The Downing Street Years

by Margaret Thatcher

  We were by now under a good deal of political pressure on the Health Service and discussed at our meeting how to respond. However good the record of the service as a whole, there was plenty of evidence that it was not sufficiently sensitive to patients’ wishes, that there was much inefficiency and that some areas and hospitals were performing inexplicably worse than others, treating fewer patients etc. Norman Fowler at the 1986 Party Conference had set out a number of targets, backed up by special allocations of public spending, for increases in the number of particular sorts of operation. This announcement had gone well. I was reluctant to add the Health Service to the list of areas in which we were proposing fundamental reform — not least because not enough work had yet been done on it. The NHS was seen by many as a touchstone for our commitment to the welfare state and there were obvious dangers of coming forward with new proposals out of the blue. The direction of reform which I wanted to see was one towards bringing down waiting lists by ensuring that money moved with the patient, rather than got lost within the bureaucratic maze of the NHS. But that left so many questions still unanswered that I eventually ruled out any substantial new proposals on Health for the manifesto.

  After the meeting I wrote to Cabinet ministers asking them to bring forward any proposals which required policy approval for implementation in the next Parliament. Once this had been received, legislation could then be drafted for introduction in the new Parliament. To knock all these submissions into a coherent whole I established a small Manifesto Committee that reported directly to me. Chaired by John MacGregor, Chief Secretary to the Treasury, its other members were Brian Griffiths, Stephen Sherbourne, Robin Harris and John O’Sullivan, a former Associate Editor of The Times, who had joined my Policy Unit as a special adviser and who drafted the manifesto.

  The manifesto was designed to solve a serious political problem for us. As a party which had been in government for eight years, we had to dispel any idea that we were stale and running out of ideas. We therefore had to advance a number of clear, specific, new and well-worked-out reforms. At the same time we had to protect ourselves against the jibe: if these ideas are so good, why haven’t you introduced them before? We did so by presenting our reforms as the third stage of a rolling Thatcherite programme. In our first term, we revived the economy and reformed trade union law. In our second, we extended wealth and capital ownership more widely than ever before. In our third, we would give ordinary people the kind of choice and quality in public services that the rich already enjoyed. Looking back, once the manifesto was published, we heard no more about the Government running out of steam.

  The manifesto was the best ever produced by the Conservative Party. This was not just because it contained far-reaching proposals to reform education, housing, local government finance, trade unions and for more privatization and lower taxes. It was also because the manifesto projected a vision and then arranged the policies in a clear and logical away around it. So, for example, the proposals on education, housing and trade unions (requiring more use of secret ballots and protecting individual unionists’ rights not to join a strike) came almost at the very front of the document, highlighting the fact that we were embarked upon a great programme of ambitious social reform to give power to the people. Those we wanted to empower were not just (or even mainly) those who could afford their own homes or private schools for their children or who had large investments, but those who lacked these advantages.

  The manifesto went to the heart of my convictions. I believe that Conservative policies must liberate and empower those whom socialism traps, demoralizes and then contemptuously ignores. This, of course, is precisely what socialists most fear; it makes a number of paternalist Tories uneasy too.

  I held a meeting at Chequers on Tuesday 21 April with Willie Whitelaw, Norman Tebbit, David Young, Peter Morrison (Norman’s Deputy at Central Office) and the draftsmen and advisers to go through the whole text. Then the redrafting and checking began. Brian and John reported back to me. Stephen Sherbourne, with his special kind of tactful ruthlessness, kept all involved to the increasingly tight deadlines which had to be met. The main new development — and a substantial improvement — was suggested by David Young. This was to bring together the record of government achievements, entitled ‘Our First Eight Years’, in a separate document, to go in a wallet alongside the manifesto. David had great flair and energy, essential for this kind of work, and I left him in charge of overseeing the manifesto’s visual presentation and indeed involved him as much as possible in the wider election preparations.

  Because a good deal of misleading comment has been made about the background to and course of the 1987 general election campaign it is worth setting some matters straight at the outset. According to some versions of events this was all about a battle between rival Tory advertising agencies; according to other accounts the main participants — particularly myself — behaved in such an unbalanced way that it is difficult to see why we were all not carried off to one of our new NHS hospitals by the men in white coats, let alone re-elected. This was not to be a happy campaign; but it was a successful one and that is what counts. There were disagreements — but good old-fashioned stand-up rows, in which most of us regret what we have said and try to forget it about it without bearing grudges, feature in all election campaigns. (As far as I can gather there were no rows in what was generally seen as a smooth running and happy Labour campaign.) As it turned out, the talents and character of all the main participants in the Conservative campaign contributed to the victory, though perhaps the creative tension was more tense than creative on occasion.

  Apart from the manifesto and the practical preparations for the campaign, there was one other task which concerned us in the early months of 1987. This was the need to deal with the SDP-Liberal Alliance. The Alliance was by now led by the at first attractive but later increasingly ridiculous duo of the two Davids, Steel and Owen: it sought to represent itself as a credible, radical third force and if it did so might attract what (in the psephological jargon we all found it impossible to avoid) is called ‘soft’ Tory support. Within the Conservative Party there was a rumbling debate about how to deal with the Alliance. Some Conservatives on the left of the Party, who doubtless had more than a sneaking sympathy with the Alliance criticisms of my policies, were all for treating them lightly — or just ignoring them.

  Neither Norman Tebbit nor I saw things like this. The fact was that, for all the posturing, the SDP were retread socialists who had gone along with nationalization and increased trade union power when in office, and had only developed second thoughts about socialism when their ministerial salaries stopped in 1979. The Liberals have always, for their part, been the least scrupulous force in British politics, specializing in dubious tactics — fake opinion polls released on the eve of by-elections to suggest a nonexistent Liberal surge were a well-loved classic. Another tactic, which the SDP quickly borrowed, was to support one policy when talking to one group and a quite different one when talking to another. The analysis which Norman had done at Central Office showed quite clearly that there were splits and inconsistencies which we must exploit — and do so as far as possible before the election campaign itself began, when such matters risked becoming submerged.

  So Norman and I agreed that at the Central Council in Torquay on Saturday 21 March 1987 we would both use the occasion to launch an assault on the Alliance. I called the Alliance ‘the Labour Party in exile’, recalled the SDP leaders’ leading role in the last Labour Government and ended with a quotation from an old music hall song:

  I gather at the next election they are hoping to be asked to give us an encore — the two Davids in that ever-popular musical delight: ‘Don’t tell my mother I’m half of a horse in a panto.’

  While the manifesto was being drafted, I was discussing with Norman Tebbit what I hoped would be the final shape of the campaign and my own role in it. At our meeting on Thursday 16 April we went over press conference themes, advertising and party ele
ction broadcasts. By now I was in a mood for an early — June — election. We would have served the four years I always felt a government should. I felt in my bones that the popular mood was with us and that Labour’s public relations gimmicks were starting to look just a little tired.

  As is the way of these things, the most appropriate date eventually wrote itself into our programme — Thursday 11 June. By then we would have seen the results of the local elections which, as in 1983, would be run through the number-crunchers of Central Office to make it into a useful guide for a general election. It would be supplemented by other private polls Norman had commissioned: this was particularly necessary for Scotland and London where there were no local elections that year. Some polling in individual key constituencies would also be done: though such are the problems of sampling in constituency polls that no one would attach too much weight to these. I saw this analysis and heard senior colleagues’ views at Chequers on Sunday: I knew by then that the manifesto was in almost final form. I had been through the final text with the draftsmen and with Nigel and Norman on that Saturday.

  We had one last disagreement. Nigel wished to include a commitment to zero inflation in the next Parliament. I thought this was a hostage to fortune. Events unfortunately proved my caution right.

  As always, I slept on the decision about whether to go to the country, and then on Monday 11 May I arranged to see the Queen at 12.25 p.m. to seek a dissolution of Parliament for an election on 11 June.

  CLOTHES

  In my case, preparation for the election involved more than politics. I also had to be dressed for the occasion. I had already commissioned from Aquascutum suits, jackets and skirts — ‘working clothes’ for the campaign.

  I took a close interest in clothes, as most women do: but it was also extremely important that the impression I gave was right for the political occasion. In Opposition I had worn clothes from various suppliers. And if I had had any doubts about the importance of getting these matters very carefully organized, they were dissipated by the arrival of an outfit ordered for the Opening of Parliament in 1979. It was a beautiful sapphire blue suit with a matching hat. I had no time for a fitting and as I put it on with just a few minutes in hand I found to my horror that it neither fitted nor suited me and had to rush away to change into something else. It was a lesson not to order from a sketch, which can disguise unwanted bulges that are too painfully obvious to the real customer.

  From the time of my arrival in Downing Street, Crawfie helped me choose my wardrobe. Together we would discuss style, colour and cloth. Everything had to do duty on many occasions so tailored suits seemed right. (They also have the advantage of gently passing by the waist.) The most exciting outfits were perhaps those suits I had made — in black or dark blue — for the Lord Mayor’s Banquet. On foreign visits, it was, of course, particularly important to be appropriately dressed. We always paid attention to the colours of the national flag when deciding on what I should wear. The biggest change, however, was the new style I adopted when I visited the Soviet Union in the spring of 1987, for which I wore a black coat with shoulder pads, that Crawfie had seen in the Aquascutum window, and a marvellous fox fur hat. (Aquascutum have provided me with most of my suits ever since.)

  With the televising of the House of Commons after November 1989 new considerations arose. Stripes and checks looked attractive and cheerful in the flesh but they could dazzle the television viewer. One day when I had just not had enough time to change before going to the House, I continued to wear a black and white check suit. Afterwards a parliamentary colleague who had seen me on television told me, ‘what you said was all right, but you looked awful.’ I learned my lesson. People watching television would also notice whether I had worn the same suit on successive occasions and even wrote in about it. So from now on Crawfie always kept a note of what I wore each week for Prime Minister’s Questions. Out of these notes a diary emerged and each outfit received its own name, usually denoting the occasion it was first worn. The pages read something like a travel diary: Paris Opera, Washington Pink, Reagan Navy, Toronto Turquoise, Tokyo Blue, Kremlin Silver, Peking Black and last but not least English Garden. But now my mind was on the forthcoming campaign: it was time to lay out my navy and white check suit, to be known as ‘Election ‘87’.

  THE ELECTION CAMPAIGN

  The Conservative Party, as I pointed out earlier, deliberately makes a slow start in elections. A slow start, however, is one thing: no start at all is quite another. As the days went by, it seemed to me that the Opposition parties were making most of the running — though at one moment they fell over their own feet when Denis Healey told an astonished world direct from the Soviet capital, where he had been seeking to establish Labour’s international credentials, that Moscow was ‘praying for a Labour victory’.

  On Friday, I spoke at the Scottish Party Conference in Perth. But of course at that stage our manifesto had not been published, so my main message was a warning of what to expect from Labour, which would try to conceal its true nature and purpose: I told people to expect an ‘iceberg manifesto’ from Labour with ‘one-tenth of its socialism visible, nine-tenths beneath the surface’.

  On Tuesday 19 May, I chaired the first press conference of the campaign to launch our manifesto: the Alliance’s had already appeared, and disappeared, and Labour’s, which would be more notable for omissions than contents, would be launched the same day. Our manifesto launch was not quite all that I had wished. The press conference room at Central Office was far too crowded, hot and noisy. Cabinet ministers — all of whom were present in order to demonstrate the strength of the ‘team’ — were crowded in too, so much so that the television shots of the conference looked truly awful. Nick Ridley explained our housing policy and I hoped that the journalists might be tempted actually to read the detailed policies of the manifesto. I was certainly determined that our candidates should do so and I took them through it in my speech to their conference in Central Hall, Westminster, the following morning.

  But I also used the speech for another purpose. Our political weak point was the social services, especially Health, so I went out of my way to tell the candidates, and through them the voters, that the Government was committed to the principle of a National Health Service which I said was ‘safe only in our hands’. We had a notably cautious section on Health in the manifesto. That done, I devoted most of the campaign to stressing our strong points on the economy and defence. This did not prevent Health emerging later in the campaign as an issue; but it meant that we had armed ourselves against Labour’s attack and done our best to soothe the voters’ anxieties.

  D-21 TO D-14

  Thursday was my first day out in the campaign Battle Bus. This was a new high-tech version of the coach I had used in 1983. It was packed with every kind of up-to-date technology — a computer, different kinds of radio telephones, a fax, a photocopier and an on-board technician to look after it all. Painted blue, the Battle Bus bore the slogan ‘Moving Forward with Maggie’. My first photo-opportunity beside the bus was at Docklands, chosen as an example of our Conservative theme of ‘regeneration’. I left Docklands to return to No. 10 at lunchtime. In the meantime, the Battle Bus had to undergo some regeneration having collided with a BMW. But the bus’s dents were hammered out overnight and it appeared almost spick and span for the following day.

  I always held my adoption meeting in Finchley on a Thursday rather than a Friday because the large Jewish population would otherwise be preparing for the Sabbath. In my speech that Thursday evening I concentrated heavily on defence, targeting not just the Labour Party but the Alliance, to the latter’s great irritation.

  Our first regular press conference of the campaign was on Friday (22 May). The subject was officially defence and George Younger made the opening statement. We had suddenly been given a great opportunity to sink the Alliance parties which some Tory strategists — but not I — thought were the principal electoral threat to us. Instead, the two Davids sank themselv
es. The passage in our manifesto claimed that their joint defence policy, because it amounted to unilateral nuclear disarmament by degrees, would just as surely as Labour’s eventually produce a ‘frightened and fellow-travelling Britain’ vulnerable to Soviet blackmail. This was not, of course, an allegation of a lack of patriotism, but a forecast of what weakness would inevitably lead to. David Owen, however, failed to make this distinction and took enormous offence. We could hardly believe our luck when for several days he concentrated the public’s attention on our strongest card, defence, and his weakest one, his connection with the Liberal Party’s sandal-wearing unilateralists. The Alliance never recovered from this misjudgement.

  But we were not without our difficulties. I was questioned on education, on which it was suggested that there were contradictions between my and Ken Baker’s line on ‘opted-out’, grant-maintained schools. In fact, we were not suggesting that the new schools would be fee paying in the sense of being private schools: they would remain in the public sector. Moreover, the Secretary of State for Education has to give his approval if a school — whether grant-maintained or not — wishes to change from being a comprehensive school to becoming a grammar school.