To some in the British foreign policy establishment, including Cartledge, Gordievsky was an irritating distraction, but Mrs Thatcher believed strongly in his importance and was passionately committed to his welfare. She understood, as Christopher Curwen, the then ‘C’ (head) of SIS, put it, that ‘It’s almost unique that the Prime Minister has a source who tells her what the Russians were up to,’46 and she valued Gordievsky accordingly. It was she personally, rather than, as was more usual in such matters, the Foreign Secretary, who authorized Gordievsky’s exfiltration. Despite the difficulties she knew this would cause in her relationship with Gorbachev she agreed the plan without hesitation. ‘We never thought for a minute that Mrs T would stop us,’ recalled Colin McColl,47 who at that time was Curwen’s deputy. In August, during his debrief at a fort in southern England, while in very low sprits, Gordievsky received a personal letter from Mrs Thatcher telling him to be cheerful and not give up hope that his wife and children would get back to him.48 In all her subsequent meetings with Gorbachev, she always pleaded vigorously for the release of the Gordievsky family, and she constantly urged Reagan, in his meetings, to do the same.* In her August letter to Gordievsky, Mrs Thatcher told him, ‘You know what kind of people we are dealing with.’49 He was impressed by this, because it proved to him that she was not starry-eyed about Gorbachev.
In early September the government prepared to make Gordievsky’s defection public and simultaneously expel all those Soviet officials known to be spies, sparing only the KGB’s security officer.† There were twenty-five of them. When the time came for Mrs Thatcher to authorize this plan, she was staying with the Queen at Balmoral. Because of the secrecy involved, a phone call was out of the question and so Charles Powell had to fly up to Scotland and intrude upon the sanctity of Mrs Thatcher’s royal retreat. ‘I drove to Balmoral and spent about an hour arguing with the Equerries as to whether I should be admitted at all,’ Powell recalled. ‘I finally fought my way through to Mrs Thatcher’s bothy‡ to get her authority and then set off back to London.’50 Rehearsing the plan just before its execution, Robert Armstrong reminded Mrs Thatcher that relations with the Soviet Union were bound to worsen because of the expulsions but ‘it would not have been right or understandable to respond less vigorously’.51 The defection was, he said, ‘a great coup for our security and intelligence services’. The following day, the defection (though not Gordievsky’s presence in Britain) was publicly announced. The Soviet media did not mention the defection, but reported the expulsions. As Armstrong had predicted, the Soviets hit back at once, expelling twenty-five British nationals from Moscow, not all of whom were intelligence officers. On 15 September 1985, Mrs Thatcher met Geoffrey Howe and the new Home Secretary, Douglas Hurd,§ to decide what to do next. Howe pleaded with her to expel only four more Russians, but Mrs Thatcher thought that ‘a further four expulsions on their own did not constitute an adequate response,’52 and kicked out six, a figure which Moscow again matched. She also refused a Foreign Office suggestion that she send a letter of congratulation to the newly appointed Soviet Prime Minister because ‘in the present climate of relations a message would be out of place.’53
Many feared that the Gordievsky row would sink Mrs Thatcher’s capacity to ‘do business’ with Gorbachev. Bryan Cartledge wrote a despatch from Moscow, which he himself described as ‘a little downbeat’. He said that relations could not now go beyond ‘damage-limitation’, and quoted a Central Committee member as complaining that ‘Your Prime Minister thinks she can treat us as if we were Argentina.’54 Mrs Thatcher herself was aware of the problem. In Gordievsky’s view, she showed a good sense of ‘balance’, because, though wanting engagement with Gorbachev, she was prepared, for the sake of the defection, ‘to put everything on ice’.55 In fact, however, although the affair did cool relations and ‘give her a bloody nose’56 in her attitude to Gorbachev, it also enhanced her reputation, and the salience of Britain in the development of the Cold War. It helped confirm the view, as John Scarlett put it, that Mrs Thatcher was ‘our key card to play – the outstanding Western leader outside the United States’.57 The Americans were extremely excited by Gordievsky’s defection. Only four days after its public announcement, Gordievsky later wrote, ‘who should come skimming into the fort by helicopter but Bill Casey, veteran head of the United States’ Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), who wanted to brief President Reagan for his first meeting with Gorbachev, due [in Geneva] in November.’58 Casey carefully tape-recorded Gordievsky’s answers to his questions, some of the most important of which concerned SDI. Gordievsky told Casey that the Russians would never agree to share the technology, because they would see it as a trick. He added that if the Americans were to drop SDI, they would win big concessions from the Soviets on arms control. Casey said that this would never happen because SDI was ‘the President’s pet’. ‘All right,’ replied Gordievsky. ‘… I think that in the long term SDI will ruin the Soviet leadership.’59
Mrs Thatcher chose 12 September 1985, the same day as the announcement of Gordievsky’s defection, to send a long letter to President Reagan. Presumably her timing was intended to make clear that the ‘engagement’ show was still on the road. The letter concerned the run-up to the Geneva summit. She was worried that Gorbachev, rather than Reagan, might gain the upper hand:
As we both expected, Gorbachev is showing himself to be a deft operator. He is playing Western public opinion skilfully and for all it’s worth … And his performance is spoiled only by the arrogance which he cannot always conceal. His purpose is, of course, to set opinion in Europe against the United States, to give the impression that the Soviet Union is full of initiatives and original ideas while the United States is flat-footed and unimaginative.60
Even more important than countering Gorbachev’s offensive, she argued, was for the US to show that ‘it has appealing proposals of its own on which you will be prepared to begin the process of negotiation when you and Gorbachev meet.’ She wanted the Geneva meeting to be one of substance: ‘I am troubled, in particular, by the notion which is gaining ground that you see the meeting as little more than a “getting to know you session” …’61
The main substance in which Mrs Thatcher was interested was arms control. Using the mandarin locutions employed by people like the Cabinet Secretary when advising her how to guide a meeting, she advised Reagan: ‘You will certainly want to explain to him [Gorbachev] personally the rationale behind your Strategic Defense Initiative,’ and she urged him to base his exposition on the Camp David Four Points. She never suggested that the President should offer to give up SDI, but she did recommend limiting its freedom of action as a sweetener for Soviet concessions. This could lay the basis for detailed talks. She also gave Reagan the benefit of her experience of where conversations with Gorbachev tended to go wrong. When she had raised the subject of human rights:
We found that he reacted most often by hitting back with allegedly bad features of life in the West. This can too easily lead to an argument about the fundamentals of our two systems, or the trading of particular accusations, neither of which in my own experience is likely to get us anywhere in terms of better Soviet behaviour. I found the best tactic was to concentrate instead on putting across to Gorbachev two parallel convictions[:]
that we in the West are not in the business of undermining the Soviet state …
[and that] nevertheless, human rights in the Soviet Union are our business: not just because both East and West have committed themselves to them at Helsinki:* but also because justice at home is more likely to produce stability and responsible behaviour abroad.62
She ended by trying to instil a sense of urgency:
I am convinced that we must stop Gorbachev’s bandwagon from gaining too much speed before your meeting by making clear now that the US is utterly serious about making the maximum progress at Geneva; and that we must set clear goals for the meeting itself with which our people on both sides of the Atlantic can identify.63
The fact t
hat Mrs Thatcher could write such a detailed letter of opinion and advice to the President, unsolicited, was itself unique. Other allied leaders would usually write only when asked, and not in such substantive terms. Such letters were evidence of her confidence and her intimacy with Reagan. Officials recalled that Reagan would always read her messages in full rather than relying on a précis, as he did with most other correspondents.64 In this case, Reagan responded warmly and quickly. ‘As always, your views captured not only the immediate challenges and opportunities, but expressed as well how these meetings can set us on a course towards long-term stability.’65 He maintained his dedication to SDI – ‘I cannot, and will not, endanger this research program which means so much to all mankind’ – but took her point about the handling of human rights issues and endorsed her desire for making real progress at the summit and being able ‘to set in motion the resolution of specific problems’.66
Reagan subsequently composed and wrote out in longhand his strategy for Geneva. The document survives and shows that he had adopted most of Mrs Thatcher’s points. He wrote that Gorbachev’s ‘major goal will continue to be weaning our European friends away from us. That means making us look like a threat to peace.’67 And he accepted her call for substance: ‘Those who think the Summit can be made to look successful if we get agreements on cultural exchanges, the consulate we want, fishing and trade matters are dealing with window dressing’68 – the ‘main events’ were ‘arms control, the regional areas of conflict and the prevalent suspicion and hostility between us’.
In a separate letter, Reagan also wrote to Mrs Thatcher to congratulate her over the Gordievsky affair. ‘I admire the strong action you took last week …’ he told her, and he agreed with her on the need to balance ‘intolerance of Soviet hostile international activities’ with ‘our desire to build a constructive relationship with the Soviet Union’.69
The groundbreaking summit at Geneva was now just a month away, and Mrs Thatcher’s relationship with Reagan as productive as it had ever been. At the same time, the previous difficulties in her relationship with Gorbachev now seemed to evaporate. The Soviet leader chose the occasion of Mrs Thatcher’s sixtieth birthday, 13 October 1985, to send her his congratulations. Their discussions at Chequers and in Moscow, he said, ‘took a correct political tone’. He wanted their mutual understanding at those meetings to ‘remain in force’, but for this ‘much effort, political wisdom and goodwill will be needed.’70 Mrs Thatcher could feel well pleased at her navigation of these difficult shoals and currents. Business could still be done.
In her annual speech to the Conservative Party conference two days earlier, she expressed her confidence publicly: ‘Our wish is to see substantial reductions in nuclear weapons, provided they are balanced and verifiable. I know that will be President Reagan’s objective at his meeting with Mr Gorbachev, and he has our full support and good wishes as he goes to Geneva. The West could not have a better or a braver champion.’71 Although, for quite other reasons, she was in choppy waters at home, she was navigating the oceans of world diplomacy with a sure touch.
At the same time as Mrs Thatcher was coaxing Reagan towards a different approach to the Soviet Union, she began modestly to attempt something similar in relation to the Middle East. Pro-Israeli though she instinctively was, she grew impatient with the lack of movement on the question of Palestine, and felt that America needed nudging. In this, she was influenced chiefly by her admiration for King Hussein of Jordan,* the Middle Eastern ruler with the closest links to Britain.† In her mind, Hussein was ‘the gallant little King’.72 In 1985, her support for him briefly took dramatic form.
When she entered office in 1979, Mrs Thatcher had been chiefly motivated by two related views in her approach to the Arab–Israeli conflict. The first was her strong belief – reinforced by her Jewish connections in her constituency of Finchley – that the story of the Jewish nation was heroic and that Israel was pro-Western. The second was her hatred of terrorism, and therefore her extreme suspicion of the Palestine Liberation Organization, led by Yasser Arafat.‡
She quickly clashed with the long-standing Arabism of the Foreign Office. Lord Carrington, her first Foreign Secretary, embodied this and acknowledged that ‘her views were not mine.’73 From the first, he pressed her to make some move in favour of the Palestinians, and in August 1979 urged her to support a UN Security Council call for Palestinian self-determination, if the words could be moderately framed. On the back of the Foreign Office note setting this out, Mrs Thatcher wrote a summary of her own approach. ‘I will leave Lord Carrington a free hand in this,’ she began, but ‘I remain concerned at the proposed course of action.’74 The fact that the Palestinians might be considered as a people should not be ‘the sole determinant of the way we vote’, she went on.
Suppose that because of the acts or omissions of the United States, or the East Germans [who were often Soviet proxies for action in the region] … the oil-bearing states cease to be in present hands and come directly or indirectly under Soviet control. There is only one nation there that would really stand & fight and that is Israel. If there is an ultimate East–West battle she will be our ally … The problem with Israel at the moment is Begin [the Israeli Prime Minister]. Further – has anyone really thought through a new Palestinian ‘homeland’?
Even more than in relation to the Cold War, Mrs Thatcher was conscious that the United States bore the security burden of the Middle East problem. She was therefore suspicious of EEC or even British diplomatic interventions. When Carrington pushed the idea of a European policy towards the Middle East, arguing for a Palestinian entity, she wrote, ‘Am very unhappy with this approach. It seems to me that if we are to take a major part in negotiations we shall have to take a major part in the Security of the region. As it is, we expect the Americans to do that in large part while we nevertheless negotiate. It doesn’t add up.’75
Her concerns expressed, Mrs Thatcher nonetheless deferred to the much greater knowledge of Carrington and the Foreign Office in this area (hence his ‘free hand’), and allowed herself to be dragged slowly in their direction, without ever going all the way. Government papers of her first six or seven years in office show her constantly resisting moves to meet PLO representatives but, quite often, in the end, compromising. As early as June 1980, when the European Council met in Venice, it approved, with Mrs Thatcher’s reluctant agreement, a statement calling for self-determination for the Palestinians, along with the recognition of Israel’s right to live within secure borders. The unstated logic of this stance was that contact with Palestinian representatives should be made. It was almost impossible to do this without dealing with the PLO. Within five years, Mrs Thatcher would be encouraging direct official and even political contact with ‘moderate’ members of the organization.*
Luckily for the Foreign Office, Mrs Thatcher’s dislike of terrorism cut both ways. She was extremely prejudiced against Menachem Begin,* the Israeli Prime Minister when she came into office, and his Likud successor, Yitzhak Shamir,† because both had been involved in terrorist attacks on British forces during the period of the British Mandate in Palestine which ended in 1948.‡ In the same month that she became prime minister, she received Begin in Downing Street. He upset and offended her by attacking the Western allies for their ‘failure … to bomb the railways leading to Auschwitz at the end of the war … Israel had a valiant army which would fight if necessary.’76 To Vice-President Mubarak§ of Egypt, Mrs Thatcher described her meeting with Begin as ‘one of the most difficult she had experienced’.77 According to her principal private secretary, Clive Whitmore, ‘She hated Begin.’78 In discussions with the Canadian Prime Minister, Pierre Trudeau, in 1981, she described how Zionist terrorists in the 1940s had booby-trapped the bodies of two British soldiers, and broke down in tears.79
In Israeli politics, therefore, Mrs Thatcher did not, as she usually did in other countries, support the more right-wing party, but favoured the Labour Party of Shimon Peres,¶ whom she like
d. When Israel, under Begin, bombed the Iraqi nuclear reactor at Osirak in 1981 and invaded Lebanon the following year, she was disinclined to cut it the slack she might well have allowed to a Peres government or to other friendly countries when confronted with severe security threats. Her preferred interlocutors in the Middle East were Mubarak, who became president of Egypt after the assassination of Anwar Sadat in 1981, the rulers of Saudi Arabia, the Gulf States and Oman, and above all King Hussein.
Unlike in areas of policy more central to her, such as the Cold War or trade union reform, in Middle East questions Mrs Thatcher was not assisted by the small bands of ‘irregulars’ whom she used to challenge official views. Her strong Jewish connections – most notably Keith Joseph in the Cabinet and David Wolfson in her own office – kept her well in touch with Jewish feeling, as did her Finchley constituents. But none contributed sustained intellectual and policy input. The occasional essay by distinguished Jewish academics like Elie Kedourie, sent to her by Hugh Thomas, or Leonard Schapiro, sent by Joseph, was not nearly enough to counteract the official orthodoxy, especially after she had made the arch-Arabist Sir Anthony Parsons her first foreign policy adviser in No. 10 in 1982. Even less than over the question of Northern Ireland (see Chapter 10), where Mrs Thatcher’s instincts were also different from those of officialdom, did she have, or seek, outside aid. In David Wolfson’s opinion, this was because ‘It was not really a major issue: everyone knew her view’:80 Mrs Thatcher could be trusted by friends of Israel. In terms of her heart, this judgment was correct, but was perhaps not so true of her head.*
Margaret Thatcher: The Authorized Biography, Volume 2 Page 35
