastefully natural appearance. In 1996 Barn Elms published her definitive study Jane Austen and the English Landscape. For the feature film released in 2001 that was based on Robert Harris’s book Enigma, she advised the actress Kate Winslet on what it was like to be a female codebreaker at Bletchley.
Batey created a new garden trail at Bletchley Park in 2004 to mark Britain’s special relationship with America; each of the US state emblems was included in the trail, from California’s sequoiadendron to Kansas’s sunflower and West Virginia’s sugar maple.
She was awarded the Royal Horticultural Society’s Veitch Memorial Medal in 1985, and appointed MBE in 1986.
Her husband died in 2010. They had a son and two daughters.
Mavis Batey, MBE, garden historian and Second World War codebreaker, was born on May 5, 1921. She died on November 12, 2013, aged 92
DORIS LESSING
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NOBEL PRIZE-WINNING WRITER WHOSE RADICAL BELIEFS AND PASSION AGAINST INJUSTICE WERE AMPLY MANIFESTED IN HER OFTEN EXPERIMENTAL NOVELS
NOVEMBER 19, 2013
One of the great writers of our time, Doris Lessing was a pioneering individualist, a woman chronicling the pains and pleasures of her sex long before the flourishing of feminism, attracted by difficult, sensitive subjects, and highly imaginative in her sympathies. With her zest for experiment, she often foreshadowed the shape of things to come in fiction and in society. Perhaps this was why she seemed perennially youthful and attractive, a writer who had loving friends as well as admirers all over the world.