Margaret Thatcher: The Autobiography

Margaret Thatcher: The Autobiography Margaret Thatcher Margaret Thatcher is the towering figure of late-twentieth-century British politics. No other prime minister of modern times has sought to change Britain and its place in the world as radically as she did. This is the story of her remarkable life in her own words - the definitive account of an extraordinary politician, published in a single volume for the first time.She writes candidly about the formation of her character and values, and the experiences that propelled her to the very top in a man's world. Beginning with a touching account of her upbringing in Grantham, Lincolnshire, she goes on to describe her Oxford years, marriage to Denis, and entry into Parliament at a time when there were no more than a handful of women MPs. Rising through the ranks to Education Secretary and then Leader of the Opposition, she led the Conservative Party to a historic victory in the 1979 general election, becoming Britain's first female prime minister.The heart of the book is a riveting first-hand portrait of the events and personalities of her eleven years in power. She recalls the triumphs and the critical moments of her premiership - the Falklands War, the miners' strike, the Brighton bomb, the Westland Affair and her unprecedented three election victories. Her judgements of the men and women she encountered, whether world statesmen or Cabinet colleagues, are astonishingly frank. She is lavish with praise where it is due; devastating with criticism when it is not. The book reaches a gripping climax with an hour-by-hour description from inside 10 Downing Street of her dramatic final days in office.Margaret Thatcher's compelling autobiography stands as a powerful testament to her extraordinary legacy. M A R G A R E T T H A T C H E R THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY CONTENTS LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS (#u4f2ce9ed-3570-51bf-89e5-4d2e1a7fde53) EDITOR’S NOTE (#ufa33e603-2f8c-5ab2-b739-c0aec99afdd7) CHAPTER 1 A Provincial Childhood (#ufb3e7cea-0054-5938-a7fe-c995b0def5f8) CHAPTER 2 Gowns-woman (#u2d326838-1b1d-5071-8228-215a17607d53) CHAPTER 3 House Bound (#u99bf4a7a-b26a-53ee-95ca-6b45da29dfc4) CHAPTER 4 The Outer Circle (#u0d816341-28f9-5ef5-876e-e78c61538366) CHAPTER 5 A World of Shadows (#u7933da25-c483-50b6-9f4c-09d95aa8d609) CHAPTER 6 Teacher’s Pest (#u131bc57e-6750-501d-af9d-c8159fa2e879) CHAPTER 7 No End of a Lesson (#u55abc953-43fa-5072-a5a7-54f4ea65bafc) CHAPTER 8 Seizing the Moment (#uccd9cead-4c1f-5c0f-94a5-35be7d8e3c69) CHAPTER 9 A Bumpy Ride (#u8433b678-6e7a-573e-9797-00d3c90ba308) CHAPTER 10 D?tente or Defeat? (#litres_trial_promo) CHAPTER 11 Apprenticeship for Power (#litres_trial_promo) CHAPTER 12 Just One Chance … (#litres_trial_promo) CHAPTER 13 Over the Shop (#litres_trial_promo) CHAPTER 14 Changing Signals (#litres_trial_promo) CHAPTER 15 Into the Whirlwind (#litres_trial_promo) CHAPTER 16 Not At All Right, Jack (#litres_trial_promo) CHAPTER 17 Not for Turning (#litres_trial_promo) CHAPTER 18 The West and the Rest (#litres_trial_promo) CHAPTER 19 The Falklands War: Follow the Fleet (#litres_trial_promo) CHAPTER 20 The Falklands: Victory (#litres_trial_promo) CHAPTER 21 Generals, Commissars and Mandarins (#litres_trial_promo) CHAPTER 22 Disarming the Left (#litres_trial_promo) CHAPTER 23 Home and Dry (#litres_trial_promo) CHAPTER 24 Back to Normalcy (#litres_trial_promo) CHAPTER 25 Mr Scargill’s Insurrection (#litres_trial_promo) CHAPTER 26 Shadows of Gunmen (#litres_trial_promo) CHAPTER 27 Keeps Raining All the Time (#litres_trial_promo) CHAPTER 28 Men to Do Business With (#litres_trial_promo) CHAPTER 29 Putting the World to Rights (#litres_trial_promo) CHAPTER 30 Jeux Sans Fronti?res (#litres_trial_promo) CHAPTER 31 Hat Trick (#litres_trial_promo) CHAPTER 32 An Improving Disposition (#litres_trial_promo) CHAPTER 33 Not So Much a Programme, More a Way of Life (#litres_trial_promo) CHAPTER 34 A Little Local Difficulty (#litres_trial_promo) CHAPTER 35 To Cut and to Please (#litres_trial_promo) CHAPTER 36 Floaters and Fixers (#litres_trial_promo) CHAPTER 37 The Babel Express (#litres_trial_promo) CHAPTER 38 The World Turned Right Side Up (#litres_trial_promo) CHAPTER 39 No Time to Go Wobbly (#litres_trial_promo) CHAPTER 40 Men in Lifeboats (#litres_trial_promo) Photo Inserts (#litres_trial_promo) CHRONOLOGY 1955–1990 (#litres_trial_promo) LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS (#litres_trial_promo) INDEX (#litres_trial_promo) COPYRIGHT (#litres_trial_promo) About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo) LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS (#ubbcd25c6-e8b6-5542-b574-c2fe40e8af5b) My father My mother My father’s shop in Grantham (Express Newspapers) With my father With my sister Muriel (F/T, Camera Press, London) In the garden at the house of some friends Muriel, father, mother and me At Somerville College, Oxford (By courtesy of the Principal and Fellows of Somerville College) At work as a research chemist (Heute Magazine) With Denis on our wedding day (Press Association Images) My 1951 election address As MP for Finchley (NI Syndication) With Ted Heath at the Conservative Party Conference (Popperfoto/Getty Images) Visiting a primary school as Secretary of State for Education With Denis, Carol and Mark (NI Syndication/Arthur Steel) Meeting the press at Conservative Central Office (Fox Photos) The State Opening of Parliament (Getty Images) Delivering the ‘Iron Lady’ speech in Kensington (Press Association Images) On a walkabout in Huddersfield (Srdja Djukanovic) On the stairs at Central Office following the 1979 general election victory (Lionel Chaerruault/Camera Press, London) With Denis outside No. 10 (NI Syndication/Tony Eyles) At the funeral of Airey Neave (Popperfoto/Getty Images) Presenting deeds in Milton Keynes (Getty Images) Addressing the Conservative Party Conference in Brighton (Press Association Images) Visiting my old school in Grantham (NI Syndication/Arthur Edwards) HMS Invincible returning to Portsmouth at the end of the Falklands War (Telegraph Syndication) Presenting medals on board HMS Hermes (Martin Cleaver/Press Association Images) On the steps of St Paul’s Cathedral (Press Association Images) With Cecil Parkinson at Central Office (Herbie Knott/Rex Features) At my desk at No. 10 (NI Syndication/John Manning) The Grand Hotel in Brighton, after the bombing (Mike Abrahams/Alamy) Leaving the Grand Hotel with Denis (Press Association Images) Photocall at Chequers with the Gorbachevs (Getty Images) Meeting Den Xiaoping (Xinhua, Camera Press, London) With President Reagan at Camp David (Official White House Photograph) Signing the Anglo-Irish Agreement (Press Association Images) Greeting the Queen outside No. 10 (NI Syndication/Arthur Edwards) With President Mitterand in 1986 (NI Syndication/Harry Kerr) Some of the Commonwealth leaders who attended the Special Commonwealth Conference in London (Roger Hutchings/OBS, Camera Press, London) In the kitchen at No. 10 (NI Syndication/Sally Soames) With Denis in Cornwall (NI Syndication/Graham Wood) Launching the 1987 general election manifesto Talking to the media from the Conservative Party ‘battle bus’ (NI Syndication/Graham Wood) Outside No. 10 with Denis (NI Syndication/R Bamber) With Neil Kinnock at the State Opening of Parliament (NI Syndication) Walking across a desolate urban landscape near Stockton-on-Tees (NI Syndication/Chris Harries) With President Reagan outside No. 10 (NI Syndication/John Rogers) At the dinner at No. 10 held in honour of President Reagan White House Photograph) Test driving the new Challenger tank (Joel Fink/AP/Press Association Images) Arriving at Camp David by helicopter (Official White House Photograph) With Helmut Kohl (NI Syndication) With Boris Yeltsin (Camera Press, London) With Nelson Mandela (Camera Press, London) Addressing the United Nations General Assembly (Courtesy of the United Nations) Receiving a standing ovation at the Party Conference (NI Syndication/Simon Townsley) With members of the Cabinet and Denis at the Carlton Club Answering questions in the House of Commons (Press Association Images) Driving away from Buckingham Palace (Geraint Lewis) Leaving No. 10 for the last time (Richard Open/Camera Press, London) EDITOR’S NOTE (#ubbcd25c6-e8b6-5542-b574-c2fe40e8af5b) The present edition is an abridged version of the original two volumes of Margaret Thatcher’s memoirs. The Downing Street Years, describing the author’s time as Prime Minister, was the first to appear, in 1993. The Path to Power, an account of her youth and early political career, was published two years later. The reverse chronological order was a response to the demands of the market and the relative interest of readers. But it had drawbacks. This single, abridged volume sets them right. It begins at the beginning and ends at the – very dramatic – end. It excludes altogether the last section of The Path to Power, which was a series of essays on issues of the day. Also excluded, for brevity’s sake, are the dedications, acknowledgements, many footnotes and most of the appendices, along with some discursive sections and travelogues that have lost immediate interest. That said, all the key moments, events, issues, exchanges and arguments are here. Arguably, the compression results in a stronger, sharper self-portrait of one of the twentieth century’s towering figures. ROBIN HARRIS CHAPTER ONE (#ubbcd25c6-e8b6-5542-b574-c2fe40e8af5b) A Provincial Childhood (#ubbcd25c6-e8b6-5542-b574-c2fe40e8af5b) Grantham 1925–1943 MY FIRST DISTINCT MEMORY IS OF TRAFFIC. I was being pushed in a pram through the town to the park on a sunny day, and I must have encountered the bustle of Grantham on the way. The occasion stays in my mind as an exciting mixture of colour, vehicles, people and thunderous noise – yet, perhaps paradoxically, the memory is a pleasant one. I must have liked this first conscious plunge into the outside world. As for indistinct memories, most of us probably recall our earliest years as a sort of blur. Mine was an idyllic blur in which the sun was always shining through the leaves of the lime tree into our living room and someone – my mother, my sister, one of the people working in the shop – was always nearby to cuddle me or pacify me with a sweet. Family tradition has it that I was a very quiet baby, which my political opponents might have some difficulty in believing. But I had not been born into a quiet family. Four generations of the Roberts family had been shoemakers in Northamptonshire, at that time a great centre of the shoe industry. My father, who had wanted to be a teacher, had to leave school at thirteen because the family could not afford for him to stay on. He went instead to work at Oundle, one of the better public (i.e. private) schools. Years later, when I was answering questions in the House of Commons, Eric Heffer, a left-wing Labour MP and regular sparring partner of mine, tried to pull working-class rank by mentioning that his father had been a carpenter at Oundle. He was floored when I was able to retort that mine had worked in the tuck shop there. My father had a number of jobs, most of them in the grocery trade, until in 1913 he was offered the post of manager of a grocery store in Grantham. In later years he would say that of the fourteen shillings a week he received, twelve shillings paid for his board and lodging, one shilling he saved, and only then did he spend the remaining shilling. The First World War broke out a year later. My father, a deeply patriotic man, tried to enlist no fewer than six times, but was rejected on each occasion on medical grounds. His younger brother, Edward, did enlist, and died on active service in Salonika in 1917. Few British families escaped such a bereavement, and Remembrance Day after the war was observed throughout the country both strictly and intensely. Four years after arriving in Grantham my father met my mother, Beatrice Ethel Stephenson, through the local Methodist church. She had her own business as a dressmaker. They were married in that church in May 1917 and my sister, Muriel, was born in 1921. My mother was quite a saver too, and by 1919 they were able to take out a mortgage to buy their own shop in North Parade. Our home was over this shop. In 1923 my father opened a second shop in Huntingtower Road – opposite the primary school which I would later attend. On 13 October 1925 I was born over the shop at North Parade. That same year, my father expanded his business further, taking in two adjoining buildings in North Parade. Our shop and house were situated at a busy crossroads and the main railway line – Grantham was an important junction – was just a hundred yards away. We could set our clocks by the ‘Flying Scotsman’ as it thundered through. What I most regretted was that we did not have a garden. Not until the end of the Second World War did my father buy a house with a long garden further along North Parade, on which the family had set our hearts some years previously. Life ‘over the shop’ is much more than a phrase. It is something which those who have lived it know to be quite distinctive. For one thing, you are always on duty. People would knock on the door at almost any hour of the night or weekend if they ran out of bacon, sugar, butter or eggs. Everyone knew that we lived by serving the customer; it was pointless to complain – and so nobody did. These orders were, of course, on top of the regular ones. My father or his staff – we had three at North Parade and someone else at Huntingtower – would generally go out and collect these. But sometimes my mother would do so, and then she might take Muriel and me along too. My sister and I knew a lot of people in the town as a result. There was, of course, no question of closing down the shop for long family holidays. We used to go to the local seaside resort, Skegness. But my father and mother had to take their holidays at different times, with my father taking a week off every year to play his favourite game, competing in the bowls tournament at Skegness. Living over the shop, children see far more of their parents than in most other walks of life. I saw my father at breakfast, lunch, high tea and supper. We had much more time to talk than some other families, for which I have always been grateful. My father was a specialist grocer. He always aimed to supply the best-quality produce, and the shop itself suggested this. Behind the counter there were three rows of splendid mahogany spice drawers with sparkling brass handles, and on top of these stood large, black, lacquered tea canisters. One of the tasks I sometimes shared was the weighing out of tea, sugar and biscuits from the sacks and boxes in which they arrived into 1lb and 2lb bags. In a cool back room we called ‘the old bake house’ hung sides of bacon which had to be boned and cut up for slicing. Wonderful aromas of spices, coffee and smoked hams would waft through the house. I was born into a home which was practical, serious and intensely religious. My father and mother were both staunch Methodists; indeed, my father was much in demand as a lay preacher in and around Grantham. He was a powerful preacher whose sermons contained a good deal of intellectual substance. But he was taken aback when I asked him why he put on a ‘sermon voice’ on these occasions. I don’t think he realized that he did this. It was an unconscious homage to the biblical message, and quite different from the more prosaic tones in which he dispatched council business and current affairs. Our lives revolved around Methodism. The family went to Sunday Morning Service at 11 o’clock, but before that I would have gone to morning Sunday School. There was Sunday School again in the afternoon; later, from about the age of twelve, I played the piano for the smaller children to sing the hymns. Then my parents would usually go out again to Sunday Evening Service. On a few occasions I remember trying to get out of going. But when I said to my father that my friends were able to go out for a walk instead and I would like to join them, he would reply: ‘Never do things just because other people do them.’ This was one of his favourite expressions – used when I wanted to learn dancing, or sometimes when I wanted to go to the cinema. Whatever I felt at the time, the sentiment stood me in good stead, as it did my father. My father’s sense of duty, however, always had its gentler side. This was not true of everyone. Life for poor people in the years before the Second World War was very difficult; and it was not much easier for those who had worked hard, accumulated a nest egg, and achieved a precarious respectability. They lived on a knife-edge and feared that if some accident hit them, or if they relaxed their standards of thrift and diligence, they might be plunged into debt and poverty. This precariousness often made otherwise good people hard and unforgiving. I remember a discussion between my father and a church-goer about the ‘prodigal son’ of a friend who, after running through his parents’ savings, had turned up penniless and with a young family on their doorstep. The church-goer was clear: the boy was no good, would never be any good, and should be shown the door. My father’s reply is vivid in my mind. No, he said. A son remained a son, and he must be greeted with all the love and warmth of his family when he turned to them. Whatever happens, you must always be able to come home. As this suggests, my father was a man of firm principles – ‘Your father always sticks to his principles,’ my mother would say – but he did not believe in applying these principles in a way which made life wretched for everyone else. He showed this in his dealings as a local councillor and later alderman with the vexed question of what could be done on the Sabbath. In those days in Grantham and in most places cinemas were closed on Sundays, but during the war – adopting a utilitarian rather than a dogmatic approach – he supported Sunday opening because it gave the servicemen stationed near the town somewhere to go, without disturbing others who wanted a quieter, more contemplative Sabbath. At the same time he strongly (though in the end unsuccessfully) opposed the opening of the parks for the playing of games, which he felt would ruin other people’s peace and quiet. He wanted to keep Sunday a special day, but he was flexible about how it should be done. For my own part, I was unpersuaded, even as a girl, of the need for these restrictions: but I can now appreciate how much this highly principled man was prepared to bend on the matter when circumstances made it sensible. These upright qualities, which entailed a refusal to alter your convictions just because others disagreed or because you became unpopular, were instilled into me from the earliest days. In 1936, when I was eleven, I was given a special edition of Bibby’s Annual. Joseph Bibby was a Liverpool food manufacturer who used part of his considerable self-made fortune to edit a religious magazine which was an odd combination of character building, homespun philosophy and religion; it also contained beautiful reproductions of great pictures. I was too young to know that the underlying approach was Theosophist* (#ulink_287b8c34-9929-5c61-a5a0-d3ca0c24b855) but the Annual was one of my most treasured possessions. Above all, it taught me some verses which I still use in off-the-cuff speeches because they came to embody for me so much of what I was brought up to feel. One ship drives East, and another drives West, By the self-same gale that blows; ’Tis the set of the sail, and not the gale, That determines the way she goes. ELLA WHEELER WILCOX Or again: The heights by great men reached and kept Were not attained by sudden flight, But they, while their companions slept, Were toiling upward in the night. HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW Whether it was that early exposure to Bibby’s Annual or just a natural bent, I was soon fascinated by poetry. Aged ten, I was the proud winner of a prize at the Grantham Eisteddfod for reciting poetry. (I read John Drinkwater’s ‘Moonlit Apples’ and Walter de la Mare’s ‘The Travellers’.) One day soon afterwards, when I called at a door to collect an order for groceries, I was given an edition of Milton by someone who knew how much poetry meant to me: I have treasured the book ever since. In the first years of the war I would go out as part of a concert party to the surrounding villages and recite from my Oxford Book of English Verse – another book which even now is never far from reach. Methodism itself, of course, has, in the form of the Wesley hymns, some really fine religious poetry. Religious life in Grantham was very active and, in the days before Christian ecumenism, competitive. There were three Methodist chapels, St Wulfram’s Anglican church – the sixth-highest steeple in England, according to local legend – and a Roman Catholic church just opposite our house. From a child’s standpoint, the Catholics seemed to have the most light-hearted time of all. I used to envy the young Catholic girls making their first communion, dressed in white, ribboned party dresses, and carrying baskets of flowers. The Methodist style was much plainer, and if you wore a ribboned dress an older chapel-goer would shake his head and warn against ‘the first step to Rome’. Even without ribbons, however, Methodism was far from dour. It placed great emphasis on the social side of religion and on music, both of which gave me plenty of opportunities to enjoy life, even if it was in what might seem a rather solemn way. Our friends from church would often come in to cold supper on Sunday evenings, or we would go to them. I always enjoyed the adults’ conversation, which ranged far wider than religion or happenings in Grantham to include national and international politics. And one of the unintended consequences of the temperance side of Methodism was that Methodists tended to devote more time and attention to eating. ‘Keeping a good table’ was a common phrase, and many of the social occasions were built around tea parties and suppers. There was also a constant round of church events. It was, I confess, the musical side of Methodism which I liked best. We sang special hymns on the occasion of Sunday School anniversaries. The Kesteven and Grantham Girls’ School (KGGS) carol service – and the weeks of practice which preceded it – was something I always looked forward to. Our church had an exceptionally good choir. Every other year we would perform an oratorio: Handel’s Messiah, Haydn’s Creation or Mendelssohn’s Elijah. We would have professionals from London to sing the more difficult solo parts. But what made an impression on me was the latent richness of musical talent which serious training and practice could develop. My family also belonged to a music society and three or four times a year there would be a chamber music concert. We were a musical family. From the age of five my parents had me learn the piano: my mother played too. In fact, I turned out to be quite good, and I was fortunate enough to have excellent teachers and won several prizes at local music festivals. The piano on which I was taught was made by my great uncle, John Roberts, in Northampton. He also made church organs. When I was ten I visited him and was thrilled to be allowed to play one of the two he had built in a cavernous barn-like building in his garden. Sadly, at sixteen I found it necessary to stop music lessons when I was cramming for my university entrance, and I still regret that I never took the piano up again. At this time, however, it was I who played the piano at home, while my father (who had a good bass voice) and mother (a contralto) and sometimes friends sang the old favourites of an evening – ‘The Holy City’, ‘The Lost Chord’, Gilbert and Sullivan, etc. Perhaps the biggest excitement of my early years was a visit to London when I was twelve years old. I came down by train in the charge of a friend of my mother’s, arriving at King’s Cross, where I was met by the Rev. Skinner and his wife, family friends who were going to look after me. The first impact of London was overwhelming: King’s Cross itself was a giant bustling cavern; the rest of the city had all the dazzle of a commercial and imperial capital. For the first time in my life I saw people from foreign countries, some in the traditional native dress of India and Africa. The sheer volume of traffic and of pedestrians was exhilarating; they seemed to generate a sort of electricity. London’s buildings were impressive for another reason; begrimed with soot, they had a dark imposing magnificence which constantly reminded me that I was at the centre of the world. I was taken by the Skinners to all the usual sites. I fed the pigeons in Trafalgar Square; I rode the Underground – a slightly forbidding experience for a child; I visited the Zoo, where I rode on an elephant and recoiled from the reptiles – an early portent of my relations with Fleet Street; I was disappointed by Oxford Street, which was much narrower than the boulevard of my imagination; made a pilgrimage to St Paul’s, where John Wesley had prayed on the morning of his conversion; and of course, to the Houses of Parliament and Big Ben, which did not disappoint at all; and I went to look at Downing Street, but unlike the young Harold Wilson did not have the prescience to have my photograph taken outside No. 10. All this was enjoyable beyond measure. But the high point was my first visit to the Catford Theatre in Lewisham where we saw Sigmund Romberg’s famous musical The Desert Song. For three hours I lived in another world, swept away as was the heroine by the daring Red Shadow – so much so that I bought the score and played it at home, perhaps too often. I could hardly drag myself away from London or from the Skinners, who had been such indulgent hosts. Their kindness had given me a glimpse of, in Talleyrand’s words, ‘la douceur de la vie’ – how sweet life could be. Our religion was not only musical and sociable – it was also intellectually stimulating. The ministers were powerful characters with strong views. The general political tendency among Methodists and other Nonconformists in our town was somewhat to the left wing and even pacifist. Methodists in Grantham were prominent in organizing the ‘Peace Ballot’ of 1935, circulating a loaded questionnaire to the electorate, which was then declared overwhelmingly to have ‘voted for peace’. It is not recorded how far Hitler and Mussolini were moved by this result; we had our own views about that in the Roberts household. The Peace Ballot was a foolish idea which must take some of the blame nationally for delaying the rearmament necessary to deter and ultimately defeat the dictators. On this question and others, being staunchly Conservative, we were the odd family out. Our friend the Rev. Skinner was an enthusiast for the Peace Ballot. He was the kindest and holiest man, and he married Denis and me at Wesley’s Chapel in London many years later. But personal virtue is no substitute for political hard-headedness. The sermons we heard every Sunday made a great impact on me. It was an invited Congregationalist minister, the Rev. Childe, who brought home to me the somewhat advanced notion for those days that whatever the sins of the fathers (and mothers) they must never be visited on the children. I still recall his denunciation of the Pharisaical tendency to brand children born outside marriage as ‘illegitimate’. All the town knew of some children without fathers; listening to the Rev. Childe, we felt very guilty about thinking of them as different. Times have changed. We have since removed the stigma of illegitimacy not only from the child but also from the parent – and perhaps increased the number of disadvantaged children thereby. We still have to find some way of combining Christian charity with sensible social policy. When war broke out and death seemed closer to everybody, the sermons became more telling. In one, just after the Battle of Britain, the preacher told us that it is ‘always the few who save the many’: so it was with Christ and the apostles. I was also inspired by the theme of another sermon: history showed how it was those who were born at the depths of one great crisis who would be able to cope with the next. This was proof of God’s benevolent providence and a foundation for optimism about the future, however dark things now looked. The values instilled in church were faithfully reflected in my home. So was the emphasis on hard work. In my family we were never idle – partly because idleness was a sin, partly because there was so much work to be done, and partly, no doubt, because we were just that sort of people. As I have mentioned, I would help whenever necessary in the shop. But I also learned from my mother just what it meant to cope with a household so that everything worked like clockwork, even though she had to spend so many hours serving behind the counter. Although we had a maid before the war – and later a cleaning lady a couple of days a week – my mother did much of the work herself, and there was a great deal more than in a modern home. She showed me how to iron a man’s shirt in the correct way and to press embroidery without damaging it. Large flatirons were heated over the fire and I was let in on the secret of how to give a special finish to linen by putting just enough candle wax to cover a sixpenny piece on the iron. Most unusually for those times, at my secondary school we had to study domestic science – everything from how to do laundry properly to the management of the household budget. So I was doubly equipped to lend a hand with the domestic chores. The whole house at North Parade was not just cleaned daily and weekly: a great annual spring clean was intended to get to all those parts which other cleaning could not reach. Carpets were taken up and beaten. The mahogany furniture – always good quality, which my mother had bought in auction sales – was washed down with a mixture of warm water and vinegar before being repolished. Since this was also the time of the annual stocktaking in the shop, there was hardly time to draw breath. Nothing in our house was wasted, and we always lived within our means. The worst you could say about another family was that they ‘lived up to the hilt’. Because we had always been used to a careful regime, we could cope with wartime rationing, though we used to note down the hints on the radio about the preparation of such stodgy treats as ‘Lord Woolton’s potato pie’, an economy dish named after the wartime Minister for Food. My mother was an excellent cook and a highly organized one. Twice a week she had her big bake – bread, pastry, cakes and pies. Her home-made bread was famous, as were her Grantham gingerbreads. Before the war there were roasts on Sunday, which became cold cuts on Monday and disappeared into rissoles on Tuesday. With wartime, however, the Sunday roast became almost meatless stew or macaroni cheese. Small provincial towns in those days had their own networks of private charity. In the run-up to Christmas as many as 150 parcels were made up in our shop, containing tinned meat, Christmas cake and pudding, jam and tea – all purchased for poorer families by one of the strongest social and charitable institutions in Grantham, the Rotary Club. There was always something from those Thursday or Sunday bakes which was sent out to elderly folk living alone or who were sick. As grocers, we knew something about the circumstances of our customers. Clothes were never a problem for us. My mother had been a professional seamstress and made most of what we wore. In those days there were two very good pattern services, Vogue and Butterick’s, and in the sales we could get the best-quality fabrics at reduced prices. So we got excellent value for money and were, by Grantham standards, rather fashionable. For my father’s mayoral year, my mother made both her daughters new dresses – a blue velvet for my sister and a dark green velvet for me – and herself a black moir? silk gown. But in wartime the ethos of frugality was almost an obsession. Even my mother and I were taken aback by one of our friends, who told us that she never threw away her tacking cottons but re-used them: ‘I consider it my duty to do so,’ she said. After that, so did we. We were not Methodists for nothing. I had less leisure time than other children. But I used to enjoy going for long walks, often on my own. Grantham lies in a little hollow surrounded by hills, unlike most of Lincolnshire which is very flat. I loved the beauty of the countryside and being alone with my thoughts in those surroundings. Sometimes I used to walk out of the town by Manthorpe Road and cut across on the north side to return down the Great North Road. I would also walk up Hall’s Hill, where in wartime we were given a week off school to go and gather rose hips and blackberries. There was tobogganing there when it snowed. I did not play much sport, though I learned to swim, and at school I was a somewhat erratic hockey player. At home we played the usual games, like Monopoly and Pit – a noisy game based on the Chicago Commodities Exchange. In a later visit to America I visited the Exchange; but my dabbling in commodities ended there. It was, however, the coming of the cinema to Grantham which really brightened my life. We were fortunate in having among our customers the Campbell family who owned three cinemas in Grantham. They would sometimes invite me around to their house to play the gramophone, and I got to know their daughter Judy, later to be a successful actress who partnered No?l Coward in his wartime comedy Present Laughter and made famous the song ‘A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square’. Because we knew the Campbells, the cinema was more acceptable to my parents than it might otherwise have been. They were content that I should go to ‘good’ films, a classification which fortunately included Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers musicals, and the films of Alexander Korda. They rarely went with me – though on a Bank Holiday we would go together to the repertory theatre in Nottingham or to one of the big cinemas there – so usually I would be accompanied by friends of my own age. Even then, however, there were limits. Ordinarily there was a new film each week; but since some of these did not sustain enough interest to last six days, another one was shown from Thursday. Some people would go along to the second film, but that was greatly frowned on in our household. Perhaps that was a fortunate restraint; for I was entranced with the romantic world of Hollywood. For 9d you had a comfortable seat in the darkness while the screen showed first the trailer for forthcoming attractions, then the British Movietone News with its chirpy optimistic commentary, after that a short public service film on a theme like Crime Does Not Pay, and finally the Big Picture. These ran the gamut from imperialistic adventures like The Four Feathers and Drum, to sophisticated comedies like The Women (with every female star in the business), to the four-handkerchief weepies like Barbara Stanwyck in Stella Dallas or Ingrid Bergman in anything. Nor was I entirely neglecting my political education ‘at the pictures’. My views on the French Revolution were gloriously confirmed by Leslie Howard and lovely Merle Oberon in The Scarlet Pimpernel. I saw my father’s emphasis on the importance of standing up for your principles embodied by James Stewart in Mr Smith Goes to Washington. I rejoiced to see Soviet communism laughed out of court when Garbo, a stern Commissar, was seduced by a lady’s hat in Ninotchka. And my grasp of history was not made more difficult by the fact that William Pitt the Younger was played by Robert Donat and, in Marie Walewska, Napoleon was played by the great French charmer Charles Boyer. I often reflect how fortunate I was to have been born in 1925 and not twenty years earlier. Until the 1930s, there was no way that a young girl living in a small English provincial town could have had access to this extraordinary range of talent, dramatic form, human emotion, sex appeal, spectacle and style. To a girl born twenty years later these offerings were commonplace and taken much more for granted. Grantham was a small town, but on my visits to the cinema I roamed to the most fabulous realms of the imagination. It gave me the determination to roam in reality one day. For my parents the reality which mattered was here and now. Yet it was not really a dislike of pleasure which shaped their attitude. They made a very important distinction between mass and self-made entertainment, which is just as valid in the age of constant soap operas and game shows – perhaps more so. They felt that entertainment that demanded something of you was preferable to being a passive spectator. At times I found this irksome, but I also understood the essential point. When my mother, sister and I went on holiday together, usually to Skegness, there was always the same emphasis on being active, rather than sitting around day-dreaming. We would stay in a self-catering guesthouse, much better value than a hotel, and first thing in the morning I went out with the other children for PT exercises arranged in the public gardens. There was plenty to keep us occupied and, of course, there were buckets and spades and the beach. In the evening we would go to the variety shows and reviews, with comedians, jugglers, acrobats, ‘old tyme’ singers, ventriloquists and lots of audience participation when we joined in singing the latest hit from Henry Hall’s Guest Night. My parents considered that such shows were perfectly acceptable, which in itself showed how attitudes changed: we would never have gone to the variety while Grandmother Stephenson, who lived with us till I was ten, was still alive. That may make my grandmother sound rather forbidding. Again, not at all. She was a warm presence in the life of myself and my sister. Dressed in the grandmotherly style of those days – long black sateen-beaded dress – she would come up to our bedrooms on warm summer evenings and tell us stories of her life as a young girl. She would also make our flesh creep with old wives’ tales of how earwigs would crawl under your skin and form carbuncles. Her death at the age of eighty-six was the first time I had ever encountered death. As was the custom in those days, I was sent to stay with friends until the funeral was over and my grandmother’s belongings had all been packed away. In fact, life is very much a day-today experience for a child, and I recovered reasonably quickly. But Mother and I went to tend her grave on half-day closing days. I never knew either of my grandfathers, who died before I was born, and I saw Grandmother Roberts only twice, on holidays down to Ringstead in Northamptonshire. She was a bustling, active little old lady who kept a fine garden. I remember particularly that she kept a store of Cox’s orange pippins in an upstairs room from which my sister and I were invited to select the best. My father was a great bowls player, and he smoked (which was very bad for him because of his weak chest). Otherwise, his leisure and entertainment always seemed to merge into duty. We had no alcohol in the house until he became mayor at the end of the war, and then only sherry and cherry brandy, which for some mysterious reason was considered more respectable than straight brandy, to entertain visitors. (Years of electioneering also later taught me that cherry brandy is very good for the throat.) Like the other leading businessmen in Grantham, my father was a Rotarian. The Rotary motto, ‘Service Above Self’, was engraved on his heart. He spoke frequently and eloquently at Rotary functions, and we could read his speeches reported at length in the local paper. The Rotary Club was constantly engaged in fund raising for the town’s different charities. My father would be involved in similar activity, not just through the church but as a councillor and in a private capacity. One such event which I used to enjoy was the League of Pity (now NSPCC) Children’s Christmas party, which I would go to in one of the party dresses beautifully made by my mother, to raise money for children who needed help. Apart from home and church, the other centre of my life was, naturally enough, school. Here too I was very lucky. Huntingtower Road Primary School had a good reputation in the town and by the time I went there I had already been taught simple reading by my parents. Even when I was very young I enjoyed learning. Like all children, I suspect, these days remain vividly immediate for me. I remember a heart-stopping moment at the age of five when I was asked how to pronounce W-R-A-P; I got it right, but I thought ‘They always give me the difficult ones.’ Later, in General Knowledge, I first came across the mystery of ‘proverbs’. I already had a logical and indeed somewhat literal mind – perhaps I have not changed much in this regard – and I was perplexed by the metaphorical element of phrases like ‘Look before you leap’. I thought it would be far better to say ‘Look before you cross’ – a highly practical point given the dangerous road I must traverse on my way to school. And I triumphantly pointed out the contradiction between that proverb and ‘He who hesitates is lost’. It was in the top class at primary school that I first came across the work of Kipling, who died that January of 1936. I immediately became fascinated by his poems and stories and asked my parents for a Kipling book at Christmas. His poems gave a child access to a wider world – indeed, wider worlds – of the Empire, work, English history and the animal kingdom. Like the Hollywood films later, Kipling offered glimpses into the romantic possibilities of life outside Grantham. By now I was probably reading more widely than most of my classmates, doubtless through my father’s influence, and it showed on occasion. I can still recall writing an essay about Kipling and burning with indignation at being accused of having copied down the word ‘nostalgia’ from some book, whereas I had used it quite naturally and easily. From Huntingtower Road I went on to Kesteven and Grantham Girls’ School. It was in a different part of town, and what with coming home for lunch, which was more economical than the school lunch, I walked four miles a day back and forth. Our uniform was saxe-blue and navy and so we were called ‘the girls in blue’. (When Camden Girls’ School from London was evacuated to Grantham for part of the war they were referred to as ‘the girls in green’.) The headmistress was Miss Williams, a petite, upright, grey-haired lady, who had started the school as headmistress in 1910, inaugurated certain traditions such as that all girls however academic had to take domestic science for four years, and whose quiet authority by now dominated everything. I greatly admired the special outfits Miss Williams used to wear at the annual school f?te or prize-giving, when she appeared in beautiful silk, softly tailored, looking supremely elegant. But she was very practical. The advice to us was never to buy a low-quality silk when the same amount of money would purchase a good-quality cotton. ‘Never aspire to a cheap fur coat when a well-tailored wool coat would be a better buy.’ The rule was always to go for quality within your own income. My teachers had a genuine sense of vocation and were highly respected by the whole community. The school was small enough – about 350 girls – for us to get to know them and one another, within limits. The girls were generally from middle-class backgrounds; but that covered a fairly wide range of occupations from town and country. My closest friend came in daily from a rural village about ten miles distant, where her father was a builder. I used to stay with her family from time to time. Her parents, no less keen than mine to add to a daughter’s education, would take us out for rural walks, identifying the wild flowers and the species of birds and birdsongs. I had a particularly inspiring History teacher, Miss Harding, who gave me a taste for the subject, which, unfortunately, I never fully developed. I found myself with absolute recall remembering her account of the Dardanelles campaign so many years later when, as Prime Minister, I walked over the tragic battlegrounds of Gallipoli. But the main academic influence on me was undoubtedly Miss Kay, who taught Chemistry, in which I decided to specialize. It was not unusual – in an all-girls’ school, at least – for a girl to concentrate on science, even before the war. My natural enthusiasm for the sciences was whetted by reports of breakthroughs in the splitting of the atom and the development of plastics. It was clear that a whole new scientific world was opening up. I wanted to be part of it. Moreover, as I knew that I would have to earn my own living, this seemed an exciting way to do so. As my father had left school at the age of thirteen, he was determined to make up for this and to see that I took advantage of every educational opportunity. We would both go to hear ‘Extension Lectures’ from the University of Nottingham about current and international affairs, which were given in Grantham regularly. After the talk would come a lively question time in which I and many others would take part: I remember, in particular, questions from a local RAF man, Wing-Commander Millington, who later captured Chelmsford for Common Wealth – a left-wing party of middle-class protest – from the Churchill coalition in a by-election towards the end of the war. My parents took a close interest in my schooling. Homework always had to be completed – even if that meant doing it on Sunday evening. During the war, when the Camden girls were evacuated to Grantham and a shift system was used for teaching at our school, it was necessary to put in extra hours at the weekend. My father, in particular, who was an all the more avid reader for being a self-taught scholar, would discuss what we read at school. On one occasion he found that I did not know Walt Whitman’s poetry; this was quickly remedied, and Whitman is still a favourite author of mine. I was also encouraged to read the classics – the Bront?s, Jane Austen and, of course, Dickens: it was the latter’s A Tale of Two Cities, with its strong political flavour, that I liked best. My father also used to subscribe to the Hibbert Journal – a philosophical journal. But this I found heavy going. Beyond home, church and school lay the community which was Grantham itself. We were immensely proud of our town; we knew its history and traditions; we were glad to be part of its life. Grantham was established in Saxon times, though it was the Danes who made it an important regional centre. During the twelfth century the Great North Road was re-routed to run through the town, literally putting Grantham on the map. Communications were always the town’s lifeblood. In the eighteenth century the canal was cut to carry coke, coal and gravel into Grantham and corn, malt, flour and wool out of it. But the real expansion had come with the arrival of the railways in 1850. Our town’s most imposing structure I have already mentioned – the spire of St Wulfram’s Church, which could be seen from all directions. But most characteristic and significant for us was the splendid Victorian Guildhall and, in front of it, the statue of Grantham’s most famous son, Sir Isaac Newton. It was from here, on St Peter’s Hill, that the Remembrance Day parades began to process en route to St Wulfram’s. I would watch from the windows of the Guildhall Ballroom as (preceded by the Salvation Army band and the band from Ruston and Hornsby’s locomotive works) the mayor, aldermen and councillors with robes and regalia, followed by Brownies, Cubs, Boys’ Brigade, Boy Scouts, Girl Guides, Freemasons, Rotary, Chamber of Commerce, Working Men’s Clubs, trade unions, British Legion, soldiers, airmen, the Red Cross, the St John’s Ambulance and representatives of every organization which made up our rich civic life filed past. It was also on the green at St Peter’s Hill that every Boxing Day we gathered to watch the pink coats of the Belvoir Hunt hold their meet (followed by the traditional tipple) and cheered them as they set off. Nineteen thirty-five was a quite exceptional and memorable year for the town. We celebrated King George V’s Silver Jubilee along with Grantham’s Centenary as a borough. Lord Brownlow, whose family (the Custs) with the Manners family (the Dukes of Rutland) were the most distinguished aristocratic patrons of the town, became mayor. The town itself was heavily decorated with blue and gold waxed streamers – our local colours – across the main streets. Different streets vied to outdo one another in the show they put on. I recall that it was the street with some of the poorest families in the worst housing, Vere Court, which was most attractively turned out. Everyone made an effort. The brass bands played throughout the day, and Grantham’s own ‘Carnival Band’ – a rather daring innovation borrowed from the United States and called ‘The Grantham Gingerbreads’ – added to the gaiety of the proceedings. The schools took part in a great open-air programme and we marched in perfect formation under the watchful eye of the wife of the headmaster of the boys’ grammar school to form the letters ‘G-R-A-N-T-H-A-M’. Appropriately enough, I was part of the ‘M’. My father’s position as a councillor, Chairman of the Borough Finance Committee, then alderman* (#ulink_a0b12f4a-cd0e-5965-a8d7-63e913745ed4) and finally, in 1945–46, mayor meant that I heard a great deal about the town’s business and knew those involved in it. Politics was a matter of civic duty and party was of secondary importance. The Labour councillors we knew were respected and, whatever the battles in the council chamber or at election time, they came to our shop and there was no partisan bitterness. My father understood that politics has limits – an insight which is all too rare among politicians. His politics would perhaps be best described as ‘old-fashioned liberal’. Individual responsibility was his watchword and sound finance his passion. He was an admirer of John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty. Like many other business people he had, as it were, been left behind by the Liberal Party’s acceptance of collectivism. He stood for the council as a ratepayer’s candidate. In those days, before comprehensive schools became an issue and before the general advance of Labour politics into local government, local council work was considered as properly non-partisan. But I never remember him as anything other than a staunch Conservative. I still recall with great sorrow the day in 1952 when Labour, having won the council elections, voted my father out as an alderman. This was roundly condemned at the time for putting party above community. Nor can I forget the dignity with which he behaved. After the vote in the council chamber was taken, he rose to speak: ‘It is now almost nine years since I took up these robes in honour, and now I trust in honour they are laid down.’ And later, after receiving hundreds of messages from friends, allies and even old opponents, he issued a statement which said: ‘Although I have toppled over I have fallen on my feet. My own feeling is that I was content to be in and I am content to be out.’ Years later, when something not too dissimilar happened to me, after my father was long dead, I tried to take as an example the way he left public life. But this is to anticipate. Perhaps the main interest which my father and I shared while I was a girl was a thirst for knowledge about politics and public affairs. We read the Daily Telegraph every day, The Methodist Recorder, Picture Post and John O’London’s Weekly every week, and when we were small we took The Children’s Newspaper. Occasionally we read The Times. And then came the day my father bought our first wireless – a Philips of the kind you sometimes now see in the less pretentious antique shops. I knew what he was planning and ran much of the way home from school in my excitement. I was not disappointed. It changed our lives. From then on it was not just Rotary, church and shop which provided the rhythm of our day: it was the radio news. And not just the news. During the war after the 9 o’clock news on Sundays there was Postscript, a short talk on a topical subject, often by J.B. Priestley, who had a unique gift of cloaking left-wing views as solid, down-to-earth, Northern homespun philosophy, and sometimes an American journalist called Quentin Reynolds who derisively referred to Hitler by one of his family names, ‘Mr Schicklgruber’. There was The Brains Trust, an hour-long discussion of current affairs by four intellectuals, of whom the most famous was Professor C.E.M. Joad, whose answer to any question always began ‘It all depends what you mean by …’ On Friday evenings there were commentaries by people like Norman Birkett in the series called Encounter. I loved the comedy ITMA with its still serviceable catchphrases and its cast of characters like the gloomy charlady ‘Mona Lott’ and her signature line ‘It’s being so cheerful as keeps me going.’ As for so many families, the unprecedented immediacy of radio broadcasts gave special poignancy to great events – particularly those of wartime. I recall sitting by our radio with my family at Christmas dinner and listening to the King’s broadcast in 1939. We knew how he struggled to overcome his speech impediment and we knew that the broadcast was live. I found myself thinking just how miserable he must have felt, not able to enjoy his own Christmas dinner, knowing that he would have to broadcast. I remember his slow voice reciting those famous lines: And I said to the man who stood at the gate of the year: ‘Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown.’ And he replied: ‘Go out into the darkness and put your hand into the Hand of God. That shall be to you better than light and safer than a known way.’* (#ulink_2cd96d81-4bcf-5e48-8a64-af6c7ea08c8d) I was almost fourteen by the time war broke out, and already informed enough to understand the background to it and to follow closely the great events of the next six years. My grasp of what was happening in the political world during the thirties was less sure. But certain things I did take in. The years of the Depression – the first but not the last economic catastrophe resulting from misguided monetary policy – had less effect on Grantham itself than on the surrounding agricultural communities, and of course much less than on Northern towns dependent on heavy industry. Most of the town’s factories kept going – the largest, Ruston and Hornsby, making locomotives and steam engines. We even attracted new investment, partly through my father’s efforts: Aveling-Barford built a factory to make steamrollers and tractors. Our family business was also secure: people always have to eat, and our shops were well run. The real distinction in the town was between those who drew salaries for what today would be called ‘white collar’ employment and those who did not, with the latter being in a far more precarious position as jobs became harder to get. On my way to school I would pass a long queue waiting at the Labour Exchange, seeking work or claiming the dole. We were lucky in that none of our closest friends was unemployed, but we knew people who were. We also knew – and I have never forgotten – how neatly turned out the children of those unemployed families were. Their parents were determined to make the sacrifices that were necessary for them. The spirit of self-reliance and independence was very strong in even the poorest people of the East Midlands towns and, because others quietly gave what they could, the community remained together. Looking back, I realize just what a decent place Grantham was. So I did not grow up with the sense of division and conflict between classes. Even in the Depression there were many things which bound us all together. The monarchy was certainly one. And my family like most others was immensely proud of the Empire. We felt that it had brought law, good administration and order to lands which would never otherwise have known them. I had a romantic fascination for out-of-the-way countries and continents and what benefits we British could bring to them. As a child, I heard with wonder a Methodist missionary describing his work in Central America with a tribe so primitive that they had never written down their language until he did it for them. Later, I seriously considered going into the Indian Civil Service, for to me the Indian Empire represented one of Britain’s greatest achievements. (I had no interest in being a civil servant in Britain.) But my father said, all too perceptively as it turned out, that by the time I was ready to join it the Indian Civil Service would probably not exist. As for the international scene, I recall when I was very young my parents expressing unease about the weakness of the League of Nations and its failure to come to the aid of Abyssinia when Italy invaded it in 1935. We had a deep distrust of the dictators. We did not know much about the ideology of communism and fascism at this time. But, unlike many conservative-minded people, my father was fierce in rejecting the argument that fascist regimes had to be backed as the only way to defeat communists. He believed that the free society was the better alternative to both. This too was a conviction I quickly made my own. Well before war was declared, we knew just what we thought of Hitler. On the cinema newsreels I would watch with distaste and incomprehension the rallies of strutting brownshirts, so different from the gentle self-regulation of our own civic life. We also read a good deal about the barbarities and absurdities of the Nazi regime. But none of this meant, of course, that we viewed war with the dictators as anything other than an appalling prospect, which should be avoided if possible. In our attic there was a trunk full of magazines showing, among other things, the famous picture from the Great War of a line of British soldiers blinded by mustard gas walking to the dressing station, each with a hand on the shoulder of the one in front to guide him. Hoping for the best, we prepared for the worst. As early as September 1938 – the time of Munich – my mother and I went out to buy yards of blackout material. My father was heavily involved in organizing the town’s air raid precautions. As he would later say, ‘ARP’ stood for ‘Alf Roberts’ Purgatory’, because it was taking up so much time that he had none to spare for other things. The most pervasive myth about the thirties is perhaps that it was the Right rather than the Left which most enthusiastically favoured appeasement. Not just from my own experience in a highly political right-wing family, but from my recollection of how Labour actually voted against conscription even after the Germans marched into Prague, I have never been prepared to swallow this. But it is important to remember that the atmosphere of the time was so strongly pacifist that the practical political options were limited. The scale of the problem was demonstrated in the general election of 1935 – the contest in which I cut my teeth politically, at the age of ten. It will already be clear that we were a highly political family. And for all the serious sense of duty which underlay it, politics was fun. I was too young to canvass for my father during council elections, but I was put to work folding the bright red election leaflets extolling the merits of the Conservative candidate, Sir Victor Warrender. The red came off on my sticky fingers and someone said, ‘There’s Lady Warrender’s lipstick.’ I had no doubt at all about the importance of seeing Sir Victor returned. On election day itself, I was charged with the responsible task of running back and forth between the Conservative committee room and the polling station (our school) with information about who had voted. Our candidate won, though with a majority down from 16,000 to 6,000. I did not grasp at the time the arguments about rearmament and the League of Nations, but this was a very tough election, fought in the teeth of opposition from the enthusiasts of the Peace Ballot and with the Abyssinian war in the background. Later, in my teens, I used to have fierce arguments with other Conservatives about whether Baldwin had culpably misled the electorate during the campaign in not telling them the dangers the country faced. In fact, had the National Government not been returned at that election there is no possibility that rearmament would have happened faster, and it is very likely that Labour would have done less. Nor could the League have ever prevented a major war. We had mixed feelings about the Munich Agreement of September 1938, as did many people. At the time, it was impossible not to be pulled in two directions. We knew by now a good deal about Hitler’s regime and probable intentions – something brought home to my family by the fact that Hitler had crushed Rotary in Germany, which my father always considered one of the greatest tributes Rotary could ever be paid. Dictators, we learned, could no more tolerate Burke’s ‘little platoons’ – the voluntary bodies which help make up civil society – than they could individual rights under the law. Dr Jauch, of German extraction and probably the town’s best doctor, received a lot of information from Germany which he passed on to my father, and he in turn discussed it with me. I knew just what I thought of Hitler. Near our house was a fish and chip shop where I was sent to buy our Friday evening meal. Fish and chip queues were always a good forum for debate. On one occasion the topic was Hitler. Someone suggested that at least he had given Germany some self-respect and made the trains run on time. I vigorously argued the opposite, to the astonishment and doubtless irritation of my elders. The woman who ran the shop laughed and said: ‘Oh, she’s always debating.’ My family understood clearly Hitler’s brutal treatment of the Jews. At school we were encouraged to have foreign penfriends. Mine was a French girl called Colette: alas, I did not keep up contact with her. But my sister, Muriel, had an Austrian Jewish penfriend called Edith. After the Anschluss in March 1938, when Hitler annexed Austria, Edith’s father, a banker, wrote to mine asking whether we could take his daughter, since he very clearly foresaw the way events were leading. We had neither the time nor the money to accept such a responsibility alone; but my father won the support of the Grantham Rotarians, and Edith came to stay with each of our families in turn until she went to live with relatives in South America. She was seventeen, tall, beautiful, well-dressed, and spoke good English. She told us what it was like to live as a Jew under an anti-semitic regime. One thing Edith reported particularly stuck in my mind: the Jews, she said, were being made to scrub the streets. We wanted to see Hitler’s wickedness ended, even by war if that proved necessary. From that point of view Munich was nothing to be proud of. We knew too that by the Munich Agreement Britain had complicity in the great wrong that had been done to Czechoslovakia. When fifty years later as Prime Minister I visited Czechoslovakia I addressed the Federal Assembly in Prague and told them: ‘We failed you in 1938 when a disastrous policy of appeasement allowed Hitler to extinguish your independence. Churchill was quick to repudiate the Munich Agreement, but we still remember it with shame.’ British foreign policy is at its worst when it is engaged in giving away other people’s territory. But equally we all understood the lamentable state of unpreparedness in Britain and France to fight a major war. Also, unfortunately, some were taken in by the German propaganda and actually believed that Hitler was acting to defend the Sudeten Germans from Czech oppression. If we had gone to war at that point, moreover, we would not have been supported by all of the Dominions. It was the Germans’ subsequent dismemberment of what remained of Czechoslovakia in March 1939 that finally convinced almost everyone that war would soon be necessary to defeat Hitler’s ambitions. Even then, as I have pointed out, Labour voted against conscription the following month. There was strong anti-war feeling in Grantham too: many Methodists opposed the official recruiting campaign of May 1939, and right up to the outbreak of war and beyond pacifists were addressing meetings in the town. In any case, the conflict was soon upon us. Germany invaded Poland on 1 September 1939. When Hitler refused to withdraw by 11 a.m. on Sunday 3 September in accordance with Britain’s ultimatum we were waiting by the radio, desperate for the news. It was the only Sunday in my youth when I can remember not attending church. Neville Chamberlain’s fateful words, relayed live from the Cabinet Room at No. 10, told us that we were at war. It was natural at such times to ask oneself how we had come to such a pass. Each week my father would take two books out of the library, a ‘serious’ book for himself (and me) and a novel for my mother. As a result, I found myself reading books which girls of my age would not generally read. I soon knew what I liked – anything about politics and international affairs. I read, for instance, John Strachey’s The Coming Struggle for Power, which had first appeared in 1932. The contents of this fashionable communist analysis, which predicted that capitalism was shortly to be superseded by socialism, seemed to many of my generation exciting and new. But both by instinct and upbringing I was always a ‘true blue’ Conservative. No matter how many left-wing books I read or left-wing commentaries I heard, I never doubted where my political loyalties lay. Such an admission is probably unfashionable. But though I had great friends in politics who suffered from attacks of doubt about where they stood and why, and though of course it would take many years before I came to understand the philosophical background to what I believed, I always knew my mind. I can see now that I was probably unusual. For the Left were setting the political agenda throughout the thirties and forties, even though the leadership of Churchill concealed it during the years of the war itself. This was evident from many of the books which were published at about this time. The Left had been highly successful in tarring the Right with appeasement, most notably in Victor Gollancz’s Left Book Club, the so-called ‘yellow books’. One in particular had enormous impact: Guilty Men, co-authored by Michael Foot, which appeared under the pseudonym ‘Cato’ after Dunkirk in 1940. Robert Bruce Lockhart’s best-selling Guns or Butter? appeared in the autumn of 1938, after Munich. Lockhart’s travels through Europe led him to Austria (now Nazi-controlled) and then to Germany itself at the height of Hitler’s triumph. There the editor of a German national newspaper is reported as telling him that ‘Germany wanted peace, but she wanted it on her own terms.’ The book ends with Lockhart, woken by ‘the tramp of two thousand feet in unison’, looking out of his window onto a misty dawn, where ‘Nazi Germany was already at work’. A more original variation on the same theme was Douglas Reed’s Insanity Fair. This made a deep impression on me. Reed witnessed the persecution of the Jews which accompanied the advance of Nazi influence. He described the character and mentality – alternately perverted, unbalanced and calculating – of the Nazi leaders. He analysed and blisteringly denounced that policy of appeasement by Britain and France which paved the way for Hitler’s successes. Written on the eve of the Anschluss, it was powerfully prophetic. Out of the Night by Jan Valtin – pen name for the German communist Richard Krebs – was lent to my father by our future MP Denis Kendall. It was such strong meat that my father forbade me to read it – but when he went out to meetings I would take it down and read its spine-chilling account of totalitarianism in action. It is full of scenes of sadistic violence whose authenticity makes them still more horrifying. The appalling treatment by the Nazis of their victims is undoubtedly the most powerful theme. But underlying it is another, just as significant. For it describes how the communists set out in cynical alliance with the Nazis to subvert the fragile democracy of Germany by violence in the late twenties and early thirties. That same alliance against democracy would, of course, be replicated in the Nazi-Soviet pact of 1939 to 1941 which destroyed Poland, the Baltic States and Finland and plunged the world into war. The book undoubtedly contributed to my growing belief that Nazism (national socialism) and communism (international socialism) were but two sides of the same coin. A book which had a particular influence on me was the American Herbert Agar’s A Time for Greatness, which appeared in 1944. This was a powerful analysis of how the West’s moral failure allowed the rise of Hitler and the war which had followed. It urged a return to western liberal democratic values and – though I liked this less – a fair amount of left-wing social engineering. For me the important message of Agar’s book was that the fight against Hitler had a significance for human destiny which exceeded the clash of national interests or spheres of influence or access to resources or any of the other – doubtless important – stuff of power politics. Agar also wrote of the need, as part of the moral regeneration which must flow from fighting the war, to solve what he called ‘the Negro problem’. I had never heard of this ‘problem’ at all. Although I had seen some coloured people on my visit to London, there were almost none living in Grantham. Friends of ours once invited two American servicemen – one black, one white – stationed in Grantham back to tea and had been astonished to detect tension and even hostility between them. We were equally taken aback when our friends told us about it afterwards. This sort of prejudice was simply outside our experience or imagination. Like many other young girls in wartime, I read Barbara Cartland’s Ronald Cartland, the life of her brother, a young, idealistic Conservative MP, who had fought appeasement all the way and who was killed at Dunkirk in 1940. It was a striking testament to someone who had no doubt that the war was not only necessary but right, and whose thinking throughout his short life was ‘all of a piece’, something which I always admired. But the sense that the war had a moral significance which underlay the fear and suffering – or in our family’s case in Grantham the material dreariness and mild deprivation – which accompanied it, was perhaps most memorably conveyed by Richard Hillary’s The Last Enemy. The author – a young pilot – portrays the struggle which had claimed the lives of so many of his friends, and which would claim his own less than a year later, as one which was also being fought out in the human heart. It was a struggle for a better life in the sense of simple decency. A generation which, unlike Richard Hillary, survived the war felt this kind of desire to put things right with themselves, their country and the world. As I would come to learn when dealing with my older political colleagues, no one who fought came out of it quite the same person as went in. Less frequently understood, perhaps, is that war affected deeply people like me who, while old enough to understand what was happening in the conflict, were not themselves in the services. But we all see these great calamities with different eyes, and so their impact upon us is different. It never seemed to me, for example, as it apparently did to many others, that the ‘lesson’ of wartime was that the state must take the foremost position in our national life and summon up a spirit of collective endeavour in peace as in war. The ‘lessons’ I drew were quite different. The first was that the kind of life that the people of Grantham had lived before the war was a decent and wholesome one, and its values were shaped by the community rather than by the government. Second, since even a cultured, developed, Christian country like Germany had fallen under Hitler’s sway, civilization had constantly to be nurtured, which meant that good people had to stand up for the things they believed in. Third, I drew the obvious political conclusion that it was appeasement of dictators which had led to the war, and that had grown out of wrong-headed but decent impulses, like the pacifism of Methodists in Grantham, as well as out of corrupt ones. And, finally, I had the patriotic conviction that, given great leadership of the sort I heard from Winston Churchill in the radio broadcasts to which we listened, there was almost nothing that the British people could not do. Our life in wartime Grantham – until I went up to Oxford in 1943 – must have been very similar to that of countless other families. There was always voluntary work to do of one kind or another in the Service canteens and elsewhere. Our thoughts were at the front; we devoured voraciously every item of available news; and we ourselves, though grateful for being more or less safe, knew that we were effectively sidelined. But there were twenty-one German air raids on the town, and seventy-eight people were killed. The town munitions factory – the British Manufacturing and Research Company (BMAR Co., or ‘British Marcs’ as we called it) – was an obvious target, as was the junction of the Great North Road and the Northern Railway Line – the latter within a few hundred yards of our house. My father was frequently out in the evenings on air raid duty. During air raids we would crawl under the table for shelter – we had no outside shelter for we had no garden – until the ‘all clear’ sounded. After bombs fell on the town in January 1941 I asked my father if I could walk down to see the damage. He would not let me go. Twenty-two people died in that raid. We were also concerned for my sister Muriel, who was working in the Orthopaedic Hospital in Birmingham: Birmingham was, of course, very badly bombed. In fact, Grantham itself was playing a more dramatic role than I knew at the time. Bomber Command’s 5 Group was based in Grantham, and it was from a large house off Harrowby Road that much of the planning was done of the bombing raids on Germany. The Dambusters flew from near Grantham – my father met their commander, Squadron Leader Guy Gibson. I always felt that Bomber Harris – himself based in Grantham in the early part of the war – had not been sufficiently honoured. I would remember what Winston Churchill wrote to him at the end of the war: For over two years Bomber Command alone carried the war to the heart of Germany, bringing hope to the peoples of Occupied Europe and to the enemy a foretaste of the mighty power which was rising against him … All your operations were planned with great care and skill. They were executed in the face of desperate opposition and appalling hazards. They made a decisive contribution to Germany’s final defeat. The conduct of these operations demonstrated the fiery gallant spirit which animated your air crews and the high sense of duty of all ranks under your command. I believe that the massive achievements of Bomber Command will long be remembered as an example of duty nobly done. WINSTON S. CHURCHILL In Grantham, at least, politics did not stand still in the war years. Hitler’s invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941 sharply altered the attitudes of the Left to the war. Pacifist voices suddenly became silent. Anglo-Soviet friendship groups sprouted. We attended, not without some unease, Anglo-Soviet evenings held at the town hall. It was the accounts of the suffering and bravery of the Russians at Stalingrad in 1942–43 which had most impact on us. Although it can now be seen that 1941 – with Hitler’s attack on Russia in June and the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor which brought America into the war in December – sowed the seeds of Germany’s ultimate defeat, the news was generally bad, especially so in early 1942. This almost certainly contributed to the outcome of the by-election held in Grantham on 27 February 1942, after Victor Warrender was elevated to the Lords as Lord Bruntisfield, to become an Admiralty spokesman. Denis Kendall stood as an Independent against our Conservative candidate, Sir Arthur Longmore. Kendall fought an effective populist campaign in which he skilfully used his role as General Manager of British Marcs to stress the theme of an all-out drive for production for the war effort and the need for ‘practical’ men to promote it. To our great surprise, he won by 367 votes. Then and later the Conservative Party was inclined to complacency. A closer analysis of the limited number of by-elections should have alerted us to the likelihood of the Socialist landslide which materialized in 1945. Unusually, I took little part in the campaign because I was preparing for examinations which I hoped would get me into Somerville College, Oxford. In particular, my evenings were spent cramming the Latin which was required for the entrance exam. Our school did not teach Latin. Fortunately, our new headmistress, Miss Gillies, was able to arrange Latin lessons for me from a teacher at the boys’ grammar school, and to lend me her own books, including a textbook written by her father. The hard work helped keep my mind off the ever more dismal news about the war. In particular, there was a series of blows in the Far East – the loss of Malaya, the sinking of the Prince of Wales and Repulse, the fall of Hong Kong and then Singapore, the retreat through Burma and the Japanese threat to Australia. One evening in the spring of 1942 when I had gone for a walk with my father I turned and asked him when – and how – it would all end. He replied very calmly: ‘We don’t know how, we don’t know when; but we have no doubt that we shall win.’ In spite of my efforts to get into Somerville, I failed to win the scholarship I wanted. It was not too surprising, for I was only seventeen, but it was a blow. If I was not able to go up in 1943 I would not be allowed to do more than a two-year ‘wartime degree’ before I was called up for national service at the age of twenty. But there was nothing I could do about it, and so at the end of August 1943 I entered the third-year sixth and became Joint Head of School. Then a telegram arrived offering me a place at Somerville in October. Someone else had dropped out. And so it was that I suddenly found myself faced with the exciting but daunting prospect of leaving home, almost for the first time, for a totally different world. * (#ulink_e7a927c3-c533-5270-a3af-d9bcc8adff5a) Theosophy was a mixture of mysticism, Christianity and the ‘wisdom of the East’, sense and nonsense. * (#ulink_dd38fcdc-bf66-5d88-9338-4acaa0dc330c) Aldermen were indirectly elected council members – elected to serve a fixed term by the directly elected element in the council; a highly honoured position which has since been abolished. * (#ulink_d61660db-7563-5961-945d-f08c6d178250) From God Knows, by Minnie Louise Haskins. CHAPTER TWO (#ubbcd25c6-e8b6-5542-b574-c2fe40e8af5b) Gowns-woman (#ubbcd25c6-e8b6-5542-b574-c2fe40e8af5b) Oxford 1943–1947 OXFORD DOES NOT SET OUT TO PLEASE. Freshmen arrive there for the Michaelmas term in the misty gloom of October. Monumental buildings impress initially by their size rather than their exquisite architecture. Everything is cold and strangely forbidding. Or so it seemed to me. It had been at Somerville during bitterly cold mid-winter days that I had taken my Oxford entrance exams. But I had seen little of my future college before I arrived, rather homesick and apprehensive, to begin my first term. In fact, Somerville always takes people by surprise. Many incurious passers-by barely know it is there, for the kindest thing to say of its external structure is that it is unpretentious. But inside it opens up into a splendid green space onto which many rooms face. I was to live both my first and second years in college, and in due course, a picture or two, a vase and finally an old armchair brought back from Grantham allowed me to feel that the rooms were in some sense mine. In my third and fourth years I shared digs with two friends in Walton Street. Both Oxford and Somerville were strongly if indirectly affected by the war. For whatever reason, Oxford was not bombed, but like everywhere else, both town and university were subject to the blackout (‘dim-out’ from 1944) and much affected by wartime stringencies. Stained-glass windows were boarded up. Large static water tanks stood ready for use in case of fire. Most of our rations were allocated direct to the college which provided our unexciting fare in hall, though on rare occasions I would be asked out to dinner. There were a few coupons left over for jam and other things. One of the minor benefits to my health and figure of such austerities was that I ceased having sugar in my tea – though only many years later would I deny my ever-sweet tooth the pleasure of sugared coffee (not that there was over-much coffee for some time either). There were tight controls over the use of hot water. For example, there must be no more than five inches of water in the bath and of course I rigidly observed this, though coming from a family where the relationship between cleanliness and Godliness was no laughing matter. Not that we ever felt like complaining. After all, we were the lucky ones. I was the first Roberts to go to Oxbridge and I knew that, however undemonstrative they might be, my parents were extremely proud of the fact. Before I went up to Oxford, I had a less clear idea of what the place would be like than did many of my contemporaries. But I regarded it as being quite simply the best, and if I was serious about getting on in life that is what I should always strive for. So, excellent as it was, particularly in the sciences, I was never tempted to opt for Nottingham, our ‘local’ university. Another aspect of Oxford which appealed to me then – and still does – is the collegiate system. Oxford is divided into colleges, though it also has some central university institutions, such as the Bodleian Library. In my day, life centred on the college (where you ate and slept and received many of your tutorials) and around other institutions – church and societies – which had more or less a life of their own. My experience of college life contributed to my later conviction that if you wish to bring the best out of people they should be encouraged to be part of smaller, human-scale communities rather than be left to drift on a sea of impersonality. Perhaps the most obvious way in which wartime conditions affected the ‘feel’ of university life was the fact that so many of us were very young – only seventeen or just eighteen. From 1944, the feel of Oxford changed again as older people, invalided out, started coming back from the services either to complete a shortened wartime degree or to begin a full degree course. They had been through so much more than we had. As Kipling wrote (in ‘The Scholars’) of young naval officers returning to Cambridge after the Great War to continue their studies: Far have they steamed and much have they known, and most would they fain forget; But now they are come to their joyous own with all the world in their debt. By the time I left I found myself dealing with friends and colleagues who had seen much more of the world than I had. And I gained a great deal from the fact that Oxford at the end of the war was a place of such mixed views and experience. I began by keeping myself to myself, for I felt shy and ill at ease in this quite new environment. I continued to take long walks on my own, around Christ Church Meadow, through the university parks and along the Cherwell or the Thames, enjoying my own company and thoughts. But I soon started to appreciate Oxford life. I was a member of a Methodist Study Group which gave and attended tea parties. My mother would send me cakes through the post and on a Saturday morning I would join the queue outside the ‘cake factory’ in north Oxford for an hour or so to buy the sustenance for tea that Sunday. I joined the Bach Choir, conducted by Sir Thomas Armstrong (by a nice coincidence Robert Armstrong’s father), whose repertoire was wider than its name suggested. I especially remember our performance of the St Matthew Passion in the Sheldonian Theatre, which Wren might have designed for the purpose. We also sang Prince Igor, Constant Lambert’s Rio Grande, and Holst’s Hymn of Jesus. Sometimes I went to listen rather than to sing: I heard Kathleen Ferrier in Elgar’s Dream of Gerontius. With the end of the war and the return of the servicemen, the pace of entertainment quickened. Eights Week was revived and I went down to the river to watch the races. It was at this time that I first went out to dances and even on occasion drank a little wine (I had previously only tasted sherry and did not like it; nor do I now). I smoked my first cigarettes. I did not like them much either, though I knew I would get the taste if I persisted. I decided not to, to save the money and buy The Times every day instead. I now went to my first commem ball, and, like the girl in the song, danced all night. I saw Chekhov and Shakespeare at the Playhouse and the New Theatre. (Christopher Fry’s first plays were being performed at that time.) And I saw a wonderful OUDS (Oxford University Dramatic Society) production performed in a college garden and featuring Kenneth Tynan, Oxford’s latest dandy. I cannot remember the play, partly because it was always difficult to distinguish Ken Tynan on stage from Ken Tynan in everyday life. I might have had a more glittering Oxford career, but I had little money to spare and would have been hard put to make ends meet if it had not been for a number of modest grants secured for me from the college at the instance of my ever-helpful tutor, the chemist Dorothy Hodgkin. I was also assisted by some educational trusts. I might have been able to supplement my income further from such sources if I had been prepared to give an undertaking to go into teaching. But I knew I had no such calling; and I did and do believe that good teachers need a vocation. In fact, I did teach science for one vacation at a school in Grantham in the summer of 1944: this earned the money for that luxury in Grantham but near-necessity in Oxford – a bicycle. It was while I was teaching there that Paris was liberated. The headmaster called the school together, announced that Paris was free again and told us how the brave Resistance fighters had helped the Allies by rising up against the German occupiers. It was a thrilling moment. The war was evidently being won; I felt somehow less guilty for not being able to play a larger part; and I shared the joy of the British people that the French Resistance had restored French honour and pride. We may have had an exaggerated view in those days of the universality of resistance – we told each other stories of how the customers of a caf? would tap out ‘V for Victory’ in morse code on their glasses when a German soldier entered the caf? – but we had no doubt that every true Frenchman wanted to be free. I threw myself into intensely hard work. In Dorothy Hodgkin the college was fortunate to have a brilliant scientist and a gifted teacher, working in the comparatively new field of X-ray crystallography. Mrs Hodgkin was a Fellow of the Royal Society and later made a decisive contribution towards discovering the structure of penicillin, the first antibiotic, for which she won the Nobel Prize in 1964. In my fourth and final year (1946–47) I worked with a refugee German scientist, Gerhard Schmidt, under Dorothy Hodgkin’s direction, on the simple protein Gramicidin B as the research project required to complete Part II of my chemistry course. Through the Cosmos Club and the Scientific Club I also came across other budding young scientists and heard many well-known scientists speak, including J.D. Bernal. His politics were very left wing, as indeed were those of many other scientists at that time. But they would never have dreamt of carrying their politics over into their professional relationships with their students. Religion also figured large in my Oxford life. There are many tales of young people entering university and, partly through coming into contact with scepticism and partly for less wholesome reasons, losing their faith. I never felt in any danger of that. Methodism provided me with an anchor of stability and, of course, contacts and friends who looked at the world as I did. I usually attended the Wesley Memorial Church on Sundays. There was, as in Grantham, a warmth and a sober but cheerful social life which I found all the more valuable in my initially somewhat strange surroundings. The church had a very vigorous Students’ Fellowship. After Sunday Evening Service there was usually a large gathering over coffee in the minister’s house, where there would be stimulating discussion of religious and other matters. Occasionally I would go to the University Church of St Mary the Virgin to listen to a particularly interesting university sermon and sometimes I would go to the college chapel, especially when I knew that Miss Helen Darbishire, who was Principal and a distinguished scholar of Milton and Wordsworth when I first went up to Somerville, was preaching. Generally speaking, though, I did not go to Anglican churches. But oddly enough – or perhaps not so oddly when one considers the great impact he had on so many of my generation – it was the religious writing of that High Anglican C.S. Lewis which had most impact upon my intellectual religious formation. The power of his broadcasts, sermons and essays came from a combination of simple language with theological depth. Who has ever portrayed more wittily and convincingly the way in which Evil works on our human weaknesses than he did in The Screwtape Letters? Who has ever made more accessible the profound concepts of Natural Law than he did in The Abolition of Man and in the opening passages of Mere Christianity? I remember most clearly the impact on me of Christian Behaviour (republished in Mere Christianity, but originally appearing as radio talks). This went to the heart of the appalling disparity between the way in which we Christians behave and the ideals we profess. One of C.S. Lewis’s messages was that the standards of Christianity are not just binding on the saints. As he put it: Perfect behaviour may be as unattainable as perfect gear-changing when we drive; but it is a necessary ideal prescribed for all men by the very nature of the human machine just as perfect gear-changing is an ideal prescribed for all drivers by the very nature of cars. Similarly, I was helped by what he wrote of the application of that sublime principle of Christian charity which seems to most of us so impossible of fulfilment. Lewis did not for a moment contest or diminish the sublimeness; but he very helpfully set out what charity is not. … what [does] loving your neighbour as yourself [mean?] I have to love him as I love myself. Well, how exactly do I love myself? Now that I come to think of it, I have not exactly got a feeling of fondness or affection for myself, and I do not even always enjoy my own society. So apparently ‘Love your neighbour’ does not mean ‘feel fond of him’ or ‘find him attractive’ … I can look at some of the things I have done with horror and loathing. So apparently I am allowed to loathe and hate some of the things my enemies do … Consequently, Christianity does not want us to reduce by one atom the hatred we feel for cruelty and treachery … Even while we kill and punish we must try to feel about the enemy as we feel about ourselves – to wish that he were not bad, to hope that he may, in this world or another be cured: in fact, to wish his good. Such words had a special poignancy, of course, at this time. The main contribution one can make as a student to one’s country in peace or wartime is to study hard and effectively. But we all also tried to do something more directly. For my part, I would serve one or two evenings a week at the Forces canteen in Carfax. British soldiers and American airmen from the nearby bases at Upper Heyford were among our main customers. It was hot, sticky and very hard on the feet, but also good fun, with plenty of company and wisecracking humour. Reports of the D-day landings in July 1944, though, brought both apprehension and anxiety. The deadly struggle on those exposed beaches made us deeply uneasy. For perhaps the only time I wondered whether I was right to be at Oxford. In fact we were now within a year of the end of the war in Europe. There were still the Battle of the Bulge and the tragedy of Arnhem to come. But slowly the emphasis came to be on preparing for peace. And among the peacetime activities which began to take an increasing amount of my time was politics. Almost as soon as I came up to Oxford I had joined the Oxford University Conservative Association (OUCA), which was founded in the 1920s under the inspiration of a don at Christ Church – Keith Feiling, the historian of the Tory Party and later biographer of Neville Chamberlain. Although the national agreement to suspend party political electoral contests for the duration of the war had no direct implications for politics at the universities, in practice political life in Oxford was a good deal quieter than it had been in the 1930s. But, for all that, OUCA activities quickly became a focus for my life. In those days the Oxford Union, in which star speakers would come to debate issues of the highest importance as well as ones of unbelievable triviality, did not admit women to its membership, though I used sometimes to listen to debates. But I would never have excelled in the kind of brilliant, brittle repartee which the Union seemed to encourage. I preferred the more serious forensic style of our discussions in OUCA and of the real hustings. OUCA also provided a further network of acquaintance and friendship. It was, indeed, an effective forum for matchmaking, as a number of my OUCA colleagues demonstrated. Oxford politics was a nursery for talent. I made friends in university politics who, as in the novels of Anthony Powell, kept reappearing in my life as the years passed by. Much the closest was Edward Boyle who, though he moved easily in a sophisticated social and political world which I had only glimpsed, shared with me a serious interest in politics. At this time Edward, the wealthy and cultivated son of a Liberal MP, was himself a classical liberal whose views chimed in pretty well with my own provincial middle-class conservatism. Although we were later to diverge politically, we remained dear friends until his tragically early death from cancer. William Rees-Mogg, whom I knew in my final year, was a distinguished editor of The Times from a very early age. I was never as close to William as I was to Edward, but one sensed that he was marked out for higher things. Robin Day was a prominent Liberal. Like Edward he was a leading light in the Oxford Union, and we later met as lawyers in the same chambers. One sometimes wondered what career would be open to the brilliant wits of the Union, until Robin Day invented a new one by pioneering television interviewing – after which our paths and our swords crossed frequently. Another star was Tony Benn, at that time still rattling his full complement of syllables as the Hon. Anthony Wedgwood Benn. From start to finish he and I have rarely agreed on anything, but he was always a courteous and effective debater, an English patriot, and as time has made socialism more and more a thing of the past, even a traditional figure. But perhaps we enjoy a sympathy based on our religious roots. When Tony became President of the Union I was invited to a celebration, attended by his father Viscount Stansgate, which, true to Tony’s Nonconformist principles, was teetotal. Kenneth Harris was another leading debater, who along with Edward Boyle and Tony Benn spent several months touring the United States giving demonstration debates. He subsequently had a distinguished career in political journalism. We met again many times, notably when he wrote my biography. As an officer in OUCA I was naturally taken up with the 1945 general election campaign. In Oxford I was busy campaigning for the city’s MP Quintin Hogg until term ended, when I returned to Grantham to work for Squadron Leader Worth in his attempt to dislodge the sitting Independent Member, Denis Kendall. In retrospect, we should all have known what to expect. By some mysterious but inexorable law, wars always seem to advance state control and those who advocate it. My husband Denis’s view was that in the services people from totally different backgrounds mix in an unprecedented way and that the result is an acute twinge of social conscience and a demand for the state to step in and ameliorate social conditions. But, in any case, the Conservatives had done uniformly badly in the limited number of wartime electoral contests, and there was a general tendency for our share of the vote to fall. Nobody paid much attention to opinion polls then: but they too told the same story. As I have noted, the Left were extremely effective after Dunkirk in portraying the Conservatives as exclusively responsible for appeasement, and managed to distance Churchill from the party he led. Nor did people remember that Labour had opposed even the limited rearmament carried out by Baldwin and Chamberlain. But there were also other influences at work. The command economy required in wartime conditions had habituated many people to an essentially socialist mentality. Within the Armed Forces it was common knowledge that left-wing intellectuals had exerted a powerful influence through the Army Education Corps, which as Nigel Birch observed was ‘the only regiment with a general election among its battle honours’. At home, broadcasters like J.B. Priestley gave a comfortable yet idealistic gloss to social progress in a left-wing direction. It is also true that Conservatives, with Churchill in the lead, were so preoccupied with the urgent imperatives of war that much domestic policy, and in particular the drawing up of the agenda for peace, fell largely to the socialists in the Coalition Government. Churchill himself would have liked to continue the National Government at least until Japan had been beaten and, in the light of the fast-growing threat from the Soviet Union, perhaps beyond then. But the Labour Party understandably wished to come into its own collectivist inheritance. In 1945, therefore, we Conservatives found ourselves confronting two serious and insuperable problems. First, the Labour Party had us fighting on their ground and were always able to outbid us. Churchill had been talking about post-war ‘reconstruction’ for some two years, and as part of that programme Rab Butler’s Education Act was on the Statute Book. Further, our manifesto committed us to the so-called ‘full employment’ policy of the 1944 Employment White Paper, a massive house-building programme, most of the proposals for National Insurance benefits made by the great Liberal social reformer Lord Beveridge and a comprehensive National Health Service. Moreover, we were not able effectively to take the credit (so far as this was in any case appropriate to the Conservative Party) for victory, let alone to castigate Labour for its irresponsibility and extremism, because Attlee and his colleagues had worked cheek by jowl with the Conservatives in government since 1940. In any event, the war effort had involved the whole population. I vividly remember sitting in the student common room in Somerville listening to Churchill’s famous (or notorious) election broadcast to the effect that socialism would require ‘some sort of Gestapo’ to enforce it, and thinking, ‘He’s gone too far.’ However logically unassailable the connection between socialism and coercion was, in our present circumstances the line would not be credible. I knew from political argument on similar lines at an election meeting in Oxford what the riposte would be: ‘Who’s run the country when Mr Churchill’s been away? Mr Attlee.’ And such, I found, was the reaction now. Back in Grantham, I was one of the ‘warm-up’ speakers for the Conservative candidate at village meetings. In those days, many more people turned out to public meetings than today, and they expected their money’s worth. I would frequently be speaking at half a dozen meetings an evening. Looking back at the reports in the local newspapers of what I said at the time, there is little with which I would disagree now. Germany must be disarmed and brought to justice. There must be co-operation with America and (somewhat less realistically) with the Soviet Union. The British Empire, the most important community of peoples that the world had ever known, must never be dismembered. (Perhaps not very realistic either – but my view of Britain’s imperial future was not uncommon in the aftermath of victory.) The main argument I advanced for voting Conservative was that by doing so we would keep Winston Churchill in charge of our foreign policy. And perhaps if Churchill had been able to see through the July 1945 Potsdam Conference the post-war world might have looked a little different. Like many other members of OUCA, I had received lessons in public speaking from Conservative Central Office’s Mrs Stella Gatehouse. Her emphasis was on simplicity and clarity of expression and as little jargon as possible. In fact, at election meetings, when you never knew how long you would have to speak before the candidate arrived, a touch more long-windedness would have been very useful. Most valuable of all for me personally, however, was the experience of having to think on my feet when answering questions from a good-humoured but critical audience. I recall a point made by an elderly man at one such meeting that had a lasting effect on my views about welfare: ‘Just because I’ve saved a little bit of money of my own, “Assistance” won’t help me. If I’d spent everything, they would.’ It was an early warning of the hard choices that the new Welfare State would shortly place before politicians. Three weeks after polling day, by which time the overseas and service votes had been returned, I went to the election count at Sleaford. As we waited for the Grantham result, news trickled in of what was happening elsewhere. It was bad, and it became worse – a Labour landslide with Tory Cabinet ministers falling one after the other. Then our own candidate lost too. I simply could not understand how the electorate could do this to Churchill. On my way back home I met a friend, someone who I had always thought was a staunch Conservative, and said how shocked I was by the terrible news. He said he thought the news was rather good. Incomprehension deepened. At the time I felt that the British electorate’s treatment of the man who more than anyone else secured their liberty was shameful. But was it not Edmund Burke who said: ‘A perfect democracy is the most shameless thing in the world’? In retrospect, the election of the 1945–51 Labour Government seems the logical fulfilment of the collectivist spirit that came to dominate wartime Britain. It was to be about thirty-five years before this collectivism would run its course – shaping and distorting British society in the process, before it collapsed in 1979’s Winter of Discontent. At the time, it was clear to everyone that fundamental reassessment of Conservative principles and policies was required. We felt this as much in Oxford as anywhere else. It lay behind the preparation of a report of the OUCA Policy Sub-Committee which I co-authored in Michaelmas term 1945 with Michael Kinchin-Smith and Stanley Moss. The report contained no more profound insights than any other Tory undergraduate paper. And its two themes we have heard many times since – more policy research and better presentation. Perhaps the main problem as regards what we would now call the ‘image’ of the Conservative Party was that we seemed to have lost our way and our policies seemed to be devised for the wealthy rather than for ordinary people. As our OUCA paper put it: ‘Conservative policy has come to mean in the eyes of the public little more than a series of administrative solutions to particular problems, correlated in certain fields by a few unreasoning prejudices and the selfish interests of the moneyed classes.’ The accusation was, of course, unfair. If the Conservatives had won in 1945 we would still have had a Welfare State – doubtless with less immediate public expenditure and certainly with greater scope for private and voluntary initiative. But the idea that Conservatism was simply that – conserving the interests of the status quo against change and reform – was immensely powerful at this time. In March 1946 I became Treasurer of OUCA and later that month went as one of the Oxford representatives to the Federation of University Conservative and Unionist Associations (FUCUA) Conference at the Waldorf Hotel in London. It was my first such conference and I enjoyed it hugely. When I spoke it was in support of more involvement by people from working-class backgrounds in university Conservative politics. I felt that we had to get away from the perception of Conservatism as stuffy and frivolous. It was not so much that I wanted a classless society, as the socialists (somewhat disingenuously) said they did, but rather that I could not see that class was important. Everyone had something unique to offer in life and their responsibility was to develop those gifts – and heroes come from all backgrounds. As I put it to the FUCUA Conference: ‘We have heard all about this being the age of the common man – but do not forget the need for the uncommon man.’ Or, I suppose I might have added, ‘woman’. In October 1946 I was elected President of OUCA – the third woman to hold the position. I had done my final exams that summer and was now beginning the research project which constituted the fourth and last year of the Chemistry degree, so I had a little more time to spend on politics. For example, I attended my first Conservative Party Conference, held that year in Blackpool. I was entranced. So often in Grantham and in Oxford it had felt unusual to be a Conservative. Now suddenly I was with hundreds of other people who believed as I did and who shared my insatiable appetite for talking politics. The Conference had a most extraordinary atmosphere. From my humble position as a ‘representative’, I had the sense that the Party leadership – with the notable exception of the Party Leader – had arrived at Blackpool prepared to reconcile itself and Conservatism to the permanence of socialism in Britain. A perceptive observer of the 1946 Conference, Bertrand de Jouvenal, wrote of our Front Bench: ‘These great, intelligent thoroughbreds, trained from their earliest years to prudent administration and courteous debate, were in their hearts not far from accepting as definitive their electoral defeat in 1945.’* (#ulink_219c2924-b151-5f8f-983f-75e0cb774bdd) This was decidedly not what the rank and file wanted to hear. Indeed, there was open dissent from the floor. A request on the first day for a general debate on questions of philosophy and policy was refused by the chairman. There was a lukewarm reaction to the consensus approach of speeches from the platform, though these became notably tougher the longer the Conference went on, as Shadow ministers perceived our discontent. My instincts were with the rank and file, though I had not yet fully digested the strong intellectual case against collectivism, as I was to do in the next few years. Back in Oxford I had organized a very full programme of speakers. Lord Dunglass (Alec Douglas-Home) urged support for Ernest Bevin’s foreign policy – support we readily gave. Bob Boothby – a wonderful speaker, with great style – declaimed against the ‘revolutionary totalitarian absolutism of Moscow’. David Maxwell-Fyfe, whose daughter Pamela was at Oxford at the time, attacked nationalization and urged a property-owning democracy. Peter Thorneycroft put forward what seemed the very advanced views of the ‘Tory Reform’ wing in a debate with the University Labour Club at the Union. Lady (Mimi) Davidson told us how it felt to be the only Conservative woman Member of the House of Commons. Anthony Eden charmed and impressed us all over sherry. Each term we had a lively debate with the other political clubs at the Oxford Union, particularly the Labour Club, which at the time was very left wing and included some famous names like Anthony Crosland – who even in those days could condescend to a Duchess – and Tony Benn. Generally, however, OUCA met in the Taylorian Institute on a Friday evening, entertaining the speaker to dinner beforehand at the Randolph Hotel. So it was there that I first rubbed shoulders with the great figures of the Tory Party. The most powerful critique of socialist planning and the socialist state which I read at this time, and to which I have returned so often since, F.A. Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom, is dedicated famously ‘To the socialists of all parties’. I cannot claim that I fully grasped the implications of Hayek’s little masterpiece at this time. It was only in the mid-1970s, when Hayek’s works were right at the top of the reading list given me by Keith Joseph, that I really came to grips with the ideas he put forward. Only then did I consider his arguments from the point of view of the kind of state Conservatives find congenial – a limited government under a rule of law – rather than from the point of view of the kind of state we must avoid – a socialist state where bureaucrats rule by discretion. At this stage it was the (to my mind) unanswerable criticisms of socialism in The Road to Serfdom which had an impact. Hayek saw that Nazism – national socialism – had its roots in nineteenth-century German social planning. He showed that intervention by the state in one area of the economy or society gave rise to almost irresistible pressures to extend planning further into other sectors. He alerted us to the profound, indeed revolutionary, implications of state planning for Western civilization as it had grown up over the centuries. Nor did Hayek mince his words about the monopolistic tendencies of the planned society that professional groups and trade unions would inevitably seek to exploit. Each demand for security, whether of employment, income or social position, implied the exclusion from such benefits of those outside the particular privileged group – and would generate demands for countervailing privileges from the excluded groups. Eventually, in such a situation everyone will lose. Perhaps because he did not come from a British Conservative background and did not ever consider himself a Conservative at all, Hayek had none of the inhibitions which characterized the agonized social conscience of the English upper classes when it came to speaking bluntly about such things. I was in Blackpool visiting my sister (who had gone there from the Birmingham Orthopaedic Hospital) when I learned from the radio news on that fateful 6 August 1945 that an atomic bomb had been dropped on Hiroshima. My academic study and the fascination exerted on me by issues relating to the practical application of science probably meant that I was better informed than most about the developments lying behind the manufacture of the atomic bomb. The following year I was able to read (and largely understand) the very full account contained in Atomic Energy for Military Purposes published by the United States. Yet – clich? as it may be – I was immediately aware on hearing the preliminary reports of Hiroshima that with the advent of the A-bomb ‘somehow the world had changed’. Or as Churchill himself would put it in his majestic memoirs The Second World War: ‘Here then was a speedy end to the Second World War, and perhaps to much else besides.’ The full scientific, strategic and political implications of the nuclear weapon would take some years to assess. But the direct human and environmental consequences of the use of atomic weapons were more quickly grasped. Yet neither on that first evening reflecting on the matter in the train home from Blackpool, nor later when I read accounts and saw the pictures of the overwhelming devastation, did I have any doubt about the rightness of the decision to use the bomb. I considered it justified primarily because it would avoid the losses inevitable if Allied forces were to take by assault the main islands of Japan. The Japanese still had 2? million men under arms. We had already seen the fanatical resistance which they had put up during the Battle of Okinawa. Only the scale of the Allies’ technological military superiority, demonstrated first at Hiroshima and then at Nagasaki, could persuade the Japanese leadership that resistance was hopeless. And so one week after Hiroshima, and after a second bomb had been dropped on Nagasaki, the Japanese surrendered. Britain had, of course, been closely involved in the development of the bomb, though because of the breakdown of Anglo-American nuclear cooperation after the war it was not till 1952 that we ourselves were able to explode one. Churchill and Truman, as we now know, were duped by Stalin at Potsdam when the American President ‘broke the news’ of the bomb to the Soviet leader, who knew about it already and promptly returned to Moscow to urge his own scientists to speed up their atomic programme. But the fact remains, as I used to remind the Soviets when I became Prime Minister, that the most persuasive proof of the essential benevolence of the United States was that in those few crucial years when it alone possessed the military means to enforce its will upon the world, it refrained from doing so. The greatest transformation affecting Britain at the time – and the one which would have a great impact on my political life – was the change of the Soviet Union from comrade in arms to deadly enemy. It is important to stress how little understanding most people in the West had at this time of conditions within the USSR. I was never tempted to sympathize with communism. But my opposition to it was at this time more visceral than intellectual. It was much later that I thought and read more deeply about the communist system and saw precisely where its weaknesses and wickednesses lay. And it is interesting to note that when Hayek came to write a new preface to The Road to Serfdom in 1976 he, too, felt that he had ‘under-stressed the significance of the experience of communism in Russia’. By the time I left Oxford with a second-class degree in Chemistry under my belt, I knew a great deal more about the world and particularly about the world of politics. My character had not changed; nor had my beliefs. But I had a clearer idea of where I stood in relation to other people, their ambitions and opinions. I had, in short, grown up. And I had discovered what I really wanted to do with my life. Shortly before my university days came to an end I went back to Corby Glen, a village some ten miles from Grantham, to a dance. Afterwards a few of us gathered for coffee and a sandwich in the kitchen of the house where I was staying. Not unusually, I was talking about politics. Something I said, or perhaps the way I said it, prompted one of the men to remark: ‘What you really want to do is to be an MP, isn’t it?’ Almost without thinking I said: ‘Yes: that really is what I want to do.’ I had never said it before – not even to myself. When I went to bed that night I found that I had a lot on my mind. * (#ulink_6d8438a3-34e6-5146-a6ff-416ec1149d3e)Problems of Socialist England (1947). CHAPTER THREE (#ubbcd25c6-e8b6-5542-b574-c2fe40e8af5b) House Bound (#ubbcd25c6-e8b6-5542-b574-c2fe40e8af5b) Marriage, family, law and politics 1947–1959 IF GOING UP TO OXFORD is one sort of shock, coming down is quite another. I had made many like-minded friends at Oxford, I had enjoyed my adventures in chemistry and I was passionately interested in university politics. It was a wrench to leave all that behind. The newly created Oxford University Appointments Committee, which helped new graduates to find suitable jobs, arranged several interviews for me, including one at a Northern ICI plant. We hopefuls were interviewed by several managers whose written comments were passed on to the general manager, who gave us our final interview. The remarks on me were lying on the table at the interview, and I could not resist using my faculty for reading upside down. They were both encouraging and discouraging; one manager had written: ‘This young woman has much too strong a personality to work here.’ In fact, I had three or four interviews with other companies and eventually I was taken on by BX Plastics at Manningtree just outside Colchester to work in their research and development section. BX produced a full range of plastics both for industrial use and consumer use, including for films. It had been understood when we originally discussed the position that it would involve my being in effect Personal Assistant to the Research and Development Director. I had been looking forward to this because I thought it would allow me to get to know more of how the company as a whole operated and also to use the talents I had, over and above my knowledge of chemistry. But on my arrival it was decided that there was not enough to do in that capacity and so I found myself donning my white coat again and immersing myself in the wonderful world of plastics. By the time Christmas 1947 was approaching I had made one or two friends and the Section moved into a separate and rather pleasant house in nearby Lawford. Like many others at the company, I lived in Colchester – a town which I increasingly came to like and where I had found comfortable lodgings. A bus took us all out to Lawford every day. And, as always with me, there was politics. I immediately joined the Conservative Association and threw myself into the usual round of Party activities. In particular, I thoroughly enjoyed what was called the ‘39–45’ discussion group, where Conservatives of the war generation met to exchange views and argue about the political topics of the day. I also kept in touch with friends like Edward Boyle, who was later adopted for a Birmingham seat in the 1950 election. It was as a representative of the Oxford University Graduate Conservative Association (OUGCA) that I went to the Llandudno Conservative Party Conference in October 1948. It had originally been intended that I should speak at the Conference, seconding an OUGCA motion deploring the abolition of university seats. At that time universities had separate representation in Parliament, and graduates had the right to vote in their universities as well as in the constituency where they lived. (I supported separate university representation, but not the principle that graduates should have more than one vote; my view was that graduates should be able to choose to vote in one or the other constituency.) It would have been my first Conference speech, but in the end the seconder chosen was a City man, because the City seats were also to be abolished. My disappointment at this was very quickly overcome in a most unexpected way. After one of the debates, I found myself engaged in one of those speculative conversations which young people have about their future prospects. An Oxford friend, John Grant, said he supposed that one day I would like to be a Member of Parliament. ‘Well, yes,’ I replied, ‘but there’s not much hope of that. The chances of my being selected are just nil at the moment.’ I might have added that with no private income of my own there was no way I could have afforded to be an MP on the salary then available. I had not even tried to get on the Party’s list of approved candidates. Later in the day, John Grant happened to be sitting next to the Chairman of the Dartford Conservative Association, John Miller. The Association was in search of a candidate. I learned afterwards that the conversation went something like this: ‘I understand that you’re still looking for a candidate at Dartford?’ (In fact, Conservative Central Office was becoming exasperated at Dartford’s failure to pick someone to fight the seat in an election that had to take place in 1950 and might be called before then.) ‘That’s right. Any suggestions?’ ‘Well, there’s a young woman, Margaret Roberts, that you might look at. She’s very good.’ ‘Oh, but Dartford is a real industrial stronghold. I don’t think a woman would do at all.’ ‘Well, why not just look at her?’ And they did. I was invited to have lunch with John Miller and his wife, Phee, and the Dartford Women’s Chairman, Mrs Fletcher, on the Saturday on Llandudno Pier. Presumably, and in spite of any reservations about the suitability of a woman candidate for their seat, they liked what they saw. I certainly got on well with them. The Millers were to become close friends and I quickly developed a healthy respect for the dignified Mrs Fletcher. After lunch we walked back to the Conference Hall in good time for a place to hear Winston Churchill give the Party Leader’s speech. It was the first we had seen of him that week, because in those days the Leader did not attend the Conference itself, appearing only at a final rally on the Saturday. Foreign affairs naturally dominated his speech – it was the time of the Berlin blockade and the western airlift – and his message was sombre, telling us that only American nuclear weapons stood between Europe and communist tyranny and warning of ‘what seems a remorselessly approaching third world war’. I did not hear from Dartford until December, when I was asked to attend an interview at Palace Chambers, Bridge Street – then housing Conservative Central Office – not far from Parliament itself. With a large number of other hopefuls I turned up on the evening of Thursday 30 December for my first Selection Committee. Very few outside the political arena know just how nerve-racking such occasions are. The interviewee who is not nervous and tense is very likely to perform badly: for, as any chemist will tell you, the adrenaline needs to flow if one is to perform at one’s best. I was lucky in that at Dartford there were some friendly faces around the table. I found myself short-listed, and was asked to go to Dartford itself for a further interview. Finally, I was invited to the Bull Hotel in Dartford on Monday 31 January 1949 to address the Association’s Executive Committee of about fifty people. As one of five would-be candidates, I had to give a fifteen-minute speech and answer questions for a further ten minutes. It was the questions which were more likely to cause me trouble. There was a good deal of suspicion of women candidates, particularly in what was regarded as a tough industrial seat like Dartford. This was quite definitely a man’s world into which not just angels feared to tread. There was, of course, little hope of winning it for the Conservatives, though this is never a point that the prospective candidate even in a Labour seat as safe as Ebbw Vale would be advised to make. The Labour majority was an all but unscalable 20,000. But perhaps this turned to my favour. Why not take the risk of adopting the young Margaret Roberts? There was not much to lose, and some good publicity for the Party to gain. The most reliable sign that a political occasion has gone well is that you have enjoyed it. I enjoyed that evening at Dartford, and the outcome justified my confidence. I was selected. Afterwards I stayed behind for drinks and something to eat with the officers of the Association. The candidate is not the only one to be overwhelmed by relief on these occasions. The selectors too can stop acting as critics and start to become friends. The happy, if still slightly bewildered young candidate, is deluged with advice, information and offers of help. Such friendly occasions provide at least part of the answer to that question put to all professional politicians: ‘Why on earth do you do it?’ My next step was to be approved by the national Party. Usually Party approval precedes selection, but when I went to Central Office the day after to meet the Women’s Chairman, Miss Marjorie Maxse, I had no difficulties. A few weeks afterwards I was invited to dinner to meet the Party Chairman Lord Woolton, his deputy J.P.L. Thomas, Miss Maxse and the Area Agent, Miss Beryl Cook. Over the next few years Marjorie Maxse and Beryl Cook proved to be strong supporters and they gave me much useful advice. After selection comes adoption. The formal adoption meeting is the first opportunity a candidate has to impress him or herself on the rank and file of the Association. It is therefore a psychologically important occasion. It is also a chance to gain some good local publicity, for the press are invited too. Perhaps what meant most to me, however, was the presence of my father. For the first time he and I stood on the same platform to address a meeting. He recalled how his family had always been Liberal, but that now it was the Conservatives who stood for the old Liberalism. In my own speech I too took up a theme which was Gladstonian in content if not quite style (or length), urging that ‘the Government should do what any good housewife would do if money was short – look at their accounts and see what’s wrong’. After the adoption meeting at the end of February I was invited back by two leading lights of the Association, Mr and Mrs Soward, to a supper party they had arranged in my honour. Their house was at the Erith end of the constituency, not far from the factory of the Atlas Preservative Company, which made paint and chemicals, where Stanley Soward was a director. His boss, the Managing Director, had been at my adoption meeting and was one of the dinner guests: and so it was that I met Denis. It was clear to me at once that Denis was an exceptional man. He knew at least as much about politics as I did and a good deal more about economics. His professional interest in paint and mine in plastics may seem an unromantic foundation for friendship, but it also enabled us right away to establish a joint interest in science. And as the evening wore on I discovered that his views were no-nonsense Conservatism. After the evening was over he drove me back to London so that I could catch the midnight train to Colchester. It was not a long drive at that time of night, but long enough to find that we had still more in common. Denis is an avid reader, especially of history, biography and detective novels. He seemed to have read every article in the Economist and the Banker, and we found that we both enjoyed music – Denis with his love of opera, and me with mine of choral music. From then on we met from time to time at constituency functions, and began to see more of each other outside the constituency. He had a certain style and dash. He had a penchant for fast cars and drove a Jaguar and, being ten years older, he simply knew more of the world than I did. At first our meetings revolved around political discussion. But as we saw more of each other, we started going to the occasional play and had dinner together. Like any couple, we had our favourite restaurants, small pasta places in Soho for normal dates, the wonderful White Tower in Fitzrovia, the Ecu de France in Jermyn Street and The Ivy for special occasions. I was very flattered by Denis’s attentions, but I first began to suspect he might be serious when the Christmas after my first election campaign at Dartford I received from him a charming present of a crystal powder bowl with a silver top, which I still treasure. We might perhaps have got married sooner, but my passion for politics and his for rugby football – Saturdays were never available for a date – both got in the way. He more than made up for this by being an immense help in the constituency – problems were solved in a trice and all the logistics taken care of. Indeed, the fact that he had proposed to me and that we had become engaged was one final inadvertent political service, because unbeknown to me Beryl Cook leaked the news just before election day to give my campaign a final boost. When Denis asked me to be his wife, I thought long and hard about it. I had so much set my heart on politics that I really hadn’t figured marriage in my plans. I suppose I pushed it to the back of my mind and simply assumed that it would occur of its own accord at some time in the future. I know that Denis too, because a wartime marriage had ended in divorce, only asked me to be his wife after much reflection. But the more I considered, the surer I was. More than forty years later I know that my decision to say ‘yes’ was one of the best I ever made. I had in any case been thinking of leaving BX Plastics and Colchester for some time. It was my selection for Dartford that persuaded me I had to look for a new job in London. I had told the Selection Committee that I would fight Dartford with all the energy at my disposal, and I meant it. Nor was I temperamentally inclined to do otherwise. So I began to look for a London-based job which would give me about ?500 a year – not a princely sum even in those days, but one which would allow me to live comfortably if modestly. I went for several interviews, but found that they were not keen to take on someone who was hoping to leave to take up a political career. I was certainly not going to disguise my political ambitions, so I just kept on looking. Finally, I was taken on by J. Lyons in Hammersmith as a food research chemist and moved into lodgings in the constituency. Dartford became my home in every sense. The families I lived with fussed over me and could not have been kinder, their natural good nature undoubtedly supplemented by the fact that they were ardent Tories. The Millers also took me under their wing. After evening meetings I would regularly go back to their house to unwind over a cup of coffee. It was a cheerful household in which everyone seemed to be determined to enjoy themselves after the worst of the wartime stringencies were over. We regularly went out to political and non-political functions, and the ladies made an extra effort to wear something smart. John Miller’s father – a widower – lived with the family and was a great friend to me: whenever there was a party he would send me a pink carnation as a buttonhole. I also used to drive out to the neighbouring North Kent constituencies: the four Associations – Dartford, Bexley Heath (where Ted Heath was the candidate), Chislehurst (Pat Hornsby-Smith) and Gravesend (John Lowe) – worked closely together and had a joint President in Morris Wheeler. From time to time he would bring us all together at his large house, ‘Franks’, at Horton Kirby. Of the four constituencies, Dartford was by far the least winnable, and therefore doubtless in the eyes of its neighbours – though not Dartford’s – the least important. But there is always good political sense in linking safe constituencies with hopeless cases. If an active organization can be built up in the latter there is a good chance of drawing away your opponents’ party workers from the political territory you need to hold. This was one of the services which Central Office expected of us to help Ted Heath in the winnable seat of Bexley. It was thus that I met Ted. He was already the candidate for Bexley, and Central Office asked me to speak in the constituency. Ted was an established figure. He had fought in the war, ending up as a Lieutenant-Colonel; his political experience went back to the late 1930s when he had supported an anti-Munich candidate in the Oxford by-election; and he had won the respect of Central Office and the four Associations. When we met I was struck by his crisp and logical approach – he always seemed to have a list of four aims, or five methods of attack. Though friendly with his constituency workers, he was always very much the man in charge, ‘the candidate’, or ‘the Member’, and this made him seem, even when at his most affable, somewhat aloof and alone. Pat Hornsby-Smith, his next-door neighbour at Chislehurst, could not have been a greater contrast. She was a fiery, vivacious redhead and perhaps the star woman politician of the time. She had brought the Tory Conference to its feet with a rousing right-wing speech in 1946, and was always ready to lend a hand to other young colleagues. She and I became great friends, and had long political talks at her informal supper parties. Well before the 1950 election we were all conscious of a Conservative revival. This was less the result of fundamental rethinking within the Conservative Party than of a strong reaction both among Conservatives and in the country at large against the socialism of the Attlee Government. The 1950 election campaign was the most exhausting few weeks I had ever spent. Unlike today’s election campaigns, we had well-attended public meetings almost every night, and so I would have to prepare my speech some time during the day. I also wrote my letters to prospective constituents. Then, most afternoons, it was a matter of doorstep canvassing and, as a little light relief, blaring out the message by megaphone. I was well supported by my family: my father came to speak and my sister to help. Before the election Lady Williams (wife of Sir Herbert Williams, veteran tariff reformer and a Croydon MP for many years) told candidates that we should make a special effort to identify ourselves by the particular way we dressed when we were campaigning. I took this very seriously and spent my days in a tailored black suit and a hat which I bought in Bourne and Hollingsworth in Oxford Street specially for the occasion. And, just to make sure, I put a black and white ribbon around it with some blue inside the bow. Quite whether these precautions were necessary is another matter. How many other twenty-four-year-old girls could be found standing on a soapbox in Erith Shopping Centre? In those days it was not often done for women candidates to canvass in factories. But I did – inside and outside. There was always a lively if sometimes noisy reception. The socialists in Dartford became quite irked until it turned out that their candidate – the sitting MP Norman Dodds – would have had the same facilities extended to him if they had thought of asking. It was only the pubs that I did not like going into, and indeed would not do so alone. Some inhibitions die hard. I was lucky to have an opponent like Norman Dodds, a genuine and extremely chivalrous socialist of the old school. He knew that he was going to win, and he was a big enough man to give an ambitious young woman with totally different opinions a chance. Soon after I was adopted he challenged me to a debate in the hall of the local grammar school and, of course, I eagerly accepted. He and I made opening speeches, there were questions and then we each wound up our case. Each side had its own supporters, and the noise was terrific. Later in the campaign there was an equally vigorous and inconclusive re-run. What made it all such fun was that the argument was about issues and facts, not personalities. On one occasion, a national newspaper reported that Norman Dodds thought a great deal of my beauty but not a lot of my election chances – or of my brains. This perfect socialist gentleman promptly wrote to me disclaiming the statement – or at least the last part. My own public meetings were also well attended. It was not unusual for the doors of our hall to be closed twenty minutes before the meeting was due to start because so many people were crowding in. Certainly, in those days one advantage of being a woman was that there was a basic courtesy towards us on which we could draw – something which today’s feminists have largely dissipated. So, for example, on one occasion I arrived at a public meeting to find the visiting speaker, the former Air Minister Lord Balfour of Inchrye, facing a minor revolution from hecklers in the audience – to such an extent indeed that the police had been sent for. I told the organizers to cancel the request, and sure enough once I took my place on the platform and started to speak the tumult subsided and order – if not exactly harmony – was restored. I was also fortunate in the national and indeed international publicity which my candidature received. At twenty-four, I was the youngest woman candidate fighting the 1950 campaign, and as such was an obvious subject for comment. I was asked to write on the role of women in politics. My photograph made its way into Life magazine, the Illustrated London News where it rubbed shoulders with those of the great men of politics, and even the West German press where I was described as a ‘junge Dame mit Charme’ (perhaps for the last time). The slogans, coined by me, gained in directness whatever they lacked in subtlety – ‘Vote Right to Keep What’s Left’ and, still more to the point, ‘Stop the Rot, Sack the Lot’. I felt that our hard work had been worthwhile when I heard the result at the count in the local grammar school. I had cut the Labour majority by 6,000. It was in the early hours at Lord Camrose’s Daily Telegraph party at the Savoy Hotel – to which candidates, MPs, ministers, Opposition figures and social dignitaries were in those days all invited – that I experienced the same bittersweet feeling about the national result, where the Conservatives had cut Labour’s overall majority from 146 to 5 seats. But victory it was not. I should recall, however, one peculiar experience I had as candidate for Dartford. I was asked to open a Conservative f?te in Orpington and was reluctantly persuaded to have my fortune told while I was there. Some fortune tellers have a preference for crystal balls. This one apparently preferred jewellery. I was told to take off my string of pearls so that they could be felt and rubbed as a source of supernatural inspiration. The message received was certainly optimistic: ‘You will be great – great as Churchill.’ Most politicians have a superstitious streak; even so, this struck me as quite ridiculous. Still, so much turns on luck that anything that seems to bring a little with it is more than welcome. From then on I regarded my pearls as lucky. And, all in all, they seem to have proved so. As I have said, the 1950 result was inconclusive. After the initial exhilaration dies away such results leave all concerned with a sense of anti-climax. There seemed little doubt that Labour had been fatally wounded and that the coup de gr?ce would be administered in a second general election fairly shortly. But in the meantime there was a good deal of uncertainty nationally and if I were to pursue my political career further I needed to set about finding a winnable seat. But I felt morally bound to fight the Dartford constituency again. It would be wrong to leave them to find another candidate at such short notice. Moreover, it was difficult to imagine that I would be able to make the kind of impact in a second campaign that I had in the one just concluded. I was also extremely tired and, though no one with political blood in their veins shies away from the excitement of electioneering, another campaign within a short while was not an attractive prospect. I had also decided to move to London. I had found a very small flat in St George’s Square Mews, in Pimlico. Mr Soward (Senior) came down from Dartford to help me decorate it. I was able to see a good deal more of Denis and in more relaxing conditions than in the hubbub of Conservative activism in Dartford. I also learned to drive and acquired my first car. My sister, Muriel, had a pre-war Ford Prefect which my father had bought her for ?129, and I now inherited it. My Ford Prefect became well known around Dartford, where I was re-adopted, and did me excellent service until I sold it for about the same sum when I got married. The general election came in October 1951. This time I shaved another 1,000 votes off Norman Dodds’s majority and was hugely delighted to discover when all the results were in that the Conservatives now had an overall majority of seventeen. During my time at Dartford I had continued to widen my acquaintanceship with senior figures in the Party. I had spoken as proposer of a vote of thanks to Anthony Eden (whom I had first met in Oxford) when he addressed a large and enthusiastic rally at Dartford football ground in 1949. The following year I spoke as seconder of a motion applauding the leadership of Churchill and Eden at a rally of Conservative Women at the Albert Hall, to which Churchill himself replied in vintage form. This was a great occasion for me – to meet in the flesh and talk to the leader whose words had so inspired me as I sat with my family around our wireless in Grantham. In 1950 I was appointed as representative of the Conservative Graduates to the Conservative Party’s National Union Executive, which gave me my first insight into Party organization at the national level. The greatest social events in my diary were the Eve of (parliamentary) Session parties held by Sir Alfred Bossom, the Member for Maidstone, at his magnificent house, No. 5 Carlton Gardens. Several marquees were put up, brilliantly lit and comfortably heated, in which the greatest and the not so great – like one Margaret Roberts – would mingle convivially. Sir Alfred Bossom would cheerily describe himself as the day’s successor to Lady Londonderry, the great Conservative hostess of the inter-war years. You would hardly have guessed that behind his amiable and easygoing exterior was a genius who had devised the revolutionary designs of some of the first skyscrapers in New York. He was specially kind and generous to me. It was his house from which I was married, and there that our reception was held; and it was he who proposed the toast to our happiness. I was married on a cold and foggy December day at Wesley’s Chapel, City Road. It was more convenient for all concerned that the ceremony take place in London, but it was the Methodist minister from Grantham, our old friend the Rev. Skinner, who assisted the Rev. Spivey, the minister at City Road. Then all our friends – from Grantham, Dartford, Erith and London – came back to Sir Alfred Bossom’s. Finally, Denis swept me off to our honeymoon in Madeira, where I quickly recovered from the bone-shaking experience of my first and last aquatic landing in a seaplane to begin my married life against the background of that lovely island. On our return from Madeira I moved into Denis’s flat in Swan Court, Flood Street in Chelsea. It was a light, sixth-floor flat with a fine view of London. It was also the first time I learned the convenience of living all on one level. As I would find again in the flat at 10 Downing Street, this makes life far easier to run. There was plenty of space – a large room which served as a sitting room and dining room, two good-sized bedrooms, another room which Denis used as a study and so on. Denis drove off to Erith every morning and would come back quite late in the evening. We quickly made friends with our neighbours; one advantage of living in a block of flats with a lift is that you meet everyone. People felt that after all the sacrifices of the previous twenty years, they wanted to enjoy themselves, to get a little fun out of life. Although I may have been perhaps rather more serious than my contemporaries, Denis and I enjoyed ourselves quite as much as most, and more than some. We went to the theatre, we took holidays in Rome and Paris (albeit in very modest hotels), we gave parties and went to them, we had a wonderful time. But the high point of our lives at that time was the coronation of Queen Elizabeth in June 1953. Those who had televisions – we did not – held house parties to which all their friends came to watch the great occasion. Denis and I, passionate devotees of the monarchy that we were, decided the occasion merited the extravagance of a seat in the covered stand erected in Parliament Square just opposite the entrance to Westminster Abbey. The tickets were an even wiser investment than Denis knew when he bought them, for it poured all day and most people in the audience were drenched – not to speak of those in the open carriages of the great procession. The Queen of Tonga never wore that dress again. Mine lived to see another day. Pleasant though married life was in London, I still had time enough after housework to pursue a long-standing intellectual interest in the law. As with my fascination with politics, it was my father who had been responsible for stimulating this interest. Although he was not a magistrate, as Mayor of Grantham in 1945–46 my father would automatically sit on the Bench. During my university vacations I would go along with him to the Quarter Sessions (where many minor criminal offences were tried), at which an experienced lawyer would be in the chair as Recorder. On one such occasion my father and I lunched with him, a King’s Counsel called Norman Winning. I was captivated by what I saw in court, but I was enthralled by Norman Winning’s conversation about the theory and practice of law. At one point I blurted out: ‘I wish I could be a lawyer; but all I know about is chemistry and I can’t change what I’m reading at Oxford now.’ But Norman Winning said that he himself had read physics for his first degree at Cambridge before changing to law as a second degree. I objected that there was no way I could afford to stay on all those extra years at university. He replied that there was another way, perfectly possible but very hard work, which was to get a job in or near London, join one of the Inns of Court and study for my law exams in the evenings. And this in 1950 is precisely what I had done. Now with Denis’s support I could afford to concentrate on legal studies without taking up new employment. There was a great deal to read, and I also attended courses at the Council of Legal Education. I had decided that what with running a home and reading for the Bar I would have to put my political ambitions on ice for some time to come. At twenty-six I could afford to do that and I told Conservative Central Office that such was my intention. But as a young woman candidate I still attracted occasional public attention. For example, in February 1952 an article of mine appeared in the Sunday Graphic on the position of women ‘At the Dawn of the New Elizabethan Era’. I was also on the list of sought-after Party speakers and was invited to constituencies up and down the country. In any case, try as I would, my fascination for politics got the better of all contrary resolutions. I talked it over with Denis and he said that he would support me all the way. So in June I went to see Beryl Cook at Central Office and told her: ‘It’s no use. I must face it. I don’t like being left out of the political stream.’ As I knew she would, ‘Auntie Beryl’ gave me her full support and referred me to John Hare, the Party Vice-Chairman for Candidates. In the kindest possible way, he told me about the pressures which membership of the House of Commons placed on family life, but I said that Denis and I had talked it through and this was something we were prepared to face. I said that I would like to have the chance of fighting a marginal or safe seat next time round. We both agreed that, given my other commitments, this should be in London itself or within a radius of thirty miles. I promptly asked to be considered for Canterbury, which was due to select a candidate. I left Central Office very pleased with the outcome – though I did not get Canterbury. The question which John Hare had raised with me about how I would combine my home life with politics was soon to become even more sensitive. For in August 1953 the twins, Mark and Carol, put in an appearance. Late one Thursday night, some six weeks before what we still called ‘the baby’ was due, I began to have pains. I had seen the doctor that day and he asked me to come back on the Monday for an X-ray because there was something he wanted to check. Now Monday seemed a very long way away, and off I was immediately taken to hospital. I was given a sedative which helped me sleep through the night. Then on Friday morning the X-ray was taken and to the great surprise of all it was discovered that I was to be the mother of twins. Unfortunately, that was not the whole story. The situation required a Caesarean operation the following day. The two tiny babies – a boy and a girl – had to wait a little before they saw their father. For Denis, imagining that all was progressing smoothly, had very sensibly gone to the Oval to watch the Test Match and it proved quite impossible to contact him. On that day he received two pieces of good but equally surprising news. England won the Ashes, and he found himself the proud father of twins. I had to stay in hospital for over a fortnight: this meant that after the first few uncomfortable days of recovery I found myself with time on my hands. The first and most immediate task was to telephone all the relevant stores to order two rather than just one of everything. Oddly enough, the very depth of the relief and happiness at having brought Mark and Carol into the world made me uneasy. The pull of a mother towards her children is perhaps the strongest and most instinctive emotion we have. I was never one of those people who regarded being ‘just’ a mother or indeed ‘just’ a housewife as second best. Indeed, whenever I heard such implicit assumptions made both before and after I became Prime Minister it would make me very angry indeed. Of course, to be a mother and a housewife is a vocation of a very high kind. But I simply felt that it was not the whole of my vocation. I knew that I also wanted a career. A phrase that Irene Ward, MP for Tynemouth, and I often used was that ‘while the home must always be the centre of one’s life, it should not be the boundary of one’s ambitions’. Indeed, I needed a career because, quite simply, that was the sort of person I was. And not just any career. I wanted one which would keep me mentally active and prepare me for the political future for which I believed I was well suited. So it was that at the end of my first week in hospital I came to a decision. I had the application form for my Bar finals in December sent to me. I filled it in and sent off the money for the exam, knowing that this little psychological trick I was playing on myself would ensure that I plunged into legal studies on my return to Swan Court with the twins, and that I would have to organize our lives so as to allow me to be both a mother and a professional woman. This was not as difficult as it might sound. The flat was large enough, though being on the sixth floor, we had to have bars put on all the windows. And without a garden, the twins had to be taken out twice a day to Ranelagh Gardens. But this turned out to be good for them because they became used to meeting and playing with other children – though early on, when we did not know the rules, we had our ball confiscated by the Park Superintendent. Usually, however, it was the nanny, Barbara, who took Mark and Carol to the park, except at weekends when I took over. Barbara turned out to be a marvellous friend to the children. Not long after I had the twins, John Hare wrote to me from Central Office: I was delighted to hear that you had had twins. How very clever of you. How is this going to affect your position as a candidate? I have gaily been putting your name forward; if you would like me to desist, please say so. I replied thanking him and noting: Having unexpectedly produced twins – we had no idea there were two of them until the day they were born – I think I had better not consider a candidature for at least six months. The household needs considerable reorganization and a reliable nurse must be found before I can feel free to pursue such other activities with the necessary fervour. So my name was, as John Hare put it, kept ‘in cold storage for the time being’. It was incumbent on me to say when I would like to come onto the active list of candidates again. My self-prescribed six months of political limbo were quickly over. I duly passed my Bar finals. I had begun by considering specializing in patent law but it seemed that the opportunities there were very limited and so perhaps tax law would be a better bet. In any case, I would need a foundation in the criminal law first. So in December 1953 I joined Frederick Lawton’s Chambers in the Inner Temple for a six months’ pupillage. Fred Lawton’s was a common law Chambers. He was, indeed, one of the most brilliant criminal lawyers I ever knew. He was witty, with no illusions about human nature or his own profession, extraordinarily lucid in exposition, and a kind guide to me. In fact, I was to go through no fewer than four sets of Chambers, partly because I had to gain a grounding in several fields before I was competent to specialize in tax. So I witnessed the rhetorical fireworks of the Criminal Bar, admired the precise draftsmanship of the Chancery Bar and then delved into the details of company law. But I became increasingly confident that tax law could be my forte. It was a meeting point with my interest in politics; it offered the right mixture of theory and practical substance; and of one thing we could all be sure – there would never be a shortage of clients desperate to cut their way out of the jungle of over-complex and constantly changing tax law. Studying, observing, discussing and eventually practising law had a profound effect on my political outlook. In this I was probably unusual. Familiarity with the law usually breeds if not contempt, at least a large measure of cynicism. For me, however, it gave a richer significance to that expression ‘the rule of law’ which so easily tripped off the Conservative tongue. When politics is in your blood, every circumstance seems to lead you back to it. Whether pondering Dicey,* (#ulink_81ab3547-4908-5a03-9e78-869e1ffaf981) poring over the intricacies of tax law or discussing current issues with other members of the Inns of Court Conservative Society, political questions insisted on taking centre stage in my imagination. So when in December 1954 I heard that there was a vacancy for the Conservative candidature in Orpington – which of course, being next to my old constituency of Dartford, I knew, and which was not too far from London – I telephoned Central Office and asked to have my name put forward. I was interviewed and placed on the shortlist. Sitting just outside the selection meeting with Denis, I heard Donald Sumner, the local candidate (and Association Chairman), advancing in his speech the decisive argument that in Orpington what they really needed was ‘a Member who really knows what is going on in the constituency – who knows the state of the roads in Locksbottom’. Denis and I roared with laughter. But Donald Sumner got the seat. I was naturally disappointed by the decision, because Orpington would have been an ideal constituency for me. It seemed extremely unlikely now that a similarly suitable seat would become available before what looked like an increasingly imminent general election. So I wrote to John Hare to say that I would now ‘continue at the Bar with no further thought of a parliamentary career for many years’. Knowing me better than I knew myself perhaps, he wrote back urging me at least to reconsider if a winnable seat in Kent became available. But I was adamant, though I made it clear that I would always be available to speak in constituencies and would of course be active in the general election campaign. Although I was in general a loyal Conservative, I had felt for some time that the Government could have moved further and faster in dismantling socialism and installing free enterprise policies. But it had not been easy for them to persuade popular opinion – or indeed themselves – that a somewhat stronger brew would be palatable. In fact, by 1955 a good deal of modest progress had been made as regards the removal of controls and, even more modestly, returning nationalized industries to the private sector. In April 1955 Churchill resigned as Prime Minister to be succeeded by Anthony Eden, and there was in quick succession a snap general election, a new Conservative Government, the d?b?cle of Suez and the arrival at No. 10 of Harold Macmillan, the wizard of change. During the general election campaign of May 1955 I spoke in a number of constituencies. But for me it was generally a dull affair. Once you have been a candidate everything else palls. Moreover, there was very little doubt of the outcome on this occasion. Sure enough, the Conservatives won an overall majority of fifty-eight. But the Eden administration’s political honeymoon turned out to be a short one. It quickly appeared that Rab Butler’s pre-election budget had been too loose, and there followed a much tighter emergency budget in October, which badly damaged Butler’s reputation – he was replaced as Chancellor by Harold Macmillan six months later – and seriously dented the Government’s. But it was, of course, to be foreign affairs which would be Eden’s real undoing. The background to the Suez crisis of July to November 1956 has been much discussed. The general feeling, at least among Conservatives, was that Britain was a great power which should not be pushed around by Nasser’s Egypt and that the latter needed to be taught a lesson, not least pour encourager les autres. Many of the details, for example the degree of collusion between Britain and France on the one hand and Israel on the other, were not available to the wider public at the time. To us, therefore, it appeared almost incomprehensible that first Anthony Nutting and then my old friend Edward Boyle should resign from the Government in protest at the intervention. Now their actions are more understandable, though even all these years later I could not endorse them. Politically, the failure of the Suez operation came as a body blow. Although it took many years for the full picture to emerge, it was immediately clear that the Government had been incompetent, and that its incompetence had been exposed in the most humiliating fashion. For a Conservative Government – particularly one led by someone whose reputation was founded on the conduct of foreign affairs – the outcome was particularly damaging. There was a mood of dismay bordering on despair among Conservative supporters. Denis’s reaction, as an ex-officer in the Royal Artillery, was sharpened by anger that our troops had been let down when the operation was halted close to completion. As he said to me: ‘You never announce a cease-fire when your troops are out on patrol.’ I would remember this: politicians must never take decisions in war without full consideration of what they mean to our forces on the ground. We also blamed harshly the conduct of the United States, and the fact that anti-Americanism lingered on in some generally right-wing circles when I was Prime Minister must be in part attributed to this. I too felt that we had been let down by our traditional ally – though at the time, of course, I did not realize that Eisenhower felt equally let down by the Anglo-French decision to launch military operations on the eve of a Presidential election in which he was running on a peace ticket. But in any case I also felt that the ‘special relationship’ with our transatlantic cousins had foundations too solid to be eroded by even such a crisis as Suez. Some people argued that Suez demonstrated that the Americans were so hostile to Britain’s imperial role, and were now so much a superpower that they could not be trusted and that closer European integration was the only answer. But there was an alternative – and quite contrary – conclusion. This was that British foreign policy could not long be pursued without ensuring for it the support of the United States. Indeed, in retrospect I can see that Suez was an unintended catalyst in the peaceful and necessary transfer of power from Britain to America as the ultimate upholder of western interests and the liberal international economic system. After the fiasco of Suez it was clear that Anthony Eden could not remain as Prime Minister. He fell ill during the crisis and resigned in January 1957. There was much speculation in the circles in which I moved as to who would succeed – in those days, of course, Conservative Leaders ‘emerged’ rather than being elected. My Conservative friends in Chambers were convinced that Rab Butler would never be summoned by the Queen because he was too left wing. By contrast, the Chancellor of the Exchequer at the time of Suez, Harold Macmillan, was considered to be the right-wing candidate. All of which shows how little we knew of the past and present convictions of both men – particularly the brilliant, elusive figure who was shortly to become Prime Minister. Harold Macmillan had the strengths and weaknesses of the consummate politician. He cultivated a languorous and almost antediluvian style which was not – and was not intended to be – sufficiently convincing to conceal the shrewdness behind it. He was a man of masks. It was impossible to tell, for instance, that behind the cynical Edwardian fa?ade was one of the most deeply religious souls in politics. Harold Macmillan’s great and lasting achievement was to repair the relationship with the United States. This was the essential condition for Britain to restore her reputation and standing. Unfortunately, he was unable to repair the damage inflicted by Suez on the morale of the British political class – a veritable ‘Suez syndrome’. They went from believing that Britain could do anything to an almost neurotic belief that Britain could do nothing. This was always a grotesque exaggeration. At that time we were a middle-ranking diplomatic power after America and the Soviet Union, a nuclear power, a leading member of NATO, a permanent member of the UN Security Council and the centre of a great Commonwealth. Macmillan’s impact on domestic affairs was mixed. Under his leadership there was the 1957 decontrol of private sector rents – which greatly reduced the scope of the rent control that had existed in one form or another since 1915 – a necessary, though far from popular move. Generally, however, Macmillan’s leadership edged the Party in the direction of state intervention, a trend which would become much more marked after 1959. Even at the time some developments made me uneasy. When Peter Thorneycroft, Enoch Powell and Nigel Birch – Macmillan’s entire Treasury team – resigned over a ?50 million increase in public expenditure in January 1958, Macmillan talked wittily of ‘little local difficulties’. I felt in no position to judge the rights and wrongs of the dispute itself. But the husbanding of public money did not strike me as an ignoble cause over which to resign. The first steps away from the path of financial rectitude always make its final abandonment that much easier. And that abandonment brings its own adverse consequences. Such was the case in the years that followed. It was not until the late summer of 1958 that the Conservatives caught up with Labour in the opinion polls. By the time of the 1959 general election the two main parties were unashamedly competing to appeal to the nation’s desire for material self-advancement. The Conservative manifesto bluntly stated: ‘Life’s better with the Conservatives, don’t let Labour ruin it.’ It went on to promise a doubling of the British standard of living in a generation. As for Labour, a few days into the campaign the Party Leader Hugh Gaitskell promised that there would be no rise in income tax in spite of all the extra spending Labour planned – even in that political climate of optimism, a fatally incredible pledge. Well before this I myself had re-entered the fray. In February 1956 I wrote to Donald Kaberry, the Party Vice-Chairman in charge of candidates: For some time now I have been feeling the temptation to return to active politics. I had intended, when I was called to the Bar, to concentrate entirely on legal work but a little experience at the Revenue Bar, and in Company matters, far from turning my attention from politics has served to draw my attention more closely to the body which is responsible for the legislation about which I have come to hold strong views. I went to see Donald Kaberry the following month. There was no problem in my being put back on the list of candidates – this time to be considered for safe, Conservative-held seats only. I was all the more delighted because I found in Donald Kaberry a constant and dependable source of wise advice and friendship – no small thing for an aspiring candidate. I was less fortunate in the reception I received from Selection Committees. It had begun at Orpington in 1954. It was the same at Beckenham, Hemel Hempstead and then Maidstone in 1957 and 1958. I would be short-listed, would make what was generally acknowledged to be a good speech – and then the questions, most of them having the same purpose, would begin. With my family commitments, would I have time enough for the constituency? Did I realize how much being a Member of Parliament would keep me away from home? And sometimes more bluntly still: did I really think that I could fulfil my duties as a mother with young children to look after and as an MP? I felt that Selection Committees had every right to ask me these questions. I explained our family circumstances and that I already had the help of a first-class nanny. I also used to describe how I had found it possible to be a professional woman and a mother by organizing my time properly. What I resented, however, was that beneath some of the criticism I detected a feeling that the House of Commons was not really the right place for a woman anyway. Perhaps some of the men at Selection Committees entertained this prejudice, but I found then and later that it was the women who came nearest to expressing it openly. I was hurt and disappointed by these experiences. They were, after all, an attack on me not just as a candidate but as a wife and mother. But I refused to be put off by them. I was confident that I had something to offer in politics. I knew that many others who had crossed my political path very much wanted me to get into the House. And most important of all, Denis never had any doubts. He was always there to comfort and support me. In April 1958 I had another long talk with Donald Kaberry and I spoke frankly about the difficulties I had faced as a woman with the Selection Committees. Unfortunately, this is not one of the topics on which even the wisest male friend can give very useful counsel. But Donald Kaberry did give me advice on what to wear on these sensitive occasions – something smart but not showy. In fact, looking me up and down he said he thought the black coat dress with brown trim which I was wearing would be just fine. His sartorial judgement would soon be put to the test. For I now entered my name for – and in July was called to interview at – the safe Conservative seat of Finchley, North London, whose MP was retiring. I was one of a ‘long list’ of some 150 applicants, which contained a number of my future colleagues in the House. I was also one of those called for preliminary interview by the Constituency Selection Committee. I could tell that I had a good deal of support, but being the most popular person on these occasions can sometimes be less important than being the least unpopular person. If, as the weaker candidates are eliminated, all their support goes to your opponent it is quite possible to fall at the last fence – and we were barely out of the paddock. It was arranged that the final four of us – three men and myself – should go before the Executive Council of the Association and I was pretty sure that I could expect some fierce opposition; it would be a fight. I prepared myself as best I could. I felt reasonably confident that I knew the constituency. I had no doubt that I could cope with even quite abstruse questions of economic or foreign policy, for I had voraciously read the newspapers and all the briefing I could obtain. I prepared my speech until it was word perfect, and I had mastered the technique of talking without notes. Equally important was that I should put myself in the right state of mind – confident but not too confident. And I wore the black coat dress. I saw no harm, either, in courting the fates: so I wore not just my lucky pearls but also a lucky brooch which had been given to me by my Conservative friends in Dartford. There was, however, one piece of thoroughly bad luck. This was that on the date of the meeting – Monday 14 July – it was quite impossible for Denis to come with me. Indeed, so quick was the whole selection process that he knew nothing whatever about it. Every year he would go away on a foreign sales tour for a month or so, and at this point his whereabouts were only ‘somewhere in Africa’. By contrast, the other candidates were accompanied by their spouses. So as I entered the packed meeting on that warm July evening I felt very much alone. But as soon as I was on my feet the inhibitions fell away. As always, I quickly became too taken up with the thrust of my argument to worry too much about what other people were thinking. The applause when I sat down seemed warm and genuine. It was at questions that the trouble began. Could a mother with young children really effectively represent Finchley? What about the strains on my family life? I gave my usual answers, and as usual too a section of the audience was determinedly unconvinced. And doubtless it was easier for them because poor Denis was absent. I rejoined the other candidates and their wives, where the tension was only relieved by that over-polite inconsequential small talk which such occasions always seem to generate. Once the last of us had performed, it seemed an endless wait until one of the officers came through to tell us the result. And when he did, it was to me that he spoke. There was no time to feel relief, pleasure or even exhaustion, because it was now necessary to return to receive the congratulations of the Executive. It was only afterwards that I knew the precise result. The first round of voting gave me thirty-five votes as against thirty-four for my nearest rival. On the second round, when the two other candidates had dropped out, I had forty-six against his forty-three. It was then expected that, for form’s sake and to show that there was no ill feeling, the Executive should unanimously vote to select me as their candidate. Unfortunately, some of those who opposed my candidature had no such intentions. So I inherited an Association which I would have to unite behind me, and this would mean winning over people who had not disguised their disapproval. But that was for tomorrow. First I must break the good news to my family back in Grantham. Denis was entirely incommunicado, blissfully unaware of what I had been through at Finchley. I had written him a letter some time before about the prospects, but he never received it. A couple of days later he was on his way from Johannesburg to Lagos via Kano in northern Nigeria. On changing planes he picked up a copy of the London Evening Standard which someone had left behind, and as he leafed through it he discovered the astonishing news that his wife had been selected for the safe seat of Finchley. I always seemed to be giving him surprises. My first opportunity to impress myself on the Finchley Association as a whole was at the Adoption Meeting early the following month. This time I again appeared in a plain black outfit with a small black hat. I received what I afterwards learned was an almost embarrassingly glowing introduction from Bertie Blatch, the constituency chairman, who was to be a great patron and protector. (It was an added advantage then and later that Bertie owned the most important local newspaper, the Finchley Press.) As I entered the hall, I was met with warm applause. I used the occasion to speak at some length about both international and domestic affairs. I pulled out every stop. I knew that though I was the only duly selected candidate, this adoption meeting was not, as it should have been, a mere formality. There was still some die-hard opposition to my candidature, centred on one woman and her little coterie, who were trying to have the contest re-run. I was determined to overcome this. There were no problems in dealing with the three questions from the body of the hall. As Conservatives do on such occasions, they gave me a terrific reception. But at the end – and contrary to the newspaper report of the occasion – a few of those present refused to vote for my adoption, which was overwhelming but not (that magic word) ‘unanimous’. I left the meeting knowing that I had secured my candidature and confident of the loyalty of the great majority of the Association, but aware too that some were still determined to make life as difficult as possible. I went as far as to write to Ted Heath, then Chief Whip, about the problems I was having. Partly as a result of his assistance, and partly because I used my own personal contacts, I managed to attract a distinguished field of speakers to come and speak on my behalf between my adoption and election day. Iain Macleod, Keith Joseph, Peter Thorneycroft and John Boyd-Carpenter – all people around whom my future political life would soon revolve – were among them. Denis’s belated but extremely welcome arrival on the scene also helped in a rather different way. Bertie Blatch gave me constant and unstinting support. Finchley had been run with a degree of gentlemanly disengagement that was neither my style nor warranted by political realities. I intended to work and then campaign as if Finchley were a marginal seat, and I hoped and expected that others would follow my lead. From now on I was in the constituency two or three times a week and regularly went out canvassing in each of the wards, returning afterwards to get to know the Party activists over a drink in the local pub or someone’s house. By the time I arrived as candidate, there was a good deal of concern that the Liberals in Finchley were becoming strongly entrenched. They were always excellent campaigners, particularly effective in local government elections. A few years before, there had been a famous local scandal over the barring of Jews from membership of Finchley Golf Club, in which a number of local Conservatives had been involved: the Liberals never missed an opportunity to remind people of it. I simply did not understand anti-semitism myself, and I was upset that the Party should have been tainted by it. I also thought that the potential Conservative vote was not being fully mobilized because of this. So I set out to make it absolutely clear that we wanted new members, especially Jewish Conservatives, in our branch organizations. Though I did not know it at the time, I was subsequently to find some of my closest political friends and associates among Jews. What was clear was that the potential Conservative vote was not being fully exploited, and that however many feathers might be ruffled in the process it was vital to strengthen our branch organization. I also put a good deal of effort into strengthening the Young Conservative organization in the constituency: I was sure that it was by attracting energetic young people that we could most surely resist the challenge of activist Liberals. By the time the election was called in September 1959 the constituency organization was looking in better shape, and I had begun to feel very much at home. My first general election polling day in Finchley in October 1959 was very much to set the pattern for the nine such polling days which would succeed it. Soon after the opening of the poll I would vote in my own home constituency – Orpington in 1959, Chelsea and Westminster in later elections – and then drive up to Finchley with Denis. I visited each of the polling stations and our committee rooms, breaking for lunch with Bertie Blatch and others in a hotel. There I rigorously paid just for my own food and drink, to avoid the accusation of ‘treating’ electors, terror of which is instilled by Conservative Central Office into all our candidates. From 5 o’clock I carefully avoided visiting committee rooms, which should all be sending out workers to summon our supporters to the polls, just dropping into a polling station or two to show the flag. Then at close of poll Denis and I went to the Blatches’ for something to eat, visited the constituency offices to catch the latest largely anecdotal news, and finally attended the count – on this occasion at Christ’s College, though later all nine constituency counts would be held at Barnet Town Hall. At the school, I found that each of the candidates had been allocated a room where he or she with a select band of supporters could get something to eat and drink and where we had access to that miracle of modern political life – a television. The 1959 campaign had, in fact, been the first in which television played a serious part. I divided my time between watching the growing piles of ballot papers, candidate by candidate, on the long tables in the body of the hall, and slipping back to my room to catch the equally satisfactory results coming in across the country as a whole. At about 12.30 a.m. I was told that the Finchley results were shortly to be announced, and was asked to join the Electoral Returning Officer with the other candidates on the platform. Perhaps some people in a safe seat when the Tories were on course for a national victory would have been confident or even complacent. Not me. Throughout my time in politics, whether from some sixth sense or perhaps – who knows? – from mere superstition, I have associated such attitudes with imminent disaster. So I stood by the side of Denis with a fixed smile and tried not to look as I felt. The Returning Officer began: ‘Deakins, Eric Petro: thirteen thousand, four hundred and thirty-seven.’ (Labour cheers.) ‘Spence, Henry Ivan: twelve thousand, seven hundred and one.’ (Liberal cheers.) And finally we reached: ‘Thatcher, Margaret Hilda: twenty-nine thousand, six hundred and ninety-seven.’ I was home and dry – and with a majority of 16,260, almost 3,500 more than my predecessor. The cheers rose. I made my short speech of acceptance, thanked all my splendid helpers, received a warm hug from Denis and walked down from the platform – the elected Member for Finchley. In an unguarded moment, shortly after I had been selected for Finchley, I had told the twins that once I became an MP they could have tea on the terrace of the House of Commons. From then on the plaintive request had been: ‘Aren’t you there yet, Mummy? It’s taking a long time.’ I had known the feeling. It had seemed so very long for me too. But I now knew that within weeks I would take my seat on the green leather benches of the House of Commons. It was the first step. * (#ulink_7c720312-ad99-5050-8f39-1df6fd738590) A.V. Dicey, jurist (1835–1922). CHAPTER FOUR (#ulink_c8dc092d-a014-5c28-adc1-053d25eefa78) The Outer Circle (#ulink_c8dc092d-a014-5c28-adc1-053d25eefa78) Backbencher and junior minister 1959–1964 BY NOW MY FAMILY AND I were comfortably installed in a large-ish detached house at Farnborough in Kent. We had decided to buy ‘Dormers’, which we saw advertised in Country Life, after rent decontrol threatened to make it a good deal more expensive to continue renting our flat in Swan Court. In any event, we felt the children needed a garden to play in. The one and a half acres of garden were heavily overgrown but I enjoyed setting to work to improve things. When my parents finally moved to a house with a garden – very long but narrow – I was no longer living at home. So the garden at ‘Dormers’ was my first real opportunity to don thick gardening gloves and rip out brambles, trundle barrows of leaf-mould from the nearby wood to improve the soil, and plant out flowerbeds. Luckily, in Bertie Blatch I had a constituency chairman who doubled as horticulturist: but for all his tips my roses never quite resembled his. For the twins, ‘Dormers’ was a seventh heaven. There was the new experience of their own garden, neighbours with children and all the excitement of a wood to walk in – though not alone. The house was part of an estate, so there was no through-traffic and it was safe for the children. I eliminated right at the beginning the dreadful possibility of their falling in the pond by having it filled with earth and turned into a rose bed. Mark and Carol were six when I became an MP, old enough to get into plenty of trouble if not firmly handled. Nor was Denis at home as much as he would have liked, since his job took him abroad a good deal. Because my parliamentary duties meant that I was not always back before the twins went to bed, I insisted on full family attendance at breakfast. We also had the advantage of the long parliamentary recess and indeed the long parliamentary weekends. But I owe a debt of gratitude to Barbara, the children’s nanny until she married a local horticulturist who advised me on the garden – and to Abby who replaced her and who in due course became a close family friend. They kept the children in order and I always telephoned from the House shortly before six each evening to see that all was well and to give the children a chance to tell me that it wasn’t. Although there were often constituency duties, the weekends provided the opportunity to sort out the house and usually to do a large bake, just as we had done at home in Grantham. In the summer months Denis and I and the children would work – or in their case play at working – in the garden. But on Saturdays in the rugby season Denis would probably be refereeing or watching a match – an arrangement which from the earliest days of our marriage had been solemnly set down in tablets of stone. Sometimes if he was refereeing an important game I would go along as well, though my concentration on the game was frequently disturbed by the less than complimentary remarks which English crowds are inclined to exchange about the conduct of referees. On Sundays we took the twins to the Family Service at the Farnborough parish church. Denis was an Anglican, and we both felt that it would be confusing for the children if we did not attend the same church. The fact that our local church was Low Church made it easier for the Methodist in me to make the transition. Anyway, John Wesley regarded himself as a member of the Church of England to his dying day. I did not feel that any great theological divide had been crossed. Weekends, therefore, provided me with an invaluable and invigorating tonic. So did family holidays. I remembered what I had enjoyed – and not enjoyed – about my own holidays at Skegness. My conclusion was that for young children nothing beats buckets and spades and plenty of activity. So we used to take a house on the Sussex coast for a month right by the side of the beach, and there always seemed to be other families with small children nearby. Later we went regularly to a family hotel at Seaview on the Isle of Wight or rented a flat in the village. Crossing the Solent by ferry seemed a great adventure to the children who, like all twins, had a degree of (usually) playful rivalry. On the way down to the coast in the car we always passed through a place called ‘Four Marks’. I was never able to answer Mark’s question about who these four were. Nor could I think up a satisfactory response to Carol who thought that it was all unfair and that there should also be a ‘Four Carols’. Not to be outdone, Mark pointed out that it was no less unfair that Christmas carols had no male equivalent. It is hard to know whether one worries more about one’s children when they are within reach or far away. I wanted the twins to be at home when they were young, but unfortunately, the nearby day school to which Mark went had to close in 1961, and Denis persuaded me that it was best that he should go to Belmont Preparatory School. At least Belmont was just on the edge of Finchley, so I could take him out to lunch. Also I knew he was not too far away in case of emergencies. But not to be left out, Carol decided that she wanted to go to boarding school as well. The house seemed empty without them. By now there was another emptiness in my life which could never be filled, and that was the loss of my mother, who died in 1960. She had been a great rock of family stability. She managed the household, stepped in to run the shop when necessary, entertained, supported my father in his public life and as Mayoress, did a great deal of voluntary social work for the church, displayed a series of practical domestic talents such as dressmaking and was never heard to complain. Like many people who live for others, she made possible all that her husband and daughters did. Her life had not been an easy one. Although in later years I would speak more readily of my father’s political influence on me, it was from my mother that I inherited the ability to organize and combine so many different duties of an active life. Her death was a great shock, even though it had not been entirely unexpected. Even young children have a keen sense of family grief. After my mother’s funeral, my father came back to stay with us for a while at ‘Dormers’. That evening when I turned back the coverlet of his bed, I found a little note from Mark on the pillow: ‘Dear Grandad I’m so sorry Granny died.’ It was heartbreaking. I was very glad, however, that both my parents had seen their daughter enter the Palace of Westminster as a Member of Parliament – quite literally ‘seen’, because the press contained flattering photographs of me in my new hat on the way to the House. My first real contact with the Conservative Parliamentary Party was when on the day before Parliament opened I went along as a member of the 1922 Committee – the Party committee to which all Conservative backbench MPs belong – to discuss the question of the Speakership of the House. I knew only a relatively small number of the several hundred faces packed into that rumbustious, smoky committee room, but I immediately felt at home. Everyone in those early days was immensely kind. The Chief Whip would give new Members a talk about the rules of the House and the whipping system. Old-stagers gave me useful hints about dealing with correspondence. They also told me that I should not just concentrate on the big issues like foreign affairs and finance, but also find one or two less popular topics on which I could make a mark. Another piece of good practical advice was to find myself a ‘pair’, which I promptly did in the form of Charlie Pannell, the Labour MP for Leeds West.* (#ulink_9d98108e-f82c-577a-860f-f8f317374eba) I had met him years earlier when he lived in Erith, in my old Dartford constituency. He was exactly the sort of good-humoured, decent Labour man I liked. The Palace of Westminster seems a bewildering labyrinth of corridors to the uninitiated. It was some time before I could find my way with ease around it. There were modestly appointed rooms set apart for the twenty-five women Members – the ‘Lady Members’ Rooms’ – where I would find a desk to work at. Neither taste nor convention suggested my entering the Smoking Room. My formidably efficient secretary, Paddi Victor Smith, had a desk in a large office with a number of other secretaries where we worked on constituency correspondence. But the heart of the House of Commons was, even more than now, the Chamber itself. Early on, I was advised that there was no substitute for hours spent there. Finance and Foreign Affairs Committee meetings might be more informative. The weekly 1922 Committee meetings might be more lively, but it was only by absorbing the atmosphere of the House until its procedures became second nature and its style of debate instinctive that one could become that most respected kind of English politician, a ‘House of Commons man’ (or woman). So I took my pre-arranged place in the fourth row back below the gangway – where thirty-one years later I chose to sit again after I resigned as Prime Minister. The House itself was – and still is – a very masculine place. This manifested itself above all, I found, in the sheer volume of noise. I was used to university debates and questions at the general election hustings, yet my brief previous visits to the Visitors’ Gallery of the House had never prepared me for this. But when I remarked on it to a colleague he just laughed and said, ‘You should have heard it during Suez!’ Masculinity, I soon found, however, did not degenerate into male prejudice. In different ways I had on occasion been made to feel small because I was a woman in industry, at the Bar and indeed in Tory constituency politics. But in the House of Commons we were all equals; and woe betide ministers who suggest by their demeanour or behaviour that they consider themselves more equal than the rest. I soon saw with appreciation that sincerity, logic and technical mastery of a subject could earn respect from both sides of the House. Shallowness and bluff were quickly exposed. Perhaps every generation of young men and women considers that those it once regarded as great figures had a stature lacked by their equivalents in later years. But I would certainly be hard put now to find on the backbenches the extraordinary range of experience and talents which characterized the House of Commons then. Almost whatever the subject, there would be some figure on either side of the House who would bring massive, specialized knowledge and obvious intuition to bear on it – and be listened to with respect by front and backbenches alike. As it happens, I had very little opportunity during my first few months as an MP for the relaxed acquisition of experience of the House. With 310 other Members I had entered the Commons ballot for the introduction of Private Members’ Bills. Never previously having so much as won a raffle, I was greatly astonished to find myself drawn second. Only the first few Private Members’ Bills have any chance of becoming legislation, and even then the Government’s attitude towards them is crucial. I had only given the most general consideration to the topic I would choose, but I now had just a week to make up my mind, for the Bill had to be tabled by 11 November. As a result of an industrial dispute in the printing industry, which began in July 1958, a number of Labour-controlled councils in big cities had denied normal reporting facilities to journalists working on provincial newspapers involved in the dispute. This had highlighted a loophole in the law which many councils used to conceal information from the general public about their activities. The press had a statutory right of admission only to meetings of the full council, not to its committees. By the device of resolving to go into committee, councils could therefore exclude the press from their deliberations. And besides these ‘committees of the whole council’ there were many other committees which were closed. Large sums of ratepayers’ money could be spent – or mis-spent – without outside scrutiny. Nor did members of the public themselves have the right to attend any council or council committee meetings. My own interest in the question stemmed partly from the fact that it had come to a head because of socialist connivance with trade union power, partly because I knew from Nottingham, not far from Grantham, what was going on, and partly because the present situation offended against my belief in accountability by government for the spending of people’s money. The 1959 Conservative manifesto had contained a promise ‘to make quite sure that the press have proper facilities for reporting the proceedings of local authorities’. Having read this, I imagined that a Bill to do just that would be welcome to the Government. I was swiftly disillusioned by the whips. Apparently, nothing more than a code of practice on the subject had been envisaged. This seemed to me extremely feeble, and so I decided to go ahead. It quickly became clear that the objection to a measure with teeth came not from ministers at the Ministry of Housing and Local Government but rather from officials, who in turn were doubtless echoing the fierce opposition of the local authorities to any democratic check on their powers. Henry Brooke, the Cabinet minister in charge, was consistently sympathetic. Each Private Member’s Bill is placed under the supervision of a junior minister who either helps or hinders its progress. My Bill was given to Sir Keith Joseph, and it was in examination of the tedious technical intricacies of the measure that I first got to know Keith. I learned a great deal in a very short time from the experience of devising, refashioning and negotiating for my Bill. Partly because the issue had been a live one for a number of years, but partly also because of senior Members’ kindness towards a new Member, I was able to rely on invaluable assistance from backbench colleagues. Sir Lionel Heald, a former Attorney-General, gave me the benefit of his great legal experience. I learned from him and others the techniques of legal draftsmanship, which were generally the preserve of the parliamentary draftsmen. I also witnessed the power of pressure groups. The influence of the local authority lobby made itself felt in a hundred ways, and not only through the Labour Party. I therefore learned to play pressure group against pressure group and made the most of the help offered to me by the Newspaper Editors’ Guild and other press bodies. In the end, however, there is no substitute for one’s own efforts. I wanted to get as many MPs as possible to the House on a Friday (when most MPs have returned to their constituency) for the Bill’s Second Reading – this was the great hurdle. I have always believed in the impact of a personal handwritten letter – even from someone you barely know. So just before Second Reading I wrote 250 letters to Government backbenchers asking them to attend and vote for my measure. By the time I rose to deliver my speech on Friday 5 February 1960, I knew the arguments by heart. As a result, I could speak for almost half an hour without notes to hand – though not without nerves. The three women members of the Government – Pat Hornsby-Smith, Mervyn Pike and Edith Pitt – showed moral support from the front bench, and the House was very full for a Friday. I was delighted that nearly 200 Members voted, and we won handsomely. I was also genuinely moved by the comments that different MPs made to me personally – particularly Rab Butler, the Leader of the House and a master of ambiguous compliments, whose congratulations on this occasion, however, were straightforward, generous and very welcome to a new Member. It was clear from the press next day that the speech had been a success and that I was – for the present at least – a celebrity. ‘A new star was born in Parliament’, thrilled the Daily Express. ‘Fame and Margaret Thatcher made friends yesterday’, shrieked the Sunday Dispatch. ‘A triumph’, observed the Daily Telegraph evenly. Feature articles appeared about me and my family. I was interviewed on television. The cameras came down to ‘Dormers’, and in an unguarded moment in answer to one of the more preposterous questions I told a journalist that ‘I couldn’t even consider a Cabinet post until my twins are older.’ But apart from this gaffe it was roses, roses all the way. Excessive praise? I had no doubt myself that it was. And I was slightly nervous that it might excite the jealousy of colleagues. My speech had been a competent performance, but it was not an epic. But was it, however, a portent? Some time before the general election I had read John Buchan’s The Gap in the Curtain. I had not thought more about it until I considered these somewhat overstated headlines. John Buchan’s tale concerns a group of men, including several politicians, who spend Whitsun at a friend’s house where they are enabled by another guest, a mysterious and fatally ill physicist of world renown, to glimpse the contents of a page of The Times one year later. Each sees something affecting his own future. One, a new Conservative MP, reads a brief obituary of himself which notes that he had delivered a brilliant maiden speech that had made him a national figure overnight. And so it turns out. The speech is outstanding, praised and admired on all sides; but after that, deprived of the self-confidence which knowledge of the future gave him, he fails totally and sinks into oblivion, waiting for the end. I shuddered slightly and reached for my lucky pearls. But my Bill – with the significant addition that members of the general public should have the same rights as the press to attend council meetings, and with committees (apart from committees of the whole council) excluded from its provisions – duly passed into law; and, though my seven-day stardom faded somewhat, I had learned a lot and gained a good deal of confidence. Life on the backbenches was always exciting – but so hectic that on one occasion, to the consternation of my male colleagues, I fainted in the Members’ Dining Room. I spent as much time as I could in the House and at backbench committees. I also regularly attended the dining club of new Tory Members to which the great figures of the Party – Harold Macmillan, Rab Butler, Iain Macleod and Enoch Powell – and brilliant young Tory journalists like Peter Utley would come to speak. The natural path to promotion and success at this time lay in the centre of politics and on the left of the Conservative Party. Above all, the up-and-coming Tory politician had to avoid being ‘reactionary’. Nothing was likely to be so socially and professionally damaging as to bear that label. Conservatism at this time lacked fire. Even though what are now widely seen as the damaging moral, social and economic developments of the sixties mainly belong to the period of Labour government after 1964, the first years of the decade also were ones of drift and cynicism, for which Conservatives must be held in large part responsible. The odd thing is, looking back, that Conservatives in the sixties, though increasingly and obsessively worried about being out of touch with contemporary trends and fashions, were beginning to lose touch with the instincts and aspirations of ordinary conservative-minded people. This was true on issues as different as trade unions and immigration, law and order and aid to the Third World. But it was also and most directly important as regards management of the economy. It was not so much inflation, which was zero throughout the winter of 1959–60 and did not reach 5 per cent until the summer of 1961, but rather the balance of payments that was seen as the main economic constraint on growth. And the means adopted to deal with the problems at this time – credit controls, interest rate rises, the search for international credit to sustain the pound, tax rises and, increasingly, prototype incomes policies – became all too familiar over the next fifteen years. The rethinking that produced first ‘Selsdon Man’ and later Thatcherism was barely in evidence. The more I learned about it, the less impressed I was by our management of the economy. I listened with great care to the speeches of the Tory backbencher Nigel Birch, which were highly critical of the Government’s failure to control public spending. The Government’s argument was that increases could be afforded as long as the economy continued to grow. But this in turn edged us towards policies of injecting too much demand and then pulling back sharply when this produced pressures on the balance of payments or sterling. This is precisely what happened in the summer of 1961 when the Chancellor of the Exchequer Selwyn Lloyd introduced a deflationary budget and our first incomes policy, the ‘pay pause’. Another effect, of course, was to keep taxation higher than would otherwise be necessary. Chancellors of the Exchequer, wary of increases in basic income tax, laid particular importance on checking tax avoidance and evasion, repeatedly extending Inland Revenue powers to do so. Both as a tax lawyer and from my own instinctive dislike of handing more power to bureaucracies, I felt strongly on the matter and helped to write a critical report by the Inns of Court Conservative Society. I felt even more strongly that the fashionable liberal tendencies in penal policy should be sharply reversed. So I spoke – and voted – in support of a new clause which a group of us wanted to add on to that year’s Criminal Justice Bill which would have introduced birching or caning for young violent offenders. In the prevailing climate of opinion, this was a line which I knew would expose me to ridicule from the selfconsciously high-minded commentators. But my constituents did not see it that way, and nor did a substantial number of us on the right. Although the new clause was defeated, sixty-nine Tory backbenchers voted against the Government and in support of it. It was the biggest Party revolt since we came to power in 1951, and the Whips’ Office were none too pleased. It was also the only occasion in my entire time in the House of Commons when I voted against the Party line. The summer of 1961 was a more than usually interesting time in politics. I retained my close interest in foreign affairs, which were dominated by the uneasy developing relationship between Kennedy and Khrushchev, the building by the Soviets of the Berlin Wall and, closer to home, by the beginning of negotiations for Britain to join the Common Market. There was also speculation about a reshuffle. In spite of my slightly blotted copybook, I had some reason to think that I might be a beneficiary of it. I had remained to a modest degree in the public eye, and not just with my speech on corporal punishment. I gave a press conference with Eirene White, the Labour MP for East Flint, on the lack of provision being made for the needs of pre-school children in high-rise flats, a topic of growing concern at this time when so many of these badly designed monstrosities were being erected. But the main reason why I had hopes of benefiting from the reshuffle was very simple. Pat Hornsby-Smith had decided to resign to pursue her business interests, and it was thought politically desirable to keep up the number of women in the Government. That said, I did not try to conceal my delight when the telephone rang and I was summoned to see the Prime Minister. Harold Macmillan was camping out in some style at Admiralty House while 10 Downing Street was undergoing extensive refurbishment. I had already developed my own strong impressions of him, not just from speeches in the House and to the 1922 Committee, but also when he came to speak to our New Members’ Dining Club – on which occasion he had strongly recommended Disraeli’s Sybil and Coningsby as political reading. But Disraeli’s style was too ornate for my taste, though I can see why it may have appealed to Harold Macmillan. It is now clear to me that Macmillan was a more complex and sensitive figure than he appeared; but appearance did seem to count for a great deal. Certainly, whether it was striking a bargain and cementing a friendship with President Kennedy, or delivering a deliciously humorous put-down to a ranting Khrushchev, Harold Macmillan was a superb representative of Britain abroad. I sorted out my best outfit, this time sapphire blue, to go and see the Prime Minister. The interview was short. Harold Macmillan charmingly greeted me and offered the expected appointment. I enthusiastically accepted. I wanted to begin as soon as possible and asked him how I should arrange things with the department. Characteristically, he said: ‘Oh well, ring the Permanent Secretary and turn up at about 11 o’clock tomorrow morning, look around and come away. I shouldn’t stay too long.’ So it was the following morning – rather before eleven – that I arrived at the pleasant Georgian house in John Adam Street, just off the Strand, which was at that time the headquarters of the Ministry of Pensions and National Insurance. In a gesture which I much appreciated – and which I myself as a Cabinet minister always emulated – John Boyd-Carpenter, my minister, was there at the front door to meet me and take me up to my new office. John was someone it was easy to like and admire for his personal kindness, grasp of detail and capacity for lucid exposition of a complex case. And he was an excellent speaker and debater. All in all, a good model for a novice Parliamentary Secretary to follow. The first step was to re-read the original Beveridge Report in which the philosophy of the post-war system of pensions and benefits was clearly set out. I was already quite well acquainted with its main aspects and I strongly approved of them. At the centre was the concept of a comprehensive ‘social insurance scheme’, which was intended to cover loss of earning power caused by unemployment, sickness or retirement. This would be done by a single system of benefits at subsistence level financed by flat-rate individual contributions. By the side of this there would be a system of National Assistance, financed out of general taxation, to help those who were unable to sustain themselves on National Insurance benefits, either because they had been unable to contribute, or had run out of cover. National Assistance was means tested and had been envisaged as in large part a transitional system, whose scope would diminish as pensions or personal savings rose. It is easy in retrospect to poke fun at many of Beveridge’s assumptions and predictions. But Beveridge had sought to guard against the very problems which later governments more or less ignored and which have now returned to plague us, in particular the debilitating effects of welfare dependency and the loss of private and voluntary effort. Whatever the effects in practice, the Beveridge Report’s rhetoric has what would later be considered a Thatcherite ring to it: … The State should offer security for service and contribution. The State in organizing security should not stifle incentive, opportunity, responsibility; in establishing a national minimum, it should leave room and encouragement for voluntary action by each individual to provide more than that minimum for himself and his family. [Paragraph 9] … The insured persons should not feel that income for idleness, however caused, can come from a bottomless purse. [Paragraph 22] Much of our time at the Ministry was taken up both with coping with the effects of and finding remedies to the difficulties which flowed from the gap between Beveridge’s original conception and the way in which the system – and with it public expectations – had developed. So, for example, in those days before inflation took hold and benefits were annually up-rated to cope with it, there were cries of disapproval when National Insurance pensions were increased and National Assistance, which made up your income to a certain level, was not. People also increasingly came to expect something better than a subsistence-level pension to retire upon, but the contribution levels or financing from general taxation which this would require seemed prohibitive. This lay behind John Boyd-Carpenter’s idea of the ‘graduated pensions’ scheme, whereby the payment of higher contributions could secure a somewhat higher pension, and provision was made for the encouragement of private occupational pension schemes. Another constant source of difficulty for which we found no ultimate (affordable) answer was the ‘earnings rule’ whereby pensioners who worked would at a certain level of income lose part or all of their pension payments. It was the impact of this on pensioner widows which caused me most difficulty and not a little heart-searching. Apart from the Beveridge Report and other general briefing from the department, it was the case work – that is the investigation of particular people’s problems raised in letters – which taught me most about the Social Security system. I was not prepared to sign a reply if I did not feel that I properly understood the background. Consequently, a stream of officials came in and out of my office to give me the benefit of their matchless knowledge of each topic. I adopted a similar approach to parliamentary questions, which would be shared out between the ministers. I was not content to know the answer or the line to take. I wanted to know why. Having served as a junior minister to three different ministers in the same department I was interested to see that the advice tendered to the ministers by civil servants differed, even though it was on the same topic. So I complained when both Niall Macpherson and Richard Wood received policy submissions proposing approaches that I knew had not been put to their predecessor, John Boyd-Carpenter. I remember saying afterwards: ‘That’s not what you advised the previous minister.’ They replied that they had known that he would never accept it. I decided then and there that when I was in charge of a department I would insist on an absolutely frank assessment of all the options from any civil servants who would report to me. Arguments should be from first principles. I also learned another lesson. There was a good deal of pressure to remove the earnings rule as regards widowed mothers. I sympathized with it strongly. Indeed, this was one of the issues upon which, as a new MP, I had publicly stated my position. I thought that if a woman who had lost her husband but still had children to support decided to try to earn a little more through going out to work she should not lose pension for doing so. Perhaps as a woman I had a clearer idea of what problems widows faced. Perhaps it was my recollection of the heartbreaking sight of a recently widowed mother eking out her tiny income buying bruised fruit at my father’s shop. But I found it almost impossible to defend the Government line against Opposition attack. I raised the matter with officials and with my minister. On one occasion, I even raised it with Alec Douglas-Home as Prime Minister when he came to speak to a group of junior ministers. But although he seemed sympathetic, I never got anywhere. The argument from officials in the department was always that ending the earnings rule for even this most deserving group would have ‘repercussions’ elsewhere. And, of course, they were logically correct. But how I came to hate that word ‘repercussions’. Ministers were wrong to take such arguments at face value and not to apply political judgement to them. It was no surprise to me that one of the first acts of the incoming Labour Government in 1964 was to make the change for which I had been arguing, and to get the credit too. The moral was clear to me: bureaucratic logic is no substitute for ministerial judgement. Forget that as a politician, and the political ‘repercussions’ will be on you. I retained my taste for the Chamber of the Commons, developed during my two years on the backbenches. We faced no mean opponents on the Labour benches. Dick Crossman had one of the finest minds in politics, if also one of the most wayward, and Douglas Houghton a formidable mastery of his brief. I liked both of them, but I was still determined to win any argument. I enjoyed the battle of facts and figures when our policies were under fire at Question Time and when I was speaking in debates – though sometimes I should have trod more warily. One day at the Dispatch Box I was handed a civil service note giving new statistics about a point raised in the debate. ‘Now,’ I said triumphantly, ‘I have the latest red hot figure.’ The House dissolved into laughter, and it took a moment for me to realize my double entendre. As luck would have it, at Pensions we were due to answer questions on the Monday immediately after the notorious Cabinet reshuffle in July 1962 which became known as ‘The Night of the Long Knives’. John Boyd-Carpenter departed to become Chief Secretary to the Treasury and Niall Macpherson had not yet replaced him at Pensions. Since most of the questions on the Order Paper related to my side of the department’s activities, rather than War Pensions, I would have to answer in the place of the senior minister for nearly an hour. That meant another nerve-racking weekend for me and for the officials I had to pester. The Labour Party was in rumbustious mood, but I got through, saying when asked about future policy that I would refer the matter to my minister – ‘when I had one’. But would the Government get through? As I was to experience myself many years later, every Cabinet reshuffle contains its own unforeseen dangers. But no difficulties I ever faced – even in 1989 – matched the appalling damage to the Government done by ‘The Night of the Long Knives’, in which one third of the Cabinet, including the Lord Chancellor and the Chancellor of the Exchequer, were dispatched and a new generation including Reggie Maudling, Keith Joseph and Edward Boyle found themselves in the front line of politics. One of the lessons I learned from the affair was that one should try to bring in some younger people to the Government at each reshuffle so as to avoid a log-jam. The handling of the changes was badly botched by Macmillan, whose standing never really recovered. Above all, out in the country there had grown up a detectable feeling that the Conservatives had been in power too long and had lost their way. That most dangerous time for a government had arrived when most people feel, perhaps only in some vague way, that it is ‘time for a change’. Later in the autumn of 1962 the Government ran into squalls of a different kind. The Vassall spy case, the flight of Philby to the Soviet Union, confirming suspicions that he had been a KGB double-agent since the 1930s, and in the summer of 1963 the Profumo scandal – all served to enmesh the Government in rumours of sleaze and incompetence. These might have been shrugged off by a government in robust health. But the significance attached to these embarrassments was the greater because of the general malaise. Europe was one of the main reasons for that malaise. In October 1961 Ted Heath had been entrusted by Harold Macmillan with the difficult negotiations for British membership of the European Economic Community. Not least because of Ted’s tenacity and dedication, most of the problems, such as what to do about Britain’s agriculture and about trade links with the Commonwealth, seemed eminently soluble. Then in January 1963 General de Gaulle vetoed our entry. No great popular passions about Europe were aroused at this time in Britain. There was a general sense, which I shared, that in the past we had underrated the potential advantage to Britain of access to the Common Market, that neither the European Free Trade Association (EFTA) nor our links with the Commonwealth and the United States offered us the trading future we needed, and that the time was right for us to join the EEC. I was an active member of the European Union of Women – an organization founded in Austria in 1953 to promote European integration – and sat on its ‘Judicial Panel’ which debated issues relating to law and the family. But I saw the EEC as essentially a trading framework – a Common Market – and neither shared nor took very seriously the idealistic rhetoric with which ‘Europe’ was already being dressed in some quarters. In fact, it is now clear to me that General de Gaulle was much more perceptive than we were at this time when, to our great chagrin, he noted: England in effect is insular, she is maritime, she is linked through her exchanges, her markets, her supply lines to the most diverse and often the most distant countries; she pursues essentially industrial and commercial activities, and only slight agricultural ones … In short, the nature, the structure, the very situation that are England’s differ profoundly from those of the Continentals … But he also said: If the Brussels negotiations were shortly not to succeed, nothing would prevent the conclusion between the Common Market and Great Britain of an accord of association designed to safeguard exchanges, and nothing would prevent close relations between England and France from being maintained, nor the pursuit and development of their direct cooperation in all kinds of fields … If this is what de Gaulle was indeed offering, it would have been a better reflection of British interests than the terms of British membership that were eventually agreed a decade later. We may have missed the best European bus that ever came along. At the time, however, so much political capital had been invested by Harold Macmillan in the European venture that its undignified collapse contributed to the impression that the Government had lost its sense of direction. The Labour Party had suffered a tragedy when Hugh Gaitskell died young in January 1963. Harold Wilson was elected as Leader. Though lacking the respect which Gaitskell had won, Wilson was a new and deadly threat to the Government. He was a formidable parliamentary debater with a rapier wit. He knew how to flatter the press to excellent effect. He could coin the kind of ambiguous phrase to keep Labour united (e.g. ‘planned growth of incomes’ rather than ‘incomes policy’), and he could get under Harold Macmillan’s skin in a way Hugh Gaitskell never could. While Gaitskell was more of a statesman than Wilson, Wilson was an infinitely more accomplished politician. As a result of all these factors, the Conservatives’ standing in the polls fell alarmingly. In July 1963, Labour were some 20 per cent ahead. In early October at the Labour Party Conference Harold Wilson’s brilliant but shallow speech about the ‘white heat’ of scientific revolution caught the imagination of the commentators. And then just a few days later – a bombshell – a resignation statement from Harold Macmillan’s hospital bed was read out by Alec Douglas-Home to the Party Conference at Blackpool, which was immediately transformed into a kind of gladiatorial combat by the leadership candidates. But the real battle for the Conservative leadership was taking place elsewhere. The subtlest process of all was the way in which Harold Macmillan let it be known that he favoured Quintin Hogg over Rab Butler, thus stopping any bandwagon for the latter and preparing the ground for the ‘emergence’ of Alec Douglas-Home. The Monday following the Conference I received a phone call from the Whips’ Office to gauge my views on the leadership. I first told them that I would support Rab over Quintin, because he was simply the more qualified of the two. I was then asked my view of Alec. This opened up a possibility I had not envisaged. ‘Is it constitutionally possible?’ I asked. Assured that it was, I did not hesitate. I replied: ‘Then I am strongly in favour of Alec.’ When Alec Douglas-Home became Foreign Secretary in June 1960 I had expressed doubts to Betty Harvie Anderson (MP for Renfrewshire East). I thought that there surely ought to be a suitable candidate for the post among the ministers in the Commons. Anthony Eden had, I recalled, ostensibly refused to give the Foreign Secretaryship to Lord Salisbury on these grounds. But Betty told me that Alec was quite outstanding and deserved the job. So I decided to read the new Foreign Secretary’s first speech in Hansard. It was a masterly survey of East-West relations, which emphasized the need for deterrence as well as negotiation with the Soviets and stressed the importance of our relationship with the United States. Alec now and later managed, most unusually, to combine skill in diplomacy with clarity of vision and he had the charm, polish and eye for detail of the perfect negotiator. Moreover, Alec Douglas-Home was a manifestly good man – and goodness is not to be underrated as a qualification for those considered for powerful positions. He was also, in the best possible way, ‘classless’. You always felt that he treated you not as a category but as a person. And he actually listened – as I found when I took up with him the vexed question of the widowed mothers’ allowance. But the press were cruelly and almost unanimously against him. He was easy to caricature as an out-of-touch aristocrat, a throwback to the worst sort of reactionary Toryism. Inverted snobbery was always to my mind even more distasteful than the straightforward self-important kind. By 1964 British society had entered a sick phase of liberal conformism passing as individual self-expression. Only progressive ideas and people were worthy of respect by an increasingly self-conscious and self-confident media class. And how they laughed when Alec said self-deprecatingly that he used matchsticks to work out economic concepts. What a contrast with the economic models with which the technically brilliant mind of Harold Wilson was familiar. No one stopped to question whether the weaknesses of the British economy were fundamentally simple and only superficially complex. In fact, if politicians had been compelled to use more honest language and simple illustrations to ensure that people understood their policies, we might well have avoided Britain’s slither into relative decline. For all that – in spite of the media criticism, in spite of the chaotic end of the Macmillan Government, in spite of the correct but appallingly timed abolition of Retail Price Maintenance which so offended small-business support for the Conservatives – we very nearly won the 1964 general election. This recovery was not because of any economic improvement, for inflation worsened and the balance of payments deficit yawned. In part it was because the closer one looked at the Labour Party’s programme and its Leader, the less substantial they seemed. But mainly the credit for our political recovery should go to Alec. There had been some press speculation that I might not hold Finchley. The Liberals began predicting another Orpington. They had secured a tight grip on the old Finchley council, though in May 1964 they had done rather less well in the elections for the new Barnet borough council. The Liberals’ new, energetic candidate, John Pardoe, campaigned principally on local issues while I mainly stuck to national ones – above all, how to secure prosperity without inflation. I am always anxious on election day; but in 1964 my anxieties were, in spite of the predictions of my defeat at the start of the campaign, much greater for the Party nationally than for me in Finchley. The results bore this out. I found myself with a majority over John Pardoe of almost 9,000. But I had seen the last of the Ministry at John Adam Street, for Labour had secured an overall majority of four seats. Thirteen years of Conservative government were over and a period of fundamental rethinking of Conservative philosophy was about to begin – alas, not for the last time. * (#ulink_2ab9581f-bb96-5574-bdd5-2fe601c05fdf) ‘Pairing’ is an informal arrangement by which pairs of MPs from opposing parties agree to abstain in parliamentary votes when one or other of them wishes to be absent from the House of Commons. The arrangement does not usually apply to crucial votes. CHAPTER FIVE (#ulink_677ef047-11ff-52c1-98e4-70fbda7b81e9) A World of Shadows (#ulink_677ef047-11ff-52c1-98e4-70fbda7b81e9) Opposition 1964–1970 THE CONSERVATIVE PARTY has never been slow to shoot the pianist as a substitute for changing its tune. So it proved in the wake of our narrow 1964 election defeat. Anyone seriously thinking about the way forward for Conservatism would have started by examining whether the established tendency to fight on socialist ground with corporatist weapons had not something to do with the Party’s predicament. Then and only then – after a more or less inevitable second election defeat, for there was a general sense in the country that Labour needed a larger working majority if it were to carry out its programme – would have been the time to consider a leadership change. I had hoped and indeed naively expected that the Party would soldier on under Alec Douglas-Home. I later heard that the supporters of Ted Heath and others anxious to oust Alec had been busy behind the scenes; but I was unaware of these mysterious cabals until it was too late. I was stunned and upset when Alec told the 1922 Committee that he intended to stand down; I was all the more distressed by his evident unhappiness. I kept on saying to people, ‘Why didn’t he let his supporters know? We might have been able to help.’ Reggie Maudling and Ted Heath were generally accepted as the only two figures in serious contention for the leadership, which for the first time would be decided by a ballot of MPs. Reggie was thought to have the better chance. Although his performance as Chancellor of the Exchequer had incurred serious and in some ways justified criticism, there was no doubting his experience, brilliant intellect and command of the House. His main weakness was a certain laziness – something which is a frequent temptation to those who know that they are naturally and effortlessly cleverer than those around them. Ted had a very different character. He was methodical, forceful and, at least on the one question which mattered to him above all others – Europe – a man of unyielding determination. As Shadow Chancellor he had the opportunity to demonstrate his capabilities in attacking the 1965 Finance Bill, which in those days was taken on the floor of the House. Ted was regarded as being somewhat to the right of Reggie, but they were both essentially centrists in Party terms. Something could be made of the different approaches they took to Europe, with Reggie regarding EFTA more favourably and Ted convinced that membership of the EEC was essential. But their attitudes to specific policies hardly affected the question of which to support. I knew Reggie as a neighbouring MP for Barnet and I liked his combination of laid-back charm and acute intellect. Ted’s character seemed to me in many ways admirable. But he was not charming – nor, to be fair, did he set out to be. He was probably more at ease talking to men than women. But it was not just women who found him difficult to get on with. I felt that though I had known him for years, there was a sense in which I did not know him at all. I was not conscious at this time of any hostility, simply of a lack of human warmth. I did not either then or later regard amiability as an indispensable or even particularly important attribute of leadership. Yet, all things considered, I thought that I would vote for Reggie Maudling. It was Keith Joseph who persuaded me to change my mind. By now Keith was a friend. We worked together, though with him very much as the senior partner, on pensions policy in 1964–65. Like everyone else who came to know him, I was deeply impressed by the quality of his mind and the depth of his compassion. Keith had gone into politics for the same reason that many on the left had done so – he wanted to improve the lot of ordinary people, particularly those he saw living deprived, unfulfilled lives. Many jokes would be made – and the best of them by Keith himself – about the way in which he changed his mind and reversed his policies on matters ranging from housing to health to social benefits. But the common thread was his relentless search for the right answer to the practical problems of human suffering. So I took him very seriously when he telephoned to say that while he knew I was currently intending to vote for Reggie, I should think again. Keith understood Reggie’s weaknesses. But it was Ted’s strengths that he wanted to speak about. He summed them up: ‘Ted has a passion to get Britain right.’ And, of course, so did Keith, and so did I. This was decisive for me. To the disappointment of Reggie Maudling and his PPS, Neil Marten, I told them that Ted Heath would be getting my vote. Sufficient numbers thought similarly. Ted emerged with a clear majority on the first ballot, Reggie withdrawing to make a second ballot unnecessary. I was not displeased to be given a different portfolio by the new Leader, exchanging my role as Shadow spokesman on Pensions for that of Housing and Land under my old boss, John Boyd-Carpenter. I would always regard my knowledge of the Social Security system as one of the most important aspects of what turned out to be my training to become Prime Minister. Now that we were in Opposition, however, it was not easy to oppose the large pension and benefit increases which the Labour Government was making: only later would the full financial implications of this spending spree become evident. So it was a relief to me to be moved to Housing and Land. As was widely expected, Harold Wilson called an early snap election at the end of March 1966. The result – a Conservative rout and an overall Labour majority of ninety-seven – was equally expected. We fought an uninspiring campaign on the basis of a flimsy manifesto entitled Action not Words, which accurately summed up Ted’s impact on politics. This was widely seen as a completion of Wilson’s 1964 victory, and Ted was not blamed. I was not displeased to keep a healthy majority of 9,464, this time over the Labour Party which had beaten the Liberals into third place. But it was a depressing time. Denis knew my mood and went out to buy me an eternity ring to cheer me up. I received a further fillip when Ted Heath made me Treasury spokesman on Tax under the Shadow Chancellor, Iain Macleod. There had been some speculation in the press that I would be promoted to the Shadow Cabinet myself. But I was not expecting it. I now know, having read Jim Prior’s memoirs,* (#ulink_9b36c347-2838-5ad2-b927-b358cf13a131) that I was indeed considered but that Ted, rather presciently, decided against it because if they got me in ‘they would never get [me] out again’. As a tax lawyer I already knew my way around my new brief. Although I had no formal training in economic theory, I felt naturally at ease with the concepts and I had always had strong convictions about the way in which public money should be handled. As I had found when junior minister responsible for pensions, I was lucky enough to have the sort of mind to grasp technical detail and understand quite complex figuring fairly easily. None of which meant, however, that I could afford to relax. I not only felt well-suited to my new job: it was also an exciting time to begin it. The incoherence and irresponsibility of socialist economic management had become apparent. The optimistic projections of George Brown’s National Plan, published in September 1965, were an albatross to hang around Labour’s neck, as forecasts of economic growth were not met. Labour’s pre-election promises of ‘no severe increases in taxation’ were broken with the announcement in the budget of May 1966 that a new Selective Employment Tax (SET) would be introduced, in effect a payroll tax falling particularly heavily on service industries: it was a major part of my brief to oppose it. The Labour Government’s reliance on its alleged special relationship with the trade unions to secure voluntary incomes restraint as a means of controlling inflation had already lost credibility with the failure of the Government-TUC joint Declaration of Intent, which had first been proclaimed amid fanfares in December 1964. In July 1966 the ‘voluntary’ approach was jettisoned. It was announced that there would be a six months’ wage freeze followed by six months of ‘severe restraint’. Prices would be frozen for a year, and a plea was made for limits to be applied to dividends over the same period. The National Board of Prices and Incomes, which Labour had established, was given powers to require one month’s advance notification of any price and wage increases and powers to delay increases by Order in Council for up to three months. The Government might take power to direct that specified price and wage increases should not be made. Fighting this policy in general and, under Iain Macleod’s leadership, opposing the ‘Standstill orders’ which came before the House of Commons, were the other important aspects of my brief. In preparing myself for my first major Commons speech in my new role, I got out from the House of Commons Library every budget speech and Finance Bill since the war and read them. I was thus able to demonstrate to a somewhat bemused Jim Callaghan, then Chancellor of the Exchequer, and Jack Diamond, his Chief Secretary, that this was the only budget which had failed to make even a minor concession in the social services area. Then I sank my teeth into the SET. It was riddled with absurdities which I took great pleasure in exposing. The attempt to distinguish between manufacturing and service industries, shifting the tax burden onto the second and handing the money back as subsidies to the first, was a demonstrably inefficient, anomaly-ridden procedure. As I put it in the House: ‘Whatever the payroll tax is, it is thoroughly bad administration … I only wish that Gilbert and Sullivan were alive today so that we could have an opera about it.’ Our side of the House liked it. I got a good press, the Daily Telegraph observing that ‘it has taken a woman … to slam the faces of the Government’s Treasury ministers in the mud and then stamp on them’. Iain Macleod himself wrote some generous lines about the performance in another paper. He did the same after my speech that autumn to the Party Conference in Blackpool. I put a special effort into it – though the nine hours of work I did would have seemed culpable idleness compared with the time I took for Conference speechwriting as Party Leader. That autumn, however, I spoke from notes, which gives extra spontaneity and the flexibility to insert a joke or jibe on the spur of the moment. Although the debate I was answering was on taxation, the cheers came in response to what I said about the way in which the Government was undermining the rule of law by the arbitrary powers it had taken through incomes policy and tax policy. With more than a touch of hyperbole, it must be admitted, I said: ‘All this is fundamentally wrong for Britain. It is a step not merely towards socialism but towards communism.’ The new and still left-of-centre Sun noted: ‘A Fiery Blonde Warns of the Road to Ruin’. In October 1967 Ted made me front-bench spokesman on Fuel and Power and a member of the Shadow Cabinet. It may be that my House of Commons performances and perhaps Iain Macleod’s recommendation overcame any temperamental reluctance on Ted’s part. My first task was to read through all the evidence given to the inquiry about the causes of the terrible Aberfan disaster the previous year, when 116 children and 28 adults were killed by a slag tip which slipped onto a Welsh mining village. Many of the parents of the victims were in the gallery for the debate, and I felt for them. Very serious criticisms had been made of the National Coal Board and as a result someone, I thought, should have resigned, though I held back from stating this conclusion with complete clarity in my first speech to the House as Shadow spokesman. What was revealed by the report made me realize how very easy it is in any large organization to assume that someone else has taken the requisite action and will assume responsibility. This is a problem which, as later tragedies have demonstrated, industrial civilization has yet to solve. Outside the House, my main interest was in trying to find a framework for privatization of electricity generation. To this end I visited power stations and sought all the advice I could from business contacts. But it turned out to be a fruitless enterprise, and I had not come up with what I considered acceptable answers by the time my portfolio was changed again – to Transport – in October 1968. Parliament had just passed a major Transport Bill reorganizing the railways, nationalizing the bus companies, setting up a new National Freight Authority – in effect, implementing most of the Government’s transport programme in one measure. I argued our case against nationalization of the ports. But, all in all, Transport proved a brief with limited possibilities. As a member of the Shadow Cabinet I attended its weekly discussions, usually on a Wednesday, in Ted’s room in the House. Discussion was generally not very stimulating. We would begin by looking ahead to the parliamentary business for the week and agreeing who was to speak and on what line. There might be a paper from a colleague which he would introduce. But, doubtless because we knew that there were large divisions between us, particularly on economic policy, issues of principle were not usually openly debated. For my part, I did not make a particularly important contribution to Shadow Cabinet. Nor was I asked to do so. For Ted and perhaps others I was principally there as the statutory woman whose main task was to explain what ‘women’ – Kiri Te Kanawa, Barbara Cartland, Esther Rantzen, Stella Rimington and all the rest of our uniform, undifferentiated sex – were likely to think and want on troublesome issues. I had, of course, great affection for Alec Douglas-Home, then Shadow Foreign Secretary, and got on perfectly well with most of my colleagues, but I had only three real friends around the table – Keith Joseph, Peter Thomas and Edward Boyle. And Edward by now was very much on the opposite wing of the Party from me. The atmosphere at our meetings was certainly made more difficult by the fact that the most senior figures now had somewhat tense relations with each other. Ted was settling into the role of Party Leader with determination, but without any real assurance. Reggie Maudling, Deputy Leader, had never really recovered from his defeat for the leadership. Iain Macleod was the most politically acute of us, but though a superb public orator he was a rather private and reserved character. He was also growing out of sympathy with his old friend Enoch Powell, who was increasingly concerned about immigration, a topic about which Iain felt equally strongly on the other side. Undoubtedly, Enoch was our finest intellect – classicist, historian, economist and biblical scholar. In a quite different way from Iain, he was a powerful public orator and able to command the House of Commons, or indeed any audience, with his remorseless logic and controlled passion. But as regards the Shadow Cabinet, by this stage he had largely withdrawn into himself. He was disliked and probably feared by Ted Heath. On Monday 26 February 1968 Shadow Cabinet discussed the Government’s Commonwealth Immigrants’ Bill to introduce the new immigration controls. A statement had been issued the previous week setting out the principles on which we would judge the measure. Ted Heath said that it was now up to Shadow Cabinet to decide whether the Bill came sufficiently within those terms. In fact, it did some of the things which we advocated. But it did not provide for registration of dependants, nor for appeal by those refused entry, nor for financial help for voluntary repatriation. It was decided to support the Bill, but also to move amendments where appropriate. Iain Macleod said that he would vote against the Bill, and was as good as his word. On Wednesday 10 April Shadow Cabinet discussed the other side of the Government’s policy, the Race Relations Bill. Ted opened the discussion. He said that though the Bill itself appeared to have many faults he thought that some legal machinery would be necessary to help improve the prospects for coloured immigrants in Britain. Quintin Hogg, the Shadow Home Secretary, outlined his own views. He thought that legislation was necessary, but that we should move amendments. However, he noted that our backbenchers were very hostile to the Bill. Reggie Maudling agreed with Quintin on both points. In the discussion which followed, in which I did not participate, the main point in dispute was whether, flawed as the Bill was, to vote against it at Second Reading would be misinterpreted as racist. Shadow Cabinet’s view was that the best assurance for good race relations was confidence that future numbers of immigrants would not be too great and that the existing law of the land would be upheld. In the end it was decided that a reasoned amendment would be drafted and there would be a two-line whip. Keith Joseph, Edward Boyle and Robert Carr, on the liberal wing, reserved their positions until they had seen the terms of the amendment. In the event they all supported it. On Sunday 21 April 1968 – two days before the debate – I woke up to find the front pages of the newspapers dominated by reports of a speech Enoch Powell had made in Birmingham on immigration the previous afternoon. It was strong meat, and there were some lines which had a sinister ring about them. But I strongly sympathized with the gravamen of his argument about the scale of New Commonwealth immigration into Britain. I too thought this threatened not just public order but also the way of life of some communities, themselves already beginning to be demoralized by insensitive housing policies, Social Security dependence and the onset of the ‘permissive society’. I was also quite convinced that, however selective quotations from his speech may have sounded, Enoch was no racist. At about 11 o’clock the telephone rang. It was Ted Heath. ‘I am ringing round all the Shadow Cabinet. I have come to the conclusion that Enoch must go.’ It was more statement than enquiry. But I said that I really thought that it was better to let things cool down rather than heighten the crisis. ‘No, no,’ he said. ‘He absolutely must go, and most people think he must go.’ In fact, I understood later that several members of the Shadow Cabinet would have resigned if Enoch had not gone. The longer-term consequences of Enoch’s departure on this issue and under these circumstances extended far beyond immigration policy. He was free to develop a philosophical approach to a range of policies, uninhibited by the compromises of collective responsibility. This spanned both economic and foreign affairs and embraced what would come to be called ‘monetarism’, deregulation, denationalization, an end to regional policy, and culminated in his opposition to British membership of the Common Market. Having Enoch preaching to such effect in the wilderness carried advantages and disadvantages for those of us on the right in the Shadow Cabinet and later the Cabinet. On the one hand, he shifted the basis of the political argument to the right and so made it easier to advance sound doctrines without being accused of taking an extreme position. On the other hand, so bitter was the feud between Ted and Enoch that querying any policy advanced by the leadership was likely to be branded disloyalty. Moreover, the very fact that Enoch advanced all his positions as part of a coherent whole made it more difficult to express agreement with one or two of them. For example, the arguments against prices and incomes policies, intervention and corporatism might have been better received if they had not been associated with Enoch’s views about immigration or Europe. At this time, as it happens, other Conservatives were moving independently in the same direction, with the notable exception of Europe, and Ted gave me an opportunity to chart this way ahead. The annual Conservative Political Centre lecture is designed to give some intellectual meat to those attending the Tory Party Conference. The choice of speaker is generally reserved to the Party Leader. It was doubtless a pollster or Party adviser who suggested that it might be a good idea to have me talk about a subject which would appeal to ‘women’. Luckily, I was free to choose my subject, and I decided on something that might appeal to thinking people of both sexes: I spoke on ‘What’s Wrong With Politics?’ I began by listing the reasons why there was so much disillusionment with politics. Some of these really consisted of the growth of a critical spirit through the effects of education and the mass media. But others were the fault of the politicians themselves. Political programmes were becoming dominated by a series of promises whose impact was all the greater because of the growth of the Welfare State. This led me on to what I considered the main cause of the public’s increasing alienation from political parties – too much government. The competition between the parties to offer ever higher levels of economic growth and the belief that government itself could deliver these had provided the socialists with an opportunity massively to extend state control and intervention. This in turn caused ordinary people to feel that they had insufficient say in their own and their families’ lives. The Left claimed that the answer was the creation of structures which would allow more democratic ‘participation’ in political decisions. But the real problem was that politics itself was intruding into far too many decisions that were properly outside its scope. Alongside the expansion of government had developed a political obsession with size – the notion that large units promoted efficiency. In fact, the opposite was true. Smaller units – small businesses, families and ultimately individuals – should once again be the focus of attention. Apart from these general reflections, my CPC lecture also contained a section about prices and incomes policy. Although I stuck to the Shadow Cabinet line of condemning a compulsory policy while avoiding the issue of a voluntary one, I included a passage which reads: We now put so much emphasis on the control of incomes that we have too little regard for the essential role of government which is the control of the money supply and management of demand [emphasis added]. Greater attention to this role and less to the outward detailed control would have achieved more for the economy. It would mean, of course, that the government had to exercise itself some of the disciplines on expenditure it is so anxious to impose on others. It would mean that expenditure in the vast public sector would not have to be greater than the amount which could be financed out of taxation plus genuine saving. In retrospect, it is clear to me that this summed up how far my understanding of these matters had gone – and how far it still needed to go. I had come to see that the money supply was central to any policy to control inflation. But I had not seen either that this made any kind of incomes policy irrelevant or that monetary policy itself was the way in which demand should be managed. By now (1968) the left-of-centre consensus on economic policy was being challenged and would continue to be. But the new liberal consensus on moral and social matters was not. That is to say that people in positions of influence in government, the media and universities managed to impose metropolitan liberal views on a society that was still largely conservative morally. The 1960s saw in Britain the beginning of what has become an almost complete separation between traditional Christian values and the authority of the state. Some politicians regarded this as a coherent programme. But for the great majority, myself included, it was a matter of reforms to deal with specific problems, in some cases cruel or unfair provisions. So it was that I voted in 1966 for Leo Abse’s Bill proposing that homosexual conduct in private between consenting adults over twenty-one should no longer be a criminal offence. In the same year I voted for David Steel’s Bill to allow abortion if there was substantial risk that a child would suffer from such physical or mental abnormalities as to be seriously handicapped, or ‘where the woman’s capacity as a mother would be severely overstrained’. On both these issues I was strongly influenced by my own experience of other people’s suffering. For example, when I was a barrister I had been moved by the humiliation I had seen inflicted in the dock on a man of considerable local standing who had been found engaging in homosexual conduct. On the other hand, some aspects of the liberal agenda seemed to me to go too far. Divorce law reform was such a case. I had talked in my constituency surgeries to women subjected to a life of misery from their brutal husbands and for whom marriage had become a prison from which, in my view, they should be released. In these circumstances divorce might be the only answer. But if divorce became too easy it might undermine marriages simply going through a bad patch. If people can withdraw lightly from their responsibilities they are likely to be less serious about entering into the initial obligation. I was concerned about the spouse who was committed to make the marriage work and was deserted. I was also very concerned about what would become of the family of the first marriage when the man (or woman) chose to start a second family. So in 1968 I was one of the minority who voted against a Bill to make divorce far easier. Divorce would be possible where it was judged that there had been an ‘irretrievable breakdown’, broadly defined, in the marriage. I also supported two amendments, the first of which made available a special form of marriage that was indissoluble (except by judicial separation). The second would seek to ensure that in any conflict of interest between the legal wife and children of the first marriage and a common-law wife and her children, the former should have priority. Similarly, I voted against Sydney Silverman’s Bill to abolish the death penalty for murder in 1965. Like all the other measures listed above this was passed by Parliament, but subject to a Conservative amendment to the effect that the Act was to expire at the end of July 1970 unless Parliament determined otherwise. I then voted against the motion in December 1969 to make the Act permanent. I believed that the state had not just a right but a duty to deter and punish violent crime and to protect the law-abiding public. However sparingly it is used, the power to deprive an individual of liberty, and under certain circumstances of life itself, is inseparable from the sovereignty of the state. I never had the slightest doubt that in nearly all cases the supreme deterrent would be an influence on the potential murderer. And the deterrent effect of capital punishment is at least as great on those who go armed on other criminal activities, such as robbery. To my mind, the serious difficulty in the issue lay in the possibility of the conviction and execution of an innocent man – which has certainly happened in a small number of cases. Against these tragic cases, however, must be set the victims of convicted murderers who have been released after their sentence was served only to be convicted of murder a second time – who have certainly numbered many more. I believe that the potential victim of the murderer deserves that highest protection which only the existence of the death penalty gives. As regards abortion, homosexuality, and divorce reform it is easy to see that matters did not turn out as was intended. For most of us in Parliament – and certainly for me – the thinking underlying these changes was that they dealt with anomalies or unfairnesses which occurred in a minority of instances, or that they removed uncertainties in the law itself. Or else they were intended to recognize in law what was in any case occurring in fact. Instead, it could be argued that they have paved the way towards a more callous, selfish and irresponsible society. Reforming the law on abortion was primarily intended to stop young women being forced to have back-street abortions. It was not meant to make abortion simply another ‘choice’. Yet in spite of the universal availability of artificial contraception the figures for abortion have kept on rising. Homosexual activists have moved from seeking a right of privacy to demanding social approval for the ‘gay’ lifestyle, equal status with the heterosexual family and even the legal right to exploit the sexual uncertainty of adolescents. Divorce law reform has contributed to – though it is by no means the only cause of – a very large increase in the incidence of marriage breakdown which has left so many children growing up without the continual care and guidance of two parents. Would I have voted differently on any of these measures? I now see that we viewed them too narrowly. As a lawyer, I felt that the prime considerations were that the law should be enforceable and its application fair to those who might run foul of it. But laws also have a symbolic significance: they are signposts to the way society is developing – and the way the legislators of society envisage that it should develop. Moreover, taking all of the ‘liberal’ reforms of the 1960s together they amount to more than their individual parts. They came to be seen as providing a radically new framework within which the younger generation would be expected to behave. Although Britain gave a distinctive gloss to these trends, the affluent consumer society to which they catered was above all to be found in the United States. I had made my first visit to the USA in 1967 on one of the ‘Leadership’ programmes run by the American Government to bring rising young leaders from politics and business over to the US. For six weeks I travelled the length and breadth of the United States. The excitement which I felt has never really subsided. At each stopover I was met and accommodated by friendly, open, generous people who took me into their homes and lives and showed me their cities and townships with evident pride. The high point was my visit to the NASA Space Center at Houston. I saw the astronaut training programme which would just two years later help put a man on the moon. As a living example of the ‘brain drain’ from which over-regulated, high-taxed Britain was suffering, I met someone from my constituency of Finchley who had gone to NASA to make full use of his talents. I saw nothing wrong with that, and indeed was glad that a British scientist was making such an important contribution. But there was no way Britain could hope to compete even in more modest areas of technology if we did not learn the lessons of an enterprise economy. I travelled to Moscow with the amiable Paul Channon and his wife. We had a full schedule including not just the sights of Moscow but also Leningrad (formerly, and now once again, St Petersburg) and Stalingrad (Volgograd). But though the name might vary, the propaganda was the same. It was relentless, an endless flow of statistics proving the industrial and social superiority of the Soviet Union over the West. Outside an art gallery I visited there was a sculpture of a blacksmith beating a sword with a hammer. ‘That represents communism,’ my guide proudly observed. ‘Actually, it doesn’t,’ I replied. ‘It’s from the Old Testament – “And they shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning-hooks”.’ Collapse of stout aesthete. Methodist Sunday School has its uses. Yet, behind the official propaganda, the grey streets, all but empty shops and badly maintained workers’ housing blocks, Russian humanity peeped out. There was no doubt about the genuineness of the tears when the older people at Leningrad and Stalingrad told me about their terrible sufferings in the war. The young people I talked to from Moscow University, though extremely cautious about what they said in the full knowledge that they were under KGB scrutiny, were clearly fascinated to learn all they could about the West. And even bureaucracy can prove human. When I visited the manager of the Moscow passenger transport system he explained to me at great length how decisions about new development had to go from committee to committee in what seemed – as I said – an endless chain of non-decision-making. I caught the eye of a young man, perhaps the chairman’s assistant, standing behind him and he could not repress a broad smile. On my return to London I was moved to the Education portfolio in the Shadow Cabinet. Edward Boyle was leaving politics to become Vice-Chancellor of the University of Leeds. There was by now a good deal of grassroots opposition at Party Conferences to what was seen as his weakness in defence of the grammar schools. Although our views had diverged, I was sorry to see him go and I would miss his intellect, sensitivity and integrity. But for me this was definitely a promotion, even though, as I have since learned, I was in fact the reserve candidate, after Keith Joseph: I got the job because Reggie Maudling refused to take over Keith’s job as Trade and Industry Shadow. I was delighted with my new role. I had risen to my present position as a result of free (or nearly free) good education, and I wanted others to have the same chance. Socialist education policies, by equalizing downwards and denying gifted children the opportunity to get on, were a major obstacle to that. I was also fascinated by the scientific side – the portfolio in those days being to shadow the Department of Education and Science. Education was by now one of the main battlegrounds of politics. Since their election in 1964 Labour had been increasingly committed to making the whole secondary school system comprehensive, and had introduced a series of measures, to make local education authorities (LEAs) submit plans for such a change. (The process culminated in legislation, introduced a few months after I took over as Education Shadow.) The difficulties Edward had faced in formulating and explaining our response soon became clear to me. The Shadow Cabinet and the Conservative Party were deeply split over the principle of selection in secondary education and, in particular, over the examination by which children were selected at the age of eleven, the 11-Plus. To oversimplify a little: first, there were those who had no real interest in state education because they themselves and their children went to private schools. This was a group all too likely to be swayed by arguments of political expediency. Second, there were those who, themselves or their children, had failed to get into grammar school and had been disappointed with the education received at a secondary modern. Third, there were those Conservatives who had absorbed a large dose of the fashionable egalitarian doctrines of the day. Finally, there were people like me who had been to good grammar schools, were strongly opposed to their destruction and felt no inhibitions at all about arguing for the 11-Plus. But by the time I took on the Education portfolio, the Party’s policy group had presented its report and the policy itself was largely established. It had two main aspects. We had decided to concentrate on improving primary schools. And in order to defuse as much as possible the debate about the 11-Plus, we stressed the autonomy of local education authorities in proposing the retention of grammar schools or the introduction of comprehensive schools. The good arguments for this programme were that improvements in the education of younger children were vital if the growing tendency towards illiteracy and innumeracy was to be checked and, secondly, that in practice the best way to retain grammar schools was to fight centralization. There were, however, arguments on the other side. There was not much point in spending large sums on nursery and primary schools and the teachers for them, if the teaching methods and attitudes were wrong. Nor, of course, were we in the long run going to be able to defend grammar schools – or, for that matter, private schools, direct grant schools and even streamed comprehensive schools – if we did not fight on grounds of principle. Within the limits which the agreed policy and political realities allowed me, I went as far as I could. This was a good deal too far for some people, as I learned when, shortly after my appointment, I was the guest of the education correspondents at the Cumberland Hotel in London. I put the case not just for grammar schools but for secondary moderns. Those children who were not able to shine academically could in fact acquire responsibilities and respect at a separate secondary modern school, which they would never have done if in direct and continual competition and contact with the more academically gifted. I was perfectly prepared to see the 11-Plus replaced or modified by testing later in a child’s career, if that was what people wanted. I knew that it was quite possible for late developers at a secondary modern to be moved to the local grammar school so that their abilities could be properly stretched. I was sure that there were too many secondary modern schools which were providing a second-rate education – but this was something which should be remedied by bringing their standards up, rather than grammar school standards down. Only two of those present at the Cumberland Hotel lunch seemed to agree. Otherwise I was met by a mixture of hostility and blank incomprehension. It opened my eyes to the dominance of socialist thinking among those whose task it was to provide the public with information about education. There were still some relatively less important issues in Conservative education policy to be decided. I fought hard to have an unqualified commitment to raising the school leaving age to sixteen inserted into the manifesto, and succeeded against some doubts from the Treasury team. I also met strong opposition from Ted Heath when, at our discussions at Selsdon Park in early 1970, I argued that the manifesto should endorse the proposed new independent University of Buckingham. I lost this battle but was at least finally permitted to make reference to the university in a speech. Quite why Ted felt so passionately against it I have never fully understood. The Selsdon Park policy weekend at the end of January and beginning of February was a success, but not for the reasons usually given. The idea that Selsdon Park was the scene of debate which resulted in a radical rightward shift in Party policy is false. The main lines of policy had already been agreed and incorporated into a draft manifesto which we spent our time considering in detail. Our line on immigration had also been carefully spelt out. Our proposals for trade union reform had been published in Fair Deal at Work. On incomes policy, a rightward but somewhat confused shift was in the process of occurring. Labour had effectively abandoned its own policy. There was no need, therefore, to enter into the vexed question of whether some kind of ‘voluntary’ incomes policy might be pursued. But it was clear that Reggie Maudling was unhappy that we had no proposals to deal with what was still perceived as ‘wage inflation’. In fact, the manifesto, in a judicious muddle, avoided either a monetarist approach or a Keynesian one and said simply: ‘The main causes of rising prices are Labour’s damaging policies of high taxation and devaluation. Labour’s compulsory wage control was a failure and we will not repeat it.’ This led us into some trouble later. During the election campaign the fallacious assertion that high taxes caused inflation inspired a briefing note from Central Office. This note allowed the Labour Party to claim subsequently that we had said that we would cut prices ‘at a stroke’ by means of tax cuts. Thanks to the blanket press coverage of Selsdon Park, we seemed to be a serious alternative Government committed to long-term thinking about the policies for Britain’s future. We were also helped by Harold Wilson’s attack on ‘Selsdon Man’. It gave us an air of down-to-earth right-wing populism which countered the somewhat aloof image conveyed by Ted. Above all, both Selsdon Park and the Conservative manifesto, A Better Tomorrow, contrasted favourably with the deviousness, inconsistency and horse trading which by now characterized the Wilson Government, especially since the abandonment of In Place of Strife under trade union pressure.* (#ulink_44f513fb-eab1-5106-a527-93cb86603e27) Between our departure from Selsdon Park and the opening of the general election campaign in May, however, there was a reversal of the opinion poll standing of the two parties. Quite why this turnaround had occurred (or indeed how real it actually was) is hard to know. With the prospect of a general election there is always a tendency for disillusioned supporters to resume their party allegiance. But it is also true – and it is something that we would pay dearly for in government – that we had not seriously set out to win the battle of ideas against socialism during our years in Opposition. And indeed, our rethinking of policy had not been as fundamental as it should have been. The campaign itself was largely taken up with Labour attacks on our policies. We for our part, like any Opposition, highlighted the long list of Labour’s broken promises – ‘steady industrial growth all the time’, ‘no stop-go measures’, ‘no increase in taxation’, ‘no increase in unemployment’, ‘the pound in your pocket not devalued’, ‘economic miracle’ and many more. This was the theme I pursued in my campaign speeches. But I also used a speech to a dinner organized by the National Association of Head Teachers in Scarborough to outline our education policies. It is hard to know just what turned the tide. Paradoxically perhaps, the Conservative figures who made the greatest contribution were those two fierce enemies, Ted Heath and Enoch Powell. No one could describe Ted as a great communicator, but as the days went by he came across as a decent man, someone with integrity and a vision – albeit a somewhat technocratic one – of what he wanted for Britain. It seemed, to use Keith’s words to me five years earlier, that he had ‘a passion to get Britain right’. This was emphasized in Ted’s powerful introduction to the manifesto in which he attacked Labour’s ‘cheap and trivial style of government’ and ‘government by gimmick’ and promised ‘a new style of government’. Ted’s final Party Election Broadcast also showed him as an honest patriot who cared deeply about his country and wanted to serve it. He had fought a good campaign. For his part, Enoch Powell made three powerful speeches on the failures of the Labour Government, urging people to vote Conservative. There is some statistical evidence that Enoch’s intervention helped tip the balance in the West Midlands. My own result was announced to a tremendous cheer at Hendon College of Technology – I had increased my majority to over 11,000 over Labour. Then I went down to the Daily Telegraph party at the Savoy, where it quite soon became clear that the opinion polls had been proved wrong and that we were on course for an overall majority. Friday was spent in my constituency clearing up and writing the usual thank-you letters. I thought that probably Ted would have at least one woman in his Cabinet, and that since he had got used to me in the Shadow Cabinet I would be the lucky girl. On the same logic, I would probably get the Education brief. On Saturday morning the call from the No. 10 Private Secretary came through. Ted wanted to see me. When I went in to the Cabinet Room I began by congratulating him on his victory. But not much time was spent on pleasantries. He was as ever brusque and businesslike, and he offered me the job of Education Secretary, which I accepted. I went back to the flat at Westminster Gardens with Denis and we drove to Lamberhurst.* (#ulink_b05bfba2-3708-5ce2-874a-05bff52e7973) Sadly my father was not alive to share the moment. Shortly before his death in February, I had gone up to Grantham to see him. My stepmother, Cissy, whom he had married several years earlier and with whom he had been very happy, was constantly at his bedside. While I was there, friends from the church, business, local politics, the Rotary and bowling club, kept dropping in ‘just to see how Alf was’. I hoped that at the end of my life I too would have so many good friends. I understand that my father had been listening to me as a member of a panel on a radio programme just before he died. He never knew that I would become a Cabinet minister, and I am sure that he never imagined I would eventually become Prime Minister. He would have wanted these things for me because politics was so much a part of his life and because I was so much his daughter. But nor would he have considered that political power was the most important or even the most effective thing in life. In searching through my papers to assemble the material for this volume I came across some of my father’s loose sermon notes slipped into the back of my sixth-form chemistry exercise book. Men, nations, races or any particular generation cannot be saved by ordinances, power, legislation. We worry about all this, and our faith becomes weak and faltering. But all these things are as old as the human race – all these things confronted Jesus 2,000 years ago … This is why Jesus had to come. My father lived these convictions to the end. * (#ulink_1f8dacb8-68b7-520c-820f-30b4e4cc346a)A Balance of Power (1986), p.42. * (#ulink_01e31219-cb2d-5a54-8c36-737ded741931)In Place of Strife was the – in retrospect ironically chosen – title of a Labour White Paper of 1969 which proposed a range of union reforms. The proposals had to be abandoned due to internal opposition within the Cabinet and the Labour Party, led by Jim Callaghan. * (#ulink_97bc4522-6265-51bb-9719-5ee870320742) We had bought ‘The Mount’, a mock-Tudor house with a large garden in Lamberhurst, near Tunbridge Wells, in 1965. In 1972 we sold it, and bought the house in Flood Street (Chelsea) which would be my home until in 1979 I moved into 10 Downing Street. CHAPTER SIX (#ulink_317ee1b3-d7e5-5079-b740-ec348ddb851e) Teacher’s Pest (#ulink_317ee1b3-d7e5-5079-b740-ec348ddb851e) The Department of Education 1970–1974 ON MONDAY 22 JUNE 1970 I arrived at the Department of Education and Science (DES) in its splendid old quarters in Curzon Street. I was met by the Permanent Secretary, Bill (later Sir William) Pile and the outgoing Permanent Secretary, Sir Herbert Andrew. They gave me a warm greeting and showed me up to my impressive office. It was all too easy to slip into the warm water of civil service respect for ‘the minister’, but I was very conscious that hard work lay ahead. I was generally satisfied with the ministerial team I had been allotted: one friendly, one hostile and one neutral. My old friend Lord Eccles, as Paymaster-General, was responsible for the Arts. Bill Van Straubenzee, a close friend of Ted’s, dealt with Higher Education. Lord Belstead answered for the department in the Lords. I was particularly pleased that David Eccles, a former Minister of Education, was available, though installed in a separate building, to give me private advice based on his knowledge of the department. My difficulties with the department, however, were not essentially about personalities. Nor did they stem from the opposition between my own executive style of decision-making and the more consultative style to which they were accustomed. Indeed, by the time I left I was aware that I had won a somewhat grudging respect because I knew my own mind and expected my decisions to be carried out promptly and efficiently. The real problem was – in the widest sense – one of politics. The ethos of the DES was self-righteously socialist. For the most part, these were people who retained an almost reflex belief in the ability of central planners and social theorists to create a better world. There was nothing cynical about this. Years after many people in the Labour Party had begun to have their doubts, the educationalists retained a sense of mission. Equality in education was not only the overriding good, irrespective of the practical effects of egalitarian policies on particular schools; it was a stepping stone to achieving equality in society, which was itself an unquestioned good. It was soon clear to me that on the whole I was not among friends. My difficulties with the civil service were compounded by the fact that we had been elected in 1970 with a set of education policies which were perhaps less clear than they appeared. During the campaign I had hammered away at seven points: a shift of emphasis onto primary schools the expansion of nursery education (which fitted in with Keith Joseph’s theme of arresting the ‘cycle of deprivation’) in secondary education, the right of local education authorities to decide what was best for their areas, while warning against making ‘irrevocable changes to any good school unless … the alternative is better’ raising the school leaving age to sixteen encouraging direct grant schools and retaining private schools* (#ulink_ee5ff0af-6086-584c-8ed5-d1c9d2375a7b) expanding higher and further education holding an inquiry into teacher training But those pledges did not reflect a clear philosophy. Different people and different groups within the Conservative Party favoured very different approaches to education, in particular to secondary education and the grammar schools. On the one hand, there were some Tories who had a commitment to comprehensive education which barely distinguished them from moderate socialists. On the other, the authors of the so-called Black Papers on education had started to spell out a radically different approach, based on discipline, choice and standards (including the retention of existing grammar schools with high standards). On that first day at the department I brought with me a list of about fifteen points for action which I had written down over the weekend in an old exercise book. After enlarging upon them, I tore out the pages and gave them to Bill Pile. The most immediate action point was the withdrawal of Tony Crosland’s Circular 10/65, under which local authorities were required to submit plans for reorganizing secondary education on completely comprehensive lines, and Circular 10/66, issued the following year, which withheld capital funding from local education authorities that refused to go comprehensive. The department must have known that this was in our manifesto – but apparently they thought that the policy could be watered down, or its implementation postponed. I, for my part, knew that the pledge to stop pressuring local authorities to go comprehensive was of great importance to our supporters, and that it was important to act speedily in order to end uncertainty. Consequently, even before I had given Bill Pile my fifteen points, I had told the press that I would immediately withdraw Labour’s Circulars. I even indicated that this would have happened by the time of the Queen’s Speech. The alarm this provoked seems to have made its way to No. 10, for I was reminded that I should have Cabinet’s agreement to the policy, though of course this was only a formality. More seriously, I had not understood that the withdrawal of one Circular requires the issue of another. My civil servants made no secret of the fact that they considered that a Circular should contain a good deal of material setting out the department’s views on its preferred shape for secondary education in the country as a whole. This might take for ever, and in any event I did not see things that way. The essence of our policy was to encourage variety and choice rather than ‘plan’ the system. Moreover, to the extent that it was necessary to lay down from the centre the criteria by which local authorities’ reorganization proposals would be judged, this could be done now in general terms, with any further elaboration taking place later. It was immensely difficult to persuade them that I was serious. I eventually succeeded by doing an initial draft myself: they quickly decided that co-operation was the better part of valour. And in the end a very short Circular – Circular 10/70 – was issued on Tuesday 30 June: in good time for the Education Debate on the Queen’s Speech on Wednesday 8 July. I now came under fierce attack from the educational establishment because I had failed to engage in the ‘normal consultation’ which took place before a Circular was issued. I felt no need to apologize. As I put it in my speech in the House, we had after all ‘just completed the biggest consultation of all’, that is, a general election. But this carried little weight with those who had spent the last twenty-five years convinced that they knew best. Ted Short, Labour’s Education spokesman, a former schoolmaster, even went so far as to suggest that, in protest, teachers should refuse to mark 11-Plus exam papers. A delegation from the NUT came to see me to complain about what I had done. Significantly, the brunt of their criticism was that I had ‘resigned responsibility for giving shape to education’. If indeed that had been my responsibility, I do not think the NUT would have liked the shape I would have given it. In fact, the policy which I now pursued was more nuanced than the caricatures it attracted – though a good deal could have been said for the positions caricatured. Circular 10/70 withdrew the relevant Labour Government Circulars and then went on: ‘The Secretary of State will expect educational considerations in general, local needs and wishes in particular and the wise use of resources to be the main principles determining the local pattern.’ It also made it clear that the presumption was basically against upheaval: ‘where a particular pattern of organization is working well and commands general support the Secretary of State does not wish to cause further change without good reason’. Strange though it may seem, although local education authorities had been used to sending in general plans for reorganization of all the schools under their control, neither these nor the Secretary of State’s comments on them had any legal standing. The law only entered the picture when the notices were issued under Section 13 of the 1944 Education Act. This required local education authorities to give public notice – and notice to the department – of their intention to close or open a school, significantly alter its character, or change the age range of its pupils. Locally, this gave concerned parents, school governors and residents two months in which to object. Nationally, it gave me, as Secretary of State, the opportunity to intervene. It read: ‘Any proposals submitted to the Secretary of State under this section may be approved by him after making such modifications therein, if any, as appear to him desirable.’ The use of these powers to protect particular good schools against sweeping reorganization was not only a departure from Labour policy; it was also a conscious departure from the line taken by Edward Boyle, who had described Section 13 as ‘reserve powers’. But as a lawyer myself and as someone who believed that decisions about changing and closing schools should be sensitive to local opinion, I thought it best to base my policy on the Section 13 powers rather than on exhortation through Circulars. I was very conscious that my actions were subject to the scrutiny of the courts and that the grounds on which I could intervene were limited. And by the time I made my speech in the debate I was in a position to spell out more clearly how this general approach would be implemented. My policy had a further advantage. At a time when even Conservative education authorities were bitten with the bug of comprehensivization, it offered the best chance of saving good local grammar schools. The administrative disadvantage was that close scrutiny of large numbers of individual proposals meant delays in giving the department’s response. Inevitably, I was attacked on the grounds that I was holding back in order to defer the closure of more grammar schools. But in this the critics were unjust. I took a close interest in speeding up the responses. It was just that we were deluged. For all the political noise which arose from this change of policy, its practical effects were limited. During the whole of my time as Education Secretary we considered some 3,600 proposals for reorganization – the great majority of them proposals for comprehensivization – of which I rejected only 325, or about 9 per cent. In the summer of 1970 it had seemed possible that many more authorities might decide to reverse or halt their plans. For example, Conservative-controlled Birmingham was one of the first education authorities to welcome Circular 10/70. A bitter fight had been carried on to save the city’s thirty-six grammar schools. But in 1972 Labour took control and put forward its own plans for comprehensivization. I rejected sixty of the council’s 112 proposals in June 1973, saving eighteen of the city’s grammar schools. Similarly, Richmond Council in Surrey had refused to come forward with a scheme under the Labour Government’s Circular 10/65, but in September 1970 voted by a large majority to end selection. I had no choice but to give my approval to the change the following year. Perhaps the most awkward decisions I had to make related to Barnet. The Conservative-controlled Barnet Council decided to go comprehensive in October 1970, having conducted a survey of parents in which 79 per cent apparently favoured ending selection. There was fierce opposition to Barnet’s scheme, and in January 1971 I received 5,400 letters of protest. The following month I approved a scheme which ended two grammar schools, but I saved a third on the grounds that the proposed merger would lead to an inconvenient divided-site school. In April I saved another grammar school and in June blocked two more schemes, thus saving a good secondary modern and another grammar school. The Conservative Party locally was split and I was censured by the local council. Most of the borough’s secondary schools in fact went comprehensive that September. The local authority kept reformulating its plans. Christ’s College and Woodhouse Grammar Schools were the main bones of contention. They were still grammar schools when I became Leader of the Opposition in 1975; they only became part of a comprehensive system (in Woodhouse’s case, a sixth-form college) in 1978 after Labour’s 1976 Education Act scrapped Section 13 and attempted to impose a comprehensive system from the centre on England and Wales. In retrospect, it is clear that a near obsessive concern with educational structures characterized the 1960s and ?70s. It is not that structures are unimportant. But educational theorists manifest a self-confidence which events have done nothing to justify when they claim that there is one system which in all circumstances and for all individuals is better than another. In one respect at least, the Department of Education was an excellent preparation for the premiership. I came under savage and unremitting attack that was only distantly related to my crimes. I have described the arguments about grammar schools and comprehensives. Yet these caused me only limited trouble, partly because many people – and not just Conservatives – agreed with me and partly because I was the bringer of good tidings in other matters. For example, I was hailed in a modest way as the saviour of the Open University. In Opposition both Iain Macleod and Edward Boyle had committed themselves in public against it. And although its abolition was not in the manifesto, many people expected it to perish. But I was genuinely attracted to the concept of a ‘University of the Airwaves’, because I thought that it was an inexpensive way of giving wider access to higher education, because I thought that trainee teachers in particular would benefit from it, because I was alert to the opportunities offered by technology to bring the best teaching to schoolchildren and students, and above all because it gave people a second chance in life. On condition that I agreed to reduce the immediate intake of students and find other savings, my Cabinet colleagues allowed the Open University to go ahead. There were more discussions of public expenditure that autumn of 1970. The Treasury had its little list of savings for the education budget – including charges for libraries, museums, school meals and school milk. I persuaded the Cabinet to drop the proposed library charges, while reluctantly accepting entry charges for museums and galleries. (We kept one free day.) But pressure for more cuts was maintained, and I had to come up with a list of priority targets. Savings on school meals and school milk were, I had to admit, an obvious candidate. There seemed no reason why families who could afford to do so should not make a larger contribution to the cost of school meals. I thought that I could defend such cuts if I could demonstrate that some of the money saved would go towards meeting the priority which we had set, namely the primary school building programme. And within the Department of Education budget it seemed logical that spending on education should come before ‘welfare’ spending, which should in principle fall to Keith Joseph’s department, Social Services. As for milk, there were already mixed views on health grounds about the advantage of providing it. By 1970 very few children were so deprived that school milk was essential for their nourishment. Tony Barber, who became Chancellor in July 1970, after the death of Iain Macleod, wanted me to abolish free school milk altogether. But I managed to hold the line at an increased price for school meals and the withdrawal of free milk from primary school children over the age of seven. These modest changes came with safeguards: children in need of milk for medical reasons continued to receive it until they went to secondary school. All in all, I had defended the education budget effectively. Nor was this lost on the press. The Daily Mail said that I had emerged as a ‘new heroine’. The Daily Telegraph drew attention to my plans to improve 460 of the oldest primary schools. The Guardian noted: ‘School meals and milk were the main casualties in a remarkably light raid on the education budget. Mrs Thatcher has won her battle to preserve a high school-building programme and turn it to the replacement of old primary schools.’ It was pleasant while it lasted. The trouble was, it didn’t last long. Six months later we had to introduce a Bill to remove the legal duty for local education authorities to provide free milk and allow them discretion to make it available for a small charge. This gave Labour the parliamentary opportunity to cause havoc. Even before that, however, the newspapers had unearthed the potential in stories about school meals. One report claimed that some local education authorities were going to charge children who brought sandwiches to school for their lunch. ‘Sandwich Kids In “Fines” Storm’ was how the Sun put it. I introduced a circular to prevent the practice. But that story in turn restored attention to the increase in school meal charges. Overnight the number of children eating such meals became a politically sensitive indicator. The old arguments about the ‘stigma’ of means-tested benefits, which I had come to know so well as a Parliamentary Secretary in the 1960s, surfaced again. It was said that children from families poor enough to be entitled to free school meals would be humiliated when better-off classmates paid for their own. Probably unwisely, I came up with a suggestion in a television programme that this could be avoided if mothers sent dinner money to schools in envelopes. The teachers could put the change back in the envelope. A poor child entitled to free meals would bring an envelope with coins that would just be put back again by the teacher. This just added a new twist to the story. In any case, it was not long before the great ‘milk row’ dwarfed debate about meals. Newspapers which had congratulated me on my success in protecting the education budget at the expense of cuts in milk and meals suddenly changed their tune. The Guardian described the Education (Milk) Bill as ‘a vindictive measure which should never have been laid before Parliament’. The Daily Mail told me to ‘think again’. The Sun demanded to know: ‘Is Mrs Thatcher Human?’ But it was a speaker at the Labour Party Conference who seems to have suggested to the press the catchy title ‘Mrs Thatcher, milk snatcher’. When the press discover a rich vein they naturally exhaust it. So it seemed as if every day some variant of the theme would emerge. For example, a Labour council was discovered to be considering buying its own herd of cows to provide milk for its children. Local education authorities sought to evade the legislation by serving up milky drinks but not milk. Councils which were not education authorities took steps to provide free milk for children aged seven to eleven under powers contained in the Local Government Act 1963. Only in Scotland and Wales did the action of councils involve a breach of the law, and it was for my Cabinet colleagues in the Scottish and Welsh departments to deal with the consequences of that rather than for me. But there was no doubt where the blame for it all was felt to lie. The campaign against me reached something of a climax in November 1971 when the Sun voted me ‘The Most Unpopular Woman in Britain’. I learned a valuable lesson. I had incurred the maximum of political odium for the minimum of political benefit. I and my colleagues were caught up in battles with local authorities for months, during which we suffered constant sniping in the media, all for a saving of ?9 million which could have been cut from the capital budget with scarcely a ripple. In future if I were to be hanged, it would be for a sheep, not a lamb, still less a cow. The image which my opponents and the press had painted of me as callously attacking the welfare of young children was one which, as someone who was never happier than in children’s company, I found deeply wounding. But any politician who wants to hold high office must be prepared to go through something like this. Some are broken by it, others strengthened. Denis, always the essence of common sense, came through magnificently. If I survived, it was due to his love and support. I later developed the habit of not poring over articles and profiles in the newspapers about myself. I came to rely instead on briefings and summaries. If what the press wrote was false, I could ignore it; and if it was true, I already knew it. Throughout 1971 as the assault on me was being mounted over the issue of school milk, I was locked in battle within the Cabinet on public spending. It was politically vital to my argument about school meals and milk that the primary school building programme should go ahead as envisaged. So within the department I rejected early suggestions of compromise with the Treasury budget cutters. In a note to Bill Pile in April 1971 I laid down our last-ditch position: ‘We cannot settle for less than last year in real terms.’ I could not reach agreement with Maurice Macmillan, then Chief Secretary, and so appealed, as any Cabinet minister has a right to do, to Cabinet. But I was then irritated to learn that No. 10 had decided that I would not be allowed to put in a paper. I wrote a sharply worded letter to Ted pointing out the pressures I was under to announce the 1973/74 school building programme. I won his agreement to put in my paper in June 1971 – and I got my way. At Cabinet later that month I succeeded in obtaining almost everything that I wanted for the school building programme. It was just in time to announce to the annual conference of the Association of Education Committees in Eastbourne and prompted such headlines as ‘Record Programme to Improve Old Primary Schools’. On my arrival at the DES, that really had been the priority for me. Because of it, I had to make (or at least accept) spending decisions which made life extraordinarily difficult. I felt that in the 1970s it was wrong for schools still to have leaky roofs, primitive equipment and outside lavatories. Moreover, now that the demographic ‘bulge’ of primary-school-age children had more or less been accommodated – the peak was in 1973 – there was some financial leeway to improve the quality of the often very old and gloomy schools which had been kept in use. Whether or not the acclaim for my defence of the primary school building programme was justified, it soon faded away as a new agitation over the financing of student unions got under way. Unlike the controversy over school milk, this was largely a campaign organized by the hard Left. It was, therefore, less politically dangerous. But it was very vicious. Nor was it just directed against me. My daughter Carol, reading Law at University College, London, also had a hard time. In both Europe and the United States this was the height of the period of ‘student revolution’. Looking back, it is extraordinary that so much notice should have been taken of the kindergarten Marxism and egocentric demands which characterized it. In part, it was a development of that youth cult of the 1960s whereby the young were regarded as a source of pure insight into the human condition. In response, many students accordingly expected their opinions to be treated with reverence. The Left had managed to gain control of many student unions, and therefore of the public money which financed them, using this position to mount campaigns of disruption which infuriated ordinary taxpayers and even many students who simply wanted to study. There were two aspects: first, the financing of student bodies, and second what those bodies did. On the first, the main source of money for student unions was subscriptions out of mandatory grants received from their local education authorities. Union membership was normally obligatory and the union subscription was then paid direct to the student union. Some student unions took advantage of this to spend the revenue on partisan purposes, often in defiance of both their constitution and the wishes of their members. In July 1971 I put proposals to the Home and Social Affairs Committee of the Cabinet (HS) for reform. I proposed that in future the union subscription should not be included in the fees payable to colleges and universities. The student maintenance grant would be increased slightly to enable students to join particular clubs or societies on a voluntary basis. Responsibility for providing student union facilities would then be placed on each academic institution. The facilities of each union would be open to all students, whether or not they were members of the union. Besides dealing with the question of accountability for public money, these changes would also abolish the closed-shop element in student unions which I found deeply objectionable on grounds of principle. HS was not prepared to go along with my proposals immediately, but I came back to the argument, fully recognizing how controversial they would be, and gained the Committee’s approval. Bill Van Straubenzee was the minister directly responsible for dealing with consultations on the proposals. But I was the one immediately marked down as the hate-figure to be targeted for them. In early November in Leeds, where I was laying a stone to mark the construction of new buildings, about 500 students tried to shout me down. Later that month 2,000 screaming students tried to prevent my presenting the designation document of the South Bank Polytechnic at the Queen Elizabeth Hall. A dozen mounted police had to protect my car. In December the student protesters found time from their studies to organize a nationwide day of protest. My effigy was burnt at various universities. By now many of the Vice-Chancellors and college authorities were giving tacit approval to the protests. Edward Boyle even addressed a mass meeting of students at Leeds to declare his opposition to my proposals. Since these had only been put out for consultation it was perfectly possible to allow tempers to cool and to delay action, which I did. The main problem was that until university authorities themselves were prepared to uphold the values of a university and exert some authority, no proposal for reform was likely to succeed. This was also the time when freedom of speech began to be denied by groups of students, who were then indulged by nervous university authorities. University intolerance was at its most violent in the early seventies. But, less visible and more institutionalized, the same censorship continues today. Nineteen seventy-one had been a crucial year for the Government and for me personally. The pressures which mounted were all the more intolerable because they were cumulative. As I shall describe, the Government’s self-confidence broke in early 1972. Somehow, although under greater strain than at any time before or since, my own held. But a number of commentators, with varying mixtures of relish and regret, thought that I was done for. On my return after the Christmas holiday at Lamberhurst, I was able to read my fate openly discussed in the newspapers. One described me as ‘The Lady Nobody Loves’. Another published a thoughtful article entitled ‘Why Mrs Thatcher is so Unpopular’. But I pushed the stuff aside and concentrated on my red boxes. In fact, it was not long before the tide – for me personally, though not for the Government – began to turn. The far more serious issues of 1972 were now upon us – the miners’ strike and the various elements of the U-turn – and these dwarfed the personal campaign against me. And, of course, I was evidently not going to buckle or depart – at least voluntarily. But I owe a debt of gratitude to Ted Heath as well. Ted asked me and my officials down to Chequers on Wednesday 12 January to have a general discussion about education. I took with me an aide-m?moire summing up the situation and looking ahead. In spite of all the difficulties, there was only one pre-election commitment which still remained to be implemented: the expansion of nursery education. More money was needed if something substantial was to be achieved. The other area was secondary school organization. There the problem was, as I put it, ‘many of our own local councils are running with the comprehensive tide. The question is what sort of balance should be struck between defending existing grammar schools and leaving local education authorities free to make their own decisions?’ We discussed both these points at Chequers. Ted was keen on nursery education; he had been pressing for action on student unions; and he very reasonably asked whether we could not use educational arguments in justifying our policy on selection, rather than just resting on the arguments about local authority autonomy. From my point of view, however, at least as important as the discussion was the fact that by inviting me down with my officials Ted implied that there was no intention to move me from Education in the foreseeable future. This was a vital reinforcement for my authority. Ted went on a few days later in the House to list my achievements. Why did he give me such strong support? Some felt that he needed a woman in the Cabinet and it was difficult to find a credible alternative candidate. But I like to think that it also showed Ted’s character at its admirable best. He knew that the policies for which I had been so roundly attacked were essentially policies which I had reluctantly accepted under pressure from the Treasury and the requirements of public finance. He also knew that I had not tried to shift the blame onto others. However unreliable his adherence to particular policies, he always stood by people who did their best for him and his Government. This was one of the better reasons why his Cabinet reciprocated by remaining united behind him. From the spring of 1972 the chilly political climate in which I had been living began noticeably to thaw. It was, however, the Education White Paper, published in December 1972, which restored the fortunes of our education policy. The decision to publish it stemmed from discussions of the three Programme Analysis and Review (PAR) Reports which we had prepared in the department.* (#ulink_1837a6f2-ab99-52e6-b25f-edae674adc6d)Education: A Framework for Advance was the original suggested title but, in a change which appears in retrospect to be all too typical of these over-ambitious, high-spending years, this became Education: A Framework for Expansion. The White Paper set out a ten-year plan for higher spending and better provision. The White Paper received a disconcertingly rapturous reception. The Daily Telegraph, although making some criticisms about the lack of proposals for student loans or vouchers, said that the White Paper established me ‘as one of our most distinguished reforming – and spending – Ministers of Education’. The Daily Mail described it as a ‘Quiet Revolution’ and commented, ‘there has been nothing like it since the war’. More unsettling was the Guardian’s praise for a ‘progressive programme’ and the comment – I hoped tongue in cheek – that ‘apart from not mandatorily ending 11-Plus segregation, Mrs Thatcher is more than halfway towards a respectably socialist education policy’. With the exception of some vigorous exchanges with Labour’s new and highly articulate Education spokesman, Roy Hattersley, about the rate of increase of education expenditure, the early months of 1973 were as near as any at the DES to being quiet. But the consequences of the Government’s fiscal and monetary policies were shortly to catch up with us. The first instalment was in May – a round of public expenditure cuts designed to cool the overheated economy. Capital spending in education, particularly the less politically sensitive area of higher education, was an obvious target. The reduction in the DES budget for 1974/75 was ?182 million – out of ?1,200 million total cuts in public spending. But I did manage for the time being to salvage the nursery school programme and also building programmes for special schools. By now, however, my mind was fast focusing on the cataclysmic events overtaking the Government. It was not long before I would have to mount my soapbox and defend the policies I had pursued in my years at Education. I found no difficulty in doing so, for on almost every front the record was one of advance. And if the measures by which ‘advance’ at this time was assessed – resources committed rather than results achieved – are accepted, it was also a record of genuine improvement. Nearly 2,000 out-of-date primary schools in England and Wales were replaced or improved. There was a substantial expansion of nursery education. I pushed through the raising of the school leaving age, which the Labour Party had had to postpone. Fewer pupils were now taught in very large classes. There were more qualified teachers and more students in higher education. But too much of my time at Education had been spent arguing about structures and resources, too little in addressing the crucial issue of the contents of education. Equally, it was clear by the time of the general election that both the figures and, more fundamentally, the approach of A Framework for Expansion had been bypassed by events. There was no way that a programme of universal nursery education was affordable. Schools would have to make do with leaky roofs for many more years, until declining pupil numbers and school closures allowed resources to be better used. The Robbins Report principle – that ‘courses of higher education should be available for all those qualified by ability and attainment to pursue them’ (paragraph 31) – would have to take second place to the demands of financial stringency. However frustrating it was to watch the shrinkage of my cherished plans and programmes, I can now see that it was unavoidable. And it may have had the side effect of forcing us to think creatively about how to get the best value from our suddenly limited resources. In the economic sphere, the crises of 1973 to 1976 led to a deep scepticism about the value of Keynesian demand management and to a new appreciation of the classical liberal economic approach of balanced budgets, low taxes and free markets. Similarly, in education and in other areas of social policy too, the realization that remedies must be found other than increased public expenditure opened up a whole new world. Fundamental questions began to be asked about whether the education system in its present form could deliver the results expected of it. Did it not in practice largely exist for the benefit of those who ran it, rather than those who received it? Was the state doing too much, rather than too little? What did the – often superior – results of other countries’ education systems and methods have to teach us? It was becoming necessary to rethink these policies; and we were shortly to be granted plenty of time to think. * (#litres_trial_promo) Direct grant schools, which included some of the most famous and successful secondary schools in Britain, entry to which was often highly competitive, were funded direct from the DES and were outside local control. * (#ulink_90d1fa2d-e12a-54d0-bf88-f42074190d56) The PAR system was a characteristic innovation of the Heath Government – an ambitious attempt to review existing departmental programmes with the professed intention of radically reducing the role of government, but with little or no effect. CHAPTER SEVEN (#ulink_27c72fbd-5767-50dd-9840-339345b189ef) No End of a Lesson (#ulink_27c72fbd-5767-50dd-9840-339345b189ef) The Heath Government 1970–1974 SHORTLY BEFORE 11 O’CLOCK on Tuesday 23 June 1970 my new ministerial car dropped me in Downing Street, where with other colleagues I ran the gauntlet of press and television outside No. 10. The hubbub in the ante-room was of enthusiasm and laughter. There was a spring in our step as we filed into the Cabinet Room where Ted Heath, with the Cabinet Secretary Sir Burke Trend beside him, awaited us. I found my place at the Cabinet table, but my mind was at least as much on the department as on the large strategic issues before the Government. It remained there – perhaps excessively so. But I felt an exhilaration which was prompted by more than the fact that this was my first ever Cabinet meeting: I felt, as I suspect we all did, that this was a decisive moment in the life of the country. It was an impression which Ted himself did everything to justify. Speaking with the same intensity which had suffused his introduction to the manifesto on which we had just fought the election, he announced his intention of establishing a new style of administration. The emphasis was to be upon deliberation and the avoidance of hasty or precipitate reactions. There was to be a clean break and a fresh start and new brooms galore. The tone was just what we would all have expected from Ted. He had a great belief in the capacity of open-minded politicians to resolve fundamental problems if the processes and structures of government were right and advice of the right technical quality was available and properly used. This was the approach which would lie behind the decision that autumn to set up the Central Policy Review Staff under Victor Rothschild, to reconstruct the machinery of government on more ‘rational’ lines (including the setting up of the mammoth Department of the Environment) and the establishment of the PAR system. More generally, it inspired what turned out to be an excessive confidence in the Government’s ability to shape and control events. Inevitably, this account contains a large measure of hindsight. I was not a member of the key Economic Policy Committee (EPC) of the Cabinet, though I would sometimes attend if teachers’ pay or spending on schools was an issue. More frequently, I attended Terence Higgins’s sub-committee on pay when the full rigours of a detailed statutory prices and incomes policy – the policy our manifesto pledged us to avoid – were applied, and made some contributions there. And, naturally, I was not a member of Ted’s inner circle where most of the big decisions originated. The role of the Cabinet itself was generally of reduced importance after the first year of the Heath Government until its very end. This, however, is said in explanation not exculpation. As a member of the Cabinet I must take my full share of responsibility for what was done under the Government’s authority. Reviewing the events of this period with the benefit of two decades’ hindsight I can see more clearly how Ted Heath, whether right or wrong, took the course he did. And as time went on, he was wrong, not just once but repeatedly. His errors – our errors, for we went along with them – did huge harm to the Conservative Party and to the country. But it is easy to comprehend the pressures upon him. It is also important to remember that the policies Ted pursued between the spring of 1972 and February 1974 were urged on him by most influential commentators and for much of the time enjoyed a wide measure of public support. There were brave and far-sighted critics who were proved right. But they were an embattled, isolated group. Although my reservations steadily grew, I was not at this stage among them. But some of us (though never Ted, I fear) learned from these mistakes. I can well understand how after I became Leader of the Conservative Party Enoch Powell, who with a small number of other courageous Tory backbenchers had protested at successive U-turns, claimed that: ‘If you are looking for somebody to pick up principles trampled in the mud, the place to look is not among the tramplers.’ But Enoch was wrong. In Rudyard Kipling’s words, Keith Joseph and I had ‘had no end of a lesson’: Let us admit it fairly, as a business people should; We have had no end of a lesson; it will do us no end of good. * (#ulink_9b766eeb-25f2-51b7-bd27-5d76727c3357) In this sense, we owed our later successes to our inside knowledge and to our understanding of the earlier failures. The Heath Government showed, in particular, that socialist policies pursued by Tory politicians are if anything even more disastrous than socialist policies pursued by Labour politicians. Collectivism, without even the tincture of egalitarian idealism to redeem it, is a deeply unattractive creed. How did it happen? In spite of the acclaim for the Selsdon Park manifesto, we had thought through our policies a good deal less thoroughly than appeared. In particular that was true of our economic policy. We had no clear theory of inflation or the role of wage settlements within it. And without such a theory we drifted into the superstition that inflation was the direct result of wage increases and the power of trade unions. So we were pushed inexorably along the path of regulating incomes and prices. Ted was also impatient. I share this characteristic. I am often impatient with people. But I knew that, in a broader sense, patience is required if a policy for long-term change is to work. This is especially true if, like Ted’s Government in 1970 and mine in 1979, you are committed to a non-interventionist economic policy that relies on setting a framework rather than designing a plan. Sudden shifts of direction, taken because the results are too long in appearing, can have devastating effects in undermining the credibility of the strategy. And so a government which came to power proud of its principle and consistency left behind it, among other embarrassing legacies, a host of quips about ‘the U-turn’. Ted’s own words in his introduction to the 1970 manifesto came back to haunt him: Once a decision is made, once a policy is established, the Prime Minister and his colleagues should have the courage to stick to it. Nothing has done Britain more harm in the world than the endless backing and filling which we have seen in recent years. At another level, however – the level of day-to-day human experience in government – the explanation of what happened is to be found in the forces which buffeted us and in our reactions to them. We thought we were well enough prepared to face these. But we were not. Little by little we were blown off course until eventually, in a fit of desperation, we tore up the map, threw the compass overboard and, sailing under new colours but with the same helmsman, still supremely confident of his navigational sense, set off towards unknown and rock-strewn waters. The squalls began early. Within weeks of taking office the Government had been forced to declare a State of Emergency* (#ulink_ad135e70-0d99-5968-9a6a-10f8e4162dfe) as a national docks strike began to bite. At the same time a Court of Inquiry was set up to find an expensive solution. Although the strike evaporated within a fortnight, it was an ambiguous triumph. The following month the crisis was international. On Sunday 6 September terrorists from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) hijacked four aircraft (none of them British) and demanded that they be flown to Jordan. Three of the hijacks were successful, but on the fourth – an Israeli plane en route to London – the hijackers were overpowered by security men. The surviving terrorist, Leila Khalid, was arrested at Heathrow. The PFLP demanded her release, and just before Cabinet met on Wednesday 9 September they hijacked a British aircraft in order to bring more pressure to bear. The plane was flying to Beirut as we met. It was explained to Cabinet that we had already acquiesced in an American suggestion to offer the release of Leila Khalid in return for the freedom of the hostages. Over the next few weeks Cabinet discussed the question many times as negotiations ran on. Meanwhile, Jordan fell into a state of civil war as King Hussein fought the Palestinians for control of his country and the Syrians invaded and occupied much of the north. Ted resisted any British involvement on the King’s side and was certain that we were right to negotiate with the PFLP. Though it went against the grain to release Khalid, in the end the deal was made. In due course all the hostages were released, though the hijacked aircraft were blown up by the terrorists, and King Hussein survived the events of ‘Black September’ – barely but triumphantly. But by then the Government had already suffered a blow from which, perhaps, we never fully recovered. In mid-July Iain Macleod had gone into hospital for a small abdominal operation. It had been a success and he had returned to No. 11 for a few days’ rest. At about midnight on Monday 20 July my telephone rang. It was Francis Pym, the Chief Whip. Iain had suffered a heart attack that evening and had just died. He was only fifty-six. I felt the blow personally, for Iain had always been a generous and kind man for whom to work. But I also immediately recognized that we had lost our shrewdest political intellect and best communicator. How Iain would have performed as Chancellor I do not know. But if one accepts that the worst mistakes of economic policy derived from Ted’s overruling the Treasury, it is reasonable to suppose that matters might have turned out better if Iain had lived. He was succeeded by Tony Barber, a man of considerable intellectual ability, who by and large had an unhappy time at the Treasury. The economic problems of the next few years were founded in this transition. The Cabinet which met after Iain Macleod’s death was a sombre one. Around the Cabinet table already sat nearly all of those who would be my colleagues over the next four and a half years. Their personal qualities would be severely tested. Tony Barber was an old if not particularly close friend from the Bar, an able tax lawyer, but not someone to stand up against Ted. Reggie Maudling, Home Secretary until his resignation over the Poulson affair in 1972,* (#ulink_22f21c01-3998-5f41-b4f2-b5586cf1c74b) was still interested in and had strong views about economic policy. By contrast, he was less than fascinated by his new brief. He was unlikely to oppose any shift back towards a more interventionist economic policy, which indeed he had always favoured. Alec Douglas-Home had returned effortlessly to his old Foreign Office brief where, however, plenty of effort was soon required in giving effect to our promises made in Opposition to lift the arms embargo on South Africa and in trying to devise an affordable way of retaining a British military presence east of Suez. He was unlikely to take much part in domestic political affairs now. Quintin Hailsham had found his ideal role as Lord Chancellor, beginning a long spell in that office under Ted and then me, where he managed to combine his old sense of mischief and theatre with the sedate traditions of the Upper House. Peter Carrington was Defence Secretary, a post for which he was well suited and which he filled with aplomb. I knew that he was close to Ted. He doubtless became still closer when later as Party Chairman and Energy Secretary he had a crucial role in dealing with the final miners’ strike which precipitated the general election of February 1974. He was one of Ted’s ‘inner circle’. Keith Joseph, by contrast, though a senior Cabinet figure and someone whose views had always to be taken seriously, was certainly not part of that circle and was never, so far as I know, invited to join it. Having been appointed to be Secretary of State for Social Services, Keith’s compassionate, social reforming side had become uppermost at the expense of his more conservative economic convictions, though he retained a profound distrust of corporatism in all its forms. His passion became the need to tackle the problem of the ‘cycle of deprivation’ which condemned successive generations to poverty. Like me, Keith had been given a high-spending ‘social’ department, and there was a natural opposition between what he (also like me) wanted for his own preferred programmes and the requirements of tight public expenditure control. Whether by chance or calculation, Ted had ensured that the two most economically conservative members of his Cabinet were kept well out of economic decision-making, which was left to those over whom he could wield maximum influence. John Davies, the former Director-General of the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) (who knew nothing of politics when he was summoned after Iain Macleod’s death to become Minister of Technology), certainly fell into that category. John was someone I liked, but his warmest admirer would have been hard put to make a case for his handling of the turbulent industrial politics which would now become his responsibility. John also represented ‘business’, a concept which Ted, with his latent corporatism, considered had some kind of ‘role’ in government. With Tony Barber and John Davies, Robert Carr was, as Employment Secretary, the third key figure responsible for economic strategy under Ted. He was a good deal senior to me and we had different views and temperaments. He was a decent, hard-working though not a colourful personality. But he had a difficult, arguably impossible, brief in trying to make the flawed Industrial Relations Act work. His reputation as a left winger in Conservative terms was less useful than some might have expected; trade unionists used to regard left-wing Conservatives not as more compassionate but merely as less candid. As Employment Secretary at the time of the first (1972) miners’ strike and Home Secretary at the time of the second (1974), few people faced greater difficulties during these years. One who did was Willie Whitelaw as, successively, Leader of the House, Northern Ireland Secretary and finally Employment Secretary at the time of the three-day week. We seemed to have little in common and neither of us, I am sure, suspected how closely our political destinies would come to be linked. Since Education was not a department requiring at this time a heavy legislative programme, our paths rarely crossed. But I was already aware of Willie as a wise, reassuring figure whose manner, voice and stature made him an excellent Leader of the House. Willie’s bluff public persona, however, concealed a shrewd political intelligence and instinct for managing men. After Iain Macleod’s untimely death, Geoffrey Rippon was given responsibility for negotiating the terms of our entry into the European Economic Community. Although we had superficially similar backgrounds, Geoffrey and I were never close. It always seemed to me that he tried to overwhelm opponents with the force of his personality rather than with the force of his argument. This may have been because Ted had given him the task of getting the best deal he could in negotiations with the EEC – and that deal was not always in our best long-term interests. My impression was that the two members of Cabinet Ted trusted most were Jim Prior and Peter Walker. Both had proved their loyalty, Jim as Ted’s PPS in Opposition, and Peter as organizer of his 1965 leadership campaign. Jim was Agriculture minister, a post which his farming background and rubicund features helped him make his own, before becoming Deputy Chairman of the Party under Peter Carrington in April 1972. Peter Walker’s thirst for the ‘modernization’ of British institutions must have helped draw him closer to Ted. He soon became Secretary of State for the huge new Department of the Environment, where he embarked with vigour upon the most unpopular local government reforms until my own Community Charge – and at the cost of far greater bureaucracy. Later he would go to the other conglomerate, the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI). Jim and, still more so, Peter were younger than me, but both had far more influence over the general direction of government. Although their political views were very different from mine, I respected their loyalty to Ted and their political effectiveness. The other members of Cabinet – Gordon Campbell at Scotland, George Jellicoe as Lord Privy Seal and Leader of the Lords, Peter Thomas, a close parliamentary neighbour and friend, as Secretary of State for Wales and Party Chairman, and Michael Noble briefly at Trade – did not figure large in discussions. I therefore found myself with just one political friend in Cabinet – Keith. But for all the difficulties which were quickly upon us that summer and autumn of 1970, such melancholy reflections were still far from our thoughts. Indeed, Ted Heath, Tony Barber, Robert Carr and John Davies set out on the course of radical reform with impressive zeal; and the rest of us in the Cabinet were enthusiastic cheerleaders. First, the Government embarked with a will on cutting public spending. Discussions began at the end of July. A target was agreed of ?1,700 million net reduction in planned spending by 1974/75, and Ted circulated a paper on the economy to show his commitment to the strategy. The cuts were to fall most heavily on industrial spending, though as already noted I had my own departmental spending battles at Education. Investment grants were ended. The Industrial Re-organization Corporation (IRC) would be closed down. Aircraft and space projects would be subject to the closest scrutiny. Even with the reprieve of the hugely expensive Concorde project, largely on European policy grounds, it was an impressive freemarket economic programme. And it made possible a tax-cutting budget in October, which reduced the standard rate of income tax by 6d, down from 8s.3d in the pound (just over 41p), and made reductions in corporation tax to take effect at the beginning of the next financial year. Nor was there any delay in bringing forward the other key feature of our economic programme – the Industrial Relations Bill. The framework of the Bill was already familiar: this was one of the areas of policy most thoroughly worked out in Opposition and we had published our proposals in 1968. The main principles were that collective bargaining agreements should be legally enforceable unless the parties to them agreed otherwise, and that the unions’ historic immunities from civil action should be significantly narrowed and confined to those whose rule books met certain minimum standards (‘registered unions’). Cases brought under this legislation would be dealt with by a new system of industrial courts and tribunals, headed by a branch of the High Court – the National Industrial Relations Court (NIRC). The Bill also gave new powers to the Secretary of State for Employment, when negotiation had failed, to apply to the NIRC either for an order deferring industrial action for up to sixty days – a ‘cooling off’ period – or for one requiring a secret ballot of the workers involved before a strike. There was a good deal in the Bill that actively favoured trade unionism, for all the hostility it encountered on the Left. For the first time in English law there would be a legally enforceable right to belong (or not to belong) to a trade union. There would be statutory protection against unfair dismissal. Finally, the Bill would repeal provisions that made it a criminal offence for gas, water and electricity workers to strike during the lifetime of their contracts. At the time I was a strong supporter of the Bill, although I had doubts about particular parts, such as the measure on essential services. We were all conscious that the previous Labour Government had backed off from its In Place of Strife proposals for trade union reform under a mixture of union and Party pressure. We were, therefore, doubly determined to make the changes required. In retrospect, the philosophy of the Bill was muddled. It assumed that if the unions were in general confirmed in their powers they would discipline their members industrially, reducing wildcat strikes for instance, and use their industrial strength in a regulated and orderly fashion. But it also contained provisions to strengthen the powers of individuals against the unions. So the Bill was in part corporatist and in part libertarian. Finally, we naively assumed that our opponents would play by the same rules as we did. In particular, we imagined that there would not be either mass opposition to laws passed by a democratically elected government or mass infringement of the criminal law, as in the miners’ strike of 1972. We did not recognize that we were involved in a struggle with unscrupulous people whose principal objectives lay not in industrial relations but in politics. It was later, as Leader of the Opposition, that I realized how far the extreme Left had penetrated into trade union leaderships and why that ‘giant’s strength’, of which the Tory pamphlet had spoken in the late 1950s, was now being used in such a ruthless manner. The communists knew that they could not be returned to Parliament, so they chose to advance their cause by getting into office in the trade union movement. And the fact that both the Wilson and Heath Governments had stood up to the unions and then lost, increased their influence more than if we had not challenged their power in the first place. But at this early stage we pressed ahead. The TUC was told by Robert Carr in October 1970 that the central aspects of the Industrial Relations Bill were not negotiable. The Bill had its Second Reading in December. February and March 1971 saw mass protests and strikes against it. Labour used every device to fight the Bill, but in August 1971 it duly reached the Statute Book. The TUC Congress passed a resolution instructing unions to de-register. It therefore remained to be seen, when the Act came into force at the end of February 1972, what its practical effects would be – revolution, reform or business as usual. We were soon to find out. Meanwhile other problems preoccupied us. It is sometimes suggested – and was at the time by Enoch Powell – that the Government’s decision in February 1971 to take control of the aerospace division of Rolls-Royce marked the first U-turn. This is not so. Shortly before the company told the Government of the impossible financial problems it faced (as a result of the escalating cost of the contract with Lockheed to build the RB-211 engine for its Tri-star aircraft), a constituent of mine had told me that he was worried about the company. So I asked Denis to look at the figures. I arrived home late one evening to find him surrounded by six years’ accounts. He told me that Rolls-Royce had been treating research and development costs as capital, rather than charging it to the profit and loss account. This spelt real trouble. A few days later I was suddenly called to a Cabinet meeting and found Fred Corfield, the Aviation Minister, waiting in the Cabinet ante-room. ‘What are you here for, Fred?’ I asked. He replied gloomily: ‘Rolls-Royce.’ His expression said it all. At the meeting itself we heard the full story. To the amazement of my colleagues I confirmed the analysis, based on what Denis had told me. We decided without much debate to let the company itself go into liquidation but to nationalize the aerospace division. Over the next few months we renegotiated the original contract with Lockheed, which was then itself in financial difficulties. One could argue – and people did – about the terms and the sum which needed to be provided. But I do not think any of us doubted that on defence grounds it was important to keep an indigenous aircraft engine capability. And in the long term, of course, this was one ‘lame duck’ which eventually found the strength to fly away again into the private sector, when I was Prime Minister. It was to be a year before the serious economic U-turns – reflation, subsidies to industry, prices and incomes policy – occurred, and began the alienation of the Conservative right in Parliament and of many Tory supporters outside it. The failure of these U-turns to deliver success divided the Party still further and had other consequences. It created an inflationary boom which caused property prices to soar and encouraged a great deal of dubious financial speculation, tarnishing capitalism, and, in spite of all the disclaimers, the Conservative Party with it. I shall return to the economic developments which led to all this shortly. But it is important not to underrate the impact on the Party of two non-economic issues – Europe and immigration. I was wholeheartedly in favour of British entry into the EEC, and General de Gaulle’s departure from the Elys?e Palace in April 1969 had transformed the prospects. His successor, Georges Pompidou, was keen to have Britain in; and no one on our side of the Channel was keener than the new Prime Minister, Ted Heath. Many people across the political spectrum opposed it. These included some of the most effective parliamentarians such as Michael Foot, Peter Shore and Enoch Powell. But the worlds of business, the media and fashionable opinion generally were strongly in favour. Talks formally opened in Brussels at the end of October 1970, with Geoffrey Rippon reporting back to Ted and a Cabinet Committee and, on occasion, to the rest of us in full Cabinet. There was no doubt that the financial cost of entry would be high. It was estimated that the best we could hope for would be a gross British contribution of 17 per cent of total EEC expenditure, with a five-year transition, and three years of so-called ‘correctives’ after that (to hold it at 17 per cent). To defuse the inevitable criticism, Geoffrey Rippon also hoped to negotiate a special review provision which we could invoke at any time if the burden of our net contributions to the budget threatened to become intolerable; but he seemed to attach little significance to it, and assumed that we could reopen the question whether there was a formal review mechanism or not. At the time Ted resolved discussion about the costs of entry by saying that no one was arguing that the burden would be so intolerable that we should break off negotiations. But this whole question of finance should have been considered more carefully. It came to dominate Britain’s relations with the EEC for more than a decade, and it did not prove so easy to reopen. Though the Community made a declaration during the entry negotiations that ‘should an unacceptable situation arise within the present Community or an enlarged Community, the very survival of the Community would demand that the Institutions find equitable solutions’, the net British contribution quickly grew. The Labour Government of 1974–79 made no progress in reducing it. It was left to me to do so later. Cabinet discussed the matter again in early May 1971, by which time the talks were reported to be ‘deadlocked’. There were difficulties outstanding on preferential arrangements for New Zealand products (butter and lamb) and Commonwealth sugar, and shadow-boxing by the French about the role of sterling as an international currency. But the budget was still the real problem. We had an idea what deal might be on offer: promises to cut the cost of the Common Agricultural Policy and the creation of a Regional Development Fund from which Britain would benefit disproportionately. It was still not the settlement we would have wanted – promises are not bankable – but at the time none of us foresaw how large the burden would turn out to be. Ted ended the discussion by telling us that he was planning a summit with President Pompidou in Paris to cut through the argument. Ted spent two days talking to the French President. In view of all the past difficulties with the French, the summit was seen as a veritable triumph for him. Negotiations were completed rapidly afterwards – other than for the Common Fisheries Policy, which took years to resolve – and the terms approved by Cabinet the following month. Parliamentary approval could not be assumed, for both parties were deeply split and Labour had reversed its former support for British entry. In the end, the Government decided that there would be a free vote on the Conservative side on the principle of entry. This embarrassed Labour, especially when sixty-nine Labour MPs ignored their own party whip and voted in favour, giving a majority of 112 for entry. But when it came to the terms rather than the principle of entry, the argument was far from won. The Second Reading of the European Communities Bill in February 1972 was only passed by 309 to 301. The dog that barely barked at the time was the issue of sovereignty – both national and parliamentary – which, as the years have gone by, has assumed ever greater importance. There was some discussion of the question in Cabinet in July 1971, but only in the context of the general presentation of the case for entry in the White Paper. The resulting passages of the document – paragraphs 29–32 – can now be read in the light of events, and stand out as an extraordinary example of artful confusion to conceal fundamental issues. In particular, two sentences are masterpieces: There is no question of any erosion of essential national sovereignty; what is proposed is a sharing and an enlargement of individual national sovereignties in the general interest. And: The common law will remain the basis of our legal system, and our Courts will continue to operate as they do at present. I can claim to have had no special insight into these matters at the time. It then seemed to me, as it did to my colleagues, that the arguments about sovereignty advanced by Enoch Powell and others were theoretical points used as rhetorical devices. In the debate on Clause 2 of the Bill, Geoffrey Howe, as Solicitor-General, gave what appeared to be satisfactory assurances on the matter in answer to criticisms from Derek Walker-Smith, saying that ‘at the end of the day if repeal [of the European Communities Act], lock, stock and barrel, was proposed, the ultimate sovereignty of Parliament must remain intact’. Asking himself the question: ‘What will happen if there is a future Act of Parliament which inadvertently, to a greater or lesser extent, may be in conflict with Community law?’ Geoffrey said: ‘The courts would … try in accordance with the traditional approach to interpret Statute in accordance with our international obligations.’ But what if they could not be reconciled? He went on, elliptically: One cannot do more than that to reconcile the inescapable and enduring sovereignty of Parliament at the end of the road with the proposition that we should give effect to our treaty obligations to provide for the precedence of Community law … If through inadvertence any such conflict arose, that would be a matter for consideration by the Government and Parliament of the day …* (#ulink_f31f3ec1-4f42-5469-8469-a45f825951c2) It was not, however, this question which was to make the Common Market such a difficult issue for the Government. The main political error was to overplay the advantages due to come from membership. As regards the Government itself, this tendency led ministers to adopt and excuse unsound policies. In order to ‘equip’ British industry to meet the challenges of Europe, subsidies and intervention were said to be necessary – reasoning endorsed in the 1972 budget speech. Still worse, loose monetary and fiscal policies were justified on the grounds that high levels of economic growth – of the order of 5 per cent or so – were now sustainable within the new European market of some 300 million people. It was also suggested that competition from Europe would compel the trade unions to act more responsibly. As regards the general public, expectations of the benefits of membership rose – and then were sharply dashed as economic conditions deteriorated and industrial disruption worsened. The success of the negotiations for British entry and their ratification by Parliament seemed to have a psychological effect on Ted Heath. His enthusiasm for Europe had already developed into a passion. As the years went by it was to become an obsession – one increasingly shared by the great and the good. The argument became less and less about what was best for Britain and more and more about the importance of being good Europeans. January and February 1972 saw three events which tried the Government’s resolve and found it wanting – the miners’ strike, the financial problems of Upper Clyde Shipbuilders (UCS) and the unemployment total reaching one million. It is always a shock when unemployment reaches a new high figure, especially one as dramatic as a million. But the rise of unemployment in 1971 was in fact the consequence of Roy Jenkins’s tight fiscal and monetary policies of 1969–70. Since monetary policy had already been significantly eased in 1971, largely as a result of financial decontrol, we could have sat tight and waited for it to work through in lower unemployment from 1972 onwards. In fact, Ted never bought this analysis, and he greatly underestimated the stimulating effects of removing credit controls. He felt that emergency fiscal measures were necessary to boost demand and reduce unemployment. And this conviction influenced his decisions across the board. Ironically, because it led to higher inflation whose main effects were suffered under the following Labour Government, and because inflation destroys jobs rather than preserves them, it ultimately led to higher unemployment as well. In particular, the approach of the Government to Upper Clyde Shipbuilders flowed from fear of the consequences of higher unemployment. But it was also seen as caving in to the threats of left-wing militants. When we first discussed the company’s problems in December 1970 the Cabinet agreed that existing government support for the UCS Group would not be continued, though there was a lifeline: we would continue with credit guarantees so long as the management agreed to close the Clydebank yard and separate Yarrow Shipbuilders from the rest of the group. Yarrow – an important Royal Navy supplier – seemed salvageable. But by June 1971 the UCS Group was insolvent and its liquidation was announced. There followed a protest strike on Clydeside. In July trade unionists occupied the four UCS shipyards. There was further discussion in Cabinet in the autumn of 1971, and the Government allowed itself to be sucked into talks with the trade unions, who it was believed might be able to influence the militant shop stewards behind the occupation. The Economic Committee of the Cabinet had agreed that money should be provided to keep open the yards while the liquidator sought a solution, but only on condition that the unions gave credible undertakings of serious negotiations on new working practices. There was strong criticism of this from some of my colleagues, rightly alert to the danger of seeming to give in on the basis of worthless undertakings. But the money was provided and negotiations went ahead. It was the unemployment prospect rather than the prospects for shipbuilding which by now were undisguisedly foremost. In November Ted Heath affirmed in a Party Political Broadcast that the ‘Government is committed completely and absolutely to expanding the economy and bringing unemployment down’. The fateful one-million mark was passed on 20 January 1972. On 24 February at Cabinet we heard that the Economic Committee had agreed to provide ?35 million to keep three of the four yards open. John Davies openly admitted that the new group had little chance of making its way commercially and that if the general level of unemployment had been lower and the economy reviving faster, he would not have recommended this course. There was tangible unease, but Cabinet endorsed it and at the end of February John announced the decision. It was a small but memorably inglorious episode. I discussed it privately with Jock Bruce-Gardyne, who was scathing about the decision. He regarded it as a critical, unforgivable U-turn. I was deeply troubled. But by now we all had other things to worry about. In framing the Industrial Relations Act we had given too much emphasis to achieving the best possible legal framework and not enough to how the attacks on our proposals were to be repelled. The same mentality prevailed as regards the threat which the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) posed to the Government and the country. We knew, of course, that the miners and the power workers held an almost unbeatable card in pay negotiations, because they could turn off the electricity supply to industry and people. Industrial action by the power workers in December 1970 had been settled after the setting up of a Court of Inquiry under Lord Wilberforce which recommended a large increase in February the following year. Within the NUM, however, there was a large militant faction at least as interested in bringing down the Conservative Government as in flexing industrial muscle to increase miners’ earnings. The NUM held a strike ballot in October 1970 and narrowly turned down an offer from the National Coal Board (NCB). Fearing unofficial action, Cabinet authorized the NCB to offer a productivity bonus to be paid in mid-1971. The NUM again turned the offer down, following which Derek Ezra, the NCB Chairman, without consulting ministers, offered to pay the bonus at once and without strings attached to productivity. Cabinet accepted this fait accompli. Perhaps John Davies and other ministers continued to monitor events. If they did I heard nothing about it. Only in early December 1971 did the issue of miners’ pay surface at Cabinet, and then in what seemed a fairly casual way. The NUM’s annual conference that year had significantly revised the rules which provided for an official strike, so that now only a 55 per cent, as opposed to a two-thirds, majority was required. The NUM ballot, which was still going on, had, it was thought, resulted in a 59 per cent majority vote for strike action. Yet nobody seemed too worried. We were all reassured that coal stocks were high. Such complacency proved unwarranted. At the last Cabinet before Christmas Robert Carr confirmed to us that the NUM was indeed calling a national strike to begin on 9 January 1972. There was more trouble over pay in the gas and electricity industries. And we only needed to glance outside to know that winter was closing in, with all that meant for power consumption. But there was no real discussion and we all left for the Christmas break. There was still some suggestion over Christmas that the strike might not be solid, but two days after it began it was all too clear that the action was total. There was then discussion in Cabinet about whether we should use the ‘cooling off’ provisions of the Industrial Relations Act. But it was said to be difficult to satisfy the legal tests involved – ‘cooling off’ orders would only be granted by the courts if there was a serious prospect that they would facilitate a settlement, which in this case was doubtful. The possibility of using the ballot provisions of the Act remained. But there was no particular reason to think that a ballot forced on the NUM would lead to anything other than a continuation of the strike. It was an acutely uncomfortable demonstration of the fragility of the principal weapons with which the Act had equipped us. Moreover, important parts of the Act had yet to come into force, and we were also aware that there was a good deal of public sympathy with the miners. The pressure on the Government to intervene directly now increased. Looking back, and comparing 1972 with the threatened miners’ strike of 1981 and the year-long strike of 1984–85, it is extraordinary how little attention we gave to ‘endurance’ – the period of time we could keep the power stations and the economy running with limited or no coal supplies – and how easily Cabinet was fobbed off by assurances that coal stocks were high, without considering whether those stocks were in the right locations to be usable, i.e. actually at the power stations. The possibility of effective mass picketing, which would prevent coal getting to power stations, was simply not on the agenda. Instead, our response was to discuss the prospects for conciliation by Robert Carr and the use of ‘emergency powers’ which would allow us to conserve power station stocks a few weeks longer by imposing power cuts. There was a great deal of useless talk about ‘keeping public opinion on our side’. But what could public opinion do to end the strike? This was one more thing I learned from the Heath years – and anyway, on the whole public opinion wasn’t on our side. A further lesson from this period – when no fewer than five States of Emergency were called – was that for all the sense of urgency and decision that the phrase ‘emergency powers’ conveys they could not be relied upon to change the basic realities of an industrial dispute. The crunch came on the morning of Thursday 10 February when we were all in Cabinet. A State of Emergency had been declared the previous day. It was John Davies who dropped the bombshell. He told us that picketing had now immobilized a large part of the remaining coal stocks, and that the supplies still available might not even suffice beyond the end of the following week. Electricity output would fall to as little as 25 per cent of normal supply, drastic power cuts were inevitable, and large parts of industry would be laid off. The Attorney-General reported that the provisions of the Industrial Relations Act against secondary boycotts, blacking of supplies and the inducement of other workers to take action resulting in the frustration of a commercial contract, would not come into force until 28 February. He thought that most of the picketing which had taken place was lawful. As regards the criminal law, some arrests had been made but, as he put it, ‘the activities of pickets confronted the police with very difficult and sensitive decisions’. This was something of an understatement. The left-wing leader of the Yorkshire miners, Arthur Scargill, who was to organize the politically motivated miners’ strike I faced in 1984–85, was already busy winning his militant’s spurs. In the course of Cabinet a message came through to the Home Secretary, Reggie Maudling. The Chief Constable of Birmingham had asked that the West Midlands Gas Board’s Saltley Coke Depot be closed because lorries were being prevented from entering by 7,000 ‘pickets’ who were facing just 500 police. There was no disguising that this was a victory for violence. Ted now sounded the retreat. He appointed a Court of Inquiry under the ubiquitous Lord Wilberforce. By now the power crisis had reached such proportions that we sat in Cabinet debating whether we had time to wait for the NUM to ballot its members on ending a strike; a ballot might take over a week to organize. There was therefore no inclination to quibble when Wilberforce recommended a massive pay increase, way beyond the level allowed for in the ‘n-1’ voluntary pay policy already in force. But we were stunned when the militant majority on the NUM Executive rejected the court’s recommendation, demanding still more money and a ragbag of other concessions. Ted summoned us all on the evening of Friday 18 February to decide what to do. The dispute simply had to be ended quickly. If we had to go an additional mile, so be it. Later that night Ted called the NUM and the NCB to No. 10 and persuaded the union to drop the demand for more money, while conceding the rest. The NUM Executive accepted, and just over a week later so did the miners in a ballot. The dispute was over. But the devastation it had inflicted on the Government and indeed on British politics as a whole lived on. The combination of the rise in unemployment, the events at Upper Clyde Shipbuilders and the Government’s humiliation by the miners resulted in a fundamental reassessment of policy. I suspect that this took place in Ted’s own mind first, with other ministers and the Cabinet very much second. It was not so much that he jettisoned the whole Selsdon approach, but rather that he abandoned some aspects of it, emphasized others and added a heavy dose of statism which probably appealed to his temperament and his continental European sympathies. None of this pleased me. But our inability to resist trade union power was now manifest. The Industrial Relations Act itself already seemed hollow: it was soon to be discredited entirely. Like most Conservatives, I was prepared to give at least a chance to a policy which retained some of the objectives we had set out in 1969/70. I was even prepared to go along with a statutory prices and incomes policy, for a time, to try to limit the damage inflicted by the arrogant misuse of trade union power. But I was wrong. State intervention in the economy is not ultimately an answer to over-mighty vested interests: for it soon comes to collude with them. It is unusual to hold Cabinets on a Monday, and I had a long-standing scientific engagement for Monday 20 March 1972, so I was not present at the Cabinet which discussed the budget and the new Industry White Paper. Both of them signalled a change in strategy, each complementing the other. The budget was highly reflationary, comprising large cuts in income tax and purchase tax, increased pensions and social security benefits, and extra investment incentives for industry. It was strongly rumoured that Tony Barber and the Treasury were very unhappy with the budget and that it had been imposed on them by Ted. The fact that the budget speech presented these measures as designed to help Britain meet the challenge opened up by membership of the EEC in a small way confirms this. It was openly designed to provide a large boost to demand, which it was argued would not involve a rise in inflation, in conditions of high unemployment and idle resources. Monetary policy was mentioned, but only to stress its ‘flexibility’; no numerical targets for monetary growth were set. On Wednesday 22 March John Davies published his White Paper on Industry and Regional Development, which was the basis for the 1972 Industry Act. This was seen by our supporters and opponents alike as an obvious U-turn. Keith and I and probably others in the Cabinet were extremely unhappy, and some of this found its way into the press. Should I have resigned? Perhaps so. But those of us who disliked what was happening had not yet worked out an alternative approach. Nor, realistically speaking, would my resignation have made a great deal of difference. I was not senior enough for it to be other than the littlest ‘local difficulty’. All the more reason for me to pay tribute to people like Jock Bruce-Gardyne, John Biffen, Nick Ridley and, of course, Enoch Powell who did expose the folly of what was happening in Commons speeches and newspaper articles. There is also a direct connection between the policies pursued from March 1972 and the very different approach of my own administration later. A brilliant, but little-known, monetary economist called Alan Walters resigned from the Central Policy Review Staff (CPRS) and delivered not only scathing criticism of the Government’s approach but also accurate predictions of where it would lead.* (#ulink_dd90eac3-f800-5a6e-bd49-70bebd2c690a) One more blow to the approach we adopted in 1970 had still to fall. This was the effective destruction of the Industrial Relations Act. It had never been envisaged that the Act would result in individual trade unionists going to jail. Of course, no legal provisions can be proof against some remote possibility of that happening if troublemakers are intent on martyrdom. It was a long-running dispute between employers and dockers about ‘containerization’ which provided the occasion for this to happen. In March 1972 the National Industrial Relations Court (NIRC) fined the Transport and General Workers’ Union (TGWU) ?5,000 for defying an order to grant access to Liverpool Docks. The following month the union was fined ?50,000 for contempt on the matter of secondary action at the docks. The TGWU maintained that it was not responsible for the action of its shop stewards, but the NIRC ruled against this in May. Then, out of the blue, the Court of Appeal reversed these judgments and ruled that the TGWU was not responsible, and so the shop stewards themselves were personally liable. This was extremely disturbing, for it opened up the possibility of trade unionists going to jail. The following month three dockers involved in blacking were threatened with arrest for refusing to appear before the NIRC; 35,000 trade unionists were now on strike. At the last moment the Official Solicitor applied to the Court of Appeal to prevent the dockers’ arrest. But then in July another five dockers were jailed for contempt. The Left were merciless. Ted was shouted down in the House. Sympathetic strikes spread, involving the closure of national newspapers for five days. The TUC called a one-day general strike. On 26 July, however, the House of Lords reversed the Court of Appeal decision and confirmed that unions were accountable for the conduct of their members. The NIRC then released the five dockers. This was more or less the end of the Industrial Relations Act, though it was not the end of trouble in the docks. A national dock strike ensued and another State of Emergency was declared. This only ended – very much on the dockers’ terms – in August. In September the TUC General Congress rubbed salt into the wound by expelling thirty-two small unions which had refused, against TUC instructions, to de-register under the Act. Having shared to the full the Party’s enthusiasm for the Act, I was appalled. In the summer of 1972 the third aspect – after reflation and industrial intervention – of the new economic approach was revealed to us. This was the pursuit of an agreement on prices and incomes through ‘tripartite’ talks with the CBI and the TUC. Although there had been no explicit pay policy, we had been living in a world of ‘norms’ since the autumn of 1970 when the ‘n-1’ was formulated in the hope that there would be deceleration from the ‘going rate’ figure in successive pay rounds. The miners’ settlement had breached that policy spectacularly, but Ted drew the conclusion that we should go further rather than go back. From the summer of 1972 a far more elaborate prices and incomes policy was the aim, and more and more the centre of decision-making moved away from Cabinet and Parliament. I can only, therefore, give a partial account of the way in which matters developed. Cabinet simply received reports from Ted on what policies had effectively been decided elsewhere, though individual ministers became increasingly bogged down in the details of shifting and complicated pay negotiations. This almost obsessive interest in the minutiae of pay awards was matched by a large degree of impotence over the deals finally struck. In fact, the most important result was to distract ministers from the big economic issues and blind us with irrelevant data when we should have been looking ahead to the threats which loomed. The period of the tripartite talks with the TUC and the CBI from early July to the end of October did not get us much further as regards the Government’s aim of controlling inflation by keeping down wage demands. It did, however, move us down other slippery slopes. In exchange for the CBI’s offer to secure ‘voluntary’ price restraint by 200 of Britain’s largest firms, limiting their price increases to 5 per cent during the following year, we embarked on the costly and self-defeating policy of holding nationalized industry price increases to the same level, even though this meant that they continued to make losses. The TUC, for its part, used the role it had been accorded by the tripartite discussions to set out its own alternative economic policy. In flat contradiction to the policies we had been elected to implement, they wanted action to keep down council rents (which would sabotage our Housing Finance Act – intended to bring them closer to market levels). They urged the control of profits, dividends and prices, aimed at securing the redistribution of income and wealth (in other words, the implementation of socialism), and the repeal of the Industrial Relations Act. These demands were taken sufficiently seriously by Ted for him to agree studies of methods by which the pay of low-paid workers could be improved without entailing proportionate increases to other workers. We had, in other words, moved four-square onto the socialist ground that ‘low pay’ – however that might be defined – was a ‘problem’ which it was for government rather than the workings of the market to resolve. In fact, the Government proposed a ?2 a week limit on pay increases over the following year, with the CBI agreeing maximum 4 per cent price increases over the same period and the extension of the Government’s ‘target’ of 5 per cent economic growth. It was not enough. The TUC was not willing – and probably not able – to deliver wage restraint. At the end of October we had a lengthy discussion of the arguments for proceeding to a statutory policy, beginning with a pay freeze. It is an extraordinary comment on the state of mind that we had reached that, as far as I can recall, neither now nor later did anyone at Cabinet raise the objection that this was precisely the policy we had ruled out in our 1970 general election manifesto. Only with the greatest reluctance did Ted accept that the TUC were unpersuadable. And so on Friday 3 November 1972 Cabinet made the fateful decision to introduce a statutory policy beginning with a ninety-day freeze of prices and incomes. No one ever spoke a truer word than Ted when he concluded by warning that we faced a troubled prospect. The change in economic policy was accompanied by a Cabinet reshuffle. Maurice Macmillan – Harold’s son – had already taken over at Employment from Robert Carr in July 1972, when the latter replaced Reggie Maudling at the Home Office. Ted now promoted his younger disciples. He sent Peter Walker to replace John Davies at the DTI and promoted Jim Prior to be Leader of the House. Geoffrey Howe, an instinctive economic liberal, was brought into the Cabinet but given the poisoned chalice of overseeing prices and incomes policy. For a growing number of backbenchers the new policy was a U-turn too far. When Enoch Powell asked in the House whether the Prime Minister had ‘taken leave of his senses’, he was publicly cold-shouldered, but many privately agreed with him. Still more significant was the fact that staunch opponents of our policy like Nick Ridley, Jock Bruce-Gardyne and John Biffen were elected to chairmanships or vice-chairmanships of important backbench committees, and Edward du Cann, on the right of the Party and a sworn opponent of Ted, became Chairman of the 1922 Committee. As the freeze – Stage 1 – came to an end we devised Stage 2. This extended the pay and price freeze until the end of April 1973; for the remainder of 1973 workers could expect ?1 a week and 4 per cent, with a maximum pay rise of ?250 a year – a formula designed to favour the low-paid. A Pay Board and a Prices Commission were set up to administer the policy. Our backbench critics were more perceptive than most commentators, who considered that all this was a sensible and pragmatic response to trade union irresponsibility. In the early days it seemed that the commentators were right. A challenge to the policy by the gas workers was defeated at the end of March. The miners – as we hoped and expected after their huge increase the previous year – rejected a strike (against the advice of their Executive) in a ballot on 5 April. The number of working days lost because of strikes fell sharply. Unemployment was at its lowest since 1970. Generally, the mood in government grew more relaxed. Ted clearly felt happier wearing his new collectivist hat than he ever had in the disguise of Selsdon. Our sentiments should have been very different. The effects of the reflationary budget of March 1972 and the loose financial policy it typified were now becoming apparent. The Treasury, at least, had started to worry about the economy, which was growing at a clearly unsustainable rate of well over 5 per cent. The money supply, as measured by M3 (broad money), was growing too fast – though the (narrower) M1, which the Government preferred, less so.* (#ulink_ca0208b4-e5ff-5dd2-a157-7fc95229d726) The March 1973 budget did nothing to cool the overheating and was heavily distorted by the need to keep down prices and charges so as to support the ‘counter-inflation policy’, as the prices and incomes policy was hopefully called. In May modest public expenditure reductions were agreed. But it was too little, and far too late. Although inflation rose during the first six months of 1973, Minimum Lending Rate (MLR) was steadily cut and a temporary mortgage subsidy was introduced. The Prime Minister also ordered that preparations be made to take statutory control of the mortgage rate if the building societies failed to hold it down when the subsidy ended. These fantastic proposals only served to distract us from the need to tackle the growing problem of monetary laxity. Only in July was MLR raised from 7.5 per cent, first to 9 per cent and then to 11.5 per cent. We were actually ahead of Labour in the opinion polls in June 1973, for the first time since 1970. But in July the Liberals took Ely and Ripon from us at by-elections. Economically and politically we had already begun to reap the whirlwind. Over the summer of 1973 Ted held more talks with the TUC, seeking their agreement to Stage 3. The detailed work was done by a group of ministers chaired by Ted, and the rest of us knew little about it. Nor did I know that close attention was already being given to the problem which might arise with the miners. Like most of my colleagues, I imagine, I believed that they had had their pound of flesh already and would not come back for more. I hope, though, that I would have given a great deal more attention than anyone seems to have done to building up coal stocks against the eventuality, however remote, of another miners’ strike. The miners either had to be appeased or beaten. Yet, for all its technocratic jargon, this was a government which signally lacked a sense of strategy. Ted apparently felt no need of one since, as we now know, he had held a secret meeting with the miners’ President, Joe Gormley, in the garden of No. 10 and thought he had found a formula to square the miners – extra payment for ‘unsocial hours’. But this proved to be a miscalculation. The miners’ demands could not be accommodated within Stage 3. In October Cabinet duly endorsed the Stage 3 White Paper. It was immensely complicated and represented the high point – if that is the correct expression – of the Heath Government’s collectivism. All possible eventualities, you might have thought, were catered for. But as experience of past pay policies ought to have demonstrated, you would have been wrong. My only direct involvement in the working of this new, detailed pay policy was when I attended the relevant Cabinet Economic Sub-Committee, usually chaired by Terence Higgins, a Treasury Minister of State. Even those attracted by the concept of incomes policy on grounds of ‘fairness’ begin to have their doubts when they see its provisions applied to individual cases. My visits to the Higgins Committee were usually necessitated by questions of teachers’ pay. On one sublime occasion we found ourselves debating the proper rate of pay for MPs’ secretaries. This was the last straw. I said that I hadn’t come into politics to make decisions like this, and that I would pay my secretary what was necessary to keep her. Other ministers agreed. But then, they knew their secretaries; they did not know the other people whose pay they were deciding. In any case, reality soon started to break in. Two days after the announcement of Stage 3 the NUM rejected an NCB offer worth 16.5 per cent in return for a productivity agreement. The Government immediately took charge of the negotiations. (The days of our ‘not intervening’ had long gone.) Ted met the NUM at No. 10. But no progress was made. In early November the NUM began an overtime ban. Maurice Macmillan told us that though an early strike ballot seemed unlikely and, if held, would not give the necessary majority for a strike, an overtime ban would cut production sharply. The general feeling in Cabinet was still that the Government could not afford to acquiesce in a breach of the recently introduced pay code. Instead, we should make a special effort to demonstrate what was possible within it. The miners were not the only ones threatening trouble. The firemen, electricians and engineers were all in differing stages of dispute. Admittedly, the threatened oil embargo and oil price rises resulting from the Arab-Israeli war that autumn made things far worse. As the effects of the miners’ industrial action bit deeper, the sense that we were no longer in control of events deepened. Somehow we had to break out. This made a quick general election increasingly attractive. Quite what we would have done if we had been re-elected is, of course, problematic. Perhaps Ted would have liked to go further towards a managed economy. Others would probably have liked to find a way to pay the miners their Danegeld. Keith and I and a large part of the Parliamentary Conservative Party would have wanted to discard the corporatist and statist trappings with which the Government was now surrounded and try to get back to the free market approach from which we had allowed ourselves to be diverted in early 1972. At Cabinet on Tuesday 13 November it was all gloom as the crisis accelerated on every front. Tony Barber told us that the October trade figures that day would show another large deficit. One shrewd move on Ted’s part at the beginning of December was to bring Willie Whitelaw back from Northern Ireland to become Employment Secretary in place of Maurice Macmillan. Willie was both conciliatory and cunning, a combination of qualities particularly necessary if some way were to be found out of the struggle with the miners. The Government’s hand was also strengthened by the fact that, perhaps surprisingly, the opinion polls were now showing us with a clear lead over Labour as the public reacted indignantly to the miners’ actions. In these circumstances, all but the most militant trade unionists would be fearful of a confrontation precipitating a general election. On Thursday 13 December Ted announced the introduction of a three-day working week to conserve energy. He also gave a broadcast that evening. This gave an impression of crisis which polarized opinion in the country. At first industrial output remained more or less the same, itself an indication of the inefficiency and overmanning of so much of British industry. But we did not know this at the time. Nor could we know how long even a three-day week would be sustainable. I found strong support among Conservatives for the measures taken. There was also understanding of the need for the ?1.2 billion public spending cuts, which were announced a few days later. At this stage we believed that we could rely on business leaders. Shortly before Christmas, Denis and I went to a party at a friend’s house in Lamberhurst. There was a power cut and so night lights had been put in jam jars to guide people up the steps. There was a touch of wartime spirit about it all. The businessmen there were of one mind: ‘Stand up to them. Fight it out. See them off. We can’t go on like this.’ It was all very heartening. For the moment. There still seemed no honourable or satisfactory way out of the dispute itself. The Government offer of an immediate inquiry into the future of the mining industry and miners’ pay if the NUM went back to work on the basis of the present offer was turned down flat. It was clear that, if and when we managed to come through the present crisis, fundamental questions would need to be asked about the Government’s direction. The miners, backed in varying degrees by other trade unions and the Labour Party, were flouting the law made by Parliament. The militants were clearly out to bring down the Government and to demonstrate once and for all that Britain could only be governed with the consent of the trade union movement. This was intolerable not just to me as a Conservative Cabinet minister but to millions of others who saw the fundamental liberties of the country under threat. Denis and I, our friends and most of my Party workers, felt that we now had to pick up the gauntlet and that the only way to do that was by calling and winning a general election. From now on, this was what I urged whenever I had the opportunity. I was, though, surprised and frustrated by Ted Heath’s attitude. He seemed out of touch with reality, still more interested in the future of Stage 3 and in the oil crisis than he was in the pressing question of the survival of the Government. Cabinet discussions concentrated on tactics and details, never the fundamental strategy. Such discussions were perhaps taking place in some other forum; but I rather doubt it. Certainly, there was a strange lack of urgency. I suspect it was because Ted was secretly desperate to avoid an election and did not seriously wish to think about the possibility of one. In the end, perhaps – as some of us speculated – because his inner circle was split on the issue, Ted finally did ask some of us in to see him, in several small groups, on Monday 14 January in his study at No. 10. By this stage we were only days away from the deadline for calling a 7 February election – the best and most likely ‘early’ date. At No. 10 in our group John Davies and I did most of the talking. We both strongly urged Ted to face up to the fact that we could not have the unions flouting the law and the policies of a democratically elected government in this way. We should have an early election and fight unashamedly on the issue of ‘Who governs Britain?’ Ted said very little. He seemed to have asked us in for form’s sake. I gathered that he did not agree, though he did not say as much. I went away feeling depressed. I still believe that if he had gone to the country earlier we would have scraped in. The following Wednesday, 30 January, with the strike ballot still pending, an emergency Cabinet was called. Ted told us that the Pay Board’s report on relativities had now been received. The question was whether we should accept the report and set up new machinery to investigate ‘relativities’ claims. The miners had always claimed to be demanding an improvement in their relative pay – hence their rejection of Ted’s ‘unsocial hours’ provision, which applied to all shift workers. The Pay Board report might provide a basis for them to settle within the incomes policy – all the more so because it specifically endorsed the idea that changes in the relative importance of an industry due to ‘external events’ could also be taken into account when deciding pay. The rapidly rising price of oil was just such an ‘external event’. We felt that the Government had no choice but to set up the relativities machinery. Not to do so – having commissioned the relativities report in the first place – would make it seem as if we were actively trying to prevent a settlement with the miners. And with an election now likely we had to consider public opinion at every step. An election became all but certain when, on Tuesday 5 February, we learned that 81 per cent of those voting in the NUM ballot had supported a strike. Election speculation reached fever pitch from which there was no going back. Ted told us at Cabinet two days later that he had decided to go to the country. The general election would take place on Thursday 28 February. Willie proposed formally to refer the miners’ claim to the Pay Board for a relativities study. He couched his argument for this course entirely in terms of it giving us something to say during the election in reply to the inevitable question: How will you solve the miners’ dispute if you win? Cabinet then made the fateful decision to agree to Willie’s proposal. Because of the emergency nature of the election, I had not been involved in the early drafts of even the education section of the manifesto, which was now published within days. There was little new to say, and the dominant theme of the document – the need for firm and fair government at a time of crisis – was clear and stark. The main new pledge was to change the system whereby Social Security benefits were paid to strikers’ families. During most of the campaign I was reasonably confident that we would win. Conservative supporters who had been alienated by the U-turns started drifting back to us. Indeed, their very frustrations at what they saw as our past weaknesses made them all the more determined to back us now that we had decided, as they saw it, to stand up to trade union militancy. Harold Wilson set out Labour’s approach in the context of a ‘social contract’ with the unions. Those who longed for a quiet life could be expected to be seduced by that. But I felt that if we could stick to the central issue summed up by the phrase ‘Who governs?’ we would win the argument, and with it the election. I felt victory – almost tangibly – slip away from us in the last week. I just could not believe it when I heard on the radio of the leak of evidence taken by the Pay Board which purported to show that the miners could have been paid more within Stage 3, with the implication that the whole general election was unnecessary. The Government’s attempts to deny this – and there did indeed turn out to have been a miscalculation – were stumbling and failed to carry conviction. From now on it was relentlessly downhill. Two days later, Enoch Powell urged people to vote Labour in order to secure a referendum on the Common Market. I could understand the logic of his position, which was that membership of the Common Market had abrogated British sovereignty and that the supreme issue in politics was therefore how to restore it. But what shocked me was his manner of doing it – announcing only on the day the election was called that he would not be contesting his Wolverhampton seat and then dropping this bombshell at the end of the campaign. It seemed to me that to betray one’s local supporters and constituency workers in this way was heartless. I suspect that Enoch’s decision had a crucial effect. Then three days later there was another blow. Campbell Adamson, the Director-General of the CBI, publicly called for the repeal of the Industrial Relations Act. It was all too typical of the way in which Britain’s industrial leaders were full of bravado before battle was joined, but lacked the stomach for a fight. By polling day my optimism had been replaced by unease. That sentiment grew as I heard from Finchley and elsewhere around the country of a surprisingly heavy turn-out of voters to the polls that morning. I would have liked to think that these were all angry Conservatives, coming out to demonstrate their refusal to be blackmailed by trade union power. But it seemed more likely that they were voters from the Labour-dominated council estates who had come out to teach the Tories a lesson. The results quickly showed that we had nothing to be cheerful about. We lost thirty-three seats. It would be a hung Parliament. Labour had become the largest party with 301 seats – seventeen short of a majority; we were down to 296, though with a slightly higher percentage of the vote than Labour; the Liberals had gained almost 20 per cent of the vote with fourteen seats, and smaller parties, including the Ulster Unionists, held twenty-three. My own majority in Finchley was down from 11,000 to 6,000, though some of that decline was the result of boundary changes in the constituency. On Friday afternoon we met, a tired and downcast fag-end of a Cabinet, to be asked by Ted Heath for our reactions as to what should now be done. There were a number of options. Ted could advise the Queen to send for Harold Wilson as the leader of the largest single party. Or the Government could face Parliament and see whether it could command support for its programme. Or he could try to do a deal with the smaller parties for a programme designed to cope with the nation’s immediate difficulties. Having alienated the Ulster Unionists through our Northern Ireland policy, this in effect meant a deal with the Liberals – though even that would not have given us a majority. There was little doubt from the way Ted spoke that this was the course he favoured. My own instinctive feeling was that the party with the largest number of seats in the House of Commons was justified in expecting that they would be called to try to form a government. But Ted argued that with the Conservatives having won the largest number of votes, he was duty bound to explore the possibility of coalition. So he offered the Liberal Leader Jeremy Thorpe a place in a coalition government and promised a Speaker’s conference on electoral reform. Thorpe went away to consult his party. Although I wanted to remain Secretary of State for Education, I did not want to do so at the expense of the Conservative Party’s never forming a majority government again. Yet that is what the introduction of proportional representation, which the Liberals would be demanding, might amount to. I was also conscious that this horse-trading was making us look ridiculous. The British dislike nothing more than a bad loser. It was time to go. When we met again on Monday morning Ted gave us a full account of his discussions with the Liberals. They had not been willing to go along with what Jeremy Thorpe wanted. A formal reply from him was still awaited. But it now seemed almost certain that Ted would have to tender his resignation. The final Cabinet was held at 4.45 that afternoon. By now Jeremy Thorpe’s reply had been received. From what Ted said, there were clues that his mind was already turning to the idea of a National Government of all parties, something which would increasingly attract him. It did not, of course, attract me at all. In any case, the Liberals were not going to join a coalition government with us. There was nothing more to say. I left Downing Street, sad but with some sense of relief. I had given little thought to the future. But I knew in my heart that it was time not just for a change in government but for a change in the Conservative Party. * (#ulink_42459718-b2f8-5c32-aa22-657e424a31a0) ‘The Lesson’ (1902). The lesson in question was the Boer War, in which Britain had suffered many military reverses. * (#ulink_a9134ceb-bdf7-5ddd-9027-d49927748216) A State of Emergency may be proclaimed by the Crown – effectively by ministers – whenever a situation arises which threatens to deprive the community of the essentials of life by disrupting the supply and distribution of food, water, fuel or light, or communications. It gives Government extensive powers to make regulations to restore these necessities. Troops may be used. If Parliament is not sitting when the proclamation is made, it must be recalled within five days. A State of Emergency expires at the end of one month, but may be extended. * (#ulink_e71acd55-e56b-551d-b3ab-845c37bcb2af) John Poulson was an architect convicted in 1974 of making corrupt payments to win contracts. A number of local government figures also went to jail. Reggie Maudling had served on the board of one of Poulson’s companies. * (#ulink_20937384-a3fb-5788-a411-baa08060252d)Hansard, 13 June 1972; Volume 838, columns 1319–20. * (#ulink_4977dd8e-dafd-5863-9f00-3c86e9b4ff5c) Alan Walters became my economic adviser as Prime Minister 1981–84 and again in 1989. * (#ulink_2100bdad-7baf-5a73-a9df-9b55d1aadd95) M1 comprised the total stock of money held in cash and in current and deposit accounts at a particular point in time; M3 included the whole of M1, with the addition of certain other types of bank accounts, including those held in currencies other than sterling. CHAPTER EIGHT (#ulink_d535670f-5330-58d7-9706-a52618995dc9) Seizing the Moment (#ulink_d535670f-5330-58d7-9706-a52618995dc9) The October 1974 general election and the campaign for the Tory Leadership IT IS NEVER EASY to go from government to opposition. But for several reasons it was particularly problematical for the Conservatives led by Ted Heath. First, of course, we had up until almost the last moment expected to win. Whatever the shortcomings of our Government’s economic strategy, every department had its own policy programme stretching well into the future. This now had to be abandoned for the rigours of Opposition. Secondly, Ted himself desperately wanted to continue as Prime Minister. He had been unceremoniously ejected from 10 Downing Street and for some months had to take refuge in the flat of his old friend and PPS Tim Kitson, having no home of his own – from which years later I drew the resolution that when my time came to depart I would at least have a house to go to. Ted’s passionate desire to return as Prime Minister lay behind much of the talk of coalitions and Governments of National Unity which came to disquiet the Party. The more that the Tory Party moved away from Ted’s own vision, the more he wanted to see it tamed by coalition. Thirdly, and worst of all perhaps, the poisoned legacy of our U-turns was that we had no firm principles, let alone much of a record, on which to base our arguments. And in Opposition argument is everything. I was glad that Ted did not ask me to cover my old department at Education but gave me the Environment portfolio instead. I was convinced that both rates and housing – particularly the latter – were issues which had contributed to our defeat. The task of devising and presenting sound and popular policies in these areas appealed to me. There were rumblings about Ted’s own position, though that is what they largely remained. This was partly because most of us expected an early general election to be called in order to give Labour a working majority, and it hardly seemed sensible to change leaders now. But there were other reasons. Ted still inspired nervousness, even fear among many of his colleagues. In a sense, even the U-turns contributed to the aura around him. For he had single-handedly reversed Conservative policies and had gone far, with his lieutenants, in reshaping the Conservative Party. Paradoxically too, both those committed to Ted’s approach and those – like Keith and me and many on the backbenches – who thought very differently agreed that the vote-buying policies which the Labour Party was now pursuing would inevitably lead to economic collapse. Just what the political consequences of that would be was uncertain. But there were many Tory wishful thinkers who thought that it might result in the Conservative Party somehow returning to power with a ‘doctor’s mandate’. And Ted had no doubt of his own medical credentials. He did not, though, make the concessions to his critics in the Party which would have been required. He might have provided effectively against future threats to his position if he had changed his approach in a number of ways. He might have shown at least some willingness to admit and learn from the Government’s mistakes. He might have invited talented backbench critics to join him as Shadow spokesmen and contribute to the rethinking of policy. He might have changed the overall complexion of the Shadow Cabinet to make it more representative of parliamentary opinion. But he did none of these things. He replaced Tony Barber – who announced that he intended to leave the Commons though he would stay on for the present in the Shadow Cabinet without portfolio – with Robert Carr, who was even more committed to the interventionist approach that had got us into so much trouble. He promoted to the Shadow Cabinet during the year those MPs like Michael Heseltine and Paul Channon who were seen as his acolytes, and were unrepresentative of backbench opinion of the time. Only John Davies and Joe Godber, neither of whom was ideologically distinct, were dropped. Above all, he set his face against any policy rethinking that would imply that his Government’s economic and industrial policy had been seriously flawed. When Keith Joseph was not made Shadow Chancellor, he said he wanted no portfolio but rather to concentrate on research for new policies – something which would prove as dangerous to Ted as it was fruitful for the Party. Otherwise, these were depressing signals of ‘more of the same’ when the electorate had clearly demonstrated a desire for something different. Added to this, the important Steering Committee of Shadow Ministers was formed even more in Ted’s image. I was not invited to join it, and of its members only Keith and perhaps Geoffrey Howe were likely to oppose Ted’s wishes. Between the February and October 1974 elections most of my time was taken up with work on housing and the rates. I had an effective housing policy group of MPs working with me. Hugh Rossi, a friend and neighbouring MP, was a great housing expert, with experience of local government. Michael Latham and John Stanley were well versed in the building industry. The brilliant Nigel Lawson, newly elected, always had his own ideas. We also had the help of people from the building societies and construction industry. It was a lively group which I enjoyed chairing. The political priority was clearly lower mortgage rates. The technical problem was how to achieve these without open-ended subsidy. In government we had introduced a mortgage subsidy, and there had been talk of taking powers to control the mortgage rate. The Labour Government quickly came up with its own scheme, devised by Harold Lever, to make large cheap short-term loans to the building societies. Our task was to devise something more attractive. As well as having an eye for a politically attractive policy, I had always believed in a property-owning democracy and wider home ownership. It is cheaper to assist people to buy homes with a mortgage – whether by a subsidized mortgage rate, or by help with the deposit, or just by mortgage interest tax relief – than it is to build more council houses or to buy up private houses through municipalization. I used to quote the results of a Housing Research Foundation study which observed: ‘On average each new council house now costs roughly ?900 a year in subsidy in taxes and rates (including the subsidy from very old council houses) … Tax relief on an ordinary mortgage, if this be regarded as a subsidy, averages about ?280 a year.’ My housing policy group met regularly on Mondays. Housing experts and representatives from the building societies gave their advice. It was clear to me that Ted and others were determined to make our proposals on housing and possibly rates the centrepiece of the next election campaign, which we expected sooner rather than later. For example, at the Shadow Cabinet on Friday 3 May we had an all-day discussion of policies for the manifesto. I reported on housing and was authorized to set up a rates policy group. But this meeting was more significant for another reason. At it Keith Joseph argued at length but in vain for a broadly ‘monetarist’ approach to dealing with inflation. The question of the rates was a far more difficult one than any aspect of housing policy, and I had a slightly different group to help me. Reform, let alone abolition, of the rates had profound implications for the relations between central and local government and for the different local authority services, particularly education. I drew on the advice of the experts – municipal treasurers proved the best source, and gave readily of their technical advice. But working as I was under tight pressure of time and close scrutiny by Ted and others who expected me to deliver something radical, popular and defensible, my task was not an easy one. The housing policy group had already held its seventh meeting and our proposals were well developed by the time the rates group started work on 10 June. I knew Ted and his advisers wanted a firm promise that we would abolish the rates. But I was loath to make such a pledge until we were clear about what to put in their place. Anyway, if there was to be an autumn election, there was little chance of doing more than finding a sustainable line to take in the manifesto. Meanwhile, throughout that summer of 1974 I received far more publicity than I had ever previously experienced. Some of this was inadvertent. The interim report of the housing policy group which I circulated to Shadow Cabinet appeared on the front page of The Times on Monday 24 June. On the previous Friday Shadow Cabinet had spent the morning discussing the fourth draft of the manifesto. By now the main lines of my proposed housing policy were agreed. The mortgage rate would be held down to some unspecified level by cutting the composite rate of tax paid by building societies on depositors’ accounts, in other words by subsidy disguised as tax relief. A grant would be given to firsttime buyers saving for a deposit, though again no figure was specified. There would be a high-powered inquiry into building societies; this was an idea I modelled on my earlier James Inquiry into teachers’ training. I hoped it might produce a long-term answer to the problem of high mortgage rates and yet save us from an open-ended subsidy. The final point related to the right of tenants to buy their council houses. Of all our proposals this was to prove the most far-reaching and the most popular. The February 1974 manifesto had offered council tenants the chance to buy their houses, but retained a right of appeal for the council against sale, and had not offered a discount. We all wanted to go further than this; the question was how far. Peter Walker constantly pressed for the ‘Right to Buy’ to be extended to council tenants at the lowest possible prices. My instinct was on the side of caution. It was not that I underrated the benefits of wider property ownership. Rather, I was wary of alienating the already hard-pressed families who had scrimped to buy a house on one of the new private estates at the market price and who had seen the mortgage rate rise and the value of their house fall. These people were the bedrock Conservative voters for whom I felt a natural sympathy. They would, I feared, strongly object to council house tenants who had made none of their sacrifices suddenly receiving what was in effect a large capital sum from the Government. We might end up losing more support than we gained. In retrospect, this argument seems both narrow and unimaginative. And it was. But there was a lot to be said politically for it in 1974 at a time when the value of people’s houses had slumped so catastrophically. In the event, the October 1974 manifesto offered council tenants who had been in their homes for three years or more the right to buy them at a price a third below market value. If the tenant sold again within five years he would surrender part of any capital gain. Also, by the time the manifesto reached its final draft, we had quantified the help to be given to first-time buyers of private houses and flats. We would contribute ?1 for every ?2 saved for the deposit up to a given ceiling. (We ducked the question of rent decontrol.) It was, however, the question of how low a maximum mortgage interest rate we would promise in the manifesto that caused me most trouble. When I was in the car on the way from London to Tonbridge on Wednesday 28 August in order to record a Party Political Broadcast the bleeper signalled that I must telephone urgently. Ted wanted a word. Willie Whitelaw answered the phone and it was clear that the two of them, and doubtless others of the inner circle, were meeting. Ted came on the line. He asked me to announce on the PPB the precise figure to which we would hold down mortgages, and to take it down as low as I could. I said I could understand the psychological point about going below 10 per cent. That need could be satisfied by a figure of 9? per cent, and in all conscience I could not take it down any further. To do so would have a touch of rashness about it. I was already worried about the cost. I did not like this tendency to pull figures out of the air for immediate political impact without proper consideration of where they would lead. So I stuck at 9? per cent. It was a similar story on the rates. When we had discussed the subject at our Shadow Cabinet meeting on Friday 21 June I had tried to avoid any firm pledge. I suggested that our line should be one of reform to be established on an all-party basis through a Select Committee. Even more than housing, this was not an area in which precipitate pledges were sensible. Ted would have none of this and said I should think again. In July Charles Bellairs at the Conservative Research Department and I worked on a draft rates section for the manifesto. We were still thinking in terms of an inquiry and an interim rate relief scheme. I went along to discuss our proposals at the Shadow Cabinet Steering Committee. I argued for the transfer of teachers’ salaries – the largest item of local spending – from local government onto the Exchequer. Another possibility I raised was the replacement of rates with a system of block grants, with local authorities retaining discretion over spending but within a total set by central government. Neither of these possibilities was particularly attractive. But at least discussion revealed to those present that ‘doing something’ about the rates was a very different matter from knowing what to do. On Saturday 10 August I used my speech to the Candidates’ Conference at the St Stephen’s Club to publicize our policies. I argued for total reform of the rating system to take into account individual ability to pay, and suggested the transfer of teachers’ salaries and better interim relief as ways to achieve this. It was a good time of the year – a slack period for news – to unveil new proposals, and we gained some favourable publicity. It seemed to me that this proved that we could fight a successful campaign without being more specific; indeed, looking back, I can see that we were already a good deal too specific because, as I was to discover fifteen years later, such measures as transferring the cost of services from local to central government do not in themselves lead to lower local authority rates. I had hoped to have a pleasant family holiday at Lamberhurst away from the demands of politics. It was not to be. The telephone kept ringing, with Ted and others urging me to give more thought to new schemes. Then I was called back for another meeting on Friday 16 August. Ted, Robert Carr, Jim Prior, Willie Whitelaw and Michael Wolff from Central Office were all there. It was soon clear what the purpose was – to bludgeon me into accepting a commitment in the manifesto to abolish the rates altogether within the lifetime of a Parliament. I argued against this for very much the same reason that I argued against the ‘9? per cent’ pledge on the mortgage rate. But so shell-shocked by their unexpected defeat in February were Ted and his inner circle that in their desire for reelection they were clutching at straws, or what in the jargon were described as manifesto ‘nuggets’. There were various ways to raise revenue for expenditure on local purposes. We were all uneasy about moving to a system whereby central government just provided block grants to local government. So I had told Shadow Cabinet that I thought a reformed property tax seemed to be the least painful option. But in the back of my mind I had the additional idea of supplementing the property tax with a locally collected tax on petrol. Of course, there were plenty of objections to both, but at least they were better than putting up income tax. What mattered to my colleagues was clearly the pledge to abolish the rates, and at Wilton Street Ted insisted on it. I felt bruised and resentful to be bounced again into policies which had not been properly thought out. But I thought that if I combined caution on the details with as much presentational bravura as I could muster I could make our rates and housing policies into vote-winners for the Party. This I now concentrated my mind on doing. It was at a press conference on the afternoon of Wednesday 28 August that I delivered the package of measures – built around 9? per cent mortgages and the abolition of the rates – without a scintilla of doubt, which as veteran Evening Standard reporter Robert Carvel said, ‘went down with hardened reporters almost as well as the sherry’ served by Central Office. We dominated the news. It was by general consent the best fillip the Party had had since losing the February election. The Building Societies’ Association welcomed the proposals for 9? per cent mortgages but questioned my figures about the cost. As I indignantly told them, it was their sums which were wrong and they subsequently retracted. Some on the economic right were understandably critical, but among the grassroots Conservatives that we had to win back the mortgage proposal was extremely popular. So too was the pledge on the rates. The Labour Party was rattled and unusually the party-giving Tony Crosland was provoked into describing the proposals as ‘Margaret’s midsummer madness’. All this publicity was good for me personally as well. Although I was not to know it at the time, this period up to and during the October 1974 election campaign allowed me to make a favourable impact on Conservatives in the country and in Parliament without which my future career would doubtless have been very different. Although it was my responsibilities as Environment spokesman which took up most of my time and energy, from late June I had become part of another enterprise which would have profound consequences for the Conservative Party, for the country and for me. The setting up of the Centre for Policy Studies (CPS) is really part of Keith Joseph’s story rather than mine. Keith had emerged from the wreckage of the Heath Government determined on the need to rethink our policies from first principles. If this was to be done, Keith was the ideal man to do it. He had the intellect, the integrity and not least the humility required. He had a deep interest in both economic and social policy. He had long experience of government. He had an extraordinary ability to form relationships of friendship and respect with a wide range of characters with different viewpoints and backgrounds. Although he could, when he felt strongly, speak passionately and persuasively, it was as a listener that he excelled. Moreover, Keith never listened passively. He probed arguments and assertions and scribbled notes which you knew he would go home to ponder. He was so impressive because his intellectual self-confidence was the fruit of continual self-questioning. His bravery in adopting unpopular positions before a hostile audience evoked the admiration of his friends, because we all knew that he was naturally shy and even timid. He was almost too good a man for politics – except that without a few good men politics would be intolerable. I could not have become Leader of the Opposition, or achieved what I did as Prime Minister, without Keith. But nor, it is fair to say, could Keith have achieved what he did without the Centre for Policy Studies and Alfred Sherman. Apart from the fact of their being Jewish, Alfred and Keith had little in common, and until one saw how effectively they worked together it was difficult to believe that they could co-operate at all. Alfred had his own kind of brilliance. He brought his convert’s zeal (as an ex-communist), his breadth of reading and his skills as a ruthless polemicist to the task of plotting out a new kind of free market Conservatism. He was more interested, it seemed to me, in the philosophy behind policies than the policies themselves. He was better at pulling apart sloppily constructed arguments than at devising original proposals. But the force and clarity of his mind, and his complete disregard for other people’s feelings or opinion of him, made him a formidable complement and contrast to Keith. Alfred helped Keith to turn the Centre for Policy Studies into the powerhouse of alternative Conservative thinking on economic and social matters. I was not involved at the beginning, though I gathered from Keith that he was thinking hard about how to turn his Shadow Cabinet responsibilities for research on policy into constructive channels. In March Keith had won Ted’s approval for the setting up of a research unit to make comparative studies with other European economies, particularly the so-called ‘social market economy’ as practised in West Germany. Ted had Adam Ridley put on the board of directors of the CPS (Adam acted as his economic adviser from within the Conservative Research Department), but otherwise Keith was left very much to his own devices. Nigel Vinson, a successful entrepreneur with strong free enterprise convictions, was made responsible for acquiring a home for the Centre, which was found in Wilfred Street, close to Victoria. It was at the end of May 1974 that I first became directly involved with the CPS. Whether Keith ever considered asking any other members of the Shadow Cabinet to join him at the Centre I do not know: if he had, they certainly did not accept. His was a risky, exposed position, and the fear of provoking the wrath of Ted and the derision of left-wing commentators was a powerful disincentive. But I jumped at the chance to become Keith’s Vice-Chairman. The CPS was the least bureaucratic of institutions. Alfred Sherman has caught the feel of it by saying that it was an ‘animator, agent of change, and political enzyme’. The original proposed social market approach did not prove particularly fruitful and was eventually quietly forgotten, though a pamphlet called Why Britain Needs a Social Market Economy was published. What the Centre then developed was the drive to expose the follies and self-defeating consequences of government intervention. It continued to engage the political argument in open debate at the highest intellectual level. The objective was to effect change – change in the climate of opinion and so in the limits of the ‘possible’. In order to do this, it had to employ another of Alfred’s phrases, to ‘think the unthinkable’. It was not long before more than a few feathers began to be ruffled by that approach. Keith had decided that he would make a series of speeches over the summer and autumn of 1974 in which he would set out the alternative analysis of what had gone wrong and what should be done. The first of these, which was also intended to attract interest among potential fundraisers, was delivered at Upminster on Saturday 22 June. Alfred was the main draftsman. But as with all Keith’s speeches – except the fateful Edgbaston speech which I shall describe shortly – he circulated endless drafts for comment. All the observations received were carefully considered and the language pared down to remove every surplus word. Keith’s speeches always put rigour of analysis and exactitude of language above style, but taken as a whole they managed to be powerful rhetorical instruments as well. The Upminster speech infuriated Ted and the Party establishment because Keith lumped in together the mistakes of Conservative and Labour Governments, talking about the ‘thirty years of socialistic fashions’. He said bluntly that the public sector had been ‘draining away the wealth created by the private sector’, and challenged the value of public ‘investment’ in tourism and the expansion of the universities. He condemned the socialist vendetta against profits and noted the damage done by rent controls and council housing to labour mobility. Finally – and, in the eyes of the advocates of consensus, unforgivably – he talked about the ‘inherent contradictions [of the] … mixed economy’. It was a short speech but it had a mighty impact, not least because people knew that there was more to come. From Keith and Alfred I learned a great deal. I renewed my reading of the seminal works of liberal economics and conservative thought. I also regularly attended lunches at the Institute of Economic Affairs where Ralph Harris, Arthur Seldon, Alan Walters and others – in other words all those who had been right when we in government had gone so badly wrong – were busy marking out a new non-socialist economic and social path for Britain. I lunched from time to time with Professor Douglas Hague, the economist, who would later act as one of my unofficial economic advisers. At about this time I also made the acquaintance of a polished and amusing former television producer called Gordon Reece, who was advising the Party on television appearances and who had, it seemed to me, an almost uncanny insight into that medium. In fact, by the eve of the October 1974 general election I had made a significant number of contacts with those on whom I would come to rely heavily during my years as Party Leader. Keith delivered a further speech in Preston on Thursday 5 September. After some early inconclusive discussion in Shadow Cabinet of Keith’s various ideas, Ted had refused the general economic re-evaluation and discussion which Keith wanted. Keith decided that he was not prepared to be either stifled or ignored, and gave notice that he was intending to make a major speech on economic policy. Ted and most of our colleagues were desperate to prevent this. Geoffrey Howe and I were accordingly dispatched to try to persuade Keith not to go ahead, or at least to tone down what he intended to say. In any case, Keith showed me an early draft. It was one of the most powerful and persuasive analyses I have ever read. I made no suggestions for changes. Nor, as far as I know, did Geoffrey. The Preston speech must still be considered as one of the very few which have fundamentally affected a political generation’s way of thinking. It began with the sombre statement: ‘Inflation is threatening to destroy our society.’ At most times this would have seemed hyperbole, but at this time, with inflation at 17 per cent and rising, people were obsessed with its impact on their lives. That only made more explosive Keith’s admission that successive governments bore the responsibility for allowing it to get such a grip. He rejected the idea embraced by the Shadow Cabinet that inflation had been ‘imported’ and was the result of rocketing world prices. In fact, it was the result of excessive growth of the money supply. Explaining as he did that there was a time lag of ‘many months, or even as much as a year or two’ between loose monetary policy and rising inflation, he also implicitly – and accurately – blamed the Heath Government for the inflation which was now beginning to take off and which would rise to even more ruinous levels the following year. He also rejected the use of incomes policy as a means of containing it. The analysis was subtle, detailed and devastating. Keith then put his finger on the fundamental reason why we had embarked on our disastrous U-turns – fear of unemployment. It had been when registered unemployment rose to one million that the Heath Government’s nerve broke. But Keith explained that the unemployment statistics concealed as much as they revealed because they included ‘frictional unemployment’ – that is, people who were temporarily out of work moving between jobs – and a large number of people who were more or less unemployable for one reason or another. Similarly, there was a large amount of fraudulent unemployment, people who were drawing benefit while earning. In fact, noted Keith, the real problem had been labour shortages, not surpluses. He said that we should be prepared to admit that control of the money supply to beat inflation would temporarily risk some increase in unemployment. But if we wanted to bring down inflation (which itself destroyed jobs, though this was an argument to which Keith and I would subsequently have to return on many occasions), monetary growth had to be curbed. Keith did not argue that if we got the money supply right, everything else would be right. He specifically said that this was not his view. But if we did not achieve monetary control, we would never be able to achieve any of our other economic objectives. The Preston speech was, of course, highly embarrassing for Ted and the Party establishment. Some still hoped that a combination of dire warnings about socialism, hints of a National Government and our new policies on mortgages and the rates would see us squeak back into office – an illusion fostered by the fact that on the very day of Keith’s speech an opinion poll showed us two points ahead of Labour. The Preston speech blew this strategy out of the water, for it was clear that the kind of reassessment Keith was advocating was highly unlikely to occur if the Conservatives returned to government with Ted Heath as Prime Minister. Keith himself discreetly decided to spend more time at the CPS in Wilfred Street than at Westminster, where some of his colleagues were furious. For my part, I did not think that there was any serious chance of our winning the election. In the short term I was determined to fight as hard as I could for the policies it was now my responsibility to defend. In the longer term I was convinced that we must turn the Party around towards Keith’s way of thinking, preferably under Keith’s leadership. The Conservative Party manifesto was published early, on Tuesday 10 September – about a week before the election was announced – because of a leak to the press. I was taken by surprise by a question on it when I was opening the Chelsea Antiques Fair. The release of the manifesto in this way was not a good start to the campaign, particularly because we had so little new to say. I had never had so much exposure to the media as in this campaign. The Labour Party recognized that our housing and rates proposals were just about the only attractive ones in our manifesto, and consequently they set out to rubbish them as soon as possible. On Tuesday 24 September Tony Crosland described them as ‘a pack of lies’. (This was the same press conference at which Denis Healey made his notorious claim that inflation was running at 8.4 per cent, calculating the figure on a three-month basis when the annual rate was in fact 17 per cent.) I immediately issued a statement rebutting the accusation, and in order to keep the argument going, for it would highlight our policies, I said at Finchley that evening that the cut in mortgage rates would be among the first actions of a new Conservative Government. Then, in pursuit of the same goal, and having consulted Ted and Robert Carr, the Shadow Chancellor, I announced at the morning press conference at Central Office on Friday that the mortgage rate reduction would occur ‘by Christmas’ if we won. The main morning papers led with the story the following day – ‘Santa Thatcher’ – and it was generally said that we had taken the initiative for the first time during the campaign. On the following Monday I described this on a Party Election Broadcast as a ‘firm, unshakeable promise’. And the brute political fact was that, despite my reservations about the wisdom of the pledge, we would have had to honour it at almost any cost. It was at this point that the way in which I was presenting our housing and rates policies first began to run up against the general approach Ted wanted to take in the campaign. At his insistence I had made the policies I was offering as hard and specific as possible. But the manifesto, particularly in the opening section, deliberately conveyed the impression that the Conservatives might consider some kind of National Government and would therefore be flexible on the policies we were putting forward. At the Conservative press conference on Friday 2 October Ted stressed his willingness as Prime Minister to bring non-Conservatives into a government of ‘all the talents’. This tension between firm pledges and implied flexibilities was in danger of making nonsense of our campaign and dividing Shadow ministers. On Thursday I continued when campaigning in the London areas with the vigorous defence of our housing policies and combined this with attacks on ‘creeping socialism’ through municipalization. In the evening I was asked to come and see Ted at Wilton Street. His advisers had apparently been urging him to actually start talking about the possibility of a Coalition Government. Because I was known to be firmly against this for both strategic and tactical reasons, and because I was due to appear on the radio programme Any Questions in Southampton the following evening, I had been called in to have the new line spelt out to me. Ted said that he was now prepared to call for a Government of National Unity which, apparently, ‘the people’ wanted. I was extremely angry. He had himself, after all, insisted on making the housing and rates policies I had been advocating as specific as possible: now, at almost the end of the campaign, he was effectively discarding the pledges in the manifesto because that seemed to offer a better chance of his returning to Downing Street. Why he imagined that he himself would be a Coalition Government’s likely Leader quite escaped me. Ted at this time was a divisive figure, and although he had somehow convinced himself that he represented the ‘consensus’, this accorded with neither his record, nor his temperament, nor indeed other people’s estimation. For myself, I was not going to retreat from the policies which at his insistence I had been advocating. I went away highly disgruntled. The last few days of the campaign were dominated by all the awkward questions which talk of coalitions brings. But I stuck to my own brief, repeating the manifesto pledges sitting alongside Ted Heath at the last Conservative press conference on Tuesday 7 October. The general election result two days later suggested that in spite of the natural desire of electors to give the minority Labour Government a chance to govern effectively, there was still a good deal of distrust of them. Labour finished up with an overall majority of three, which was unlikely to see them through a full term. But the Conservative result – 277 seats compared with Labour’s 319 – though it might have been worse, was hardly any kind of endorsement for our approach. Though my majority fell a little in Finchley, I was thought to have had a good campaign. Talk of my even possibly becoming Leader of the Party, a subject which had already excited some journalists a great deal more than it convinced me, started to grow. I felt sorry for Ted Heath personally. He had his music and a small circle of friends, but politics was his life. That year, moreover, he had suffered a series of personal blows. His yacht, Morning Cloud, had sunk and his godson had been among those lost. The election defeat was a further blow. Nonetheless, I had no doubt that Ted now ought to go. He had lost three elections out of four. He himself could not change and he was too defensive of his own past record to see that a fundamental change of policies was needed. So my reluctance to confirm suggestions that I might myself become Leader had little to do with keeping Ted in his present position. It had everything to do with seeing Keith take over from him. Indeed, by the weekend I had virtually become Keith’s informal campaign manager. Accordingly I discouraged speculation about my own prospects. Then, on Saturday 19 October, Keith spoke at Edgbaston in Birmingham. It was not intended as part of the series of major speeches designed to alter the thinking of the Conservative Party, and perhaps for this reason had not been widely circulated among Keith’s friends and advisers: certainly, I had no inkling of the text. The Edgbaston speech is generally reckoned to have destroyed Keith’s leadership chances. It was the section containing the assertion that ‘the balance of our population, our human stock, is threatened’, and going on to lament the high and rising proportion of children being born to mothers ‘least fitted to bring children into the world’, having been ‘pregnant in adolescence in social classes 4 and 5’, which did the damage. Ironically, the most incendiary phrases came not from Keith’s own mouth, but from passages taken from an article by two left-wing sociologists published by the Child Poverty Action Group. This distinction, however, was lost upon the bishops, novelists, academics, socialist politicians and commentators who rushed to denounce Keith as a mad eugenicist. The speech was due to be given on Saturday night, and so the text was issued in advance with an embargo for media use. But the Evening Standard broke the embargo and launched a fierce attack on Keith, distorting what he said. I read its version on Waterloo Station and my heart sank. Afterwards Keith himself did not help his cause by constantly explaining, qualifying and apologizing. Doubtless as a result of all this, Ted felt a good deal more secure. He even told us in Shadow Cabinet the following Tuesday that the election campaign had been ‘quite a good containment exercise and that the mechanics had worked well’. A strange unreality pervaded our discussions. Everyone except Ted knew that the main political problem was the fact that he was still Leader. Ted was now locked in a bitter battle with the 1922 Executive. In reply to their demands for a leadership contest – and indeed for reform of the leadership election procedure – he disputed their legitimacy as representatives of the backbenches on the grounds that they had been elected during the previous Parliament and must themselves first face re-election by Tory MPs. Ted and his advisers hoped that they might be able to have his opponents thrown off the Executive and replaced by figures more amenable to him. As part of a somewhat belated attempt to win over backbenchers, Ted also proposed that extra front-bench spokesmen should be appointed from among them and that officers of the Parliamentary Committees might speak from the front bench on some occasions. It was also widely rumoured that there would shortly be a reshuffle of the Shadow Cabinet. Not for the first time, I found the press more optimistic about my prospects than I was. The Sunday Express and the Observer on 3 November ran stories that I was to be appointed Shadow Chancellor. This was a nice thought and I would have loved the job; but I regarded it as extremely unlikely that Ted would give it to me. That was more or less confirmed by stories in the Financial Times and the Daily Mirror on the Monday that said that I would get a top economic job, but not the Shadow Chancellorship. And so indeed it turned out. I was appointed Robert Carr’s deputy with special responsibility for the Finance Bill and also made a member of the Steering Committee. Some of my friends were annoyed that I had not received a more important portfolio. But I knew from the years when I worked under Iain Macleod on the Finance Bill that this was a position in which I could make the most of my talents. What neither Ted nor I knew was just how important that would be over the next three months. The reshuffle as a whole demonstrated something of the weakness of Ted’s political standing. Edward du Cann refused to join the Shadow Cabinet, which was therefore no more attractive to the right of the Party, some of whom at least Ted needed to win over. Tim Raison and Nicholas Scott who did come in were more or less on the left and, though able, not people who carried great political weight. The re-election of all the members of the 1922 Executive, including Edward du Cann, on the day of the reshuffle – Thursday 7 November – was bad news for Ted. A leadership contest could no longer be avoided. He wrote to Edward saying that he was now willing to discuss changes to the procedure for electing the Party Leader. From now on it was probably in Ted’s interest to have the election over as soon as possible, before any alternative candidate could put together an effective campaign. At this time I started to attend the Economic Dining Group which Nick Ridley had formed in 1972 and which largely consisted of sound money men like John Biffen, Jock Bruce-Gardyne, John Nott and others. Above all, I buried myself in the details of my new brief. It was a challenging time to take it up, for on Tuesday 12 November Denis Healey introduced one of his quarterly budgets. It was a panic reaction to the rapidly growing problems of industry and consisted of cuts in business taxation to the tune of ?775 million (?495 million of new business taxes having been imposed only six months before) and some curbs on subsidies to nationalized industries. Ted’s reply – in which, against the background of an audible gasp from Tory backbenchers, he criticized the Chancellor for allowing nationalized industry prices to rise towards market levels – did him no good at all. My chance came the following Thursday when I spoke for the Opposition in the Budget Debate. I had done my homework and I set about contrasting the Labour Government’s past statements with its present actions. Some of the speech was quite technical and detailed, as it had to be. But it was my answers to the interruptions that had the backbenchers roaring support. I was directly answering Harold Lever (without whom Labour would have been still more economically inept) when he interrupted early in my speech to put me right on views I had attributed to him. Amid a good deal of merriment, not least from Harold Lever himself, a shrewd businessman from a wealthy family, I replied: ‘I always felt that I could never rival him [Lever] at the Treasury because there are four ways of acquiring money. To make it. To earn it. To marry it. And to borrow it. He seems to have experience of all four.’ At another point I was interrupted by a pompously irate Denis Healey when I quoted the Sunday Telegraph which reported him as saying: ‘I never save. If I get any money I go out and buy something for the house.’ Denis Healey was most indignant, so I was pleased to concede the point, saying (in reference to the fact that like other socialist politicians he had his own country house): ‘I am delighted that we have got on record the fact that the Chancellor is a jolly good saver. I know that he believes in buying houses in good Tory areas.’ No one has ever claimed that House of Commons repartee must be subtle in order to be effective. This performance boosted the shaky morale of the Parliamentary Party and with it my reputation. Meanwhile, Alec Douglas-Home, now returned to the Lords as Lord Home, had agreed to chair a review of the procedure for the leadership election. On Wednesday 20 November I received a note from Geoffrey Finsberg, a neighbouring MP and friend, which said: ‘If you contest the leadership you will almost certainly win – for my part I hope you will stand and I will do all I can to help.’ But I still could not see any likelihood of this happening. It seemed to me that for all of the brouhaha caused by his Edgbaston speech Keith must be our candidate. The following afternoon I was working in my room in the House, briefing myself on the Finance Bill, when the telephone rang. It was Keith to check I was there because he had something he wanted to come along and tell me. As soon as he entered, I could see it was serious. He told me: ‘I am sorry, I just can’t run. Ever since I made that speech the press have been outside the house. They have been merciless. Helen [his wife] can’t take it and I have decided that I just can’t stand.’ His mind was quite made up. I was on the edge of despair. We just could not abandon the Party and the country to Ted’s brand of politics. I heard myself saying: ‘Look, Keith, if you’re not going to stand, I will, because someone who represents our viewpoint has to stand.’ There was nothing more to say. My mind was already a whirl. I had no idea of my chances. I knew nothing about leadership campaigns. I just tried to put the whole thing to the back of my mind for the moment and concentrate on the Finance Bill. Somehow or other the news got out and I started to receive telephone calls and notes of support from MP friends. Late that night I went back to Flood Street and told Denis of my intention. ‘You must be out of your mind,’ he said. ‘You haven’t got a hope.’ He had a point. But I never had any doubt that he would support me all the way. The following day Fergus Montgomery, my PPS, telephoned me, and I told him that Keith was not going to stand but that I would. I wondered how best to break the news to Ted. Fergus thought I should see him personally. I arranged to see Ted on Monday 25 November. He was at his desk in his room at the House. I need not have worried about hurting his feelings. I went in and said: ‘I must tell you that I have decided to stand for the leadership.’ He looked at me coldly, turned his back, shrugged his shoulders and said: ‘If you must.’ I slipped out of the room. Monday was, therefore, the first day I had to face the press as a declared contender for the Tory leadership. I was glad to be able to rely on the help and advice of Gordon Reece, who had now become a friend and who sat in on some of my early press interviews, which went quite well. It was, of course, still the fact that I was a woman that was the main topic of interest. Ted’s coterie and, I believe, at least one Central Office figure had, in any case, alighted on something which they hoped would destroy me as effectively as had happened to Keith. In the interview I had given to Pre-Retirement Choice more than two months before I had given what I considered to be practical advice to elderly people trying to make ends meet in circumstances where food prices were rising sharply. I said that it made sense to stock up on tinned food. This was precisely the sort of advice I myself had been given as a girl. Any good housewife shops around and buys several items at a time when prices are low, rather than dashing out at the last minute to buy the same thing at a greater cost. To my horror the press on Wednesday 27 November was full of stories of my ‘hoarding’ food. Someone had clearly used this obscure interview in order to portray me as mean, selfish and above all ‘bourgeois’. In its way it was cleverly done. It allowed the desired caricature to be brought out to the full. It played to the snobbery of the Conservative Party, because the unspoken implication was that this was all that could be expected of a grocer’s daughter. It reminded the public of all that had been said and written about me as the ‘milk snatcher’ at Education. A veritable circus of indignation was now staged. Pressure groups were prompted to complain. A deputation of housewives was said to be travelling from Birmingham to urge me to give them the tins. Food chemists gave their views about the consequences of keeping tinned food too long in the larder. Martin Redmayne, the former Chief Whip, reliable Party establishment figure and now Deputy Chairman of Harrods, appeared on television to say that ‘any sort of inducement to panic buying was … against the public interest’ – although Lord Redmayne’s larder probably contained something more enticing than a few tins of salmon and corned beef. There was nothing for it but to invite the cameramen in and have them check the contents of my Flood Street larder and cupboards. This may have convinced some of the Tory hierarchy that my and my family’s tastes and standards were not at all what should be expected from someone who aspired to lead their party. But it certainly showed that the ‘hoarding’ allegation was malicious nonsense. Finally, in order to keep the dying story alive my opponents went too far. On Friday 29 November I was in John Cope’s South Gloucestershire constituency when my secretary, Alison Ward, telephoned to say that the radio was now broadcasting that I had been seen in a shop on the Finchley Road buying up large quantities of sugar. (There was a sugar shortage at the time.) Alison had already checked and discovered that in fact no such shop existed. It was a straightforward lie. A firm denial prevented its circulation in the press and marked the effective end of this surreal campaign. At the time, however, I was bitterly upset by it. Sometimes I was near to tears. Sometimes I was shaking with anger. But as I told Bill Shelton, the MP for Streatham and a friend: ‘I saw how they destroyed Keith. Well, they’re not going to destroy me.’ What had happened made me all the more determined to throw my hat into the ring. But there was also much talk of Edward du Cann’s putting himself forward as a candidate. As Chairman of the 1922 Committee – and a man – he might reasonably be expected to command more support than me. One of Edward du Cann’s chief supporters, Airey Neave, the MP for Abingdon and a colleague of Edward’s on the 1922 Executive, was someone I knew quite well. As barristers we had shared the same Chambers, and he had been a neighbour at Westminster Gardens. Airey was a man of contrasts. His manner was quiet yet entirely self-assured. As a writer and a war hero who escaped from Colditz there was an air of romance about him. He had seen much more of the world than most MPs, and suffered a good deal too. He had the benefit, in Diana, of a marvellous political wife. He had briefly been a junior minister in the late 1950s but had to resign because of ill-health, and I understand Ted had unfeelingly told him that that was the end of his career. It was difficult to pin down Airey’s politics. I did not consider him, ideologically, a man of the right. He probably did not look at the world in those terms. We got on well and I was conscious of mutual respect, but we were not yet the close friends we were to become. Airey had come to see me shortly after my decision to stand was known. He hoped to persuade Edward du Cann to stand, but Edward himself remained undecided. Excluded by Ted from high office, he had devoted himself to a City career he was now reluctant to give up. A new factor that weakened Ted and strengthened his potential rivals was the announcement of the Home Committee’s conclusions on Tuesday 7 December. There would be annual elections for the Tory Leader, challengers needed only a proposer and a seconder to put themselves forward, and the majority required to win on the first ballot was significantly increased to 50 per cent plus 15 per cent of those eligible to vote. It was in effect an incentive to challengers, since it meant that a Leader in difficulties needed to retain the confidence of a super-majority of those voting. Still, Christmas at Lamberhurst that year was less festive than on some other occasions. On Wednesday 15 January Edward du Cann made it publicly known that he would not run for the leadership. The way was therefore open for me. It was now vitally necessary to have an effective campaign team. That same afternoon I was leading for the Opposition on the Committee Stage of the Finance Bill. Fergus had just learned that he would have to go on a parliamentary visit to South Africa, though he still thought (wrongly as it turned out) that he would be back in time for the leadership first ballot. He therefore asked Bill Shelton, when they met in the Division Lobby, to run my campaign in his absence, and Bill agreed. I was delighted when Bill told me, for I knew he was loyal and would be a skilful campaigner. Then, as I learned later, in the course of a subsequent vote Airey approached Bill and said: ‘You know that I have been running Edward du Cann’s campaign? Edward is withdrawing. If we could come to some agreement I will bring Edward’s troops behind Margaret.’ In fact, the ‘agreement’ simply consisted of Airey taking over the running of my campaign with Bill assisting him. When I began to make suggestions to Airey about people to contact, he told me firmly not to bother about any of that, to leave it to him and to concentrate on my work on the Finance Bill. This was good advice, not least because both in the upstairs Committee Room and on the floor of the Chamber I had every opportunity to show my paces. It was, after all, the members of the Parliamentary Conservative Party who would ultimately make the decision about the Conservative leadership, and they were just as likely to be impressed by what I said in debate as by anything else. The campaign team began as a small group of about half a dozen, though it swelled rapidly and by the second ballot had become almost too large, consisting of as many as forty or fifty. Canvassing was done with great precision, and MPs might be approached several times by different people in order to verify their allegiances. Airey and his colleagues knew that there was no short cut to this process, and day after day it went on, with Bill Shelton crossing off names and keeping the tally. Meanwhile, dealings with the media were suddenly becoming important. In these Gordon Reece was invaluable. In fact, the attitude towards my candidature was tangibly changing. I spoke on Tuesday 21 January to a lunch in St Stephen’s Tavern of the Guinea Club, consisting of leading national and provincial newspaper journalists. By this time as a result of the soundings Airey had taken I was actually beginning to feel that I was in with a chance. I said to them wryly at one point: ‘You know, I really think you should begin to take me seriously.’ By the weekend articles had begun to appear reappraising my campaign in a different light. Nor were my prospects harmed by another exchange in the Commons the following day with the ever-obliging Denis Healey. In bitter but obscure vein he described me as the ‘La Pasionaria of privilege’. I jotted down a reply and delivered it a few moments later with relish: ‘Some Chancellors are microeconomic. Some Chancellors are fiscal. This one is just plain cheap.’ The Tory benches loved it. With just a week to go, Airey, Keith and Bill came round to Flood Street on Sunday 26 January to discuss the latest position. The number of pledges – mine at around 120 and Ted’s less than eighty – looked far too optimistic. People would need to be revisited and their intentions re-examined. Presumably the Heath campaign, in which Peter Walker and Ted’s PPSs Tim Kitson and Ken Baker were the main figures, was receiving equally or even more optimistic information; but they made the mistake of believing it. In marked contrast to Airey’s public demeanour, they were loudly predicting a large victory on the first ballot. At Flood Street it was agreed that I should address my core campaigners in Committee Room 13 on Monday night. I could not tell them anything about campaigning. They had forgotten far more about political tactics and indeed political skulduggery than I would ever know. So instead I spoke and answered questions on my vision of a Conservative society from 10.30 till midnight. It was marvellous to be able to speak from the heart about what I believed, and to feel that those crucial to my cause were listening. The Heath camp now changed the direction of their campaign. Ridicule had failed. Instead, the accusation became that the sort of Conservatism I represented might appeal to the middle-class rank and file supporters of the Party, particularly in the South, but would never win over the uncommitted. My article in the Daily Telegraph, which appeared on Thursday 30 January, took this head-on: I was attacked [as Education Secretary] for fighting a rearguard action in defence of ‘middle-class interests’. The same accusation is levelled at me now, when I am leading Conservative opposition to the socialist Capital Transfer Tax proposals. Well, if ‘middle-class values’ include the encouragement of variety and individual choice, the provision of fair incentives and rewards for skill and hard work, the maintenance of effective barriers against the excessive power of the state and a belief in the wide distribution of individual private property, then they are certainly what I am trying to defend … This theme – the return to fundamental Conservative principles and the defence of middle-class values – was enormously popular in the Party. I repeated it when speaking to my Constituency Association the following day. I rejected the idea that my candidature was representative of a faction. I emphasized that I was speaking up for all those who felt let down by recent Conservative Governments. I was also prepared to accept my share of the blame for what had gone wrong under Ted. But [I added] I hope I have learned something from the failures and mistakes of the past and can help to plan constructively for the future … There is a widespread feeling in the country that the Conservative Party has not defended [Conservative] ideals explicitly and toughly enough, so that Britain is set on a course towards inevitable socialist mediocrity. That course must not only be halted, it must be reversed. I knew from my talks with Conservative MPs that there were many contradictory factors which would influence their votes. Some would support Ted simply because he was the Leader in situ. Many would not dare go against him because, even after two successive election defeats, he inspired fear that there would be no forgiveness for mutiny. Moreover, many thought that I was inexperienced – and as I had publicly admitted, there was more than a little truth in that. There was also some suspicion of me as too doctrinaire and insensitive. And then, of course, there was the rather obvious fact that I was a woman. As a result of these conflicting considerations, many MPs were undecided. They wanted to be able to talk to me, to find out what I was like and where I stood. Airey and his team would send these Members along to see me in the room of Robin Cooke – one of our team – in the House where, singly or in small groups, over a glass of claret or a cup of tea, I would try to answer their points as best I could. Ted, by contrast, preferred lunch parties of MPs where, I suspect, there was not much straight talking – at least not from the guests. Doubtless his campaign team marked them down as supporters, which many were not. The press on Monday 3 February was full of the fact that the National Union of the Party had reported that 70 per cent of Constituency Associations favoured Ted Heath and that the great majority of Conservative supporters agreed with them. We were not surprised by this. The Conservative Associations, nudged by Central Office, were understandably loyal to the existing Leader and the opinion poll results reflected the fact that I was a relatively unknown quantity outside the House of Commons. But obviously it did not help, and it certainly boosted confidence in the Heath camp. Indeed, there was evidence of a late surge of support for Ted among MPs. Airey’s and Bill’s final canvass returns suggested that I was neck and neck with Ted, with the third candidate, the gallant and traditionalist Hugh Fraser, picking up a few right-wing misogynist votes. But I was told that I came over quite well on the World in Action television programme that night. On Tuesday 4 February, the day of the first ballot, I was up early to prepare Denis’s breakfast and see him off to work before driving from Flood Street to the House of Commons, exhibiting what I hoped was a confident smile and a few friendly words for the press gathered outside. For me it was another day on the Finance Bill Committee, while in another House of Commons Committee Room the voting for the leadership took place. The ballot was due to close at 3.30. I went up to Airey Neave’s room to await the result. Bill Shelton represented me at the count and Tim Kitson represented Ted. I believe that even after they had heard the sombre news of the outcome of that day’s voting the Heath camp had hoped that the proxy votes, counted last, would see Ted through. But most of the proxies also went to me. I was trying to concentrate on anything other than the future when the door opened and Airey came in. Softly, but with a twinkle in his eye, he told me: ‘It’s good news. You’re ahead in the poll. You’ve got 130 votes to Ted’s 119.’ Hugh Fraser had sixteen. I could barely believe it. Although I was thirty-one votes short of the required margin to win outright on the first ballot – 50 per cent plus a lead of 15 per cent of those eligible to vote – and therefore there would have to be a second round, I was decisively ahead. I had no doubt that if I had failed against Ted that would have been the end of me in politics. As it was, I might be Leader. Who knows? I might even be Prime Minister. My own surprise at the result was as nothing compared to the shattering blow it had delivered to the Conservative establishment. I felt no sympathy for them. They had fought me unscrupulously all the way. But I did feel sorry for Ted, who quickly announced his decision to resign as Leader and not to contest the second ballot. Willie Whitelaw now put his name forward and immediately became the favourite. I myself thought that Willie had a very good chance of winning; and though I could not seriously imagine him changing the direction of the Party as I wished, it did please me to think that between us there would be none of the bitterness which had soured my relations with Ted. Jim Prior, John Peyton and Geoffrey Howe also entered the contest. I was a little worried about Geoffrey’s candidature because he held similar views to mine and might split the right-wing vote, which in a close contest could be crucial. Hugh Fraser withdrew and urged his supporters to vote for Willie. In fact, without knowing it, I had what the Americans call ‘momentum’. I had always reckoned that a substantial number of those voting for me in the first round would only do so as a tactical way of removing Ted and putting in someone more acceptable but still close to his way of thinking, such as Willie. But in fact my support actually hardened. Certainly, many people in the Party at Westminster and outside it were now desperately anxious to bring the whole process to a swift end. The very circumstances which had counted against me in the first ballot now assisted me as the leading candidate in the second. The Daily Telegraph, an important barometer of Tory grassroots feeling, swung decisively onto my side. Willie and I both attended the Young Conservative Conference at Eastbourne on Saturday 8 February. One woman on the platform was dressed in funereal black and glowering. I was rather concerned and asked her whether anything was wrong. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I’m in mourning for Mr Heath.’ There were few other mourners present. Willie and I were photographed as we kissed for the cameras. I remarked: ‘Willie and I have been friends for years. I’ve done that to Willie many times and he to me. It was not that difficult for him to do it, I think.’ Willie replied: ‘I’ve kissed her often. But we have not done it on a pavement outside a hotel in Eastbourne before.’ It was all good fun and the atmosphere lightened. I used my own speech to the Conference to give a full-blooded rendering of my views. I said: You can get your economic policies right, and still have the kind of society none of us would wish. I believe we should judge people on merit and not on background. I believe the person who is prepared to work hardest should get the greatest rewards and keep them after tax. That we should back the workers and not the shirkers: that it is not only permissible but praiseworthy to want to benefit your own family by your own efforts. Conservatives had not heard this sort of message for many years, and it went down well. On Tuesday the second ballot took place. Again I waited nervously in Airey’s room. And again it was Airey who came to give me the news. He smiled and said: ‘You are now Leader of the Opposition.’ I had obtained 146 votes to Willie’s seventy-nine. The other candidates were out of the picture.* (#ulink_dba0ea8b-8e66-5dee-82c5-754436b14e56) I now had to hurry down to the Grand Committee Room, off Westminster Hall, where the press were waiting. I told them: ‘To me it is like a dream that the next name in the lists after Harold Macmillan, Sir Alec Douglas-Home, Edward Heath, is Margaret Thatcher. Each has brought his own style of leadership and stamp of greatness to his task. I shall take on the work with humility and dedication.’ Then it was off for the Leader’s traditional first visit to Conservative Central Office. On entering, I could not help remembering how hard some of the people there had worked to stop my becoming Leader. Then I was driven back to Bill Shelton’s house in Pimlico for a celebration with my friends. Denis was there. I had tried to telephone the news through to him myself, but somehow the Press Association beat me to it. Mark learned the news while he was at work as a trainee accountant. As for Carol, she could not be disturbed until she had finished the solicitors’ exam she was taking that afternoon. Only much later that night, after I had returned from dinner with the Chief Whip, Humphrey Atkins, could all of the family celebrate the good news. It was wonderful to be together. I suspect that they knew, as I did, that from this moment on our lives would never be quite the same again. Nor would the Conservative Party. * (#ulink_2947bccc-2efd-5057-bb24-431b601429cc) Jim Prior and Geoffrey Howe had nineteen votes each and John Peyton eleven. CHAPTER NINE (#ulink_ec29a07c-d1bf-5db9-86e7-b6419b9b3efe) A Bumpy Ride (#ulink_ec29a07c-d1bf-5db9-86e7-b6419b9b3efe) Leader of the Opposition February 1975–March 1977 MY FIRST TASK was to compose the Shadow Cabinet. I met Humphrey Atkins, the Chief Whip, in the Leader of the Opposition’s room in the House of Commons where we had an excellent dinner prepared by his wife Maggie. Humphrey Atkins had, of course, been Ted’s appointment, and occupying the position he did had not declared his support for one side or the other in the leadership contest. But he was amiable and amenable and, as Chief Whip, was possessed of the unique fund of knowledge and gossip so essential when making high political appointments. I told Humphrey that although there were some people, like Keith Joseph and Airey Neave, to whom I felt a special obligation, I did not want to make a clean sweep of the existing team. After the bitterness of the contest with Ted there had to be sufficient continuity to keep the Party together. The more we talked, however, the clearer it became to both of us that all the other dispositions depended upon Ted. If he wished to serve under my leadership – and I had publicly committed myself to offering him the opportunity during the leadership campaign – he might decide that he wanted one of the three main Shadow posts, or possibly a post without portfolio. I privately hoped that he would not take up my offer at all. Although none of us knew how enduring his sense of injury would be, it was already hard to imagine Ted behaving like Alec Douglas-Home and fitting in as a loyal and distinguished member of his successor’s team. In any case, the newspapers were saying that Ted had no intention of serving. But I had to know for myself. Having sounded Ted out and received the impression that the speculation about his intentions was accurate, Humphrey reported back to me. But I had said I would make the offer, and the following morning I was driven to Ted’s house in Wilton Street to do it in person. Tim Kitson, Ted’s PPS, showed me into the downstairs study. Ted was sitting at his desk. He did not get up; and I sat down without waiting to be asked. There was no point in pleasantries. I could guess what he thought about recent events and about me. Without offering a specific post, I asked him whether he would join the Shadow Cabinet. He said no, he would stay on the backbenches. The interview was effectively at an end. I knew that it must be painful and probably humiliating for him. But I also knew that if I walked out of Wilton Street past the assembled press after just a few minutes, the lunchtime news would be dominated by stories of snubs and splits. So I spun things out a little by asking his views about Labour’s promised referendum on Britain’s continuing membership of the European Economic Community and, in particular, whether he would lead the Conservative campaign. Again, he said no. I had done all I decently could to keep Ted within the fold and to ensure the meeting did not end too abruptly. But only five minutes or so had elapsed when I left Ted’s study. So Tim Kitson (who was equally aware of the risk of bad publicity) and I talked inconsequentially for another quarter of an hour to fill out the time before I left the house. Respecting, as I thought, Ted’s confidence, I did not even tell Airey Neave, who was setting up my office, the details of what had transpired. I made it public later only in order to set the record straight. I returned to the House of Commons and told Humphrey Atkins that Ted would indeed not be in the Shadow Cabinet. Next, Robert Carr, who had been acting Leader of the Party during the leadership campaign, wanted to see me. He had, of course, been close to Ted and I could well understand if he did not relish the prospect of serving under me. In fact, when I saw him he made it quite clear that the only post he would accept was that of Shadow Foreign Secretary. I said that I could not promise him that. Not only was I unwilling to have my hands tied before I had properly considered the shape of the team as a whole: I was not convinced that Robert Carr would have a place in it. By contrast, Willie Whitelaw definitely had. He had demonstrated his popularity in the leadership election. He was immensely experienced and his presence would be a reassuring guarantee to many on the backbenches that evolution rather than revolution was the order of the day. Perhaps both of us already sensed that we could form a strong political partnership, our strengths and weaknesses complementing one another’s. Although I could not as yet offer him a particular portfolio, I asked Willie to be Deputy Leader of the Party, and he accepted. But his loyalty was not contingent on that; he was loyal from the first. That evening I chaired the Shadow Cabinet for the first time. The meeting had a slightly unreal atmosphere since none of those present had yet been formally reappointed, and some would not be. Quintin Hailsham congratulated me on the Shadow Cabinet’s behalf and pledged their loyalty and co-operation. I felt that he at least probably meant it. I said that Willie had agreed to be Deputy Leader and that Ted had turned down my offer of a place in the Shadow Cabinet. Willie then said that he had accepted the Deputy Leadership at once and looked forward to serving in this capacity. The formalities thus indicated a kind of armed truce between the competing views and personalities. The following evening, I made my first appearance as Leader at the 1922 Committee meeting. My relations with the wider Parliamentary Party were much easier than with the Shadow Cabinet. As I entered, everyone rose to their feet. Edward du Cann presented me with an unsigned Valentine card (a day early) which would join the other Valentines and roses that accumulated at Flood Street. In the next few days my time was taken up in meeting journalists, discussing arrangements for my office and fulfilling long-standing constituency engagements. There were few opportunities to sit down with Humphrey and Willie to discuss Shadow Cabinet membership. In any case, I wanted the weekend to make my final decisions. But the delay encouraged speculation. According to the press a battle was under way to prevent Keith Joseph becoming Shadow Chancellor. In fact, he did not ask for the position nor did I offer it. Willie was the first to come in. I gave him a roving brief which included the issue of devolution – which already spelt political difficulties that he, as both a former Chief Whip and a Scot representing an English seat, might be able to tackle. Then I saw Keith Joseph, whom I asked to continue with his Shadow Cabinet responsibility for policy and research. In a sense, Willie and Keith were the two key figures, one providing the political brawn and the other the policy-making brains of the team. I also felt that Keith must continue his intellectual crusade from the Centre for Policy Studies for wider understanding and acceptance of free enterprise economics. I was under no illusion that my victory in the leadership election represented a wholesale conversion. My next visitor was Reggie Maudling. I suspect that, although he had made it clear publicly that he was willing to serve, he was as surprised as the press when I made him Shadow Foreign Secretary. Though widely praised at the time, this was not a good appointment. Still less of a soulmate was Ian Gilmour. He had been a strong partisan of Ted, and he lacked the support or standing which might have made him politically costly to dispense with. But I valued his intelligence. I felt that he could make a useful contribution as long as he was kept out of an economic post, to which neither his training nor his aptitudes suited him. I asked him to be Shadow Home Secretary. Michael Heseltine, who now came in to see me, had a much more flamboyant personality than Ian’s, although they shared many of the same views. I asked him to stay on as Shadow Industry Secretary. It was a portfolio which gave full scope to his talent for Opposition, since it fell to him to fight the Labour Government’s main nationalization proposals. What I did not fully grasp at this time was how ideologically committed he was to an interventionist approach in industry which I could not accept. I asked Peter Carrington to stay on as Leader of the House of Lords. Again, I had no illusions about Peter’s position in the Tory Party’s political spectrum: he was not of my way of thinking. He had, of course, been in Ted’s inner circle making the political decisions about the miners’ strike and the February 1974 election. But since we lost office he had proved an extremely effective Opposition Leader in the Upper House, and as a former Defence Minister and an international businessman he had wide experience of foreign affairs. Admittedly, he was likely in Shadow Cabinet to be on the opposite side to me on economic policy. But he never allowed economic disagreements to get in the way of his more general responsibilities. He brought style, experience, wit and – politically incorrect as the thought may be – a touch of class. Geoffrey Howe had his own droll wit. But in most other ways he was a very different politician from my other appointments that day. I would in any case have felt obliged to give Geoffrey a Shadow Cabinet post, simply because he was a candidate against me and I wished to unify the Party as much as possible. But it was a calculated gamble to make him Shadow Chancellor. Geoffrey was to have a difficult time both trying to resolve our divisions on economic policy and in defending our case in the House. I would be put under a good deal of pressure to remove him and find someone better able to take on the Chancellor, Denis Healey. But I knew that Geoffrey’s difficulties, like mine, were more the result of circumstances than lack of native talent. By the time our period in Opposition was approaching its end he had become indispensable. After careful thought I decided to keep Jim Prior as Shadow Employment Secretary. This was rightly taken as a signal that I had no immediate plans for a fundamental reform of trade union law. It was Jim’s strong conviction that our aim should be to establish both that we accepted the existing trade union law, with perhaps a few alterations, and that we saw the union leaders as people with whom we could deal. Such an approach made more sense at the beginning of the period in Opposition than at the end of it. Airey Neave had already privately told me that the only portfolio he wanted was that of Shadow Northern Ireland Secretary. His intelligence contacts, proven physical courage and shrewdness amply qualified him for this testing and largely thankless task. The other appointments were less strategically crucial. Two offers of Shadow Cabinet posts were turned down – one to John Biffen, who would in fact join later, and the other to Edward du Cann, whose early campaign team had provided the nucleus of mine. Edward stayed on as Chairman of the 1922 Committee, which was probably far more useful to me. The next day (Tuesday) I had some less pleasant business to transact. At 10.30 Peter Walker came in. There was no personal warmth between us. He had been one of the most effective members of Ted’s inner circle, and he opposed with vigour and eloquence the approach which Keith and I were committed to adopt. He clearly had to go. I confirmed in a discussion with Geoffrey Rippon, who now came into my room, that he did not wish to serve: that suited us both. I then saw Nicholas Scott, who had shadowed Housing. He too was on the left of the Party. The conversation was made slightly easier by the fact that I had absorbed the Housing portfolio into the wider Environment one. His job had been shot from under him. I left to last the interview with Robert Carr. I told him that I had given the Shadow Foreign Secretary post to Reggie Maudling, which he presumably knew already. Perhaps he had just bid too high, or perhaps he might have been persuaded to stay in another capacity. But I was not keen to have another strong opponent in any position on the team. The published Shadow Cabinet list (to which Peter Thorneycroft as Party Chairman and Angus Maude as Chairman of the Conservative Research Department would later be added) was rightly seen as a compromise. As such, it annoyed the left of the Party who disliked my dropping of Robert Carr, Peter Walker and Nicholas Scott: it also disappointed the right who worried about Reggie Maudling’s return, the fact that Geoffrey and not Keith was Shadow Chancellor and the lack of any new right-wing faces from the backbenches. In fact, given the fragility as yet of my position and the need to express a balance of opinion in the Shadow Cabinet to bring the Party together, it was a relatively successful operation. It created a Treasury team that shared my and Keith’s views on the free market economy, shifted the balance of opinion within the Shadow Cabinet as a whole somewhat in my direction and yet gave grounds for loyalty to those I had retained from Ted’s regime. I felt I could expect support (within limits) from such a team, but I knew I could not assume agreement – even on basic principles. Airey Neave and I decided that there would have to be changes at Conservative Central Office. Constitutionally, Central Office is the Leader of the Party’s office: events during the leadership campaign had convinced me that it would be very difficult for some of those there to act in that capacity under me. At Central Office I wanted as Chairman an effective administrator, one preferably with business connections, who would be loyal to me. I had always admired Peter Thorneycroft and in retrospect I thought that his courageous resignation on the issue of public expenditure in 1958 had signalled a wrong turning for the post-war Conservative Party. As part of that older generation which had been leading the Party when I first entered Parliament, and as chairman of several large companies, Peter seemed to me to fit the bill. But how to persuade him? It turned out that Willie Whitelaw was related to him, and Willie persuaded him to take the job. It would have taxed the energy of a much younger man, for the Party Chairman has to keep up morale even in the lowest periods, of which there would be several. Peter had the added problem that at this stage most of the Party in the country accepted my leadership only on sufferance. This would gradually change after the 1975 Party Conference. But it took a good deal longer – and some painful and controversial personnel changes – before I felt that the leading figures at Central Office had any real commitment to me. Peter gradually replaced them with loyalists; I never enquired how. Alistair McAlpine’s arrival as Party Treasurer certainly helped. Although a staunch Tory from a family of Tories, Alistair had to turn himself into something of a politician overnight. I told him that he would have to give up his German Mercedes for a British Jaguar and he immediately complied. But I had not prepared him for the host of minor but irritating examples of obstructive behaviour which confronted him at Central Office, nor for the great difficulties he would encounter in trying to persuade businessmen that in spite of the years of Heathite corporatism we were still a free enterprise Party worth supporting. Some people expected me to make even more substantial changes at the Conservative Research Department. The CRD was in theory a department of Central Office, but largely because of its geographical separateness (in Old Queen Street) and its intellectually distinguished past, it had a specially important role, particularly in Opposition. In a sense, the Centre for Policy Studies had been set up as an alternative to the Research Department. Now that I was Leader, however, the CRD and the CPS would have to work together. The Director of the Research Department, Chris Patten, I knew to be on the left of the Party. Much bitterness and rivalry had built up between the CRD and the CPS. In the eyes of many on the right it was precisely the consensus-oriented, generalist approach epitomized by the CRD which had left us directionless and – in the words of Keith Joseph – ‘stranded on the middle ground’. I decided to replace Ian Gilmour with Angus Maude as Chairman of the Research Department, who would work with Keith on policy, but leave Chris Patten as Director and Adam Ridley, Ted’s former economic adviser, as his deputy. These were good decisions. Meanwhile, Airey Neave and I had to assemble a small personal staff who would run my office. A flood of letters followed my becoming Leader, sometimes 800 a day. Girls would come across from Central Office to help sort out the post, but usually this was the task of my four secretaries, who sat on the floor in the main room opening envelopes and categorizing the letters. They did their best, but it was hopelessly unsystematic. Then Alistair McAlpine suggested that I ask David Wolfson to take charge of the correspondence section. Alistair thought that if David, as the man responsible for the mail-order section of Great Universal Stores, could not bring order out of this chaos no one could. In fact, both in Opposition and then at 10 Downing Street, David’s talents were put to a good deal wider use than sorting the mail: he gave insights into what business was thinking, provided important contacts and proved particularly adept at smoothing ruffled political feathers. But I also needed a full-time head of my office, who had to be industrious, dependable and, with the number of speeches, articles and letters to draft, above all literate. It was my old friend and colleague, providentially translated to the editorship of the Daily Telegraph, Bill Deedes who suggested Richard Ryder, then working on Peterborough, the Telegraph’s respectable gossip column. A month after Richard’s arrival Gordon Reece, on secondment from EMI for a year, joined my full-time staff to help in dealing with the press and much else. Gordon was a godsend. An ebullient former TV producer whose good humour never failed, he was able to jolly me along to accept things I would have rejected from other people. His view was that in getting my message across we must not concentrate simply on heavyweight newspapers, The Times and the Daily Telegraph, but be just as concerned about the mid-market populars, the Daily Mail and the Daily Express and – the real revolution – about the Sun and the News of the World. Moreover, he believed that even newspapers which supported the Labour Party in their editorial line would be prepared to give us fair treatment if we made a real attempt to provide them with interesting copy. He was right on both counts. The Sun and the News of the World were crucial in communicating Conservative values to traditionally non-Conservative voters. The left-wing Sunday Mirror also gave me fair and full coverage, however critical the comments. Gordon regularly talked to the editors. But he also persuaded me that the person they really wanted to see and hear from was me. So, whatever the other demands on my diary, when Gordon said that we must have lunch with such-and-such an editor, that was the priority. Gordon also performed another invaluable service. Every politician has to decide how much he or she is prepared to change manner and appearance for the sake of the media. It may sound grittily honourable to refuse to make any concessions, but such an attitude in a public figure is most likely to betray a lack of seriousness about winning power or even, paradoxically, the pride that apes humility. When Gordon suggested some changes in my style of hair and clothes in order to make a better impression, he was calling upon his experience in television. ‘Avoid lots of jewellery near the face. Edges look good on television. Watch out for background colours which clash with your outfit.’ It was quite an education. There was also the matter of my voice. In the House of Commons one has to speak over the din to get a hearing. This is more difficult the higher the pitch of one’s voice, because in increasing its volume one automatically goes up the register. This poses an obvious problem for most women. Somehow one has to learn to project the voice without shrieking. Even outside the House, when addressing an audience my voice was naturally high-pitched, which can easily become grating and I had deliberately tried to lower its tone. The result, unfortunately, was to give me a sore throat – an even greater problem for a regular public speaker. Gordon found me an expert who knew that the first thing to do was to get your breathing right, and then to speak not from the back of the throat but from the front of the mouth. She was a genius. Her sympathetic understanding for my difficulties was only matched by that for her ailing cat. Unfortunately, the cat would sometimes fall sick just before my lesson and force its cancellation. Fortunately, I too like cats. And so we finished the course. On one occasion Gordon took me to meet Sir Laurence Olivier to see whether he had any tips. He was quite complimentary, telling me that I had a good gaze out to the audience, which was important, and that my voice was perfectly all right, which – no thanks to the cat – it now probably was. Getting all these things right took me several months. But all in all the general system never let me down. The real political tests of Opposition leadership, however, still lay ahead. My first real experience of the public aspects of being Leader of the Opposition came when I visited Scotland on Friday 21 February. From the time that I stepped off the aircraft at Edinburgh Airport, where a waggish piper played ‘A man’s a man for a’ that’, I received an enthusiastic Scottish welcome. I could always be sure of a friendly reception from grassroots Scottish Tories, whose embattled position seems to sharpen their zeal. More generally, however, the honeymoon did not last long and ordinary political life resumed with a vengeance. The opinion polls, which in February had given the Conservatives a 4 percentage point lead over Labour, showed a 2 per cent Labour lead just a month later – not statistically significant perhaps, but a check on any premature tendency to euphoria. It also soon became clear that powerful elements in the Party were out to make trouble for me. In early April Harold Macmillan and Ted Heath made speeches to a conference of Young Conservatives, warning against shifting the Conservative Party to the right. The European referendum campaign placed the focus on European issues, and this in turn gave a fillip to advocates of coalition government. All this created more difficulties for me. My first major parliamentary performance, in which I crossed swords with Harold Wilson, in a debate on the economy on Thursday 22 May, was heavily and justly criticized for not spelling out convincingly the Conservative alternative. The difficulty was that at this point we had no credible alternative to offer. Imprisoned by the requirement of defending the indefensible record of the Heath Government, we were unable as yet to break through to a proper free market alternative. Even so, on this and several other occasions I did not make a good speech. Leading for the Opposition in set-piece debates, one is not able to make a wide-ranging speech on the basis of a few notes, something which I was good at. The root of all our problems, however, lay in the unresolved contradictions of policy. In March 1975 we discussed a paper from Keith and Angus on policy-making. They proposed involving both backbench committees and sympathetic outside experts; and this was accepted. The number of policy groups continued to multiply. They were generally chaired by the relevant front-bench spokesmen. Geoffrey Howe’s Economic Reconstruction Group was the main forum for hashing over economic policy. From time to time, there would be whole-day Shadow Cabinet policy discussions, which I myself would chair. The full Shadow Cabinet approved, rather than devised, policy on the basis of papers put to it by the chief Shadow spokesmen and their policy groups. The Centre for Policy Studies and a range of outside advisers, particularly on economic matters, fed in ideas and suggestions to Keith and me (Keith also had a number of lunchtime meetings with other Shadow Cabinet colleagues on policy). And on top of all that I would sometimes advance a new policy in a speech or interview – not always to the applause of my colleagues. As a system of decision-taking the structure had a somewhat ramshackle feel to it. But then, no amount of institutional neatness could resolve the fundamental questions we had to decide. The fact that by the time we took office in May 1979 so many of the big issues had been satisfactorily resolved, and Shadow ministers had as clear an idea of their priorities as any incoming post-war British Government, shows that in the most important sense this policy-making system ‘worked’. The foremost policy issue was how to deal with inflation, which soared to 26.9 per cent in August 1975 before beginning to fall, going below 10 per cent in January 1978. Discussion of how inflation was caused and cured also necessarily involved making a judgement about the Heath Government. If inflation was the result of an increase in the money supply, which takes approximately eighteen months to work through in the form of higher prices, then the prime responsibility for the high inflation during the first eighteen months or so of the Labour Government should be laid at the door of the Conservatives. If, however, the cause of high inflation was excessive wage awards after the collapse of the previous Conservative Government’s incomes policy and Labour’s abdication of authority to the trade unions, then political life in Opposition would be easier. We might not have any credible solutions to offer, but we could at least blame everything on the Government. This approach was likely to be favoured by those of my colleagues who prided themselves on being sceptics about all kinds of economic theory. In fact, the case that the Heath Government’s monetary incontinence was to blame for inflation seemed to me convincingly argued by Alan Walters, whose devastating indictment and predictions were circulated by Keith as background for a discussion with Shadow Cabinet colleagues in March 1975. But if I had publicly accepted this it would have provoked even more trouble from Ted Heath and his supporters. Our failure to be explicit about the overriding importance of monetary policy did, however, open up our flank to attack on incomes policy. For if wage rises were the cause of inflation, then how would we in government be able to contain such rises? Конец ознакомительного фрагмента. Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес». Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию (https://www.litres.ru/margaret-thatcher/margaret-thatcher-the-autobiography/?lfrom=688855901) на ЛитРес. 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