The Real Iron Lady

by Gillian Shephard

  John MacGregor was startled, sometime after he had left his post as Chief Secretary to the Treasury, to be introduced by Margaret Thatcher to a visiting overseas Finance Minister at a reception as the former Chief Secretary who had told her the role ‘was one of the jobs he would have most wanted’.

  I was amazed. I was not sure she had even heard what I said at the time, let alone remembered it all those years later!

  John Alston became the Leader of the Norfolk County Council in 1981, a post which he held until 1987, and then again from 1990 to 1994. He recalls a political visit by Mrs Thatcher to Norfolk in August 1981.

  After I became Leader of the Council in May 1981, Michael Heseltine, the Environment Secretary, announced changes to the Rate Support Grant system which had disastrous consequences for rural authorities. In effect, his system rewarded high-spending authorities, and penalised the low-spending ones, like Norfolk. The Association of County Councils organised a special meeting at their headquarters of officers to plan their response. One of their number leaked the time and place of the meeting to Michael Heseltine, who turned up uninvited and unannounced, but inexplicably armed with a blackboard, with the aid of which he proceeded to bombard us with an impromptu presentation. He spoke well, but with scant regard for the facts. At the end of his presentation, I stood up to deliver a tirade of the true facts, and a protest that he had somehow appeared at what had been intended as a private meeting. Naturally, this was leaked to the press, where I reinforced my view of Mr Heseltine. There was widespread national and local coverage.

  About a fortnight later, I received a call from the South Norfolk Conservative agent, asking if I would be prepared to host a luncheon for Mrs Thatcher at County Hall on 6 August. I said I would, provided I got twenty minutes on my own with her, which was agreed. Originally it was intended to be a private political visit; she did not wish to meet the Lord Mayor of Norwich or the Chairman of the County Council. I was to go and meet her at Norwich Airport. Eventually she was persuaded to meet the Lord Mayor – anything less would have been a severe slight – and the District Council Leaders.

  I had seen Mrs Thatcher before, but it had been at a huge Conservative rally during the 1979 election campaign. On this occasion she came straight down the steps of the plane and walked over. I remember the characteristic walk, not inelegant, but purposeful. She was strikingly good looking, immaculate hair and clothes, and above all, a wonderful complexion, flashing eyes and warm smile.

  She began by test-driving some Lotus cars round the airfield, where she met John MacGregor, MP for South Norfolk, at that time Minister for Small Businesses. She then visited a factory making modern kitchens, gave a press conference, and an address to the party faithful at a local dance hall. I attended all these events. Even from a distance, you could see she gave all those she met her absolutely undivided attention.

  We eventually arrived at County Hall, where our private meeting took place in the Chairman’s room. She admitted straightaway that the Department of the Environment had got the Rate Support Grant policy all wrong, but she would not be saying so today, there would be a statement in the autumn. She then changed the subject, and asked to be briefed, in detail, on the concerns of fruit farmers, whom she would be meeting that afternoon. Their problem, in particular affecting apples and blackcurrants, was the effect on their profits of cheap fruit imports from France and Poland.

  She was in very good form over lunch with the District Council Leaders, light-hearted gossip about a recent visit to Egypt, but mostly I remember her flirting with Eddie Coke (Viscount Coke, at that time the Leader of the King’s Lynn and West Norfolk Council), with long discussions about his family history, which she either knew or had been briefed on.

  After lunch she did a brief photo call with the County Council chairman and then a photo opportunity on the steps of County Hall, instructing me to turn left, while she turned right, to give the press and people watching from the windows a good picture.

  I had a very nice letter of thanks from her, and in the autumn I had a call from her office to say that Michael Heseltine would be making a statement in Parliament that afternoon about adjustments in the Rate Support Grant. Someone somewhere ran a very efficient office. She had said that if I ever had any other difficulties I should be directly in touch with her office.

  Some considerable time later, the County Council was having problems in getting a Bill through Parliament to set up the Broads Authority. We were opposed by the Port and Haven Commissioners, the MPs, who were either against or sat on the fence, and other special interest groups of various kinds. The Bill was declared hybrid. That had the advantage of being able to survive the dissolution of Parliament, but equally, it had to be in the party manifesto at the forthcoming election. I did not trust Conservative Central Office to deal with this, so Hartley Booth arranged a meeting in her private apartments in No. 10. She came in, brightly, and just as I remembered, proffered a large whisky, listened carefully, asked a few questions, and left. It did appear in the party manifesto of 1987, and became law in 1988.

  Nothing could be more characteristic of Margaret Thatcher’s approach than this account by John Alston. If she was convinced by the detail of a case, she would act – and action followed. The Broads Authority Bill was a case in point; not that important politically, but it needed to be correct, well-supported and, above all, workable. Because of her personal attention to it, it was all of those things.

  Incidentally, the Norfolk visit provided an illustration of the Prime Minister’s technique with political demonstrations. A number of demonstrators had gathered outside County Hall, and a couple of obviously official cars swept in, taking all the tomatoes, eggs and shouted abuse prepared by the waiting protesters. Her car then followed at speed, before the protesters had time to re-equip. This method never failed, and I recommended it to French colleagues, notably Martine Aubry, and my agriculture counterpart Jean Puech, who were obsessed by the potential embarrassment of enduring a demo with a British colleague sitting alongside them in the official car. History does not relate if they ever adopted the practice.

  Margaret Thatcher’s attention to detail, and in particular her prodigious memory, were perfectly suited to the role of a constituency MP. Even now, when I meet people who were her constituents in Finchley, they will recall her work for them, the fact that she knew their names, and the names of their children, and called the rabbis by their first names. She continued to hold regular surgeries throughout the whole time she was Prime Minister, despite the obvious implications for her security, and I have been told many times of the occasion when she walked a mile in the snow to the inaugural meeting of the Finchley Friends of Israel.

  In many ways, the Finchley constituency might have been made for her. She had, of course, twice fought and lost elections in Dartford. Jean Lucas, a Conservative Party agent, recalls inviting her to address a supper club in the Norwood constituency, in the hope that it might help her in her search for a seat. She tried and failed to get selected for Orpington, Beckenham, Maidstone and Oxford. But Finchley, where she was selected in 1958, and which she represented until she left the House of Commons, was predominantly middle class and aspiring in character. Owner-occupiers were the largest group. Twenty per cent of the population were Jewish. At the time of her selection, there was a safe Conservative majority of 12,000.

  In The Path to Power, she describes how she prepared for the selection process. ‘Like any enthusiastic would-be candidate, I set to work to find out all there was to know about Finchley.’ By the time of the initial interview for the seat, she had briefed herself on the issues likely to be of concern to local people: rent de-control, immigration and the economy.

  I had voraciously read the newspapers and all the briefing I could obtain. I prepared my speech until it was word-perfect and I had mastered the technique of speaking without notes. Equally important was that I should put myself in the right state of mind, confident but not too confident. I decided to obey instruction
s (from Donald Kaberry, a senior party agent at Conservative Central Office), and wear the black coat dress. I saw no harm either in courting the fates, so I wore not just my lucky pearls but also a lucky brooch which had been given to me by my Conservative friends in Dartford.

  All this had the desired result, and she duly became the candidate.

  Then, of course, came the preparation for the general election.

  Finchley had been run with a degree of gentlemanly disengagement that was neither my style nor warranted by political realities. I intended to work and then campaign as if Finchley were a marginal seat, and I hoped and expected that others would follow my lead. From now on I was in the constituency two or three times a week, and regularly went out canvassing in each of the wards, returning afterwards to get to know the Party activities over a drink in the local pub or someone’s house … By the time the election was called in September 1959, the constituency was in much better shape, and I had begun to feel very much at home.

  Hartley Booth, Mrs Thatcher’s successor in Finchley, writes,

  At the end of July 1991, I was selected to be Margaret’s successor. Technically of course I was selected to be the Prospective Parliamentary Candidate for the constituency of Finchley. It was all over the world press and I urgently needed to liaise with her, the sitting MP, to ensure that I did not make any politically unsound statements to the media, who were literally queuing up to discover what it was like to follow the great lady. She came on the phone and said, ‘Congratulations.’ Then she said, ‘Can you afford it?’ As with so many areas, Margaret was concerned about matters of detail and so often thinking of the people around her, sometimes in the most disarming way, like this. It was one of the reasons I could never abide the mindless hectoring she suffered, and that I too received from the left, that she did not believe in Society. She believed in society with a small ‘s’, which meant the Christian principle of loving your neighbour, and she certainly believed in community, not leaving it all to those who provided from the great height of Whitehall, but as neighbourly actions of getting involved in the nearest charity, or in voluntary work to help people around you.

  She did not believe in the individual as a selfish autonomous unit, either. She sees the individual as a person with dignity and responsibilities towards neighbours. ‘Selfish greed’ was the mindless accusation against Margaret and her policies. Nothing was further from the truth.

  These conclusions came from my encounters with her over the two stages of my work with her. I was overwhelmed by the evidence of the love and care she had shown to constituents over the years, extending from the local special school for children with autism to the many dozens of constituents I met.

  Before the election, Margaret briefed me on the needs of the Greek Cypriots and the Jewish community. She took a judicious stand on the latter group, very properly avoiding backing any one political party in Israel, and stressing that the country should observe UN rulings with regard to its neighbouring states.

  The constituency party members revered her. One man was papering a wall in his house with her written replies to his questions. (He continued with mine until I put a stop to it.) People told me how she would organise her arrivals to be exactly on time. They would say, ‘Prime Minister Thatcher was a wonderful MP. We could always rely on her punctuality. If the car bringing her was early, we would see it go round the block, and park. Then on the dot, her driver would stop outside the hall or wherever, and out she would step. We thought she was royalty really.’

  Harvey Thomas was Director of Presentation at Conservative Central Office for thirteen years from the late 1970s onwards. He writes, ‘My relationship with Mrs T. not only crossed between government and party,’ as he puts it,

  but as it happened, by the time Marlies and I were married in 1978, we were also Margaret’s constituents in Finchley, and remained so throughout her time in power. This gave us, of course, yet another perspective. I doubt if her many friends in the constituency would claim it for themselves, but Mrs T. was enormously strengthened by the total loyalty and support from her constituency leaders, together of course with her constituency secretary, Joy Robilliard. The support from the constituency was superb, led in later years by her agent, Mike Love. I remember many times in Downing Street or some other official location in different parts of the world, when her eyes would relax and you could sense her pleasure as she referred to constituency friends and what, in many ways, she regarded as her ‘real’ foundations in Finchley.

  Sir Donald Stringer, the senior Conservative agent responsible for the London area for much of the whole period Mrs Thatcher was a London MP, recalls how he would receive phone calls from her from all over the world, if word had reached her that something was not going well in Finchley.

  Finchley played an important part in Margaret Thatcher’s first election as Leader of the Conservative Party in 1979. Doreen Miller explains:

  The first occasion I had any connection with her was when, as the new Leader of the Party, she was preparing for her first general election, in 1979. Mr Callaghan was deferring it for as long as he could. As an activist in the constituency adjoining hers, I was asked to secure contributions and to edit a pre-election (and pre-election expenses!) leaflet which was produced with the considerable assistance of a local journalist, Dennis Signey, in the form of a newspaper which we grandly called The Finchley Leader. Its first headline read ‘We will be the next government.’ Mrs Thatcher was able to make considerable use of this paper in the run-up to her historic victory in 1979.

  She certainly did. The paper gave regular reports of her activities as opposition leader, of her speeches in the Commons and her policy announcements, and national journalists came to regard it as authoritative enough to repeat and quote in their newspapers on a regular basis.

  Cynical political commentators almost invariably ignore the constituency element of a politician’s life. But there is no truism more certain that you get back from a constituency what you put in, in terms of effort, presence and attention to detail. If Margaret Thatcher, at difficult moments, felt supported by Finchley, that is because Finchley knew that every detail of its collective and individual life mattered to her.

  THREE

  ‘THERE WAS ALWAYS A LITTLE DANGER ABOUT HER, APPREHENSION OF A DAMNING PUT-DOWN OR MEMORABLE ERUPTION.’

  Margaret Thatcher’s ferocious attachment to hard work, her high standards and stamina, her insistence on getting things right, had a flip side. She could be impossible to work with, given to tantrums, tears and shouting matches and lightning changes of mood. She was indeed, as John Major says, ‘a woman of contrasts who could behave with great kindness, yet who was equally capable of great intimidation’.

  Throughout her leadership, Margaret Thatcher was portrayed in the press as confident, battling, principled, unwavering, domineering, arguing, occasionally losing, more often winning. She was an extraordinarily divisive figure, and remains so to this day. Very few people are neutral about her, and the mere mention of her name still arouses strong reactions, not only in Britain, but also abroad.

  In opposition, and in her first parliamentary term as Prime Minister, however, there is plenty of evidence that she was privately much more hesitant than her manner indicated.

  In One of Us, Hugo Young describes how

  alongside the euphoria [of the success of the 1979 election] went anxiety… None of her colleagues had ever experienced a more assertive, more overbearing leader … in part it was an act put on to convince herself and others that she really was the boss.

  Those who were in a position to observe Margaret Thatcher at close quarters confirm this initial lack of confidence.

  Matthew Parris, who worked in her private office in the early days of her leadership, and was later a Conservative MP and then a journalist, puts it thus:

  History, having concluded that Margaret Thatcher was a tremendous, convinced, directed and unstoppable force, has all but forgotten the fragile self-confidence, t
he hurt, the panic, the changeability and the near despair that, I keep having to remind myself, I saw in the early days. (‘A time, a place, Two entirely different stories’, The Times, 26 May 2012.)

  This hesitancy was also noted by Michael Jopling, her Chief Whip from 1979 to 1983.

  Although I did not actually hear her say it, I know that when she took over as Leader of the Opposition she did say that one problem was that all the brains were among the right wing of the Conservative Party. She also described Keith Joseph as her muse. It has surprised me that if that was her view then, she must have changed it before 1979, when she appointed a Cabinet with a strong left-of-centre flavour. As a result she failed to get Cabinet support in 1980 for the economic policy proposed by her and Chancellor Geoffrey Howe. So, in two shuffles in 1981 to restore the balance, she dropped Christopher Soames, Ian Gilmour, Norman St John Stevas and Mark Carlisle. But what surprised me was that her muse Keith Joseph never held any of the great offices of state, Treasury, Home Office or Foreign Office.

  She almost fell into the same trap again in 1982 when she had another shuffle. At a very late stage when all was agreed, we pointed out to her that she was again poised to appoint a Cabinet which had a similar slant to the earlier one. As a result of this, changes were made to redress the balance. Among other changes, she brought in Lord Cockfield as Trade Secretary at the last minute.

  Given that of all the members of a probable Cabinet after the 1979 election, only two, Keith Joseph and Norman St Stevas, had voted for her in the leadership election, it is hardly surprising that she was at first hesitant of making wholesale changes to her Cabinet. The fact was that the Conservatives were divided after the 1979 election. In a way, she was there on sufferance, not least because she was a woman. There was a great deal of male muttering and covert joking. She must have been aware of it, and it cannot have been conducive to confidence in her own leadership. Jim Prior was not the only one of her colleagues who found it irritating to be led by a woman. ‘I found it very difficult to stomach,’ he later wrote.