The next morning, Mrs Thatcher had a rather pro forma meeting with the Prime Minister, Nikolai Ryzhkov. But the highlight of the day was her interview on Soviet television with three Soviet journalists. The Foreign Office had advised that her hosts were likely to adopt ‘a pretty respectful posture’ and that ‘an interview with a visiting Prime Minister will probably not be regarded as the occasion for cut and thrust.’85 While she carefully read and underlined the note, Mrs Thatcher, who always thrived on cut and thrust, did not take this to heart, readily challenging, interrupting and contradicting her stolid male interrogators. She explained to her audience how well the Soviet Union was stocked with nuclear weapons and put forward her argument in favour of the nuclear deterrent, and of the danger of conventional war. The Russians, she pointed out, had been invaded by Hitler and endured great suffering in the conventional age. She expounded her ‘step-by-step’ approach to nuclear disarmament, defended SDI and praised Gorbachev’s reforms. The effect of the interview was sensational, not so much for any particular answer, but because the Soviet authorities allowed it to be broadcast that evening in its full, unedited form. Such a thing had never happened before. Tony Bishop monitored the broadcast and the reaction to it for the Foreign Office:
From it the Soviet public learned for the first time so much about their own country, its armaments etc, that had hitherto remained concealed. Her handling of the interviewers evoked widespread if sometimes rueful admiration … One Soviet trade unionist remarked, unattractively, to our Ambassador shortly afterwards: ‘She squashed them like kittens’ … And the Soviet public just loved it.86
‘Yes, I took a risk,’ Gorbachev said later, ‘but it was my deliberate choice because I wanted her and everyone else to see that my policy of Glasnost was not a trick.’87
Percy Cradock passed on to Charles Powell one letter, in imperfect but expressive English, from ‘a young Soviet intellectual’, Alexei Yanshin, which he had written to a British fellow geologist. It captured the enormous personal impact of Mrs Thatcher on the Russian public. ‘She acted extremely professional,’ Yanshin wrote, ‘very attractive and even sincerely … She was very rational and humanic. Now I often saw ladies dressed and hair-cutted a la Margaret Thatcher.’ For two weeks afterwards, he said, crowds queued at the offices of the newspaper Izvestia to see the exhibition of photographs of Mrs Thatcher and Gorbachev: ‘she change the whole attitude to UK – now … it’s not considered that UK is a country with no face and only a political echo, mirror of USA. Now we suppose the UK is very interesting country, original.’88 In Yanshin’s view, Mrs Thatcher had outclassed her interviewers: ‘When 3 huge, fat political commentators attacked her, they were … untactkful [sic], unprofessional, simply rude.’ The interview had been the ‘apopheosis [sic] of her visit’.
In the evening, Mrs Thatcher attended a small, informal dinner given by the Gorbachevs at the Soviet Foreign Ministry guesthouse, far more relaxed than that of the previous night. ‘An effort had clearly been made’, Charles Powell noted, ‘to re-create the atmosphere at Chequers’ large open fire.’89 Only the Ryzhkovs, the two countries’ ambassadors, Powell and the interpreters were present in addition. (Again, no Geoffrey Howe.) Mrs Gorbachev, Richard Pollock noted, was ‘in very chirpy form’,90 arguing in a friendly way with her husband about what constituted the working class.91 Ideas flowed freely as Gorbachev speculated on his plans for reform. ‘Some of his ideas appear simplistic,’ Mrs Thatcher later wrote to Reagan, but she was impressed by the way he was heading. At one point, Gorbachev raised the suggestion of ‘paying people more and then charging them something for services like health and education’,92 a notion which even capitalist Britain tended to find heretical and dangerous. To hear such radical notions from the lips of a Soviet leader was indeed remarkable. The host, behaving in a manner for which colleagues at home often criticized Mrs Thatcher herself, was ‘again dominating the conversation – surprising that he scarcely ever invites even his principal guest’s views’.93 Mrs Thatcher did not seem to object, however, and gave as good as she got. ‘There can never have been a case where two heads of Government so radiated a kind of chemistry between them,’ judged Cartledge. ‘You could see sparks flying off.’94 Charles Powell reported:
As we sat down to dinner Mr Gorbachev pointed to a landscape on the wall depicting a farming scene with a clear sky in the background and observed that it reminded him of his talks with the Prime Minister, tempestuous but with great clarity. The Prime Minister pointed out that the light was coming from the West.95
Mrs Thatcher took leave of Gorbachev in the Kremlin the following morning. The occasion, wrote Pollock, was:
very significant for Mrs Gorbachev’s presence – and no one else’s – with Gorbachev. Suggestive not only of their sincere personal commitment to the relationship … with the Prime Minister – but possibly too of Gorbachev’s increasing confidence in his own position … There was no doubt whatever of the strength of friendship and respect those few words/minutes/facial expressions attested towards the Prime Minister and the United Kingdom.96
Nor was there any doubt in the minds of the participants on both sides that Mrs Thatcher’s Moscow visit had been a great success. ‘Remember how long we debated whether to invite her or not?’ Gorbachev asked his Politburo colleagues. ‘Now we can say we made the right choice.’97 ‘The visit’, Cartledge wrote as it ended, ‘has been the occasion for more candid and coherent exchanges on nearly all aspects of the East/West relationship than have, to my knowledge, ever taken place between a Soviet leader and the head of a Western government.’98 In his report to Geoffrey Howe, Cartledge expanded on this idea:
the visit was replete with paradox. On the major issues, no breakthroughs were expected or achieved: but the visit has nevertheless been accounted an outstanding succes [sic] by every objective observer. The areas of disagreement dwarfed those of agreement: but the warmth of the atmospherics, both personal and political, was striking. Despite – or perhaps, because of – these contradictions, I have no hesitation in describing the visit as historic. It established a new bench-mark for the quality of East–West dialogue.99
Mrs Thatcher also won plaudits from the press, across the political spectrum. In an April Fools’ Day send-up, the Daily Mirror’s front page carried a mocked-up picture of Mrs Thatcher kissing Gorbachev marked ‘Exclusive – Maggie Disarms Gorbachev’. The Guardian’s leader said that Mrs Thatcher ‘had acquitted the country pretty well in Moscow, not only by what she said but by what she has listened to’. The Sun was more direct: ‘at home and abroad Margaret Thatcher is a lion.’100
It was of great significance that East–West dialogue now included discussion of Gorbachev’s domestic reform agenda. Mrs Thatcher had arrived in Moscow not quite sure what to make of glasnost and perestroika. During her visit, she had not only heard about this reform effort from Gorbachev first hand, but had also experienced some of the new openness for herself. At this stage, she was less interested in the specifics of Gorbachev’s reforms than in getting a feel for what was under way. On this score she left Moscow encouraged. She now believed that, while Gorbachev remained a committed Communist, his effort at delivering reform was genuine and deserved support from the West. In her thank-you letter to him, she wrote: ‘We both enjoy frank speaking, and I am sure this is the best way to reach a better understanding. I was pleased to be able to confirm to you personally our welcome for your policies of open-ness, restructuring and democratisation.’101 She had moved a fair way from the more cautious atmosphere of the Chequers seminar, which had concluded that ‘Public comments by western governments on the reform process were unlikely to be of much consequence one way or the other.’ The importance of this was not lost on Gorbachev. ‘Her interest in what is happening in the Soviet Union is real, and very strong …’ he told the Politburo; ‘probably unexpectedly to herself, she said too many positive things about us. Something happened inside her.’ It was important, Gorbachev continued, ‘that Thatcher practically s
upported the policy of perestroika. The Americans are calling this her biggest mistake.’102 Mrs Thatcher’s support for Gorbachev’s reforms would grow in the months and years that followed, even though, as Gorbachev suggested, many in Washington questioned the wisdom of this course.
The visit was also, of course, very good for Mrs Thatcher politically. ‘It showed her in a lead position, in a slightly glamorous position,’ recalled Charles Powell, ‘– the cold Russian winter with the fur collar and the fur hat and tens of thousands of Russians turning out to cheer her in the street. It really made it look as though her understanding of the changes in the East/West relationship was a really significant factor in the world. She was, as it were, leading the way.’103 Here Gorbachev was complicit: ‘it is in our interest to raise the British role in international affairs,’ he told his colleagues, stressing that Mrs Thatcher’s views could influence the Europeans and the Americans.104 It was noted that Gorbachev had devoted an unprecedented amount of time and trouble to looking after his visitor, and that he had used her with the Russian people to advance his reforms. Gorbachev believed that his insistence that her public comments be reported had ‘disarmed her’.105 However, his decision to allow her to be interviewed unedited also set a crucial precedent, making it possible for George Shultz, who visited two weeks later, to be given the same treatment. ‘They played what I said on Afghanistan [on television],’ Shultz recalled. ‘That really showed things were changing.’106
Gorbachev had accepted more of what Mrs Thatcher said, particularly concerning the disconnect between his internal reforms and Moscow’s unchanged, hardline foreign policy, than his combative style betrayed at the time. ‘She emphasized trust,’ he reported to the Politburo.
She said the USSR had undermined trust in itself. ‘We do not believe you. You take grave actions irresponsibly: Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Afghanistan. We could not imagine that you’d send troops to Czechoslovakia, but you did. The same again with Afghanistan. We are afraid of you. If you withdraw your medium-range missiles, and the Americans do the same, then we’ll be defenceless before your armies.’ This is how she thinks. She’s sure that we have not given up the Brezhnev Doctrine. This is really something to ponder, comrades. We can’t just brush it aside …107
The Russians lost no time in following up. On 8 April, Charles Powell reported a visit from a Mr Kossov of the Soviet Embassy in London. He explained to Powell that, before her visit, Moscow officials had been over-worried by Mrs Thatcher’s Torquay speech, and this explained Gorbachev’s aggression at the dinner on the second night. Kossov described Mrs Thatcher’s ideas about predictability in SDI as having been ‘very carefully noted’,108 and asked if they had been agreed by the Americans in advance. The US had been informed, but its agreement had not been sought, Powell replied. Kossov said that ‘Mr Gorbachev wanted to maintain his “special relationship” with the Prime Minister.’ The British official reaction registered pleasure as well as vigilance at this use of a phrase usually reserved for Britain and America. Derek Thomas, for the Foreign Office, replied to Powell that the idea was ‘no doubt intended to be both flattering and wedge-driving. But we should not discount the possibility that it is also genuine … we should remain cautious about Soviet attempts to build up a special relationship, but not to the point of discouraging the Prime Minister from maintaining it.’109
Mrs Thatcher did not forget, however, where her real special relationship was. Her account to Reagan, written before she had even returned to Britain, was full, and more or less frank. She told Reagan that she thought she had been able to move Gorbachev towards ‘the step-by-step approach [to disarmament] which we agreed at Camp David last year’.110 On INF, she said that Gorbachev would not accept the Western right to match Soviet levels of short-range systems ‘(which I said was a key point)’. ‘His aim’, she continued, ‘is patently the denuclearisation of Europe. I left him in no doubt that I would never accept this.’ But she thought, all the same, ‘there is a pretty reasonable prospect of getting … an agreement which meets our requirements by the end of the year.’ She wanted to be clear that she had not fallen for Gorbachev’s blandishments: ‘If ever I had any doubts whether Gorbachev is a true “believer” in the Communist system, my talks with him dispelled them.’ But she argued strongly that her visit had been ‘very well worthwhile’. ‘Gorbachev needs to be told in plain, unvarnished terms what the Western viewpoint is. And he was … It was interesting that he did not allow my frankness to affect our personal relationship.’ The West had an interest in supporting his reform policies. The response of the Russian people to her visit had been ‘remarkable’ – the West should use glasnost to promote its own messages.
Electorally, of course, there could be no better message than that the Iron Lady was also the person to bring peace. Mrs Thatcher was very conscious of this as she planned to go to the polls in June. But beyond political considerations at home, the Moscow visit was important. As Charles Powell put it, it was, ‘in some ways, the beginning of the end of the Cold War’.111
Nicholas Garland, Independent, 1 April 1987.
19
What they saw in her
‘Mrs Thatcher is the point at which all snobberies meet’
The success of the Moscow visit reinforced the perception of Mrs Thatcher as a bold and brave champion of the West. As she approached the end of her eighth year as prime minister, her battles at home and abroad were well known. Her longevity in office, and evident intention to continue, only served to confirm her dominance. Everyone recognized her; everyone had an opinion about her. She embodied the hopes of many and featured in the nightmares of some. The impact – psychological and cultural as well as directly political – of Mrs Thatcher at the height of her power was deep. She had become a mythological figure, the archetype of the ‘strong woman’ in all continents, the patron saint, some said, of taxi drivers and all those who strove to better themselves. Possibly for this very reason, she had become the object of unique scorn and vitriol among many British writers and intellectuals.
Ahead of the general election that would be held in June 1987, many of these critics spoke out. ‘The chief function of this election’, wrote the novelist Julian Barnes,* ‘is to turn out Mrs Thatcher and her spayed Cabinet, whose main achievement in the last eight years has been the legitimation of self-interest.’1 The television playwright Dennis Potter† thought Mrs Thatcher ‘the most obviously repellent manifestation of the most obviously arrogant, dishonest, divisive and dangerous government since the war’.2 David Hare‡ wrote of Mrs Thatcher, ‘She is, as her teams of journalistic galley-slaves never tire of telling us, a crusader. Her crusade, however, is exclusively on behalf of herself, and those who share her peculiar temperament and ideas.’3 He thought that voters would eventually recognize what he saw as her promotion of greed, and predicted, therefore, that her influence would disappear quickly after she left the political scene, ‘leaving nothing but the memory of a funny accent and an obscure sense of shame’.4 His reference to her accent gives a clue to the visceral way in which Mrs Thatcher’s intellectual critics disliked her. She not only upheld ideas they found obnoxious: she almost physically embodied everything bad they conjured up in the use of the word ‘suburban’. As the novelist and screenwriter Hanif Kureishi* later told the Guardian: ‘England has become a squalid … intolerant, racist, homophobic, narrow-minded, authoritarian rat-hole run by vicious, suburban-minded materialistic philistines.’5
Even without an election campaign, Mrs Thatcher as philistine-in-chief was a popular theme with Britain’s leading thinkers and cultural figures, many of whom spoke to the journalist Graham Turner for an article which appeared in the Sunday Telegraph. The novelist and travel writer Jonathan Raban† saw her as a total philistine – ‘she doesn’t appreciate doubleness, contradictions, paradox, irony, ambiguity’ and, to her, paintings, books and ideas were ‘just so much Black Forest gateau’.6 To David Hare she ‘has no sense of personal morality’.7 Alan Bennett also cond
emned Mrs Thatcher as a philistine and, in words which were not printed, depicted her as a type of bossy sexual ignorance: ‘I see her as an assertive aunt … a kind of maiden aunt who knows all about marriage.’8 Mary Warnock,‡ the philosopher and Mistress of Girton College, Cambridge, said that Mrs Thatcher had ‘a total lack of understanding of what universities were about’ and that, even if her views changed, she would still not be acceptable because ‘Watching her choose clothes at Marks and Spencer there was something really quite obscene about it.’9* Dr Jonathan Miller,† the theatre director and polymath, called her ‘loathsome, repulsive in almost every way’10 and, in remarks which Turner decided not to print,11 said that she had ‘the diction of a perfumed fart’.
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