Read The Real Iron Lady Online
Authors: Gillian Shephard
The Real Iron Lady (5 page)
Margaret Thatcher's approach to politics was that of one who sought solutions to particular problems rather than the discussion of abstract principles. As Ian Beesley says, she regarded a successful minister as one who got results. She would always ask how a policy would work. So much the better, surely, since government's policies affect everyone's lives. It is curious that this practical approach to politics, the constant question âhow will it work', which characterised much of her domestic policy, somehow failed when it came to the poll tax, where despite the model process of consultation, Green Papers and White Papers, and a full process through the relevant Cabinet Committees, the wrong decision in the end was taken.
Margaret Thatcher's tireless attention to detail paid great dividends in her contacts with the public, who were invariably impressed by the trouble she had taken to inform herself about them as individuals. Janet Fookes recalls that
on one occasion I had a visitor to the Commons from Australia who expressed a great wish to meet her. Margaret explained that she would not be able to meet him until after the ten o'clock vote. The division having duly taken place, Margaret kept her word, and chatted with the visitor, taking a lot of time to talk to him and showing an amazing knowledge of the construction of the roof of the Sydney Opera House. The guest
was astonished (and so was I) that late in the evening she showed such kindness and knowledge to someone simply passing through.
Hazel Byford writes,
Her clarity of thought combined with her ability to work long hours made her a remarkable adversary and a good friend. As Prime Minister, she set the standard and would expect from others the same commitment. The Conservative Women's Area chairmen used to meet the Prime Minister once a year, when we would be asked to give a short resumé of the issues affecting our particular area. The best piece of advice I was given for these occasions was to think of the supplementary questions that might be raised from my contribution. Her single-mindedness, the ability to listen and seek clarification are skills I have always remembered, and they have remained through my parliamentary life. I did not consider her approach overpowering, but one was certainly on one's mettle on these occasions.
Mrs Thatcher was an inspiration whether talking within a small group or giving her end-of-conference speech â she was totally engaged. Many who neither shared Conservative policies nor were admirers of our leader would openly admit that even so, she was an amazing lady. But there was much more to Mrs Thatcher than was publicly recorded, and that was her detailed concern for others on a personal level. I share but one such example.
In 1985, Val Pulford became Chairman of the East Midlands Area Women's Committee, but she was also a member of the Leicestershire County Council and the North West Leicestershire District Council, both of which were âhung'. This workload proved too great for her,
and she stood down after her first term as East Midlands Chairman, although she continued to work tirelessly for the party for over thirty years. She never received any public recognition for this work. In 2002, I had the chance to raise this with Margaret Thatcher, who responded with a personal handwritten letter to Val. Val said that in retrospect she often thought that she was more a Thatcherite than she was a Conservative. Mrs Thatcher's influence is well known, but many of her detailed and individual kindnesses are not so well documented.
John MacGregor was startled, sometime after he had left his post as Chief Secretary to the Treasury, to be introduced by Margaret Thatcher to a visiting overseas Finance Minister at a reception as the former Chief Secretary who had told her the role âwas one of the jobs he would have most wanted'.
I was amazed. I was not sure she had even heard what I said at the time, let alone remembered it all those years later!
John Alston became the Leader of the Norfolk County Council in 1981, a post which he held until 1987, and then again from 1990 to 1994. He recalls a political visit by Mrs Thatcher to Norfolk in August 1981.
After I became Leader of the Council in May 1981, Michael Heseltine, the Environment Secretary, announced changes to the Rate Support Grant system which had disastrous consequences for rural authorities. In effect, his system rewarded high-spending authorities,
and penalised the low-spending ones, like Norfolk. The Association of County Councils organised a special meeting at their headquarters of officers to plan their response. One of their number leaked the time and place of the meeting to Michael Heseltine, who turned up uninvited and unannounced, but inexplicably armed with a blackboard, with the aid of which he proceeded to bombard us with an impromptu presentation. He spoke well, but with scant regard for the facts. At the end of his presentation, I stood up to deliver a tirade of the true facts, and a protest that he had somehow appeared at what had been intended as a private meeting. Naturally, this was leaked to the press, where I reinforced my view of Mr Heseltine. There was widespread national and local coverage.
About a fortnight later, I received a call from the South Norfolk Conservative agent, asking if I would be prepared to host a luncheon for Mrs Thatcher at County Hall on 6 August. I said I would, provided I got twenty minutes on my own with her, which was agreed. Originally it was intended to be a private political visit; she did not wish to meet the Lord Mayor of Norwich or the Chairman of the County Council. I was to go and meet her at Norwich Airport. Eventually she was persuaded to meet the Lord Mayor â anything less would have been a severe slight â and the District Council Leaders.
I had seen Mrs Thatcher before, but it had been at a huge Conservative rally during the 1979 election campaign. On this occasion she came straight down the steps of the plane and walked over. I remember the characteristic walk, not inelegant, but purposeful. She was strikingly good looking, immaculate hair and clothes, and above all, a wonderful complexion, flashing eyes and warm smile.
She began by test-driving some Lotus cars round the airfield, where
she met John MacGregor, MP for South Norfolk, at that time Minister for Small Businesses. She then visited a factory making modern kitchens, gave a press conference, and an address to the party faithful at a local dance hall. I attended all these events. Even from a distance, you could see she gave all those she met her absolutely undivided attention.
We eventually arrived at County Hall, where our private meeting took place in the Chairman's room. She admitted straightaway that the Department of the Environment had got the Rate Support Grant policy all wrong, but she would not be saying so today, there would be a statement in the autumn. She then changed the subject, and asked to be briefed, in detail, on the concerns of fruit farmers, whom she would be meeting that afternoon. Their problem, in particular affecting apples and blackcurrants, was the effect on their profits of cheap fruit imports from France and Poland.
She was in very good form over lunch with the District Council Leaders, light-hearted gossip about a recent visit to Egypt, but mostly I remember her flirting with Eddie Coke (Viscount Coke, at that time the Leader of the King's Lynn and West Norfolk Council), with long discussions about his family history, which she either knew or had been briefed on.
After lunch she did a brief photo call with the County Council chairman and then a photo opportunity on the steps of County Hall, instructing me to turn left, while she turned right, to give the press and people watching from the windows a good picture.
I had a very nice letter of thanks from her, and in the autumn I had a call from her office to say that Michael Heseltine would be making a statement in Parliament that afternoon about adjustments in the Rate Support Grant. Someone somewhere ran a very efficient office. She had
said that if I ever had any other difficulties I should be directly in touch with her office.
Some considerable time later, the County Council was having problems in getting a Bill through Parliament to set up the Broads Authority. We were opposed by the Port and Haven Commissioners, the MPs, who were either against or sat on the fence, and other special interest groups of various kinds. The Bill was declared hybrid. That had the advantage of being able to survive the dissolution of Parliament, but equally, it had to be in the party manifesto at the forthcoming election. I did not trust Conservative Central Office to deal with this, so Hartley Booth arranged a meeting in her private apartments in No. 10. She came in, brightly, and just as I remembered, proffered a large whisky, listened carefully, asked a few questions, and left. It did appear in the party manifesto of 1987, and became law in 1988.
Nothing could be more characteristic of Margaret Thatcher's approach than this account by John Alston. If she was convinced by the detail of a case, she would act â and action followed. The Broads Authority Bill was a case in point; not that important politically, but it needed to be correct, well-supported and, above all, workable. Because of her personal attention to it, it was all of those things.
Incidentally, the Norfolk visit provided an illustration of the Prime Minister's technique with political demonstrations. A number of demonstrators had gathered outside County Hall, and a couple of obviously official cars swept in, taking all the tomatoes, eggs and shouted abuse prepared
by the waiting protesters. Her car then followed at speed, before the protesters had time to re-equip. This method never failed, and I recommended it to French colleagues, notably Martine Aubry, and my agriculture counterpart Jean Puech, who were obsessed by the potential embarrassment of enduring a demo with a British colleague sitting alongside them in the official car. History does not relate if they ever adopted the practice.
Margaret Thatcher's attention to detail, and in particular her prodigious memory, were perfectly suited to the role of a constituency MP. Even now, when I meet people who were her constituents in Finchley, they will recall her work for them, the fact that she knew their names, and the names of their children, and called the rabbis by their first names. She continued to hold regular surgeries throughout the whole time she was Prime Minister, despite the obvious implications for her security, and I have been told many times of the occasion when she walked a mile in the snow to the inaugural meeting of the Finchley Friends of Israel.
In many ways, the Finchley constituency might have been made for her. She had, of course, twice fought and lost elections in Dartford. Jean Lucas, a Conservative Party agent, recalls inviting her to address a supper club in the Norwood constituency, in the hope that it might help her in her search for a seat. She tried and failed to get selected for Orpington, Beckenham, Maidstone and Oxford. But Finchley, where she was selected in 1958, and which she represented until she left the House of Commons, was
predominantly middle class and aspiring in character. Owner-occupiers were the largest group. Twenty per cent of the population were Jewish. At the time of her selection, there was a safe Conservative majority of 12,000.
In
The Path to Power
, she describes how she prepared for the selection process. âLike any enthusiastic would-be candidate, I set to work to find out all there was to know about Finchley.' By the time of the initial interview for the seat, she had briefed herself on the issues likely to be of concern to local people: rent de-control, immigration and the economy.
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 speaking without notes. Equally important was that I should put myself in the right state of mind, confident but not too confident. I decided to obey instructions (from Donald Kaberry, a senior party agent at Conservative Central Office), and wear 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.
All this had the desired result, and she duly became the candidate.
Then, of course, came the preparation for the general election.
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 activities over a drink in the local pub or someone's house ⦠By the time the election was called in September 1959, the constituency was in much better shape, and I had begun to feel very much at home.
Hartley Booth, Mrs Thatcher's successor in Finchley, writes,
At the end of July 1991, I was selected to be Margaret's successor. Technically of course I was selected to be the Prospective Parliamentary Candidate for the constituency of Finchley. It was all over the world press and I urgently needed to liaise with her, the sitting MP, to ensure that I did not make any politically unsound statements to the media, who were literally queuing up to discover what it was like to follow the great lady. She came on the phone and said, âCongratulations.' Then she said, âCan you afford it?' As with so many areas, Margaret was concerned about matters of detail and so often thinking of the people around her, sometimes in the most disarming way, like this. It was one of the reasons I could never abide the mindless hectoring she suffered, and that I too received from the left, that she did not believe in Society. She believed in society with a small âs', which meant
the Christian principle of loving your neighbour, and she certainly believed in community, not leaving it all to those who provided from the great height of Whitehall, but as neighbourly actions of getting involved in the nearest charity, or in voluntary work to help people around you.
She did not believe in the individual as a selfish autonomous unit, either. She sees the individual as a person with dignity and responsibilities towards neighbours. âSelfish greed' was the mindless accusation against Margaret and her policies. Nothing was further from the truth.
These conclusions came from my encounters with her over the two stages of my work with her. I was overwhelmed by the evidence of the love and care she had shown to constituents over the years, extending from the local special school for children with autism to the many dozens of constituents I met.
Before the election, Margaret briefed me on the needs of the Greek Cypriots and the Jewish community. She took a judicious stand on the latter group, very properly avoiding backing any one political party in Israel, and stressing that the country should observe UN rulings with regard to its neighbouring states.
The constituency party members revered her. One man was papering a wall in his house with her written replies to his questions. (He continued with mine until I put a stop to it.) People told me how she would organise her arrivals to be exactly on time. They would say, âPrime Minister Thatcher was a wonderful MP. We could always rely on her punctuality. If the car bringing her was early, we would see it go round the block, and park. Then on the dot, her driver would stop outside the hall or wherever, and out she would step. We thought she was royalty really.'