Margaret Thatcher: The Autobiography

by Margaret Thatcher

  Far from being unpopular, these proposals were soon being criticized on the grounds that they did not go far enough. The SDP were trying to outflank us by urging greater use of mandatory secret ballots. Many of our own supporters wanted to see action to stop the abuses connected with the ‘political levy’, a substantial sum extracted from trade unionists largely for the benefit of the Labour Party. There was continuing pressure to do something to prevent strikes in essential services. But it would not have been practical to deal with all of these issues at once in a single Bill: each raised complicated questions and we could not afford to make mistakes in this vital area. I was glad, however, that the atmosphere had changed and that the dangers of trade union power were now so much more widely understood. We were winning that battle, too.

  In September Norman came forward with a paper containing his thoughts for new industrial relations legislation which would be formally submitted to ‘E’ Committee, the Economic Committee of the Cabinet, with a view to inclusion in the manifesto. Norman had already announced that we would undertake consultations with interested parties on legislation that would require trade unions to use secret ballots for the election of their leaders. There was strong support in both Houses for mandatory secret ballots before industrial action. But we were divided on this.

  Ministers now discussed what should be the priorities for the forthcoming consultative Green Paper. We agreed to concentrate on ballots for the election of trade union leaders, mandatory strike ballots, and the political levy. Norman had reservations about the use of compulsory ballots before strikes. We had previously concluded that these should be voluntary. Moreover, there were doubts whether or not the use of ballots would actually reduce the frequency and length of strikes. But I was very aware of the great advantages of linking trade union reform to the unassailable principle of democracy, and I was keen to see that the proposals on strike ballots were expressed in a positive way in the Green Paper.

  We published the Green Paper under the title Democracy in Trade Unions, in January 1983. Ministers discussed in April where we should go from there. We had no difficulty deciding in favour of proposals relating to trade union elections and strike ballots. Two other issues proved much more difficult: the prevention of strikes in essential services and the political levy.

  Public sector strikes and consequent disruption to the lives of the general public had been a feature of life in post-war Britain, but the practical difficulties of tackling the problem were immense. How should one define an ‘essential service’? How much would it cost the taxpayer in extra pay to secure ‘no strike’ agreements? What should be the penalty for failure to observe a ‘no strike’ agreement?

  The political levy was a second difficult subject. It was paid by trade unionists into political funds held by their unions, the principal use of which was, in fact, to support the Labour Party. Payment was on the basis of ‘contracting out’: that is, trade unionists contributed automatically unless they specified otherwise. On the face of it, it would have been fairer to base the system on a principle of ‘contracting in’ and some argued for the change. But ‘contracting in’ would have wreaked havoc with the Labour Party’s finances. Had we introduced such a measure, there would undoubtedly have been pressure to change the system by which some companies donated to political parties, from which, of course, the Conservative Party heavily benefited. I never believed that the cases were parallel: after all, trade unionists in a closed shop could find it very difficult to avoid paying the political levy. By contrast, shareholders who did not approve of company donations to a political party could either hold the Board to account for their decisions or simply sell their shares. But the funding of political parties was a sensitive topic. If we brought forward radical proposals on the eve of a general election, we would be accused both of attempting to crush the Labour Party financially and of unfairness on the matter of corporate donations.

  On Tuesday 10 May I held a meeting of ministers at which we decided our manifesto commitment. On essential services, the introduction of strike ballots would clearly help reduce the risk of strikes in these areas. But we would also consult further about the need for industrial relations in specified essential services to be governed by adequate procedure agreements, breach of which would deprive industrial action of immunity. On the question of the political levy, we had evidence from the consultations on the Green Paper that there was widespread disquiet about the operation of the system and we proposed to consult with the TUC to see what action they were prepared to take, failing which we would act ourselves. These were matters to which we would have to return after the election. But we had made substantial progress in reducing the overbearing power of trade unions – much more than the fainthearted had ever believed possible. And far from proving a political incubus it was one of our strongest appeals to the voters.

  For all sorts of reasons it is much easier to prepare for an election when you are in government than in Opposition. You have more information available about forthcoming events and more power to shape them. But parties in government face two risks in particular. First, ministers can get out of the habit of thinking politically and become cocooned in their departments. Having to face, as I did, rigorous cross-questioning from an often hostile House of Commons twice a week, there was little danger that I personally would succumb to this: but others might. The second risk is that having implemented its manifesto, a government may run out of ideas. It is part of the job of ministers to see that this does not happen in their own areas of responsibility, and the job of the Prime Minister to prevent it happening to the Government as a whole.

  One of the main obstacles to the kind of forward thinking which all governments should do is unauthorized disclosure of information by disaffected ministers or civil servants. A particularly serious problem arose in the last half of the 1979–83 Parliament. In March 1982 Geoffrey Howe asked officials to undertake an examination of long-term public expenditure up to and including 1990 and its implications for levels of taxation: their report was presented to me on 28 July. It was intended to get us all to examine how the long-term momentum for the expansion of the state and public spending might be curbed and reversed. As it turned out the paper was excessively gloomy and its most likely scenario underestimated very substantially the economic growth rate for the 1980s. To make matters worse, the CPRS prepared its own paper, which contained a number of very radical options that had never been seriously considered by ministers or by me. These included, for example, sweeping changes in the financing of the National Health Service and extensions of the use of charging. I was horrified. As soon as I saw the paper, I pointed out that it would almost certainly be leaked and give a totally false impression. That is exactly what happened.

  When the papers were discussed at Cabinet in early September, they made no great impact on our thinking. Our main conclusions could have been reached without any such exercise: that there should be no major new expenditure commitments pending further consideration, and that we should generally examine the scope for changing policies in ways which would bring public spending under proper control. But that failed to stop the media frenzy. A fairly full account of the CPRS paper duly appeared in the Economist. The Observer developed the story. The Economist later gave a blow-by-blow account of discussions at Cabinet. The Observer and then The Times revealed still more information. Of course, the Opposition had a field day. We were to be plagued by talk of secret proposals and hidden manifestos up to polling day and beyond. It was all the greatest nonsense.

  There were two lessons from this incident which I never forgot. The first was that we had political opponents about us who would stop at nothing to distort and thereby prevent our forward thinking on policy. The second lesson was of equal importance: it was unacceptable for highly controversial proposals to come before Cabinet without the prior knowledge and approval of the ministers responsible. This raised acutely what role there could be for the CPRS.

  In earlier days, th
e CPRS had been a valuable source of sound longrange analysis and practical advice. But it had become a freelance ‘Ministry of Bright Ideas’, some of which were sound, some not. Moreover, as I have noted earlier, a government with a clear sense of direction does not need advice from first principles. Now, as this incident had shown, the CPRS could become a positive embarrassment. That was why, shortly after the election, I was to dissolve the ‘Think-Tank’, and ask two of its members to join the in-house Policy Unit which worked more closely with me.

  Ferdy Mount was now head of my Policy Unit. I had long been a great admirer of Ferdy’s witty and thoughtful articles even when, as over the Falklands, I did not agree with his views; and I was delighted when in April 1982 he agreed to succeed John Hoskyns. Ferdy was particularly interested in all that goes under the heading of social policy – education, criminal justice, housing, the family and so on, to which I was increasingly turning my attention. In late May he prepared for me a paper which contained the outline of an approach to ‘renewing the values of society’:

  This Government came to power asserting that it is the exercise of responsibility which teaches self-discipline. But in the early stages of life it is the experience of authority, when exerted fairly and consistently by adults, which teaches young people how to exercise responsibility themselves. We have to learn to take orders before we learn how to give them. This two-way relationship between obedience and responsibility is what makes a free, self-governing society. And in the breakdown of that relationship we can trace the origins of so much that has gone wrong with Britain.

  If we can rebuild this relationship, we might begin to restore also respect for law and order, respect for property, and respect for teachers and parents. But the rebuilding itself has to be a two-way business. On the one hand, we need to restore effective authority to teachers and parents. On the other hand, we need to offer young people a taste of responsibility and a useful role in society.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Home and Dry

  The background to and course of the 1983 general election campaign

  THE CENTRAL IMPORTANCE of the manifesto in British general elections often strikes foreign observers as slightly odd. In the United States and continental Europe, party ‘platforms’ have less authority and as a result they are not nearly as closely studied. Even in Britain it is only relatively recently that manifestos have been so full of detailed proposals.

  The first Conservative manifesto was Sir Robert Peel’s 1835 address to his electors in Tamworth. The ‘Tamworth manifesto’, for all the obvious differences, has one basic similarity with the Conservative manifesto today: it was then and is now very much the Party Leader’s own statement of policies.

  However, the rest of the Government and Parliamentary Party need to feel committed to the manifesto’s proposals and consequently there has to be a good deal of consultation. I discussed the question with Cecil Parkinson and we agreed that Geoffrey Howe was the right person to oversee the manifesto-making process. As Chancellor of the Exchequer he had the seniority and experience to supervise the required policy work. Looking back, this arrangement was successful in one of its aims – that of reducing the burden on me – but it turned out to have significant drawbacks. In 1987 I decided to oversee the preparation of the manifesto myself.

  The whole process began almost a year before the election. On Saturday 19 June 1982 I approved the setting up of Party policy groups with the remit of identifying ‘tasks for Conservative administration during the rest of this decade; to make proposals for action where possible; where not possible, to identify subjects for further study’. The nine groups we set up covered unemployment, enterprise, family and women’s affairs, education, the cities and law and order, the poverty trap, the European Community, nationalized industries and urban transport. We decided that the chairman of each group should be a parliamentarian who would help to select members for their group from among the Conservative-minded in the worlds of business, academia, voluntary service and local government. Special advisers to the relevant Cabinet ministers would sit in on the meetings. (Special advisers are political appointees, and so free from the constraints of political neutrality which prevent the use of civil servants in such roles.) Secretarial and research work was done by members of the Conservative Research Department.

  Essentially, the policy groups had two purposes. The more important was to involve the Party as a whole in our thinking for the future. In this I believe they were successful. The second was to come up with fresh ideas for the manifesto, and unfortunately in this purpose they failed. For one reason or another it took too long to find appropriate chairmen and the right balance of group members. It was not until October or November 1982 that the groups actually got down to work. The groups were due to report only at the end of March 1983, but by then of course we in government were all well advanced on our own policy work. Another problem is the human vanity of wanting to demonstrate that you are on the inside track. All too often their proposals trickled out through the press.

  The fact is that the really bold proposals in any manifesto can only be developed over a considerable period of time. Relying on bright ideas thought out at the last moment risks a manifesto that would be incoherent and impossible to carry out. So, in the end, the real work for the 1983 manifesto had to be done in No. 10 and by ministers in departments.

  The most important pledges in the manifesto fell into three groups. First, we promised to accelerate privatization, which was fundamental to our whole economic approach. If elected, we committed ourselves to sell British Telecom, British Airways, substantial parts of British Steel, British Shipbuilders, British Leyland and as many as possible of Britain’s airports. The offshore oil interests of British Gas would also be privatized and private capital would be introduced into the National Bus Company. This was an ambitious programme.

  The second important group of pledges concerned trade union reform. Building on the consultations on our Trade Union Democracy Green Paper, we promised legislation to require ballots for the election of trade union governing bodies and ballots before strikes, failing which unions would lose their immunities. There was also a cautious pledge to consider legislation on the trade union political levy and on strikes in essential services. At a time when Labour was promising to repeal our earlier trade union reforms, we were moving ahead with new ones: the contrast was stark, and we were sure the voters would appreciate the fact.

  The third significant group of manifesto proposals related to local government. In particular, we promised to abolish the Greater London Council (GLC) and the Metropolitan County Councils, returning their functions to councils closer to the people – the boroughs in London, and the districts in the other metropolitan areas. We also promised to introduce what came to be known as ‘rate-capping’ – legislation enabling us to curb the extravagance of high-spending councils, in the interests of local ratepayers and the wider economy.

  Though the manifesto took our programme forward, it was somehow not an exciting document. The first years of Conservative administration had been dominated by the battle against inflation and by a different kind of warfare in the South Atlantic. Great as the achievements were, neither economics nor defence is the kind of issue that generates exciting material for manifestos. Social policy is very different, but we were only really starting to turn our attention to this area. And on this occasion at least, Geoffrey Howe may have been too safe a pair of hands.

  Perhaps the most important feature of the manifesto was what it did not contain. It did not promise a change of direction or an easing of the pace. It gave no quarter to the advocates of socialism and corporatism.

  On Wednesday 5 January 1983 I set aside a full day for discussion of our general election strategy. It was in the recess, so we held it at Chequers, always a relaxing place to think things out. The first half of the morning was spent with Cecil Parkinson, Michael Spicer (Deputy Chairman of the Party), Ian Gow and David Wolfson.

 
We discussed how to handle television: it was likely to be even more important than in earlier elections, though the new breakfast television would have less impact than had often been predicted. Gordon Reece had come over from the United States to help with this aspect of the campaign. Gordon was a former television producer with a unique insight into the medium. He had a much better grasp of popular taste than might have been expected from a man whose principal diet was champagne and cigars. He argued that we should be prepared to accept a series of televised debates between myself and Michael Foot, and (separately) with the Alliance leaders. This was an exceptional suggestion: British Prime Ministers have never accepted challenges to election debates of this kind. I rejected the idea. I disliked the way that elections were being turned into media circuses. And the arguments were too important to be reduced to a ‘sound bite’ or a gladiatorial sport.

  One of our principal assets was the state of the Party’s organization. Cecil Parkinson had done wonders for Central Office. He had brought the Party’s finances into order since he had become Chairman: this was essential, because it is only by husbanding resources in mid-term that you can afford to spend as heavily as required in a general election campaign.

  In the afternoon Tim Bell presented a paper summarizing the strengths and weaknesses of our position, based upon opinion polls. Tim could pick up quicker than anyone else a change in the national mood. And, unlike most advertising men, he understood that selling ideas is different from selling soap. Tim set out a communications strategy whose main theme was ‘keep on with the change’, an approach I welcomed. Its wisdom lay in the perception that it was the Conservative Government rather than the Opposition parties which was the radical force in British society.