165 Interview for Thames Television’s TV Eye, January 24, 1985, transcript, Thatcher MSS (digital collection), doc. 105949.
166 Lawson, The View from No. 11, p. 142.
167 Ibid., p. 143.
168 Ibid., p. 157.
169 Robin Renwick, Fighting with Allies: America and Britain in Peace and War (Macmillan, 1996), p. 230.
170 It’s not hard at all; you’d have to be deaf not to hear how her accent changed. But Kinnock’s Thatcher imitations are matchless, and I could hardly pass up an opportunity to hear more of them.
171 May 22, 1984, House of Commons PQs, Hansard [60/822–26].
172 March 13, 1984, House of Commons PQs, Hansard [60/56/276–82].
173 Thatcher, The Downing Street Years, p. 362.
174 Lawson, The View from No. 11, p. 144.
175 It refused to pay. The court then discovered the assets were missing. They had been transferred abroad.
176 BBC documentary, The Downing Street Years, 1993.
177 From script of “True Spies,” produced by BBC News, aired October–November 2002.
178 Ibid.
179 October 30, 1984, House of Commons PQs, Hansard HC [65/1156–60].
180 Orwell, The Road to Wigan Pier.
181 Press conference for American correspondents in London, December 7, 1984, transcript, Thatcher MSS (digital collection), doc. 105810.
182 The Downing Street Years, pp. 370–371.
183 Speech to Conservative Party Conference, October 11, 1985, Thatcher MSS (digital collection), doc. 106145.
184 Orwell, The Road to Wigan Pier.
185 Interview with CBI News, January 10, 1986, Thatcher MSS (digital collection), doc.106299.
186 Ibid.
187 Peter Walker claimed the flying pickets were paid forty pounds a day. My bet is that a pound a day is a lot closer to the truth.
188 The British National Party—fascists.
189 The Red Star was the Soviet newspaper that gave Thatcher her nickname—the Iron Lady.
190 The transcript, which I have shortened for the sake of economy, comes from the June 1993 International Civil Aviation Organization report.
191 Address to the Nation on the Soviet Attack on a Korean Civilian Airliner, September 5, 1983, www.reagan.utexas.edu/archives/speeches/1983/90583a.htm.
192 Thatcher to Reagan, September 15, 1983, NSA Head of State File, Thatcher: Cables (3), Box 35, Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, Simi Valley, California. Documents from U.S. presidential libraries cited in this chapter may be consulted at www.margaretthatcher.com.
193 “Nuclear War: Minuteman,” Weekendavisen, April 2, 2004; The Red Button and the Man Who Saved the World, LOGTV Ltd. & MG Productions, www.logtv.com/films/redbutton/video.htm.
194 Thatcher, The Downing Street Years, p. 450.
195 Bullard note on Chequers Soviet seminar, September 5, 1983, Thatcher MSS (digital collection), doc. 111071.
196 John Coles, minutes on Chequers Soviet seminar, September 8, 1983, Thatcher MSS (digital collection), doc. 111075.
197 September 7, 1983, Thatcher Archive (FCO), D. J. Manning minute on Chequers Soviet seminar.
198 “Changing Power Relations among OECD States,” October 22, 1979, CIA National Foreign Assessment Center. Carter Library release 2005/01/28 NLC–7–16–10–14–1.
199 Robert Gates, From the Shadows (Simon & Schuster, 1997), p. 197.
200 When Stéphane Courtois argued for this figure in his 1997 masterpiece, Le livre noir du Communisme, many critics believed this number was inflated. It increasingly appears that his estimate was too low. The book was published in English as The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression (Harvard University Press, 1999). The death toll may well have been more than two hundred million by the end of the Cold War. See, e.g., R. J. Rummel, Death by Government (Transaction, 1997).
201 Radio interview for British Forces Broadcasting Service, June 10, 1982, transcript, Thatcher MSS (digital collection), doc. 104962.
202 Thatcher, The Downing Street Years, p. 157.
203 “Changing Power Relations among OECD States,” October 22, 1979.
204 “An Interview with Thatcher,” Time, February 16,1981.
205 Reagan meeting with Kinnock, February 14, 1984, briefing and background papers, National Security Council Country File, Box 91331, Reagan Library.
206 March 26, 1981, House of Commons PQs, Hansard HC [1/1073–77].
207 Radio Interview for British Forces Broadcasting Service, June 10, 1982, Thatcher MSS (digital collection), doc. 104962.
208 Ronald Reagan, “Margaret Thatcher and the Revival of the West,” National Review, May 19, 1989.
209 “An Interview with Thatcher,” Time, February 16, 1981.
210 October 29, 1983, House of Commons PQs, Hansard HC [10/985–90].
211 He had also been to Belgium in 1972 and West Germany in 1975.
212 I believe he is referring to Alexander Yakovlev, although his name doesn’t begin with a K.
213 Interview with Zamyatin, Kommersant, May 4, 2005.
214 Mikhail Gorbachev, Memoirs (Doubleday, 1996).
215 Thatcher, The Downing Street Years, p. 462.
216 Thatcher-Reagan meeting at Camp David, December 22, 1984, record of conversation, European and Soviet Affairs Directorate, National Security Council, Folder “Thatcher Visit—Dec 1984 (1),” Box 90902, Reagan Library.
217 Ibid.
218 Ibid.
219 Thatcher, The Downing Street Years, p. 463.
220 Weinberger to Thatcher, January 29, 1985, NSA Head of State File, Box 36, Reagan Library.
221 Ronald Reagan, An American Life: The Autobiography (Simon and Schuster, 1990). I leave the story of Mulroney’s influence on Reagan to the author of Sleeping Giant to the North: Why Canada Matters.
222 Reagan to Gorbachev, April 30, 1985, “To the Geneva Summit: Perestroika and the Transformation of U.S.-Soviet Relations,” Electronic Briefing Book No. 172, Document 9, National Security Archive, George Washington University, Washington, D.C.
223 Max M. Kampelman, “Bombs Away,” New York Times, April 24, 2006.
224 John Fund, “Freedom’s Team: How Reagan, Thatcher and John Paul II won the Cold War,” Wall Street Journal, June 7, 2004.
225 Lance Morrow, “The Mystery of Ronald Reagan Lives On,” Time, April 19, 2000.
226 Thatcher, The Downing Street Years, p. 472.
227 Ibid., p. 472.
228 George Shultz, Turmoil and Triumph: My Years as Secretary of State (Scribner, 1993).
229 Andrei Sakharov, the Soviet Union’s most famous political dissident.
230 Interview for Soviet television, Vladimir Simonov, Novosci Press Agency; Boris Kalyagin, Soviet TV; Thomas Kolesnichenko, Pravda, March 31, 1987, transcript, Thatcher MSS (digital collection), doc. 106604.
231 Specifically, he bribed the Saudis with Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS) planes. If you’re curious about this story, you may consult my doctoral dissertation, Our Common Enemy: The Making of the United States Arms Transfer Policy Towards the Arab-Israeli Antagonists, 1967–1988. It is available for consultation at the Bodleian Library at Oxford University. You will be the only person ever to have been curious. When last I checked, I discovered that according to the library’s records, no visitor to the library—not one—had ever signed it out. Sic transit gloria mundi.
232 Peter Schweizer, Reagan’s War: The Epic Story of His Forty-Year Struggle and Final Triumph Over Communism (Doubleday, 2002).
233 Title VIII, Article 63, The Treaty Establishing a Constitution for Europe.
234 Alberto Alesina and Francesco Giavazzi, The Future of Europe: Reform or Decline (MIT Press, 2006), p. 122.
235 “Fighting against Overregulation and Red Tape,” Financial Times, October 9, 2006.
236 “Iron Grip Corrupted by Fatal Arrogance,” Independent, October 8, 1996.
237 Margaret Thatcher, Statecraft: Strategies for a Changing World (HarperCollin
s, 2002), pp. 323–325.
238 For example, see Hugo Young, This Blessed Plot: Britain and Europe from Churchill to Blair (Macmillan, 1991).
239 Claire Berlinski, Menace in Europe (Three Rivers Press, 2007), p. 235.
240 Needless to say, there will always be someone who places the blame on Germany’s notorious persecutors. The British diplomat Nicholas Henderson remarked that “People give all sorts of reasons why she became fanatically anti-German, one of which, I don’t know whether it’s true, is that her constituency was Finchley and it’s full of Jews. That may have had something to do with it . . . I don’t know.” Malcolm McBain interview with Nicholas Henderson, September 24, 1998, British Diplomatic Oral History Programme, Churchill Archives Centre, Cambridge.
241 Margaret Thatcher, The Path to Power (HarperCollins, 1995), p. 25.
242 I was told this by Sally McNamara, an analyst at the Heritage Foundation’s Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom. “It wasn’t relayed to me by Lady Thatcher herself,” she wrote, “but [by] one of her secretaries at a private event I organized with my former organization . . . It was particularly striking to the group we were meeting with because we were honoring her with our organization’s ‘Pioneer Award’ for her services to the advancement of the conservative principles of free markets, limited government, federalism (in the American sense and not the European sense!) and individual liberty.” E-mail, January 23, 2008.
243 Thatcher, The Path to Power, p. 27.
244 Speech to Finchley Conservatives, August 14, 1961, Thatcher MSS (digital collection), doc. 101105.
245 April 16, 1975, Speech to Conservative Group for Europe (opening Conservative referendum campaign), Thatcher MSS (digital collection), doc. 102675.
246 Speech to Helensburgh Conservative rally, April 18, 1975, Thatcher MSS (digital collection), doc. 102678.
247 Speech at Centro Italiona di Study per la Conciliazione Internazionale, Rome, “Europe as I See It,” June 24, 1977, Thatcher MSS (digital collection), doc. 103403.
248 Speech at dinner for French President Giscard d’Estaing, November 19, 1979, Thatcher MSS (digital collection), doc. 104172.
249 Thatcher, The Downing Street Years, p. 24.
250 Thatcher, The Downing Street Years, p. 742.
251 Craig R. Whitney, “Pressed at Home, British Unions Are Looking to Europe for Gains,” New York Times, September 11, 1988.
252 Speech to the College of Europe (“The Bruges Speech”), September 20, 1988, Thatcher MSS (digital collection), doc. 107332.
253 “Thatcher Sets Face Against United Europe,” Guardian, September 21, 1988.
254 Speech by Wilfried Martens, September 28, 1988, Brussels, in Europe: Documents 1527 (December 10, 1988): 7–8, Agence Europe S.A.
255 Geoffrey Howe, Conflict of Loyalty (St. Martin’s Press, 1994), pp. 537–538.
256 Speech in Wales, April 28, 1989, Archives historiques des Communautés européennes, Florence, Italy.
257 Lawson, The View from No. 11, pp. 659, 956.
258 Ibid., p. 936.
259 October 28, 1989, The Walden Interview, Thatcher MSS (digital collection), doc. 107808.
260 TV Interview for TV-AM, November 24, 1989, Washington, D.C., Thatcher MSS (digital collection), doc. 107829.
261 October 30, 1990, Hansard HC [178/869–92].
262 Clark, Diaries: In Power, pp. 342–343.
263 Thatcher, The Downing Street Years, p. 839.
264 Ibid., p. 840.
265 You may watch highlights of the speech here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1C2hieHKgA . Note that John Major—Thatcher’s chancellor—is sitting to Thatcher’s left and nodding sagely in seeming approval of Howe’s remarks.
266 Clark, Diaries: In Power, p. 349.
267 Ibid, p. 351.
268 Ibid., p. 366.
269 I don’t wish to be misleading: They were often found that way. A good handful would have been in those bushes on any given evening.
270 November 22, 1990, HC S: [Confidence in Her Majesty’s Government], House of Commons Speech, Hansard HC [181/445–53].
271 I was wrong too, but my opinions are obviously of less historical significance.
272 Speech paying tribute to Ronald Reagan, Washington, D.C., March 1, 2002, Thatcher MSS (digital collection), doc. 109306.
273 Again, my own judgment on this issue was no better at all. I was in full agreement with this speech.
274 See Stefan Theil, “Europe’s Philosophy of Failure,” Foreign Policy, January/February 2008.
275 I mention this as evidence that this is still one of the world’s most active political conflicts. I do not mean these remarks to be construed as any kind of approval of the excessive force used by the Turkish police. Under Thatcher, the police did not tear gas people sitting peacefully in cafes, and they did not tear gas women and children who were caught in the melee, and they did not tear gas leukemia patients in hospitals.
Copyright © 2008, 2011 by Claire Berlinski
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“There is no alternative” : why Margaret Thatcher matters / Claire Berlinski.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
eISBN : 978-0-465-03122-1
Thatcher, Margaret. 2. Great Britain—Politics and government—1979–1997. 3. Conservatism—Great Britain. I. Title.
DA589.7.B47 2008
941.085’ 8092—dc22
2008024595
There is No Alternative Page 38