There is No Alternative

by Claire Berlinski

  CAESAR

  [To the Soothsayer] The ides of March are come.

  SOOTHSAYER

  Ay, Caesar; but not gone.

  “The whole house is in ferment,” wrote Clark. “Little groups, conclaves everywhere . . . in the corridors it is all whispering and glancing over shoulders . . . a great basket of bitterness, thwarted personal ambition and vindictive glee. Talk of country, or loyalty, is dismissed as ‘histrionics.’”267

  In the end, one of Thatcher’s great strengths—her ability to stand remote from the men around her—became her great liability. “One of the qualities that men tend to have,” Nigel Lawson says to me, “or Englishmen, you know, from the sort of background that most of the cabinet came from, is clubbability. They’re extremely clubbable. And there’s a kind of men’s club atmosphere. She had no element of clubbability in her at all. Now, I say this is both a strength and a weakness. It was a strength because it disconcerted the men. They didn’t quite know how to deal with a leader who was unclubbable. And this therefore made it easier for her to exert the power she wished to exert and the leadership she wished to exert.

  “It was a disadvantage because it did rather, and increasingly, separate her from the rest of her cabinet, all of whom were men . . . So it was an all-male cabinet and she became separated because of this lack of clubbability, not merely from the people she may have not minded being separated from, but also from her actual supporters within the cabinet. And this contributed to her downfall in two ways. The most important way is that she did become rather out of touch, and she didn’t—obviously, she thought she was completely self-sufficient—she didn’t need anybody else. She also didn’t interact, after a time. She did in the beginning, when she first came in, but less and less so . . . and that made her less sure-footed. And the other thing of course is that it meant that there wasn’t, when she stood for the leadership . . . there wasn’t the degree of emotional support from her colleagues that I think she thought she deserved.”

  Before she even returned to London, it was already over.

  On the evening of November 21, a series of ministers visited her in Downing Street. They told her, one by one, that she had lost the support of the party. She would not win the second round.

  “She looked calm, almost beautiful,” wrote Clark.

  “Ah, Alan . . . ”

  “You’re in a jam.”

  “I know that.”

  “They’re telling you not to stand, aren’t they?”

  “I’m going to stand. I have issued a statement.”

  “That’s wonderful. That’s heroic. But the Party will let you down.”

  “I am a fighter.”

  “Fight, then. Fight right to the end, a third ballot if you need to. But you lose.”

  There was quite a little pause.

  “It’d be so terrible if Michael won. He would undo everything I have fought for.”

  “But what a way to go! Unbeaten in three elections, never rejected by the people. Brought down by nonentities!”

  “But Michael . . . as Prime Minister.”

  “Who the fuck’s Michael? No one. Nothing. He won’t last six months. I doubt he’d even win the election. Your place in history is towering . . . ”

  Outside, people were doing that maddening trick of opening and shutting the door, at shorter and shorter intervals.

  “Alan, it’s been so good of you to come and see me . . . ”268

  Clark was the only one who encouraged her. The others hewed to their script. “As I well realized,” Thatcher writes, “they had been feverishly discussing what to say in the rooms off the Commons Cabinet corridor above my room. Like all politicians in a quandary, they had sorted out their ‘line to take’ and they would cling to it through thick and thin. After three or four interviews, I felt I could almost join the chorus.”

  Of course I support you, they told her, one by one. This is a travesty. You have my complete loyalty. But we’re outnumbered—you’re going to lose. You must step down, so that we can defeat Heseltine, who will destroy everything you’ve worked for . . .

  “I was sick at heart,” Thatcher remembers. “I could have resisted the opposition of opponents and potential rivals and even respected them for it; but what grieved me was the desertion of those I had always considered friends and allies and the weasel words by which they had transmuted their betrayal into frank advice and concern for my fate.”

  ANTONY

  This was the most unkindest cut of all;

  For when the noble Caesar saw him stab,

  Ingratitude, more strong than traitors’ arms,

  Quite vanquish’d him: then burst his mighty heart;

  And, in his mantle muffling up his face,

  Even at the base of Pompey’s statua,

  Which all the while ran blood, great Caesar fell.

  After the last visitor left, she dictated a brief statement. She would resign.

  “They demonstrated the ruthlessness of the officer class,” says Kinnock. “It was quite an operation, but they got rid of her. And I had to tell my people, ‘Celebrate, and get drunk tonight, and then wake up in the morning and know that we have just lost our greatest political asset.’ Which is the truth.”

  It is said that Ted Heath cried “Rejoice! Rejoice!” when he heard the news. When later he was asked whether he had indeed said this, he replied no: He hadn’t said “rejoice” twice, he’d said it three times.

  BRUTUS

  People and senators, be not affrighted;

  Fly not; stand stiff: ambition’s debt is paid.

  I remember where I was when I heard. Everyone who lived in Britain then would. I was in Holywell Manor, the graduate annex of Balliol College. There had been rumors all week that she might resign, that Heseltine would challenge her, but truly, no one believed it would really happen. It was inconceivable. I had never known a Britain in which Margaret Thatcher wasn’t the prime minister.

  A student burst through the door, shouting: She’s resigned!

  CINNA

  Liberty! Freedom! Tyranny is dead!

  Run hence, proclaim, cry it about the streets.

  Everyone knew who “she” was. Almost everyone in earshot began cheering, punching the air. The elderly porter in the porter’s lodge looked stricken. We raced to the lone television set in the building to follow the story. The college bar was opened early. All day long there were choruses of “Ding, dong, the witch is dead!” That night, at least a dozen students were found passed out or vomiting in the rose bushes.269

  FIRST CITIZEN

  This Caesar was a tyrant.

  THIRD CITIZEN

  Nay, that’s certain:

  We are blest that Rome is rid of him.

  On November 28, the prime minister tendered her resignation to the Queen. One week later, she was driven away from Downing Street.

  She was in tears.

  ANTONY

  O mighty Caesar! dost thou lie so low?

  Are all thy conquests, glories, triumphs, spoils,

  Shrunk to this little measure? Fare thee well.

  Kinnock called for a motion of no confidence in the Conservative government. In defeat, Thatcher seized the opportunity to deliver one of her most astonishing performances. “Each sentence,” she recalls, “was my testimony at the bar of History. It was as if I were speaking for the last time, rather than merely for the last time as Prime Minister.”

  She began by recalling Nicholas Henderson’s famous missive from Paris describing the state of Britain when she took power: “We talk of ourselves without shame as being one of the less prosperous countries of Europe,” she quoted from the dispatch. The prognosis for Britain in 1979, she reminded those present, was terminal decline.

  “Conservative government has changed all that,” she reminded the House. “Once again, Britain stands tall in the councils of Europe and of the world, and our policies have brought unparalleled prosperity to our citizens at home.”

  For Brutus is an honora
ble man.

  “The average pensioner now has twice as much to hand on to his children as he did 11 years ago . . . ”

  So are they all, all honorable men—

  “We are no longer the sick man of Europe . . . ”

  And Brutus is an honorable man.

  “Britain no longer has an overmanned, inefficient, backward manufacturing sector, but modern, dynamic industries . . . ”

  And Brutus is an honorable man.

  “We have worked for our vision of a Europe which is free and open to the rest of the world, and above all to the countries of eastern Europe as they emerge from the shadows of socialism . . .”

  In the middle of this speech, an immortal moment:

  The Prime Minister: I am enjoying this!

  This is the astonishing thing: She genuinely does appear to be enjoying this. I would swear she is having a simply splendid time. It is a bravura performance. Sheer arrant pride, bustling about as if she hadn’t a single care, chest out, immaculately powdered and lacquered, not a trace of self-pity. If ever I am thus humiliated, I pray I could put on a face like that.

  They knew it, too, the House. They were in the presence of an indomitable spirit. You can see it and you can hear it—they are watching her and thinking, My God, she’s magnificent. And a heartbeat later: My God, what have we done?

  Mr. Michael Carttiss: Cancel it! You can wipe the floor with these people!

  The Prime Minister: Yes, indeed.

  “Under our leadership, Britain has been just as influential in shaping the wider Europe and the relations between East and West. Ten years ago, the eastern part of Europe lay under totalitarian rule, its people knowing neither rights nor liberties. Today, we have a Europe in which democracy, the rule of law and basic human rights are spreading ever more widely, where the threat to our security from the overwhelming conventional forces of the Warsaw pact has been removed: where the Berlin wall has been torn down and the Cold War is at an end.”

  And sure he is an honorable man.

  “There is something else which one feels. That is a sense of this country’s destiny: the centuries of history and experience which ensure that, when principles have to be defended, when good has to be upheld and when evil has to be overcome, Britain will take up arms.

  “It is because we on this side have never flinched from difficult decisions that this House and this country can have confidence in this Government today!”270

  The House was stunned.

  The motion of no confidence was defeated, 367 to 247.

  But it was too late: She was gone.

  FIRST CITIZEN

  O piteous spectacle!

  SECOND CITIZEN

  O noble Caesar!

  THIRD CITIZEN

  O woeful day!

  FOURTH CITIZEN

  O traitors, villains!

  WHAT HAVE THEY DONE?

  —Daily Express

  CONCLUSION

  Why Margaret Thatcher Matters

  The title of this book implies a doubt. A book called Why Hitler Matters would be inherently absurd; no one doubts that he mattered and no one needs to be told why. But the title of this book also implies a conviction. No one would write a book called Why John Major Matters. We know full well that he doesn’t.

  You picked up this book because you know already that Thatcher is significant. But how significant is she, and why?

  I do not propose to appeal to judgments only time can make. No one now asks whether Hitler, Lenin, Stalin, Churchill, and Roosevelt were historical figures of enduring significance. They were judged as massive during their lifetimes; these judgments proved correct. But we should remember that a similar assessment was once made of Chiang Kai-shek. He was believed by his contemporaries to be—I quote now from the Chiang Anthem, and I reckon I would lose no money by betting that this is not on your iPod—“the savior of mankind, the greatest person in the whole world, the lighthouse of freedom, the Great Wall of democracy.” He bustled and strutted over the world stage; he was the darling of American conservatives and a fulcrum of great power politics. Nonetheless, professional historians of China apart, no one now thinks of Chiang as one of the pivotal figures of human history. No one today would write a book titled Why Chiang Matters. I assume that quite a number of my readers will need to go to Wikipedia to remind themselves who he was.

  Will Margaret Thatcher be placed among the pantheon of politicians with enduring significance? Or will she pass, like Chiang, into the fog of history? I cannot tell you. No one can.

  I can only tell you why she matters to us now.

  Begin with a broader question: What do political figures who matter have in common? Why, as I asked at the beginning of this book, do some of them become larger than life?

  Here is my answer. The political figures who matter have two rare gifts. First, they are able to perceive the gathering of historical forces in a way their contemporaries are unable to do. What do I mean by “the gathering of historical forces”? I mean, they are able to sense the big picture. Lenin was able to discern a convergence of trends in Czarist Russia—the migration of the peasants, the rise of revolutionary consciousness, the weakness of the Czarist government, the debilitation inflicted upon Russia by the First World War—and to recognize what this convergence implied: The old order could now be toppled—not merely reformed, but destroyed. Czar Nicholas II could not perceive this. It is thus that Lenin now matters and Nicholas II does not.

  Second, when promoted to power, those who matter are able to master these historical forces. Chiang understood perfectly that China was vulnerable to communism and understood as well precisely what communism in China would mean. He perceived the forces of history. But he was unable, for all his energy and efforts, to master them. And so, tragically, he does not matter.

  Churchill perceived the forces of history and then mastered them. In 1933, Hitler was widely regarded outside of Germany as no more than a buffoon. Churchill knew better. His assessment of Hitler was at the time astonishingly prescient and singular. He perceived the unique danger of Nazism when others could not see it or refused to believe it. He was steadfast in his warnings. When at last Churchill acquired power, he discharged his responsibilities in such a fashion as to gain him immortality.

  When politicians matter, they matter because of these gifts.

  Thatcher had these gifts. She perceived—as did many of her contemporaries—that Britain was in decline. She perceived that the effects of Marxist doctrine upon Britain had been pernicious. But unlike her contemporaries, she perceived that Britain’s decline was not inevitable. And she perceived too that socialism was not—as widely believed—irreversible.

  Simultaneously, she sensed a wider and related tide in history that no other leader in the Western world, apart from Reagan, sensed at all. She understood that the Soviet Union was far from the invulnerable colossus it was imagined to be. She sensed, in fact, that it was unable to satisfy the basic needs of its own population. It was corrupt, moribund, and doomed.

  “It is easy to forget the state of the country . . . in the years which led up to 1979,” remarked Michael Howard, leader of the Conservative Party from 2003 to 2005. “The air of defeatism which was the prevailing climate of the time was the economic and social equivalent of Munich . . . from the beginning she displayed the resolve and determination which made her, to my mind, the peacetime counterpart of Churchill.” (Courtesy of the family of Srdja Djukanovic)

  Having perceived the gathering of historical forces, she mastered them. She reversed the advance of socialism in Britain, proving both that a country can be ripped from a seemingly overdetermined trajectory and that it takes only a single figure with an exceptionally strong will to do so. She did not single-handedly cause the Soviet empire to crumble, but she landed some of the most devastating punches of the Cold War and, extraordinarily, emerged unbloodied from the fight.

  There is an even larger sense in which Margaret Thatcher perceived and mastered the forces of his
tory.

  Since the eighteenth century, two views of political life have vied for dominance in the Western world. They are views about the hypothetical state of nature—the condition of mankind in the absence of government. The first view is that of Thomas Hobbes: The life of man in the state of nature, he wrote, is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.” The second is that of Jean-Jacques Rousseau: “Man is born free, but he is everywhere in chains.”

  Hobbes wrote Leviathan during the English civil wars of the seventeenth century. Such horrors as he had seen, he believed, arose because of the absence of government, and in particular, the absence of a government powerful enough to overawe men who would otherwise be fractious and dominated by self-interest.

  Leviathan is a defense of a central and commanding power in political life. It is sometimes understood, for this reason, as an argument for totalitarianism. A close study of Hobbes suggests little to encourage this view. The form of this central power was to Hobbes largely a matter of indifference. He favored a monarchy, but this is not his key point. His key point is that there is a choice between anarchy and a powerful state. And since, as he could plainly see, anarchy was awful, he chose a powerful state.

  This powerful state is the Leviathan, and it is a Leviathan because it possesses—in theory, at least—a monopoly on violence. Leviathan to this day remains a critical justification for the existence and the primacy of the nation-state. This was a primacy Thatcher sought instinctively and ferociously to preserve.

  It is perverse that Hobbes is widely seen as providing a defense of absolutism in political life, for the historical trail between his thought and the unspeakable evils of the twentieth century is almost impossible to map. Neither Lenin, nor Stalin, nor Hitler, nor Mao thought in his terms; they did not justify their rule by an appeal to a state of nature in which men would find themselves enemies to one another.