Margaret Thatcher: Power and Personality (28 page)

The vulnerability was well hidden, but it was there. One night, after an 11.30 p.m. vote in the House, I dropped Carol home at Flood Street. Margaret was on her own in the sitting room reading some papers. I put my head round the door to say goodnight, and saw that she was red-eyed, visibly upset. So I asked what was the matter. ‘Nothing really’, she sniffed. ‘One of our colleagues was unbelievably unpleasant to me in the division lobby … said I was wrecking the party … ’ This seemed such an unlikely cause of tears that I treated it rather insouciantly. ‘He was probably pissed’, I said. ‘Don’t let it get to you.’ ‘I hurt too, you know’, she said, getting up and leaving the room. It was the first sign to me that the Iron Lady had a soft centre.

As for maternal affection, I had observed early on in my relationship with Carol that the usual outward signs of mother–daughter tenderness were rare. However, there was an inner bond of some strength as the following story of a skiing weekend illustrated.

In the winter of 1978 Carol was given a ten-day holiday in the Swiss resort of Verbier by her parents. I planned to come and join her there for a long weekend in the middle of it. Because of problems with airline seat availability at the height of the skiing season, my travel plans only worked if I flew back to London on a Monday evening flight from Geneva. Unfortunately, after the tickets had been bought, this particular Monday turned out to be a date unexpectedly chosen by the opposition for some contentious parliamentary voting. It required all Conservative MPs to be present in the House on a running three-line whip from 3.30 p.m. onwards. As I could not be on the ski slopes and in the division lobbies at the same time, and as no alternative flights were available, my weekend with Carol in Verbier had to be cancelled, to our great disappointment.

Although I accepted the disappointment, Carol in Verbier did not. Unknown to me, she telephoned her mother with a wail of protest about the unfairness
of the opposition’s three-line whip and its wrecking effects on our romantic weekend. Margaret’s heart evidently melted. A cheerful Carol came on the line with the announcement, ‘Mum says she can change the voting for Monday’. ‘That’s impossible’, I replied. I was wrong. For at the last minute the opposition day business was switched and the three-line whip was miraculously dropped. Carol and I had a wonderful weekend together in the joys of the Alps.

The day after my return I was back in the division lobbies of the House of Commons when I saw the Leader of the Opposition a few feet away from me. I went over and started to say thank you for her amazing favour in re-arranging the parliamentary business. ‘Sshh!’ she said, putting a finger to her lips and giving me a theatrical wink. ‘Did you two have fun?’ ‘Great fun’, I replied. ‘Come and tell me about it, then.’

Five minutes later I was sitting in an armchair drinking Scotch with Margaret Thatcher in the Leader of the Opposition’s office. Kicking off her shoes, she brushed aside my thanks by saying that her Chief Whip, Humphrey Atkins, had wanted to change the opposition’s voting plans anyway. Then she wanted to know everything about Verbier, asking me about snow conditions, ski runs, restaurants, the local fondue and whether Carol had any other friends or skiing companions. ‘I get so worried about Carol being out there all on her own’, she explained in an anxious voice. Even more poignantly, as I was leaving her office Margaret said, ‘You won’t tell Carol that I was worrying about her, will you? She will think I am being overbearing.’

The relationship between Mark and his mother was over-indulgent. Margaret was constantly fussing about her son’s health, his failure to pass his accountancy exams and his perilous finances. She paid off his overdraft at least twice in the mid-1970s. She worried about his personal safety when driving motor-cars long before the 1982 episode of him getting temporarily lost in the Sahara on a rally. In 1979, she became tearful when late at night Mark had not returned from a day on the test-driving track of the Williams Formula One team. Margaret was beside herself, getting me to call my friend Frank Williams to make sure that Mark had not been injured.

I liked what I saw of Margaret as a mother and Denis as a father. Some of my best glimpses of them were at Scotney Castle, which had beautiful grounds. Looking out of the window one morning, I saw Margaret and Denis strolling around the garden holding hands. It struck me that this was the first time I had
seen any two members of the family in warm human contact. They were not a tactile foursome. Hugs, cuddles and kisses never seemed to be on their agenda. Years later I asked Mark if my impression was correct. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘Mum was not in the slightest bit tactile. But she communicated her love by the way she looked at you.’
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For all such loving glances, good communications within the family deteriorated in quantity and quality once Margaret Thatcher became Leader of the Opposition. She was such a totally absorbed public figure that there was little or no time for private relaxation, even with her nearest and dearest. Did she have any true friend in whom she confided and trusted, apart from Denis? I suspected not. Her shadow cabinet colleagues may have been the recipients of political confidences, but there was no indication that she showed them any personal intimacy or even warmth. The same was true of her office team. With the possible exception of Cynthia Crawford (‘Crawfie’), who later became something of a confidante through her feminine skills as a PA and dresser, Margaret Thatcher’s inner circle of staffers were professionally but not personally close to her.

Endearingly, she had a great appreciation for the virtue of loyalty. Anyone who gave it to her received it back abundantly, particularly if they were going through a bad patch. When her former PPS, Fergus Montgomery MP, was accused of shoplifting, Margaret Thatcher sought him out on the day after he was charged and said: ‘Fergus, you stay beside me all the time in the House today. I want everyone to see that I know you are innocent.’
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A more colourful recipient of Margaret Thatcher’s loyalty was a remarkable parliamentary character known as ‘The one-armed bandit’. He was William Rees-Davies QC MP, whose constituency of Thanet West adjoined mine.

Billy was a flamboyant original. In his heyday he had been a fast bowler in county cricket, a war hero who had lost an arm on the battlefield, a big-time gambler and a controversial criminal barrister. During the late 1970s, he managed to get himself into a series of well-publicised scrapes. His troubles included a police scandal, an unpaid debts controversy, a row with his tenants
over bed bugs in his house in Greece and a drink-driving charge. He was reprimanded by a judge for being at the races when he should have been in court. There were problems within his constituency association, which threatened to de-select him. Some of his local difficulties stemmed from his vociferous opposition to Ted Heath, a fellow resident of Thanet.

Perhaps because of his anti-Heath feelings, Billy Rees-Davies became one of the earliest and staunchest supporters of Margaret Thatcher. He was not exactly her cup of tea, but because of his enthusiasm for backing her as a leadership candidate, she reciprocated his loyalty. So when de-selection rumours were threatening to end his career, Billy asked for, and received, the leader’s personal help.

The circumstances in which the help was given were hilarious. Billy hosted a New Year’s Eve party at his country house at Monkton-in-Thanet. Apart from Margaret and Denis Thatcher and myself, the guest list consisted of the entire executive of the Thanet West Conservative Association. As the clock ticked towards midnight, the disgruntled anti-Billy faction, pacified by the presence of the party leader, began to express the view that their Member of Parliament was perhaps not such a bad chap after all. The leader strongly agreed. Champagne flowed. Good-will increased.

At about 11.45 p.m., Billy rang the ship’s bell that stood in the hall of his house, and called on the Chairman of the Thanet West Conservative Association, Councillor Harry Anish, to say a few words. The Chairman expressed the opinion that in these festive circumstances, with the Leader of the Conservative Party being in attendance, it might be appropriate to let bygones be bygones, and to pass a vote of confidence in our Member, wishing him and our leader a Happy New Year. ‘Yes please’, said Margaret Thatcher loudly. The vote was immediately carried by acclamation. We all sang, ‘For he’s a jolly good fellow’ and then ‘For
she’s
a jolly good fellow’, until the clock struck twelve and it was time for ‘Auld Lang Syne’.

It must have been one of the most unusual and unconstitutional constituency association meetings in the history of the Conservative Party, but it did the trick. There was no more talk of de-selection, and Billy Rees-Davies duly survived for another Parliament as the Member for Thanet West.

As Margaret Thatcher departed into the night for her drive across Kent back to Scotney, someone asked her what she thought of Thanet’s two Members
of Parliament. ‘They are both excellent MPs – with unusual talents’,
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was her verdict. Whatever she really felt, she had shown loyalty to a friend under pressure, and been marvellously effective with the rank and file members of the Conservative Party.

REFLECTION

It was easy to underestimate Margaret Thatcher during the early stages of her leadership of the opposition.

Although she had the highest constitutional respect for Parliament, she was never really comfortable as a parliamentarian. She had no feel, let alone love, for the House of Commons. She was impatient with its atmospherics, and with many of its Honourable Members. She had her occasional one-off successes at the despatch box, but she did not instinctively go with the flow of the House or tune into its moods. This was the cause of her continuous underperforming in the gladiatorial contests of Prime Minister’s Questions. She was over-prepared, and lacking in the spontaneous cut and thrust that is essential for success at PMQs. ‘Too bandbox’ was the view of Barbara Castle, watching Margaret Thatcher with some degree of feminist sympathy from the Labour front bench. ‘When finally she … fires her shaft, it never completely misses, but is never (or very, very rarely) deadly.’
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This same weakness of not being in command of her party in Parliament applied to her lack of dominance at meetings of the shadow cabinet. ‘The atmosphere was often uneasy because Margaret was too careful and not strong enough to take on the old guard’, recalled John Nott, who was one of the few kindred spirits she promoted to her top team. ‘Most of the Pyms, Priors, Carringtons, Gilmours and their ilk believed she would fail, and that sanity would return in the form of a consensus-minded replacement.’
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This feeling that Margaret Thatcher was merely an interim leader prevailed in many other metropolitan quarters. The intellectual elite in the Conservative Research Department, headed in 1975 by Chris Patten, referred to her as ‘Hilda’. Snobbery about her voice and her clothes, as well as her middle name, were among the many condescensions she had to bear. Julian Critchley suggested that she should be written to as ‘The Leader of the Opposition, c/o Dickins & Jones’.
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Yet at the same time as the old guard, the metropolitan elite and the social snobs in the Tory party were turning up their noses at Margaret Thatcher, a much larger swathe of public opinion was warming to her. Her unique status as the first woman party leader in any Western democracy gave her an aura of interest and charisma that few male politicians could match. She used it to communicate her vote-winning potential not in the usual currency of specific promises, but by proclaiming her personal values and beliefs.

There were signs from polls and by-election results that Middle England liked what it saw in this side of Margaret Thatcher. A large section of the electorate also knew in its heart of hearts that something must be done to halt the slow decline of their country, and to break the stranglehold of union power. But did the new Tory leader have the strength and the support to tackle these enormous problems?

On such crucial questions the national jury was undecided. People disliked Harold Wilson’s government. But the leap from his cynicism to Margaret Thatcher’s certainties was a step too far, at least in the mid-term of a Parliament that looked as though it could muddle on for most of the next five years.

There were three factors running in Margaret Thatcher’s favour. The first was her novelty. The second was her ability to communicate impressively in big set speeches and on television. The third was her interest in new ideas and solutions. Even with these advantages, she continued to be thwarted by her inability to shine in Parliament. Her apparent failure in this arena worsened with the arrival of a new Labour leader, James Callaghan. He was surprisingly effective as a Prime Minister who for many months ran rings round an inexperienced Leader of the Opposition.

Despite a hairline majority and a perilous inheritance of insecurity in most of the important votes in the House of Commons, Jim Callaghan managed to keep Margaret Thatcher at bay for three frustrating years. She did not lead her party in Parliament well during this fragile period, until the ‘winter of discontent’ changed the atmosphere.