Margaret Thatcher: The Autobiography

by Margaret Thatcher

  The main points I now made to the President were the need to allocate submarine-launched Cruise missiles and additional F1–11 aircraft to the Supreme Allied Commander in Europe to compensate for the withdrawal of Cruise and Pershing, and the need to resist pressure from the Germans for early discussion of reductions of SNF in Europe. I also wanted to see an upgraded and longer-range Follow-On to LANCE missile (FOTL) developed by the Americans and deployed by the mid-1990s, and a Tactical Air to Surface Missile (TASM) to replace our free-fall bombs. On these matters the President and I saw eye to eye. Where I did agree with the Germans – but found myself unable to convince the Americans – was that I would have liked to retain the old German Pershing ballistic missiles for the rest of their natural life (a few years), not including them as part of the INF package. But it was the future of SNF that to my mind was the most crucial element in our nuclear deterrence; and it certainly proved the most controversial.

  Britain’s own security interests were closely bound up with US-Soviet arms negotiations, so I was delighted when Mr Gorbachev accepted my invitation to stop over at Brize Norton on his way to the United States to sign the INF Treaty.

  Within the Soviet Union there were mixed signs. Mr Gorbachev had brought his ally Mr Yakovlev into the Politburo; but his one-time protégé, Boris Yeltsin, who had been brought in as head of the Moscow Party as an incorruptible radical reformer, had been publicly humiliated. Within the Soviet leadership, apart from Mr Gorbachev himself, it still seemed that probably only Foreign Minister Shevardnadze and Mr Yakovlev were fully committed to the Gorbachev reforms.

  We got down to the detailed discussions on arms control. There was not much to say now about INF and it was the projected START Agreement,* which would lead to cuts in strategic nuclear weapons, on which we focused. There were still large differences between the two sides as regards definition and verification. I also repeated my determination to keep nuclear weapons, which Mr Gorbachev described as my preferring to ‘sit on a powder keg rather than an easy chair’. I countered by reminding him of the large superiority which the Soviets enjoyed in conventional and chemical forces. Then I raised Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan and the human rights issue, suggesting that any action he took on these would be likely to assist the US Administration in overcoming opposition in the Senate to the INF Treaty. But I made no headway: he said that a solution in Afghanistan would be easier if we stopped supplying the rebels with arms and that human rights was a matter for the particular country involved. (It was this sort of attitude which had already created a very bad impression in the United States as a result of Mr Gorbachev’s remarks about human rights in an interview with NBC.)

  In spite of his tetchiness over human rights, it was a vigorous, enjoyable and even rather jolly occasion.

  When I got back to London I telephoned President Reagan to let him know about our discussions. I told him what I had said on Afghanistan and arms control. I also said that though the President must be prepared to tackle Mr Gorbachev on human rights he should also be prepared for a sharp reaction. President Reagan said that he expected some tough sessions with Mr Gorbachev. He also asked me if I thought that he should try to get on first name terms with the Soviet leader. I advised him to go carefully on this, because although I found Mr Gorbachev friendly and open he was also quite formal, something which the whole rigid Soviet system encouraged.

  In fact, the Reagan-Gorbachev summit in Washington was a success. The INF Treaty was agreed and a further summit in Moscow in the first half of 1988 was arranged in principle at which the treaty would be signed and possibly agreement reached on a START Treaty as well. In February 1988 Mr Gorbachev announced that Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan would begin in May. We were clearly moving into new territory and it seemed to me the right time to take our bearings at a NATO summit. The first NATO heads of government summit for six years – incidentally, the first attended by a French president for twenty-two years – was scheduled for March in Brussels.

  It was clear from the start that the West Germans were likely to be the main source of difficulty. Mr Gorbachev had launched a very successful propaganda drive to win over German opinion to a denuclearized Germany. Within the Federal German Government, I knew that Chancellor Kohl was still fundamentally sound on the need to avoid a ‘third zero’ and denuclearization. Herr Genscher, the Federal Foreign minister, by contrast, was not. Chancellor Kohl insisted on NATO adherence to what was called its ‘comprehensive concept’ – that is, regarding the different elements of defence strategy, of which SNF was one, as a whole. Within this ‘comprehensive concept’ he was prepared to support measures agreed, after proper study by the alliance as necessary, to maintain flexible response; but he had said publicly in Washington that there was no present need to make a decision on SNF modernization. It was possible for the Americans and us to take account of German sensitivities in the NATO communiqué while still maintaining the right stance both on the military doctrine and modernization of nuclear weapons. Consequently, I was not at all displeased by the wording which resulted. The heads of government agreed on: ‘a strategy of deterrence based on an appropriate mix of adequate and effective nuclear and conventional forces which will continue to be kept up to date where necessary’. That was enough.

  After the Brussels summit officially broke up I met President Reagan to discuss the outcome. I told him that I thought the summit had been a great success because Britain and the United States had stood together. I left Brussels reassured that the President and I were at one as we faced up to all the difficult and complicated arms control negotiations which would now ensue.

  President Reagan was as good as his word when he went to Moscow. Although the INF Treaty was signed there was tough negotiation and no compromise on START, where the Soviets wanted the United States to have Sea-Launched Cruise Missiles (SLCMs) included in the agreement. But, as with my own visit in 1987, it was the opportunity for President Reagan and the Russian people to meet one another face to face which was probably of greatest importance. He told me when he came to London on Thursday 2 June, on his way back from Moscow, how moved he had been by the huge, welcoming crowds there. The only thing which had upset him was the brutal way in which the KGB had dealt with the people who wanted to approach him. He had given high prominence to human rights matters – particularly to freedom of worship – when he was in the Soviet Union and I said how right I thought he had been to do this. The President also told me about the difficult arms control talks. He said he had been determined not to give an inch on SDI and he was not going to be rushed on START. In the meantime, NATO must move ahead with modernization of its short-range nuclear forces and the West Germans must be persuaded to approach this in a positive way.

  The President spoke to a large City and diplomatic audience at Guildhall the next day. It was a vintage performance and one of some significance in the light of later events. He harked back to the speech he had made to Members of Parliament in 1982 in which he had enunciated what came to be called the ‘Reagan Doctrine’. Neither he nor I knew how close we were to its triumphant vindication; but what was clear was that great advances had been made in the ‘crusade for freedom’ we had been fighting. It was now time to restate the cause, which was as much spiritual as political or economic. As the President put it:

  Our faith is in a higher law … we hold that humanity was meant, not to be dishonoured by the all-powerful state, but to live in the image and likeness of Him who made us.

  Just five months later – in November 1988 – I visited Poland. My aim was to continue that strategy towards the eastern bloc countries which I had first begun in Hungary in 1984. I wanted to open up these countries – their governments and peoples – to western influence and to exert pressure for respect for human rights and for political and economic reform. But Poland’s recent past demonstrated how dependent events in such countries were on the intentions of the Soviet Union. Whether one regarded General Jaruzelski as a patriot stepping in to prev
ent worse things befalling his fellow countrymen or just as a Soviet puppet, the circumstances under which martial law was imposed and Solidarity crushed in 1981 were an unforgettable lesson in the reality of power politics. Now the political and economic bankruptcy of the Jaruzelski Government was again apparent and its authority challenged by a revived Solidarity. The role of the West – above all of a visiting western leader – was to give heart to the anti-communists, while urging on them a carefully calculated response to the opportunities they had to improve conditions and increase their influence; and in dealings with the Government it must be to combine straight talking about the need for change with an attitude which avoided outright and counter-productive conflict. It would not be an easy task.

  For their part, the authorities were determined to make it harder still. On the eve of my visit the Government announced their intention to close the Lenin Shipyard at Gdansk, the home of Solidarity. It was a trap. The communists hoped that I would be forced to welcome the closure of uneconomic plant and to condemn Solidarity’s resistance to it on the grounds of ‘Thatcherite’ economics. Some commentators fully expected me to fall for this.

  In the light of these manoeuvrings I was glad that I had insisted that there should be an unofficial as well as an official side to my visit. I was not prepared to be prevented from meeting Lech Walesa and the leading opponents of the regime. To his credit, I felt, General Jaruzelski did not raise objections to my doing so.

  In planning my visit I had consulted the Pope whose own visit there in June 1987 had provided the main impetus for the revival of Solidarity and the pressure for reform. It was clear that the Vatican thought my visit could do good but also that the Church was proceeding with great caution.

  In preparing my Polish trip there was another matter on which I felt I must consult a wise authority and that was what I should wear. A Polish lady who served me at Aquascutum said that green was the colour which represented hope in Poland. So green was the colour of the suit I chose.

  My first official meeting in Warsaw on the evening of Wednesday 2 November was with the recently appointed Polish Prime Minister, Mr Rakowski. He was not an impressive or persuasive advocate of the line the Polish Government was taking about the Lenin Shipyard, though he did his best. He said how much he agreed with my public statements about the need for economic reform and portrayed closure of the shipyard as part of this process. In somewhat forced ‘Thatcherite’ tones he told me that rationalization was the only way to extricate Poland from its crisis and that Poland’s great weakness historically had been lack of consistency, which was something he was determined to change.

  Later that evening I met a number of opponents of the regime and learned a little more about its shortcomings.

  On Thursday afternoon I had my first real taste of the Poland which the communists had tried and failed to destroy. I visited the church of St Stanislaw Kostka in the north of Warsaw where Father Jerzy Popieluszko had preached his anti-communist sermons until in 1984 he was abducted and murdered by members of the Polish Security Services. The church itself was overflowing with people of every age who had come out to see me, and on my arrival they broke into a Polish hymn. In Father Popieluszko they had evidently found a martyr, and I came away in little doubt that it was his creed rather than that of his murderers which would prevail in Poland.

  I said as much to General Jaruzelski when I met him for talks later. The General had spoken for one and three-quarter hours without interruption about his plans for Poland. In this, at least, he was a typical communist. He even said that he admired the trade union reforms I had put through in Britain. When he finished I pointed out that people in Britain did not have to rely on trade unions as a means of expressing their political views because we had free elections. I had just experienced the power of the Solidarity movement in that church in northern Warsaw. I said that, as a politician, all my instincts told me that this was far more than a trade union – it was a political movement whose power could not be denied.

  The next day, Friday, was one I shall never forget. I flew up to Gdansk in the early morning to join General Jaruzelski in laying a wreath at the Westerplatte, which saw the first fighting between the Poles and the invading Germans in 1939. It was a bleak peninsula above the bay of Gdansk and the wind was bitter; the ceremony lasted half an hour. I was pleased to get aboard and into the cabin of the small naval ship which was to take me down the river to Gdansk itself. I changed out of my black hat and coat into emerald green and then went back up on deck. The scenes at the arrival of our boat at Gdansk shipyard were unbelievable. Every inch of it seemed taken up with shipyard workers waving and cheering.

  After a walkabout in old Gdansk itself I was driven to the hotel where Lech Walesa and his colleagues came up to see me in my room. He was under a sort of liberal house arrest and had been brought to the hotel, ironically enough, by Polish Security Police. I gave him the present I had brought with me – some fishing tackle, for he was a great fisherman – and we departed again for the shipyard. Again there were thousands of shipyard workers waiting for me, cheering and waving Solidarity banners. I laid flowers on the memorial to shipyard workers shot by the police and army in 1970, and then went to the house of Father Jankowski, Mr Walesa’s confessor and adviser, for a meeting followed by lunch.

  The Solidarity leaders were a mixture of workers and intellectuals. Mr Walesa was in the former group, but he had a large physical presence as well as a symbolic importance, which allowed him to dominate. He told me that Solidarity was disinclined to accept the Government’s invitation to join in round-table talks, believing that the purpose was to divide and if possible discredit the opposition. Solidarity’s goal he described as ‘pluralism’, that is a state of affairs in which the Communist Party was not the sole legitimate authority. What struck me, though, was that they did not have a specific plan of action with immediate practical objectives. Indeed, when I said that I thought that Solidarity should attend the talks and submit its own proposals in the form of a detailed agenda with supporting papers my hosts looked quite astonished.

  Over lunch – one of the best game stews I have ever tasted – we argued through together what their negotiating stance might be and how in my final discussions with the Polish Government I could help. We decided that the most important point I could make to General Jaruzelski was that Solidarity must be legalized. Throughout I was repeatedly impressed by the moderation and eloquence of Mr Walesa and his colleagues. At one point I said: ‘You really must see that the Government hears all this.’ ‘No problem’, replied Mr Walesa, pointing up to the ceiling; ‘our meetings are bugged anyway.’

  After lunch it was suggested that I might like to look around the nearby church of St Brygida. To my delighted astonishment, when Mr Walesa and I entered I found the whole church packed with Polish families who rose and sang the Solidarity anthem ‘God give us back our free Poland’: I could not keep the tears from my eyes. I seemed to have shaken hundreds of hands as I walked around the church. I gave a short emotional speech and Lech Walesa spoke too. As I left, there were people in the streets crying with emotion and shouting ‘Thank you, thank you’ over and over again. I returned to Warsaw with greater determination than ever to do battle with the communist authorities.

  In my final meeting with General Jaruzelski I kept my word to Solidarity. I told him that I was grateful that he had put no obstacle in the way of my visit to Gdansk – though it has to be said that the authorities had put on a total news blackout about it both before and afterwards. I said how impressed I had been by Solidarity’s moderation. If they were good enough to attend round-table discussions, they were also good enough to be legalized. General Jaruzelski gave no impression of being prepared to budge.

  A fortnight later I was back in Washington as President Reagan’s last official guest. This gave me the chance of discussions with President-elect Bush.

  I later learned that President Bush was sometimes exasperated by my habit of talking nonsto
p about issues which fascinated me and felt that he ought to have been leading the discussion. More important than all of this, perhaps, was the fact that, as President, George Bush felt the need to distance himself from his predecessor: turning his back fairly publicly on the special position I had enjoyed in the Reagan Administration’s counsels and confidence was a way of doing that. This was understandable; and by the time of my last year in office we had established a better relationship. By then I had learned that I had to defer to him in conversation and not to stint the praise. If that was what was necessary to secure Britain’s interests and influence, I had no hesitation in eating a little humble pie.

  Unfortunately, even then the US State Department continued to put out briefings against me and my policies – particularly on Europe – until the onset of the Gulf crisis made them hastily change their stance. To some extent the relative tilt of American foreign policy against Britain in this period may have been the result of the influence of Secretary of State James Baker. Although he was always very courteous to me, we were not close. Yet that was not crucial. Rather, it was the fact that Jim Baker’s many abilities lay in the area of ‘fixing’. He had had a mixed record of this, having as US Treasury Secretary been responsible for the ill-judged Plaza and Louvre Accords which brought ‘exchange rate stability’ back to the centre of the West’s economic policies with highly deleterious effects. Now at the State Department Jim Baker and his team brought a similar, allegedly ‘pragmatic’ problem-solving approach to bear on US foreign policy.