Things changed when the Prime Minister moved Douglas Hurd, ‘somewhat against her will’, to the Foreign Office, where
the scene somewhat altered, but this was inevitable. For ten years, she had been deeply immersed in foreign affairs; she knew the people with whom she had to deal, both on the British side and overseas. I got used to her occasional outbursts against her fellow Europeans, but these were usually reserved either for the attempts to brief her before a meeting, or for the press conference or Commons statement after it was over.
Lynda Chalker held ministerial posts at the DHSS, Transport and the Foreign Office in Margaret Thatcher’s governments. Her views on Europe and on South Africa diverged from those of Margaret Thatcher, but in her account it is clear that those differences were of a greater magnitude in the collective eyes of the press at the time than in her view of the Prime Minister, either then or now.
When Mrs Thatcher became our leader, like so many other women in the Conservative Party, I was excited, and determined to help her make it to Prime Minister. Having long been a keen European, I was well aware that there would be some difference of opinion and approach, but having always seen the Conservative Party as having a broad spectrum of views, I was determined to do my bit.
The first chance came when she appointed me a junior opposition spokesman on Health and Social Security in November 1976. Getting to grips with pensions and social security was a formidable task, which she well knew. It was thus always heartening to have her quiet enquiries, and later, when I was a minister, her remarkable support. Once we were in government in that department, we all worked the ministerial machine to try to turn round MPs’ enquiries and also to reform policy so as to keep the ever-spiralling budget under control and to rid the system of the incredible contradictions in entitlements.
It was in 1982, when we were legislating to remove strikers’ benefits, that I knew of her full support. The Minister of State on the Social Security Bill Committee, Hugh Rossi, had a heart condition, and could not work after 1830 hours, so when debates went on, first in the Commons until 2200 hours and then in Committee through the night, with a timetable motion in force to deter the Labour opposition from their continual filibustering, I was on my own leading the government team. The most controversial part of the Bill was the removal of strikers’ entitlement to social security. The opposition put down a wrecking amendment and we began to debate it at two in the morning! Within minutes of the start of the debate, the public gallery door opened, and in came the Prime Minister with a Private Secretary to listen. She remained with us for the full two hours the debate took, and wrote me a very kind note once we had defeated the opposition amendment.
There were many times when I was Minister of State for Transport when the Prime Minister gave quiet but firm encouragement, such as the battle to have seat belts made compulsory to save lives. Many backbenchers thought that this was anti-libertarian and so opposed the law change, but the Prime Minister gave me her full support to introduce the government-agreed measure, which has since saved many thousands of lives and prevented much injury in road accidents.
From the day I went to the Foreign Office in 1986 to work on Europe and Africa, I knew that my real political battles would increase. In fact, the Single European Bill to get rid of trade barriers and establish much improved working with our European Community neighbours was exactly in line with our manifesto commitments, but it was at about the time when some outrageous statements from M. Delors of France and Signor Andreotti of Italy began to inflame the anti-European fever among a proportion of our backbenchers. Throughout the passage of the Bill, I had nothing but active support from Margaret.
Later, our views on Europe diverged, but there was rarely a time when I felt I would not be supported, and Margaret was the very person who had given me the real chance in politics to focus on Africa, the development of which has been my interest and concern since I helped two girls from Botswana back in 1955. While I was still Minister of Transport, I was encouraged by her to develop transport exports in Africa, and work in West Africa had encouraged me to sharpen up my conversational French. Thus as Minister for Africa from 1986 onwards, I had the chance to expand my interest and to help to resolve many issues, thanks to Margaret Thatcher.
Our views may have differed, but many discussions allowed me to learn a great deal from her and her colleagues in committees and Cabinet when I attended in the Foreign Secretary’s absence overseas.
The early years of Margaret’s premiership were very tough at times, but that was the time when the foundations of many reforms were laid. Even if we differed, as our experiences in life were so changed by our exposure to the very challenges we had been elected to solve, I shall always be grateful for her advice and friendly guidance, so often given quite unexpectedly.
All three – John Major, Douglas Hurd and Lynda Chalker – were able to achieve a modus operandi with the Prime Minister, even though they did not share all of her views. The accounts also indicate that, on occasion, she was prepared to listen and accommodate difference in order to make progress. But there is too much evidence of her over-ruling objections from colleagues and, on occasion, simply shouting them down, actually in Cabinet, for it to be ignored.
John Hoskyns, in Just in Time: Inside the Thatcher Revolution, analyses it thus:
She did not seem to understand that colleagues could not answer back without being disrespectful, in front of others, to a woman and to a Prime Minister. She was too ready to blame others when things went wrong, and gave too little praise or credit when it was due. None of these things would be forgiven when her position became weaker.
In particular, the aggression she showed towards Geoffrey Howe, despite the many years they had worked closely together, seems inexplicable and, indeed, inexcusable.
In his book, Conflict of Loyalty, Geoffrey Howe describes an extraordinary incident in December 1981 as he prepared to make his Autumn Statement to the Commons. Compared with the events that led to his resignation, this episode ended relatively well although the description of the Prime Minister’s behaviour is, to say the least, unedifying.
Howe realised that ‘this particular exercise (the Autumn Statement) was almost bound to be a public-relations zero, at best. For its essential structure lacked virtually all the tax-cutting or scene-shifting components that can add cheer or authority to a proper Budget.’ In the event, the press and public reception of it was much as he expected, with the Daily Mail describing it ‘as electrifying as an algebra lesson’.
He continues,
But the most startling treatment of my Statement came from next door, in the form of a last-minute row about the presentation. The Prime Minister had been closely informed about, indeed engaged in discussing, the substance of everything that I had to say, and had not objected. But when, on the day before the Statement’s delivery, she was routinely sent the full text, she protested vigorously. She delivered this presentational broadside (and she was right about the problem though short of a solution) at an early-evening meeting with me. This led me to summon a group of senior advisers and drafters to a late-night meeting in the downstairs sitting room at No. 11. We met at about 9 p.m. Some were in favour of sticking to the original text, John Kerr and some others were for revision, if only on the ground that it would be politic to make at least some changes.
We were still at work on this exercise when we were interrupted (and astonished) by the arrival of the Prime Minister through the connecting door with No. 10. Margaret had apparently just returned from a dinner engagement (I never did find out where), and been told by her Treasury private secretary, Michael Scholar, of the meeting taking place next door. To his dismay, she decided to join the proceedings. We had no time to think of reducing the large cast present. Margaret, who was in most unprepossessing mood, proceeded to play to the gallery outrageously, more than I had ever witnessed before. Anyone who attempted to describe the reformulations on which we had agreed was shouted down. So was I. At one poi
nt she exclaimed, ‘If this is the best you can do, then I’d better send you to hospital and deliver the Statement myself.’
The storm eventually blew itself out and the lady withdrew. A shaken handful of trusties stayed on to complete our redraft. Michael Scholar and John Kerr prudently decided to withhold the product from Margaret until the morning after. It was a little shorter and perhaps to that extent, better, than the original. But it was not in substance any different from the first version, or from the reformulations that Margaret had derided so fiercely. There was no further comment from that quarter until after I had delivered the Statement. By the time I got back to No. 11 there was a note in her own hand: ‘Well done in a difficult House. We have cut the 5.30 meeting – come this evening [for a pre-arranged working dinner] when you are ready. TV presentation matters more than anything else. Your quiet confidence goes over very well there, as in the House.’
I cannot recall Margaret ever coming closer to an apology than this. Neither of us ever mentioned the incident again.
He describes the Falklands conflict as a time when Margaret Thatcher felt isolated, at least partly because she had no confidence in the strategy of Francis Pym, who had replaced Lord Carrington as Foreign Secretary after his resignation. She would use her regular Sunday evening chats with Geoffrey Howe
to discuss the ‘progress’ of Pym’s persistent, but intrinsically hopeless, search for an honourable settlement of the Falklands dispute. On those occasions, when I sensed that she felt at her most lonely, we reached perhaps the high point of our relationship. It was clear to me that the Argentine leadership was never seriously committed to such an outcome.
When victory finally came, there was a transformation in Margaret’s standing, throughout the world, even more than at home, and deservedly so. There can be no doubting the extraordinary importance, from start to end of the crisis, of her sustained courage in the face of uniquely personalised pressures. The role of victorious warrior queen was one into which she grew very naturally. Her confidence in her own judgement was certainly not diminished. And her respect for the wisdom of the Foreign Office had certainly not been enhanced by the whole story. Nor, I have to confess, had mine. On the day after the invasion (Saturday 3 April 1982), I had to preside over a ministerial meeting to consider the economic consequences of the conflict. The only department not represented there was the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. ‘Surely,’ I exploded, ‘they’re going to send someone along to tell us whether or not there’s a war on?’ It was a serious question, with important legal consequences, but it went, that day, unanswered. At any rate, these changes in Margaret’s perception did not bode well for the years ahead.
Early in their relationship, Geoffrey Howe, like John Wakeham, also devised ways of dealing with what he calls ‘the problems of managing Margaret’.
In my case, (at least in my Treasury days) I had the satisfaction of knowing that Margaret and I were working to basically similar guidelines, even if we should not always handle the details in the same way. This sense of ideological security is what came, I suppose, from being ‘one of us’. This central sympathy of purpose gave one more rather than less room for manoeuvre in the management of policies. Often indeed I was able to enlarge or accelerate actions on which we both agreed, and less often, to modify or tailor their impact so as to make them more sensitive to the anxieties of others: restraining, for example, Margaret’s passionate wish to preserve the real value of mortgage interest relief or even to embark upon the replacement of the rating system.
This kind of unspoken deal is to be found, I suspect, in many management or team relationships – is indeed essential to their survival. It becomes intolerable or unacceptable, either to the partnership itself or to the world that is affected by it, only if the relationship is manifestly or chronically unbalanced or irretrievably fissile.
Margaret’s most important weakness – the flipside of her strength – was the extent to which her partners were driven in the end to choose between submission or defection. Perhaps inevitably, the closer the original bonding, the longer the life of the partnership, the more dramatic the final rupture. ‘I must prevail’ was the phrase that finally broke Nigel Lawson’s bond of loyalty and affection. Is almost all real leadership foredoomed to produce such rupture?
In his autobiography, John Major paints a vivid picture of Geoffrey Howe’s last Cabinet meeting before his resignation.
His last Cabinet meeting on the morning of his resignation was the worst of all. Geoffrey and Margaret were sitting side by side, directly opposite me. They could hardly 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.
That incident took place in the privacy of the Cabinet Room. But Geoffrey Howe’s final break with Margaret Thatcher could hardly have been more public. It was televised live from the House of Commons in his resignation speech delivered on 13 November 1990. He concluded his devastating attack with the words, ‘the time has come for others to consider their own response to the tragic conflict of loyalties with which I have myself wrestled for perhaps too long’.
For her part, Margaret Thatcher, according to Harvey Thomas’s account given above, had an ‘unwavering belief that you could say anything and do anything to “trusted friends”’. After Geoffrey Howe’s shatteringly dramatic resignation speech, Harvey Thomas remembers having a drink with Mrs Thatcher after a final speech rehearsal. Just before they departed for home, Mrs Thatcher said sadly: ‘Why couldn’t Geoffrey have just left quietly after these years together as friends?’
As Geoffrey Howe himself put it, on another occasion, ‘it didn’t always feel like that’.
FOUR
‘MAGGIE HAD A HUGE SENSE OF PERSONAL LOYALTY AND PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY.’
John Major describes Margaret Thatcher as a ‘woman of contrasts’. This she certainly was but, he added,
It is worth noting that – however combative she might have been with her peers – she would never once raise her voice to those who were in no position to answer back. This was a Prime Minister who engendered great affection from her staff.
John Wakeham confirms this.
On informal occasions she was always very considerate and kind to her staff. I never came across anyone who did not enjoy working for her and the devotion of many who worked for her years ago is still to this day very much there, and will be there forever.
The accounts written for this book by some of those who worked for and with Margaret Thatcher have produced many examples of her kind and considerate behaviour towards them, often above and beyond mere duty or politeness.
Janice Richards worked in the Prime Minister’s Office from 1971 until 1999. She became Head of the Garden Rooms and the Correspondence Section at No. 10 in 1985.
Before I joined No. 10, I worked at the Department of Education and Science in Curzon Street, as it was then named. Mrs Thatcher was the Secretary of State, and, even now, I remember there was a buzz with her at the helm. Little did I know that I would be working for her again in the future, in very different circumstances.
As a Garden Room secretary (so called because the secretaries’ rooms overlooked the rear garden at ground level), I, with other colleagues, performed the ritualistic welcoming party for incoming Prime Ministers in the Front Hall of No. 10. May 1979 was the start of a very special welcoming, and we all felt that we were going to experience not only history being made, but different and exciting times ahead. We were proved right, and those memorable years while Mrs Thatcher was in No. 10 proved to be very special times for those privileged to work there.
I was one of twelve secretaries who worked closely with the private office and travelled with the Prime Minister wherever she went, eithe
r in the UK or overseas. Especially at Chequers, there was an opportunity to see a more relaxed and less pressured side to Mrs Thatcher. I recall conversations about food, clothes, family and so on.
I recall the visit to Lusaka in 1979, for the Commonwealth heads of government meeting – Mrs Thatcher’s first of many – where the heads of state and government were accommodated in Mulungushi, a sort of tribal village complex which Kenneth Kaunda had had specially built some time earlier. However, the bungalows allocated were, to say the least, below standard, and a colleague recalled someone describing them as ‘glorified mud huts’. Horizon House was the accommodation for the support staff – far superior to Mrs Thatcher’s own, and she joined the staff there after a few days. There were some memorable meals there, all support staff sitting at a large round table with her. Clive Whitmore, at that time Principal Private Secretary to Mrs T., Brian Cartledge, Private Secretary for Overseas Affairs at No. 10, and Sir John Hunt, the Cabinet Secretary, were there too. I also remember that Mrs Thatcher was unwell for a time during the Lusaka visit, but just had to get on with the business of the day. All marvelled at her ability to keep going.
I became Head of the Garden Rooms in 1985 when my travelling days came to an end. This allowed me to work more closely with Mrs Thatcher again, but in a different way. There were decisions to be made on gifts which were to be given, and caretaking the gifts which Mrs Thatcher received. Since she had come to power, the correspondence received had risen to 5,000 letters a week, and one needed to be selective about which should be shown to the private office and the Prime Minister. It was important that she saw a wide range of letters and learned of the personal difficulties and problems experienced by the general public, and thereby the issues that most concerned them. She took a great interest in these letters and would often add manuscript sentences in her responses.
The Real Iron Lady Page 8