There is No Alternative (41 page)

When faced with the choice between strengthening Britain's ties to Europe and strengthening its ties to the United States, Thatcher did not even try to find a tactful middle ground:

Giant protests erupted in mainland Europe and Britain against the United States' plans to deploy cruise and Pershing missiles in
response to the Soviet deployment of the Satan. This antinuclear sentiment blossomed into a mass movement financed by the Soviet Union and supported, in Britain, by the Labour Party. “All over Europe,” recalled Reagan, “the peace marchers demonstrated to prevent Western missiles from being installed for their defense, but they were silent about the Soviet missiles targeted against them! Again, in the face of these demonstrations, Margaret never wavered.”
²⁰⁸

The first cruise missiles arrived at Greenham Common in December 1983, inaugurating a permanent state of protest at the U.S. air base. Thatcher scolded the protesters: “We are very fortunate to have someone else's weapons stationed on our soil to fight those targeted on us.”
²⁰⁹
Although this was perfectly true, she sounded to her detractors—as she so often did—rather like Mr. Bumble informing Oliver Twist that he was very fortunate to have gruel every day with an onion twice a week.

There was one notable moment of dissent: When in 1983 the United States invaded Grenada, a member of the British Commonwealth, without first notifying the British government, Thatcher was furious. She nonetheless held her tongue in public, even while expressing her extreme displeasure with Reagan in private.

By publicly supporting Reagan when he was most isolated abroad, Thatcher won Reagan's trust and earned his gratitude. Ultimately, and in large part owing to her sheer, dogged loyalty, her influence on Reagan came to exceed that of most of his cabinet members. That influence proved pivotal when Mikhail Gorbachev came to power.

In November 1984, roughly a year after the downing of KAL 007, the Soviets walked out of the Geneva talks on intermediate-range missiles. They then walked out of the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty discussions on long-range missiles, breaking off all contact with the United States. There was now no personal contact between American and Soviet leaders.

This extraordinarily dangerous impasse, Thatcher believed, made it incumbent upon her to take the diplomatic initiative. She rejected Geoffrey Howe's suggestion that she invite the Soviet premier, Konstantin Chernenko, to visit Britain. She was not prepared to be that friendly. Instead, she issued invitations to several lower-ranking members of the Politburo. The Soviet agricultural secretary, a man by the name of Gorbachev, responded with interest.

Thatcher knew little about Gorbachev save that his wife was reputed to be less unattractive than the wives of the other Soviet leaders. In 1984, there was no reason beyond this to expect that Gorbachev would be much different from the other walking corpses of the Soviet leadership. Gorbachev had never visited the United States. He had never met Reagan. Still furious with the Soviets, Reagan had shown no interest in meeting him. But this Gorbachev fellow seemed keen to come to Britain, so Thatcher asked him to join her for lunch, at Chequers, on December 16.

Charles Powell remembers Gorbachev's arrival at Chequers vividly. “It was an extraordinary moment. You won't have seen Chequers, but it's an old English country house, with a great hall at the entrance, a huge fire, a few members of the government
standing there—and nobody had
any
clue what to expect. I mean, Gorbachev was not known outside the Soviet Union. He'd once been outside to Canada.
²¹¹
Nobody had taken any notice of him. He came into this room, beaming, bouncing on the balls of his feet, this smartly dressed wife with him, and everyone present just simply had to change gear . . .
this is not Khrushchev, this is not Andropov, this is not Chernenko, this is an entirely new sort of person.
He engaged from the beginning in jovial banter with people and ordered a drink before lunch. Then he and Margaret Thatcher sat next to each other at lunch, and neither of them ate a thing. They spent the whole time talking at each other, and arguing about things—”

 

“Right from the start? Arguing right from the start?”

“Well, arguing was sort of Thatcher's
raison d'être
—”

“It sounds as if he sort of got that right away, understood it, related to it?”

“Oh, yes, absolutely. He
enjoyed
it. And then we retired into another room. It was just him, and her, and me, and the then Soviet ambassador here, and that man from the Politburo who was Gorbachev's great ally, he'd been exiled to be ambassador to Canada, and whose name now escapes me, began with K.
²¹²
And in that small room, they talked for two and a half hours as against the half-hour scheduled. Gorbachev—immediately, again, you
saw
the difference. I mean, the advisors just shut up. He had no briefs, no documents, he had a few little handwritten notes in green ink, which he occasionally produced, the odd newspaper clipping from the
Wall Street Journal
or the
New York Times
—one was about nuclear war, I remember particularly. About nuclear winter. And he talked absolutely self-confidently and assuredly, and he wasn't even leader at the time. Chernenko was still in charge. Gorbachev was still just a member of the Politburo, technically in charge of agriculture. This was new ground . . . I mean, we'd had this succession of geriatrics, Chernenko, and before him Andropov and Brezhnev, who could barely stand up and who just sort of read from bits of paper. Here was a man who talked and argued like a
Western politician, didn't need briefs and notes and advisors—and he sat there and slugged it out with her! This was somebody you could really
engage
with.”

The then Soviet ambassador to whom Powell is referring was a man named Leonid Zamyatin. “This was how it went,” Zamyatin remembered. “They sat down in armchairs at a fireplace, Thatcher took off her patent-leather shoes, tucked her feet under her chair and got out her handbag.”
²¹³

I've spoken now to many men who specifically remember Thatcher kicking off her shoes and curling up her feet in that flirtatious way. I have looked in vain for a photo or video clip that shows her doing this. It seems she never did it with a camera present. She was obviously well aware that it was a coquettish and provocative gesture, and well aware, too, that “barefoot and cuddly” was not the image she wished, as a world leader, to project widely.

I have pieced together what happened next from several different accounts—her memoirs, Gorbachev's memoirs, Powell's recollections, Zamyatin's, various official memoranda of the meeting. I am fairly sure that it went roughly this way:

Gorbachev suddenly suggested they both get rid of their briefing papers.

“Gladly!” replied Thatcher, putting her papers back in her handbag.

Gorbachev told Thatcher it was time to end the Cold War.

Thatcher told Gorbachev it was time to end communism.

Gorbachev told Thatcher that communism was superior to capitalism.

“Don't be silly, Mr. Gorbachev. You can barely feed your own citizens.”

“To the contrary, Mrs. Thatcher! Our people live
joyfully.
”

“Oh, do they? Then why do so many of them want to leave? And why do you prevent them from leaving?”

“They can leave if they want to!”

“That's not what I hear. And by the way, we're not happy about the money you're sending to Arthur Scargill.”

“We have nothing to do with that.”

“Who do you think you're kidding? You and I both know that your economy is centrally controlled. Not a kopeck leaves without the Politburo's knowledge.”

“
Nyet, nyet,
you misunderstand. It's not centrally controlled.”

“Oh, no? How does a Russian factory decide how much to produce?”

“We tell them.”

Perhaps Thatcher laughed. Perhaps she snorted. I like to imagine that her gifted mimic of a translator laughed or snorted along with her even as the Soviet translator remained a leaden lump. “The Soviet Union and the West,” she said, “have entirely different ways of life and government. You don't like ours, we don't like yours. But it is in our common interest—indeed it is our duty—to avoid a conflict.”

“But the United States has been targeting us with missiles since the 1950s!”

“Of course it has. You've been trying to export communism by force. Your missiles are aimed at us. What did you expect?”

I can't determine what Gorbachev said next. But something prompted Thatcher to tell him that Reagan was an honorable man. When he took office, he had put his heart and soul into writing a letter to Brezhnev. He had written it by hand. After months of silence, he received only a typed, pro forma reply.