The Iron Lady

by John Campbell

  The selection was a close-run thing, but on the second ballot Mrs Thatcher squeezed home by 46 votes to 43. She had won the vote, but she had still to win the acceptance of the whole Association. ‘Woman Chosen as Conservative Prospective Candidate’, the Finchley Press reported. ‘Barrister, Housewife, Mother of Twins.’26 The London Evening Standard featured the same angle. ‘Tories Choose Beauty’ ran its headline.27 Her sex remained a contentious issue. Sir John Crowder made no secret of his disgust at being succeeded by a woman; and Central Office feared trouble at the formal adoption meeting on 31 July. In the event she had a triumph:

  We had anticipated that there might have been some volume of opposition to Mrs Thatcher as a clique in the constituency were known to be opposed to a woman candidate. In fact the Chairman handled the meeting extremely well and Mrs Thatcher gave a most excellent speech and altogether went down splendidly. When the resolution proposing her adoption was put, it was carried with about five descensions [sic] who looked extremely red-faced and stupid.28

  Over the next fifteen months she threw herself into the task of getting to know the constituency with her usual thoroughness, holding meetings in each of the ward branches, leading canvassing parties and conducting ‘an intensive campaign to meet as many of the electors as possible’.29 Her pace was perhaps not quite so hectic as it had been in Dartford nine years earlier. There she had been a single woman with no obligations outside her work; now she was married with children and a home to run. Moreover, though she took nothing for granted, Finchley was in fact a safe seat. She had not the urgent sense of being a missionary in enemy territory; she was among friends – once she had overcome initial reservations – securing her base for a long parliamentary career. For that purpose Finchley suited her admirably. The only drawback was that she had just gone to live in Kent, and the constituency was the wrong side of London.

  Affluent middle-class homeowners, relatively highly educated and concerned for the education of their children, with a strong Jewish element – this was to be Mrs Thatcher’s personal electorate. These were ‘her people’, who embodied her cultural values and whose instincts and aspirations she in turn reflected and promoted for the next thirty years. One can only speculate how differently her career might have developed if she had become Member for Maidstone or Oxford or Grantham; as it was she became perfectly typecast as Mrs Finchley.

  The Thatcher family was on holiday on the Isle of Wight in early September 1959 when Macmillan called the election. Margaret hurried back to throw herself into what the Finchley Press hyperbolically dubbed ‘the political struggle of all time’.30 Her election address spelled out in conventional terms how eight years of Conservative Government had made life better for the voters of Finchley. She fought an energetic but courteous campaign, sharing platforms with both her Labour and Liberal opponents. The result was never in doubt. The Liberals’ effort was enough to gain them some 4,000 votes from Labour but not quite enough to put them into second place: they made almost no impact on the Tory vote. Mrs Thatcher thus increased the Tory majority from 12,825 to 16,260.

  Though she held the seat without serious alarm through various boundary changes for the next thirty-two years, her majority was never so large again. The lowest it ever fell was in October 1974, when it dipped below 4,000; but even in her years of dominating the national stage her majority in Finchley never again hit five figures.

  Finchley was a microcosm of the national result. Macmillan increased his overall majority to exactly 100.This was the high point of Tory fortunes in the post-war period, a zenith of confidence not to be touched again until Mrs Thatcher’s own unprecedented run of three consecutive victories in the 1980s. The party she joined at Westminster in October 1959 was riding high; political analysts wondered if Labour would ever hold office again. But within a few years the pendulum had swung, and the first fifteen years of Margaret Thatcher’s parliamentary career were served against a background of increasing uncertainty and loss of confidence within the party – from which it fell to her, eventually, to lead an astonishing recovery.

  3

  First Steps

  Member for Finchley

  WITH the Conservatives winning a three-figure majority, Margaret Thatcher was one of sixty-four new Tory Members elected in 1959. Among such a large new intake being a woman was simultaneously an advantage and a handicap. As one of only twelve women Members on the Conservative side of the House (Labour had thirteen) she was immediately conspicuous – the more so since she was younger, prettier and better dressed than any of the others – but for this very reason she was also patronised and disregarded. ‘She appeared rather over-bright and shiny’, one contemporary recalled. ‘She rarely smiled and never laughed… We all smiled benignly as we looked into those blue eyes and the tilt of that golden head. We, and all the world, had no idea what we were in for.’1

  She was always combative, another remembered, but in those early days she would generally back down gracefully when she had made her point. The alternative was to be written off as strident and bossy. She had to be careful to keep this side of her character out of sight for the next twenty years while she climbed the ladder: not until she was Prime Minister did Tory MPs come to enjoy being hectored by a strong-minded woman. To a remarkable extent she succeeded, while extracting the maximum advantage from her femininity.

  Mrs Thatcher’s parliamentary career received a fortunate boost within a few weeks of arriving at Westminster when she came third in the ballot for Private Members’ Bills. This threw her in at the deep end, but also gave her the opportunity to make a conspicuous splash: instead of the usual uncontroversial debut delivered in the dinner hour to empty benches, she made her maiden speech introducing a controversial Bill. Inevitably she seized her chance and made certain of a triumph. She brought herself emphatically to the attention of the whips, demonstrated her competence and duly saw her Bill on to the Statute Book with the Government’s blessing. Behind the scenes, however, neither the origin nor the passage of the Bill were as straightforward as they appeared. The newly elected thirty-four-year-old endured some bruising battles, both in the House of Commons and in Whitehall; and the measure that emerged was neither the one she originally intended nor the one she introduced. It was a tough baptism.

  An MP who wins a high place in the Private Members’ ballot is swamped with proposals for Bills which he or she might like to introduce. The issue Mrs Thatcher eventually chose was the right of the press to cover local government. This was thought to have been enshrined in an Act of 1908. Recently, however, some councils had been getting round the requirement of open meetings by barring the press from committees and going into a committee of the whole council when they wanted to exclude reporters. The 1959 Tory manifesto contained a pledge to ‘make quite sure that the press have proper facilities for reporting the proceedings of local authorities’.2 But the Government proposed to achieve this by a new code of conduct rather than by legislation. Mrs Thatcher considered this ‘extremely feeble’ and found enough support to risk defying the expressed preference of the Minister of Housing and Local Government, Henry Brooke, and his officials.

  Her problem was that she needed the Department’s help to draft her Bill; but the Department would only countenance a minimal Bill falling well short of her objective. Eventually she settled for half a loaf. Her Bill published on 24 January 1960 was judged by The Times ‘to have kept nicely in line with Conservative thinking’.3 In fact, it was a fairly toothless measure which increased the number of bodies – water boards and police committees as well as local authorities – whose meetings should normally be open to the press; required that agendas and relevant papers be made available to the press in advance; and defined more tightly the circumstances in which reporters might be excluded – but still left loopholes. It was still open to a majority to declare any meeting closed on grounds of confidentiality.

  Maiden speech

  The Second Reading was set down for 5 February. To ensure a good atte
ndance on a Friday morning, Mrs Thatcher sent 250 handwritten letters to Tory backbenchers requesting their support. She was rewarded with a turnout of about a hundred. She immediately ignored the convention by which maiden speakers begin with some modest expression of humility, a tribute to their predecessor and a guidebook tour of their constituency. Margaret Thatcher wasted no time on such courtesies:

  This is a maiden speech, but I know that the constituency of Finchley which I have the honour to represent would not wish me to do other than come straight to the point and address myself to the matter before the House. I cannot do better than begin by stating the object of the Bill…

  She spoke for twenty-seven minutes with fluency and perfect clarity, expounding the history of the issue and emphasising – significantly – not the freedom of the press but rather the need to limit local government expenditure. Only at the very end did she remember to thank the House for its traditional indulgence to a new Member.4

  Her seconder, Frederick Corfield, immediately congratulated her on ‘an outstanding maiden speech… delivered with very considerable clarity and charm’. She had introduced her Bill ‘in a manner that would do credit to the Front Benches on either side of the Chamber’.5 Later speakers reiterated the same compliments. It was practically compulsory in 1960 to praise a lady speaker’s ‘charm’; but the tributes to the Member for Finchley’s front bench quality were more significant and probably more sincere.

  In any case, the Bill passed its Second Reading – on a free vote, with many Labour Members supporting and some Tories opposing – by 152 votes to 39. Eventually it went into committee in mid-March. Over the next few weeks Mrs Thatcher had to battle hard for her Bill. She suffered a serious defeat when she failed to carry a clause giving public access to all committees exercising delegated functions; she had to settle for committees of the full council only. The Times regretted that this reduced the Bill to a ‘half-measure’.6

  Back on the floor of the House the emasculated Bill carried its Third Reading on 13 May, without a vote. For the Government Keith Joseph paid another compliment to Mrs Thatcher’s ‘most cogent, charming, lucid and composed manner’, which had contributed to the passage of ‘a delicate and contentious measure perhaps not ideally suited for a first venture into legislation’.7 In the Lords the Bill earned another historical footnote when Baroness Elliot of Harwood became the first peeress to move a Bill in the Upper House, before it finally received the Royal Assent in October. After exactly a year it was an achievement of sorts, but rather more of an education. As a piece of legislation it was ineffective. Nevertheless Mrs Thatcher had learned in a few months more about the ways of Whitehall – and specifically about the ability of officials and the Tory establishment together to stifle reform – than most backbenchers learn in a lifetime.

  Mrs Thatcher’s conduct of the Public Bodies (Admission to Meetings) Bill, as a novice backbencher taking on a senior Cabinet Minister of her own party, his Permanent Secretary and the parliamentary draftsmen, in the belief that they were all being either feeble or obstructive, displayed a degree of political aggression to which Whitehall was unaccustomed. Officials did not know how to handle a forceful woman who did not play by bureaucratic rules or accept their departmental wisdom. Their successors were to have the same problem twenty years later, multiplied tenfold by her authority as Prime Minister. No one in 1960 imagined that a woman could ever become Prime Minister. But her luck in winning a high place in the Private Members’ ballot, and her plucky exploitation of the opportunity, had certainly put her in line for early promotion.

  The Common Market

  In the summer of 1961, after months of cautious soundings, the Macmillan Government finally announced Britain’s application to join the European Economic Community – the Common Market, as it was then universally known. This was the biggest decision in post-war politics, which determined – even though it was another decade before Britain’s third application was successful – the gradual redirection of British policy towards ever closer involvement with the Continent. In time, Mrs Thatcher as Prime Minister came to feel that this process had gone too far, and set herself to slow or even to reverse it. She felt no such doubts in 1961. In a characteristically thorough speech in her constituency on 14 August, she tackled the question of sovereignty head-on.

  First she denied that Britain faced a choice between Europe and the Commonwealth, as many older Tories feared, arguing that the Commonwealth would only benefit from Britain being strong and prosperous. Besides, she frankly admitted, the Commonwealth was not the same as twenty or thirty years earlier: ‘Many of us do not feel quite the same allegiance to Archbishop Makarios or Doctor Nkrumah or to people like Jomo Kenyatta as we do towards Mr Menzies of Australia.’ Seldom has that point been more bluntly put.

  Second, she warned that it was important to join the Community quickly in order to be able to help shape the Common Agricultural Policy. In fact it was already too late for that: the Six were pressing on deliberately to settle the CAP before Britain was admitted. But the principle she enunciated – that Britain needed to be in at the beginning of future developments – was an important one whose truth did not diminish.

  Third, and most crucially, Mrs Thatcher faced up to fears of loss of sovereignty and national identity and dismissed them as groundless. Britain already belonged to alliances – principally NATO – which limited her independence. These were an exercise of national sovereignty, not a derogation of it.

  Sovereignty and independence are not ends in themselves. It is no good being independent in isolation if it involves running down our economy and watching other nations outstrip us both in trade and influence… France and Germany have attempted to sink their political differences and work for a united Europe. If France can do this so can we.8

  What is remarkable about this statement, in retrospect, is its unblinking acceptance of the political dimension of a united Europe and Britain’s proper place within it. Yet it only reflected the common assumption of British politicians in the early 1960s – and still in the early 1970s – that Britain would be joining the Community in order to lead Europe, or at least to share in the joint leadership. It was the confidence that Britain would still be a great power within Europe – indeed a greater power as part of Europe – which allowed them to contemplate with equanimity the loss, or pooling, of formal sovereignty. It is a striking illustration of this confidence that even so ardent a nationalist as Margaret Thatcher felt no qualms in 1961 on the subject which exercised her so furiously thirty years later.

  Pensions minister

  Less than two months later she was invited to join the Government as joint Parliamentary Secretary at the Ministry of Pensions and National Insurance (MPNI). The offer had come a little sooner than she would have liked, when the twins were only eight; but she knew that in politics, ‘when you’re offered a job you either accept it or you’re out’, so she accepted.9 It was an exceptionally rapid promotion – equal first of the 1959 intake. Probably Macmillan and his Chief Whip simply wanted another woman to replace Patricia Hornsby-Smith in what was regarded as a woman’s job. But their choice made Mrs Thatcher the youngest woman and the first mother of young children ever appointed to ministerial office.

  She stayed in the Ministry of Pensions and National Insurance for three years, longer than she might have wished in one department; but it was a good department in which to serve her ministerial apprenticeship. The nature of the work suited her perfectly. Though she knew next to nothing about social security when she arrived, she quickly set herself to master both the principles of the system and the immensely complex detail. With her tidy mind – honed by both chemistry and law – and her inexhaustible appetite for paperwork, she rapidly achieved a rare command of both aspects which enabled her to handle individual cases confidently within a clear framework of policy. The MPNI was not a department where a minister – certainly not a junior minister – had large executive decisions to take, rather a mass of tiny decisions inves
tigating grievances and correcting anomalies across the whole range of benefits and human circumstances. Three years of this gave Mrs Thatcher a close working knowledge of the intricacies of the welfare system which – since she never forgot anything once she had learned it – became a formidable part of her armoury twenty years later (though much of her detailed knowledge was by then out of date).

  Her first minister was John Boyd-Carpenter, a pugnacious character who had been at the MPNI since 1955. ‘He was a marvellous teacher,’ she later recalled, ‘fantastic man, total command of his department.’10 He won her undying gratitude by coming down to meet her at the door the first morning she turned up bright and early at the department just off the Strand. This gallantry made such an impression on her that she made a point of extending the same courtesy to her own juniors at the Department of Education ten years later.

  In her memoirs she conceded that generally ‘the calibre of officials I met impressed me’.11 Yet the enduring lesson she took from her time at the MPNI was that civil servants have their own agenda. She was shocked to catch them offering advice to Boyd-Carpenter’s successors which they would not have dared to offer him because they knew he would not take it. ‘I decided then and there that when I was in charge of a department I would insist on an absolutely frank assessment of all the options from any civil servants who would report to me.’12 Whether this always happened in Downing Street in the 1980s is debatable, but Mrs Thatcher never had any doubt of the need to show her officials very quickly who was boss. Even as a junior minister she always wanted the fullest possible briefing. On one occasion she found herself unable to answer a series of deliberately arcane questions put by her Labour shadow, Douglas Houghton, to catch her out. She was furious and told her officials that it must never happen again. It never did.13