The Downing Street Years (4 page)

Of course, I had visited No. 10 when I served as Education Secretary in Ted Heath’s Government of 1970–4 and, indeed, before that as a Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Pensions in Harold Macmillan’s and Alec Douglas-Home’s Governments. So I knew that the house is much larger than it looks from the outside because it is, in fact, two houses, one situated behind the other, joined by passages,
with an extra wing linking the two buildings. But although familiar with the reception rooms and the Cabinet Room, I knew little of the rest of the building.

Number Ten is more than an office: it is intended to serve as the prime minister’s home. I never had any doubt that when the Callaghans had left I would move into the prime minister’s small flat at the top of the building. Every practical consideration suggested it, as well as my own taste for long hours of work. As we used to say, harking back to my girlhood in Grantham, I liked living over the shop. I was not able to move out of the house in Flood Street where my family had been living for the last ten years until the first week of June. But from then, until November 1990, Downing Street and Chequers were the twin centres of my personal and professional life.

The flat at No. 10 quickly became a refuge from the rest of the world, though on occasion a good deal of business was done there too. It was right at the top of the building — up in the rafters, in fact. But that was an advantage, for the stairs provided me with about the only real exercise I got. There were plenty of cupboards and a box room in which to dump everything until it found a more permanent place and into which piles of books and papers could be pushed when visitors were due.

Denis and I decided that we would not have any living-in domestic help. No housekeeper could possibly have coped with the irregular hours. When I had no other engagement, I would go up to the flat for a quick lunch of salad or poached egg on Bovril toast. But usually it was 10 or 11 o’clock at night when I would go into the kitchen and prepare something — we knew every way in which eggs and cheese could be served and there was always something to cut at in the fridge — while Denis poured me a night-cap.

The deep freeze was always kept well stocked and the microwave, when it appeared, did sterling work when sudden meals were required because we were working late into the night on a speech, a statement or decisions required for the Falklands campaign or the Libyan raid — or Resolutions at the UN Security Council. On these occasions we used the small dining-room in the flat, which was next to the even smaller kitchen; secretaries from the Political Office, not paid by the taxpayer, would always lend a hand.

Prime Minister or not, I never forgot that I was also MP for Finchley; nor, indeed, would I have wanted to. My monthly surgeries in the constituency and the correspondence which was dealt with from within No. 10 by my secretary, Joy Robilliard (who had been Airey Neave’s secretary until his death), kept me directly in touch with people’s worries. I always had the benefit of a first-class constituency agent and a strongly supportive constituency chairman, which as any MP knows makes a world of difference. I also kept up my own special interests which had been developed as a result of constituency work, for example as patron of the North London Hospice.

I could never have been Prime Minister for more than eleven years without Denis at my side. Always a powerful personality, he had very definite ideas about what should and should not be done. He was a fund of shrewd advice and penetrating comment. And he very sensibly saved these for me rather than the outside world, always refusing to give interviews. He never had a secretary or public relations adviser but answered between thirty and fifty letters every week in his own hand. With the appearance of the ‘Dear Bill’ letters in
Private Eye
he seemed to become half the nation’s favourite correspondent.

Denis shared my own fascination with politics — that, of course, is how we first met — but he also had his own outside interests, not least sport. He was passionately interested in rugby football — having indeed been a referee. He was also heavily involved in charities, an active member of the Sports Aid Foundation and of the Lord’s Taverners. Denis delivered many speeches on his favourite (nonpolitical) subjects. The one which for me best summed up his character and convictions was on sport and ethics and contained these lines:

Although Denis had a deep interest in everything military, and by choice would have stayed in the army at the end of the Second World War, the unexpected death of his father left him with no option but to return to run the family business, a paint and chemicals company. I am glad he did. For his industrial experience was invaluable to me. Not only was he familiar with the scientific side (something which we had in common); he was also a crack cost and management accountant. Nothing escaped his professional eye — he could see and sense trouble long before anyone else. His knowledge of the oil industry also gave me immediate access to expert advice when in 1979 the world experienced the second sudden oil price increase. Indeed, through him
and our many friends I was never out of touch with industry and commerce.

Being prime minister is a lonely job. In a sense, it ought to be: you cannot lead from the crowd. But with Denis there I was never alone. What a man. What a husband. What a friend.

In some ways 10 Downing Street is an unusual sort of home. Portraits, busts and sculptures of one’s prime ministerial predecessors remind one of the nearly 250 years of history into which one has stepped.

As prime minister one has the opportunity to make an impact on the style of No. 10. Outside the flat I had displayed my own collection of porcelain, which I had built up over the years. I also brought with me a powerful portrait of Churchill from my room in the House of Commons. It looked down on those who assembled in the antechamber to the Cabinet Room. When I arrived, this area looked rather like a down-at-heel Pall Mall club, with heavy and worn leather furniture; I changed the whole feel by bringing in bookcases, tables and chairs from elsewhere in the building. There might be some difficult times to come in the Cabinet Room itself, but there was no reason why people should be made to feel miserable while they were waiting to go in.

Although it was not until I had been there some ten years that I had the most important redecorations done, I tried from the start to make the rooms seem more lived in. The official rooms had very few ornaments and when we arrived No. 10 looked rather like a ‘furnished house to let’, which in a way, I suppose, it was. Downing Street had no silver. Whenever there was an official dinner the caterers had to bring in their own. Lord Brownlow, who lived just outside Grantham, lent me silver from his collection at Belton House: it sparkled and transformed the No. 10 dining-room. One particular piece had a special meaning for me — a casket containing the Freedom of the Borough of Grantham, of which both the previous Lord Brownlow and later my father had been Mayor. The gardeners who kept St James’s Park brought in flowers. And happily, the flowers kept on coming, sent by friends and supporters, right until my last days at Downing Street, when you could hardly move down the corridors for a floral display which rivalled the Chelsea Flower Show. I also had the study repapered at my own expense. Its unappealing sage-green
damask flock wallpaper was stripped off and replaced by a cream stripe, which was a much better background for some fine pictures.

I felt that Downing Street should have some works by contemporary British artists and sculptors, as well as those of the past. I had met Henry Moore when I was Secretary of State for Education and much admired his work. The Moore Foundation let No. 10 borrow one of his smaller sculptures which fitted perfectly in an alcove in the main hallway. Behind the sculpture was hung a Moore drawing, which was changed every three months; among my favourites were scenes of people sleeping in the London Underground during the Blitz.

I was conscious of being the first research scientist to become prime minister — almost as conscious, in fact, as I was of being the first woman prime minister. So I had portraits and busts of some of our most famous scientists placed in the small dining-room, where I often lunched with visitors and colleagues on less formal occasions.

I felt strongly that when foreign visitors came to Downing Street they should see something of Britain’s cultural heritage. When I came to No. 10 all the paintings in the main dining-room were copies. They were replaced. For example, I was lent a picture of George II, who had actually given No. 10 to Sir Robert Walpole, the first prime minister. On my foreign visits I quickly found that many of our embassies had superb works of art which added greatly to the impression people had of Britain. I wanted foreign visitors to No. 10 to be similarly impressed. I knew that there were large numbers of excellent British paintings in our museums which were not on show. I was able to borrow some Turners, a Raeburn from Scotland and some pictures from the Dulwich Gallery and these were hung in the White Drawing Room and the main reception room. I also had some fine portraits hung of the nation’s heroes; through them you could feel the continuity of British history. I recall on one occasion watching President Giscard d’Estaing gazing at two portraits in the dining-room — one of the young Nelson and the other of Wellington. He remarked on the irony. I replied that it was no less ironic that I should have to look at portraits of Napoleon on my visits to Paris. In retrospect, I can see that this was not quite a parallel. Napoleon lost.

On this first evening, though, I could do little more than make a brief tour of the main rooms of the building. Then I entered the Cabinet Room where I was greeted by more familiar faces — among them my daughter Carol. There was Richard Ryder who had been and would continue for a time as my political secretary, responsible for keeping me in touch with the Conservative Party in the country; David Wolfson (now Lord Wolfson) who acted as my Chief of Staff,
bringing to bear his charm and business experience on the problems of running No. 10; Caroline Stephens (later to become Caroline Ryder) who became my diary secretary; Alison Ward (later Alison Wakeham) my constituency secretary; and Cynthia Crawford — known to all of us as ‘Crawfie’ — who acted as my personal assistant and who has stayed with me ever since. We did not waste much time in conversation. They were anxious to sort out who was to go to which office. I had exactly the same task in mind: the choice of my Cabinet.

Choosing a Cabinet is undoubtedly one of the most important ways in which a prime minister can exercise power over the whole conduct of government. But it is not always understood how real are the constraints under which the choices take place. By convention, all ministers must be members of either the Commons or the Lords, and there must not generally be more than three Cabinet members in the Lords, thus limiting the range of potential candidates for office. In addition one has to achieve distribution across the country — every region is easily convinced it has been left out. You must also consider the spectrum of party opinion.

Even so, the press expect the Cabinet of some twenty-two ministers to be appointed and the list to be published within about 24 hours — otherwise it is taken as a sure sign of some sort of political crisis. My American and other foreign friends are often astonished at the speed with which British Governments are formed and announced.

So I do not think that any of us at No. 10 relaxed much that day, which turned out to be a long one. (The previous night I had had no more than a couple of hours’ sleep, if that.) I received the usual detailed security briefing which is given to incoming prime ministers. Then I went upstairs to the study in which I was to spend so many hours in the years which followed. I was accompanied by Willie Whitelaw and our new Chief Whip, Michael Jopling. We began to sift through the obvious and less obvious names and slowly this most perplexing of jigsaws began to take shape. While Willie, the Chief Whip and I discussed the appointments to the Cabinet, Ken Stowe sought to contact those involved to arrange for them to come in the next day.

At 8.30 p.m. we took a break for a meal. Knowing that there were no canteen facilities at No. 10, my personal staff brought in a Chinese meal from a take-away and some fifteen of us sat down to eat in the
large dining-room. (That, I think, was the last take-away while I was Prime Minister.)

I knew that the hardest battles would be fought on the ground of economic policy. So I made sure that the key economic ministers would be true believers in our economic strategy. Geoffrey Howe had by now thoroughly established himself as the Party’s chief economic spokesman. Geoffrey was regularly bullied in debate by Denis Healey. But by thorough mastery of his brief and an ability to marshal arguments and advice from different sources, he had shown that beneath a deceptively mild exterior he had the makings of the fine Chancellor he was to become. Some of the toughest decisions were to fall to him. He never flinched. In my view these were his best political years.

After becoming leader in 1975, I had considered appointing Keith Joseph as Shadow Chancellor. Keith had done more than anyone else to spell out in his speeches and pamphlets what had gone wrong with Britain’s economic performance and how it could be transformed. He has one of the best minds in politics. He is an original thinker, the sort of man who makes you understand what Burke meant when he wrote of politics being ‘philosophy in action’. He is rare in another way too: he combines humility, open-mindedness and unshakeable principle. He is deeply and genuinely sensitive to people’s misfortunes. Although he had no doubt of the Tightness of the decisions which we were to make, he knew that they meant unviable firms would collapse and overmanning become unemployment, and he cared about those who were affected — far more than did all our professionally compassionate critics. But such a combination of personal qualities may create difficulties in the cruel hurly-burly of political life which Chancellors above all must endure. So Keith took over at Industry, where he did the vital job that no one else could have done of altering the whole philosophy which had previously dominated the department. Keith was — and remains — my closest political friend.