Margaret Thatcher: Power and Personality

by Aitken, Jonathan

  Parliamentary statements on the outcome of European Council meetings are notorious for the tedium of their language and detail. Not this one. In my seventeen years as an MP I had never seen the House more electrified, except by the debate immediately after Argentina’s seizure of the Falkland Islands. For, when answering questions, the Prime Minister threw caution to the winds. With eyes flashing, gestures flamboyant and vocal chords stretched to a timbre fit for sounding the last trumpet, she transformed herself into Queen Boadicea driving her chariot against the Roman invaders with a combination of passion and fury.

  During the ninety minutes she blazed away from the despatch box that afternoon, she slaughtered one sacred Euro-cow after another. The single currency was dismissed as ‘not the policy of this Government’. The alternative British proposal for a parallel currency, known as the hard ECU, fared little better, for she dismissed it with the withering comment: ‘In my view, it would not become widely used … Many people would continue to prefer their own currency.’25 Her Chancellor, John Major, who had spent months promoting the hard ECU, said he ‘nearly fell off the bench’26 in reaction to this surprise declaration, because he realised it would wreck all his recent efforts at economic diplomacy.

  But Margaret Thatcher had by no means finished. At various stages in these exchanges she asserted that the Commission was ‘striving to extinguish democracy’ and planning to take us through ‘the back door to a federal Europe’. She declared, ‘We have surrendered enough’ to the Community. For good measure, she added, ‘It would be totally and utterly wrong’ to agree to ‘abolish the pound sterling, the greatest expression of sovereignty’. She fired her biggest guns at Jacques Delors, bombarding him with a salvo of triple negatives:

  The President of the Commission, M. Delors, said at a press conference the other day that he wanted the European Parliament to be the democratic body of the Community, he wanted the Commission to be the Executive and he wanted the Council of Ministers to be the Senate. No. No. No.27

  The mounting crescendo with which she so passionately delivered those last three words was greeted by a chorus of cheers in all parts of the House. The Tory Eurosceptics were in ecstasy, for they sensed a conversion moment in the Prime Minister, and perhaps within their own party. For it appeared from the tide of the exchanges that the Europhiles were in a minority and in retreat.

  Those appearances were to prove deceptive in at least one important case. But at the time, there seemed to be a sea change in parliamentary opinion that was by no means confined to the government’s side of the House. A good number of anti-Brussels Labour MPs were cheering. The Ulster Unionists, encouraged by Enoch Powell, were in a similarly exultant mood.

  Perhaps the question that best caught the mood of the House came from the SDP Leader, David Owen. ‘Is it not perfectly clear that what was being attempted at Rome was a bounce which led only one way – to a single federal united states of Europe? … Would not Britain be entitled and right to use the veto?’

  ‘I totally agree with the right hon. Gentleman’, replied the Prime Minister.28

  As she left the chamber that afternoon to continuous ‘hear, hear’ and waving of order papers, Margaret Thatcher must have felt that she had routed her critics and redefined where she and her government stood on the issue of progress towards monetary and political union in Europe.

  If there was any one single moment when EMU and its successors, the euro and the eurozone, were decisively rejected by the British political system, that afternoon in the House of Commons on 30 October 1990 was it.

  The consequences of what happened in Parliament that day were to have profound implications for the future of Britain’s long-term relationship with Europe. But in the short term there were even more momentous consequences for Margaret Thatcher. The impact on her immediate future came from the reactions of Sir Geoffrey Howe.

  HOWE PREPARES TO STRIKE

  Sir Geoffrey Howe had long been a believer in the need for Britain to be a full participant in European economic and political union. He supported the single currency. He gave the impression of approving the vague declaratory outcomes of the Italian summit. At the time when the Prime Minister was denouncing the possibility of a single currency in Rome, Howe spoke live on London Weekend Television to Brian Walden, saying that Britain was not opposed to the idea, and implying that Margaret Thatcher would probably be won round to it.29 She characterised his intervention as ‘either disloyal or remarkably stupid’.30

  As a result of this clash over the airwaves, the Deputy Prime Minister and the Prime Minister were once again at loggerheads. Just before she rose to deliver her statement on the European Council, Neil Kinnock tried to expose their divisions during Prime Minister’s Questions by asking whether Sir Geoffrey Howe enjoyed her full confidence. ‘My right hon. and learned Friend the deputy Prime Minister is too big a man to need a little man like the right hon. Gentleman to stand up for him’, she retorted.31 It was hardly a ringing endorsement. Howe suspected that she was deliberately distancing herself from him in a manner she had used before when undercutting Nigel Lawson.

  It was revealing to watch the Deputy Prime Minister’s body language on 30 October, as he sat on the front bench alongside his boss when she opened fire on Jacques Delors and all his works. When she reached her explosive punch line of ‘No. No. No’ Howe’s normally sphinx-like imperturbability crumbled. His wincings of dismay were plain for all to see. The only Member of the House who seemed not to notice his discomfort was the Prime Minister.

  The following day, Sir Geoffrey resolved to resign. His motives for this decision were the cause of much speculation. He himself pinned his reasons to the 30 October statement, citing his distaste for ‘the increasingly nationalist crudity of the Prime Minister’s whole tone’.32

  Margaret Thatcher believed that her Deputy was shaken by the shift in opinion of Conservative MPs towards a much more Eurosceptic position. As she put it, ‘Perhaps the enthusiastic – indeed uproarious – support I received from the backbenchers convinced him that he had to strike at once, or I would win round the Parliamentary Party to the platform I earlier set out in Bruges.’33

  It is more probable that the reasons for Howe’s exit from the government were a longer-term mixture of pent-up anger and political frustration. Ever since his removal from the job of Foreign Secretary, which he loved, growing bitterness had been fermenting within his soul. This rancour was largely created by Margaret Thatcher’s style of man-management, which was both deplorable and unpleasant towards Sir Geoffrey. Yet he was not without fault in their relationship. Not only did he fail to confront or at least reason with her about her excesses of aggressive behaviour. He had a long history of shutting up in masochistic silence, but then putting up in public with coded attacks on the Prime Minister when she became a vulnerable target. Rather like a hunter-killer submarine, HMS Howe spent long periods lurking secretively below the surface until he suddenly launched his torpedoes at a moment when he could inflict maximum damage. His Walden interview on 29 October was an example of this deliberate yet unexpected style of clandestine counter-attack.

  The vehemence of Margaret Thatcher’s reaction to the Rome summit unsettled Geoffrey Howe for two reasons. Although he was clear minded enough to see that the Italian manoeuvres were unprofessional and unfair, he nevertheless believed that Britain should have given a measured and patient response by simply postponing the arguments on EMU until the next Intergovernmental Conference. When the Prime Minister came out of her corner with unconcealed rage, Sir Geoffrey’s pro-European sensibilities were grievously offended.

  A more serious blow was Howe’s realisation that Margaret Thatcher’s rejection of EMU and the Delors philosophy that accompanied it were surprisingly popular. As Leader of the House, he could read the parliamentary runes as well as anyone. The eruptions of cheering during the 30 October statement marked a watershed. Sir Geoffrey was a child of the Heath era, when most Conservatives intoned the mantra, ‘We are the part
y of Europe’. Suddenly it was apparent that this ground was crumbling. The Eurosceptics had moved into the ascendant.

  Everything that Howe had worked for as Foreign Secretary was being challenged by a populist Prime Minister who was showing a fierce determination to rally support for her cause, not only in the House but also in the country. This last fear loomed large in Sir Geoffrey’s mind as he asked himself: ‘Was she, I began to wonder, talking herself into the mode in which she intended, consciously or unconsciously, to fight the next election?’34

  To heighten such worries, this anti-European populism, which the Prime Minister had unleashed in Parliament, was magnified by the media. ‘Up Yours – Delors’ was the headline in the Sun on 31 October. It was the most colourful example of a swelling chorus of support for the Prime Minister. To see this surge of public opinion erupting so passionately against Europe upset Sir Geoffrey even more. It was sweeping away whatever residual hopes he might still have harboured of succeeding Margaret Thatcher as Prime Minister. It was breaking his remaining moorings of loyalty and collective responsibility to her government. So it was for a variety of complex private emotions and public policy differences that Geoffrey Howe seized his moment and sat down to compose his letter of resignation.

  The letter was a laborious production running to nearly 1,200 words, and taking two days to draft. When it was still incomplete, the Deputy Prime Minister attended his last cabinet meeting. He had little more than a walk-on part in the proceedings, but before he opened his mouth several colleagues picked up the vibrations of heightened Howe–Thatcher antagonism.

  One perceptive observer of the scene, a Howe sympathiser, was John Major, who described Howe’s final cabinet meeting, on the morning of his resignation, as the worst of all:

  Geoffrey and Margaret were sitting side by side, directly opposite me. They could barely bring themselves to look at one another. Geoffrey stared down at his papers, his lips pursed; Margaret had a disdainful air, her eyes glittering. When he looked down the long cabinet table, she looked up it. When she put her head down to read her notes, he looked straight up. The body language said it all. This treatment of a senior colleague was embarrassing for the whole cabinet.35

  The treatment got worse. When the discussion turned to the legislative programme, which was due to be introduced at the opening of the new session of Parliament in a few days time, Geoffrey Howe as Leader of the House and Lord President of the Council made the anodyne comment that two or three departments had not yet finalised their bills. This was merely a polite prompt to the ministers concerned, which needed no further comment. The Prime Minister exploded like a headmistress delivering a rocket to an errant schoolboy. ‘Why aren’t their bills ready?’ she demanded. ‘Isn’t it the Lord President’s responsibility to see that this kind of thing has been done?’ The rebuke flowed on for a couple of embarrassing minutes.

  ‘What the hell? This is positively the last time’, was Howe’s unspoken thought as he suffered the insults in silence. He had already made up his mind to resign. As he later recalled the incident: ‘So far from being the last straw, this final tantrum was for me the first confirmation that I had taken the right decision.’36

  The Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister met for the last time as cabinet colleagues at 6 p.m. later that day. Although she had been forewarned of his imminent resignation, she appeared to be shaken by it. ‘Is there anything we can do that would cause you to change your mind?’ she asked. The answer was a polite negative. Geoffrey Howe then produced his resignation letter. ‘It’s very generous’, she commented as she reached the end of page one. ‘Better wait till you’ve read it all’, was his response. By the time she finished reading it her tone had changed. ‘I can see now why we shouldn’t be able to change your mind. You’ve obviously thought a lot about it.’37

  They parted with the odd formality of their first-ever handshake. In the tension of the moment, both of them forgot the tradition that fellow Members of Parliament do not shake hands. It was a strange ending to what, at its best, had once been a strong political partnership.

  The artificiality continued with the exchange of resignation letters. Howe’s was too turgid to make much impact – at least in comparison with his resignation statement to the House of Commons two weeks later. He made the obvious point that he felt he must leave the government because he did not share the Prime Minister’s views on Europe. But then he confused the issue by presenting a most opaque picture of his own views. He was not a Euro-idealist or federalist. He was against an imposed single currency, but believed that the risks of being left out of EMU were severe. On the other hand, he thought that, ‘more than one form of EMU possible. The important thing is not to rule in or out any one particular solution absolutely.’38 When these words of Delphic ambivalence were passed round late at night in the smoking room of the House of Commons, the Tory MP for Saddleworth, Geoffrey Dickens, created pantomime hilarity by booming out, ‘Written by Mr Wishy-Washy!’39

  The obscurity of Howe’s prose style in his letter of resignation left it far from clear what exactly were his disagreements with the Prime Minister over Europe. This gave Margaret Thatcher the opportunity to blur their differences still further in her reply. Her line was that their policy disagreements were not nearly as great as he had suggested. She even had the chutzpah to claim that her statement on the Rome summit had demonstrated the unity of the Conservatives: ‘We have always been the party of Europe and will continue to be so.’40 Prime Ministerial correspondence at the time of resignations often falls into the category of what Dr Johnson called, ‘in lapidary inscriptions a man is not upon oath’.41 Parts of Margaret Thatcher’s valedictory epistle to Sir Geoffrey Howe might well win first prize for lapidary fabrication.

  Having completed her reply to his resignation letter, the Prime Minister faced the new political situation with gritty realism. ‘It was a relief he had gone. But I had no doubt of the political damage it would do. All the talk of a leadership bid by Michael Heseltine would start again’ was her assessment.42 So her first moves were to try and shore up her crumbling authority with the necessary reshuffle – her fourth in less than a year. She made John McGregor the new Leader of the House; moved Kenneth Clarke into McGregor’s job at Education; and brought William Waldegrave into the cabinet as Secretary of State for Health. Her first priority had been to persuade Norman Tebbit to come back into her first line of senior ministers, but he declined on the grounds that he had to look after his paralysed wife, Margaret. Another explanation voiced by some wag in Annie’s Bar‡ was that ‘Norman may have been a pilot, but he’s not a kamikaze pilot’.43

  Whatever the reasons at the time, Tebbit was remorseful about his decision in later life. Three days after the death of Margaret Thatcher he caustically told the House of Lords, ‘I left her, I fear, at the mercy of her friends. That I do regret.’44

  There was a widespread expectation at Westminster among both friends and foes that another leadership election would take place in the new session of Parliament, but no one knew who would stand in it, or who would win it. Michael Heseltine was the obvious contender, having been trailing his coat ever since his departure over the Westland crisis almost five years earlier. Yet he began by playing his hand badly. He published an open letter to his constituency chairman calling for the Conservative Party to chart a new course in Europe. But before the ink was dry, its author set off on a private visit to the Middle East. This absence was an error of judgement, which became a focal point for mockery by his critics. The noisiest of these was Bernard Ingham, who orchestrated a ‘put up or shut up’ stream of anti-Heseltine stories in the press. ‘This was just lighting the blue touch paper and retiring to a safe distance – in this case to Amman’, was Ingham’s contribution to the furore from the Downing Street press office.45

  With Heseltine hesitating in Arabia, and MPs enjoying a brief recess away from Westminster, there was an uneasy lull in the countdown to the anticipated outbreak of hostilities aga
inst the Prime Minister. For a week or so it looked as though the pressures on her might be receding. Then they were sharply increased by two dreadful by-election results, first in Bootle and then an even worse one in Bradford North, where the Tory candidate came bottom of the poll.46 These humiliations had been preceded by a disastrous Tory defeat in Ian Gow’s old stronghold of Eastbourne, where the Liberal Democrats captured the seat, with a swing of 21.1 per cent against the government.47

  Despite the ill omens from the electorate, the new session of Parliament began well for Margaret Thatcher, as she wiped the floor with Neil Kinnock in her opening speech in the debate on the Loyal Address. In those exchanges the Prime Minister indulged in a sally of over-confidence, which had serious consequences for her with one of her listeners. Attempting to play down the seriousness of her quarrels with her recently departed Deputy, Margaret Thatcher declared

  If the Leader of the Opposition reads my right hon. and learned Friend’s letter, he will be very pressed indeed to find any significant policy difference on Europe between my right hon. and learned Friend and the rest of us on this side.48

  This was a factually correct statement, yet it contained a great untruth. Sir Geoffrey Howe’s resignation letter had waffled negatively about ‘the mood’ the Prime Minister had struck after the Rome summit, but had omitted the specifics of their disagreements. Nevertheless, their divisions on Europe ran deep, as she well knew. Her attempt to minimise their differences on policy was a sophistry that infuriated Sir Geoffrey. From that moment he was determined not only to make a resignation statement, but to bring the Prime Minister down with it. At long last he prepared to strike.