The Real Iron Lady (7 page)

On one occasion we met late at night following a successful vote in the Commons, to discuss the European issues of the day. She greeted me very warmly and we had an extremely amicable conversation, accompanied by three large whiskies. As I was leaving, her mood suddenly changed, and she said, quite belligerently, ‘Henry, we must discuss the Common Agricultural Policy. I am not going to put any more money into the pockets of these peasant farmers in France, and elsewhere in Europe.'

I must have been emboldened by the three whiskies and I found myself saying, ‘If you will just shut up for one minute, I will tell you about the CAP.' Not surprisingly, she looked a little startled at my less than tactful words, and said, ‘You'd better come back in.' So we went back into her room, more whisky was provided, and I said, ‘Those peasants as you call them, the small farmers, get nothing out of the CAP. It is big farmers like your brother-in-law, on his farm in Essex, who
are getting the money from the intervention payments they receive on their surplus wheat, £50 a ton while we still have a wheat mountain. Yes, the CAP wants changing, but surpluses are not the fault of the so-called European peasants, their problem is social, not economic.'

Her jaw dropped. ‘How do you know my brother-in-law?' she asked. ‘I was on his farm only last week,' I said, ‘and I can tell you that what I said is right. You can ask him yourself if you want.'

I never again heard her blame ‘European peasants' for the problems of the Common Agricultural Policy, but I always wondered what kind of conversation she might have had when she next saw her sister and brother-in-law.

I left without being handbagged.

[Margaret Thatcher's sister, Muriel, was married to John Cullen, a farmer, in 1950, and they settled in Essex.]

Her tendency to lead from the front has been well reported. It left colleagues and officials in no doubt about the direction in which her mind was turning, and that was important in helping officials think about options. But it could bring trouble. I was present when Michael Heseltine presented his Ministerial Information System (MINIS) in a slide show in a first-floor reception room at No. 10 in 1981. Throughout, John Nott, Secretary of State for Defence, conspicuously worked on departmental papers, demonstrating his indifference to Heseltine's initiative. Nothing daunted, Mrs Thatcher started the question-and-answer session with, ‘I can see that the Secretary of
State for Defence has been taking copious notes throughout, so perhaps he'd like to begin.' He did so with telling words, ‘My Department is different, Prime Minister
…
' The invective that followed from the Prime Minister, and directed at John Nott
[for so obviously ignoring the presentation and then opposing its arguments],
wrecked any chance of others sticking their heads above the parapet, and with it, the prospect for widespread adoption of MINIS.

Shortly after the time of the tenth anniversary of her premiership (in May 1989), we were seated in Downing Street for one of these gatherings. All was going fine with conventional, even deferential, questions, when my friend and colleague John Mason asked a question about Europe. He raised it in terms which implied that the Conservative Party and the electorate needed a clearer indication of what government policy was on the issue.

What then followed was a display of verbal pyrotechnics which was glorious to behold. The then head of the EU Commission, Jacques Delors, came close to being described as a ‘little H' which was aspirated away only to emphasise what she thought of the Commission's President. Whether she was right or wrong to take such an aggressive approach to John's question, it certainly gave us a glimpse of the political energy which made her such a powerful conviction politician.

The effect on Margaret was immediate. It was not so much that it struck a chord but rather that it ignited a fire. She made it plain that she did not trust him at all and that nothing that he said would be of any interest to her. She did not explain why she had come to this view and frankly it did not seem politic to enquire further! It was, however, an indication to me that she felt very deeply about people, whether for good or ill.

It has often been said that she talked too much and interrupted her colleagues too often. I think this did become a problem in the later years, causing some resentment. But I have strongly resisted suggestions that she would not listen to the views of others. She was open to listening to new proposals, but she wanted to be both convinced herself and at the same time to be sure her minister was able to argue his case in the face of her own cross-examination. Often I heard her say, ‘Well, Secretary of State, you had better get on with your proposal. But if it goes wrong, don't come back to me to sort it out.'

Argument was meat and drink to her. I shall never forget a very small lunch with Pierre Trudeau
…
whom she did not admire. He had similar feelings about her and the verbal fireworks on a series of world issues were, what she described about another of their meetings, ‘lively'.

very soon learned that if she took a letter out of her handbag it was not just important, it contained views she instinctively felt were right. On the rare occasions she was wrong, I always felt I was more likely to get her to change her mind if I set about it slowly and with a little subtlety.

One example was when she wanted to write a letter which I felt was unwise, so I suggested that because the letter was so important, she should get a senior official to look at the drafting and tighten it up if possible. He was sent for, and after a good go at this, I suggested that as the letter was likely to leak to the press, it might be a good idea to get a press adviser to look at it. He was fetched, and after he had given his rather forthright views, the letter idea was abandoned and a more successful approach was adopted.

My first serious encounter with her was when I was a Minister of State at the Treasury. I had made some rather radical tax proposals which she did not like too much, and she sent for me. I felt my political
career was about to end before it had really begun. I determined that my best course was to stick to my guns and keep smiling! After a long debate, she said, ‘All right, John, we will do it your way, but you had better be right. Let's have a drink.'

Mrs Thatcher came out to see how I was performing. As Leader of the Opposition, she was cheered to hear that I was a poor feeble creature. She thought that this might be a good opportunity to smack at the Labour government. To her surprise, we got on quite well at a dinner given on her first night in Belgrade by my British colleague, our ambassador to Yugoslavia. Next morning she sent me a friendly note saying how much she had enjoyed our meeting.

I sprang into life and made a few quick telephone calls to diplomatic colleagues from the Conference, and secured agreement that I should be called upon to speak that morning. I then, of course, invited Mrs T. to hear a specimen of my oratory. We proceeded to the
Conference Hall, where she took a place behind me, arousing much interest among the colleagues. As privately planned, I was soon called upon to speak, and made a robust speech about human rights, denouncing in particular the poor performance of the Soviet Union. At the conclusion, Mrs Thatcher congratulated me warmly, saying that I had spoken well.

As we adjourned for morning coffee, the effect of all this was slightly marred by the behaviour of our Russian colleague, an able man called Vorontsov. We were on quite good terms and sometimes lunched together in discreet seclusion. On passing Mrs Thatcher and myself, Vorontsov somewhat spoilt the effect of my efforts by giving me a satirical wink. Fortunately, Mrs T. did not seem to notice. On her return to London, she notably refrained from attacking me in the House of Commons. The Foreign Office were relieved and pleased. Shortly afterwards we were transferred to Madrid, where I served for four-and-a-half busy years from 1980 to 1984. This period encompassed the Falklands conflict.

The Spanish Prime Minister, the able Calvo-Sotelo, had the sense to see that Mrs Thatcher could be an ally in getting Spain into the European Union and NATO and thus into democratic Europe. He helped us in various discreet ways which made a favourable impression.

The time was right to try and make progress over Gibraltar. The trouble was that the Franco regime had closed the frontier between Gibraltar and the Spanish mainland. This was a great handicap to our side. If we could get the barriers removed, it would be much easier for Britain to support the return of Spain to the modern world. The advantage would be to both sides and under the leadership of our excellent Foreign Secretary, Lord Carrington, we agreed to draw
up and submit to ministers a draft agreement which should do the trick. Calvo-Sotelo was to visit Downing Street for this purpose.

On the morning of the day itself, I flew to London and arrived at No. 10 to find Mrs T. holding a briefing meeting with Lord Carrington and his officials from the FCO. I slipped into a modest place at the end of the table. The PM was saying that she was very unhappy about the draft agreement. It gave too much away, she thought, and would not be acceptable to the Conservative Party. I cleared my throat noisily. ‘What's that noise you are making, Ambassador?' snapped the Prime Minister. ‘I was trying to control my amusement, Prime Minister.' ‘Amusement?' echoed Mrs T. in a voice worthy of Lady Bracknell. ‘Perhaps you would care to explain.' ‘The truth is, Prime Minister,' I replied, ‘that this morning I saw off the Prime Minister of Spain at the airport in Madrid on his way to London. I heard him telling his officials the same thing as you. The draft would not be acceptable to his party.'

‘The Spanish Prime Minister is worried too, is he?' responded the Prime Minister, with marked satisfaction. ‘That's the first piece of good news I have heard today.'

Everything was then smoothly agreed on our side. Afterwards Lord Carrington said to me very kindly, ‘You arrived just in time.'

I learned something from this episode. Mrs T. had the reputation for being bossy and opinionated and averse to listening to both sides. But it was more complicated than that. She liked to hear both sides of an argument, properly explained to her. She would listen carefully if you knew your facts and were not afraid of deploying them. Heaven help you, though, if you tried a fudge. Then she would come out firmly on the winning side and present it to the world as if it were the only possible option. The Iron Lady was privately amenable to reason.
How else could she have remained Prime Minister for so many years? But the public never quite spotted that and imagined that she became a kind of dictator.

How times – and the power of the unions – change. In 1981, following the riots in Bristol, Brixton, Toxteth and Moss Side, when important parts of our cities were ablaze and tensions ran high, the TUC could demand and secure a meeting, not just with the Prime Minister but also with all her senior Cabinet colleagues with economic responsibilities. The situation was deeply disturbing. It felt like our civilisation was collapsing, as TV relayed dramatic shots of violence, looting and fires. Our purpose was to use the riots to press the government to act decisively on unemployment, which was up near the 3 million mark, and especially on youth unemployment and inner city dereliction.

A delegation from the TUC General Council therefore met around half the Cabinet in 10 Downing Street.

Mrs Thatcher was not the dominatrix on this occasion. She farmed out our various points to William Whitelaw, Geoffrey Howe,
Michael Heseltine and others, obviously a pre-arranged tactic to lower the temperature. Not that it worked with the TUC. We are more comfortable with the broad brush than the technicalities and the meeting ended with nothing. But Mrs Thatcher was, on that occasion, the courteous diplomat, far from the fierce warrior against the unions that later became the dominant judgement of history.