On the crucial question of whether a Thatcher government would adopt an incomes policy, there was a vague public impression that she would go along with it in the interests of national unity. However, in many private conversations she said exactly the opposite.
This was not a dishonest approach. It was the different expression of Margaret Thatcher’s short-term political head and her long-term philosophical heart. One perceptive observer of this phenomenon was Enoch Powell, who saw the contradictions as the product of a feminine mind:
The consonance between thoughts and words is something in which she is basically not interested. This – as well as being a woman – enables her year after year to live with something, with a cross on a paper at the back of her mind saying, ‘I don’t agree with that, I don’t like it … but I can’t do anything about it at the moment.’ … It’s more the mood of a person who says, ‘I don’t like that. When I can settle accounts with that, I will settle account with it.’30
It is possible that Enoch Powell’s perception of this ambivalence in Margaret Thatcher came from listening to her at private gatherings of an organisation to which they both belonged in the 1976–1979 period – the Conservative Philosophy Group (CPG). Although her attendance at its meetings was intermittent, she revealed more of herself than was on display to the general public by her interest in the philosophical ideas and values championed by the group.
Margaret Thatcher began coming to the CPG because Airey Neave suspected its meetings were being used for plotting against her. This paranoia on his part surfaced in May 1975, when he asked me to come and see him. ‘Are you running some sort of subversive right-wing operation against the leader?’ he asked. ‘What’s this I hear about you starting up a splinter group to keep on supporting Hugh Fraser?’31
This was one of many wires that were getting crossed in the fragile aftermath of her election as Tory leader. Hugh Fraser, the least successful of first-round contestants, had started chairing the new CPG, whose principal organisers were the philosopher Roger Scruton, the Cambridge don Dr John Casey and myself. As we had lined up speakers of the calibre of Robert Blake, Friedrich Hayek, Michael Oakeshott, Milton Friedman, Hugh Trevor-Roper, Hugh Thomas, Peregrine Worsthorne, Anthony Quinton, Richard Nixon and Paul Johnson, it was not difficult to persuade the head of the leader’s office that the purpose of the CPG was to generate new ideas for the party, not to open old wounds. Margaret Thatcher was evidently so persuaded, because a few days later a slightly sheepish Airey Neave asked me, ‘Do you think the leader could be invited to join your group?’ The answer was of course yes, so I sent her an invitation to our next supper, which she promptly accepted.
Her participation in CPG meetings revealed some interesting angles on her then unknown personality. It became clear that she loved to argue, often with a vigour that could startle the assembled company. One evening Professor H.W.R. Wade, Master of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, delivered a paper favouring a British Bill of Human Rights, which he said was necessary ‘to protect us from political extremes’.
‘But on our side we are never extreme’, objected Margaret Thatcher. Professor Wade begged to differ, and was able to cite one or two examples of actions by previous Conservative governments that he thought fell into this category. This set off a vehement clash of opinions between the two of them. Their exchanges became so heated that Professor Michael Oakeshott mischievously started a diversion. Seeing on my mantelpiece a Victorian gilded birdcage containing two miniature linnets, he wound it up. As the clockwork songbirds chirruped away, several members of the group dissolved into laughter. But Margaret Thatcher was not to be distracted by these noises off. She kept firing her salvos until Bill Wade and the linnets subsided into silence.
Another lively evening, which found the Leader of the Opposition in full voice, began with a paper from Dr Edward Norman about the relations between church and state. Somehow this worked round to an argument about whether Christians had a duty to fight for the state even if its government became communist.
Professor Hugh Trevor-Roper, an old adversary of Dr Norman, said he couldn’t see what all the fuss was about. He reminded us that when the Barbarians had sacked Rome, the Christians had promptly signed on for service in the Barbarian army.
‘You’re being deliberately provocative,’ declared Margaret Thatcher, ‘but do go on. This is fun.’
Enoch Powell intervened to say that he would fight for England even if it had a communist government.
‘But you would only fight to defend the right values?’ said the Leader of the Opposition in a tone of command rather than inquiry. ‘Values exist in a transcendental realm beyond space and time’, replied Powell. ‘They can neither be defended nor destroyed.’
Margaret Thatcher gazed at him as though this was the most extraordinary statement she’d ever heard. ‘Construct, Enoch dear, construct – don’t destruct’,32 she ordered.
More or less at this point the division bell pealed in my home at Lord North Street. We were on a two-line whip. Most of us, including the Leader of the Opposition, were paired and stayed on. But a handful of MPs, including Enoch Powell, who had become a member of the United Ulster Unionist Party, had to go and vote.
‘You shouldn’t have left us, Enoch dear’, was Margaret Thatcher’s parting shot. ‘You would have had a pair this evening.’33
As these vignettes show, her appearances at CPG evenings had their moments of amusement. She communicated some attractive sides of her personality in this private setting. Her warmth, her willingness to debate ideas and the radical strength of her political instincts manifested themselves in a form that was a refreshing contrast to the chilly caution of her Dresden china image. Among like-minded friends she relaxed more, and also looked a more interesting future prime minister.
Margaret Thatcher’s participation in the CPG was indicative of her enthusiasm for seeking out a framework of moral and intellectual values for her future policies. But it was not nearly as influential as the two think tanks that she listened to most – the Centre for Policy Studies (CPS), chaired by Keith Joseph, and the Institute for Economic Affairs (IEA), chaired by Ralph Harris. She attended seminars and speaker events organised by both institutions, occasionally asking questions and frequently taking notes.
There is little doubt that the two most important thinkers who influenced Margaret Thatcher in her quest for fresh ideas were Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman. Yet she was never either a fully committed Hayekian or Friedmanite. The practicalities of British politics, coupled with her own instinctive caution, ensured that she did not fully embrace anyone’s academic theory or philosophy. Yet she owed much to both these gurus who were introduced or re-introduced to her in the late 1970s.
While an Oxford undergraduate, Margaret Thatcher read Hayek’s Road to Serfdom when it was first published in 1944. However, she had ignored the book’s fervent anti-socialism during her first fifteen years in Parliament, making many compromises with the leftist orthodoxy of the times when she served as Education Secretary in Ted Heath’s government. But Keith Joseph and the CPS reconverted her to Hayek’s political credo.
There is a story of Margaret Thatcher visiting the consensus-leaning Conservative Research Department, where she cut short a researcher’s presentation by pulling out of her handbag a copy of Hayek’s The Constitution of Liberty. ‘This is what we believe’, she declared as she slammed the book down on the table.34
Many of her convictions were inspired by Hayek’s writings, particularly her zeal to roll back the frontiers of the socialist state in Britain. In their later exchanges of correspondence, Margaret Thatcher paid tribute to her reliance on Hayekian thought. ‘We are indebted to your economic ideas and philosophy’, she wrote to her intellectual hero from 10 Downing Street twelve months after becoming Prime Minister. Four years later she made him a Companion of Honour in the 1984 Birthday Honours List.
Friedrich Hayek was important as a philosopher-king to the Thatcherite movement
, but he was never a monetarist. This part of the opposition’s new thinking on economic policy came largely from Milton Friedman. He preached his gospel of public expenditure cuts and tight control of the money supply. Margaret Thatcher listened to him at both the CPG and the IEA in 1978. Ralph Harris has recalled from the latter occasion how ‘Mrs Thatcher hung on his words like a schoolgirl, carefully writing down everything he said and asking intelligent but elementary questions, as though it was all quite new to her’.35
For all her keen studies of Hayek and Friedman, Margaret Thatcher did not use either of them as direct sources for policy-making. As she well realised, the specific application of their ideas would be a dangerous hostage to fortune in electoral politics. Nevertheless, their influences made themselves felt in her self presentations of the kind of national leader she would turn out to be.
The values she proclaimed were a mixture of economic freedom and social conservatism. She advocated free choice, free enterprise and a throwing off of the shackles of socialist governance. Common-sense economics and sound rule of law disciplines were the key points on her compass. But rarely did these themes translate into specific proposals. Instead, she expressed her beliefs through the image of her personality.
Her most important tool in wooing the electorate was her self-projection. Many voters did not warm to her personality, but an increasing number were won over by the strength of it. What you saw was what you got – an immensely hard-working, determined and professional political leader. Away from the bear-pit of the House of Commons, where she faltered too often, she was beginning to sound like a capable Prime Minister-in-waiting. This improving perception of her owed much to her growing trust in a trio of image-makers – Tim Bell, Gordon Reece and Ronnie Millar. The results of their labours were a long time coming, and might not have come at all had it not been for the extraordinary events that became known as the ‘winter of discontent’.
That winter was some eight months away in the spring of 1978. It was a time when Margaret Thatcher did not look like a sure-fire winner for the next general election. The opinion polls were narrowing. Jim Callaghan was maintaining his ascendency in the Commons, and the economy was starting to recover. This last factor was the wild card. Two years of IMF-imposed discipline on the public finances had given Denis Healey enough leeway to make some modest tax cuts in his April Budget. All of a sudden, the sinking ship of government by Lib–Lab pact appeared more seaworthy.
Astonishingly, considering its failures of policy and governance in the previous four years, Labour began to look electable. The party even showed a small lead in the polls later in the summer, while the Prime Minister’s personal approval ratings climbed ten or twelve points above those of the Leader of the Opposition.
These signs and portents unnerved many Conservatives. Instead of concentrating their fire on the most unsuccessful government in living memory, they began a renewed round of grumbling about matters such as Margaret Thatcher’s hats and vocal chords. It was the summer of Tory discontent and the lowest point of her leadership.
REFLECTION
As Parliament went into recess in July 1978, the discontent over Margaret Thatcher was reaching new levels of turbulence among Conservative MPs. Three years after she had been elected Leader of the Opposition she was looking alarmingly close to being a failure at the job. Why did she do so badly, particularly in a period when the Labour government of the day was in such dire straits?
The answer to this question may have more to do with the plight of the country than the political abilities of Margaret Thatcher. The mid-1970s found Britain in a demoralised, chaotic and confused state. We were rightly called ‘The sick man of Europe’, but no one in the front line of politics knew how to cure the sickness. Successive Conservative and Labour governments had failed at this task. The endemic problems of soaring inflation, union militancy, low productivity and unsustainable levels of public expenditure remained in place. Worse than any of this was the shattering loss of national self-confidence.
Although as Leader of the Opposition Margaret Thatcher tried to articulate solutions to the crisis, her voice and her views were not nearly as coherent as they became once she was established as Prime Minister. She had three major difficulties. Her party was not united behind her. Her skills at presentation, particularly in the House of Commons, were often unconvincing. And, she herself had not worked out what the right policies were for halting Britain’s decline.
One last obstacle to her progress towards No. 10 was the considerable figure of James Callaghan. All polling data suggested that the electorate trusted him far more than they trusted her to pull Britain back from the abyss. He was often called ‘The best Conservative Prime Minister we never had’. Considering the poor cards he held in terms of a fractious party, explosive wage demands, anarchic unions and no parliamentary majority, he was astonishingly successful in playing his hand as a respected national leader. Had he called a general election in either the summer or early autumn of 1978 he would probably have won it, thereby relegating Margaret Thatcher to a footnote in political history. She always said she would only get one chance from the electorate as Leader of the Opposition. In the period May–October 1978 she looked as though she was going to blow it.
But as often happens in politics, the game was changed by unexpected developments. These were the events of the ‘winter of discontent’ and the wave of reaction they unleashed among the electorate. Because Margaret Thatcher kept her nerve during the troughs of opposition, she was ready to ride on the crest of this wave. Its turbulence seemed to vindicate much of what she had been saying and standing for during her most difficult years as leader of her party.
________________
* Ronald Millar was writing speeches for Ted Heath when he met Margaret Thatcher for the first time at the Carlton Club in 1972. She was at the centre of the ‘milk snatcher’ row and the miners were on strike. Dining by candlelight during a power cut, Millar recalled, ‘She looked radiant and ridiculously young’ (Ronald Millar, A View from the Wings, p. 219).
13
Last lap to the election
THE IMPORTANCE OF THE LAUGHING BOYS
Before the tide turned in Margaret Thatcher’s favour during the ‘winter of discontent’, there were another six months of choppy political waters to be navigated. It was a time when she needed friends. She found three of her best ones in the world of advertising, PR and the theatre. They were Tim Bell, Gordon Reece and Ronnie Millar. She called the first two ‘my laughing boys’, a label which might just have well been extended to all three of them, since it was Millar who provided the best of the humour. As a triumvirate, they were deadly serious about delivering the missing weapon in the Leader of the Opposition’s arsenal – the presentational skills which could deliver victory at the coming election.
In the summer of 1978, Margaret Thatcher was doing badly in the House of Commons. In late July she had come off noticeably worse in a joust with Jim Callaghan, which was designed to draw the battle lines for the expected autumn election. Opening the debate, Callaghan launched an attack on the Leader of the Opposition’s ability to govern. He accused her of being ‘All over the shop on this issue of pay’, ‘insulting the intelligence of the British people with her one-sentence solutions to deep-seated problems’ and setting out a foreign policy based on ‘prejudice and dislike’.1 His peroration was designed to portray the Leader of the Opposition as a divisive figure who would split the country.
He concluded:
The right hon. Lady has led the Conservative Party for three years and under her leadership people still do not know what the Conservatives stand for. They do not know because she does not know … The Tory Party once aspired to lead one nation and to speak for one nation. Now the Tory Party, many of its members reluctant and sullen, has to listen to the language of division the whole time. The British people have come to know that they achieve most when they work together in unison, in social justice and in fair play.2
Margaret Thatcher missed her chance to make a vigorous rebuttal of the Prime Minister’s attack. Instead of a debating speech from a fighter, the House was given an analysis of government statistics by a lecturer. Callaghan had instructed his back-benchers not to interrupt her. The result was that she spoke in an eerie silence that made her tone sound ‘nervous and faltering’.3 According to one discomfited member of her shadow cabinet, Norman St John-Stevas, ‘The speech showed that she had no feel whatever for the mood of the House’.4 It was a disaster.
As she ran through a tedious recital of the comparative economic figures from the Conservative record of 1961–1964 (pointedly omitting the Heath government period of 1970–1974), the restive back-benchers behind her were the visible proof of Callaghan’s claim that her own party was ‘reluctant and sullen’.5
It was an unhappy parliamentary occasion for the Tories, made unhappier by the wind-up speech for the government by the Chancellor, Denis Healey. Posing as a prophet of doom, he condemned Margaret Thatcher for her ‘deep psychological obsession with conflict and confrontation’, and funereally proclaimed the debate as ‘a historical occasion’ because it was her last speech as Leader of the Conservative Party. ‘The axes and knives are already been sharpened.’ She and her party were ‘in the last stages of decay … riding to certain defeat’.6
Although the fever of what he evidently thought was an imminent election made Healey’s forecasts look silly in hindsight, at the time both he and Callaghan touched many a Tory nerve with their attacks on the Leader of the Opposition. I well remember the negative reactions among colleagues to her speech, which even her strongest supporters were describing as ‘off form’ or ‘dull’. Most of us thought she had confirmed her increasingly poor reputation for failing to rise to the occasion in these big set-piece debates. ‘But we’re stuck with her now, until she loses’,7 said Nicholas Fairbairn, the colourful Scottish Member for Kinross and Perthshire. It was exactly the sort of gloomy judgement passed on Ted Heath in early 1974.
Margaret Thatcher: Power and Personality Page 27