Thatcher (12 page)

The relationship with Reagan was fundamental to the relationship with Soviet Russia, and here great things were happening. In 1983, Francis Pym went to the Soviet Union in a first small attempt to break the frozen impasse of the ‘Cold War'. Margaret Thatcher was becoming convinced that it was necessary to talk to the Soviet Bloc, and so was Ronald Reagan. This was a huge change for both leaders. Reagan had been used to calling the Soviet bloc the ‘focus of evil' in the modern world, and Margaret Thatcher had horrified her diplomats with her outbursts ever since the ‘Iron Lady' speech in the 1970s. Now though, she was convinced that the advantages of the free market would be evident, if Communist leaders had the opportunity to experience them. Perhaps innocently, but very patronisingly, she made this absolutely clear:
they do not know how to think in any other terms and that, really, is one of the reasons why I invited Mr. Gorbachev here long before he is where he is now, because I wanted to be able to get some of the younger people up to show them how very much better a free society works. They may not understand how it works, but they can see how it works. They can see the massively increased prosperity
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Her relationship with Gorbachev was crucial to defusing the Cold War. She met him shortly after she visited Hungary, at the funeral of the Soviet president Yuri Andropov. Her view, that Communism could not contain its people for ever, was explicit. In October 1982, she visited the Berlin Wall and said:
Every decade since the war the Soviet leaders have been reminded that their pitiless ideology only survives because it is maintained by force. But the day comes when the anger and frustration of the people is so great that force cannot contain it. Then the edifice cracks: the mortar crumbles... One day liberty will dawn on the other side of the wall
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But the cost of defence spending to continue the Cold War was prohibitive, and something had to be done. This was agreed on both sides of the Atlantic – Reagan was writing to his Soviet opposite numbers at this time, but getting no response. In December 1984, she invited Gorbachev and his wife to Chequers. She had a wide-ranging discussion with him – Denis was also charming to and charmed by Gorbachev's wife, Raisa. The scene was set for discussion when Gorbachev later became Soviet leader in 1985.

Her preparations were almost torpedoed by America's ‘Star Wars' initiative – a research programme intended to develop a new space-based anti-missile system that would make ballistic missiles obsolete. This possibility worried Europe, who saw themselves caught between two warring powers. It undermined nuclear deterrence, in which Margaret Thatcher believed and in which she had invested considerable money. Worse, it was clear that the Soviets would retaliate by creating equal weapons. Reagan and Gorbachev were meeting, and their discussion included phasing out nuclear weapons. This was wholly against Margaret Thatcher's beliefs – she truly believed that peace lay in the ‘stand off' of equal nuclear armament, and she had invested a great deal of British money in Trident ballistic missiles. If she was to prevent the Soviet Union from withdrawing from arms talks and America retreating into isolationism she had little time. On the Sunday, she saw Gorbachev at Chequers. On Wednesday, she was in Beijing signing the agreement by which Hong Kong was returned to the Chinese. On Thursday, she was in Hong Kong reassuring the population. On Saturday, she was at Camp David to meet with President Reagan. In 1984 the journey was mammoth, the travelling uncomfortable, and each meeting vital. Her visit to America cemented the relationship with the USA, re-assured Europe, and elicited public statements that reassured the Russians. This was only one step on the path to discussion between America and Russia: The importance of nuclear deterrence was
the one issue on which I knew I could not take the Reagan Administration for granted
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By 1990, and before her resignation, the Berlin Wall had come down and Germany was reunified. There is no doubt that Margaret Thatcher's personal style was central to this process. She was well aware of the danger of opening dialogue with the East and mediating their position with America: if America and the Soviet Union made a private deal, Britain and Europe could well be marginalised. If Russia and America agreed between them to abandon nuclear weapons, then Britain's arsenal would be an expensive white elephant, and Britain would be defenceless to other forms of attack. She knew that her personal friendship with Reagan would not, on its own, prevent this from happening: it was in American interests to find a way of ending the existing nuclear stalemate. Faced with a problem, Margaret Thatcher used her own well-honed skills to solve it – she went out to canvas. Starting in Hungary, she and her ministers set out to encourage Eastern bloc people to see the British Prime Minister as the embodiment of the benefits of capitalism. In Moscow, she went on a ‘walkabout' in a Moscow housing estate – ‘it almost appeared that the Prime Minister was fighting a by-election in Moscow North' one commentator remarked. ‘Margaret Thatcher,' said another, ‘in her Aquascutum wardrobe careering around the outer tenement blocks was one of the most impressive examples of political canvassing ever seen.'
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The results were beyond even her imaginings –
I do not see... that there will be anything other than a Communist system in the Soviet Union in my lifetime
,
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she said in this year. Acting as friend to both Russia and America meant that British interests could be defended: failing to do so could mean that Britain was pinned between the two. But this also took her and Britain on a different path from the other European states.

During her second term, relations with Europe improved slightly, if only temporarily. Margaret Thatcher wanted Europe to be a trading community, with few trade barriers and little intervention in the market. The idea of a single market-place, where different nations could buy and sell without hindrance, was her free-market dream. Pressing ahead with the single market was the common factor between the leaders: in 1986, the ‘Single European Act' was signed. But France and Germany had a different understanding of a single market – they foresaw, and looked forward to, harmonization of social policies as well as trade. The European heads of state distrusted Margaret Thatcher's friendship with America – she still regarded Europe as needing to be grateful for Britain and America's help in the war.
After all we
[Britain and America]
saved all their skins collectively in the war
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she was reported as saying privately. Personally, her position was eased by the election of François Mitterrand as President of France. Although he was a socialist, they got on unexpectedly well. But she never considered Europe to be more than a free-trade area, and her opposition to closer European union was a strong as ever.

The necessary second step after a single market was agreed was de-regulation of prices and industrial relations. The step after that was integration of policy and practice, on ground that had been the prerogative of national governments. Some of this she should have known – for instance in 1987 it was agreed to harmonise VAT rates. Margaret Thatcher had to be forcibly reminded that provision for this was in the Treaty of Rome, and that she had been in the Cabinet that signed the treaty. The other leaders had no doubts: To them, the Single European Act signaled harmonization and integration across Europe. This came to a head in 1991, when other European heads of state signed the ‘Social Chapter' of the Maastricht Treaty including a direct intention to implement the Community Charter of Fundamental Social Rights and requiring that social policies should be integrated across Europe. To Margaret Thatcher, this was a return to the support for workers' rights that she had defeated at home: if legislation protected working hours, minimum standards, and health and safety practices then the employer, the industrialist, could not manage his own business. British opposition meant that an opt-out clause was included, although only Britain refused to sign.

A third problem left over from the colonial days, like Rhodesia and the Falklands, was Hong Kong. For 150 years the city had been a British protectorate, and an island of capitalism in a sea of communism. The lease on Hong Kong was due to expire in 1997. In 1983, she was reassuring the British public that talks were under way, and that the Hong Kong way of life would continue.
It will be quite tragic if between us, between China and Britain, we cannot make an arrangement which enables that way of life, that stability and prosperity, to continue, because it's compounded of two things – the enormous enterprise, hard work, inventiveness of the Chinese character in Hong Kong, and the system which has been run under the British in Hong Kong. Now it's trying to get the continuity of that system, together with the wonderful character of the Chinese people that we're struggling to maintain
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After 1984, she embarked on a series of speeches designed to reassure Hong Kong residents and the world. In Hong Kong itself she stressed three principles:
The first point I wish to make about this Agreement is that it assures the continuation of Hong Kong as a free trading capitalist society for a very long time to come – into the middle of the next century. This means that Hong Kong can plan long-term with confidence. I believe Chairman Deng
[Deng Xiaoping]
intends his bold concept of ‘one country-two systems' to last. My second point is that you have my absolute assurance that Britain will administer Hong Kong wisely and well between now and 1997. We shall honour our obligations to the full. My third point is that Britain will not merely do all in its power to work for Hong Kong's steady development and a smooth transition; we shall also seek to win the widest possible acceptance of the Agreement in the rest of the world
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The agreement was broadly accepted, and was carried out. These negotiations were different from both her obduracy in the Falklands, and her boldness in Rhodesia. Her major concern was that capitalism should continue: once she felt that aim had been met, her primary interest ended.

A constant thread throughout her office, and indeed her political life, was the vexed question of Northern Ireland. The Irish Republican Army touched her life very directly, in the death of Ross McWhirter, which resulted in her being given a police guard that is still with her: in the death of Airey Neave, her close friend and ally;
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in the bombing of the Brighton hotel where she and her Cabinet were staying in 1984, injuring Norman Tebbit and his wife and killing five; at the end of her government, when Ian Gow was killed at his home. There were other high profile actions less close to her – the year that she entered office as Prime Minister was also the year that Lord Mountbatten and 18 soldiers were killed on the same day.

True to her background, Margaret Thatcher was staunchly Unionist – it would be surprising if she had not supported a largely Protestant movement that wished to retain close ties with Britain and British history. This would be the same argument as that which took her to the Falklands to protect the people, and made her prioritize Hong Kong people and their rights to capitalism. In opposition, in the unsanctioned speech that made her the ‘Iron Lady' she made her views clear.
But we cannot afford, in Labour's view, to maintain our defences at the necessary level – not even at a time when on top of our NATO commitments, we are fighting a major internal war against terrorism in Northern Ireland, and need more troops in order to win it
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To call the situation ‘war' was a major slip: in government policy, it was always referred to as troops supporting the civilian government. But it made her position clear, and presaged the 21st-century ‘War on Terror' fought today.

Unsurprisingly, Margaret Thatcher's public statements promised that Ireland would remain British for as long as the majority of her people wished it to. This was one area where she did not benefit from her usual meticulous briefings. The BBC's political editor John Cole, a Protestant Ulster man who could be expected to be sympathetic to her view, wrote that she had ‘a total lack of feeling for a province that was remote from her own background'.
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More revealing, off-the-cuff remarks, that Irish Prime Minister Garrett Fitzgerald reports her making in 1985 when the Anglo-Irish Agreement was signed and Ireland was eligible for European Union funds, show her as disliking Irish demands:
More money for those people? Why should they have more money? I need that money for my people in England
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Her choice of Northern Ireland secretaries did not dispel the picture. Airey Neave, in opposition, was a right-wing Unionist with only a nod towards nationalist views: his successors were little different. Margaret Thatcher took the killing of Lord Mountbatten with her customary courage and defiance. She flew to Ireland, did a walkabout in Belfast, and was photographed in a combat jacket and Ulster Defence Force beret. She went again at Christmas, and visited almost every year of her term of office.

In 1980, Charles Haughey took over as Irish Taoiseach. Margaret Thatcher liked him, staunch Nationalist though he was. The reports of their first meeting were positive: ‘British sources agreed that a good personal relationship had been struck between the two prime ministers. They were now to hold regular meetings for the first time. But Mr. Haughey, while meticulously observing the confidentiality of the meeting, trumped all that by his bold performance. He said it was the most successful meeting he had had with any politician before an international news conference.'
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When talks in December were reported equally positively, Margaret Thatcher wrote reassuringly to the Unionist leader the Reverend Ian Paisley:
Finally, let me stress that it remains a fundamental assumption of all government thinking on these matters that Northern Ireland is part of the United Kingdom and will remain so unless its people and the Westminster Parliament decide otherwise. I could hardly have made that clearer than I have done in recent days both in the House of Commons and outside it
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