Although I accepted the disappointment, Carol in Verbier did not. Unknown to me, she telephoned her mother with a wail of protest about the unfairness of the opposition’s three-line whip and its wrecking effects on our romantic weekend. Margaret’s heart evidently melted. A cheerful Carol came on the line with the announcement, ‘Mum says she can change the voting for Monday’. ‘That’s impossible’, I replied. I was wrong. For at the last minute the opposition day business was switched and the three-line whip was miraculously dropped. Carol and I had a wonderful weekend together in the joys of the Alps.
The day after my return I was back in the division lobbies of the House of Commons when I saw the Leader of the Opposition a few feet away from me. I went over and started to say thank you for her amazing favour in re-arranging the parliamentary business. ‘Sshh!’ she said, putting a finger to her lips and giving me a theatrical wink. ‘Did you two have fun?’ ‘Great fun’, I replied. ‘Come and tell me about it, then.’
Five minutes later I was sitting in an armchair drinking Scotch with Margaret Thatcher in the Leader of the Opposition’s office. Kicking off her shoes, she brushed aside my thanks by saying that her Chief Whip, Humphrey Atkins, had wanted to change the opposition’s voting plans anyway. Then she wanted to know everything about Verbier, asking me about snow conditions, ski runs, restaurants, the local fondue and whether Carol had any other friends or skiing companions. ‘I get so worried about Carol being out there all on her own’, she explained in an anxious voice. Even more poignantly, as I was leaving her office Margaret said, ‘You won’t tell Carol that I was worrying about her, will you? She will think I am being overbearing.’
The relationship between Mark and his mother was over-indulgent. Margaret was constantly fussing about her son’s health, his failure to pass his accountancy exams and his perilous finances. She paid off his overdraft at least twice in the mid-1970s. She worried about his personal safety when driving motor-cars long before the 1982 episode of him getting temporarily lost in the Sahara on a rally. In 1979, she became tearful when late at night Mark had not returned from a day on the test-driving track of the Williams Formula One team. Margaret was beside herself, getting me to call my friend Frank Williams to make sure that Mark had not been injured.
I liked what I saw of Margaret as a mother and Denis as a father. Some of my best glimpses of them were at Scotney Castle, which had beautiful grounds. Looking out of the window one morning, I saw Margaret and Denis strolling around the garden holding hands. It struck me that this was the first time I had seen any two members of the family in warm human contact. They were not a tactile foursome. Hugs, cuddles and kisses never seemed to be on their agenda. Years later I asked Mark if my impression was correct. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘Mum was not in the slightest bit tactile. But she communicated her love by the way she looked at you.’20
For all such loving glances, good communications within the family deteriorated in quantity and quality once Margaret Thatcher became Leader of the Opposition. She was such a totally absorbed public figure that there was little or no time for private relaxation, even with her nearest and dearest. Did she have any true friend in whom she confided and trusted, apart from Denis? I suspected not. Her shadow cabinet colleagues may have been the recipients of political confidences, but there was no indication that she showed them any personal intimacy or even warmth. The same was true of her office team. With the possible exception of Cynthia Crawford (‘Crawfie’), who later became something of a confidante through her feminine skills as a PA and dresser, Margaret Thatcher’s inner circle of staffers were professionally but not personally close to her.
Endearingly, she had a great appreciation for the virtue of loyalty. Anyone who gave it to her received it back abundantly, particularly if they were going through a bad patch. When her former PPS, Fergus Montgomery MP, was accused of shoplifting, Margaret Thatcher sought him out on the day after he was charged and said: ‘Fergus, you stay beside me all the time in the House today. I want everyone to see that I know you are innocent.’‡21
A more colourful recipient of Margaret Thatcher’s loyalty was a remarkable parliamentary character known as ‘The one-armed bandit’. He was William Rees-Davies QC MP, whose constituency of Thanet West adjoined mine.
Billy was a flamboyant original. In his heyday he had been a fast bowler in county cricket, a war hero who had lost an arm on the battlefield, a big-time gambler and a controversial criminal barrister. During the late 1970s, he managed to get himself into a series of well-publicised scrapes. His troubles included a police scandal, an unpaid debts controversy, a row with his tenants over bed bugs in his house in Greece and a drink-driving charge. He was reprimanded by a judge for being at the races when he should have been in court. There were problems within his constituency association, which threatened to de-select him. Some of his local difficulties stemmed from his vociferous opposition to Ted Heath, a fellow resident of Thanet.
Perhaps because of his anti-Heath feelings, Billy Rees-Davies became one of the earliest and staunchest supporters of Margaret Thatcher. He was not exactly her cup of tea, but because of his enthusiasm for backing her as a leadership candidate, she reciprocated his loyalty. So when de-selection rumours were threatening to end his career, Billy asked for, and received, the leader’s personal help.
The circumstances in which the help was given were hilarious. Billy hosted a New Year’s Eve party at his country house at Monkton-in-Thanet. Apart from Margaret and Denis Thatcher and myself, the guest list consisted of the entire executive of the Thanet West Conservative Association. As the clock ticked towards midnight, the disgruntled anti-Billy faction, pacified by the presence of the party leader, began to express the view that their Member of Parliament was perhaps not such a bad chap after all. The leader strongly agreed. Champagne flowed. Good-will increased.
At about 11.45 p.m., Billy rang the ship’s bell that stood in the hall of his house, and called on the Chairman of the Thanet West Conservative Association, Councillor Harry Anish, to say a few words. The Chairman expressed the opinion that in these festive circumstances, with the Leader of the Conservative Party being in attendance, it might be appropriate to let bygones be bygones, and to pass a vote of confidence in our Member, wishing him and our leader a Happy New Year. ‘Yes please’, said Margaret Thatcher loudly. The vote was immediately carried by acclamation. We all sang, ‘For he’s a jolly good fellow’ and then ‘For she’s a jolly good fellow’, until the clock struck twelve and it was time for ‘Auld Lang Syne’.
It must have been one of the most unusual and unconstitutional constituency association meetings in the history of the Conservative Party, but it did the trick. There was no more talk of de-selection, and Billy Rees-Davies duly survived for another Parliament as the Member for Thanet West.
As Margaret Thatcher departed into the night for her drive across Kent back to Scotney, someone asked her what she thought of Thanet’s two Members of Parliament. ‘They are both excellent MPs – with unusual talents’,22 was her verdict. Whatever she really felt, she had shown loyalty to a friend under pressure, and been marvellously effective with the rank and file members of the Conservative Party.
REFLECTION
It was easy to underestimate Margaret Thatcher during the early stages of her leadership of the opposition.
Although she had the highest constitutional respect for Parliament, she was never really comfortable as a parliamentarian. She had no feel, let alone love, for the House of Commons. She was impatient with its atmospherics, and with many of its Honourable Members. She had her occasional one-off successes at the despatch box, but she did not instinctively go with the flow of the House or tune into its moods. This was the cause of her continuous underperforming in the gladiatorial contests of Prime Minister’s Questions. She was over-prepared, and lacking in the spontaneous cut and thrust that is essential for success at PMQs. ‘Too bandbox’ was the view of Barbara Castle, watching Margaret Thatcher with some degree of feminist sympa
thy from the Labour front bench. ‘When finally she … fires her shaft, it never completely misses, but is never (or very, very rarely) deadly.’23
This same weakness of not being in command of her party in Parliament applied to her lack of dominance at meetings of the shadow cabinet. ‘The atmosphere was often uneasy because Margaret was too careful and not strong enough to take on the old guard’, recalled John Nott, who was one of the few kindred spirits she promoted to her top team. ‘Most of the Pyms, Priors, Carringtons, Gilmours and their ilk believed she would fail, and that sanity would return in the form of a consensus-minded replacement.’24
This feeling that Margaret Thatcher was merely an interim leader prevailed in many other metropolitan quarters. The intellectual elite in the Conservative Research Department, headed in 1975 by Chris Patten, referred to her as ‘Hilda’. Snobbery about her voice and her clothes, as well as her middle name, were among the many condescensions she had to bear. Julian Critchley suggested that she should be written to as ‘The Leader of the Opposition, c/o Dickins & Jones’.25
Yet at the same time as the old guard, the metropolitan elite and the social snobs in the Tory party were turning up their noses at Margaret Thatcher, a much larger swathe of public opinion was warming to her. Her unique status as the first woman party leader in any Western democracy gave her an aura of interest and charisma that few male politicians could match. She used it to communicate her vote-winning potential not in the usual currency of specific promises, but by proclaiming her personal values and beliefs.
There were signs from polls and by-election results that Middle England liked what it saw in this side of Margaret Thatcher. A large section of the electorate also knew in its heart of hearts that something must be done to halt the slow decline of their country, and to break the stranglehold of union power. But did the new Tory leader have the strength and the support to tackle these enormous problems?
On such crucial questions the national jury was undecided. People disliked Harold Wilson’s government. But the leap from his cynicism to Margaret Thatcher’s certainties was a step too far, at least in the mid-term of a Parliament that looked as though it could muddle on for most of the next five years.
There were three factors running in Margaret Thatcher’s favour. The first was her novelty. The second was her ability to communicate impressively in big set speeches and on television. The third was her interest in new ideas and solutions. Even with these advantages, she continued to be thwarted by her inability to shine in Parliament. Her apparent failure in this arena worsened with the arrival of a new Labour leader, James Callaghan. He was surprisingly effective as a Prime Minister who for many months ran rings round an inexperienced Leader of the Opposition.
Despite a hairline majority and a perilous inheritance of insecurity in most of the important votes in the House of Commons, Jim Callaghan managed to keep Margaret Thatcher at bay for three frustrating years. She did not lead her party in Parliament well during this fragile period, until the ‘winter of discontent’ changed the atmosphere.
________________
* Richard Ryder (1949–), Political Secretary to the Leader of the Opposition, 1975–1979; Political Secretary to Prime Minister, 1979–1981; married Prime Minister’s diary secretary, Caroline Stephens, 1981; Conservative MP for Mid Norfolk, 1983–1997. Created Lord Ryder of Wensum, 1997.
† There was a Grantham connection in this relationship. Sir John Tilney’s sister, Susan Agnes Rhodes Tilney (1897–1964) married Colonel Henry Brace DSO MC, 15th Hussars. They lived in Grantham. He was Deputy Lieutenant of Lincolnshire in 1944. Mrs Brace served on the Grantham town council with Alfred Roberts and knew Margaret Thatcher as a child. She wrote to Conservative Central Office in February 1949 recommending Margaret as the prospective Conservative candidate for Dartford.
‡ On 4 April 1977, Fergus Montgomery was charged with stealing two books from the Army & Navy Stores in Victoria. He was convicted and fined £70. He appealed and in December had his conviction overturned.
12
Three frustrating years
PARTY CONFERENCES AND FOREIGN VISITS
In the world beyond the House of Commons, Margaret Thatcher performed better as the new Leader of the Opposition. She was consistently effective with the faithful at constituency rallies and regional gatherings. Although this part of politics is the equivalent of preaching to the choir, she did it well. Indeed, the earliest sign that she might have star quality as a national leader came at her first party conference. In October 1975 at the Blackpool Winter Gardens, over four thousand delegates (the best crowd since 1963) came to inspect the leader they had not expected to be chosen. Even by the sceptical standards of the media commentators she was a hit.
She had vision and humour in her text. Its preparation was an agony but its reception was a triumph. The opening was endearingly humble as she recalled coming to her first conference in 1946 when Winston Churchill was leader. She moved briskly through tributes to all her predecessors including Ted Heath, ‘Who successfully led the party to victory in 1970 and brilliantly led the nation into Europe in 1973’.1 This was generous, considering Heath had refused to attend a reconciliation meeting organised by Willie Whitelaw two nights earlier in the Imperial Hotel. Her unreciprocated graciousness brought the audience to its feet, many expecting at least a handshake from the ex-leader sitting a few feet away from her on the platform. But Heath remained motionless and expressionless as a sphinx. The coldness of his snub increased the warmth for her as she developed her themes of economics and personal freedom.
Let me give you my vision. A man’s right to work as he will to spend what he earns to own property to have the State as servant and not as master these are the British inheritance. They are the essence of a free economy. And on that freedom all our other freedoms depend.
Her knockabout moments went down well too with an amusing analogy likening the Labour Party to a pub which was running out of mild beer: ‘If someone doesn’t do something soon, all that’s left will be bitter. And all that’s bitter will be Left.’
After emphasising the importance of wealth creation in order to spend money on the sick and handicapped, and the primacy of law and order, she boldly upheld the right to be unequal in economic and personal development. Her peroration was the philosophy of her Grantham upbringing writ large:
I have tried to tell you something of my personal vision, my belief in the standards on which this nation was greatly built, on which it greatly thrived, and from which in recent years it has greatly fallen away. We are coming, I think, to yet another turning point in our long history. We can go on as we have been going and continue down. Or we can stop – and with a decisive act of will we can say ‘Enough!’2
In those days a Tory conference always gave a rapturous ovation to the closing speech from the leader, but this acclaim was explosive in its enthusiasm. The reason for such excitement was partly down to her ability to express her own and the party’s frustrations over a failed socialist economy in which inflation had just reached the rate of 26.9 per cent. More importantly, Margaret Thatcher tapped into deep wells of instinctive Tory beliefs with her championship of self-reliance, a smaller state, and the economic right to be better rewarded for hard work and effort.
I recall the high emotions her speech produced in one of my constituency delegates from Thanet East. He was David Pettit, a greengrocer from Ramsgate. As we walked away from the Winter Gardens he hopped from one leg to the other and twisted himself around in dance-steps of delight, saying over and over again: ‘She spoke for me! She spoke for the man in the street! She spoke for my customers!’ Alfred Roberts would have been too restrained to do the dance, but he would surely have enthused over the speech for the same reasons as the greengrocer from Ramsgate. Middle England had found a voice. As the Daily Mail commented in its leader the following day: ‘If this is “lurching to the Right”, as her critics claim, 90 per cent of the population lurched that way long ago.’3
The
speech had been crafted by several wordsmiths but she was the only one who counted since she completely dominated the agonising process of its creation. The most exotic recruit to her speech-writing team was the playwright Ronald Millar.* He was summoned to Blackpool at short notice by Gordon Reece with the brief to ‘make the whole text flow along’, as Margaret Thatcher put it.4 This was no mean task since she herself was constantly altering its flow.
In his amusing autobiography A View from the Wings, Millar recaptured the scene: a combination of the neurotic, the heroic and the comic, as he and his fellow writers Chris Patten and Adam Ridley wrote and rewrote into the small hours of the morning. The leader of the party attacked and changed their draft pages, which were spread out on tables, chairs and even over the carpet across the suite. An added complication was that since Margaret Thatcher did not do humour, the jokes that Millar wrote for her had to be explained and rehearsed in laborious detail. In this speech the line about mild and bitter beer took a lot of polishing, since she had never tasted either. The exhausting process went on until ten past five when Denis came in and ordered his wife to bed. It was the first illustration of a much-repeated saying among her inner circle: ‘No one ever writes a speech for Margaret Thatcher. They write it with her.’5
Margaret Thatcher: Power and Personality Page 25
