The Real Iron Lady

by Gillian Shephard

  caring and understanding nature. Before her first Christmas as Prime Minister, she asked me if I knew of any of our MPs who were going to be alone over that time, as she wanted to invite them to Chequers. Again, when people both in or out of Parliament got into trouble over various sexual misdemeanours, she would comment that her experience as a barrister had taught her that ‘some men cannot resist feasting with leopards’.

  John MacGregor recalls an informal lunch at Chequers when Mrs Thatcher had ‘an urgent and rather complicated matter’ that she wanted to discuss with him.

  We arranged that we should arrive early so that she could do so. As we arrived at the security gates half an hour earlier than the others for this purpose, Jean, my wife, wondered what she should do while she was on her own before the rest of the guests arrived. She need not have worried. As we drove into the courtyard, Margaret was waiting at the front door. She greeted Jean effusively, took her in, showed her round and arranged for her to be properly looked after, and only then came down to our meeting.

  Jill Knight was elected as MP for Edgbaston in 1966 seven years after Mrs Thatcher.

  I also fought twice in a hopeless seat before I managed it. When I arrived in the House of Commons, to my surprise, she knew my history and welcomed me warmly. She referred to a speech I had made years earlier at a Conservative Conference, which actually achieved a standing ovation. That she should recall it at all amazed me. But she also offered to help and advise whenever I thought I needed it, and very generously was as good as her word when I did.

  Virginia Bottomley fought the Isle of Wight seat in 1983.

  Arriving in the Isle of Wight by hovercraft, Margaret Thatcher came to support my first parliamentary campaign on the penultimate day of the 1983 general election. She was magnificent. ‘It was as though she was re-taking the Falkland Islands,’ said the sketchwriters. Her charisma, authority and confidence had started the transformation of Britain’s economy, regained the Falkland Islands and established her in Downing Street. I may have made a reputation as a serious campaigner with over 34,000 votes; I failed to win the seat.

  Rebuilding her Cabinet, having successfully gained a second term, on the day after the election and my failure to win, the telephone rang. The Prime Minister was on the line. She was empathetic, generous, delightful. This reduced me to tears. It was a typical example of her personal kindness to individuals and the ability to offer support to someone of relative insignificance, even though she had a fearsome diary and heavy responsibilities.

  And even John Monks, in no way as he puts it ‘a paid-up member of the Mrs Thatcher fan club’, noted with approval a vignette at a No. 10 reception:

  I was at a reception at No. 10 including a collection of the great and the good, with Jacqueline du Pré, then badly afflicted by multiple sclerosis and in a wheelchair. Mrs Thatcher entered and went straight over to the great cellist, a favourite of mine, and they talked intently for twenty minutes or so. It is not easy to talk to anyone for more than a minute at a crowded reception, yet she ignored all others and applied her concentration, an act of personal kindness which sticks in my mind.

  A woman of contrasts indeed.

  † A major political corruption scandal sparked by the discovery that architectural designer and businessman John Poulson had engaged in widespread bribery of politicians, civil servants and local authority officials. The Select Committee inquiry reported in 1977.

  FIVE

  ‘I HOPE THAT ONE QUALITY IN WHICH I AM NOT LACKING IS COURAGE.’

  Few of Margaret Thatcher’s critics could advance the argument that she lacked courage. The challenges that she faced and overcame during her premiership demonstrated again and again her steely resolve.

  For Michel Jopling, her Chief Whip until 1983, the three greatest tests were the Falklands War, the Brighton bomb and the Miners’ Strike.

  In all of these challenges there was a common theme. There must be no question of giving way. The challenge must be met and overcome. The rule of law and the right of the government to govern must be asserted. I remember her calmness which was so apparent in meeting all these challenges.

  But before there was any thought of her becoming an MP, let alone Prime Minister, she faced down unpopularity and, worse, condescension and ridicule at Oxford for her unfashionable Conservative views. She also, like other women, endured extraordinary prejudice from mostly male selection committees before she got a parliamentary seat.

  Jill Knight shared the problem. She entered Parliament in 1966, seven years after Margaret Thatcher.

  Today, if one has ambitions to become an MP, it is a positive advantage to be a woman. Fifty years ago, it was a monumental disadvantage. Selection committees did not like females. Very few women even had their names put forward for consideration, much less for an interview. It was difficult to build up a reputation for political knowledge, let alone expertise, and the general feeling was that the electorate would not vote for a woman, so why choose one to be a candidate? Only ample amounts of dedication, courage, intelligence, hard work, persistence and personality broke the barriers, and Margaret Thatcher had every one of them. She was young and pretty, too, which may have helped. Contesting the strong Labour seat of Dartford in 1950 did not get her into Parliament, but it brought her more publicity, more fans and much valuable experience. She fought it again in 1951, still without success, but her determination, loyalty and courage, added to the ability which by now everyone recognised, finally got her the nomination for the plum seat of Finchley and she became its Member in 1959.

  That, of course, was only part of the story. In 1954, when the Thatchers were living in Orpington, Margaret Thatcher tried for the seat when the sitting MP, Sir Waldron Smithers, died at the end of that year. She was shortlisted, but the Association chose its own chairman, Donald Sumner, as the candidate. Ironically, when Sumner resigned the seat seven years later to become a judge, it was sensationally lost in the famous Orpington by-election to the Liberal candidate, Eric Lubbock, an outcome unthinkable had the Orpington Tories chosen Margaret Thatcher as their candidate in the first place.

  In 1956, she put her name back on the Central Office candidates list, and took part in a course in television skills for hopeful candidates. The following year, when her children were three years old, she resumed her search for a winnable seat. Beckenham came up in early 1957. She was up against three men candidates and one of them, Philip Goodhart, was selected. Apparently some of the Beckenham Conservative Association members had specified that they wanted someone local, preferably a businessman or one with parliamentary experience. Such mantras are very familiar to all would-be candidates. Associations usually add that their particular seat is extremely safe and should be awarded only to a very deserving candidate.

  Towards the end of 1957, Lady Davidson indicated that she was standing down from her Hemel Hempstead seat. Margaret Thatcher at once said that she was interested, but a shortlist of six men was drawn up. None impressed the selection committee, so a second list was compiled, this time including Margaret Thatcher, who was rejected with the comment ‘limited outlook’. She then applied and was shortlisted for Maidstone, where she was beaten by John Wells.

  Finally, Finchley came up; Margaret Thatcher applied and was selected, despite the fact that the deputy area agent (a woman) reported: ‘I gather that Finchley are determined to see some women so that they may be seen to have gone through the motions, but I should be very surprised if they selected one.’

  Like so many women candidates in all the main political parties, Margaret Thatcher must have raged against what she very well knew was prejudice against her because she was a woman. It took real grit for her to continue against what must have seemed insuperable odds. Even in Finchley, at her final adoption meeting (the formal meeting by which an Association officially adopts the successful applicant as their candidate), there were a few dissenting voices.

  When I was selected for my seat in South West Norfolk in 1986, the local Assoc
iation members had determined from the start that there were two kinds of candidate they did not want and would not have: ‘a barrister from away, or a woman’. In the event, they began by choosing a barrister from away, an able lawyer called Charles Harris, whereupon a grassroots rebellion was organised to reject him at his actual adoption meeting, normally a formality. The whole process was started again, and on the second attempt, they chose me, the other thing they did not want, a woman. And at my adoption meeting, three members resigned publicly, saying as they left the room that they could not go home and say to people in their villages that the next MP would be a woman.

  I include my own selection story because, like scores of other women candidates (and men, although they were not normally rejected because they were men), I know it is tough to go on and on with the process of getting a seat after a number of rejections. You have to keep going, but you steel yourself every time for yet another failure. My story is far from the worst in my generation. Emily Blatch, who eventually became Deputy Leader of the House of Lords, after a successful ministerial career at the Home Office and Education, was asked at a selection meeting if she realised that the House of Commons was in London and that she would have to go there if she became an MP. Ann Widdecombe was asked if she did not think she was rather short to be an MP. Judith Chaplin, the tragically short-lived MP for Newbury from 1992, was introduced at a selection meeting in Surrey with the words, ‘This is Judith Chaplin. She is from Norfolk where she and her second husband have nine children between them.’ She was then ushered to a podium which was so high that it obscured her from the view of the audience.

  We all knew that we had to keep going. The fact that Margaret Thatcher had gone before was a comfort to all of us.

  Understandably (although this did not accord with the popular image of her), she was very vulnerable where family matters were concerned. When her son Mark was reported missing during a motor rally in the Sahara in January 1982, she had six days of appalling anxiety, and was frequently found weeping, sometimes in public. It did not stop her doing her job, as John MacGregor observed.

  One of my ministerial appointments in the early 1980s was Parliamentary Under-Secretary for the Department of Trade and Industry, with special responsibilities for small businesses. I was generally known as the Minister for Small Businesses, or, indeed, as the Small Business Minister. It was a time when we were trying to reinstate the importance of small businesses, to revive the spirit of enterprise and to assist the growth of start-ups. Early on, I arranged a one-day conference for small businesses, their federations and organisations at the Russell Hotel in London. The highlight was to be an address by Margaret Thatcher at lunchtime. Mid-morning, I heard the news that Mark, Margaret’s son, had been lost in the Sahara Desert. I assumed that she would cancel. But no, word came that she was determined to go ahead, I am sure because of the importance that she attached to these policies, given her own family background and her huge personal commitment to the sector. As she got out of the car, she was uncharacteristically tearful and it was clear that she was very upset. I waited in the room with her for ten minutes while she tried to get further news. Then she turned to me and said, ‘Right, John’, stood up very composed, went straight into the lunch and delivered a marvellous speech. No one there could have known the inner turmoil.

  The Falklands conflict certainly stretched her to the very limit. She was acutely aware that the final decision to send Britain to war was hers, and she had to take responsibility for it. What turned out, in the end, to be a great political triumph for Margaret Thatcher began with a failure of foreign policy, in that her government had apparently been unable to decide between cutting defence spending and maintaining overseas defence commitments.

  From the start of the affair, she realised that she had to pay punctilious attention to Cabinet and parliamentary procedures in a matter as serious as going to war. She had to seek and get the approval of the Cabinet and Parliament. She would have unquestionably have resigned had the Cabinet not agreed. Parliament also gave its approval, albeit on a technical motion on the day, but, she wrote in her memoirs, ‘I obtained the almost unanimous but grudging support of a Commons that was anxious to support the government’s policy, while reserving judgement on the government’s performance.’ She set up a small War Cabinet, technically an offshoot of the standing Cabinet Committee for Overseas and Defence, known as OD(SA). This War Cabinet met once and sometimes twice a day throughout the war, and a second full Cabinet meeting met each week after the War Cabinet, so that it was fully informed at every stage. The Chiefs of Staff were present at this second full Cabinet.

  Peter Hennessy quotes a Whitehall insider in The Prime Minister:

  They were proper Cabinets with proper decisions. She was aware that the nearer she got, the surer she had to be that people were with her … She was seen as an able and acceptable leader of a team of people … She spent much more time asking questions and weighing up the answers than she is reputed to have done in all other areas. With hindsight, the fact that she was a woman, that she did not have military experience and that she had a clear and penetrating mind were all pluses.

  Ian Beesley describes how the decision to sink the Belgrano was taken at an emergency meeting of OD(SA) at Chequers on 2 May 1982.

  Uncharacteristically, Margaret Thatcher did not lead with her opinion. She asked each person in turn, ministers and officials, whether an order to sink the Belgrano should be given, before she gave any hint of her own position.

  The fact was that the only person whose career would have been irretrievably destroyed by failure in the Falklands conflict was Margaret Thatcher. She was acutely aware of this throughout. When others had prevaricated, she had acted. And, in the end, she took immense personal pleasure and pride from the outcome. Most agree that her whole leadership style changed as a result.

  But the conflict took a personal toll on Margaret Thatcher. At the time of the Falklands conflict, Joan Seccombe was the Chairman of the Conservative Women’s National Committee.

  During the Falklands conflict she showed typically amazing courage. I had seen her before her session began at the Conservative Women’s Annual Conference in spring 1982. Her concern over the injuries to our troops and their families nearly overwhelmed her as, that morning, the Atlantic Conveyor was hit, killing twelve sailors and injuring many, many more. When she arrived at the conference, her officials were unsure of the number of casualties and she was clearly distressed. It was made clear to her that the world’s media would be focused on her at this crucial point. As ever, she showed courage and impeccable judgement. She went out on the stage, and delivered a speech with strength and determination, while at the same time sharing the grief with the families of the young people who had lost their lives or were injured during the conflict. This test of character was one which she passed with flying colours and I felt people were able to draw comfort from her courage and fortitude throughout this difficult time.

  Harvey Thomas, who as Head of Presentation at Conservative Central Office was in charge of the conference, throws further light on the Prime Minister’s reaction – and how it was handled.

  Her personal acceptance of responsibility was both straightforward and sometimes painful for friends to see.

  The day a British warship was hit in the Falklands, there was a Conservative Women’s conference scheduled in the Royal Horticultural Hall. Backstage, Margaret’s tears flowed for almost forty minutes as she felt the burden of being, as she put it, ‘the first Prime Minister in decades to have to send young British soldiers to their death in conflict’.

  We had many extra speakers at that conference, and so I bundled them up to the platform to keep it going while she composed herself.

  There was much media comment during and after the Falklands War, alleging that Margaret Thatcher had shown little feeling for the casualties suffered on both sides as a result of the conflict, and that she had somehow gloried in going to war. The fact is that she took the
whole matter with the utmost seriousness, paid the greatest possible attention to the democratic process throughout, and was deeply grieved by the loss of life and her responsibility for it. That same sense of personal responsibility coloured her reaction to the bombing by the IRA of the Grand Hotel in Brighton when the Conservative Party Conference was taking place there on 12 October 1984. Four people were killed outright by the bomb, one died a month later and thirty-four were taken to hospital with their injuries. Harvey Thomas recalls that Margaret Thatcher

  believed that people were hurt, as she saw it, because the IRA was trying to kill her. In a personal handwritten note the following week, she said, ‘It would have been difficult to have gone through last weekend without a strong faith.’ Years later she spoke again of ‘the burden of responsibility’ when speaking about the Tebbits, who had been so terribly injured in the incident.

  Three of the contributors to this book have written accounts of the Brighton bomb. I have included all three in full because, while the accounts overlap, they complement one another in their vivid depiction of the terrifying attack.

  Joan Seccombe had become Vice-Chairman of the National Union (the voluntary side of the Conservative Party) by 1984.

  The 1984 Conservative Party Conference in Brighton was one which changed many lives, due to the extraordinary events which unfolded. On the Thursday evening, 11 October, we had retired to bed in Room 19 on the third floor of the Grand Hotel when there was the most enormous explosion followed by a strange rumbling sound, which we later found out was the building collapsing in on itself. Lights went out, bells rang furiously. We dressed, partially, with speed and left by the emergency exit fire escape. The main staircase was blocked so our route was through Lady Airey’s room. I will always remember emerging from the Grand Hotel and seeing Sir Keith Joseph standing immaculately on the seafront, resplendent and bedecked in cravat and silk dressing gown! We went into the adjoining Metropole Hotel, and were generously provided with refreshments throughout the night. Nobody quite knew what had happened to others staying in the hotel, but we were assured that the Prime Minister was safe and had been whisked away.