The Real Iron Lady (15 page)
Read The Real Iron Lady Online
Authors: Gillian Shephard
Her attitude to Parliament was somewhat different. Michael Brunson writes in
A Ringside Seat
that she told him âParliament could hold up her plans for a year, but no more', which implies that she had a healthy respect for the conventions and role of Parliament, and nothing more than that. She was certainly not clubbable, and regarded the Commons as a place of work, a place in which to perform, but not one in which to spend all one's waking hours. When she first became an MP, she had young children and a busy home and constituency life, and would certainly have left the House promptly after votes.
For that reason, some have claimed that she was a bit of an outsider in Parliament too. But when I was a backbencher and junior minister during her time as Prime Minister, my impression was that she took great care over her relations with the House of Commons. She was very frequently in the Commons, as statistics confirm. For one thing, she voted in more than 30 per cent of divisions when she was Prime Minister. Tony Blair voted in about 5 per cent. Milburn Talbot, Head Doorkeeper in the Commons, recalls her coming in most evenings, after some outside engagement, to vote, to have meetings in her room behind the Speaker's Chair, or to be around, âalways marvellously dressed in a long gown, and wafting clouds of perfume.
She always had a word for the doorkeepers and the policemen.' I think she enjoyed the atmosphere of repartee and gossip. Allan Rogers, the former Labour MP for the Rhondda, not exactly a fellow traveller, enjoyed paying her extravagant compliments on her appearance, to which she used to reply, âYou Welsh, you're such flatterers!'
She would regularly go into the less salubrious cafeterias and into the Members' Dining Room to eat and chat to people. Sometimes she would appear in the Strangers' Dining Room, and I can remember my stepson being struck dumb by her sudden appearance at our table. On one occasion, I remember her coming into the Tea Room during an all-night sitting at around 5 a.m., where we were slouching, unwashed and bleary-eyed, around a table on which were the remains of the night's teas, coffees and sandwiches. âYou've been eating buns,' she cried accusingly. No one had the courage or energy to argue, although there were points that might have been made.
Janet Fookes has a very positive memory of Mrs Thatcher's attendances in the Commons.
When she was Prime Minister, I noticed the frequency with which she would be voting in the division lobbies late into the evening, even if her crowded itinerary meant that she was getting up early the next day, often on a gruelling overseas visit. It was clear that she had a strong sense of duty towards the House of Commons as an institution, and a concern that she did not expect members of her party to be voting when she had chickened out.
Ian Beesley recounts her cautious attitude towards the role of Parliament.
She was sensitive to the mood and will of the House of Commons. The Rayner/Efficiency Unit wanted to conduct a study of the costs imposed on government by Parliament through parliamentary questions, briefing for debates, appearances at Select Committees etc. She would not entertain the idea; it was not the job of the government to scrutinise Parliament.
Both Michael Jopling in his role as Chief Whip and Patrick Cormack as an influential backbencher recall that she was sufficient of an insider to encourage the playing of parliamentary games within the House of Commons.
Michael Jopling writes,
After the 1979 election, she announced her whole ministerial team on the Sunday evening, following polling day on the Thursday. Over a drink that evening, I said that she had not yet invited anyone to be her Parliamentary Private Secretary. She asked me if I had any ideas. âWould you buy Ian Gow?' I offered. She readily agreed, and when I phoned him he asked if eight o'clock would be a suitable time for him to report at No. 10 the following morning. âI think nine o'clock would be more appropriate,' I suggested.
I think that history has not reflected the influence that Ian Gow had on Margaret Thatcher over the next four years. For instance, I have always felt that his strong eurosceptic views drew her more and more into that position over the early years of government.
She turned a blind eye to some of Ian's activities in causing mischief by encouraging dissent to causes which were close to his and her heart, although contrary to the government's policy. An example was the difficulty we had in passing Jim Prior's Northern Ireland Bill, which was unpopular with some of our own members and Enoch Powell, who was then an Ulster Unionist MP. In the end, I had to tell her that it was taking so long that we must move a timetable motion. [Michael Jopling means by this that Conservative MPs had been holding up the progress of their own government's Bill by filibustering, or making over-long speeches, raising unnecessary points of order and so on, and encouraged to do so by the Prime Minister's own PPS.] She said, âI hope you realise, Michael, that you are the first Chief Whip to move a guillotine motion against our own side?' But she agreed.
Deep waters indeed.
Patrick Cormack recalls another covert operation when Margaret Thatcher was Leader of the Opposition.
Most of my memories of this time are associated with a small and rather unusual dining group I convened. For many months I used to meet Reg Prentice, at that time Minister for Overseas Development in the Callaghan government, almost on a weekly basis, after Cabinet meetings and we would have lunch together at the Reform Club (in Pall Mall). It became increasingly clear that he was not only disenchanted by his supremely unattractive constituency party in Newham, but he was also less and less in sympathy with the Labour government of which he was a member and with the Prime Minister who had appointed him. It was out of these meetings that we formed a little
coterie. It consisted of three Labour and three Tory MPs. The other Labour members were John Mackintosh and Brian Walden, and the Tories were Julian Amery, his brother-in-law Maurice Macmillan and me. Being the most junior, I acted as organiser/secretary.
Even now, I will not give the full inside story of that remarkable episode in late 1970s political life. Sufficient to say that we formed a line of communication to the Leader of the Opposition. Brian Walden met her from time to time, and even helped to draft some of her speeches. And I took Reg to see her at her home in Flood Street, both before and after he left the government. It did not take long after he had returned to the backbenches for him to join the Conservative Party. He was adopted to fight the safe seat of Daventry at the next election. In our meetings, Margaret showed herself very alive to the dramatic possibilities produced by the conversion of a Labour Cabinet minister to the Tory cause. She also saw the attraction of working closely with those in other parties and made some of her own approaches, sometimes assisted by us. One in particular was to Roy Jenkins. Reg himself was given an assurance that he would be in any future Conservative government, and both he and we thought that would mean a Cabinet position. Another by-product was a book of essays by new converts from the left, which I edited. Entitled
Right Turn,
its leading piece was by Reg.
After the 1979 general election, he was made Minister for the Disabled, outside the Cabinet. Having played a fairly significant part in orchestrating his defection, I was somewhat disappointed that there was no place for me in the first Thatcher government.
[In fact, Patrick Cormack was approached by the late Jack Weatherill to see if he would like to become a Whip, but Patrick
turned down the offer, in what he describes as âpossibly the most mistaken decision of my political life'.]
Margaret Thatcher herself would have made no claims to be the kind of orator whose speeches filled the Chamber of the House of Commons. Indeed, I heard her say on many occasions, âIf you want a speech made, ask a man. If you want something done, ask a woman.'
Peter Riddell confirms that:
She was never a natural orator. She was always rather awkward and obviously uneasy with the artifices of speech writers. Her success came from the power of her personality, the force of the conviction politician, the sabre rather than the rapier. Hence her most memorable speeches were all about the circumstances â the Iron Lady being tested during the Falklands conflict or in the aftermath of the Brighton bomb in October 1984. On both these occasions, it was less the soon-to-be forgotten words that impressed than the expression of the personal will of the leader.
I believe that she had strong respect for the conventions of Parliament. She may not have been a devotee of the gossipy Tea Room and bars, but she knew how much backbenchers mattered. Tellingly, she writes in
The Downing Street Years
about the afternoon of her first Cabinet meeting:
In all this activity of government making and policy setting, however, I knew I could not neglect the backbenchers. After twenty years in the House of Commons, through
six parliaments, I had seen how suddenly trouble could arise and the business of the House be put in jeopardy. So on the Tuesday evening, before Parliament assembled the following day, I had invited the chairman and officers of the 1922 Committee for a talk to celebrate our victory and discuss the work of the coming parliamentary session ⦠Even in less stormy times, a heavy legislative programme is only possible when there is a good working understanding between No. 10, the 1922 Committee, the Whips' Office and the Leader of the House.
And she knew very well that it was the Commons that had the power to make a party leader â and to destroy a party leader. Patrick Cormack recalls the events which led up to her election as Leader of the Conservative Party.
I had no personal dealing with her during those rather fraught years of the Heath administration, which was brought to a shuddering halt when he made the fatal mistake of asking the country who ran it, in the second Miners' Strike. I was one of those who spoke out against a premature election. Although Heath won more votes than Harold Wilson's Labour Party, he was out, and an unhappy leader of an increasingly fractious party during the months leading up to the second 1974 election in October.
When Ted Heath failed again, it was quite clear that his days were numbered. All over the Palace of Westminster, one would find Conservatives talking of, and often plotting for, a change at the top. I was one of a small group, convened by Nigel Fisher and Airey
Neave, who talked of various potential successors. Keith Joseph had ruled himself out by a rather injudiciously worded speech. Incredibly, Edward du Cann was briefly considered, and then one night Airey Neave came along, looking particularly conspiratorial, and said, âWhat about Maggie?' It was the first time I had heard her called that. Initially his suggestion was met with almost total scepticism but, as it became increasingly clear that she was the only politician of any real stature who might have the courage to allow her name to go forward, we coalesced around her and the bandwagon began to roll.
The rest, as they say, is history, but I had my own ringside seat. I was leading a small deputation from the National Association of Widows, including Eve Macleod, its president (the widow of Iain Macleod), and June Henner, the founder and chairman, who happened to come from Staffordshire, to see the Leader of the Conservative Party. The date fixed was after the first ballot and before the second, and so it was the Acting Leader, Robert Carr, we saw. And we saw him on the very afternoon that the second ballot was declared. Indeed, our meeting was interrupted by a phone call giving the result and, when he came back from taking it, he handed a piece of paper to Eve Macleod and me, announcing Margaret Thatcher's triumph. âWell, she ought to be sympathetic to widows,' was Eve's immediate response.
Later that evening, Airey Neave hosted a celebration party for those of us who had taken part in the campaign and, at a suitable moment, Margaret herself arrived, with a broad but determined smile and an immediate pep talk.
That was a dramatic enough Westminster event, but it was nothing compared with the night of 28 March 1979,
when Jim Callaghan lost the vote of confidence in the Commons, clearing the way for a general election and allowing Margaret Thatcher to get her hands on the reins of power.
Jill Knight was there.
None of us who were MPs at the time will ever forget 28 March 1979. Britain had just been through the Winter of Discontent. Militants in the trade unions were holding the country to ransom and just about everybody was on strike. Birmingham's car industry was being strangled by a rabid union leader known as Red Robbo. Constituents of mine who worked in the factories he controlled told me of the beating-up of any man who voted against strike action. The atmosphere of fear was tangible. Factories which made other goods were also strike-bound, but the local authority still demanded taxes from them, as long as the building was useable. So the owners took the roofs off them and I shall never forget how bleak those gaunt, headless buildings looked when I drove past. Miners, schools, street cleaners, dustmen, even grave diggers, were on strike.
For Margaret, it was time to take a huge gamble. The country desperately needed an election, but the only way to get one was to put down a motion of No Confidence, and win it. But the political parties in Parliament then were so finely balanced that no one could predict how such a vote would turn out. Would she chance it? She made her decision: it was a chance Britain
had
to have. The motion was tabled.
During the entire day of the vote, Westminster was in a fever of uncertainty. Colleagues kept rushing in with news of so-and-so
changing his vote. Someone had been taken ill; another would not be able to get back because of the strikes. One Labour MP said he wanted a word with me, it was strictly private, but would I promise to give my Chief Whip a very confidential message to the effect that if we Tories promised to give him a peerage, he would vote with us. I delivered the message with as straight a face as I could muster, but the Chief almost fell off his bar stool with hilarity. That was one vote we did without. I might add that at this time, all the catering staff in Parliament were on strike. The bar staff were not. There was nothing to eat, but a very great deal to drink. A somewhat riotous atmosphere reigned.
At 10 p.m. precisely, we trooped out to vote. Not a soul knew how it would go. Back to our seats, there was not a spare inch in the public or press galleries, or, of course, in the Chamber itself. After what seemed like an interminable time, the count was over. We were transfixed. In came the Labour Deputy Chief Whip, grinning from ear to ear. I saw Margaret, sitting on the front bench, go as white as a sheet. Two minutes later, our own Deputy entered. He held up one finger. We had won by one vote. The whole House erupted when Mr Speaker announced the result, and, with dignity, Mr Callaghan came to the despatch box to say that he would be handing in his resignation to Her Majesty in the morning.
So Margaret Thatcher became Prime Minister, and set to work with a will.
