Margaret Thatcher: The Autobiography

by Margaret Thatcher

  I now knew from Michael’s behaviour that unless he were checked there were no limits to what he would do to secure his objectives at Westland. This had to stop.

  Westland was placed on the agenda for the Cabinet of Thursday 9 January. At that meeting I began by rehearsing the decisions which had been made by the Government. I then ran over the damaging press comment which there had been in the New Year. I said that if the situation continued, the Government would have no credibility left. I had never seen a clearer demonstration of the damage done to the coherence and standing of a government when the principle of collective responsibility was ignored. Leon Brittan and then Michael Heseltine put their respective cases. After some discussion, I began to sum up by pointing out that the time was approaching when the company and its bankers at a shareholders’ meeting had to decide between the two consortia. It was legally as well as politically important that they should come to their decision without further intervention by ministers and there must be no lobbying or briefing directly or indirectly. Because of the risks of misinterpretation during this period of sensitive commercial negotiations and decisions, answers to questions should be cleared interdepartmentally through the Cabinet Office so as to ensure that all answers given were fully consistent with the policy of the Government.

  Everyone else accepted this. But Michael Heseltine said that it would be impossible to clear every answer through the Cabinet Office and that he must be able to confirm statements already made and answer questions of fact about procurement requirements without any delay. I suspect that no one present saw this as anything other than a ruse. No one sided with Michael. He was quite isolated. I again summed up, repeating my earlier remarks and adding that consideration should also be given to the preparation under Cabinet Office auspices of an interdepartmentally agreed fact sheet which could be drawn upon as a source of answers to questions. I then emphasized the importance of observing collective responsibility in this and in all matters. At this Michael Heseltine erupted. He claimed that there had been no collective responsibility in the discussion of Westland. He alleged a breakdown in the propriety of Cabinet discussions. He could not accept the decision recorded in my summing up. He must therefore leave the Cabinet. He gathered his papers together and left a Cabinet united against him.

  I have learnt that other colleagues at the meeting were stunned by what had happened. I was not. Michael had made his decision and that was that. I already knew whom I wanted to succeed him at Defence: George Younger.

  I called a short break and walked through to the Private Office. Nigel Wicks, my principal private secretary, brought George Younger out; I offered him, and he accepted, the Defence post. I asked my office to telephone Malcolm Rifkind to offer him George’s former post of Scottish Secretary, which he too subsequently accepted. We contacted the Queen to ask her approval of these appointments. Then I returned to Cabinet, continued the business and by the end of the meeting I was able to announce George Younger’s appointment. Within the Cabinet at least all had been settled.

  When the House reassembled on Monday 13 January, at a meeting that morning Willie, Leon, George, the Chief Whip and others discussed with me what should be done. It was decided that Leon, rather than I, would make a statement on Westland in the House that afternoon. It went disastrously wrong. Michael Heseltine trapped Leon with a question about whether any letters from British Aerospace had been received bearing on a meeting which Leon had with Sir Raymond Lygo, the Chief Executive of British Aerospace. It was suggested (as it transpired quite falsely) that at his meeting with Sir Raymond Lygo Leon had said that British Aerospace’s involvement in the European consortium was against the national interest and that they should withdraw. The letter in question, which had arrived at No. 10 and which I saw just before coming over to the House to listen to Leon’s statement, had been marked ‘Private and Strictly Confidential’. Leon felt that he had to respect that confidence, but in doing so he used a lawyer’s formulation which opened him to the charge of misleading the House of Commons. He had to return to the House later that night to make an apology. In itself it was a small matter; but in the atmosphere of suspicion and conspiracy fostered by Michael Heseltine – who mysteriously knew all about this confidential missive – it did great harm to Leon’s credibility. The letter was subsequently published with the permission of its author, Sir Austin Pearce, but it contributed little to the debate since the day after that Sir Raymond withdrew his allegations as having been based on a misunderstanding. By then, however, Leon’s political position was all but irrecoverable.

  But none of this made my life any easier when I had to reply to Neil Kinnock in the debate on Westland on Wednesday 15 January.

  My speech was strictly factual. It demonstrated that we had reached our decisions on Westland in a proper and responsible way. Indeed, as I listed all the meetings of ministers, including Cabinet committees and Cabinets which had discussed Westland, I half felt that I had been guilty of wasting too much of ministers’ time on an issue of relative unimportance. Although it set out all the facts, my speech was not well received.

  Michael Heseltine spoke, criticizing the way in which collective responsibility had been discharged over Westland and quite ignoring the fact that he had walked out of a Cabinet meeting on Westland because he was the only minister unwilling to abide by a Cabinet decision.

  Leon summed up for the Government in a speech which I hoped would restore his standing in the House and which seemed a modest success. The press, however, still kept up the pressure on him and there was plenty of criticism of me as well. It seemed, though, that given time, we were over the worst. It was not to be. On Thursday 23 January I had to make a difficult statement to the House. It outlined the results of the leak inquiry into the disclosure of the Solicitor-General’s letter of 6 January. The tension was great, speculation at fever pitch. The inquiry concluded that civil servants at the Department of Trade and Industry had acted in good faith in the knowledge that they had the authority of Leon Brittan, their Secretary of State, and cover from my office at No. 10 for proceeding to reveal the contents of Patrick Mayhew’s letter. For their part, Leon Brittan and the DTI believed that they had the agreement of No. 10 to do this. In fact I was not consulted. It is true that, like Leon, I would have liked the fact that Michael Heseltine’s letter was thought by Patrick Mayhew to contain material inaccuracies needing correction to become public knowledge as soon as possible. Sir John Cuckney was to hold a press conference to announce the Westland board’s recommendation to its shareholders that afternoon. But I would not have approved of the leaking of a law office’s letter as a way of achieving this.

  In my statement I had to defend my own integrity, the professional conduct of civil servants who could not answer for themselves and, as far as I could, my embattled Trade and Industry Secretary. I never doubted that as long as the truth was known and believed all would ultimately be well. Yet it is never easy to persuade those who think that they know how government works, but in fact do not, that misunderstandings and errors of judgement do happen, particularly when ministers and civil servants are placed under almost impossible pressure day after day after day, as they were by Michael Heseltine’s antics.

  Alas, Leon’s days were numbered. It was a meeting of the ′22 Committee, not any decision of mine, which sealed his fate. He came to see me on the afternoon of Friday 24 January and told me that he was going to resign. I tried to persuade him not to; I hated to see the better man lose. His departure from the Cabinet meant the loss of one of our best brains and cut short what would have been, in other circumstances, a successful career in British politics. But I was by now thinking hard about my own position. I had lost two Cabinet ministers and I had no illusions that, as always when the critics sense weakness, there were those in my own Party and Government who would like to take the opportunity of getting rid of me as well.

  I knew that the big test would come in the House of Commons the following Monday when I was to answer Nei
l Kinnock in an emergency debate on Westland. I spent the whole of Sunday with officials and speech writers. I went through all of the papers relating to the Westland affair from the beginning, clarifying in my own mind what had been said and done, by whom and when. It was time well spent.

  Neil Kinnock opened the debate that Monday afternoon with a long-winded and ill-considered speech which certainly did him more harm than it did me. But I knew as I rose to speak that it was my performance which the House was waiting for. Once again, I went over all the details of the leaked letter. It was a noisy occasion and there were plenty of interruptions. But the adrenalin flowed and I gave as good as I got. The speech does not now read as anything exceptional. But it undoubtedly turned the tide. I suspect that Conservative MPs had by now woken up to the terrible damage which had been done to the Party. They would have found in their constituencies that weekend that people were incredulous that something of such little importance could be magnified into an issue which threatened the Government itself. So, by the time I spoke, what Tory MPs really wanted was leadership, frankness and a touch of humility, all of which I tried to provide. Even Michael Heseltine deemed it expedient to protest his loyalty.

  But the most damaging effect of the Westland affair was the fuel which had been poured on the flames of anti-Americanism.

  On the heels of Westland came the question of privatizing British Leyland. Paul Channon, whom I appointed to succeed Leon, was faced within days of taking office with a fresh crisis and one which affected the jobs of many thousands of people and concerned a significant number of Conservative MPs, including ministers.

  I had not always seen eye to eye with Norman Tebbit over BL. I felt that the company was continuing to perform badly and wanted to take a tougher line with it. There had certainly been improvements, but the management was still poor.

  There must, I felt, be a new management and new Chairman at BL, tighter financial discipline and, above all, a renewed drive for privatization. From October 1985 Leon Brittan concentrated closely on all these aspects but it was privatization which increasingly took centre stage. Jaguar had already been successfully sold off. Unipart, which handled BL’s spare parts, should have been privatized too, though BL seemed to be reluctant to move ahead with this. But, most important, we had secretly been in contact with General Motors (GM) which was interested in acquiring Land Rover, including Range Rover, Freight Rover (vans) and Leyland Trucks (heavy vehicles). These negotiations too seemed to drag on and on; so I was pleased when Leon sent me on 25 November his proposals for moving ahead with the deal.

  Apart from (though having a bearing upon) the price, there were three tricky questions which required attention.

  First, we had to consider the consequences for jobs of the rationalization of the GM (Bedford) and BL (Leyland) truck businesses, which was undoubtedly one of the attractions for GM of their proposal. We thought that up to 3,000 jobs might go: but the choice in an industry where there was great overcapacity was not between job losses and no job losses but between some jobs going and a possible collapse of one or other – or conceivably both – truck producers.

  Second, we had to consider the position of the rest of BL’s operations: the volume car business of Austin Rover, which would be left to pay off the accumulated debt, and which GM had no intention themselves of taking on.

  Third, the thorniest issue would be the future control of Land Rover, which GM were determined to acquire but on which public opinion would require safeguards that it should in some sense ‘stay British’.

  Suddenly, however, we were facing an embarras de richesses. Before we had fully come to grips with the GM offer, code-named ‘Salton’, the still more intriguingly code-named ‘Maverick’ put in an appearance. At the end of November the Chairman of Ford in Europe came to see Leon Brittan to say that Ford were considering making an offer for Austin Rover and Unipart. The company fully recognized the political sensitivity of this and so wanted the green light from the Government first. Leon Brittan, Nigel Lawson and I discussed what should be done at a meeting on the afternoon of Wednesday 4 December. There was no doubt in our minds of the political difficulties involved. Although Ford said that they intended to keep the main BL and Ford plants open there would be opposition from MPs fearful of job losses in the areas affected. Ford’s productivity was worse than BL’s, their newest models were not selling well and they were worried about Japanese penetration of their European markets. There might be problems about collaboration with Honda on which BL had come to depend. But for all that the Ford offer was certainly worth pursuing.

  To Paul Channon’s horror – and mine – at the start of February the weekend press was full of details of what was planned. BL had almost certainly leaked it. All hope of confidential commercial discussion had been destroyed. Irrationality swept through the debate.

  I chaired an extremely difficult meeting of the Cabinet on Thursday 6 February in the course of which it became clear to me that there was no way in which the Ford deal could be put through. Paul Channon told the House that afternoon that in order to end the uncertainty we would not pursue the possibility of the sale of Austin Rover to Ford. It was humiliating and did less than justice to Ford, which had provided so many jobs in Britain. But in politics you have to know when to cut your losses.

  The question now was whether we could still strike a satisfactory deal with GM. And now the news was out, we were faced with a rash of alternative bids. Few of them were serious and all of them were an embarrassment rather than a help. Most politically sensitive was the proposal for a management buy-out of Land Rover. GM remained – in our and BL’s view – by far the best option because that company was interested in all, not just some, divisions; because of its financial strength; and because of the access to its distribution network.

  GM in the end were not willing to proceed with a deal for Leyland Trucks and Freight Rover which excluded Land Rover and so the talks ended. When this was announced by Paul to the House of Commons on Tuesday 25 March, one after another of our backbenchers stood up to say that a great opportunity had been lost and that the GM deal should have gone through. I told several later that they should have spoken up when the going was rough.

  This whole sorry episode had harmed not just the Government but Britain. Time and again I had drawn attention to the benefits Britain received as a result of American investment. The idea that Ford was foreign and therefore bad was plainly absurd. Their European headquarters was located in Britain, as was their largest European Research and Development Centre. All of the trucks and most of the tractors that Ford sold in Europe were made in Britain. Ford’s exports from the UK were 40 per cent more by value than those of BL. But it was not just a matter of Ford. Over half the investment coming into Britain from abroad was from the United States. Both Ford and GM were offended and annoyed by the campaign waged against them. Britain just could not afford to indulge in self-destructive anti-Americanism of this sort. Yet it would continue and was shortly to be raised to fever pitch – not just in the area of industrial policy but that of defence and foreign affairs, where passions ignite more easily.

  I was at Chequers on Friday 27 December 1985 when I learned that terrorists had opened fire on passengers waiting on the concourses at the Rome and Vienna airports, killing seventeen people. The gunmen were Palestinian terrorists from the Abu Nidal group. They had apparently been trained in the Lebanon, but evidence soon emerged of a Libyan connection.

  On Tuesday 7 January the United States unilaterally imposed sanctions on Libya with little or no consultation and expected the rest of us to follow. I was not prepared to go along with this. I made it clear in public that I did not believe that economic sanctions against Libya would work.

  In late January, February and March tension between the United States and Libya rose as US naval forces started manoeuvres in an area of the Gulf of Sirte which Libya, in violation of international law, claimed as its own territorial waters. On Monday 24 March US aircraft were atta
cked by Libyan missiles fired from the shore. US forces struck back at the Libyan missile sites and sank a Libyan fast patrol boat.

  I had to consider what our reaction would be. I was conscious that we had 5,000 British subjects in Libya. I was also aware of the possibility of Libyan action against our base in Cyprus. But I told Cabinet that in spite of this we must endorse the right of the United States to maintain freedom of movement in international waters and air space and its right to self-defence under the UN Charter.

  Meanwhile, the Americans may have started to see who their true friends were. I learned that the French were expressing reservations about any policy of confrontation with Colonel Gaddafi, arguing that any US military action would win Libya Arab support and urging the need to avoid ‘provocation’.

  Then in the early hours of Saturday 5 April a bomb exploded in a discotheque frequented by US servicemen in West Berlin. Two people – one a US soldier – were killed and some 200 others – including 60 Americans – were injured. US intelligence, confirmed by ours, pointed to a Libyan involvement. For the Americans this was the final straw.

  Just before 11 p.m. on the night of Tuesday 8 April I received a message from President Reagan. He requested our support for the use of the American F1–11s and support aircraft based in Britain in strikes against Libya, and he asked for an answer by noon the following day. I immediately called in Geoffrey Howe and George Younger to discuss what should be done. At 1 a.m. I sent an interim reply to the President. Its main purpose was to support the United States but I also expressed very considerable anxiety. I wanted more information on the targets in Libya. I was worried that US action might begin a cycle of revenge. I was concerned that there must be the right public justification for the action which was taken, otherwise we might just strengthen Gaddafi’s standing. I was also worried about the implications for British hostages in the Lebanon – and, as events were to turn out, rightly so.