Willie and I both attended the Young Conservative Conference at Eastbourne on Saturday 8 February. One woman on the platform was dressed in funereal black and glowering. I was rather concerned and asked her whether anything was wrong. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I’m in mourning for Mr Heath.’ There were few other mourners present. Willie and I were photographed as we kissed for the cameras. I remarked: ‘Willie and I have been friends for years. I’ve done that to Willie many times and he to me. It was not that difficult for him to do it, I think.’ Willie replied: ‘I’ve kissed her often. But we have not done it on a pavement outside a hotel in Eastbourne before.’ It was all good fun and the atmosphere lightened.
I used my own speech to the Conference to give a full-blooded rendering of my views. I said:
You can get your economic policies right, and still have the kind of society none of us would wish. I believe we should judge people on merit and not on background. I believe the person who is prepared to work hardest should get the greatest rewards and keep them after tax. That we should back the workers and not the shirkers: that it is not only permissible but praiseworthy to want to benefit your own family by your own efforts.
Conservatives had not heard this sort of message for many years, and it went down well.
Airey, Keith, my other advisers and I looked at the situation after the first ballot. Our general approach was to concentrate on the electorate — the 276 Tory MPs — pointing out that I had already won a near majority of them, that I was pulling steadily away from the field and that my four rivals were fighting for second place. In these circumstances we felt that I had little to gain from debates with the other candidates. But a slight stir was created when I decided not to appear on Panorama with them. They went ahead without me. But this was Hamlet without a Princess. It merely emphasized my status as the front-runner.
And then on Tuesday the second ballot took place. Again I waited nervously in Airey’s room. And again it was Airey who came to give me the news. This time it was subtly but decisively different. He smiled and said: ‘You are now Leader of the Opposition.’ I had obtained 146 votes to Willie’s seventy-nine. The other candidates were out of the picture.[33]
I rapidly scribbled some thoughts in the back of my diary because I knew I would now have to go and give my first press conference as Party Leader. The first item was ‘TED’, because it was most important to pay tribute to his leadership.
I now had to hurry down to the Grand Committee Room, off Westminster Hall, where the press were waiting. I told them: ‘To me it is like a dream that the next name in the lists after Harold Macmillan, Sir Alec Douglas-Home, Edward Heath, is Margaret Thatcher. Each has brought his own style of leadership and stamp of greatness to his task. I shall take on the work with humility and dedication.’
Then it was off for the Leader’s traditional first visit to Conservative Central Office. On entering, I could not help remembering how hard some of the people there had worked to stop my becoming Leader. I shook hands with a line of Party officials, stopping to kiss Russell Lewis, the Conservative Political Centre Director who I knew had actually wanted me to win. I have no doubt there were many anxious thoughts behind the polite, smiling faces that evening. And not without reason. For though I was not interested in paying off old scores, I was already sure that changes must be made.
Then I was driven back to Bill Shelton’s house in Pimlico for a celebration with my friends. Denis was there. I had tried to telephone the news through to him myself, but somehow the Press Association beat me to it. Mark learned the news while he was at work as a trainee accountant. As for Carol, she could not be disturbed until she had finished the solicitors’ exam she was taking that afternoon.
Only much later that night, after I had returned from dinner with the Chief Whip, Humphrey Atkins, could all of the family celebrate the good news. It was wonderful to be together. I suspect that they knew, as I did, that from this moment on our lives would never be quite the same again.
Nor would the Conservative Party, as a perceptive leader in the Daily Telegraph the following morning observed:
What kind of leadership Mrs Thatcher will provide remains to be seen… But one thing is clear enough at this stage. Mrs Thatcher is a bonny fighter. She believes in the ethic of hard work and big rewards for success. She has risen from humble origins by effort and ability and courage. She owes nothing to inherited wealth or privilege. She ought not to suffer, therefore, from that fatal and characteristic twentieth-century Tory defect of guilt about wealth. All too often this has meant that the Tories have felt themselves to be at a moral disadvantage in the defence of capitalism against socialism. This is one reason why Britain has travelled so far down the collectivist road. What Mrs Thatcher ought to be able to offer is the missing moral dimension to the Tory attack on socialism. If she does so, her accession to the leadership could mark a sea-change in the whole character of the party political debate in this country.
It was a mighty challenge. At the time I did not realize how mighty.
CHAPTER IX
A Bumpy Ride
Leader of the Opposition February 1975–March 1977
SHADOW CABINET-MAKING
My first task was to compose the Shadow Cabinet. I met Humphrey Atkins, the Chief Whip, in the Leader of the Opposition’s room in the House of Commons where we had an excellent dinner prepared by his wife Maggie. Humphrey Atkins had, of course, been Ted’s appointment, and occupying the position he did had not declared his support for one side or the other in the leadership contest. But he was amiable and amenable and, as Chief Whip, was possessed of the unique fund of knowledge and gossip so essential when making high political appointments. I told Humphrey that although there were some people, like Keith Joseph and Airey Neave, to whom I felt a special obligation, I did not want to make a clean sweep of the existing team. After the bitterness of the contest with Ted there had to be sufficient continuity to keep the Party together.
The more we talked, however, the clearer it became to both of us that all the other dispositions depended upon Ted. If he wished to serve under my leadership — and I had publicly committed myself to offering him the opportunity during the leadership campaign — he might decide that he wanted one of the three main Shadow posts, or possibly a post without portfolio. In fact, I privately hoped that he would not take up my offer at all. Although none of us knew how enduring his sense of injury would be, it was already hard to imagine Ted behaving like Alec Douglas-Home and fitting in as a loyal and distinguished member of his successor’s team. In any case, the newspapers were saying that Ted had no intention of serving. But I had to know for myself. I had thought of going to see him that evening, but all things considered it seemed better that Humphrey should make the first approach. Having sounded Ted out and received the impression that the speculation about his intentions was accurate, Humphrey reported back to me. But I had said I would make the offer, and the following morning I was driven to Ted’s house in Wilton Street to do it in person.
Tim Kitson, Ted’s PPS, showed me into the downstairs study, facing onto the garden. Ted was sitting at his desk. He did not get up; and I sat down without waiting to be asked. There was no point in pleasantries. I could guess what he thought about recent events and about me. Without offering a specific post, I asked him whether he would join the Shadow Cabinet. He said no, he would stay on the backbenches. The interview was effectively at an end. For my part, I had no wish to prolong the meeting. I knew that it must be painful and probably humiliating for him. But I also knew that if I walked out of Wilton Street past the assembled press after just a few minutes, the lunchtime news would be dominated by stories of snubs and splits. Also, I had not finished my coffee. So I spun things out a little by asking his views about Labour’s promised referendum on Britain’s continuing membership of the European Economic Community and, in particular, whether he would lead the Conservative campaign.[34] Again, he said no. I had done all I decently could to keep Ted within the fold and to
ensure the meeting did not end too abruptly. But only five minutes or so had elapsed when I left Ted’s study. So Tim Kitson (who was equally aware of the risk of bad publicity) and I talked inconsequentially for another quarter of an hour to fill out the time before I left the house. Respecting, as I thought, Ted’s confidence, I did not even tell Airey Neave, who was setting up my office, the details of what had transpired. I made it public later only in order to set the record straight.[35] I returned to the House of Commons and told Humphrey Atkins that Ted would indeed not be in the Shadow Cabinet.
Next, Robert Carr, who had been acting Leader of the Party during the leadership campaign, wanted to see me. He had, of course, been close to Ted and was identified with the corporatist tendency in the Party. I could well understand if he did not relish the prospect of serving under me. In fact, when I saw him he made it quite clear that the only post he would accept was that of Shadow Foreign Secretary. I said that I could not promise him that. Not only was I unwilling to have my hands tied before I had properly considered the shape of the team as a whole: I was not convinced that Robert Carr would have a place in it.
By contrast, Willie Whitelaw definitely had. He had demonstrated his popularity in the leadership election. He was immensely experienced and his presence would be a reassuring guarantee to many on the backbenches that evolution rather than revolution was the order of the day. Perhaps both of us already sensed that we could form a strong political partnership, our strengths and weaknesses complementing one another’s. Although I could not as yet offer him a particular portfolio, I asked Willie to be Deputy Leader of the Party, and he accepted. But his loyalty was not contingent on that; he was loyal from the first.
There was much male chauvinist hilarity — ‘Give us a kiss, Maggie,’ etc. — when I came into the Chamber to hear the Prime Minister, Harold Wilson, make a statement. I took my place on the front bench between Willie and Robert Carr. Jim Prior, Geoffrey Howe and John Peyton — the other defeated leadership candidates — were also there, though Ted was not. I received the wittily barbed congratulations of the Prime Minister and replied somewhat less wittily to them. Harold Wilson was at his still incomparable best in the House. As I listened, I reflected that as a new Leader of a shaken and still badly split party, and as a woman striving for dominance in this noisy, boisterous, masculine world, I could expect difficulties ahead. And so it proved.
That evening I chaired the Shadow Cabinet for the first time. The meeting had a slightly unreal atmosphere since none of those present had yet been formally reappointed, and some would not be. Quintin Hailsham congratulated me on the Shadow Cabinet’s behalf and pledged their loyalty and cooperation. I felt that he at least probably meant it. I said that Willie had agreed to be Deputy Leader and that Ted had turned down my offer of a place in the Shadow Cabinet. Willie then said that he had accepted the Deputy Leadership at once and looked forward to serving in this capacity. The formalities thus indicated a kind of armed truce between the competing views and personalities.
The following evening, I made my first appearance as Leader at the 1922 Committee meeting. My relations with the wider Parliamentary Party were much easier than with the Shadow Cabinet. As I entered, everyone rose to their feet. Edward du Cann presented me with an unsigned Valentine card (a day early) which would join the other Valentines and roses that accumulated at Flood Street. In addressing the 1922 Committee it is the Leader’s mood and bearing rather than the content of a speech which matter most. But they seemed to like the message as well — namely, the need to distinguish the Conservative approach clearly from that of the socialists, to return to traditional values of independence and self-help and to challenge the assumption that the onward march of the Left was irreversible. I sat down amid much clapping, banging of desks and that curious deep braying with which the Parliamentary Conservative Party expresses its approval.
In the next few days my time was taken up in meeting journalists, discussing arrangements for my office and fulfilling long-standing constituency engagements. There were few opportunities to sit down with Humphrey and Willie to discuss Shadow Cabinet membership. In any case, I wanted the weekend to make my final decisions. But the delay encouraged speculation. According to the press a battle was under way to prevent Keith Joseph becoming Shadow Chancellor. In fact, he did not ask for the position nor did I offer it.
My Shadow Cabinet-making was smoothed by the fact that Peter Thomas and Geoffrey Rippon made it clear that they did not want to continue. That meant two more vacancies to play with. I spent Saturday and Sunday at Flood Street making and remaking the list, consulting Humphrey or Willie on particular points. On Monday I made the appointments in a series of meetings with colleagues at my room in the Commons.
Willie was the first to come in. I gave him a roving brief which included the issue of devolution — which already spelt political difficulties he, as both a former Chief Whip and a Scot representing an English seat, might be able to tackle. Then I saw Keith Joseph, whom I asked to continue with his Shadow Cabinet responsibility for policy and research. In a sense, Willie and Keith were the two key figures, one providing the political brawn and the other the policy-making brains of the team. I also felt that Keith must continue his intellectual crusade from the Centre for Policy Studies for wider understanding and acceptance of free-enterprise economics. I was under no illusion that my victory in the leadership election represented a wholesale conversion. Our ability to change Party policy, as the first step towards making changes in government, depended upon using our positions to change minds. Unfortunately, on his forays into the universities Keith was to find a readier hearing from the Militant Tendency in his avowedly left-wing audiences than he would from the cynical tendency among his colleagues.
My next visitor was Reggie Maudling. I suspect that, although he had made it clear publicly that he was willing to serve, he was as surprised as the press when I made him Shadow Foreign Secretary. Though widely praised at the time, this was not a good appointment. I had always admired Reggie’s intellect and regretted that he had had to resign over the Poulson affair in 1972. Also bringing Reggie back to deal with foreign affairs appeared a convincing answer to those who had contrasted Ted’s experience with my own lack of it. But it soon became clear that Reggie was not prepared to modify his own views, a problem compounded by the fact that, more broadly, he had an only thinly disguised contempt for the monetarist approach which Keith and I wanted to pursue. I would have done better to appoint someone who shared my instincts on defence and foreign policy.
Still less of a soulmate was Ian Gilmour. I suspect that when he learned that I wanted to see him he expected the worst. He had been a strong partisan of Ted, and he lacked the support or standing which might have made him politically costly to dispense with. But I valued his intelligence. I felt that he could make a useful contribution as long as he was kept out of an economic post, to which in spite of his later reputation as one of the foremost advocates of ‘reflation’ neither his training nor his aptitudes suited him. I asked him to be Shadow Home Secretary.
Michael Heseltine, who now came in to see me, had a much more flamboyant personality than Ian’s, although they shared many of the same views. He too had long been a Heath supporter, but it had always been assumed that the cause he most strongly advocated was his own. My campaign team believed him to have been an abstainer in the first round of the leadership contest. To do Michael credit, he was always refreshingly open about his ambitions. I asked him to stay on as Shadow Industry Secretary. It was a portfolio which fascinated him and which gave full scope to his talent for Opposition, since it fell to him to fight the Labour Government’s main nationalization proposals. What I did not fully grasp at this time was how ideologically committed he was to an interventionist approach in industry which I could not accept.
After a lunchtime meeting of small businessmen at the National Chamber of Trade, where I made my first public speech as Leader, I returned to my room at the House for more Shadow Ca
binet carpentry. I asked Peter Carrington to stay on as Leader of the House of Lords. Again, I had no illusions about Peter’s position in the Tory Party’s political spectrum: he was not of my way of thinking. He had, of course, been in Ted’s inner circle making the political decisions about the miners’ strike and the February 1974 election. But since we lost office he had proved an extremely effective Opposition Leader in the Upper House, and as a former Defence Minister and an international businessman he had wide experience of foreign affairs. Admittedly, he was likely in Shadow Cabinet to be on the opposite side to me on economic policy. But he never allowed economic disagreements to get in the way of his more general responsibilities. He brought style, experience, wit and — politically incorrect as the thought may be — a touch of class.
Geoffrey Howe had his own droll wit. But in most other ways he was a very different politician from my other appointments that day. I would in any case have felt obliged to give Geoffrey a Shadow Cabinet post, simply because he was a candidate against me and I wished to unify the Party as much as possible. But it was a calculated gamble to make him Shadow Chancellor. I knew that as an immensely hard-working lawyer he would make the effort required to master his brief. I also knew that, in spite of his role in implementing the Heath Government’s prices and incomes policy as Minister for Trade and Consumer Affairs, he had a well-deserved reputation as a believer in free-market economics. As such, he was very much a rarity in the upper ranks of the Conservative Party. Once I had decided that Keith would be better employed overseeing policy rethinking, Geoffrey seemed the best candidate. Very few who come new to such a demanding portfolio find it trouble-free. Geoffrey was to have a difficult time both trying to resolve our divisions on economic policy and in defending our case in the House. I would be put under a good deal of pressure to remove him and find someone better able to take on the Chancellor, Denis Healey. But I knew that Geoffrey’s difficulties, like mine, were more the result of circumstances than lack of native talent. By the time our period in Opposition was approaching its end he had become indispensable.
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