Throughout 1971 as the assault on me was being mounted over the issue of school milk, I was locked in battle within the Cabinet on public spending. It was politically vital to my argument about school meals and milk that the primary school building programme should go ahead as envisaged. So within the department I rejected early suggestions of compromise with the Treasury budget cutters. In a note to Bill Pile in April 1971 I laid down our last-ditch position: ‘We cannot settle for less than last year in real terms.’
I could not reach agreement with Maurice Macmillan, then Chief Secretary, and so appealed, as any Cabinet minister has a right to do, to Cabinet. But I was then irritated to learn that No. 10 had decided that I would not be allowed to put in a paper. I wrote a sharply worded letter to Ted pointing out the pressures I was under to announce the 1973/74 school building programme.
I won his agreement to put in my paper in June 1971 – and I got my way. At Cabinet later that month I succeeded in obtaining almost everything that I wanted for the school building programme. It was just in time to announce to the annual conference of the Association of Education Committees in Eastbourne and prompted such headlines as ‘Record Programme to Improve Old Primary Schools’.
On my arrival at the DES, that really had been the priority for me. Because of it, I had to make (or at least accept) spending decisions which made life extraordinarily difficult. I felt that in the 1970s it was wrong for schools still to have leaky roofs, primitive equipment and outside lavatories. Moreover, now that the demographic ‘bulge’ of primary-school-age children had more or less been accommodated – the peak was in 1973 – there was some financial leeway to improve the quality of the often very old and gloomy schools which had been kept in use.
Whether or not the acclaim for my defence of the primary school building programme was justified, it soon faded away as a new agitation over the financing of student unions got under way. Unlike the controversy over school milk, this was largely a campaign organized by the hard Left. It was, therefore, less politically dangerous. But it was very vicious. Nor was it just directed against me. My daughter Carol, reading Law at University College, London, also had a hard time.
In both Europe and the United States this was the height of the period of ‘student revolution’. Looking back, it is extraordinary that so much notice should have been taken of the kindergarten Marxism and egocentric demands which characterized it. In part, it was a development of that youth cult of the 1960s whereby the young were regarded as a source of pure insight into the human condition. In response, many students accordingly expected their opinions to be treated with reverence.
The Left had managed to gain control of many student unions, and therefore of the public money which financed them, using this position to mount campaigns of disruption which infuriated ordinary taxpayers and even many students who simply wanted to study. There were two aspects: first, the financing of student bodies, and second what those bodies did. On the first, the main source of money for student unions was subscriptions out of mandatory grants received from their local education authorities. Union membership was normally obligatory and the union subscription was then paid direct to the student union. Some student unions took advantage of this to spend the revenue on partisan purposes, often in defiance of both their constitution and the wishes of their members.
In July 1971 I put proposals to the Home and Social Affairs Committee of the Cabinet (HS) for reform. I proposed that in future the union subscription should not be included in the fees payable to colleges and universities. The student maintenance grant would be increased slightly to enable students to join particular clubs or societies on a voluntary basis. Responsibility for providing student union facilities would then be placed on each academic institution. The facilities of each union would be open to all students, whether or not they were members of the union. Besides dealing with the question of accountability for public money, these changes would also abolish the closed-shop element in student unions which I found deeply objectionable on grounds of principle. HS was not prepared to go along with my proposals immediately, but I came back to the argument, fully recognizing how controversial they would be, and gained the Committee’s approval.
Bill Van Straubenzee was the minister directly responsible for dealing with consultations on the proposals. But I was the one immediately marked down as the hate-figure to be targeted for them. In early November in Leeds, where I was laying a stone to mark the construction of new buildings, about 500 students tried to shout me down. Later that month 2,000 screaming students tried to prevent my presenting the designation document of the South Bank Polytechnic at the Queen Elizabeth Hall. A dozen mounted police had to protect my car. In December the student protesters found time from their studies to organize a nationwide day of protest. My effigy was burnt at various universities.
By now many of the Vice-Chancellors and college authorities were giving tacit approval to the protests. Edward Boyle even addressed a mass meeting of students at Leeds to declare his opposition to my proposals. Since these had only been put out for consultation it was perfectly possible to allow tempers to cool and to delay action, which I did. The main problem was that until university authorities themselves were prepared to uphold the values of a university and exert some authority, no proposal for reform was likely to succeed. This was also the time when freedom of speech began to be denied by groups of students, who were then indulged by nervous university authorities. University intolerance was at its most violent in the early seventies. But, less visible and more institutionalized, the same censorship continues today.
Nineteen seventy-one had been a crucial year for the Government and for me personally. The pressures which mounted were all the more intolerable because they were cumulative. As I shall describe, the Government’s self-confidence broke in early 1972. Somehow, although under greater strain than at any time before or since, my own held.
But a number of commentators, with varying mixtures of relish and regret, thought that I was done for. On my return after the Christmas holiday at Lamberhurst, I was able to read my fate openly discussed in the newspapers. One described me as ‘The Lady Nobody Loves’. Another published a thoughtful article entitled ‘Why Mrs Thatcher is so Unpopular’. But I pushed the stuff aside and concentrated on my red boxes.
In fact, it was not long before the tide – for me personally, though not for the Government – began to turn. The far more serious issues of 1972 were now upon us – the miners’ strike and the various elements of the U-turn – and these dwarfed the personal campaign against me. And, of course, I was evidently not going to buckle or depart – at least voluntarily. But I owe a debt of gratitude to Ted Heath as well.
Ted asked me and my officials down to Chequers on Wednesday 12 January to have a general discussion about education. I took with me an aide-mémoire summing up the situation and looking ahead. In spite of all the difficulties, there was only one pre-election commitment which still remained to be implemented: the expansion of nursery education. More money was needed if something substantial was to be achieved. The other area was secondary school organization. There the problem was, as I put it, ‘many of our own local councils are running with the comprehensive tide. The question is what sort of balance should be struck between defending existing grammar schools and leaving local education authorities free to make their own decisions?’ We discussed both these points at Chequers. Ted was keen on nursery education; he had been pressing for action on student unions; and he very reasonably asked whether we could not use educational arguments in justifying our policy on selection, rather than just resting on the arguments about local authority autonomy.
From my point of view, however, at least as important as the discussion was the fact that by inviting me down with my officials Ted implied that there was no intention to move me from Education in the foreseeable future. This was a vital reinforcement for my authority. Ted went on a few days later in the House to list my achievements. Why did he give m
e such strong support? Some felt that he needed a woman in the Cabinet and it was difficult to find a credible alternative candidate. But I like to think that it also showed Ted’s character at its admirable best. He knew that the policies for which I had been so roundly attacked were essentially policies which I had reluctantly accepted under pressure from the Treasury and the requirements of public finance. He also knew that I had not tried to shift the blame onto others. However unreliable his adherence to particular policies, he always stood by people who did their best for him and his Government. This was one of the better reasons why his Cabinet reciprocated by remaining united behind him.
From the spring of 1972 the chilly political climate in which I had been living began noticeably to thaw.
It was, however, the Education White Paper, published in December 1972, which restored the fortunes of our education policy. The decision to publish it stemmed from discussions of the three Programme Analysis and Review (PAR) Reports which we had prepared in the department.*Education: A Framework for Advance was the original suggested title but, in a change which appears in retrospect to be all too typical of these over-ambitious, high-spending years, this became Education: A Framework for Expansion. The White Paper set out a ten-year plan for higher spending and better provision.
The White Paper received a disconcertingly rapturous reception. The Daily Telegraph, although making some criticisms about the lack of proposals for student loans or vouchers, said that the White Paper established me ‘as one of our most distinguished reforming – and spending – Ministers of Education’. The Daily Mail described it as a ‘Quiet Revolution’ and commented, ‘there has been nothing like it since the war’. More unsettling was the Guardian’s praise for a ‘progressive programme’ and the comment – I hoped tongue in cheek – that ‘apart from not mandatorily ending 11-Plus segregation, Mrs Thatcher is more than halfway towards a respectably socialist education policy’.
With the exception of some vigorous exchanges with Labour’s new and highly articulate Education spokesman, Roy Hattersley, about the rate of increase of education expenditure, the early months of 1973 were as near as any at the DES to being quiet. But the consequences of the Government’s fiscal and monetary policies were shortly to catch up with us. The first instalment was in May – a round of public expenditure cuts designed to cool the overheated economy. Capital spending in education, particularly the less politically sensitive area of higher education, was an obvious target. The reduction in the DES budget for 1974/75 was £182 million – out of £1,200 million total cuts in public spending. But I did manage for the time being to salvage the nursery school programme and also building programmes for special schools.
By now, however, my mind was fast focusing on the cataclysmic events overtaking the Government. It was not long before I would have to mount my soapbox and defend the policies I had pursued in my years at Education. I found no difficulty in doing so, for on almost every front the record was one of advance. And if the measures by which ‘advance’ at this time was assessed – resources committed rather than results achieved – are accepted, it was also a record of genuine improvement. Nearly 2,000 out-of-date primary schools in England and Wales were replaced or improved. There was a substantial expansion of nursery education. I pushed through the raising of the school leaving age, which the Labour Party had had to postpone. Fewer pupils were now taught in very large classes. There were more qualified teachers and more students in higher education. But too much of my time at Education had been spent arguing about structures and resources, too little in addressing the crucial issue of the contents of education.
Equally, it was clear by the time of the general election that both the figures and, more fundamentally, the approach of A Framework for Expansion had been bypassed by events. There was no way that a programme of universal nursery education was affordable. Schools would have to make do with leaky roofs for many more years, until declining pupil numbers and school closures allowed resources to be better used. The Robbins Report principle – that ‘courses of higher education should be available for all those qualified by ability and attainment to pursue them’ (paragraph 31) – would have to take second place to the demands of financial stringency.
However frustrating it was to watch the shrinkage of my cherished plans and programmes, I can now see that it was unavoidable. And it may have had the side effect of forcing us to think creatively about how to get the best value from our suddenly limited resources. In the economic sphere, the crises of 1973 to 1976 led to a deep scepticism about the value of Keynesian demand management and to a new appreciation of the classical liberal economic approach of balanced budgets, low taxes and free markets. Similarly, in education and in other areas of social policy too, the realization that remedies must be found other than increased public expenditure opened up a whole new world. Fundamental questions began to be asked about whether the education system in its present form could deliver the results expected of it. Did it not in practice largely exist for the benefit of those who ran it, rather than those who received it? Was the state doing too much, rather than too little? What did the – often superior – results of other countries’ education systems and methods have to teach us? It was becoming necessary to rethink these policies; and we were shortly to be granted plenty of time to think.
* Direct grant schools, which included some of the most famous and successful secondary schools in Britain, entry to which was often highly competitive, were funded direct from the DES and were outside local control.
* The PAR system was a characteristic innovation of the Heath Government – an ambitious attempt to review existing departmental programmes with the professed intention of radically reducing the role of government, but with little or no effect.
CHAPTER SEVEN
No End of a Lesson
The Heath Government 1970–1974
SHORTLY BEFORE 11 O’CLOCK on Tuesday 23 June 1970 my new ministerial car dropped me in Downing Street, where with other colleagues I ran the gauntlet of press and television outside No. 10. The hubbub in the ante-room was of enthusiasm and laughter. There was a spring in our step as we filed into the Cabinet Room where Ted Heath, with the Cabinet Secretary Sir Burke Trend beside him, awaited us. I found my place at the Cabinet table, but my mind was at least as much on the department as on the large strategic issues before the Government. It remained there – perhaps excessively so. But I felt an exhilaration which was prompted by more than the fact that this was my first ever Cabinet meeting: I felt, as I suspect we all did, that this was a decisive moment in the life of the country.
It was an impression which Ted himself did everything to justify. Speaking with the same intensity which had suffused his introduction to the manifesto on which we had just fought the election, he announced his intention of establishing a new style of administration. The emphasis was to be upon deliberation and the avoidance of hasty or precipitate reactions. There was to be a clean break and a fresh start and new brooms galore.
The tone was just what we would all have expected from Ted. He had a great belief in the capacity of open-minded politicians to resolve fundamental problems if the processes and structures of government were right and advice of the right technical quality was available and properly used. This was the approach which would lie behind the decision that autumn to set up the Central Policy Review Staff under Victor Rothschild, to reconstruct the machinery of government on more ‘rational’ lines (including the setting up of the mammoth Department of the Environment) and the establishment of the PAR system. More generally, it inspired what turned out to be an excessive confidence in the Government’s ability to shape and control events.
Inevitably, this account contains a large measure of hindsight. I was not a member of the key Economic Policy Committee (EPC) of the Cabinet, though I would sometimes attend if teachers’ pay or spending on schools was an issue. More frequently, I attended Terence Higgins’s sub-committee on pay when the full rigours of a detailed statutor
y prices and incomes policy – the policy our manifesto pledged us to avoid – were applied, and made some contributions there. And, naturally, I was not a member of Ted’s inner circle where most of the big decisions originated. The role of the Cabinet itself was generally of reduced importance after the first year of the Heath Government until its very end.
This, however, is said in explanation not exculpation. As a member of the Cabinet I must take my full share of responsibility for what was done under the Government’s authority. Reviewing the events of this period with the benefit of two decades’ hindsight I can see more clearly how Ted Heath, whether right or wrong, took the course he did. And as time went on, he was wrong, not just once but repeatedly. His errors – our errors, for we went along with them – did huge harm to the Conservative Party and to the country. But it is easy to comprehend the pressures upon him.
It is also important to remember that the policies Ted pursued between the spring of 1972 and February 1974 were urged on him by most influential commentators and for much of the time enjoyed a wide measure of public support. There were brave and far-sighted critics who were proved right. But they were an embattled, isolated group. Although my reservations steadily grew, I was not at this stage among them.
But some of us (though never Ted, I fear) learned from these mistakes. I can well understand how after I became Leader of the Conservative Party Enoch Powell, who with a small number of other courageous Tory backbenchers had protested at successive U-turns, claimed that: ‘If you are looking for somebody to pick up principles trampled in the mud, the place to look is not among the tramplers.’
But Enoch was wrong. In Rudyard Kipling’s words, Keith Joseph and I had ‘had no end of a lesson’:
Let us admit it fairly, as a business people should;
We have had no end of a lesson; it will do us no end of good. *
Margaret Thatcher: The Autobiography Page 16