The Path to Power m-2

by Margaret Thatcher

  Within the Shadow Cabinet I was aware of a broadly similar range of views. Shadow ministers in general did not want to make education a major issue in the forthcoming election. Nor was this necessarily a foolish view. Both the Party’s own internal polling and published polls showed that the 11-Plus was widely unpopular and that people were at least prepared to say that they supported comprehensive schools. Whether they would have felt the same if they had been asked about re-organizing specific local schools on comprehensive lines and whether, in any case, they understood what was meant by ‘comprehensivization’ were of course different matters. There was, for example, a large difference between the full expression of the comprehensive concept, which was essentially one of social engineering and only secondarily educational, under which there was no streaming at all according to ability, and — on the other hand — a school to which entry was open to all, but which streamed by ability. In fact, as I was to point out in the Second Reading debate of Labour’s Education Bill in February 1970, it was absurd for the socialists to attack the principle of selection, since it would continue to apply in one way or another throughout the system from the age of eleven. I might have added that when you stop selecting by ability you have to select according to some other inevitably less satisfactory criterion. In practice, this would usually be income, because families with sufficient money would move and buy houses in middle-class areas where a well-run school was available for their children. Some Labour Members and many Labour supporters understood all this well enough, and felt betrayed by Harold Wilson’s abandonment of his own personal commitment to keep the grammar schools. When I won a surprise victory in the Committee Stage debate, knocking out Clause 1 of the Bill, it was because two Labour Members absented themselves.

  But by the time I took on the Education portfolio, the Party’s policy group had presented its report and the policy itself was largely established. It had two main aspects. We had decided to concentrate on improving primary schools. And in order to defuse as much as possible the debate about the 11-Plus, and in place of Labour’s policy of comprehensivization by coercion, we stressed the autonomy of local education authorities in proposing the retention of grammar schools or the introduction of comprehensive schools.

  The good arguments for this programme were that improvements in the education of younger children were vital if the growing tendency towards illiteracy and innumeracy was to be checked and, secondly, that in practice the best way to retain grammar schools was to fight centralization. There were, however, arguments on the other side. There was not much point in spending large sums on nursery and primary schools and the teachers for them, if the teaching methods and attitudes were wrong. Nor, of course, were we in the long run going to be able to defend grammar schools — or, for that matter, private schools, direct grant schools and even streamed comprehensive schools — if we did not fight on grounds of principle.

  Within the limits which the agreed policy and political realities allowed me, I went as far as I could. This was a good deal too far for some people, as I learned when, shortly after my appointment, I was the guest of the education correspondents at the Cumberland Hotel in London. I put the case not just for grammar schools but for secondary moderns. Those children who were not able to shine academically could in fact acquire responsibilities and respect at a separate secondary modern school, which they would never have done if in direct and continual competition and contact with the more academically gifted. I was perfectly prepared to see the 11-Plus replaced or modified by testing later in a child’s career, if that was what people wanted. I knew that it was quite possible for late developers at a secondary modern to be moved to the local grammar school so that their abilities could be properly stretched. I was sure that there were too many secondary modern schools which were providing a second-rate education — but this was something which should be remedied by bringing their standards up, rather than grammar school standards down. Only two of those present at the Cumberland Hotel lunch seemed to agree. Otherwise I was met by a mixture of hostility and blank incomprehension. It was not just that they thought me wrong: they could not imagine that I could seriously believe such things. It opened my eyes to the dominance of socialist thinking among those whose task it was to provide the public with information about education.

  There were still some relatively less important issues in Conservative education policy to be decided. I fought hard to have an unqualified commitment to raising the school leaving age to sixteen inserted into the manifesto, and succeeded against some doubts from the Treasury team. I also met strong opposition from Ted Heath when at our discussions at Selsdon Park in early 1970 I argued that the manifesto should endorse the proposed new independent University of Buckingham. In spite of backing from Keith Joseph and others, I lost this battle but was at least finally permitted to make reference to the university in a speech. Quite why Ted felt so passionately against it I have never fully understood.

  The Selsdon Park policy weekend at the end of January and beginning of February was a success, but not for the reasons usually given. The idea that Selsdon Park was the scene of debate which resulted in a radical rightward shift in Party policy is false. The main lines of policy had already been agreed and incorporated into a draft manifesto which we spent our time considering in detail. Our line on immigration had also been carefully spelt out. Our proposals for trade union reform had been published in Fair Deal at Work. On incomes policy, a rightward but somewhat confused shift was in the process of occurring. Labour had effectively abandoned its own policy. There was no need, therefore, to enter into the vexed question of whether some kind of ‘voluntary’ incomes policy might be pursued. But it was clear that Reggie Maudling was unhappy that we had no proposals to deal with what was still perceived as ‘wage inflation’. In fact, the manifesto, in a judicious muddle, avoided either a monetarist approach or a Keynesian one and said simply: ‘The main causes of rising prices are Labour’s damaging policies of high taxation and devaluation. Labour’s compulsory wage control was a failure and we will not repeat it.’

  This in turn led us into some trouble later. During the election campaign the fallacious assertion that high taxes caused inflation inspired a briefing note from Central Office. This note allowed the Labour Party to claim subsequently that we had said that we would cut prices ‘at a stroke’ by means of tax cuts.

  Thanks to the blanket press coverage of Selsdon Park, we seemed to be a serious alternative Government committed to long-term thinking about the policies for Britain’s future. We were also helped by Harold Wilson’s attack on ‘Selsdon Man’. It gave us an air of down-to-earth right-wing populism which countered the somewhat aloof image conveyed by Ted. Above all, both Selsdon Park and the Conservative manifesto, A Better Tomorrow, contrasted favourably with the deviousness, inconsistency and horse trading which by now characterized the Wilson Government, especially since the abandonment of In Place of Strife under trade union pressure.[13]

  Between our departure from Selsdon Park and the opening of the general election campaign in May, however, there was a reversal of the opinion poll standing of the two parties. At Selsdon we were in the lead and we thought we would win. In May quite suddenly we lost ground and appeared to be several points behind. Influenced by the short-term change in the polls, Harold Wilson called the election for 10 June — a mistake I never forgot when I became Prime Minister. But at the time most of us — including myself — thought that we would lose. The gloom steadily deepened. During the campaign I called in one day at the Conservative Research Department offices in Old Queen Street for some briefing material and was struck by how depressed everybody seemed.

  Quite why this turnaround had occurred (or indeed how real it actually was) is hard to know. With the prospect of a general election there is always a tendency for disillusioned supporters to resume their party allegiance. But it is also true — and it is something that we would pay dearly for in Government — that we had not seriously set out to wi
n the battle of ideas against socialism during our years in Opposition. And indeed, although we did not realize it, our rethinking of policy had not been as fundamental as it should have been.

  The campaign itself was largely taken up with Labour attacks on our policies. We for our part, like any Opposition, but with more cause and opportunity than most, highlighted the long list of Labour’s broken promises — ‘steady industrial growth all the time’, ‘no stop-go measures’, ‘no increase in taxation’, ‘no increase in unemployment’, ‘the pound in your pocket not devalued’, ‘economic miracle’ and many more. This was the theme I pursued in my campaign speeches. But I also used a speech to a dinner organized by the National Association of Head Teachers in Scarborough to outline our education policies.

  It is hard to know just what turned the tide, if indeed there was a tide against us to turn. Paradoxically perhaps, the Conservative figures who made the greatest contribution were those two fierce enemies Ted Heath and Enoch Powell. No one could describe Ted as a great communicator, not least because for the most part he paid such little attention to communication. But as the days went by he came across as a decent man, someone with integrity and a vision — albeit a somewhat technocratic one — of what he wanted for Britain. It seemed, to use Keith’s words to me five years earlier, that he had ‘a passion to get Britain right’. This was emphasized in Ted’s powerful introduction to the manifesto in which he attacked Labour’s ‘cheap and trivial style of government’ and ‘government by gimmick’ and promised ‘a new style of government’. Ted’s final Party Election Broadcast also showed him as an honest patriot who cared deeply about his country and wanted to serve it. Though it would not have saved him had we lost, he had fought a good campaign.

  So had Enoch Powell. There had been much speculation as to whether he would endorse the Conservative leadership and programme. Attitudes towards Enoch remained sharply polarized. When he came in March to speak to my Association we were subject to strong criticism and I decided to issue a statement to the effect that: ‘Those who use this country’s great tradition of freedom of speech should not seek to deny that same freedom to others, especially to those who, like Mr Powell, spent their war years in distinguished service in the Forces.’

  In the June campaign Enoch made three powerful speeches on the economic failure of the Labour Government, law and order, and Europe, urging people to vote Conservative. Furthermore, a bitter personal attack on Enoch by Tony Benn, linking him to fascism, probably rallied many otherwise unsympathetic voters to his standard. There is some statistical evidence that Enoch’s intervention helped tip the balance in the West Midlands in a close election.

  When my own result was announced to a tremendous cheer at Hendon College of Technology, it appeared that I had increased my majority to over 11,000 over Labour. Then I went down to the Daily Telegraph party at the Savoy, where it quite soon became clear that the opinion polls had been proved wrong and that we were on course for an overall majority.

  Friday was spent in my constituency clearing up and writing the usual thank-you letters. I thought that probably Ted would have at least one woman in his Cabinet, and that since he had got used to me in the Shadow Cabinet I would be the lucky girl. On the same logic, I would probably get the Education brief.

  On Saturday morning the call from the No. 10 Private Secretary came through. Ted wanted to see me. When I went in to the Cabinet Room I began by congratulating him on his victory. But not much time was spent on pleasantries. He was as ever brusque and businesslike, and he offered me the job of Education Secretary, which I accepted.

  I went back to the flat at Westminster Gardens with Denis and we drove to Lamberhurst. Sadly my father was not alive to share the moment. Shortly before his death in February, I had gone up to Grantham to see him. Having always had a weak chest, he had now developed emphysema and had oxygen beside the bed. My stepmother, Cissy, whom he had married several years earlier and with whom he had been very happy, was constantly at his bedside. While I was there, friends from the church, business, local politics, the Rotary and bowling club, kept dropping in ‘just to see how Alf was’. I hoped that at the end of my life I too would have so many good friends.

  I understand that my father had been listening to me as a member of a panel on a radio programme just before he died. He never knew that I would become a Cabinet minister, and I am sure that he never imagined I would eventually become Prime Minister. He would have wanted these things for me because politics was so much a part of his life and because I was so much his daughter. But nor would he have considered that political power was the most important or even the most effective thing in life. In searching through my papers to assemble the material for this volume I came across some of my father’s loose sermon notes slipped into the back of my sixth-form chemistry exercise book.

  Men, nations, races or any particular generation cannot be saved by ordinances, power, legislation. We worry about all this, and our faith becomes weak and faltering. But all these things are as old as the human race — all these things confronted Jesus 2,000 years ago… This is why Jesus had to come.

  My father lived these convictions to the end.

  CHAPTER VI

  Teacher’s Pest

  The Department of Education 1970–1974

  FIRST IMPRESSIONS

  On Monday 22 June 1970 I arrived at the Department of Education and Science (DES) in its splendid old quarters in Curzon Street (alas, in 1973 we moved to a hideous new office block at Waterloo). I was met by the Permanent Secretary, Bill (later Sir William) Pile and the outgoing Permanent Secretary, Sir Herbert Andrew. They gave me a warm greeting and showed me up to my impressive private office. It was all too easy to slip once more into the warm water of civil service respect for ‘the minister’, but I was very conscious that hard work lay ahead. I was generally satisfied with the ministerial team I had been allotted: one friendly, one hostile and one neutral. My old friend Lord Eccles, as Paymaster General, was responsible for the Arts. Bill Van Straubenzee, a close friend of Ted’s, dealt with Higher Education. Lord Belstead answered for the department in the Lords. I was particularly pleased that David Eccles, a former Minister of Education, was available, though installed in a separate building, to give me private advice based on his knowledge of the department.

  My difficulties with the department, however, were not essentially about personalities. Nor, after the first culture shock, did they stem from the opposition between my own executive style of decision-making and the more consultative style to which they were accustomed. Indeed, by the time I left I was aware that I had won a somewhat grudging respect because I knew my own mind and expected my decisions to be carried out promptly and efficiently. The real problem was — in the widest sense — one of politics.

  I do not know and did not enquire how the senior civil servants around me voted. But the ethos of the DES was self-righteously socialist. For the most part, these were people who retained an almost reflex belief in the ability of central planners and social theorists to create a better world. There was nothing cynical about this. Years after many people in the Labour Party had begun to have their doubts, the educationalists retained a sense of mission. Equality in education was not only the overriding good, irrespective of the practical effects of egalitarian policies on particular schools; it was a stepping stone to achieving equality in society, which was itself an unquestioned good. It was soon clear to me that on the whole I was not among friends.

  The counter-argument would presumably be that since I was seeking to challenge the conventional wisdom in education, I could hardly complain when I met with opposition. There are, however, two considerations which must be weighed against that. First, civil servants owe ministers honest, accurate advice based on fact, rather than slanted submissions based on preconceptions that the Government (and the electorate) have rejected. Second, it is highly damaging, even judged by the narrow criteria of good and impartial administration, for a department to become as close
ly connected with its clients as the DES was with the teaching unions, in particular the National Union of Teachers (NUT). I saw this in the flesh quite early on when on Saturday 12 September 1970 I was deputed at the last moment, because of the Leila Khalid affair,[14] to deliver Ted Heath’s speech at a Guildhall dinner to celebrate the centenary of the NUT. There were a large number of DES senior civil servants present and it was immediately clear to me that they and the NUT leaders were on the closest of terms. There were all those in-jokes, unstated allusions, and what is now called ‘body language’ which signify not just common courtesy but rather a common sympathy.

  My difficulties with the civil service were compounded by the fact that we had been elected in 1970 with a set of education policies which were perhaps less clear than they appeared. During the campaign I had hammered away at seven points:

  • a shift of emphasis onto primary schools

  • the expansion of nursery education (which fitted in with Keith Joseph’s theme of arresting the ‘cycle of deprivation’)

  • in secondary education, the right of local education authorities to decide what was best for their areas, while warning against making ‘irrevocable changes to any good school unless… the alternative is better’

  • raising the school leaving age to sixteen

  • encouraging direct grant schools and retaining private schools[15]

  • expanding higher and further education

  • holding an inquiry into teacher training

  But those pledges did not reflect a clear philosophy. As I have already indicated, different people and different groups within the Conservative Party favoured very different approaches to education, in particular to secondary education and the grammar schools. On the one hand, there were some Tories who had a commitment to comprehensive education which barely distinguished them from moderate socialists. On the other, the authors of the so-called Black Papers on education had, to their credit, started to spell out a radically different approach, based on discipline, choice and standards (including the retention of existing grammar schools with high standards). Their case was strongly founded in well-informed criticisms of the present system. We were caught between these two opposing views. And for all our talk of coherent strategies and deliberate decision-making, this was not a government which felt any inclination to resolve fundamental contradictions. I was very conscious that in any struggle with the civil service I might not be able to count on the support of all my Cabinet colleagues.