Margaret Thatcher: Power and Personality

by Aitken, Jonathan

  Supporting Richard Shepherd’s bill was an early pinprick. A worse one came when she publicly condemned the Prime Minister for being ‘arrogant’18 in his refusal to declare his backing to a pre-Maastricht referendum. This was ironic for two reasons. First, because her use of language sounded ridiculous, attacking the mild-mannered Major for the offence of political hubris, of which she had been the worst of sinners. Second, because her intervention torpedoed the prospects for a referendum, which the new Prime Minister would otherwise have supported.

  As John Major recalled in an interview for this biography:

  ‘From the early 1990s I wanted to make a public commitment to hold a referendum if any future government wanted to join the Euro,’ said John Major. But I faced problems with this: several Members of the Cabinet were deeply opposed to a referendum as a matter of principle. That had once been Margaret’s position. Now, her fierce opposition to the Euro made her favour such a move. But – ironically – her advocacy provoked strong opposition in the Cabinet, thus making agreement to a referendum even more difficult. This was not a unique problem: her strident views on Europe made decisions about a number of other European policy issues infinitely more difficult.19

  The difficulties became worse because of the style as well as the substance of her attacks on her successor. Egged on by sycophants in the press and in her new parliamentary fan club, she became recklessly indiscreet. I recall a dinner in the home of John Aspinall in late 1991 when she openly mocked John Major as ‘A puir wee bairn’ and ‘the boy from Coldharbour Lane’. She accused him of ‘having no courage and no backbone’. He was ‘hell-bent on destroying the legacy I left him’.20 Many such derisive sneerings found their way into the press.

  It was clear that some of this criticism was close to irrational. For example, she fulminated against the compassionate but minor policy of paying compensation to haemophiliacs who had been infected with HIV as a result of contaminated blood transfusions supplied by the NHS. On a larger canvas, she was furious that Michael Heseltine was brought back into the cabinet. She even railed against the inevitable decision to halt the poll tax and revert to a much more equitable version of the Community Charge. But her two greatest battles of overt opposition to the government were over Bosnia and Maastricht.

  As the ethnic violence in the republics of former Yugoslavia worsened, Margaret Thatcher championed the cause of Western military intervention to oppose the Serbian excesses and atrocities, particularly in Bosnia. The Major government – and for a long while the Clinton administration – rejected her advice on the grounds that the West should avoid getting dragged into a Balkan civil war. But in the end, Margaret Thatcher’s view was largely vindicated. The Serbs only stopped their horrific practice of ethnic cleansing because the deployment of US military power brought them to the negotiating table and the Dayton Agreement in 1995.

  The anger unleashed in her by Bosnia was exceeded by the passion with which she opposed the Maastricht Treaty. To widespread surprise, John Major achieved a considerable success in securing an opt-out for Britain from joining the single currency, and an exemption from signing up to the Social Chapter. Had Margaret Thatcher still been at the helm, the probability is that she would have been delighted at these results, which saved the pound sterling and guaranteed its independence from the euro. But by this time, nothing that Major did was right in her eyes. So she worked overtime to undermine him. She came perilously close to succeeding.

  The votes on Maastricht in the House of Commons were a cliff-hanger. Margaret Thatcher, who had kept silent about the proposed treaty during the 1992 general election, became an outright opponent of its ratification. Elevated to the House of Lords as Baroness Thatcher of Kesteven, she worked vigorously to corral her coterie of Eurosceptic Tory MPs into opposing the enabling legislation of Maastricht. From her new base in the upper house, she ran a campaign of persuading potential rebels from the Commons to vote against or at least abstain in the most crucial division of all – on the so-called ‘paving’ amendment. She was at her most manipulative: charming some waverers, flattering others and giving one or two of them brutal handbaggings. Her former political secretary, John Whittingdale, the newly elected MP for Colchester, broke down in tears after she told him: ‘The trouble with you, John, is that your spine does not reach your brain.’21 He abstained.

  It was without precedent to have a former Conservative Prime Minister fighting at one end of the corridors of the Palace of Westminster to incite Conservative back-benchers into rebellion against her successor’s most important legislation. Her campaigning, aided and abetted by her fellow new peer Lord Tebbit, came within a hair’s breath of blocking the treaty. For the tightest division on the ‘paving’ amendment was carried by the government by only three votes. Right up to the last minute, Margaret Thatcher had been doing her utmost to get the government defeated. Had she succeeded, the consequences for John Major would have been catastrophic.

  Although Margaret Thatcher’s opposition to the Maastricht Treaty marked her most determined efforts to derail the new Conservative government, she continued her sabotage activities in numerous other ways. Because of her enduring agony at losing office, she could not control her tongue or her emotions. She began to half-believe in extraordinary conspiracy theories, of which the silliest was the notion that John Major had feigned his wisdom-tooth operation in order to be absent from the campaign for her re-election as Conservative leader in November 1990.

  This was nonsense, and her rational mind knew it. But her irrational, wounded side could spread poison, or at least pejorative propaganda, among the many acquaintances she saw privately. As her new circle included many journalists, from press barons to political reporters, her hostility towards the Prime Minister did not stay private for long. Instead of the loyalty he had hoped to receive from his predecessor, John Major was constantly having to handle a barrage of negativity from her, which steadily made his life impossible.

  As he recalled:

  Leading the Conservative Party at this time was like sitting on a volcano about to erupt. I don’t think I lived through a single day without worrying whether the party was going to split into two. If I had chosen to be as fierce in my own views as she was in hers, I think that fear might have become a reality. But I was forever trying to knit things together, and prepared to do a great deal to stop it splitting. As a result, I had to keep silent in the face of a great deal of provocation.22

  The silence was one sided. Margaret Thatcher could not find the self-discipline to stop her complaining and carping. Because her wounds had not healed, they festered. She encouraged denigration of the Prime Minister, and legitimised the internal opposition towards him. She openly mocked several of his Cabinet Ministers. One amusing example of this occurred when she came to a drinks party at the home of Alan Duncan MP in 1997. There she saw Michael Portillo, the new Defence Secretary who told her that he had put out many invitations to tender since he assumed his office.

  ‘Invitations to tender!’ snorted the former Prime Minister in tones of ringing scorn. ‘You’ll never win a war Michael with invitations to tender! I know about these things. You’ll have to do far better than talking about invitations to tender.’

  As she stalked off to another part of Alan Duncan’s drawing room she muttered to her host ‘I know I mustn’t! I know I mustn’t’!23

  The fierceness and the frequency of her grumblings against the Major government took their toll. They had a huge knock on effect in spreading discontent, particularly on Europe. Although the Conservative Party did not actually split, it looked and behaved as though it was a house bitterly divided against itself. This was the darkest side of Margaret Thatcher’s legacy.

  REFLECTION

  In the 1970s, it was said that no Conservative Party leader had ever behaved as badly towards their successor as Ted Heath did with his sulks, snubs and unhelpful behaviour towards Margaret Thatcher.

  In the 1990s, this view had to be revised. For Margaret Thatc
her’s political behaviour towards John Major was infinitely worse and far more destructive.

  There were both human and political explanations for Margaret Thatcher’s malevolence. On the human side, she had every justification for fury at the internal coup that had brought about her fall. Her anger and her sickness of heart were so profound that she could not overcome them. This was her personal tragedy.

  On the political front, she was entitled to hold passionate views about both Bosnia and Europe. Freed from the constraints of office, she could use wilder words and take up more extreme stances. Since she was broadly right about both issues, her principled beliefs deserve respect.

  Unfortunately for her reputation, the human bitterness began to damage the political respect. She abandoned some of the qualities that had stood her in good stead in her early years as Prime Minister, such as self-discipline, caution and an acceptance of the norms of political conduct. She no longer listened enough to objective, let along critical, advice. Instead, she was misled towards further furies by voices who pandered to her worst fears and prejudices. Her denigration of John Major was a bad blot on her record.

  Internationally, the picture was much more positive. On her global travels she did the state some service, built up her finances, and enhanced her reputation as an icon of historic achievements. Yet, even so, this chapter of her life was a sad one. Her agony after the fall did not enable her to go gently into the twilight of retirement.

  ________________

  * New codes and push buttons had been introduced by the privatised British Telecom.

  39

  Snapshots of her retirement years

  STRATEGIC IDEAS AND PERSONAL CONVERSATIONS

  The newly ennobled Baroness Thatcher of Kesteven did not settle comfortably into the House of Lords. Her early speeches on Maastricht were listened to politely but voted against by overwhelming majorities. She tended to misjudge the mood of the upper house, particularly on 14 July 1993 when she launched an emotional attack against further erosions of sovereignty to Brussels unless sanctioned by a national referendum.1 The motion she supported was defeated by 445 votes to 146. Such speeches, aggravated by her continuing snipings against John Major, began to irritate not only the Tory establishment but also the party rank and file, who gave her noticeably shorter ovations when she appeared at party conferences.

  None of these fluctuations in her domestic popularity worried her in the slightest. The contrast between the acclaim she was receiving on her international speaking tours and the anxiety she caused by her interventions in domestic politics could have been an echo of the biblical line ‘a prophet is without honour in his own country’.2

  On the world stage some of her speeches deserved the adjective prophetic. In March 1996 at Fulton, Missouri (where Winston Churchill had given his great ‘Iron Curtain’ address in 1945), she coined another memorable phrase by warning of the threat posed by ‘rogue states’. She specified in this category ‘Syria, Iraq and Gaddafi’s Libya’ and highlighted ‘the danger from the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction’.3

  Despite Margaret Thatcher’s vast experience of geopolitical issues, her hostility towards John Major meant that he and his government had ceased to consult her on foreign policy. However, there was no ban on ministers taking advice from the former Prime Minister. So a few weeks after my appointment as Minister of State for Defence I went to see her. Despite some handwringing from my officials (‘Are you sure it would be wise, minister?’) I felt I would benefit from her advice over the biggest decisions on my desk involving potential orders for missiles, torpedoes and aircraft. The rationale for them ultimately centred on a strategic question: Was there or was there not likely to be a future military threat to the UK from Russia now that the Soviet Union had collapsed?

  I asked Margaret Thatcher if I could come and talk to her on this issue. She had unrivalled experience of making geopolitical judgements and an unequalled range of contacts in both Washington and Moscow. So for over an hour we had a deep and detailed discussion about the various factors that might cause a Russian resurgence as an aggressive military power.

  She was still at the top of her game, well understanding why a new Defence minister might want to ask her advice on questions that could decide whether certain kinds of procurement orders should be confirmed or cancelled. After a conversation that ranged across both strategic and specific considerations, it emerged that she was a cautious optimist about Russian intentions. ‘The Bear may get hungry and angry towards its neighbours, but not for a generation or two.’4 I agreed, and told her that as a result of her advice I would shortly be cancelling the £1 billion Spearfish torpedo programme.*

  At the end of this talk I said I would like to mention something rather personal. Taking a deep breath I began:

  We were last on our own together nearly thirteen years ago, and I have often thought that if we ever found ourselves in a one-on-one situation again then I would like to apologise to you. You see, I think I handled the break-up with Carol terribly badly. I am on good terms with her again, but I know I made such a mess of things that I upset you too as her mother. So I just wanted you to know that I am very sorry for that.5

  Margaret Thatcher looked totally stunned. There was an awkward silence in which she seemed to be choking up. I understood this, knowing how difficult she found any kind of personal or family matters. So I took my leave quickly, wondering whether I had made a mistake in reopening a painful memory.

  However, a week or two later Denis Thatcher came over to me at a large cocktail party and said, as we shook hands: ‘Thank you for what you said to Margaret the other day. She appreciated it a lot and so did I.’6

  From that moment onwards, my communications with Margaret Thatcher got better and better. I was a regular guest at her drinks and dinner parties, and she came to some of mine. She particularly enjoyed arguing over a meal with visiting foreign statesmen such as Henry Kissinger, Ghazi al Gosaibi of Saudi Arabia and HM the Sultan of Oman.

  On one occasion her arguing went completely over the top. Margaret and Denis came down to Sandwich Bay to stay the weekend with Julian and Diana Seymour. As their near neighbour I invited the Thatchers and the Seymours over for lunch. It was a disaster.

  Margaret had read a story in the Sunday papers about the deteriorating situation in Bosnia. So she arrived with her dander up to press the argument for immediate British military intervention. By this time I was in the cabinet as Chief Secretary to the Treasury. So I parroted the Treasury line that such a commitment could lead to an unpredictably high cost to public expenditure. I might just as well have lit the blue touch paper to a barrel of gunpowder.

  In the explosions that followed, the table of Sunday lunch guests fell into cowed silence as Margaret denounced the ‘cowardice and the shame’ of our policy of non-intervention. One of her milder rhetorical questions was: ‘Are you ministers so weak that you are going to twiddle your thumbs while the Serbs inflict genocide?’ It did not help the temperature of the discussion when my Serbian-born wife, Lolicia, observed that most Serbs did not agree with genocide. More gunpowder exploded.

  Although I had caught glimpses of Margaret Thatcher in this kind of a mood back in her Leader of the Opposition days, I was startled by the ferocity of her anger. It was eventually curtailed by Denis taking advantage of a pause in the explosions to issue the quiet command, ‘Cut it out girl!’ Amazingly she did, making on abrupt and barely polite exit a few minutes later. ‘It’s not cricket to behave like that’, observed one of our guests, E.W. ‘Jim’ Swanton, whose opinion carried some authority since he had been the chief cricket correspondent of the Daily Telegraph for many years.7

  The outburst had an unexpected sequel. Perhaps realising that she had over-reacted, Margaret asked to see me in the House of Lords a few days later. Apologies were not her style but she went out of her way to be gracious and charming on a most unexpected subject – the choice of her official biographer. She said that she was considering
the possibilities. Julian Seymour had recommended me for the job.

  She stressed that she would not be making up her mind quickly, but was I interested? Naturally I was. So I sent her an inscribed copy of my 670-page biography of Richard Nixon and hoped for the best.

  Meanwhile, I learned that the field of authors under consideration had narrowed down to four runners – Simon Heffer, Antony Beevor, Charles Moore and myself. Some months went by. Then Margaret said to me, ‘I’m afraid I have decided not to ask you to be my official biographer because’ – and nothing could possibly have prepared me for the next four words – ‘you’re too old’.

  For a moment I thought I must be mishearing her. But in the next few sentences she explained she was going to make it a pre-condition that her official biography should not be published until after her death. I was left to draw the conclusion that she expected to outlive me. This seemed an optimistic assumption on her part since at the time (1996) I was fifty-four to her seventy. Perhaps she had other reasons. Whatever they may have been, she made a wise choice in appointing the excellent Charles Moore to be her official biographer.

  One of the oddities of conversations with Margaret Thatcher in her retirement was that they sometimes contained an ambush of eccentric unpredictability. Two subjects on which she showed this side of her personality concerned the dangers (as she saw them) of a reunited Germany and the opportunities created by the collapse of the Soviet Union.

  On the first subject she often lurched into embarrassing tirades against Helmut Kohl and his German reunification policies. On one occasion in 1997 she was giving a drink to a group of Eurosceptic Tory MPs who included Iain Duncan Smith, Bernard Jenkin, Bill Cash and Richard Shepherd. They were gathered in the Chesham Place offices of the Thatcher Foundation which overlooked the German Embassy in the same street. As the former Prime Minister’s denunciations of the Bundestag and the Berlin government became particularly vehement, Richard Shepherd gestured towards the Embassy and joked, ‘Careful Margaret, they’ll hear you!’ Raising her voice and shaking her fist at the gates of the German Embassy she shouted across to the other side of Chesham Place, ‘Oh I do hope so!’8