The Path to Power m-2

by Margaret Thatcher

  In one sense, I had been politically marooned. Yet, as the weeks went by, I was pleasantly surprised to discover that my little island was no more deserted intellectually than socially. I found myself in the company not just of concerned friends but of like-minded academics, journalists and members of the younger generation of politicians, in fact those whose ideas and convictions were well placed to influence the future. I came to see that on leaving Downing Street I had, however disagreeably and unwillingly, broken out of the kind of self-imposed exile which high office brings. For years, I had had to deal with and work through politicians and civil servants who, with a few remarkable exceptions, by and large did not agree with me and shared little of my fundamental approach. They had dutifully done their part — and some beyond duty. But the inevitable loneliness of power had been exacerbated in my case by the fact that I so often had to act as a lone opponent of the processes and attitudes of government itself — the Government I myself headed. I was often portrayed as an outsider who by some odd mixture of circumstances had stepped inside and stayed there for eleven and a half years; in my case the portrayal was not inaccurate.

  Now I was outside again. But it was a different ‘outside’ than I remembered. I found that by contrast with those difficult days as Leader of the Opposition which I have described earlier in this book, nearly all the cleverest conservatives, those who had something to say and much to offer, were of my way of thinking. The revolution — of privatization, deregulation, tax-cutting, wider ownership, restoring self-reliance, building ladders out of poverty, strengthening our defences, securing the Atlantic alliance, restoring the country’s morale and standing — which had been so laboriously achieved inside Government had to some extent obscured from me the extent of the intellectual revolution which had occurred outside it. From time to time, for example at my annual visits to the Centre for Policy Studies, I had seen something of what was happening. But I had not grasped its full measure. And as I now came to have misgivings about some Government policies, I correspondingly placed greater hope in those outside Government who still carried on the battle of ideas. Moreover, this had its pleasant and practical side. For I never lacked stimulating conversation; and when I needed help with a speech or article or briefing on some abstruse subject there was a small army of enthusiastic and expert volunteers to provide it.

  I had a similar experience abroad, where my speech tours increasingly took me. To begin with, I was received as a former Prime Minister and spent much of my time with people I had known in office. But at the top of international politics the faces change quickly. Former contacts are a diminishing source of capital. What I really enjoyed and found intellectually bracing was when I was received not just for the office I had held — or even what others considered I had achieved — but for what in some more general sense I ‘represented’. I suppose I might have expected this in the United States, the seat of radical modern conservative thinking and almost my second home. But when I talked to politicians, businessmen and intellectuals from the newly liberated democracies of Central and Eastern Europe, to West Europeans who shared my concerns about Maastricht, to political and business leaders of Asian and Pacific countries whose economies were racing ahead by making full-blooded capitalism work, to those who were rapidly turning Latin American countries around from being Third World failures to First World dynamos, I found the same thing. I was simultaneously chairing and participating in a sort of revolving seminar. They wanted to hear all that they could from me; and I found myself learning much from them.

  Of course, I was equally aware of the setbacks — of weakening links between America and Europe, of former communists slipping back into power in the officially ‘post-communist’ world, and of the horrors of the Balkan tragedy which Western weakness allowed and encouraged and which streams of Slovenes, Croats, Bosnians and democratically-minded Serbs came in to describe to me. Yet, I felt from the way in which I was received by my hosts abroad (as well as the way in which I seemed to fall on my feet at home) that the basic themes I had preached and sought to practise over the years were as relevant and potent as ever. It was not that the world had turned away from my kind of conservatism, but rather that conservatives themselves in some countries had temporarily lost confidence in themselves and their message. The foreign visits were tiring. But I decided that while I had the strength — and so far there seems plenty — I would strive to influence the thinking of peoples, if no longer the actions of governments. And I hoped that when I could no longer fulfil that role myself my Foundation would do so for me.

  Sadly, as I have suggested, all this has become increasingly necessary. It is hard to imagine as I write these words that the West so recently secured a great victory over communist tyranny, and free-enterprise economics a decisive triumph over socialism. The mood in the West now seems to oscillate between bravado, cynicism and fear. There are problems at home. In most Western countries public spending on social entitlement programmes is leading to swollen deficits and higher taxes. There are problems abroad. Western defences are being run down and the resolve to use them is dwindling. There is deep confusion about the future of Europe and Britain’s place in it. The ‘special relationship’ with the United States has been allowed to cool to near freezing point. The West has failed to give the democrats in the post-communist world the support they needed; their place is being taken by too many dubious figures. First by our inaction, now by our weakness, we are encouraging the Russians to believe that they will only receive the respect and attention of the West if they behave like the old Soviet Union. In the former Yugoslavia aggression has been allowed to pay. And disarray grows in NATO, because it has destroyed an empire and not yet found a new role. Not that everything is bad. The world is a freer, if not necessarily safer, place than during the Cold War. But that most important element of political success is missing — a sense of purpose.

  Of course, I would say that, wouldn’t I? Perhaps. But others who often criticized me in Government are saying it too. In the pages which follow — on Europe, the wider international scene, social policy and the economy — I offer some thoughts about putting these things right. It is now, however, for others to take the action required.

  CHAPTER XIII

  Bruges or Brussels?

  Policy towards Europe

  NARROW INTERNATIONALISM

  Once a politician is given a public image by the media, it is almost impossible for him to shed it. At every important stage of his career, it steps between him and the public so that people seem to see and hear not the man himself but the invented personality to which he has been reduced.

  My public image was on the whole not a disadvantageous one; I was ‘the Iron Lady’, ‘Battling Maggie’, ‘Attila the Hen’, etc. Since these generally gave opponents the impression I was a hard nut to crack, I was glad to be so portrayed even though no real person could be so single-mindedly tough. In one respect, however, I suffered: whenever the topic of Europe arose, I was usually depicted as a narrow, nostalgic nationalist who could not bear to see the feudal trappings of Britain’s ancien régime crumble into dust like Miss Havisham’s wedding cake, when the sunlight of Europe’s rational modernity was turned upon them. I was ‘isolated’, ‘backward-looking’, ‘rooted in the past’, ‘clinging to the wreckage of Empire’, and ‘obsessed with the outdated notion of sovereignty’. And virtually all my statements on Europe were read in that light.

  In fact, of the three underlying reasons for my scepticism about European federalism, the most important was that the European Union was an obstacle to fruitful internationalism. (The other two were that Britain showed that established and ‘satisfied’ nationalisms were the best building-blocks for international cooperation; and that, as I argue elsewhere in this chapter, democracy cannot function in a federal superstate where the multiplicity of languages makes democratic debate and democratic accountability mere slogans.) The European federalists are in fact ‘narrow internationalists’, ‘little Europeans’
who consistently place the interests of the Community above the common interests of the wider international community. The EU came near to sabotaging the GATT; it has sparked a series of trade disputes across the Atlantic; it has prolonged the instability of Central and Eastern Europe by maintaining absurdly high trade barriers on their infant export industries; and it threatens to divide NATO with premature and militarily incomprehensible plans to establish a ‘European pillar’ or ‘European defence identity’. And most of these obstructive initiatives make no sense in their own terms; they are launched solely in order to bring nearer the day when ‘Europe’ will be a fully-fledged state with its own flag, anthem, army, parliament, government, currency and, eventually one supposes, people.

  I am not alone in warning that this could stimulate both the US and Japan to safeguard themselves by forming similar protectionist empires. The world might then drift towards an Orwellian future of Oceania, Eurasia and Eastasia — three mercantilist world empires on increasingly hostile terms. In the process the post-war international institutions which have served us well, like NATO and GATT, would be weakened, pushed aside and eventually made irrelevant. That prospect is still alive and should worry us.

  If we look ahead still further to the end of the twenty-first century, however, an even more alarming (because more unstable) future is on the cards. Consider the number of medium-to-large states in the world that now stand poised on the edge of a freemarket revolution: India, China, Brazil, possibly Russia. Add to these the present economic great powers: the USA, Japan, the European Union (or, with only a slight amendment of the scenario, a Franco-German ‘fast lane’ bloc). What we are possibly looking at in 2095 is an unstable world in which there are more than half a dozen ‘great powers’, all with their own clients, all vulnerable if they stand alone, all capable of increasing their power and influence if they form the right kind of alliance, and all engaged willy-nilly in perpetual diplomatic manoeuvres to ensure that their relative positions improve rather than deteriorate. In other words, 2095 might look like 1914 played on a somewhat larger stage.

  Whether your favourite nightmare is Orwell’s tripartite division of the spoils, or this vision of 1914 revisited, the key to avoiding it is the same. Neither need come to pass if the Atlantic Alliance remains, in essence, America as the dominant power surrounded by allies which, in their own long-term interest, generally follow its lead. Such are the realities of population, resources, technology and capital that if America remains the dominant partner in a united West, then the West can continue to be the dominant power in the world as a whole. And since collective security can only really be provided if there is a superpower of last resort, the rest of the world (apart from ‘rogue states’ and terrorist groups) would generally support, or at least acquiesce in, such an international structure.

  Britain’s role in such a structure would, I believe, be a disproportionately influential one. That is not, however, my principal reason for supporting it. My reason is that such a world best meets the needs of international peace and collective prosperity. It would also be a liberal world — politically, economically and culturally — and far more so than a world dominated by either Asian or Eurasian blocs, remarkable though their achievements have been in history and in recent years.

  Let me stress again, however, that it will not come to pass unless America is persuaded to remain the dominant European power militarily and economically. That means we must ensure that American troops remain in Europe for the foreseeable future, and in particular for the next few years when budgetary pressures will tempt the US to withdraw. In these circumstances, the EU’s creeping tendency to establish itself as a separate ‘third force’ risks alienating America and sending the legions home. The stakes are high. And to divide the West and move closer to permanent world instability in order that Europe may enjoy a modest increase in status as one independent superpower among seven or eight seems to me the most mischievous and irresponsible form of nationalism.

  TOWARDS MAASTRICHT

  One of the few things I still regret about the timing of my departure from Downing Street was that it prevented my coming to grips with the rapidly changing scene in Europe.[63] In the autumn of 1990 the groundwork was being laid for what would be the Maastricht Treaty, designed to set in place the framework for a federal United States of Europe. I had fought many battles within the European Community since becoming Prime Minister, but I had never before faced one of this scale and importance.

  It had, of course, been increasingly clear to me that the European Commission and a number of heads of government held a quite different view from mine about the purpose and direction of the Community. It was as a warning against the way in which statism, protectionism and federalism were advancing relentlessly that I delivered the Bruges speech in 1988. At Bruges I had argued against attempts to fit nations ‘into some sort of identikit European personality’, calling instead for ‘willing and active cooperation between independent sovereign states [as] the best way to build a successful European Community’.

  From then on I had been ever more preoccupied with the need to spell out and win domestic and foreign support for an alternative vision. It was by no means an impossible task, but the difficulties were legion. Within the Conservative Party there was a large minority of irreconcilable Euro-enthusiasts, willing to welcome almost anything stamped as made in Brussels. The Single European Act, contrary to my intentions and my understanding of formal undertakings given at the time, had provided new scope for the European Commission and the European Court to press forward in the direction of centralization. For their own different reasons, both France and Germany — and the Franco-German axis was dominant — were keen to move in the same direction. In the United States the Administration had made a crucial error of judgement in believing that promotion of a united Europe led by Germany would best secure America’s interests — though the experience of the Gulf War undoubtedly caused President Bush to question such assumptions.

  In spite of all this, I remained confident that given singleness of purpose and strength of will the Bruges alternative could be made to prevail — for three long-term influences favoured it. First, the need to accommodate the newly liberated countries of Eastern Europe created difficulties for the narrow Europeanism of the federalists which their high-tax, high-regulation, high-subsidy system could not ultimately meet. Secondly, global economic changes, which dramatically widened horizons in finance and business, would reduce the relative importance of the European Community itself. Thirdly, not just in Britain but increasingly in other European countries, the popular mood was moving away from remote bureaucracies and towards recovering historically rooted local and national identities. It might take a decade. But this, I felt, was a cause with a future.

  In my final speech to the House of Commons as Prime Minister on Thursday 22 November 1990 I taunted the Labour Party with its studied ambiguity on the large issues:

  They will not tell us where they stand. Do they want a single currency? Are they prepared to defend the rights of this United Kingdom Parliament? For them it is all compromise, sweep it under the carpet, leave it for another day, in the hope that the people of Britain will not notice what is happening to them, how the powers are gradually slipping away.

  I was not at that point to know, and indeed I would not have wanted to imagine, that precisely the same would soon be said of the Conservative Government led by my successor. I knew that John Major was likely to seek some kind of compromise with the majority of heads of government who wanted political and economic union. That had become clear from our exchanges when John was Chancellor.[64] Moreover, I could well understand that after the bitter arguments over Europe which preceded my resignation he would want to bind up wounds in the Party. But I was not prepared for the speed with which the position I had adopted would be entirely reversed.

  In December the Foreign Secretary, Douglas Hurd, publicly advocated a distinctive European defence role through the Western European
Union (WEU), which I had always distrusted, aware that others, particularly the French, would like to use it as an alternative to a NATO inevitably dominated by America. Then in March 1991 the Prime Minister announced in Bonn that Britain’s place was ‘at the very heart of Europe’. This seemed to me a plain impossibility in more than merely the geographical sense, since our traditions and interests diverged sharply in many areas from those of our Continental neighbours. For instance, in trade generally, and in agricultural trade in particular, Britain is both more open and more dependent on countries outside Europe than are our European partners.

  I wanted to avoid appearing to undermine my successor. I knew that his position was still fragile and I wanted him to succeed. I had faced sufficient difficulties from Ted Heath not to wish to inflict similar ones. As a result and paradoxically, I found myself even more constrained in what I was able to say after my resignation than before it. But I could not in good conscience stay silent when the whole future direction of Britain, even its status as a sovereign state, was at issue. So although I had the gravest misgivings about the reported shape of the draft treaties being discussed by heads of government, I sought to be positive, setting out in public the kind of Europe I wanted, while giving the Government the benefit of the doubt for as long as possible.