Margaret Thatcher: The Autobiography (111 page)

Often, it was difficult to explain to the general public precisely why we opposed the specific measure the Commission wanted. This made it politically difficult to resist the creeping expansion of the Commission’s authority. In theory, it would have been possible to fight all this in the courts; for time after time the Commission were twisting the words and intentions of the European Council to its own ends. We did indeed fight, and won a number of cases on these grounds before the European Court of Justice (ECJ). But the advice from the lawyers was that in relation to questions of Community and Commission competence the ECJ would favour ‘dynamic and expansive’ interpretations of the treaty over restrictive ones. The dice were loaded against us.

The more I considered all this, the greater my frustration and the deeper my anger became. Were British democracy, parliamentary sovereignty, the common law, our traditional sense of fairness, our ability to run our own affairs in our own way to be subordinated to the demands of
a remote European bureaucracy, resting on very different traditions? Because Britain was the most stable and developed democracy in Europe we had perhaps most to lose from these developments. But Frenchmen who wanted to see France free to decide her own destiny would be losers too. So would Germans, who wished to retain their own currency, the deutschmark, which they had made the most credible in the world.

I was no less conscious of those millions of eastern Europeans living under communism. How could a tightly centralized, highly regulated, supra-national European Community meet their aspirations and needs?

This wider Europe, stretching perhaps to the Urals and certainly to include that New Europe across the Atlantic, was an entity which made at least historical and cultural sense. And in economic terms, only a truly global approach would do. This then was my thinking as I turned my mind to what would be the ‘Bruges Speech’.

The hall in which I made my speech was oddly arranged. The platform from which I spoke was placed in the middle of the long side so that the audience stretched far to my left and right, with only a few rows in front of me. But the message got across well enough. And it was not only my hosts at the College of Europe in Bruges who got more than they bargained for. The Foreign Office had been pressing me for several years to accept an invitation to speak there to set out our European credentials.

I began by doing what the Foreign Office wished. I pointed out just how much Britain had contributed to Europe over the centuries and how much we still contributed, with 70,000 British servicemen stationed there. But what was Europe? I went on to remind my audience that, contrary to the pretensions of the European Community, it was not the only manifestation of European identity. ‘We shall always look on Warsaw, Prague and Budapest as great European cities.’ I went on to argue that western Europe had something to learn from the admittedly dreadful experience of its eastern neighbours and their strong and principled reaction to it:

There were, moreover, powerful non-economic reasons for the retention of sovereignty and, as far as possible, of power, by nation-states. Not only were such nations functioning democracies, but they also represented intractable political realities which it would be folly to seek to override or suppress in favour of a wider but as yet theoretical European nationhood. I pointed out:

I set out other guidelines for the future. Problems must be tackled practically: and there was plenty in the CAP which still needed tackling. We must have a European Single Market with the minimum of regulations – a Europe of enterprise. Europe must not be protectionist: and that must be reflected in our approach to the GATT. Finally, I stressed the great importance of NATO and warned against any development (as a result of Franco-German initiatives) of the Western European Union as an alternative to it.
*

Not even I would have predicted the furore the Bruges speech unleashed. In Britain, to the horror of the Euro-enthusiasts, there was a great wave of popular support for what I had said. But the reaction in polite European circles – or at least the official reaction – was one of stunned outrage.

By now attention in British politics was turning to two issues which, much as I sought to disentangle them, became entwined: the elections to the European Parliament and the occasion of my tenth anniversary. On the second of these, I had given strict instructions to Central Office and the Party that it should be handled with as little fuss as possible. I gave one or two interviews; I received a commemorative vase from the National Union; and a rather attractive publication was issued by the
Party, which was a modest success without being exactly a bestseller. But, of course, there were plenty of journalists anxious to write ‘reflective’ pieces on ten years of Thatcher and to conclude, as I knew they would, that a decade of this woman was quite enough.

In such an atmosphere it was natural that the Labour Party would claim that the 1989 European elections were a ‘referendum’ on Thatcherism in general and the Bruges approach in particular. I might have accepted that the European elections were a sort of judgement on Bruges if we had had European candidates who were Brugesist rather than federalist. With a few notable exceptions that was not the case.

The overall strategy was simple. It was to bring Conservative voters – so many of whom were thoroughly disillusioned with the Community – out to vote. Perhaps it might have worked if the message had been got across with greater conviction and vigour by the candidates themselves and if we had been free of highly publicized attacks from Ted Heath and others. In fact, at the very last moment there was a late surge to the Green Party which undercut our vote. People had treated the European elections rather as they would a by-election, voting not to effect real changes in their lives but to make a protest against the sitting government. Labour were the beneficiaries and gained thirteen seats from us. For all the mitigating factors, I was not happy. The result would encourage all those who were out to undermine me and my approach to Europe.

This did not take long to occur. I have already described how Geoffrey Howe and Nigel Lawson tried to hustle me into setting a date for sterling’s entry into the ERM and how I avoided this at the Madrid Council in June 1989. In fact, the ERM was something of an irrelevance at Madrid. The two real issues were the handling of the Delors Report on EMU and the question of whether the Community should have its own Social Charter.

I was, of course, opposed root and branch to the whole approach of the Delors Report. But I was not in a position to prevent some kind of action being taken upon it. Consequently, I decided to stress three points. First, the Delors Report must not be the only basis for further work on EMU. Second, there must be nothing automatic about the process of moving towards EMU either as regards timing or content. In particular, we would not be bound now to what might be in Stage 2 or when it would be implemented. Third, there should be no decision now to go ahead with an Inter-Governmental Conference on the Report. A fall-back position would be that any such IGC must receive proper – and as lengthy as possible – preparation.

As regards the Social Charter, the issue was simpler. I considered it quite inappropriate for rules and regulations about working practices or welfare benefits to be set at Community level. The Social Charter was quite simply a socialist charter – devised by socialists in the Commission and favoured predominantly by socialist member states.

Most of the first day’s discussions in Madrid were taken up with EMU. Late in the afternoon we turned to the Single Market and the ‘social dimension’. I have already described how I used my first speech to spell out my conditions for entering the ERM. But I also backed Poul Schlüter who challenged paragraph 39 of the Delors Report, which essentially spelt out the ‘in for a penny, in for a pound approach’ which the federalists favoured. The other extreme was represented by France. President Mitterrand insisted on setting deadlines for an IGC and for completion of Stages 2 and 3, which at one point he suggested should be 31 December 1992.

The argument then turned to the Social Charter. I was sitting next to Sr Cavaco Silva, the rather sound Portuguese Prime Minister who would doubtless have been sounder still if his country was not so poor and the Germans quite so rich.

‘Don’t you see’, I said, ‘that the Social Charter is intended to stop Portugal attracting investment from Germany because of your lower wage costs? This is German protectionism. There will be directives based on it and your jobs will be lost.’ But he seemed unconvinced that the charter would be anything other than a general declaration. And perhaps he thought that if the Germans were prepared to pay enough in ‘cohesion’ money the deal would not be too bad. So I was alone in opposing the charter.

The European election results had no particular significance in themselves. But they had revealed a groundswell of discontent which could not be ignored. A minority of Conservative MPs were uneasy about the line I was taking on Europe. But more important was the fact that there was a widespread restlessness because avenues of promotion into the ranks of the Government seemed blocked. I too felt that changes were required. When a Prime Minister has been in power for ten years he or she must be that much more aware of the dangers of the Government as a whole appearing to be tired or stale. I decided to make some changes in the Cabinet to free up posts at every level and bring on some new faces.

I had also been thinking about my own future. I knew that I had a good few more years of active service left in me and I intended to see through
to the end the restoration of our economic strength, the fulfilment of our radical social reforms and that remodelling of Europe on which I had embarked with the Bruges speech. I wanted to leave behind me when I went, perhaps halfway into the next Parliament, several candidates with proven character and experience from whom the choice of my successor could be made. For various reasons I did not believe that any of my own political generation were suitable. If one considers the possibilities – first among those who were of my own way of thinking: Norman Tebbit was now concentrating on looking after Margaret and on his business interests; Nick Ridley who never suffered fools gladly would not have been acceptable to Tory MPs; Cecil Parkinson had been damaged in the eyes of the old guard. Geoffrey Howe I shall come to shortly. Nigel Lawson had no interest in the job – and I had no interest in encouraging him. Michael Heseltine was not a team player and certainly not a team captain. Anyway, I saw no reason to hand over to anyone of roughly my age while I was fit and active. In the next generation, by contrast, there was a variety of possible candidates: John Major, Douglas Hurd, Ken Baker, Ken Clarke, Chris Patten and perhaps Norman Lamont and Michael Howard. I felt it was not for me to select my successor. But I did have the obligation to see that there were several proven candidates from whom to choose.

I was, however, wrong on one important matter. Of course, I understood that some of my Cabinet colleagues and other ministers were more to the left, some more to the right. But I believed that they had generally become convinced of the rightness of the basic principles as I had. Orthodox finance, low levels of regulation and taxation, a minimal bureaucracy, strong defence, a willingness to stand up for British interests wherever and whenever threatened – the arguments for them seemed to me to have been won. I now know that such arguments are never finally won.

A little earlier I left aside Geoffrey Howe from my discussion of possible leadership candidates. Something had happened to Geoffrey. His clarity of purpose and analysis had dimmed. I did not think he was any longer a possible leader. But worse than that, I could not have him as Foreign Secretary – at least while Nigel Lawson was Chancellor – after his behaviour on the eve of the Madrid Council. I was determined to move him aside for a younger man.

I decided that two ministers should leave the Cabinet altogether. Paul Channon was loyal and likeable. But Transport was becoming a very important department in which public presentation was at a premium – what with the appalling disasters which seemed to plague us at this time
and in the light of the traffic congestion which Britain’s new prosperity brought with it. I asked Paul to leave and he did so with perfect good humour. I appointed Cecil Parkinson to his place. Deciding to ask John Moore to go was even more of a wrench. He was of my way of thinking. At Health it was he – rather than his successor Ken Clarke – who had really got the Health review under way. At Social Security, after I split the DHSS into two departments, he had been courageous and radical in his thinking about dependency and poverty. But John had never fully recovered, at least psychologically, from the debilitating illness he suffered while Secretary of State at the old combined DHSS. So I asked him to make way and appointed Tony Newton, a stolid, left-inclining figure but one with a good command of the House and of his brief. I also brought into the Cabinet Peter Brooke who had been a much-loved and utterly dependable Party Chairman. He wanted to be Ulster Secretary and I gave him the job, moving Tom King to the Defence Ministry, vacated by George Younger who wanted to leave the Government to concentrate on his business interests. George’s departure was a blow. I valued his common sense, trusted his judgement and relied on his loyalty. His career is proof of the fact that, contrary to myth, gentlemen still have a place in politics.