Margaret Thatcher: Power and Personality (23 page)

REFLECTION

The year of 1974 was a decisive turning point in the life of Margaret Thatcher. It was the period when, most unexpectedly, opportunity knocked with a chance for her to become the leader of the Conservative Party.

Much less noticed at the time, 1974 was the year when she sowed one of the seeds that brought about her destruction as Prime Minister. For it was during her few months as Ted Heath’s Shadow Environment Secretary that she became convinced of the unfairness of the rating system. So she made a public commitment to abolish the rates, and to replace it with a fairer method of taxation to finance local government. This was the genesis of the Community Charge (or ‘poll tax’) that she so unwisely turned into her ‘flagship’ policy in 1988–1990.

Both the move to abolish the rates and the move towards competing for the party leadership revealed an interesting dimension in the political character of Margaret Thatcher – her pragmatic opportunism.

Viewed in historical perspective, she is rightly seen as a principled politician. But her election promise to abolish the rates in October 1974, coupled with her simultaneous pledge to peg mortgage interest rates at 9.5 per cent, were unprincipled decisions. They were crowd-pleasing and leader-pleasing initiatives which, had they been implemented, would have sent inflation and public expenditure soaring. She knew this perfectly well. Her only excuse was that she thought that the price of her promises would never have to be paid, since the Conservatives were bound to lose the election anyway.

Although she was flaky about the inflationary consequences, she was firm about the moral reasons for abolishing the rates. Time and again in her 1974
speeches as Shadow Environment Minister, Margaret Thatcher highlighted the unfairness of a widow living alone in a big house who had to pay her rates out of her fixed income pension, when in the same street a family of wage-earners paid the same rating bill out of their much larger collective earnings. This was a moral issue. Margaret Thatcher, whose longstanding sympathy for widows dated back to her days as Joint Parliamentary Secretary at the Ministry of Pensions and National Insurance, felt passionately about it. This passion for rating reform ended up as the poll tax, and hastened her demise as Prime Minister. It all started in 1974.

More importantly, this was the year in which the green shoots of Margaret Thatcher’s leadership ambitions began to emerge. At first, she kept them well under wraps. She knew Keith Joseph too well to believe that he would ever run the full distance as a leadership challenger himself. He was a good man, and a clever man. But even if he had never made his fateful eugenics speech, his handwringing temperament and his intellectual propensity to see merit in all sides of all questions made him quite unfit to give the strong leadership the Conservatives needed. The same could well be said, for different reasons, of all the other potential candidates from the shadow cabinet. It was a weak field in which a strong woman might just beat the bookies’ forecasts. Her logical mind must surely have led her to dream this unthinkable dream long before she put her hat into the ring.

Whatever went on in her head during the first ten months of 1974, her political positioning was impeccable. She was both constitutionally loyal to Ted Heath, while politically supportive of Keith Joseph. She gave no clues that she had aspirations of her own. Yet while all the other horses in the race were faltering, she was gaining ground. This did not happen by chance. The Iron Lady was preceded by the Iron Candidate.

10

Winning the leadership

DECIDING TO RUN

Margaret Thatcher bided her time while the media row about Keith Joseph smouldered on for a month’s worth of bad headlines. His embarrassment emboldened Ted Heath to reshuffle the shadow cabinet. But the Leader’s confidence that his position had been strengthened was undermined by the parliamentary reaction to his new appointments.

If Heath had brought in some fresh faces from the right of the party, or promoted Margaret Thatcher, he might have calmed the murmurings against him at least for a while. But Edward du Cann, who was exercising an increasing influence as Chairman of the 1922 Committee, refused to serve in the shadow cabinet. The only two newcomers invited to join it were Nick Scott and Tim Raison, both regarded as left of centre Heathites. Their appointments increased the grumblings from the right.

Before the reshuffle, Margaret Thatcher was tipped in the press to become Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer. Heath did not want to put her in such an important role. In an attempt to take her down a peg, he did not assign a departmental portfolio to her. Instead, he made her the number two spokesman under Robert Carr. He was a colourless figure, who had served as Home Secretary with decency but without distinction. Unlike his new deputy, he was no match as a debater for the Labour Chancellor, Denis Healey. This gave Margaret Thatcher her opportunity to shine.

Her first outing at the despatch box in her new role for the opposition was in the Budget debate, exactly as it had been after her appointment as number two to Iain Macleod eight years earlier. She won cheers from the Conservative back-benchers for her entertaining digs at Labour’s Treasury ministers. After
being congratulated on her appointment by Labour’s Chief Secretary to the Treasury, the multi-millionaire Harold Lever, she got a good laugh (not least from him) by responding that she could never hope to rival his expertise on ‘the four ways of acquiring money, to make it, to earn it, to marry it, and to borrow it. He seems to have experience of all four’.
¹

Later in her speech she had a lively clash with Denis Healey, who she taunted with a newspaper clipping about his new house in Sussex. This reported him as saying ‘I never save. If I get any money I go out and buy something for the house’.
²
He not only protested too much at this slur on his reputation for prudence, and noticeably omitted to mention his country-house purchase. To which she retorted: ‘I am delighted that we have got on record the fact that the Chancellor is a jolly good saver. I know that he believes in buying houses in good Tory areas.’
³

Winning an exchange with Healey, the Labour government’s most flamboyant debater, was a good start for Margaret Thatcher in the high profile Budget debate. At a time of low morale for the Conservative Party she raised the spirits of her back-benchers with her attacking speech. Some of them started muttering about the need to take her more seriously as a leadership candidate. Once again, she had seized her moment as an effective parliamentary debater. She backed this up with some impressive performances on the early stages of the Committee on the Finance Bill.

A few days later she seized a far more important moment. On 21 November she was working in her room at the House on the Finance Bill when the beleaguered Keith Joseph came in to see her. ‘I am sorry, I just can’t run’, he told her. ‘Ever since I made that speech the press have been outside the house. They have been merciless. Helen [his wife] can’t take it, and I have decided that I just can’t stand.’
⁴

Margaret Thatcher responded, ‘If you’re not going to stand, I will, because someone who represents our viewpoint
has
to stand’.
⁵
Later that evening, she returned to Flood Street and told her husband she had decided to run for the leadership. ‘You must be out of your mind’, she claimed he replied. ‘You haven’t a hope.’
⁶
Denis’s account of his response was, ‘Heath will murder you’.
⁷

These versions are suspect. Both Thatchers were viewing the rising tide of party support for her more positively than their later stories suggest. Speculation among Tory MPs that she could be a serious and credible leadership candidate
had been around for several weeks. It rose sharply with the fall in Keith Joseph’s stock among his colleagues, climbing even higher in the aftermath of her Budget debate speech. Margaret Thatcher was well aware of the growing buzz of interest in her favour. She also knew that support for her was gathering momentum in some unexpected quarters.

TOFFS FOR THATCHER AND OTHER SURPRISES

Margaret Thatcher’s earliest encouragement to run for the leadership did not come, as was erroneously claimed at the time, from a ‘peasants’ revolt’
^*
within the party. Her first supporters were toffs, country gents and Treasury specialists.

The first time I heard Margaret Thatcher’s name mooted as a leadership candidate was in July 1974. I had just played a game of squash on the House of Commons court with Peter Morrison, the twenty-nine-year-old Member for Chester. We were good friends.

On this particular morning he was rather full of himself. ‘I’ve been seeing Margaret Thatcher’, he confided. ‘I told her that she must stand and that I could organise quite a few votes for her.’

I expressed amazement, and asked what her response had been.

‘She said I was the first Member of the 1974 intake to say this to her’, replied Peter Morrison. ‘Then she said she had no chance. But in the next breath she asked me how much support I thought she had. I replied, “Well you’ve got the Fonthill vote. My father’s been saying he’s certain you’ll be our next leader.” ’
⁸

This information was intriguing. Peter’s father, Lord Margadale, was a legendary figure of influence in the Tory Party. As Major Sir John Morrison MP, he had been Chairman of the 1922 Committee for many years. He was one of the last of a vanishing breed of back-bench heavyweights known as ‘Knights of the Shires’. He was widely credited with delivering the emergence of Sir Alec Douglas-Home as leader in 1963 and the election of Ted Heath in 1965. ‘Major Shrewd’ was his nickname. He was the father of two current MPs, Peter and his elder brother Charlie, the Member for Devizes.

Another source of Lord Margadale’s continuing influence was that he held court at Fonthill, his country estate in Wiltshire, where weekend house parties for political guests were a regular fixture. If the ‘Fonthill vote’ was really moving Margaret Thatcher’s way, it was an intriguing development. On the other hand, Peter Morrison might be getting the wrong end of the stick – which was the view I expressed.

‘Well, watch this space!’ was his cheery response. ‘Of course it’s early days, but some wise money’s going on La Thatcher.’

The summer recess and the October election filled the space for both of us in the next three months. But back in the squash court again at the start of the new parliamentary session, we returned to the subject of Margaret Thatcher. By this time she was being talked about, but only as a long-odds runner, in the leadership stakes.

‘I’ve become the sort of White’s Club whip for her’, confided Peter. The title had a meaning in high Tory circles. In the 1970s, there were still about forty old-guard MPs who belonged to clubs in St James’s Street like White’s, Boodle’s, Brooks’s, Pratt’s and the Carlton. One of the better-connected Conservative whips (at the time, Spencer le Marchant) was tasked with digging these club members out of their dining rooms in time to vote in nocturnal divisions. So I understood the role Peter Morrison was describing, but thought it would be an impossible job to find supporters for Margaret Thatcher in these circles.

‘Difficult territory for you’, I said.

‘Oh, you’re out of touch, old boy’, he responded. ‘Quite a few of my chums are talking of coming into Margaret’s camp.’

‘Like who?’ I asked.

‘Like Robin Cooke, Alan Clark, Bill Benyon, Michael Ancram, Marcus Kimball, Julian Amery, Maurice Macmillan and Stephen Hastings. My father’s putting in a word for her with some of them, too.’
⁹

My amazement increased. None of these names were from Margaret Thatcher’s natural constituency. She was a lady of the suburbs, not the shires. These alleged supporters were men of old money, old regiments and old school ties.

‘Shurely shome mistake’, I responded, using a
Private Eye
catchphrase. ‘No way!’ insisted Peter. He knew his fellow-grandees and club members. As we towelled down in the squash-court dressing room, he managed to convince me that owners of great estates like Athelhampton (Robin Cooke), Highgrove
(Maurice Macmillan), Englefield (Bill Beynon), Saltwood (Alan Clark), Lothian (Michael Ancram), Milton (Stephen Hastings) and Fonthill (Morrison family) were swinging Thatcher’s way.

‘But why?’

‘Because we think she’s the only one with balls, even though she’s a filly. Brains, too’, he replied. ‘And she is running well enough to end up the winner.’

Peter Morrison in those days was lean, energetic and enthusiastic, with considerable gifts of persuasion. He quietly conjured at least thirty or more improbable votes out of the upper social echelons of the parliamentary party. While later backers of Thatcher (including Airey Neave) were dithering, Peter was working flat out for her. His role was underestimated at the time, but not by Margaret Thatcher, or by one or two of her below-the-radar confidants, such as Gordon Reece
¹⁰
and the theoretically neutral Chief Whip, Humphrey Atkins.

One effect of the early dedication of Peter Morrison was that it won him the enduring loyalty of the candidate. When she became Prime Minister in 1979, she appointed him Minister of State for Employment, and to a succession of further posts during the next eleven years of which the last, and most disastrous, was to be her Parliamentary Private Secretary at the time of the fateful leadership election in 1990. But the failure of his final service to her has obscured the success of his original initiative on her behalf. Peter’s progress started with ‘toffs for Thatcher’
,
sixteen years earlier. He was her first unequivocal backer, and she never forgot it.

The toffs were joined by a more cerebral strand of support from a clever group of Tory MPs who specialised in Treasury matters. Their leader was John Nott, who just after the February 1974 election defeat met Denis Thatcher at a Burmah Oil board meeting. ‘Your wife could be Ted Heath’s successor’, said Nott. ‘My God, I hope you’re wrong’, replied Denis.
¹¹

John Nott was one of the founder members of the Economic Dining Club, a group of Conservative MPs interested in Treasury issues who dined together every month in one another’s London homes. The other members included Nicholas Ridley, Jock Bruce-Gardyne, Enoch Powell, Peter Hordern and John Biffen. After being invited to some of these evenings as a guest, Margaret Thatcher was put up for membership in the early 1970s. ‘But she was blackballed on the grounds she talked for too long’, recalled Nott.
¹²

The blackballs were lifted in March 1974, so the future leader of the party became a regular attendee at the Economic Dining Club. She was ideologically sympathetic to the group’s enthusiasm for free markets, floating exchange rates, and the theories of monetarism. So, when her bandwagon started to inch forward, it was no surprise that the members of the club put their shoulders to its wheels.

They were joined by a second wave of Tory Treasury specialists who participated alongside her on the 1974 Finance Bill Committee. Many of its stages took place on the floor of the House where Margaret Thatcher’s professionalism as a debunker and destroyer of government amendments was winning golden opinions, not least from the brightest new stars in the Finance Bill firmament. They included two future Chancellors, Norman Lamont and Nigel Lawson.

Rave reviews for her leadership of the front-bench team also came from the newly elected Member for Croydon, John Moore, a future Treasury minister, who volunteered to be one of the first Thatcher canvassers. Another fan, playing a key role on the Finance Bill was my next-door parliamentary neighbour Peter Rees, the Member for Dover and Deal. He was a tax QC and a future Chief Secretary to the Treasury. He advised me and other members of the East Kent group of MPs that we should all back Margaret Thatcher for the leadership because ‘She is performing brilliantly, even on the most complicated and technical amendments’.
¹³

Since the Finance Bill was the centrepiece of parliamentary life in the opening weeks of the new House of Commons, the praise for Margaret Thatcher from its ablest debaters on the Tory team had a ripple effect throughout the entire party. Yet most of its backbenchers, including myself, still had no clear idea as to who they might vote for in a leadership election, if there was going to be one. However, the combination of toffs, Treasury specialists and Ted Heath haters was creating a degree of momentum for Margaret Thatcher, even if it was not yet strong enough to propel her to the front of the pack.

A DEAL WITH EDWARD DU CANN

Although Margaret Thatcher told Ted Heath that she intended to stand against him, her position was not a strong one. In the autumn of 1974 there were only a handful of believers, like Peter Morrison, who thought she could win the crown. Most Tory MPs were hedging their bets, half-heartedly paying lip service to the
status quo while they waited for the emergence of a stronger challenger. But who would this be?

With Willie Whitelaw refusing to enter the lists, and Keith Joseph withdrawing from them, a number of unlikely names were fleetingly mentioned as possible contenders. Most of them were slightly dated establishment grandees, such as Christopher Soames, Richard Wood, Hugh Fraser and Julian Amery. Heath was supremely confident of seeing off all of them, and Margaret Thatcher too. But one potential candidate worried the Leader’s praetorian guard. It was that of Edward du Cann, Chairman of the 1922 Committee, former Chairman of the Conservative Party and former Economic Secretary to the Treasury. His strongest qualification was that he was implacably opposed to Ted Heath and determined to put an end to his leadership of the party.