Margaret Thatcher: Power and Personality

by Aitken, Jonathan

  The Foreign Secretary’s admiration was widely shared by the foreign leaders. Presidents Bush, Mitterrand, Gorbachev and Chancellor Kohl all said their farewells to Margaret Thatcher in moving terms. Perhaps the most poignant parting words in Versailles came from Mikhail Gorbachev. He clasped both his hands around hers, and said in a choking voice, ‘Да хранит Вас Бог!’ The phrase was translated by the Soviet leader’s interpreter, Pavel Palazchenko, as ‘God bless you’.25

  Margaret Thatcher’s brave face to her fellow leaders at Versailles crumbled when she returned to the privacy of her room at the British Embassy just before midnight on 20 November. There she sat up until dawn talking to Crawfie, her closest confidante after Denis. As Cynthia Crawford recalled:

  She wasn’t all right, she wasn’t going to sleep and we decided to have a drink, and then we just stayed up all night and talked about every aspect of her life – her childhood, her father, her mother, getting married to Denis, having the twins and her political career – and we just never went to bed, and then about half past six we just sort of got ready for the day.26

  What the day or days ahead would bring, no one could know. Margaret Thatcher’s heart was telling her that she must fight with every sinew to hold on to her power as Prime Minister. Yet at the same time her head must have told her that power was ebbing away from her, and might haemorrhage so quickly that her political death would become inevitable. A night without sleep was not helpful in making the right calculations and judgements in such a situation. So, it was in a mixed up mood of tension, apprehension and confusion that the wounded leader returned to London from Paris.

  REFLECTION

  The sequence of end-game events that brought down Margaret Thatcher combined the worst frailties of politicians. Some of them were her own. Yet for most of the drama she was largely a passive participant. Indeed, for almost the only time in her career she was too passive, remaining aloof from a battle she should have been leading. Her great fault was that she had lost touch with her tribe of parliamentary supporters.

  As a member of the tribe for the previous sixteen years I was appalled by the way so many of my colleagues lost their moral and political moorings. It was a time of collective madness. Even if you were a critic, as I was, of some of Margaret Thatcher’s mistakes and high-handed behaviour, this was no justification for staging a coup against a sitting and three times elected prime minister.

  We were eighteen months away from an election, plenty of time in which to modify the poll tax. The economy was improving. Our armed forces were on a war footing, poised for what became the successful eviction of Saddam Hussein from Kuwait. For all the above reasons, aided by the abysmal performance of Neil Kinnock in the campaign, the Conservatives won the 1992 general election. Who can be sure that this combination of events would not have given Margaret Thatcher her fourth victory as Prime Minister just as it helped John Major to his first? Even if she had gone down to defeat, it would have been an honourable decision by the people in a general election – infinitely preferable to a fearful, spiteful stab in the back by an aggrieved minority of plotting Conservative parliamentarians.

  The Tory Party spent over a decade in the political wilderness because the public could not forgive or forget the coup against Margaret Thatcher. As a modest participant on the fringes of the drama, I can at least lay claim to have got it right when I said on BBC Newsnight on the evening of Geoffrey Howe’s resignation statement: ‘If we throw out Britain’s most successful peacetime Prime Minister in a backstage party bloodbath, we will come to regret it as our darkest hour.’27

  ________________

  * The sporting analogy was crafted by Charles Powell, whose duties as overseas affairs private secretary to the Prime Minister had by this time extended to domestic speech-writing. Unfortunately he knew nothing about cricket either.

  † In 1978, Denis Healey was Labour Chancellor of the Exchequer and Geoffrey Howe was his opposite number on the Conservative front bench.

  37

  Exit

  FIRST SOUNDINGS

  ‘Don’t go on, love’, were the first words of advice Margaret Thatcher received as she returned to 10 Downing Street from Paris.1 They came from Denis, who had worked out that her position was untenable. She had not yet reached the same conclusion, being determined to fight hard as long as there might be a chance of winning on the second ballot. During the next few hours she discovered, in a painful process, that there was no such chance.

  It took a while before she was told the truth. After her talk with Denis in the flat, she met in her study with Peter Morrison, Norman Tebbit and John Wakeham. Soon afterwards she went down to the Cabinet Room where they were joined by Kenneth Baker, John MacGregor, Tim Renton, Cranley Onslow and John Moore. To Margaret Thatcher’s dismay, the priority that emerged from the discussion was the importance of stopping Heseltine. Even her most ardent supporters seemed to be emphasising that this was the principal reason why she should go forward to the second ballot. The consensus was that she was the best bet as the candidate who could keep Tarzan at bay.2

  This was hardly a flattering endorsement of her record as a Prime Minister who had won three elections. To make matters worse, the consensus about the bet was unclear. Tim Renton, the Chief Whip, reported on the basis of his soundings that she would be defeated by Heseltine. John MacGregor, who had been tasked with checking out the cabinet, held a similar view but he pulled his punches. He knew that a significant minority of his cabinet colleagues either wanted the Prime Minister to go or thought that she would not beat Heseltine in the run-off. However, MacGregor did not wish to pass on his findings in front of Renton, who was suspected of being a supporter of the Howe–Heseltine pincer movement. So Margaret Thatcher was kept in the dark about the extent to which her support was haemorrhaging among her most senior colleagues.

  The position was further blurred by the Chairman of the 1922 Committee, Cranley Onslow, who decided to preserve the strict neutrality of the election umpire. So he offered no advice on how the currents of opinion were moving among back-benchers. However, he did say that the argument about European policy was fading as an issue. His view was that voting would turn the following week on whether or not something substantial could be done on the Community Charge. Margaret Thatcher told Onslow that she could not suddenly pull a rabbit out of a hat in the five days before the ballot.

  Her staunchest supporter was Norman Tebbit. He did not minimise the effect that Michael Heseltine’s promise to make a radical review of the poll tax was having on many MPs. But Tebbit was certain that if her senior ministers stood by her, then the Prime Minister could make up lost ground and win over enough votes to beat her challenger. This became Margaret Thatcher’s strategy. She resolved to confirm her support base among her cabinet, and to woo her back-benchers in the way she had so conspicuously failed to do before the first ballot.

  The duties of a Prime Minister had to take precedence over the task of being a candidate. In the early afternoon she made a statement on the CSCE summit in Paris. As she left Downing Street for the House of Commons, she called out to the throng of journalists, ‘I fight on, I fight to win’. When she saw the coverage of her words on the evening news bulletins, she thought, ‘I looked a great deal more confident than I felt’.3

  The CSCE statement went well, but there was no meat in it for either side since it was largely about the uncontroversial goal of promoting democracy and human rights in Eastern Europe. The Prime Minister answered all questions authoritatively, giving no clues that she was planning to do anything other than remain in office. Immediately afterwards, she set off for the tea room accompanied by Norman Tebbit. This was such an unexpected move that she was greeted as if she was an apparition. ‘Here’s Banquo’s ghost!’,4 called out one unfriendly voice. She pretended not to have heard the jibe, and sat down at a big oval table just beyond the cafeteria counter for tea, but not enough sympathy.

  She moved round to four groups of colleagues. They wer
e almost universally critical of her first-round campaign. ‘Michael has asked me two or three times for my vote already. This is the first time we have seen you’, was one reproach.5 It came from a committed supporter, George Gardiner, who wanted to hear her assurance that she would from now on be fighting for every vote. He got it. By the time she arrived at the table where I was sitting, her tone was superficially upbeat. Teddy Taylor and I said we would canvass every single MP in our Conservative European Reform Group. We thought we could deliver at least forty votes from our fifty members, whose Eurosceptic sympathies were firmly with the Prime Minister. ‘But will they all tell the truth?’6 she asked, somewhat plaintively. It was a small sign that her confidence might be faltering.

  Meanwhile, the confidence of her opponents was soaring. Michael Heseltine’s long-serving lieutenant, Keith Hampson MP, was pirouetting gleefully in the corridor beside the tea room, saying to all and sundry, ‘Yipee! Tee-hee! She’s standing. We’ve made it. We can’t lose now.’7 A burly whip, David Lightbown, told him to shut up. Corridor conversations were getting even more acerbic than they had been on the afternoon of the Howe resignation statement. Vehemence in both directions seemed to be the order of the day.

  ‘I shall stiffen my sinews to get her elected’, announced Nicholas Budgen, sounding as though he was Henry V at the siege of Harfleur. ‘What we need now is a unity candidate to stop all this nonsense’ was the gloomy view of Robert Rhodes James, the Member for Cambridge.8 Almost as he spoke, Margaret Thatcher was talking to the two most likely players of that role. She asked Douglas Hurd to propose her nomination in the second ballot. He reaffirmed his willingness to do this, even though he was aware that there was a groundswell of support already building for his own entry into the race.

  With Hurd signed up, the Prime Minister telephoned John Major. He was convalescing at his home in Huntingdon from a wisdom-tooth extraction. Contrary to some later reports, this dental procedure, arranged two weeks earlier, was entirely genuine. When Margaret Thatcher got through to him she briskly asked him to second her nomination. ‘There was a moment’s silence. The hesitation was palpable’, she thought.9 John Major did indeed pause before replying, but his hesitation was not because he was thinking of his own chances. He was put off by the peremptory tone of her voice and her automatic assumption of his support. He thought her approach to him was a classic example of her high-handed management style. He would have liked to be consulted, not bossed about. But he swallowed his doubts and answered, ‘If that is what you want, I will’.10

  With her two nominators in place, the Prime Minister set about organising her campaign team. She was not going to leave her destiny in the hands of Peter Morrison for a second time. She turned, through John Wakeham, to two of the most effective campaigners who had delivered a good result for her in the 1989 contest – Tristan Garel-Jones and Richard Ryder. They both refused to help. As the former was an avid Europhile, she was not unduly disappointed by his refusal to serve. But the defection of Richard Ryder was a blow that hurt. He had been her political secretary from 1975 to 1981, and was married to her closest aide and diary secretary, Caroline Stephens. Margaret Thatcher regarded Ryder almost as family. She had given him fast-track promotion after he became an MP in June 1983. It was a grim sign for her survival prospects that he was deserting.

  Although the shadows were closing in on her, Margaret Thatcher had not yet lost her self-belief. On that fateful evening of Wednesday 21 November, she had an audience with the Queen, who was informed that the Prime Minister intended to stand in the second ballot. On returning to the House of Commons, she started a series of one-on-one appointments with her senior cabinet ministers. This was where her re-election prospects finally came unstuck.

  THE CABINET DEFECTS

  The cabinet killed Margaret Thatcher’s chances of survival. Their motives were mixed. Some wanted her out because they had come to dislike her. Others thought they were giving her the only realistic advice in the light of faltering support. A few reckoned that once she was gone they had a much better chance of stopping Heseltine and holding on to their jobs under Douglas Hurd or John Major. Only a handful stayed loyal to the Prime Minister who had made their careers.

  The momentum to ditch rather than follow the leader had been building steadily within the cabinet for the past twenty-four hours. Soon after the first-ballot result was announced, a group of ten ministers, five of them in the cabinet, met at the Westminster home of Tristan Garel-Jones. Margaret Thatcher was spoken of almost entirely in the past tense, apart from a brief tribute from William Waldegrave. Her departure was regarded as a fait accompli. So the conversation focused on who was the best candidate to beat Heseltine. At this early stage, the consensus chez Garel-Jones was that this candidate would be Douglas Hurd. Malcolm Rifkind, Chris Patten, Tony Newton and William Waldegrave all seemed to be leaning this way. Others, like Norman Lamont, kept their own counsel. But not a single minister advocated putting up a fight to keep Margaret Thatcher.

  Similar if smaller groups were talking together all through Tuesday evening and Wednesday. So by the time Margaret Thatcher began seeing her cabinet individually, the die was cast. They had made up their minds not to support her, and many of them had even collectively rehearsed their speeches of regret.

  Between 7 and 9 p.m. on Wednesday 21 November, fifteen ministers, twelve of them from the cabinet, called one by one on the Prime Minister. This procedure, recommended by John Wakeham, was a tactical mistake. Margaret Thatcher might have done better if she had brought them all together, and in the presence of her proposer and seconder had simply asked each minister how they would vote and whether they would go out and campaign for her. In such a collegiate atmosphere the ranks might have closed behind her. Certainly, the level of her support would have been much higher.

  Even under the one-on-one arrangement, only three cabinet ministers had the guts to tell Margaret Thatcher that she should go. They were Kenneth Clarke, Malcolm Rifkind and Chris Patten. The most brutal of these was Kenneth Clarke, who advised her that if she stood she would ‘lose big’, and that the crown would go to Michael Heseltine, who would split the party.11

  Seven members of the cabinet used what was clearly a previously agreed ‘line to take’ in their interviews. They all told the Prime Minister they would support her in the second ballot, but that she could not win it. So in varying tones of regret that ranged from the embarrassment of a candid friend to the tearfulness of a bereaved mourner, they advised her to quit now. ‘Almost to a man,’ she sourly complained, ‘they used the same formula … I felt I could almost join in the chorus.’12

  The chorus line included Peter Lilley, John Gummer, William Waldegrave, John MacGregor, Tony Newton and Norman Lamont. Margaret Thatcher was retrospectively harsh in her criticism of the messengers who dressed up their message in this way. ‘What grieved me’, she wrote in her memoirs, ‘was the desertion of those I had always considered friends and allies, and the weasel words whereby they had transmuted their betrayal into frank advice and concern for my fate.’13 Later, she characterised their behaviour as ‘Treachery with a smile on its face’.14

  Those cabinet colleagues she acquitted of the charge of treachery were Cecil Parkinson, John Wakeham, Peter Brooke, David Waddington, Michael Howard and Tom King. But even some of those loyalists expressed their doubts. King came up with a suggestion that she should offer to stand down at the conclusion of the Gulf War. She rejected it on the grounds that she had no wish to stay on as a lame-duck Prime Minister.

  By the end of her cabinet interviews, she knew it was all over. But she was not admitting it. The nearest she came to this was when, amidst all the comings and goings of her senior colleagues, Alan Clark was allowed access ‘for a split second’ by Peter Morrison. ‘She looked calm, almost beautiful’, said Clark, who proceeded to tell her that she ‘was wonderful’, heroic, but that the party would let her down.

  ‘I am a fighter’, she replied.

  ‘Fight, then. Fig
ht right to the end, a third ballot if you need to. But you lose.’

  There was a pause. Then came a most telling response.

  ‘It’d be so terrible if Michael won’, she said. ‘He would undo everything I have fought for.’15

  A day after this exchange, Alan Clark told me that when he heard her say these words, he knew he had accomplished his mission. He venerated Margaret Thatcher, but desperately wanted to find a way of persuading her to leave the battlefield with honour. In the role of ‘a gallant friend’ (her description of him)16 singing her praises, he may have nudged her towards the exit more effectively than any hostile member of her cabinet.

  The fear of Heseltine was a surprising infection, and now it had gripped her. The reality was that no one knew what sort of a prime minister he would make if he reached this pinnacle. The idea that he would destroy the achievements of Margaret Thatcher over the past decade was fanciful. Indeed, when announcing his candidacy he had proclaimed himself ‘to be have been at the leading edge of Thatcherism’.17 But because he was mistrusted so much and had communicated so little, many people at the top of the party had exaggerated anxieties about the Heseltine destabilisation factor. Would he purge the cabinet? Make radical changes in policy? Split the party? Destroy the Prime Minister’s legacy? All this was unlikely, but as the barbarian drew close to the gates of No. 10, irrational rumours spread. Stop him at all costs became the cry, and in the end even Margaret Thatcher joined the chorus.

  After the cabinet ministers and Alan Clark had said their pieces, Margaret Thatcher was visited by a smattering of uber-loyal ministers and MPs. The first one in was Michael Portillo, the thirty-seven-year old Minister of State at the Department of the Environment with responsibility for the poll tax. He was followed by a delegation from the right-of-centre 92 Group.* Their message was the polar opposite of the doom and gloom purveyed by the cabinet. These young and impassioned Thatcherite MPs told the Prime Minister that she was being misled by her senior ministers, and that with an energetic fight she could still triumph on the second ballot. Their heroine was touched. ‘With even a drop of this spirit in higher places, it might indeed have been possible’,18 she wrote later. But at the time, she weighed the optimism of youth against the pessimism of the reports she was getting from her campaign manager, John Wakeham, and others close to her. The pessimists produced grim estimates to suggest that her vote had now fallen below 150, a figure that would have given Heseltine a seventy-plus majority. With growing sadness, Margaret Thatcher returned to No. 10.