The Real Iron Lady

by Gillian Shephard

  At the Party Conference, during elections, on the international stage, there was no trace of the ‘rather brown unmemorable girl’ who had so singularly failed to impress the world of Oxford. Quite simply, politics was her métier, and in it she shone.

  The last time I saw her in the House of Commons was the day before William Hague was elected as Leader of the Conservative Party in the summer of 1997. There had been a press conference at the Atrium restaurant at 4 Millbank. Afterwards we all streamed back to the St Stephen’s entrance of the House of Commons for a photo call. Margaret Thatcher made a staged exit to join us, sweeping down the steps immaculately dressed and coiffed as usual.

  The media were there in force, of course, and in the scrum, the ITN producer, Graham Forrester, squatted on the ground so that his microphone could catch Mrs Thatcher’s words of wisdom. Looking down at him at her feet, she said, ‘Now, the name’s Hague, William Hague, H-A-G-U-E, Hague, are you quite sure you’ve got that?’

  I was then asked to persuade her to come into the Commons Tea Room. ‘Yes, dear,’ she said, ‘but I don’t have any money with me.’ Charging her for a cup of tea was far from our minds. We swept through the House, with her in the vanguard, and sailed into the Tea Room, to the amazement of the newly elected Labour women MPs clustered there. She went straight up to a male MP, sitting enjoying a quiet cup of tea, and said, ‘Now, you must vote for William Hague!’ He said, ‘I certainly would, but I am a Liberal Democrat.’ Nothing daunted, she swept up to another, hidden by a newspaper, snatched away the paper and boomed, ‘You do support William, don’t you?’ The MP in question was Sir Richard Body, who did in fact intend to vote for Hague, but it would have taken a brave man to enter into discussion with her on the subject at that moment.

  It was a splendid if slightly farcical episode. But it did remind everyone in the Tea Room that day of just what verve and style she had brought to politics. Margaret Thatcher was on the campaign trail again, and the effect was electrifying.

  SEVEN

  ‘ELLE A LES YEUX DE STALIN ET LA VOIX DE MARILYN MONROE.’

  Some commentators have claimed that foreign policy was less congenial to Margaret Thatcher than domestic reform. Whether or not that was the case, she had no choice other than to become deeply involved in foreign policy, as all Prime Ministers have to be. Indeed, public perceptions of her still include the many reports of rows in Europe over the British rebate and national sovereignty, not to mention her relationship with Ronald Reagan, the Falklands conflict and the Iraq War. But it is also the case that her election as leader of the British Conservative Party, of all things, and later as Britain’s first woman Prime Minister, created a sensation around the world.

  Jean Lucas, a senior Conservative Party agent, visited New Zealand and Australia in 1980, and remembers that ‘wherever I went I was questioned about Mrs Thatcher as the first woman Prime Minister’. In an interview with the New Zealand Herald of 5 February 1980, she pointed out that just six years earlier, people had said that there would never be a woman Prime Minister in Britain – indeed, Mrs Thatcher said it herself. She added,

  Before Mrs Thatcher, most people believed that women could not reach the higher political positions. But Mrs Thatcher has shown that there is no bar to how far a woman can go. British women are very active politically behind the scenes … a few years ago the ratio of women to men in the Conservative Party organisation was one to nine. Now it is one to three.

  Miss Lucas added that at least ten years were needed to

  get the country back on the rails. I am hopeful this will happen under Mrs Thatcher. She is familiar with the day-to-day problems that people face, and she has a first-class brain.

  I also recall that wherever I went, either as a government minister or as an individual, people would ask questions about Mrs Thatcher. In France, graffiti mentioning ‘Tatcher’ abounded, on bridges, alongside railway lines, and on the sides of derelict buildings, usually in the form of ‘A bas Tatcher’, or ‘Mort a Tatcher’, or indeed worse. Conversations always turned to whether I had dealings with her, what she was like, and if she would last. I had a particularly lively exchange with members of a French teachers’ union at the time of the Miners’ Strike in 1984 and 1985, in which they claimed that this was a struggle to the death – her death. I mildly observed that it might be best to wait and see.

  In Egypt and in Uruguay and Paraguay, I was besieged by women at receptions and meetings asking if I knew who were Madame Thatcher’s couturiers, hairdressers and visagistes. Disappointingly for them, but fortunately for me, I did not know, but given her notably modest tastes in these areas, a factual answer would have been even more of a disappointment for my questioners. On the street more or less anywhere in the world, children trying out their English would rush up and shout ‘Mrs Thatcher, Mrs Thatcher’ and later ‘Iron Lady’, a sobriquet she told Sir Richard Parsons she would like to ‘divest’ herself of as she considered it ‘unhelpful’. In Argentina, where, in late 1993, as Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, I was the first British minister to visit after our Embassy had reopened following the Falklands conflict, points made on the street about Mrs Thatcher (and indeed many things British) were a little different. Fortunately for me, I was there with a trade delegation, mostly to sell bull semen – which, while it may seem strange to many audiences, was well understood in Argentina, and very obviously nothing to do with territorial interests.

  At international gatherings, and especially at EU meetings, her presence hovered over proceedings, and people would say ‘But what would your Prime Minister say to that?’ or ‘How will you tell Mrs Thatcher that?’ I could not help but notice that male ministers were particularly persistent with such enquiries.

  Peter Riddell writes,

  My most vivid memories of her were on overseas trips when she was invariably at her most formidable. In Washington in 1985, shortly after Ronald Reagan’s second inauguration, she addressed a joint session of Congress and then hosted a dinner party at the British Embassy with the President as guest of honour to mark the 200th anniversary of diplomatic relations after the Revolutionary War.

  Later that evening, while Ronald Reagan was making a typically charming speech, she interrupted and capped one of his anecdotes. Not many people can do that with an American President, but she could, and did. ‘There you go, Maggie,’ he smiled.

  Michael Jopling recalls Margaret Thatcher’s first meeting with Mikhail Gorbachev.

  I was with her at Chequers when she first met Gorbachev, at that time in charge of Soviet agriculture, but about whom the Foreign Office brief was very thin. It took only hours for her to pronounce, ‘This is a man with whom I can do business.’ How right she was!

  That judgement led to an overseas visit which gave a boost to domestic politics, as Peter Riddell remembers.

  In March 1987, in the Soviet Union, she held her talk-in with Mikhail Gorbachev, the prelude to her successful re-election a couple of months later. It was a triumph for her, not least by contrast with the troubled visit to Washington immediately beforehand by Neil Kinnock, which had been undermined by some behind-the-scenes manoeuvring with the Reagan White House by Charles Powell, her foreign affairs Private Secretary. Mrs Thatcher was the conviction leader, the epitome of Western values engaging in vigorous debate with the reforming Soviet leader. Even Stalin might have been impressed. On the final day, in Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia, she looked as unlike a Soviet-era leader as possible, and, with her fur hat, was almost like a Russian empress. As an elderly lady kissed her hand opposite the seminary (now a museum) where Stalin had trained, I remarked to Bernard Ingham beside me within the security cordon that nobody in London would believe the scene. ‘It’s your bloody job to tell them.’ As, indeed, it was. On the crowded and noisy VC10 flying back over the Black Sea and up the Danube, she famously said she would ‘go on and on’. Ingham muttered, ‘Now I’ll never be able to retire.’ Hubris is always followed by nemesis, and three-and-a-half years later,
he, and she, did.

  It was no accident that Margaret Thatcher’s visit to Russia made such an impression worldwide. She needed a positive overseas event as a launch platform for the 1987 general election campaign, and her wardrobe had been carefully planned with the help of Margaret King of Aquascutum, who was helping to advise her on clothes at this stage of her premiership.

  I clearly remember Margaret Thatcher’s appearance during her Moscow visit, which received extensive press coverage in Britain. She wore stunning fur hats, beautifully cut warm Aquascutum coats, and had the bearing of at least a tsarina. She also performed memorably on Soviet television, and aroused enormous interest wherever she went.

  On 11 June, she won her third term in government with a majority of 102. I was elected to Parliament in that election.

  Margaret Thatcher’s premiership had a profound effect in France, where she had constructive relations with both Franҫois Mitterand and Jacques Chirac. She wrote of the two French Presidents, ‘M. Chirac was blunt, forceful, argumentative, had a sure grasp of detail and a profound interest in economics. M. Mitterand was quieter, more urbane, a self-conscious French intellectual, fascinated by foreign policy, bored by detail, possibly contemptuous of economics. Oddly enough, I liked them both.’ She had certainly not liked Mitterand’s predecessor, the lofty and snobbish Giscard d’Estaing, who referred to her as ‘la fille de l’épicier’. It was one thing for her to vaunt her own background, and quite another to have to put up with condescension from the other side of the Channel. One of her own very senior civil servants told me that she had dreaded her first one-to-one meeting with Franҫois Mitterand, which took place over dinner in Downing Street, but that by the time the French President left, she was glowing.

  Geoffrey Howe describes an incident at a difficult EU meeting in Copenhagen in 1987, where it had proved well-nigh impossible to make progress, and where Margaret Thatcher had come to the aid of the French President.

  Suddenly, President Mitterand asked for the floor. He spoke gravely. His voice was laden with foreboding. We had come to the end of the road, he said. The brightest hopes had been blighted. The dreams of the founding fathers would turn to dust. Perhaps a community of twelve nations could never be made to work. And so on, for ten minutes or more. This semi-spontaneous epilogue, as may be imagined, cast something of a pall over the proceedings. Then, to my surprise, Margaret Thatcher leaned forward and asked to speak. ‘Come on,’ she said brightly, ‘it isn’t as bad as that. We’ve made a lot of progress. But we haven’t finished today. Don’t you remember just how gloomy things looked in Brussels in 1984? Yet three months after that, at Fontainebleau, under your brilliant chairmanship, President Mitterand, we did reach a major agreement. And I am quite sure that, under Chancellor Kohl’s chairmanship in a few months’ time, we can do the same. So’ – very brightly – ‘cheer up, President Mitterand, cheer up!’ And President Mitterand, catching the mood of the occasion, replied, ‘I begin to wonder whether Madame Thatcher isn’t even more intriguing when she is saying yes than when she is saying no.’

  All those present at Copenhagen were indeed heartened by the tone of Margaret’s closing remarks. We were still all on the same side, they felt – and I hoped – whatever the difficulties from month to month. This was reflected in the continental press. The French, Italian and Belgian newspapers spoke of Margaret Thatcher’s ‘good will’, portrayed her as ‘restrained but firm’, and commended the ‘clarity and consistency of her views, and particularly the way in which her “soft approach” contributed to showing divisions among others’. It showed very clearly what could be done.

  There is no doubt that M. Mitterand was intrigued by la dame de fer, whether she was saying yes or no. In August 1992, I had to act as interpreter for him at a private dinner organised to mark the opening of ‘the Grove of Albion’ in the newly restored garden of the Château de Cormatin, near Cluny. The official opening was performed by the then Archbishop of Canterbury, George Carey, who was staying at Taizé, the well-known Christian evangelical centre in Burgundy. The owners of the château had taken advantage of the presence of the Mitterands on holiday at Mme Mitterand’s home in Cluny to invite them to attend in a private capacity. Much to everyone’s surprise and pleasure, they accepted, although what followed, perhaps inevitably, was anything but private. The tiny village was invaded by at least eighty of the President’s security staff, displacing members of the local garde champêtre, who had been in charge of traffic arrangements, and causing the boulangerie to have to reopen as bread supplies ran out. From apparently nowhere there appeared a number of French ministers, including Jack Lang the Culture Minister, and a distinctly carnival atmosphere developed, enhanced no doubt by the copious amounts of marvellous wine which flowed in all directions.

  Over dinner, I interpreted for the President and the Archbishop as they engaged in conversation, but in the interstices, M. Mitterand was questioning me closely about Mrs Thatcher. How had her downfall come about? Were British politicians mad to get rid of such an outstanding Prime Minister? What role had the Queen played in all this – surely she could have prevented such a disaster? (A question I thought particularly rich from a Republican.) Who was her couturier? Did I understand that such a thing could never happen in France, the constitution specifically prevented such a thing, and why did the British not have such constitutional arrangements? What did I think of her husband, and what kind of man could be married to such a woman? It went on and on, interrupted from time to time by the Archbishop asking what the President was talking about, and Jack Lang capering about taking photographs of the occasion. I was not prepared to gossip with the President about Mrs Thatcher, at least partly because I did not know the answers to most of his extremely indiscreet questions, and eventually, but with no less enthusiasm, he turned to discussion of the Duchess of York. Photographs of her on holiday in the south of France had appeared in Paris Match that summer, apparently having her toes sucked by a lover. Fortunately, when we reached this stage, it was time for us to leave the table for the opening of the Grove of Albion, to which we all proceeded, more or less steadily, according to the amount of wine we had enjoyed.

  Dr Sophie Loussouarn, a distinguished French academic and commentator on British politics and the British economy, interviewed, for this book, Hubert Védrine who was Mitterand’s diplomatic adviser from 1981 to 1988. He was appointed Conseiller d’État and Head of Staff at the Élysée Palace from 1991 to 1995, and was Foreign Secretary in the Jospin government from 1997 to 2002.

  Dr Loussouarn gives Védrine’s reflections on Mrs Thatcher, and describes the relationship between her and Mitterand and Chirac, while also drawing on the memoirs of Jacques Attali, adviser to M. Mitterand, who became the first President of the European Bank of Reconstruction and Development in London.

  When Margaret Thatcher became Prime Minister in 1979, Jean-Marie le Pen was the only French politician who paid tribute to her and welcomed ‘the first victory over impoverishing socialism’. Later, her championing of capitalism and her monetarist revolution caused her to be a role model for other French politicians, including Léotard, Madelin and Balladur. But when Mitterand became President of France on 10 May 1981, thanks to Communist votes, he was determined to improve relations with European countries, and he was the first head of state to call Mrs Thatcher to express support in the Falklands War. There was good mutual understanding between President Mitterand and the Iron Lady on the Falklands, their attitude to Gorbachev, and on the Channel Tunnel. But there were antagonisms between the two over the European budget, the Common Agricultural Policy and German reunification.

  The first meeting between Margaret Thatcher and President Mitterand took place ahead of the wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer. The French President wanted to have a good relationship with Britain, to avoid a right-wing coalition between the UK and the US. The Iron Lady enjoyed Franҫois Mitterand’s culture and finesse, and got on well with him. The disagreements between Thatcher and
Mitterand over Europe mattered less than their mutual understanding. Besides, in 1981, Europe was not Mitterand’s priority.

  The first Franco-British summit took place in London on 10 September 1981, a few months after Mitterand’s election as President. Mitterand and Thatcher discussed Europe and the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). Margaret Thatcher reasserted the importance of the EU for Britain, but underlined the problems of the CAP. She wanted her money back, as she constantly repeated. Mitterand felt that she did not share the values of the European community, but praised the commercial genius of Britain, and called for cooperation between the two countries in computer engineering. This summit saw the start of the Channel Tunnel project, which ended Britain’s isolation as an island and linked it to continental Europe. On the plane back to Paris, President Mitterand spoke to his adviser, Jacques Attali, about Margaret Thatcher, saying, ‘She has Stalin’s eyes and Marilyn Monroe’s voice.’