Margaret Thatcher: The Authorized Biography, Volume 2

by Charles Moore

  † A graduate of the Philosophy Faculty of Moscow University, Raisa ‘wanted us all to know that she wasn’t just another dumpy, head-scarved wife’, recalled Martin Nicholson, the Foreign Office official who interpreted for her. ‘ “I know where my own country is,” she snapped when our guide helpfully pointed out Russia on an ancient globe in the Library.’ (Martin Nicholson, unpublished manuscript, kindly made available to the author by Martin Nicholson.)

  * It is possible that some parts of the conversation did not make it into the official record. Charles Powell did his best to take notes but had difficulty hearing everything given that this was all taking place over lunch (Lord Powell of Bayswater, British Diplomatic Oral History Programme, Churchill College, Cambridge (https://www.chu.cam.ac.uk/media/uploads/files/Powell.pdf)).

  † Tony Bishop, the interpreter, noticed that Gorbachev’s language was ‘irreproachably sound’ in Soviet terms, but used refreshing colloquialisms, such as ‘chepukha (nonsense/twaddle)’ (Gorbachev, A Personal Assessment of the Man during his Visit to the United Kingdom, 15–21 December 1984, TNA: PREM 19/1394 (http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/134739)).

  * Richard Perle, then Assistant Secretary for Defense and close to Weinberger, was well known as one of the Pentagon’s leading anti-Soviet hawks.

  † Mrs Thatcher noted this remark on her briefing paper, misspelling the nineteenth-century Prime Minister’s name as ‘Palmerstone’.

  * Mrs Thatcher, who rarely had much time for the wives of her fellow world leaders, paid slightly beady attention to the well-dressed Mrs Gorbachev. She keenly scrutinized a report from Miss Horner, the Foreign Office official who accompanied Mrs Gorbachev on her shopping and cultural expeditions in London, underlining references to ‘the jewelled drop-earrings’ she bought for £750 at Mappin and Webb which revealed her ‘as someone accustomed to living life on that level’. Mrs Thatcher was always very alert to the fact that the Soviet leadership lived in conditions of privilege, whereas the Soviet people went without. (Appleyard to Powell, Summary of Miss Horner’s minute, 21 January 1985, Prime Minister’s Papers, Soviet Union, UK/Soviet Relations, Part 4 (document consulted in the Cabinet Office).)

  * A curious incident indicates something of Gorbachev’s own excitement about his British visit. On 19 December 1984, David Barclay, one of Mrs Thatcher’s private secretaries who had remained in London when she flew to China, reported that at five o’clock that afternoon Gorbachev and his entourage had passed Downing Street on their way from Parliament to the Soviet Embassy. He had suddenly ‘expressed a wish to see the outside of No. 10’. Special Branch had negotiated with the policeman at the barrier ‘(without informing us)’, and he had been let in and then allowed to enter the front hall. ‘They were gone before any private secretary had reached the spot – reportedly in good humour.’ (FCO telegram 2520, 19 December 1984, Prime Minister’s Papers, Soviet Union, UK/Soviet Relations, Part IV (document consulted in the Cabinet Office).)

  † Alexander Yakovlev (1923–2005), joined the Communist Party in 1944; head of Department of Ideology and Propaganda, 1969–73; Soviet Ambassador to Canada, 1973–83; member of the Politburo, 1987–91; one of the main proponents of perestroika (restructuring).

  * Butler, meanwhile, persuaded the RAF crew to allow him to sleep on the floor of the plane on an inflatable mattress.

  * Weinberger had been deliberately excluded. ‘Colin Powell [his military assistant] tells me Cap is very desirous of attending,’ one NSC staffer minuted McFarlane ahead of the meeting (Untitled memo, CO167: 270790–289999, WHORM File, Reagan Library). This plea went unheeded.

  * John Kerr (1942–), educated Glasgow Academy and Pembroke College, Oxford; principal private secretary to Chancellor of the Exchequer, 1981–4; Head of Chancery, British Embassy, Washington, DC, 1984–7; Assistant Under-Secretary, FCO, 1987–90; Ambassador and UK Permanent Representative to EU, 1990–95; Ambassador to the United States, 1995–7; Permanent Under-Secretary, FCO, 1997–2002; created Lord Kerr of Kinlochard, 2004.

  † Powell and Kerr dictated while Nigel Sheinwald, himself much later Ambassador to the US, hammered out the text on an old-fashioned typewriter.

  * Colin Powell (1937–), Senior Military Assistant to US Secretary of Defense, 1983–6; Deputy National Security Advisor, 1986–7; National Security Advisor, 1987–9; General, 1989; chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff, 1989–93; Secretary of State, 2001–5.

  * Most authors (including Aldous, Reagan and Thatcher, p. 201; Aitken, Margaret Thatcher, p. 490; and John Campbell, Margaret Thatcher: The Iron Lady, Jonathan Cape, 2003, p. 292) have followed Geoffrey Smith (Reagan and Thatcher, Bodley Head, 1990, p. 165) in dating this seminar to July 1985. In fact, during her visit to Washington that summer Mrs Thatcher did not meet Reagan, who was recovering from surgery.

  * Lieutenant General James Abrahamson (1933–), educated Massachusetts Institute of Technology and University of Oklahoma; lieutenant general (retired) US Air Force; astronaut with the Manned Orbiting Laboratory Program, 1967–9; Associate Administrator at NASA, responsible for the US space shuttle program, 1981–4; Director, Strategic Defense Initiative 1984–9.

  * This ‘reverse hostage’ concept was first suggested to Mrs Thatcher by Charles Powell.

  † George Shultz observed this tendency. An early draft of his memoirs contained a passage, removed before publication, noting that Mrs Thatcher had ‘a wonderful Foreign Secretary, Sir Geoffrey Howe, who I saw a great deal of and came to admire. But Margaret Thatcher seemed to pay little attention to him … It was always a puzzle to me how one could do it this way. I know that, if I had been in Geoffrey’s shoes I simply wouldn’t have stood for it.’ (Unpublished draft, ‘G. P. Shultz – Great Britain’, Box 61, Papers of Charles Hill, Hoover Institution.)

  * It may be doubted whether Mrs Reagan was quite as close to Mrs Thatcher as her husband was. That evening, Mrs Reagan was seen to be irritated by her husband’s desire to stay late and go on talking to Mrs Thatcher (private information). In the view of Charlie Price, without their mutual admiration for Ronald Reagan, Mrs Reagan and Mrs Thatcher ‘wouldn’t ever have been close personal friends’ (Interview with Charles Price).

  * President Reagan, however, decided otherwise: ‘My gut instinct said no’ (11 March 1985, Ronald Reagan, The Reagan Diaries, HarperCollins, 2007, p. 307).

  † It is not clear why Mrs Thatcher kept this account. It contains little political analysis, and ends without recording her substantive conversation with Gorbachev. It is possible that she intended to write up the entire trip, but never found time to finish it.

  * Mrs Thatcher was probably comparing Mrs Gandhi’s fate – she had been assassinated on 31 October 1984 – with her own good fortune in surviving the Brighton bomb in the same month unscathed.

  * In fact, SDI deployment would have required some renegotiation (if not complete abrogation) of the ABM Treaty.

  * An indication of the detail with which anything emanating from Moscow was studied can be seen in the reaction to an intentionally comic letter sent by Mrs Gorbachev to Michael Jopling, the Minister of Agriculture, more than seven months after they had met at Chequers: ‘Esteemed Mr Jopling, At Chequers, I told you that in Byelorussia we had 300 recipes for potatoes … My apologies for being somewhat inaccurate: in fact, there are 500, rather than 300, recipes to cook potatoes.’ Mrs Gorbachev enclosed the recipe book. Charles Powell forwarded the note to Mrs Thatcher with the words ‘Fascinating evidence of a new style!’ (Raisa Gorbachev to Jopling, 19 July 1985, Prime Minister’s Papers, Soviet Union, UK/Soviet Relations, Part 4 (document consulted in the Cabinet Office).)

  * The Maginot Line was France’s means of defence against Germany in the 1930s which proved quite useless when Hitler went round the fortifications and entered France through Belgium in 1940.

  * Privately, Charles Powell reported, ‘The Prime Minister commented that the President’s voice sounded firm and he appeared in good spirits. Mrs Reagan, who also spoke, sounded by contrast careworn
and under strain.’ Bush confirmed this: ‘he was worried about her. She had nagging doubts as to whether the President’s cancer had really been eliminated. She also thought that the President’s staff were “bearing down” on him unnecessarily and pushing him to get back to work.’ (Powell to Appleyard, 29 July 1985, Prime Minister’s Papers, USA: Prime Minister’s Visit to the USA on 25/26 July 1985 (document consulted in the Cabinet Office).)

  * Despite Mrs Thatcher’s admonition, by 1990 British SDI research contracts totalled just $81.9 million, a very small share of a multi-billion-dollar pie (cited in Stanley Orman, Faith in G.O.D.S: Stability in the Nuclear Age, Elsevier, 1991, p. 96).

  * It is still not known what prompted Moscow’s suspicion. Some believe Aldrich Ames, a Soviet mole in the CIA, was the first to give Gordievsky away. Gordievsky, however, insists that his cover was blown by ‘another, as yet unidentified source outside the British intelligence community’. (Christopher Andrew, The Defence of the Realm: The Authorized History of MI 5, Allen Lane, 2009, p. 726.)

  * The Gordievskys were finally allowed to leave Russia for Britain in September 1991, nearly a year after Mrs Thatcher had left office.

  † Most assumed that this information had come directly from Gordievsky, but he insists SIS already knew the identities of the KGB’s agents. ‘They used me as an excuse,’ he said, ‘because of the political situation after my escape.’ (Interview with Oleg Gordievsky.)

  ‡ A little hut on the estate.

  § Douglas Hurd (1930–), educated Eton and Trinity College, Cambridge; Conservative MP for Mid Oxon, February 1974–1983; for Witney, 1983–97; Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, 1984–5; Home Secretary, 1985–9; Foreign Secretary, 1989–95; contested Conservative leadership unsuccessfully, 1990; created Lord Hurd of Westwell, 1997.

  * In return for a commitment to respect human rights within the Soviet bloc, the Helsinki Final Act (1975) had recognized Soviet domination of Eastern Europe. At the time Mrs Thatcher had been suspicious of the deal, but she now intended to hold the Soviets to their part of the bargain (see Volume I, Chapter 12).

  * King Hussein of Jordan (1935–99), educated Harrow School and RMA Sandhurst; King of Jordan, 1952–99.

  † Mrs Thatcher also felt gratitude to King Hussein because during the Falklands War he had written to her to offer ‘our total support of your position’ (Hussein to Thatcher, 19 May 1982, CAC: THCR 3/1/21 (http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/123328)).

  ‡ Yasser Arafat (1929–2004), chairman, Palestine Liberation Organization, 1968–2004.

  * Mrs Thatcher was, in fact, the first senior British politician to meet Yasser Arafat, but this was by mistake on her part, though not on his. He tapped her on the shoulder at the funeral of Marshal Tito in Belgrade in May 1980, and she shook hands with him politely before realizing who he was. Her dislike of Arafat was added to by the fact that he did not, in her view, shave properly. (Interview with Sir Dennis Walters.) ‘He looks like a terrorist!’ she would exclaim (Interview with Lord Luce).

  * Menachem Begin (1913–92), born Poland; commander, Irgun Zvai Leumi, 1943–8; Leader, Herut Party, 1948–73; of Likud Party 1973–83; Minister without Portfolio, 1967–70; Prime Minister of Israel, 1977–83; joint winner, Nobel Peace Prize, (with Anwar al-Sadat), 1978.

  † Yitzhak Shamir (1915–2012), born Poland; elected to the Knesset as a member of the Herut Party, 1973; Foreign Minister, 1980; Leader of Likud Party, 1983–92; Prime Minister of Israel 1983–4. After 1984 elections he alternated posts with Shimon Peres of the Labor Party, serving as Foreign Minister, 1984–6 and Prime Minister, 1986–92.

  ‡ Begin had been in charge of Irgun, the organization which blew up the King David Hotel in Jerusalem in 1946, killing ninety-one people, many of them British soldiers. Shamir planned the assassination of Lord Moyne, the British Minister for Middle East Affairs in 1944, and also of the UN envoy and rescuer of Holocaust victims, Count Bernadotte, in 1948.

  § Hosni Mubarak (1928–), Vice-President of Egypt, 1975–81; Prime Minister 1981–2; President, 1981–2011. He stepped down in February 2011 following mass protests in Cairo and other Egyptian cities. After a series of trials, Mubarak and his sons were convicted of corruption and given prison sentences.

  ¶ Shimon Peres (1923–), born Poland; member of Israeli Knesset, 1959–2007; Minister of Immigrant Absorption, 1969–70; of Transport and Communications, 1970–74; of Information, 1974; of Defense, 1974–7; Chairman of Labor Party, 1977–92 and 1995–7; Acting Prime Minister, 1977; Prime Minister, 1984–6 and 1995–6; Vice Premier, 1986–90; Minister of Foreign Affairs, 1986–8 and 1992–5; Minister of Finance, 1988–90; President of Israel, 2007–14; joint winner Nobel Peace Prize (with Yasser Arafat and Yitzhak Rabin), 1994.

  * Wolfson could recall only one instance when she used her informal Jewish connections in the Middle East. In 1982, the Israeli government was minded to make Eliyahu Lankin its new ambassador in London. Lankin had a terrorist record against the British. Mrs Thatcher asked Wolfson to visit Begin in Israel and request informally on her behalf that Lankin should not be sent to London. This he did, successfully. (Interview with Lord Wolfson of Sunningdale.)

  † These accords, brokered by President Jimmy Carter in 1978, led to Egypt and Israel agreeing ‘land for peace’, the former recognizing the latter, and Israel withdrawing from Egyptian land occupied after the Yom Kippur War of 1973.

  * Nicholas (‘Nicko’) Henderson (1919–2009), educated Stowe and Hertford College, Oxford; Ambassador to Poland, 1969–72; to Federal Republic of Germany, 1972–5; to France, 1975–9; to the United States, 1979–82; chairman, Channel Tunnel Group Ltd, 1985–6; knighted, 1972.

  † Fahd of Saudi Arabia (1921–2005), Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, 1975–1982; King, 1982–2005.

  * Reagan’s middle initial was actually W (for Wilson).

  † Richard Murphy (1929–), US Ambassador to Mauritania, 1971–4; to Syria, 1974–8; to the Philippines, 1978–81; to Saudi Arabia, 1981–3; Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs, 1983–9.

  ‡ These two resolutions, the first after the Six-Day War of 1967, the second after the Yom Kippur War of 1973, called on Israel to return to its 1967 borders, but also upheld the need for ‘secure and recognised boundaries’ of all states in the region to be respected (UN Security Council Resolution 242, 22 November 1967 (http://unispal.un.org/unispal.nsf/0/7D35E1F729DF491C85256EE700686136)).

  * The guests included Haj Rashad Shawwa (the deposed Mayor of Gaza), Elias Freij (Mayor of Bethlehem), Izzat al Alloul (Acting Mayor of Nablus), and a number of lawyers and journalists (Dinner in Honour of the Prime Minister, 26 May 1986, CAC: THCR 1/10/104).

  * Discussion of arms sales to Iraq and related matters will appear in Volume III.

  * Geoffrey Pattie (1936–), educated Durham School and St Catharine’s College, Cambridge; Conservative MP for Chertsey and Walton, February 1974–97; Minister of State for Defence Procurement, 1983–4; DTI, 1984–7; knighted, 1987.

  † Jonathan Aitken (1942–), educated Eton and Christ Church, Oxford; Conservative MP for Thanet East, February 1974–83; for Thanet South, 1983–97; Chief Secretary to the Treasury, 1994–5; journalist and author; jailed in 1999 and served seven months of an eighteen-month sentence for perjury and perverting the course of justice.

  ‡ Wafic Saïd (1939–), businessman, entrepreneur and philanthropist; founder and chairman, Saïd Foundation; founder, Saïd Business School, Oxford.

  * James Blyth (1940–), educated Spier’s School and Glasgow University; businessman; Head of Defence Sales, MOD, 1981–5; knighted, 1985; CEO, Alliance Boots Holdings Ltd, 1987–98; chairman, 1998–2000; chairman, Diageo plc, 2000–2008; created Lord Blyth of Rowington, 1995.

  † Clive Whitmore (1935–), educated Sutton Grammar School, Surrey and Christ’s College, Cambridge; principal private secretary to the Prime Minister, 1979–82; Permanent Under-Secretary, MOD, 1983–8; Home Office, 1988–94; director, N. M. Rothschild & Sons Ltd,
1994–; knighted, 1983.

  ‡ Prince Bandar bin Sultan (1949–), fighter pilot, trained RAF Cranwell; Saudi Arabia’s Ambassador to US, 1983–2005; Secretary-General, National Security Council, 2005–15; Director-General, Saudi Intelligence Agency, 2012–14; King Abdullah’s special envoy, 2014–15.

  § Richard Evans (1942–), educated Royal Masonic School; chief executive, British Aerospace plc, 1990–98; chairman, 1998–2004; knighted, 1996.

  * When Fahd had met François Mitterrand, he asked him to let him build a mosque in France, and was irritated by Mitterrand’s reply: ‘Your Majesty, if you permit one church to be built in Saudi Arabia, I shall let you build a hundred mosques in France’ (Private information).

  * The typed correspondence survives, but a few of them, it seems, were handwritten (and were not copied). When King Fahd first received one of these, he was surprised. ‘Does the lady not have someone to type letters for her?’ he asked. It was pointed out to him that, in British culture, a handwritten letter was a mark of personal attention. (Private information.)