Margaret Thatcher: The Autobiography

by Margaret Thatcher

  If I was to challenge the accepted wisdom on these matters I needed expert help. But most of the experts had jumped aboard the Sovietology gravy train which ran on official patronage, conferences with ‘approved’ Soviet academics, visa journalism and a large dose of professional complacency. I had, however, through John O’Sullivan of the Daily Telegraph, heard about Robert Conquest, a British historian and fearless critic of the USSR. I asked him to help me and together we wrote the speech which I delivered on Saturday 26 July 1975 in Chelsea. The occasion itself was only arranged a few days in advance. I did not speak to Reggie Maudling or anyone else in the Shadow Cabinet about it beforehand, because I knew that all I would receive were obstruction and warnings, which would doubtless be leaked afterwards – particularly if things went wrong.

  I began by setting the large military imbalance between the West and the Soviet Union against the background of the retreat of western power. I drew particular attention to the Soviet naval build-up, describing the Soviet navy as a global force with more nuclear submarines than the rest of the world’s navies put together and more surface ships than could possibly be needed to protect the USSR’s coast and merchant shipping. I argued that nothing was more important to our security than the American commitment to Europe, adding that an isolationist Britain would encourage an isolationist America.

  I then dealt with the imminent Helsinki summit. I did not attack détente directly, indeed I called for a ‘real’ détente. But I quoted Leonid Brezhnev speaking in June 1972 to illustrate the Soviets’ true intentions. Brezhnev had affirmed that peaceful coexistence ‘in no way implies the possibility of relaxing the ideological struggle. On the contrary we must be prepared for this struggle to be intensified and become an even sharper form of confrontation between the systems.’

  I also drew attention to the importance of human rights as a further measure of the nature of the regime with which we were dealing:

  When the Soviet leaders jail a writer, or a priest, or a doctor or a worker for the crime of speaking freely, it is not only for humanitarian reasons that we should be concerned. For these acts reveal a country that is afraid of truth and liberty; it dare not allow its people to enjoy the freedoms we take for granted, and a nation that denies those freedoms to its own people will have few scruples in denying them to others.

  Human rights would, we already knew, be the subject of far-reaching verbal undertakings in the so-called ‘Basket Three’ of the Helsinki package – ‘Co-operation in humanitarian and other fields’. But I placed no trust in the Soviets’ good faith: indeed, since their whole system depended upon repression, it was difficult to see how they could comply. I suspected that for many of those present at Helsinki – and not just on the communist side – the undertakings about human rights would be regarded as uplifting rhetoric rather than clear conditions to be rigorously monitored. So I noted:

  We must work for a real relaxation of tension, but in our negotiations with the Eastern bloc we must not accept words or gestures as a substitute for genuine détente. No flood of words emanating from a summit conference will mean anything unless it is accompanied by some positive action by which the Soviet leaders show that their ingrained attitudes are really beginning to change.

  That is why we so strongly support all those European and American spokesmen, who have insisted that no serious advance towards a stable peace can be made unless some progress at least is seen in the free movement of people and of ideas.

  The reaction to this speech confirmed that I was the odd woman out. The Helsinki Agreement was widely welcomed. I could imagine the shaking of wise heads at my impulsive imprudence. Reggie Maudling came round at once to see me in Flood Street to express both his anger at my delivering such a speech without consulting him and his disagreement with its content. I gave no ground. Indeed, Mr Brezhnev’s evident satisfaction at what Helsinki achieved helped convince me that I must return to the subject: he described it as ‘a necessary summing up of the political outcome of the Second World War’. In other words he regarded it – not least perhaps the commitment not to alter European borders except ‘by peaceful means and by agreement’ – as recognizing and legitimizing the Soviet hold on eastern Europe which they had obtained by force and fraud at the end of the war.

  The Helsinki summit of 1975 is now viewed in a favourable light because the dissidents in the Soviet Union and eastern Europe used its provisions as a programme for which to fight in their long struggle with the communist State. And indeed by making human rights a matter of treaty obligations rather than domestic law it gave the dissidents leverage which they employed to the full. Their bravery would have been of little account, however, without the subsequent western, particularly American, renewal of resolve and defence build-up. These halted the expansion that had given Soviet communism the psychological prestige of historical inevitability, exerted an external pressure on communist regimes that diverted them from domestic repression, and gave heart to the burgeoning resistance movements against communism. This pincer movement – the revived West and the dissidents – more than countered the advantages that the Soviets received from Helsinki in the form of increased legitimacy and western recognition. Without that, Helsinki would have been just one more step on the road to defeat.

  Undoubtedly, the most important foreign tour I made in 1975 – probably the most significant during my time as Leader of the Opposition – was to the United States in September. I already, of course, knew something of the States; and I liked and admired most of what I knew. This, however, was my first opportunity to meet all the leading political figures, and do so on something approaching equal terms. I was guaranteed plenty of media attention, if largely for the depressing reason that Britain’s stock had rarely fallen lower. American newspapers, magazines and television programmes were concentrating on the precipitous decline of the British economy, the advance of trade union power, the extension of the socialist state and what was perceived to be a collapse of national self-confidence. Aside from the schadenfreude, also evident was a nagging worry that America, itself suffering a deep but different crisis in the wake of the fall of Vietnam and the trauma of Watergate, might suffer the same fate.*

  Gordon Reece flew on ahead of me to New York in order to set up the media arrangements. Just before I left London he telephoned to say that expectations of my visit were now so high that I should make the first speech I was to deliver – to the Institute of Socio-Economic Studies in New York – a blockbuster rather than, as planned, a low-key performance with the main speech coming later in Washington. I began by taking head-on the American comments on the sorry state of contemporary Britain and treating them seriously. I then drew attention to what I called ‘the progressive consensus, the doctrine that the state should be active on many fronts in promoting equality: in the provision of social welfare and in the redistribution of wealth and incomes’. There followed a detailed analysis of its effects in the form of over-taxation, the discouragement of enterprise, the squeeze on profits, the defrauding of savers by inflation and negative interest rates and the apparently inexorable growth of the public sector and public spending.

  I was promptly attacked back home by the Labour Government for running Britain down abroad. In fact, the message I was bringing to America about Britain was essentially one of hope, namely that the nation’s potential was great enough to withstand even the effects of socialism. The criticism from the Foreign Secretary, Jim Callaghan, who quaintly criticized me later for putting ‘argumentative passages’ into my American speeches, found a faithful echo in the British Embassy where I was staying. A senior member of the embassy staff briefed the American press against me. Gordon Reece quickly discovered what was happening, and there was a sharp exchange of letters on the subject between me and Jim Callaghan when I returned to England.

  Aware of the attempt to try to cast me in this light, I used my speech to the National Press Club in Washington to point out that if the present socialist policies were abandoned, Br
itain had underlying strengths which would ensure its swift recovery. A shift of popular opinion against the far Left, the extent of our energy reserves and the strength of our scientific potential – shown by seventy-two Nobel Prizes, more than France, Italy, the Netherlands and Belgium put together – all justified long-term optimism.

  Now, slowly, we are finding our way. It is true that the reports about Britain still reflect a serious situation, and they are right to do so. But a change is coming over us … I see some signs that our people are ready to make the tough choice, to follow the harder road. We are still the same people who have fought for freedom, and won. The spirit of adventure, the inventiveness, the determination are still strands in our character. We may suffer from a British sickness now, but our constitution is sound and we have the heart and the will to win through.

  In the course of my American visit I met the key figures in the Ford Administration. Dr Kissinger I knew already. But this was the first time that I had met Bill Simon, the free-market-minded Treasury Secretary, who had jettisoned the wage and price controls imposed under President Nixon, and the immensely experienced James Schlesinger, the Defense Secretary, the Administration’s principal internal opponent to détente.

  I was also received by President Ford himself. He was a large, friendly man, unexpectedly precipitated into high office who, perhaps to his own surprise as well as that of others, had started to relish it. He had assembled or inherited a talented team around him and had already demonstrated to the Europeans America’s continued commitment to their security, in spite of all the upheavals of domestic politics. He had, in fact, both the strengths and weaknesses of what in current political parlance is described as ‘a safe pair of hands’. He was not the kind of man to challenge accepted orthodoxies, which I increasingly believed ought to be challenged. But he was a reassuring and steady figure who helped America heal the self-inflicted wounds of Watergate. After a rocky period in the wake of his pardon for Richard Nixon, his Administration’s fortunes appeared to be improving, and his undeclared bid for the Republican nomination was proceeding against a genially effective campaign by a certain Governor Ronald Reagan. President Ford’s prospects for re-election appeared good. I came away hoping that he would succeed.

  I found on my return to London that the coverage given to my American tour had transformed my political standing. Even the Labour Party’s simulated outrage helped. For the more attention was paid to my arguments, the more seriously they were taken. I was soon conscious also of a change of attitude within the upper echelons of the Conservative Party. People who had regarded my accession to the leadership as an irritating but temporary fluke had to think again. Not only was I evidently being treated seriously by some of the most powerful figures in the free world; the warnings I had given in my Helsinki speech looked ever less eccentric and more prescient.

  In late September the Cubans, acting as Soviet surrogates, began to pour troops into Angola. In December the US Senate overturned President Ford’s policy of providing assistance to the anti-communist forces there and resistance to the MPLA collapsed. I thought and read more about these things over Christmas and decided that I would make a further speech.

  On this occasion I stuck to the conventions and told Reggie Maudling of my decision. It was perhaps a testimony to his unease at the prospect that Reggie went so far as to offer me a draft. Unfortunately, as Denis might have said, ‘It was so weak it wouldn’t pull the skin off a rice pudding.’ Bob Conquest had now departed for the Hoover Institution in California, so I asked Robert Moss to help me. The editor of the Economist’s Foreign Report, an expert on security and strategic matters, one of the founders of the National Association for Freedom set up to combat overweening trade union power, and destined to be a best-selling novelist, Robert turned out to be an ideal choice.

  The speech, which I delivered on Monday 19 January at Kensington Town Hall, covered similar ground to the previous year’s Chelsea speech, but concentrated more on defence and contained even stronger language about the Soviet menace. It accused the Labour Government of ‘dismantling our defence at a moment when the strategic threat to Britain and her allies from an expansionist power is graver than at any moment since the end of the last war’.

  I warned of the imbalance between NATO and Warsaw Pact forces in central Europe, where the latter outnumbered us by 150,000 men, nearly 10,000 tanks and 2,600 aircraft. But I emphasized that the West’s defence could not be ensured in Europe alone: NATO’s supply lines had also to be protected. This meant that we could not ignore what Soviet-backed forces were doing in Angola. If they were allowed their way there, they might well conclude that they could repeat the performance elsewhere.

  The reaction to the speech, particularly in the more thoughtful sections of the British press, was much more favourable than to the Chelsea speech. The Daily Telegraph entitled its editorial comment ‘The Truth About Russia’. The Times admitted that ‘there has been complacency in the West’. Nor was the Soviet reaction long in coming. The Soviet Embassy wrote a letter to Reggie Maudling, and the ambassador called on the Foreign Office to protest in person. A stream of crude invective flowed from the different Soviet propaganda organs. But it was some apparatchik in the office of Red Star, the Red Army newspaper, his imagination surpassing his judgement, who coined the description of me as ‘The Iron Lady’.

  It is one of the few defences which free societies have against totalitarian propaganda that totalitarians are inclined to see the western mind as a mirror image of their own. They are consequently capable from time to time of the most grotesque misjudgements. This was one of them. When Gordon Reece read on the Press Association tapes what Red Star had said he was ecstatic and rushed into my office to tell me about it. I quickly saw that they had inadvertently put me on a pedestal as their strongest European opponent. They never did me a greater favour.

  The election of Jimmy Carter as President of the United States at the end of 1976 brought to the White House a man who put human rights at the top of his foreign policy agenda. One could at least be sure that he would not make the mistake of his predecessor, who had refused to meet Solzhenitsyn for fear of offending the Soviet Union.

  President Carter was soon to be tested. In January 1977 the text of ‘Charter 77’, the manifesto of the Czech dissidents, was smuggled into West Germany and published. The following month Jimmy Carter wrote personally to Professor Andrei Sakharov, the Soviet nuclear scientist and leading dissident. This change of tone was reassuring.

  But I soon became worried about other aspects of the Carter Administration’s approach to foreign policy. President Carter had a passionate commitment to disarmament, demonstrated both by his early cancellation of the B1 strategic bomber and the renewed impetus he gave to SALT II (Strategic Arms Limitation Talks), which President Ford had initiated with the Soviets. Ironically, therefore, President Carter found that he could only take action to improve human rights against countries linked to the West, not against countries that were hostile and strong enough to ignore him.

  As for the SALT II negotiations, it was possible to argue about the particular formulae, but the really important strategic fact was that the Soviet Union had in recent years been arming far faster than the Americans. Any mere ‘arms limitation’ agreement was bound to stabilize the military balance in such a way as to recognize this. Only deep arms cuts on the one hand, or a renewed drive for stronger American defences on the other, could reverse it. When I visited the United States again in September 1977, the Carter Administration was still enjoying its political honeymoon. President Carter had brought a new informal style to the White House, which appeared to accord with the mood of the times. Although there was unease about some of his appointments, this was largely put down to Washington resentment against outsiders. In Cyrus Vance, his Secretary of State, and Zbigniew Brzezinski, his National Security Adviser, he had two remarkable assistants, whose differences of outlook were not yet apparent.

  I had met Jimmy Carter
himself in London in May when he attended the G7 summit. In spite of my growing doubts about his foreign policy, I liked him and looked forward to meeting him again. At our discussion in the White House the President was most keen to explain and justify his recently launched initiative for a comprehensive nuclear test ban. Although he had clearly mastered the details and was a persuasive advocate, I was not convinced. Believing as I did in the vital importance of a credible nuclear deterrent, and knowing that nuclear weapons had to be tested in order to be credible, I could not go along with the policy. Equally, I was unable to agree with President Carter, or indeed Cyrus Vance and Andrew Young, the US Ambassador to the United Nations, on their preferred approach to settling the Rhodesian question. The Americans were insisting that the Rhodesian security forces be dismantled. But I knew that would never be acceptable to the white population – who still enjoyed military superiority over the ‘armed struggle’ – without some real guarantee of peace. The Americans were also toying with the idea of imposing sanctions against South Africa, which seemed to me equally ill-judged considering that they needed to have the South African Government on their side if they were to persuade Ian Smith to compromise.

  At least on this occasion I did not have to contend with hostile briefing from the embassy, which was ironic considering that the new ambassador, Peter Jay, was Jim Callaghan’s son-in-law. There had been loud accusations of nepotism when this appointment had been announced. But I liked and admired Peter Jay personally. His understanding of monetary economics would have made him a welcome recruit to the Shadow Cabinet.