Being Prime Minister is a lonely job. In a sense, it ought to be: you cannot lead from the crowd. But with Denis there I was never alone. What a man. What a husband. What a friend.
In some ways 10 Downing Street is an unusual sort of home. Portraits, busts and sculptures of one’s Prime Ministerial predecessors remind one of the nearly 250 years of history into which one has stepped.
Outside the flat I had displayed my own collection of porcelain, which I had built up over the years. I also brought with me a powerful portrait of Churchill from my room in the House of Commons. It looked down on those who assembled in the antechamber to the Cabinet Room. When I arrived, this area looked rather like a down-at-heel Pall Mall club, with heavy and worn leather furniture; I changed the whole feel by bringing in bookcases, tables and chairs from elsewhere in the building. There might be some difficult times to come in the Cabinet Room itself, but there was no reason why people should be made to feel miserable while they were waiting to go in.
Although it was not until I had been there some ten years that I had the most important redecorations done, I tried from the start to make the rooms seem more lived in. The official rooms had very few ornaments and when we arrived Downing Street had no silver. Whenever there was an official dinner the caterers had to bring in their own. Lord Brownlow lent me silver from his collection at Belton House: it sparkled and transformed the No. 10 dining room. One particular piece had a special meaning for me – a casket containing the Freedom of the Borough of Grantham, of which both the previous Lord Brownlow and later my father had been Mayor. The gardeners who kept St James’s Park brought in flowers and I also had the study repapered at my own expense. Its unappealing sage-green damask flock wallpaper was replaced by a cream stripe, which was a much better background for some fine pictures.
I felt that Downing Street should have some works by contemporary British artists and sculptors, as well as those of the past. I had met Henry Moore when I was Secretary of State for Education and much admired his work. The Moore Foundation let No. 10 borrow one of his smaller sculptures which fitted perfectly in an alcove in the main hallway. Behind the sculpture was hung a Moore drawing, which was changed every three months; among my favourites were scenes of people sleeping in the London underground during the Blitz.
I was conscious of being the first research scientist to become Prime Minister – almost as conscious as I was of being the first woman Prime Minister. So I had portraits and busts of some of our most famous scientists placed in the small dining room, where I often lunched with visitors and colleagues on less formal occasions.
On this first evening, though, I could do little more than make a brief tour of the main rooms of the building. Then I entered the Cabinet Room where I was greeted by more familiar faces – among them my daughter Carol. There was Richard Ryder who would continue for a time as my political secretary, responsible for keeping me in touch with the Conservative Party in the country; David Wolfson (now Lord Wolfson) who acted as my Chief of Staff, bringing to bear his charm and business experience on the problems of running No. 10; Caroline Stephens (later to become Caroline Ryder) who became my diary secretary; Alison Ward (later Alison Wakeham) my constituency secretary; and Cynthia Crawford – known to all of us as ‘Crawfie’ – who acted as my personal assistant and who has stayed with me ever since. We did not waste much time in conversation. They were anxious to sort out who was to go to which office. I had exactly the same task in mind: the choice of my Cabinet.
Choosing a Cabinet is undoubtedly one of the most important ways in which a Prime Minister can exercise power over the whole conduct of government. But it is not always understood how real are the constraints under which the choices take place. By convention, all ministers must be members of either the Commons or the Lords, and there must not generally be more than three Cabinet members in the Lords, thus limiting the range of potential candidates for office. In addition one has to achieve distribution across the country – every region is easily convinced it has been left out. You must also consider the spectrum of Party opinion.
Even so, the press expect the Cabinet of some twenty-two ministers to be appointed and the list to be published within about 24 hours – otherwise it is taken as a sure sign of some sort of political crisis. So I do not think that any of us at No. 10 relaxed much that day, which turned out to be a long one. I received the usual detailed security briefing which is given to incoming Prime Ministers. Then I went upstairs to the study accompanied by Willie Whitelaw and our new Chief Whip, Michael Jopling. We began to sift through the obvious and less obvious names and slowly this most perplexing of jigsaws began to take shape, and Ken Stowe sought to contact those involved to arrange for them to come in the next day.
I knew that the hardest battles would be fought on the ground of economic policy. So I made sure that the key economic ministers would be true believers in our economic strategy. Geoffrey Howe had by now thoroughly established himself as the Party’s chief economic spokesman. Geoffrey was regularly bullied in debate by Denis Healey. But by thorough mastery of his brief and an ability to marshal arguments and advice from different sources, he had shown that beneath a deceptively mild exterior he had the makings of the fine Chancellor he was to become. Some of the toughest decisions were to fall to him. He never flinched. In my view these were his best political years.
After becoming Leader in 1975, I had considered appointing Keith Joseph as Shadow Chancellor. Keith had done more than anyone else to spell out in his speeches and pamphlets what had gone wrong with Britain’s economic performance and how it could be transformed. He is an original thinker, and combines humility, open-mindedness and unshakeable principle and is genuinely sensitive to people’s misfortunes. Although he had no doubt of the rightness of the decisions which we were to make, he knew that they meant unviable firms would collapse and overmanning become unemployment, and he cared about those who were affected – far more than did all our professionally compassionate critics. But such a combination of personal qualities may create difficulties in the cruel hurly-burly of political life which Chancellors above all must endure. So Keith took over at Industry, where he did the vital job of altering the whole philosophy which had previously dominated the department. Keith was – and remains – my closest political friend.
John Biffen I appointed Chief Secretary to the Treasury. He had been a brilliant exponent in Opposition of the economic policies in which I believed, but he proved rather less effective than I had hoped in the grueling task of trying to control public expenditure. His later performance as Leader of the House where the qualities required were acute political sensitivity, good humour and a certain style was far happier. John Nott became Secretary of State for Trade. He, too, had a clear understanding of and commitment to our policies of monetary control, low taxes and free enterprise. But John is a mixture of gold, dross and mercury. No one was better at analysing a situation and prescribing a policy to deal with it. But he found it hard, or perhaps boring, to stick with the policy once it had been firmly decided. His vice was second thoughts.
It seemed prudent in the light of our effective performance in Opposition and the election campaign to maintain a high degree of continuity between Shadow Cabinet and Cabinet posts. Willie Whitelaw became Home Secretary, and in that capacity and later as Leader of the Lords he provided me personally and the Government as a whole with shrewd advice based on massive experience. People were often surprised that the two of us worked so well together, given our rivalry for the leadership and our different outlook on economics. But Willie is a big man in character as well as physically. He wanted the success of the Government which from the first he accepted would be guided by my general philosophy. Once he had pledged his loyalty, he never withdrew it. He was an irreplaceable Deputy Prime Minister – an office which has no constitutional existence but is a clear sign of political precedence – and the ballast that helped keep the Government on course.
But some changes in portfolios wer
e required. I brought in the formidable Christopher Soames to be Leader of the House of Lords. Christopher was his own man, indeed excessively so, and thus better suited to solo performances than to working in harmony with others. Peter Carrington, who had led the Lords skilfully in Opposition, became Foreign Secretary. Peter had great panache and the ability to identify immediately the main points in any argument; and he could express himself in pungent terms. We had disagreements, but there were never any hard feelings. We were an effective combination – not least because Peter could always tell some particularly intractable foreign minister that whatever he himself might feel about a particular proposition, there was no way in which his Prime Minister would accept it. I was determined, however, that at least one Foreign Office minister should have a good grounding in – and sound views on – economic policy. I had Peter bring in Nick Ridley.
Two other appointments excited more comment. To his surprise, I asked Peter Walker to be Minister of Agriculture. Peter had never made a secret of his hostility to my economic strategy. But he was both tough and persuasive, priceless assets in dealing with the plain absurdities of the European Community’s Common Agricultural Policy.
And despite the divergences of opinion between Jim Prior and the rest of us during Opposition there was no doubt in my mind that we needed him at Employment. There was still the feeling in the country, and indeed in the Conservative Party, that Britain could not be governed without the tacit consent of the trade unions. It was to be some years before that changed.
By about 11 p.m. the list of Cabinet was complete and had been approved by the Queen. I went upstairs to thank the No. 10 telephonists who had had a busy time arranging all the appointments for the following day. Then I was driven home.
On Saturday I saw the future Cabinet one by one. It all went smoothly enough. Those who were not already Privy Councillors* were sworn in at Buckingham Palace. By Saturday afternoon the Cabinet was appointed and the names announced to the press. That gave every new minister the weekend to draft instructions to his department to put into effect the manifesto policies.
My last and best appointment was of Ian Gow as my Parliamentary Private Secretary (or PPS). Ian’s combination of loyalty, shrewdness and an irrepressible sense of fun was to see us all through many difficult moments.
On Tuesday at 2.30 p.m. we held our first Cabinet meeting. It was ‘informal’: no agenda had been prepared by the Cabinet Secretariat and no minutes were taken. (Its conclusions were later recorded in the first ‘formal’ Cabinet which met on the customary Thursday morning.) Ministers reported on their departments and the preparations they had made for forthcoming legislation. We gave immediate effect to the pledges in our manifesto to see that both the police and the armed forces were properly paid. As a result of the crisis of morale in the police service, the fall in recruitment and talk of a possible police strike, the Labour Government had set up a committee on police pay under Lord Justice Edmund Davies. The committee had devised a formula to keep police pay in line with other earnings. We decided that the recommendations for pay increases due for implementation on 1 November should be brought forward. This was duly announced the following day. We similarly decided that the full military salary recommended by the latest Report of the Armed Forces Pay Review Body should be paid in full, as from 1 April.
At that first informal Cabinet we began the painful but necessary process of shrinking down the public sector. We imposed an immediate freeze on all civil service recruitment, though this would later be modified and specific targets for reduction set. We started a review of the controls imposed by central on local government, though here, too, we would in due course be forced down the path of applying still tougher, financial controls, as the inability or refusal of councils to run services efficiently became increasingly apparent.
Pay and prices were an immediate concern. Professor Hugh Clegg’s Commission on Pay Comparability had been appointed by the Labour Government as a respectable means of bribing public sector workers not to strike with postdated cheques due to be presented after the election. The Clegg Commission was a major headache, and the pain became steadily more acute as the cheques fell due.
As regards pay bargaining in the nationalized industries, we decided that the responsible ministers should stand back from the process as far as possible. Our strategy would be to apply the necessary financial discipline and then let the management and unions directly involved make their own decisions.
There would also have to be a fundamental overhaul of the way in which prices were controlled by such interventionist measures as the Price Commission, government pressure, and subsidy. We were under no illusion: price rises were a symptom of underlying inflation, not a cause of it. Inflation was a monetary phenomenon which it would require monetary discipline to curb. Artificially holding down increases merely reduced investment and undermined profits – both already far too low for the country’s economic health – while spreading a ‘cost plus’ mentality through British industry.
At both Cabinets, I concluded by emphasizing the need for collective responsibility and confidentiality between ministers. I said I had no intention of keeping a diary of Cabinet discussions and I hoped that others would follow my example. Inconvenient as that may be for the authors of memoirs, it is the only satisfactory rule for government.
On the following day Members of Parliament assembled to take the oath. But Thursday was a day of more than ceremonial importance (indeed there was one ceremony which somehow got lost in the rush – Denis’s birthday). It was on that day that Helmut Schmidt, the West German Federal Chancellor, arrived in London on an official visit originally arranged with the Labour Government – the first head of a foreign government to visit me as Prime Minister.
I had met Herr Schmidt in Opposition and had soon developed the highest regard for him. He had a profound understanding of the international economy on which – although he considered himself a socialist – we were to find ourselves in close agreement. In fact, he understood a good deal better than some British Conservatives the importance of financial orthodoxy – the need to control the money supply and to restrain public spending and borrowing so as to allow room for the private sector to grow. But he had to be told straight away that although Britain wanted to play a vigorous and influential role in the European Community, we could not do so until the problem of our grossly unfair budgetary contribution had been resolved. I saw no reason to conceal our views behind a diplomatic smokescreen so I used every occasion to get the message across.
On Saturday I flew to Scotland to address the Scottish Conservative Conference, something I always enjoyed. Life is not easy for Scottish Tories. Unlike English Conservatives, they are used to being a minority party, with the Scottish media heavily slanted against them. But these circumstances gave Scottish Conservatives a degree of enthusiasm and a fighting spirit which I admired, and which also guaranteed a warmhearted and receptive audience. Some leading Scottish Tories, a small minority, still hankered after a kind of devolved government, but the rest of us were deeply suspicious of what that might mean to the future of the Union. While reaffirming our decision to repeal Labour’s Scotland Act, I indicated that we would initiate all-party talks ‘aimed at bringing government closer to the people’. In the event we did so by rolling back the state rather than by creating new institutions of government.
My main message to the Conference was a deliberately sombre one, intended for Britain as a whole. That same day an inflation figure of 10.1 per cent had been published. It would rise further. I noted:
The evil of inflation is still with us. We are a long way from restoring honest money and the Treasury forecast when we took over was that inflation was on an upward trend. It will be some considerable time before our measures take effect. We should not underestimate the enormity of the task which lies ahead. But little can be achieved without sound money. It is the bedrock of sound government.
As our economic and political difficulties accumu
lated in the months ahead, no one could claim that they had not been warned.
We arrived back at RAF Northolt and drove to Chequers where I spent my first weekend as Prime Minister. I do not think anyone has stayed long at Chequers without falling in love with it. From the time of its first Prime Ministerial occupant, David Lloyd George, it has been assumed that the holders of that office would not necessarily have their own country estates. For that reason, Lord Lee’s gift to the nation of his country house for the use and relaxation of Prime Ministers marks as much a new era as did the Reform Bills.
Chequers is an Elizabethan house, but has been substantially rebuilt over the years. The centre of the house is the great hall, once a courtyard, enclosed at the end of the last century, where in winter a log fire burns, giving a slight tang of woodsmoke through every room.
Thanks to the generosity of Walter Annenberg, US Ambassador to Britain from 1969–74, Chequers has a covered swimming pool. But in the years I was there it was only used in the summer. Early on I learned that it cost £5,000 a year to heat. By saving this money we had more which could be spent on the perpetual round of necessary repairs to the house.
The group which gathered for Sunday lunch just ten days after our election victory was fairly typical of a Chequers weekend. My family were there, Denis, Carol, Mark. Keith Joseph, Geoffrey and Elspeth Howe, the Pyms and Quintin Hailsham represented, as it were, the Government team. Peter Thorneycroft and Alistair McAlpine were present from Central Office. David Wolfson, Bryan Cartledge (my private secretary) with their wives, and our friends, Sir John and Lady Tilney, completed the party.
Margaret Thatcher: The Autobiography Page 35
