Margaret Thatcher: The Authorized Biography, Volume 2

by Charles Moore

  In the intervening period, all those concerned with the long-term economic strategy begged Mrs Thatcher to stand firm. In a short, handwritten note, Alan Walters told her: ‘This is the one non-repeatable opportunity to roll back public spending. If a Tory majority of 144 cannot do it, then there is little hope for Britain.’64 Analysing the present discontents, Bernard Ingham complained to Mrs Thatcher that there had been no ‘sureness of presentational touch’.65 This must be sorted out before the recess. ‘I have found it difficult to get a real “feel” for the Government,’ he told her. He linked the capital punishment and the public spending issues: ‘so far as hanging is concerned, the Lobby [that is, the lobby journalists] feel that this distraction has shown you in a less resolute light … if you had really wanted hanging restored you would have campaigned for it; you didn’t and therefore you were part of the conspiracy to kill the issue for this Parliament.’

  The public spending matter was ‘more damaging’: ‘This is because the Chancellor is widely felt by the media to have been less than frank and to have bounced his colleagues into submission. They see him paying a longer-term price for a short-term gain.’ This could damage Mrs Thatcher because ‘potentially at least your priceless assets with the electorate – integrity and resolution – may have been compromised.’ So the media would be watching the coming public expenditure Cabinet for evidence that ‘rising damp in the Cabinet has become a surge’ and the markets would want ‘reassurance that the Government really is determined to keep on top of spending and exercise restraint as a way of life’. Mrs Thatcher underlined this passage vigorously. Fearing leaks and unhelpful briefing, Ingham told her he wanted a statement of the government’s aims to be put out immediately after the key meeting: ‘We must not allow others to get their oar in first.’ Ingham’s anxieties showed that Mrs Thatcher was by no means at one with all her colleagues.

  At the public spending Cabinet on 21 July, Heseltine renewed his objections, and was joined by others, including Norman Fowler at the Department of Health and Social Security, who pleaded that ‘We shd stick to our social aims.’66 ‘For the first time, it was absolutely explicit that the whole purpose was to cut spending to make room for tax cuts,’ recalled Fowler. ‘The old One Nation thing was swept aside. We hadn’t remotely gone into the election saying this. For me, this was a major torpedo.’67 Lawson’s simple point, however, was that he was doing no more than insisting that ministers stick to spending totals already agreed. Setting out targets for the Parliament, he predicted that unemployment would soon ‘peg’ at a little more than 3 million, and demographic change would favour spending restraint, so better times were ahead. Mrs Thatcher backed him strongly and repetitiously – ‘It is not possible to overrun totals on which we fought the Election … We cannot go out of this room without agreeing totals. Ch. has been very modest.’ Ministers agreed to accept the totals for that year, but Heseltine called for a collective discussion at a later date of what would happen in the long term – just the sort of thing which Mrs Thatcher, always anxious that colleagues might conspire to frustrate her aims, wanted to avoid. Lawson said he welcomed Heseltine’s suggestion: they should ‘Agree we look at sacred cows’. Mrs Thatcher switched the animal metaphor: ‘But not a hobby horse race’, she warned.*

  By his own account, Lawson, even as he began his new job, was having to adopt a more cautious stance than he would have liked. The panic caused by the CPRS leak the previous year had made it impossible to advance tax cuts through actual reductions in public spending. Instead, he developed the aim of ‘holding the level of public spending steady in real terms while the economy grew’,68 and later ‘refined’ this to ‘a slower rate of growth for public spending than the sustainable growth rate of the economy as a whole, with the result that public spending would steadily decline as a share of GDP’. For all the genuine economic radicalism of the Thatcher years – trade union reform, privatization, tax changes – the basic task of holding back the growth of state spending remained painfully hard, chiefly because little serious attempt was made to reform and reduce spending on social programmes. Public spending, as a whole, was never cut. The frontiers of the state were indeed rolled back from interference in a great deal of economic activity, but in terms of money spent, they ceded surprisingly little ground.

  On 28 July, the by-election in Penrith and the Border caused by Willie Whitelaw’s elevation to the House of Lords took place. It was won by the Conservative candidate, David Maclean, but the Tory majority fell from 15,421 to 552, confirming the prediction of Mrs Thatcher’s loyal though irritated deputy. It was not the good note on which to begin the parliamentary summer recess that Bernard Ingham had wanted.

  Mrs Thatcher herself was not quite on her top form. Although some, including Robin Butler, considered her enthusiasm undiminished by the election struggle, others thought she was badly in need of rest. Well-wishers, such as the Bishop of Ely, Peter Walker (not to be confused with the other Peter Walker), wrote to encourage her to take a respite. ‘Alas, I have not time to “Go Slowly”,’ she replied.69 John Coles, her foreign affairs private secretary, noticed that ‘it was not quite the same Margaret Thatcher who returned to No. 10’70 after the 1983 election. There was some decline in her energy (though, by ordinary standards, it was ‘still prodigious’): ‘It became much rarer for her to work after midnight, much rarer for her to keep dinner party guests back for discussion into the small hours.’

  One reason for this, obviously, was fatigue after the campaign, added to, in Coles’s view, by the long backwash from her total commitment in the Falklands War the previous year. But there was something else as well. A couple of days after the 1983 victory she told Coles, ‘I have not long to go.’ He was very surprised, given the scale of her victory, and asked why. ‘My party’, she replied, ‘won’t want me to lead them into the next election – and I don’t blame them.’71

  This was an important part of Mrs Thatcher’s psychology which hindsight, because of her victory in 1987, has obscured. In 1983, she knew that, well before the next general election, she would have served longer as party leader than any since Winston Churchill. Having herself performed the political assassination of a Tory leader (Heath), she understood how colleagues could rebel. She was aware that her trouncing of the Wets had made her more powerful, but not necessarily more popular with Cabinet colleagues. She recognized how ambitious people seek to displace one another, and she kept telling herself that she could not possibly expect her luck to hold. This helps to explain why she did not mellow in her dealings with her Cabinet. She did not feel much more secure than before her landslide victory: she was right not to.

  Apart from all this, though possibly related to the strain caused by hard work, she was also suffering from a physical ailment. On the day following the Penrith by-election, while inspecting RAF Cranwell on her home turf in Lincolnshire, she noticed black spots in the field of vision of her right eye. At Chequers that weekend, they did not improve. She thought she was going blind72 and consulted her private doctor John Henderson, who lived near Chequers. In fact, she had a detached retina. On Sunday evening Mrs Thatcher underwent laser treatment at King Edward VII’s Hospital in Windsor, before returning to Downing Street. After further tests on Wednesday 3 August, her consultant decided that more extensive repair work was needed. She entered a private hospital in Windsor for an operation that evening.* Perhaps because of the general sense of her invulnerability, most of those close to Mrs Thatcher did not take the moment as seriously as they should have done. Robin Butler recalled that when she told him what was happening, he gave her a matter-of-fact, businesslike reply about the work arrangements made necessary by her treatment, and then realized, guiltily and too late, that ‘what she really wanted me to say was “Poor you.” ’73 He noted, too, that she was embarrassed at the thought that she might have to wear an eyepatch. Denis, who always had a horror of illness and hospitals, dutifully visited his wife during her three-night stay, and Mark, the attentive son, made sev
eral visits.74

  To convalesce, Mrs Thatcher – and her husband – went to stay, as in the past, with Lady Glover at Schloss Freudenberg. For once, her state of health meant that she was forced to have a bit of real rest, although she did, on 5 August, sign a personal minute to all Cabinet ministers, urging them to work out with the Chief Secretary the longer-term trends in public expenditure, so that the Chancellor could have ‘a solid enough basis’ for his Medium-Term Financial Strategy throughout the Parliament.75* She was inundated with more than a thousand letters from well-wishers which she answered on her return from Switzerland. Most untypically for one usually so thoughtful towards her juniors, she lost her temper with the Garden Room staff (so called because they operated from two basement rooms looking on to the garden of No. 10) for not typing her replies fast enough76 – a sign that she was still under strain.†

  President Reagan telephoned on 3 August but found her still recovering, so he called again three days later to wish her his best. There were flowers from President Mitterrand, mangoes from President Zia of Pakistan, letters from Indira Gandhi‡ and Michael Foot, a ‘posy’ from the novelist Roald Dahl and a card from Jimmy Savile,§ the subsequently notorious disc-jockey.* Ferdinand Mount sent a postcard: ‘We have been trekking across Tuscany where P. Shore, R. Hattersley & N. Kinnock are all said to be on holiday. Luckily, so far we have only seen S. Botticelli & L. da Vinci.’77 Replying to Cecil Parkinson’s ‘get well’ note, she thanked him and added, ‘We shall need to have a great new drive in September–October.’78 She still had every expectation of keeping her favourite minister.

  While Mrs Thatcher was still in hospital, Alan Clark dined with Ian Gow. ‘To my horror he told me that he had not seen the Prime Minister since 14 June, which was the day that Michael Alison took over. How ruthless women can be – far worse than men.’79 The two agreed that Michael Alison, ‘although a pleasant and saintly man, could not possibly provide the Lady with the same alternating course of stimulus and relaxation’. And her position constantly needed securing:

  Ian told me that even the present Cabinet could only guarantee her a majority of two when the chips were really down – ‘and supposing Geoffrey is away?’ Is that margin of one constituted by Willie? I didn’t ask, although his name has returned to the forefront with this ludicrous assurance that he is ‘… standing by at his farm in Cumbria’ in case the Lady goes blind and the ship of state becomes rudderless.

  ‘It should have been a celebratory dinner,’ Clark reflected ruefully. ‘… Now we are both Ministers with a Government majority of 140 and no Opposition of any kind in sight. But there was a certain melancholy too. How often is it better to travel than to arrive.’80

  During the recess, Cecil Parkinson became increasingly worried that his affair with his former secretary, Sara Keays, and the fact of her pregnancy, would become public knowledge.

  On holiday with his wife Ann and their three daughters in August, Parkinson had finally decided – although he had sometimes in the past told Sara Keays that he would leave Ann and marry her – that he would stay with his wife. This news pleased Mrs Thatcher, who had authorized Ian Gow (possibly the only other politician party to the secret) to tell him that ‘the one thing Margaret is passionate about is that you should not leave Ann,’81 but, strangely, it also made Parkinson more vulnerable politically. Sara Keays was now angry, and felt cheated.* She wanted a statement put out about the pregnancy; negotiations with lawyers were in progress. Parkinson feared an explosion, particularly at the party conference, and advised Mrs Thatcher to get a new party chairman as soon as she decently could, although he hoped to hang on to his Cabinet post.

  Mrs Thatcher had intended to keep Parkinson in place as chairman until the party conference in October, so that he could take credit for the successful election campaign, but she bowed to the inevitable. To replace Parkinson she chose John Selwyn Gummer, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary at the Department of Employment.† Although only a junior minister, Gummer was well known to Mrs Thatcher because he often helped with her speeches. She also liked his interventions at the General Synod of the Church of England, where he was one of the few members who defended the government on moral, social and nuclear issues. As she put it, ‘He used to make very good speeches on the basic philosophy of the party.’82 She was worried that her own choices for the main departmental posts – Lawson, Howe and Brittan – were not good television performers, and wanted a youngish man out in front to counter David Steel, David Owen and Neil Kinnock, the forty-one-year-old favourite to succeed Michael Foot as leader at the coming Labour Party conference. She sought someone who would attack the Labour Party ‘like a terrier’.83 Gummer had the additional advantage, which she naturally could not explain to others, that he was sexually ‘safe’,84 as he was securely married.

  Nevertheless, it was a controversial choice, and an eccentric one. On hearing of it, Norman Tebbit, Gummer’s departmental boss, ‘came steaming into Downing Street, very angry’, and told Mrs Thatcher that he ‘wasn’t having it’.85‡ His protest was in vain, but understandable. Traditionally, the chairman of the party was a senior figure. Gummer, who was in his early forties and lacked physical stature as well as Cabinet experience, was demonstrably no such person. His appointment felt like an affront to her senior colleagues, and seemed to disturb the chain of command. Besides, the role of party chairman after a general election was usually to repair the party organization more than take part in public debate. Mrs Thatcher’s own view, in the retrospect of retirement, was that Gummer ‘couldn’t organise anything’.86 For his part, Gummer considered that Mrs Thatcher herself allowed Tory organization and the party’s base in local government ‘to be destroyed – it did not interest her at all’.87 Seen in terms of managing opinion to assist the leader – another role of the chairman – the choice of Gummer, a man of the party’s pro-European, Heathite wing, was also odd. As was obvious at the time to those working for her, the godly combination of Gummer and Michael Alison would never do the business for her as the worldlier Parkinson and Gow had.88 It also created a void in her life. Parkinson was the sort of man who greeted her by saying things like ‘You’re looking wonderful today, Margaret.’ It is unimaginable that Gummer, fourteen years her junior, could have attempted such a thing.

  Parkinson himself had not suggested and did not support the appointment of Gummer, whom he saw as ‘a choirboy’,89 but he was in no position to interfere. He was involved in increasingly tense legal discussions about the joint statement, which Sara Keays wanted, revealing her pregnancy.

  Matters were brought to a head in a strange way. In the first week of October, the satirical magazine Private Eye implied, in its ‘Grovel’ gossip column, that Parkinson might have had to leave the Tory chairmanship because of his ‘marital difficulties’, and reported that ‘Parkinson’s fun-loving secretary Ms Keays is expecting a baby in three months’ time’. In the same piece, it falsely suggested that she was having an affair with another Conservative MP, Marcus Fox, whose name it deliberately misprinted as ‘Fux’. At this time, for somewhat obscure reasons, the magazine’s jokey euphemism for illicit sexual relations was ‘discussing Ugandan affairs’ (or variants on the word Uganda). The Eye said that Miss Keays ‘had only recently returned from exploring the jungles of Uganda’ with Fox.90 Robin Butler (who, as yet, knew nothing of the Parkinson affair) immediately showed this to Mrs Thatcher. ‘Oh, that’s really libellous,’ she exclaimed.91 The matter was further discussed during a meeting of ministers with her later in the day. Mrs Thatcher waved the magazine about: ‘Robin’s shown me this. I know it’s untrue. Marcus told me he’s never visited Africa.’ It fell to Butler, as principal private secretary, to explain to the Prime Minister what the phrase meant, while Cabinet colleagues tried to contain their mirth.92

  It was clear that Parkinson’s affair could not be long concealed. Rather against his will, a statement agreed with Sara Keays’s lawyers was put out late on the night of 5 October. It distracted media att
ention from the Labour Party conference, at which, three days earlier, Neil Kinnock had been elected his party’s leader. In the statement, Parkinson admitted a long relationship with Miss Keays and said that she was expecting his baby in January: ‘I am of course making provision for the mother and child.’93 In the statement, Parkinson also admitted that he had promised to marry Miss Keays and had then changed his mind. He expressed his ‘regret’ for ‘the distress I have caused to Miss Keays, to her family and to my own family’.

  As she had done throughout, Mrs Thatcher stood by Parkinson (‘Maggie says he will not have to quit Cabinet,’ Daily Express). Bernard Ingham reported that at their weekly lobby meeting with him, the Sunday newspapers were trying to keep the story going. Would there be ‘less talk of Victorian values’94 now, they asked? Would she mention Parkinson in her party conference speech? Was it true that ‘the Government is running into early trouble and that you are running out of luck’? What they wanted, Ingham told her, was a speech ‘which conjures inspiration out of the essentially long-term task of rejuvenating Britain’.

  The fate of Parkinson now lay in the hands of the party conference at Blackpool. The Tory rank and file, taking their tone from the leader, clapped whenever Parkinson’s name was mentioned in speeches. The grandees were more tepid. Parkinson, who made his own platform speech on Thursday 13 October, noted that while the hall gave him a standing ovation, the platform stayed seated.95 His potential departure was not displeasing to those who wanted Mrs Thatcher’s power reined in. All went well with him throughout the conference, however, until late that night, the last of the conference and Mrs Thatcher’s fifty-eighth birthday.*