The Downing Street Years

by Margaret Thatcher

  That said, however — and over the next few days it all had to be said repeatedly by Ken Baker — I was saddened that we had had to give all these assurances. It is my passionate belief that what above all has gone wrong with British education is that since the war we have, as I put it at this time, ‘strangled the middle way’. Direct grant schools and grammar schools provided the means for people like me to get on equal terms with those who came from well-off backgrounds. I would have liked grant-maintained schools — combined with the other changes we were making, and perhaps supplemented by a voucher applying in public and private sectors alike — to move us back to that ‘middle way’. I also wanted a return to selection — not of the old eleven-plus kind but a development of specialization and competition so that some schools would become centres of excellence in music, others in technology, others in science, others in the arts etc. This would have given specially gifted children the chance to develop their talents, regardless of their background.

  If you are to have specialization of the sort I would like to see you ought to allow the school, which has become a centre of excellence in some field, to control its admission procedures. Competition between schools and individuals will also be more effective if there is some ability to ‘top up’ grants received from the state. I hope that we can go further along these lines. We ought to if the full Conservative vision for education is to be fulfilled. But at this stage it was clearly not going to be possible.

  Some critics argued that this early row resulted from the fact that our reforms had not been fully thought through. That is certainly true of some of the details, even though the main lines were clear. But what was really behind the dispute was that, as I often did in government, I was using public statements to advance the argument and to push reluctant colleagues further than they would otherwise have gone. In an election campaign this was certainly a high-risk strategy. But without such tactics Thatcherism would be a merely theoretical viewpoint.

  At the end of the first week we had established ourselves as the only party which had new, fresh ideas. But I felt that we had not gained the momentum from our manifesto which we might have expected and I was starting to be concerned about the tactics of the campaign.

  My tour that day took me to the North-West. I made a speech to a large crowd of supporters from the Bury North constituency in the middle of a field. It was just the sort of lively, old-fashioned campaigning which I enjoyed.

  Sunday was spent with interviews and working on speeches. Unlike 1983, each of my speeches in this campaign was for the particular occasion rather than drawn from previously prepared material. John O’Sullivan, Ronnie Millar and Stephen Sherbourne were the ‘home team’ of speech writers. The general rule was that I would look at the speech draft overnight, make the changes required and work on the detail through the following day right up to the delivery of the speech itself. This made for fresh and interesting speeches which were probably better than in the 1983 campaign; but it was also much more difficult to link the theme of the speech with other themes of the day from the morning press conference, my tour, other ministerial speeches or external events.

  At Monday’s press conference we took the economy as the subject of the day and Nigel Lawson made the opening statement. This was a good campaign for Nigel. Not only did he demonstrate complete command of the issues, he also spotted the implications of Labour’s tax and national insurance proposals — especially their planned abolition of the married man’s tax allowance and of the upper limit on employees’ national insurance contributions — for people on quite modest incomes. This threw Labour into total disarray in the last week of the campaign and revealed that they did not understand their own policies. Nigel had earlier published costings of the Labour Party’s manifesto at some £35 billion over and above the Government’s spending plans. As I was to say later in a speech: ‘Nigel’s favourite bedside reading is Labour policy documents: he likes a good mystery.’

  At this stage, however, defence continued to dominate the headlines, partly because we had deliberately concentrated our early fire on it, but mainly because of Neil Kinnock’s extraordinary gaffe in a television interview in which he suggested that Labour’s response to armed aggression would be to take to the hills for guerilla warfare. We gleefully leapt upon this and it provided the inspiration for the only good advertisement of our campaign, depicting ‘Labour’s Policy on Arms’ with a British soldier, his hands held up in surrender. On Tuesday evening, after a day’s campaigning in Wales, I told a big rally in Cardiff:

  Labour’s non-nuclear defence policy is in fact a policy for defeat, surrender, occupation, and finally, prolonged guerilla fighting… I do not understand how anyone who aspires to government can treat the defence of our country so lightly.

  The speech went very well. Under Harvey Thomas’s supervision our rallies had by now moved into the twentieth century with a vengeance. Dry ice shot out over the first six rows, enveloping the press in a dense fog; lasers flashed madly across the auditorium; our campaign tune, composed by Andrew Lloyd Webber for the occasion, blared out; a video of me on international visits was shown; and then on I walked to deliver my speech, feeling something of an anti-climax.

  Wednesday’s press conference was of particular importance to the campaign because we took education as the theme, with Ken Baker and me together, in order to allay the doubts our early confusion had generated and to regain the initiative on the subject, which I regarded as central to our manifesto. It went well.

  But my tours, by general agreement, did not. Neil Kinnock was gaining more and better television coverage. He was portrayed — as I had specifically requested at the beginning of the campaign that I should be — against the background of cheering crowds, or doing something which fitted in with the theme of the day. The media — far more I suspect than the general public — were entranced by the highly polished party election broadcast showing Neil and Glenys walking hand in hand, bathed in a warm glow of summer sunlight, to strains of patriotic music, looking rather like an advertisement for early retirement. This probably encouraged them to give favourable coverage to the Kinnock tours. And what was I doing on Wednesday? I was visiting a training centre for guide dogs for the blind. The symbolism and significance were lost not just on the media but on me too — and much as I enjoyed looking at the dogs, they did not have a vote. I felt that I was not meeting enough real people. I was going to too many factories and firms. This was partly because of the very tight constraints on security which dictated the tour programme. But the basic strategy was wrong because the tour was organized around photo-opportunities — and no one was seeing the photos.

  I began to improvise a little on my own account. That afternoon on our way back from the West Country I had the coach stop at a farm shop, plentifully stocked with bacon, chutney and cream. The following press coaches stopped too and we all piled into the shop. I bought cream and everyone seemed to follow suit. This, I felt, had been my personal contribution to the rural economy; perhaps we might even get some reasonable television film footage at last.

  D-14 TO D-7

  One week into the campaign and in spite of our own difficulties the political situation was still favourable. Our lead in the polls was holding up. Indeed, the polls recorded little net change in party strength during the campaign, though as will be seen there were a few rogue polls which caused some alarm. There had been a big erosion of support for the Alliance, whose campaign was marred by splits and that basic incoherence which is the nemesis of people who eschew principle in politics. Neil Kinnock kept away from the main London-based journalists and Bryan Gould took most of the press conferences. By the second week, however, this tactic was beginning to rebound and the Fleet Street press were becoming frustrated and critical: they were able to cross-question me day after day and they expected to enjoy a similar sport with the Leader of the Opposition. In this they were enthusiastically encouraged by Norman Tebbit, who by temperament and talent was perfectly suited
to maul Neil Kinnock and did so effectively in successive speeches as the campaign wore on.

  Thursday’s press conference was on the NHS. Norman Fowler had devised a splendid illustration of new hospitals built throughout Britain, marked by lights on a map which were lit up when he pressed a switch. Like the Kinnocks’ election broadcast, I had him repeat the performance by popular demand. Sadly, like so much of the campaign, it did not come over properly on television. The press conference went smoothly. But what was worrying me, as usual, was my speech that evening in Solihull.

  We had worked on the draft late until 3.30 a.m. but I was still not happy with it. I continued to break away to work on it whenever I could during the day — that is when I was not meeting candidates, talking to regional editors, admiring Jaguars at the factory and then meeting crowds at the Home and Garden exhibition at the Birmingham NEC. As soon as we arrived at Dame Joan Seccombe’s house — she is one of the Party’s most committed volunteers — I left the others to enjoy her hospitality and closeted myself away with with my speech writers, working frantically on the text right up to the last moment. For some mysterious reason the more you all suffer in preparing a speech, the better it turns out to be and this speech was very good indeed. It contained one wounding passage which drew a roar of approval from the audience:

  Never before has the Labour Party offered the country a defence policy of such recklessness. It has talked of occupation — a defence policy of the white flag. During my time in government white flags have only once entered into our vocabulary. That was the night, when at the end of the Falklands War, I went to the House of Commons to report: ‘The white flags are flying over Port Stanley.’

  But I was to broaden the attack on Labour in this speech. I levelled my sights at the ‘loony Left’s’ policy of municipal socialism and sexual propaganda on the rates. This drew applause which surprised even me. It became clear that there was real public anxiety about the extremism cloaked by Labour’s moderate image. I set out with renewed energy in every speech to win over traditional Labour supporters. Indeed, this became one of my principal themes.

  Nick Ridley explained our housing policy at the Friday morning press conference. Then I set off on my tour. This was one of our more successful days, including good photo-opportunities, the chance to meet real people and even a spot of heckling from a Labour councillor when I was making a speech through a loudspeaker to a large crowd on a sports field. The television cameras covered what was thought to be my receiving from No. 10 the news that a British diplomat kidnapped in Tehran had been released: in fact I knew this anyway and the person I was speaking to over the telephone was a secretary at Conservative Central Office. The best picture of the campaign was in Tiptree, in John Wakeham’s constituency. Followed by three tractors pulling trailers full of perspiring press-men and photographers, I was driven out into a blackcurrant field to be photographed looking through binoculars at a bird sanctuary. It was a surreal picture of splendid isolation.

  With ten days to go, David Young gave the press conference on Monday 1 June, arguing that voting Conservative was the only way to keep unemployment coming down. Using striking graphics, he summarized the elements of what we called ‘Labour’s job destruction package’, showing how thousands of jobs would go as a result of their policies for defence cuts, sanctions on South Africa and extra powers for trade unions. It was a good performance and I was glad that we were at last beginning to get across our strong card of economic prosperity.

  The next day, after chairing our press conference, which again was on the economy, I flew to Scotland. By now the Labour Party had decided that they had better keep off policy altogether and they leaked that instead they would concentrate on personal attacks on me. Neil Kinnock did not do this with great subtlety: he described me as ‘a would-be empress’ and the Cabinet as ‘sycophants and doormats’. I was determined to make this tactic rebound on them. I spoke at a rally that night in Edinburgh:

  This week [Labour] are resorting to personal abuse. This is an excellent sign. Personal abuse is no substitute for policy. It signals panic. In any case, let me assure you it will not affect me in the slightest. As that great American Harry Truman observed: ‘if you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.’ Well, Mr Chairman, after eight years over the hot stove I think I can say, with all due modesty, that the heat is entirely tolerable.

  In spite of the bad weather it had been a pleasant, old-fashioned day of campaigning. Denis enjoyed it too. We visited the Scottish & Newcastle Brewery in Edinburgh and Denis with somewhat feigned reluctance downed the obligatory pint on my behalf. Next morning after giving press and television interviews I flew to Newcastle and went on to the Gateshead Metro shopping centre where, amid the large crowds which gathered as I went into different shops, I felt that I was at last making proper contact with the electorate.

  My satisfaction, however, was marred by the onset of extremely painful toothache. I had been to the dentist before the campaign began and nothing seemed amiss. But the pain grew worse as the afternoon wore on and later that evening after I returned to London I went to the dentist once more. There was apparently an abscess under my tooth which would need proper treatment later. For the moment I had to rely on pain killers. By the time I got back to London I had something else unpleasant to think about. I was told in the course of the afternoon that the next day’s Gallup poll would show a definite shift from us to Labour for the first time, cutting our lead to 4 per cent.

  D-7 TO D-DAY

  I could not get to sleep that night because of my tooth. At about 4.00 a.m. Crawfie gave me some pain killers. They did the trick for the toothache and allowed me to get some rest. But they made me feel and — as I have later learned — look catatonic when, first thing the following morning, I went across to Central Office. This has gone down in political mythology as ‘wobbly Thursday’ or ‘black Thursday’: since we did not wobble but the news looked black I prefer the second description.

  The subject of the day was pensions and social security. I had expressly told Central Office that I wanted Health to be covered as well but this had not been done, which angered me. At the press conference briefing my toothache had come on again and I tore into Norman Fowler’s draft press release, rather unfairly, until David Wolfson, who is one of the few people who gets away with this sort ofthing, told me to ‘shut up’ and read it through first before making any more changes. I did so, agreed it and then faced the news about the poll. The worst was that there would be another poll by Marplan for the next day which was the subject of wild speculation. It would show whether the Gallup result was just a rogue poll, or whether our position really was slipping away.

  I had talked to David Young the previous night about my worries about the campaign, which seemed to me to be unfocused and not to stress sufficiently our strongest themes, in particular the record of economic prosperity. The following day, Norman Tebbit and I had a ding-dong row. This cleared the air. We agreed that some of our younger ministers, like John Moore and Kenneth Clarke, should be given a higher billing. I arranged to appear upon the David Frost programme from which I had been withdrawn. But at this stage we had still not agreed on the advertising for the following week.

  The press conference that day was widely considered to be a disaster for us and I was held to blame. The issue arose of private health care. I refused to be apologetic for the fact that I used private health insurance to have minor operations done speedily, without adding to the queue for NHS treatment and using my own money. What I said was immediately exploited as being insensitive, callous and uncaring. I was aware that the press conference had not been a success in public relations terms. But I was not going to back down, however much others around me hoped that I would stay silent on the matter in the interviews when it was bound to be raised. Moreover, my instincts were right and that of the professionals wrong. The press set out on what turned out to be a fruitful hunt for examples of Labour politicians and their families who used private he
alth care. By the end of the campaign I had won this argument — and it was definitely worth winning.

  After the press conference I set out my ideas for a major advertising campaign, which I had previously privately discussed with Tim Bell, who had of course been effectively excluded from the campaign by Central Office and Saatchis. I wanted this to be based heavily on our record of achievements, which may have seemed dull to the creative and unpolitical minds of communications specialists but which — as was subsequently demonstrated again at the 1992 general election — are what the electorate is really likely to vote on. Saatchis were to devise one set of advertising for me to see and approve: meanwhile Tim Bell and David Young were working on another which I believed would be better. I went to the Alton Towers theme park in Staffordshire, without being quite in the mood for jollity, still worried about what would come of the advertising, even more concerned about the mysterious opinion poll we were waiting for. There was media speculation that it would show our lead down to 1 per cent. While at Alton Towers I overheard a BBC newscaster remark, ‘that’s it: she’s downhill all the way now.’

  I had little time to deal with the advertising when I arrived back at No. 10. I liked the material Tim Bell had prepared. Norman Tebbit, who is always a big man in such situations, frankly acknowledged that the new ideas for the advertising were better. I left him and David Young to deal with it all while I went on with the briefing for my interview with Jonathan Dimbleby. There is only one complaint I still allow myself to nurture against my staff in No. 10: that is that I was not told before I went on television about the results of the poll, which put us back in a healthy lead and showed that the earlier one was not to be taken seriously. Perhaps it was as well, for it was a tough interview and I really fought back. At least one good — if extremely expensive — thing came out of that rogue poll: for it prompted me to insist on that newspaper advertising blitz on the lines I wanted, which consolidated our support.