Margaret Thatcher: The Autobiography

by Margaret Thatcher

  Geoffrey was extremely reluctant to go and it must be said that his reluctance proved justified since he was insulted by President Kaunda and brushed off by President Botha. I later learned that he thought I had set him up for an impossible mission and was deeply angry about it. I can only say that I had no such intention. I had a real admiration for Geoffrey’s talent for quiet diplomacy. If anyone could have made a breakthrough he would have done it.

  Shortly after Geoffrey’s return I had to face the Special Commonwealth Conference on South Africa which we had agreed at Lyford Cay to review progress. It had been decided that seven Commonwealth heads of government would meet in London in August. The worst aspect was that because of President P.W. Botha’s obstinacy we did not have enough to show by way of progress since the Nassau CHOGM. There had been some significant reforms and the partial state of emergency had been lifted in March. But a nationwide state of emergency had been imposed in June, Mr Mandela was still in prison, and the ANC and other similar organizations were still banned.

  The media and the Opposition were by now quite obsessive about South Africa. There was talk of the Commonwealth breaking up if Britain did not change its position on sanctions, though there was never any likelihood of either event. I was always convinced – and my postbag showed – that the views and priorities of these commentators were quite unrepresentative of what the general public felt.

  My meetings with heads of government before the official opening filled me with gloom. Brian Mulroney urged me to have Britain ‘give a lead’ and seemed to want me to reveal my negotiating hand to him in advance: but this I had no intention of doing. Kenneth Kaunda was in a thoroughly self-righteous and uncooperative frame of mind when I dropped in to see him at his hotel. He predicted that if sanctions were not applied, South Africa would go up in flames. Later I told Rajiv Gandhi that I would be prepared to move ‘a little’ at the conference. He seemed rather more amenable than he had been at Nassau, as indeed he usually was in private.

  In fact, the formal discussions were every bit as unpleasant as at Lyford Cay. My refusal to go along with the sanctions they wanted was attacked by Messrs Kaunda, Mugabe, Mulroney and Hawke. I found no support. Their proposals went well beyond what had been proposed the previous year. At Nassau they had wanted to cut off air links with South Africa, to introduce a ban on investment, agricultural imports, the promotion of tourism and other measures. Now they were demanding a whole raft of additional measures: a ban on new bank loans, imports of uranium, coal, iron and steel and the withdrawal of consular facilities. Such a package sacrificed the living standards of South Africa’s black population to the posturing of South Africa’s critics and the interests of their domestic industries. I was simply not prepared to endorse it. Instead, I had a separate paragraph inserted into the communiqué detailing our own approach which noted our willingness to go along with a ban on South African coal, iron and steel imports, if the European Community decided on it, and to introduce straight away voluntary bans on new investment and the promotion of tourism in South Africa. In the event we in the Community decided against the sanctions on coal, to which the Germans were particularly strongly opposed, though the other sanctions proposed at The Hague were introduced in September 1986.

  Perhaps the most extraordinary feature of these discussions was that they seemed to be carried on without regard to what was happening in South Africa itself. As I was informed by our excellent new ambassador, Robin Renwick, and by others who had dealings with the real rather than the bogus South Africa, fundamental changes were taking place. Black trade unions had been legalized, the Mixed Marriages Act had been repealed, influx controls had been abolished and the general policy (though not without exceptions) of forced removals of blacks had ended. So had job reservation for whites and the very unpopular pass laws. Still more important, there was a practical breakdown of apartheid at the workplace, in hotels, in offices and in city centres. The repeal of the Separate Amenities Act had been proposed and seemed likely to be implemented. In all these ways ‘apartheid’, as the Left continued to describe it, was rapidly dying. Yet South Africa received no credit for this, only unthinking hostility.

  I was less prepared than ever to go along with measures which would weaken the South African economy and thus slow down reform. So as the 1987 CHOGM at Vancouver approached I was still in no mood for compromise. In some respects the position was easier for me than it had been at Nassau and in London. Events in Fiji and in Sri Lanka were likely to occupy a good deal of attention at the conference. My line on sanctions was well known and the domestic pressure on me had decreased: I had made headway in winning the sanctions argument at home during the London conference.

  In January 1989 Mr Botha suffered a stroke and was succeeded as National Party Leader by F.W. de Klerk, who became President in August. It was surely right to give the new South African leader the opportunity to make his mark without ham-fisted outside intervention.

  The 1989 CHOGM was due to take place in October in Kuala Lumpur, hosted by Dr Mahathir. I went there with a new Foreign Secretary, John Major, and a renewed determination not to go further down the path of sanctions. Introducing the session on the ‘World Political Scene’ I drew attention to the momentous changes occurring in the Soviet Union and their implications for all of us. I said that there was now the prospect of settling regional conflicts – not least those in Africa – which had been aggravated by the international subversion of communism. Throughout the world we must now ardently advocate democracy and a much freer economic system. I secretly hoped that the message would not be lost on the many illiberal, collectivist Commonwealth countries whose representatives were present.

  But the debate on South Africa brought out all the old venom. Bob Hawke and Kenneth Kaunda argued the case for sanctions.

  By now I was quite used to the vicious, personal attacks in which my Commonwealth colleagues liked to indulge. John Major was not: he found their behaviour quite shocking. I left him back in Kuala Lumpur with the other Foreign ministers to draft the communiqué while I and the other heads of government went off to our retreat in Langkawi. While I was there my officials faxed through a text which the Foreign ministers apparently thought we could all ‘live with’. But I could only live with it if I also put out a separate unambiguous statement of our own views. I had it drafted and sent back to John Major in Kuala Lumpur. Contrary to what the press – almost as eager for ‘splits’ as they were for describing Britain’s ‘isolation’ – subsequently alleged, John was quite happy to go along with issuing a separate British document and made some changes to it, which I agreed. The issue, however, of our separate document prompted howls of anger from the other heads of government.

  In South Africa, as 1990 opened, the movement which I had hoped and worked for began. There were indications that Nelson Mandela would shortly be released. I told the Foreign Office – who did not like it one bit – that as soon as Mr Mandela was freed I wanted us to respond rapidly by rescinding or relaxing the measures we had taken against South Africa, starting with the relatively minor ones which rested with us alone and did not have to be discussed with the European Community.

  On 2 February 1990 President de Klerk made a speech which announced Mr Mandela’s and other black leaders’ imminent release, the unbanning of the ANC and other black political organizations and promised an end to the state of emergency as soon as possible. I immediately went back to the Foreign Office and said that once the promises were fulfilled we should end the ‘voluntary’ ban on investment and encourage the other European Community countries to do likewise. I asked Douglas Hurd – now Foreign Secretary – to propose to other Community Foreign ministers at his forthcoming meeting with them an end to the restrictions on purchase of krugerrands and iron and steel. I also decided to send messages to other heads of government urging practical recognition of what was happening in South Africa.

  In April I was briefed by Dr Gerrit Viljoen, the South African Minister for Constitutiona
l Development, on the contacts between the South African Government and the ANC, now effectively led once more by Mr Mandela. I was disappointed by the fact that Mr Mandela kept repeating the old ritual phrases, arguably suitable for a movement refused recognition, but not for one aspiring to a leading and perhaps dominant role in government. The South African Government was formulating its own ideas for the constitution and was moving towards a combination of a lower house elected by one-man one-vote with an upper chamber with special minority representation. This would help to accommodate the great ethnic diversity which characterizes South Africa, although in the long run some sort of cantonal system may be needed to do this efficiently.

  By the time that President de Klerk set off for his talks with European leaders in May, discussions with the ANC had begun in earnest. I was also glad that the South African Government was paying due regard to Chief Buthelezi, who had been such a stalwart opponent of violent uprising in South Africa while the ANC had been endorsing the Marxist revolution, to which some of its members are still attached.

  President de Klerk, Pik Botha and their wives came to talks and lunch at Chequers on Saturday 19 May. My talks with Mr de Klerk focused on his plans for the next steps in bringing the ANC to accept a political and economic system which would secure South Africa’s future as a liberal, free enterprise country. The violence between blacks, which was to get worse, was already the single biggest obstacle to progress. But he was optimistic about the prospects for agreement with the ANC on a new constitution; and he thought that the ANC wanted this too.

  We discussed what should be done about sanctions. He said that he was not like a dog begging for a biscuit, seeking specific rewards for actions he took. What he wanted was the widest possible international recognition of and support for what he was doing, leading to a fundamental revision of attitudes towards South Africa. This seemed to me very sensible. Mr de Klerk also invited me to South Africa. I said that I would love to come but I did not want to make things more difficult for him at this particular moment. There was, I knew, nothing more likely to sour his dealings with other governments who had been proved wrong about South Africa than for me to arrive in his country as a kind of proclamation that I had been right. (In fact, it is a disappointment to me that I was never to go to South Africa as Prime Minister and I only finally accepted his invitation after I left office.)

  On Wednesday 4 July I held talks and had lunch at Downing Street with the other main player in South African politics, Nelson Mandela.

  The Left were rather offended that he was prepared to see me at all. But then he, unlike them, had a shrewd view as to what kind of pressure for his release had been more successful. I found Mr Mandela supremely courteous, with a genuine nobility of bearing and – most remarkable after all he had suffered – without any bitterness. I warmed to him. But I also found him very outdated in his attitudes, stuck in a kind of socialist timewarp in which nothing had moved on, not least in economic thinking, since the 1940s. Perhaps this was not surprising in view of his long years of imprisonment: but it was a disadvantage in the first few months of his freedom because he tended to repeat these outdated platitudes which in turn confirmed his followers in their exaggerated expectations.

  It was only shortly before I left office that President de Klerk again came to see me at Chequers – on Sunday 14 October. There had been some progress since I had seen Mr Mandela in July. The ANC had agreed to suspend the ‘armed struggle’ and the two sides had agreed in principle on the arrangements for the return of South African exiles and the release of the rest of the political prisoners. The remaining features of the old apartheid system were being dismantled. The Land Acts were due to be repealed and the Population Registration Act – the last remaining legislative pillar of apartheid – would go when a new constitution was agreed. Only state education remained segregated but movement on this – for the whites – very sensitive matter had begun. However, violence between blacks had sharply worsened and this was poisoning the atmosphere for negotiations.

  The South Africans were being careful about pressing for the lifting of the remaining sanctions. The most important contribution to this would have been that of the ANC: but they stubbornly refused to recognize that the case for sanctions – to the extent it had ever existed – was dead. Within the European Community, the key to a formal change of policy now was Germany, but for domestic political reasons Chancellor Kohl was still unwilling to act. The Americans held back for similar reasons. (In fact, sanctions were gradually dismantled over the next few years: indeed the international community began to prepare financial aid for South Africa to undo the damage that sanctions had wrought.)

  President de Klerk was clearly frustrated that the further round of informal talks with the ANC on the constitution for which he had been pressing had still not occurred. The main principle to which he held was that there must be power sharing in the Executive. In the new South Africa no one must have as much power as he himself had now. In some respects he thought that the Swiss Federal Cabinet was a guide to what was needed. This seemed to me to be very much on the right lines – not that either hybrid constitutions or federal systems have much inherent appeal, but in states where allegiances are at least as much to subordinate groups as to the overarching institutions of the state itself these things may constitute the least bad approach.

  * On 22 July 1946 91 people were killed when the hotel was bombed by Jewish terrorists from a group led by Menachem Begin.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Jeux Sans Frontières

  Relations with the European Community 1984–1987

  THE WISDOM OF HINDSIGHT, so useful to historians and indeed to authors of memoirs, is sadly denied to practising politicians. Looking back, it is now possible to see the period of my second term as Prime Minister as that in which the European Community subtly but surely shifted its direction away from being a Community of open trade, light regulation and freely co-operating sovereign nation-states towards statism and centralism. I can only say that it did not seem like that at the time.

  Now I see that the underlying forces of federalism and bureaucracy were gaining in strength as a coalition of Socialist and Christian Democrat governments in France, Spain, Italy and Germany forced the pace of integration and a commission, equipped with extra powers, began to manipulate them to advance its own agenda. It was only in my last days in office and under my successor that the true scale of the challenge had become clear. At this time I genuinely believed that once our budget contribution had been sorted out and we had set in place a framework of financial order, Britain would be able to play a strong positive role in the Community.

  Crucial to this was the European Council to be held at Fontainebleau, outside Paris, on Monday 25 and Tuesday 26 June 1984. On the short flight to Orly I finalized our tactics. Geoffrey Howe and I shared the same analysis. We wanted an agreement on the budget at this meeting but only if it was close enough to our terms. I was prepared to accept, if necessary, a different formula from that which we advanced, but the money rebated must be enough and the arrangement had to be lasting.

  I arrived at lunchtime at the Château of Fontainebleau to be met by President Mitterrand and a full guard of honour. The French know how to do these things properly. Lunch took place in the Château’s Hall of Columns and then we went through into the Ballroom, which was heavily disguised by interpreters’ booths, for the first session of the Council. Without any warning, President Mitterrand asked me to open the proceedings by summing up the results of the recent economic summit in London. Others then joined in to give their own views and two hours elapsed. I started to fidget. Were these just delaying tactics? At last we got on to the budget. Again I opened, demonstrating what I thought unsatisfactory about the other schemes which had been put forward to provide a solution, and argued for our own ideas of a formula. There was further discussion. Then President Mitterrand remitted the matter to the Foreign ministers to discuss later in the evening. Our meeting now r
eturned to generalities, in particular President Mitterrand’s lively account of his recent visit to Moscow.

  That evening we drove back through the forest to our hotel at Barbizon. This little village attracts artists and gastronomes. Anyone who has eaten at the local Hôtellerie du Bas-Bréau will know why: the food was simply delicious.* As we drank our coffee, we saw that the Foreign ministers were taking theirs outside onto the terrace and naturally concluded that they had done their work. Far from it. President Mitterrand did not conceal his displeasure and the Foreign ministers quickly went inside again to get down to discussing the budget.

  At about 11.30 p.m. M. Cheysson emerged to tell us that the Foreign ministers had ‘clarified the points of difference’. In fact, the French had apparently managed to persuade the Foreign ministers to favour a rebate system giving us back a simple percentage of our net contribution. On such a percentage system there would be no link between net contributions and relative prosperity – unlike the ‘threshold’ system we had been arguing for.

  But a percentage of what? The French proposed in calculating our contributions to take into account only those payments to the Community that Britain made under VAT. That formula, however, ignored the considerable sums we also contributed through tariffs and levies. But in the end we had to accept the calculation.

  And, finally, how big a percentage would the rebate be? I had in mind a figure of well over 70 per cent. But it seemed from the Foreign ministers’ meeting that we were now likely to be offered at most something between 50 and 60 per cent with a temporary two-year sweetener that would bring the refund up to 1,000 million ecus a year for the first two years. How Geoffrey had allowed the Foreign ministers to reach such a conclusion I could not understand.