Margaret Thatcher: The Autobiography

by Margaret Thatcher

  At this meeting I made no secret of the fact that my own instincts were against an early election; I had in mind an election in October. I was convinced that we were now seeing sustainable economic recovery, which would continue to strengthen the longer we waited: clearly, the more solid economic good news we could show the better.

  But, of course, the overriding consideration in choosing an election date is whether or not you think you are going to win. On Sunday 8 May I had a final Chequers meeting with Cecil Parkinson, Willie Whitelaw, Geoffrey Howe, Norman Tebbit, Michael Jopling, Ferdy Mount, David Wolfson and Ian Gow. There had been local government elections on Thursday 5 May and we knew that the results would tell us a good deal about our prospects. Central Office staff had worked furiously to provide a detailed computer analysis by the weekend. We also had the evidence provided by private and public opinion polls.

  By long-established custom, elections take place on a Thursday: if we were to go in June, which Thursday should it be? It seemed that the second Thursday in June would be best, although this meant that the campaign would have to include a Bank Holiday – something electioneers prefer to avoid since it is almost impossible to campaign over that weekend. But Ascot began the following Monday and I did not like the idea of television screens during the final or penultimate week of the campaign filled with pictures of toffs and ladies in exotic hats while we stumped the country urging people to turn out and vote Conservative. Therefore, if we went in June it would have to be the 9th.

  I did not make up my mind finally that day, returning to No. 10 only provisionally convinced. When I am making a big decision, I always prefer to sleep on it.

  The following morning just before 7 o’clock I rang down to the duty clerk asking my principal private secretary, Robin Butler, to see me as soon as he came in: Robin would arrange for an Audience with the Queen later that morning. I had decided to seek a dissolution and go to the country on Thursday 9 June.

  I saw the Chief Whip and the Party Chairman to tell them of my decision, summoned a special Cabinet for 11.15 a.m. and went on to the Palace at 12.25 p.m. The rest of the day was spent discussing final election campaign preparations and the manifesto, and recording interviews.

  I also had to make some decisions about my future engagements as Prime Minister, particularly meetings already arranged with foreign visitors: which, if any, should I see? Another question was whether I should go to the United States for the forthcoming G7 summit at Williamsburg at the end of May. I decided immediately that I had to cancel my planned visit to Washington on 26 May for pre-summit talks with President Reagan. As for the Williamsburg summit itself, I was minded to go. The summit was important in its own right, not least because the President would be chairing it. Moreover, it would show Britain in a leading international role and lend international endorsement to the sort of policies we were pursuing.

  Labour’s manifesto, all over the newspapers shortly before the dissolution of Parliament, was an appalling document. It committed the Party to a non-nuclear defence, withdrawal from the European Community, enormously increased public spending and a host of other irresponsible policies and was dubbed by one of the wittier Shadow Cabinet ministers ‘the longest suicide note ever written’. We were very keen to publicize it and I understand that Conservative Central Office placed the largest single order for copies. But at my customary address to the ′22 that evening, I warned the Party against overconfidence: even a short election campaign is quite long enough for things to go badly wrong.

  The next day I flew to Scotland to address the Scottish Conservative Party Conference in Perth. The hall in Perth is not large, but it has excellent acoustics. In spite of a sore throat from the tail-end of a heavy cold, I enjoyed myself.

  That weekend I was also able to study the results of our first major ‘state of battle’ opinion poll survey. It showed that we had a 14 per cent lead over Labour and that there had been a fall in support for the Alliance. This was, of course, very satisfactory. I was glad to note that there was no evidence that people thought I had been wrong to call the election; indeed, the great majority thought it was the correct decision. But the poll also showed that if the Alliance looked in with a chance there was considerable potential for an increase in its support from weakly committed Conservative and Labour voters. Obviously this was something we would have to guard against.

  In 1983, as in 1979 and 1987, we usually began the morning with a press conference on a prearranged topic. Before the press conference I was briefed in Central Office – during this election by Stephen Sherbourne, who would shortly join my team in Downing Street as political secretary. This briefing took place at 8.30 a.m. in a cramped room at Central Office. We would begin by approving the day’s press release and go on to consider questions likely to come up. Someone from the Conservative Research Department would come in partway through the briefing to report what had happened at Labour’s press conference. It was convenient that Labour’s daily schedule ran ahead of ours. Our press conference would begin at 9.30 a.m. and was planned to last an hour. We had arranged my tours so that I spent very few nights away from London, and therefore I was nearly always available to chair it. I would field some of the questions myself, but try to give whichever ministers were appearing beside me that morning a chance to make their points.

  Our main aim both in the press conferences and speeches was to deal with the difficult question of unemployment by showing that we were prepared to take it head-on and prove that our policies were the best to provide jobs in the future. So successful were we in this that by the end of the campaign the opinion polls showed that we were more trusted to deal with this problem than Labour. People knew that the real reasons for the high level of unemployment were not Conservative policies but rather past overmanning and inefficiency, strikes, technological change, changes in the pattern of world trade and the international recession. Labour lost the argument when they tried to place the whole blame for this deep-seated problem on the callous, uncaring Tories.

  Then there were the speeches. During the campaign I used Sundays to work on speeches for the forthcoming week with Ferdy Mount and others at Chequers. Ferdy had prepared about half a dozen speech drafts on different topics before the campaign. The actual speeches I delivered consisted of extracts from these, with additional material often provided by Ronnie Millar and John Gummer, and topical comment addressing the issue of the day. I would put on the finishing touches in the campaign coach, trains, aeroplanes, cars and just about anywhere else you can imagine along the campaign trail. There were a few big speeches during this election but a large number of short speeches on ‘whistle stops’, often delivered off the back of a lorry on a small mobile platform, always off the cuff. I preferred the whistle stops, particularly when there were some hecklers. People tell me that I am an old-fashioned campaigner; I enjoy verbal combat, though it has to be said that neither I nor the crowds derived much intellectual challenge from the monotonous chants of the CND and Socialist Worker protesters who followed me round the country.

  Third, there were the tours themselves. The basic principle, of course, is that you should concentrate the Leader’s appearances in marginal seats. One day on the campaign bus David Wolfson chided me for waving too much to people watching us pass: ‘only wave in marginals, Prime Minister’. As the importance of television and the ‘photo-opportunity’ increases, the Leader’s physical location on a particular day is rather less important than it once was, but one thing you must do is to visit all the main regions of the country: nothing is more devastating to candidates and party workers than to think they have been written off.

  Finally, there were the interviews. They came in quite different styles. Brian Walden on Weekend World would ask the most probing questions. Robin Day on Panorama was probably the most aggressive, though in this campaign he made the mistake of plunging into detail on the problem of calculating the impact of unemployment on the public finances – a gaffe when cross-examining a former Minist
er of National Insurance. I made a gaffe of my own calling Sir Robin ‘Mr Day’ throughout. Alistair Burnet specialized in short, subtle questions which sounded innocuous but contained hidden dangers. One needed all one’s nimbleness of wit to make it unscathed through the minefields. Then there were the programmes on which members of the public asked questions. My favourite was always the Granada 500 when a large audience quizzes you about the things which really matter to them.

  Our manifesto was launched at the first Conservative press conference on Wednesday 18 May. The whole Cabinet was there. I ran through the main proposals, and then Geoffrey Howe, Norman Tebbit and Tom King made short statements on their sections of the manifesto. After that I invited questions. Manifestos rarely make the headlines unless, as on this occasion, something goes wrong. The press will consign carefully thought-out proposals for government to an inside page and concentrate on the slightest evidence of a ‘split’. At the press conference a journalist asked Francis Pym about negotiations with Argentina. I felt that Francis’s reply risked being ambiguous, so I interrupted to make clear that while we would negotiate on commercial and diplomatic links, we would not discuss sovereignty. The press highlighted this: but there was in fact no split. That’s politics.

  It was not Francis Pym’s week. He told a questioner on BBC’s Question Time that in his opinion ‘landslides on the whole don’t produce successful governments’. Naturally, people drew the inference that he did not want us to win a large majority. Of course, this was all very well for those with safe seats like Francis himself. But it was distinctly less good news for candidates in the Conservative marginals and those of our people hoping to win seats from other parties. And since complacency was likely to be our worst enemy in the campaign, this remark struck a wrong note.

  The first regular press conference on the campaign took place on Friday 20 May. Geoffrey Howe challenged Labour on the cost of their manifesto proposals and said that if they did not publish them, we would. This was the first deployment of a very effective campaign theme. Patrick Jenkin, taking it up, drew attention to Labour’s plans for nationalization and regulation of industry. There were a number of questions about the economy. But, inevitably, what the press really wanted to know was what I thought about Francis’s remark. Francis had been Chief Whip under Ted Heath and I made that the basis of my reply:

  I think I could handle a landslide majority all right. I think the comment you’re referring to was natural Chief Whip’s caution. Ex-Chief Whip’s caution. You know there’s a club of Chief Whips. They’re very unusual people.

  It was on Monday 23 May that my campaign began in earnest. We started as usual with a briefing meeting for that morning’s press conference where we spent some time discussing the Party’s advertising. Saatchi & Saatchi had devised some brilliant advertisements and posters in 1979. Most of those they produced in 1983 were not quite as good, although there were exceptions. One compared the Communist and Labour Party manifestos by printing side by side a list of identical commitments from each. It was a long list. A second poster set out 14 rights and freedoms that the voter would be signing away if Labour was elected and carried out its programme. Another poster, aimed at winning us support from ethnic minorities with the slogan ‘Labour Think He’s Black, Conservatives Think He’s British’, caused some controversy. But I thought it was perfectly fair. I did, however, veto one showing a particularly unflattering picture of Michael Foot with the slogan: ‘Under The Conservatives All Pensioners Are Better Off’. Maybe that was a fair political point too: but I do not like personal attacks.

  My speech that evening was at the Cardiff City Hall. It was a long speech, made a little longer but much more lively when I broke away from the text, which always seems to help the delivery. I covered all the main election issues – jobs, health, pensions, defence – but the lines I liked best related to Labour’s plans for savings:

  Under a Labour Government, there’s virtually nowhere you can put your savings where they would be safe from the state. They want your money for state socialism, and they mean to get it. Put your savings in the bank – and they’ll nationalize it. Put your savings in a pension fund or a life assurance company – and a Labour Government would force them to invest the money in their own socialist schemes. If you put money in a sock they’d probably nationalize socks.

  I had returned early to No. 10 from Tuesday’s daily tour in order to prepare for a Question and Answer session with Sue Lawley on Nationwide. This unfortunately degenerated into an argument about the sinking of the General Belgrano.

  The Left thought it was scoring points by keeping the public’s attention focused on this, exploiting minor discrepancies to support its theory of a ruthless government intent on slaughter. This was not only odious; it was inept. The voters overwhelmingly accepted our view that protecting British lives came first. On the Belgrano, as on everything else, the Left’s obsessions were at variance with their interests. But I found the whole episode distasteful.

  The Labour Party was now in deep trouble. On Wednesday 25 May – the very day we had chosen to devote to defence – Jim Callaghan made a speech in Wales rejecting unilateral nuclear disarmament. The newspapers were full of contradictory statements about Labour’s position on nuclear weapons. Even among Labour front-benchers there was disarray: you could choose between Michael Foot, Denis Healey and John Silkin – each seemed to have his own defence policy. Michael Heseltine at our press conference and throughout the campaign was devastating in his criticisms of Labour’s policy.

  I always realized that there were a few issues on which Labour was especially vulnerable – issues on which they had irresponsible policies but ones to which the public attached great importance. They were the ‘gut issues’. Defence was one. Another was public spending. For that reason I was very keen that Geoffrey Howe do a more comprehensive costing of Labour’s manifesto promises than usual. He produced a superb analysis that ran to twenty pages. It showed that Labour’s plans implied additional spending in the life of a Parliament of between £36–43 billion – the latter figure almost equal to the total revenue of income tax at that time. Labour’s economic credibility never recovered. Indeed, Labour’s profligacy has been its Achilles heel in every election I have fought – all the more reason for a Conservative Government to manage the nation’s economic affairs prudently.

  On Thursday 26 May the opinion polls reported in the press gave us anything between a 13 and 19 per cent lead over Labour. The principal danger from now on would be complacency among Conservative voters rather than any desperate Labour attempts at a comeback.

  Thursday was to be a pleasant day of traditional campaigning, this time in Yorkshire. One highlight was lunch in Harry Ramsden’s Fish and Chip Shop – the ‘biggest fish and chip shop in the Free World’ – in Leeds. I thoroughly enjoyed myself.

  That evening I spoke at the Royal Hall, Harrogate, dwelling on a theme which was central to my political strategy. The turbulence of politics in the 1970s and 1980s had overturned the set patterns of British politics. Labour’s own drift to the left and the extremism of the trade unions had disillusioned and fractured its traditional support. They were benefiting from the opportunities we had made available, especially the sale of council houses; more important, they shared our values, including a strong belief in family life and an intense patriotism. We now had an opportunity to bring them into the Conservative fold, and I directed my speech at Harrogate to doing just that.

  By the time that I arrived back in London on Friday there had been yet another extraordinary development in Labour’s campaign. Labour’s General Secretary, Jim Mortimer, reported to an astonished press corps that ‘The unanimous view of the campaign committee is that Michael Foot is the Leader of the Labour Party.’ With statements like that one wondered how long either of them would keep his job.

  My own mind that evening was very much on the forthcoming G7 economic summit at Williamsburg, for which I would leave for the United States at midday on Satur
day.

  Whatever its electoral implications for me, there was no doubt that the Williamsburg summit was of real international importance. President Reagan was determined to make a success of it. At previous G7 summits the scope for genuine discussion had been somewhat limited by the fact that a draft communiqué had been drawn up even before the leaders met. This time the Americans had insisted that we should discuss first and draft later, which was far more sensible. But I took along a British draft just in case it was needed.

  The atmosphere at Williamsburg was excellent, not just because of the President’s own radiant good humour but because of the place itself. In the surroundings of this restored Virginian town each head of government stayed in a separate house. We were welcomed by friendly townspeople in old-style colonial dress. There was a complete contrast with the perhaps over-luxurious feel of Versailles.

  The two main objectives which President Reagan and I shared for the summit were the reaffirmation of sound economic policies and a public demonstration of our unity behind NATO’s position on arms control, especially as regards the deployment of Cruise and Pershing II missiles. I introduced the discussion on arms control at dinner on Saturday. In fact, by that morning we had what most of us considered a satisfactory draft communiqué. France’s position – as a country outside the NATO command structure – required to be taken into account. But President Mitterrand said that he had no dispute with the substance of our proposal. In fact, he came up with an amendment that we were able to accept, because it strengthened it in the direction we wanted. It seems improbable that President Mitterrand realized this.

  The text on the economy was pretty satisfactory as well, except for a little misty language on exchange rate co-ordination.