Margaret Thatcher: The Autobiography (20 page)

In retrospect, it is clear that a near obsessive concern with educational structures characterized the 1960s and ′70s. It is not that structures are unimportant. But educational theorists manifest a self-confidence which events have done nothing to justify when they claim that there is one system which in all circumstances and for all individuals is better than another.

In one respect at least, the Department of Education was an excellent preparation for the premiership. I came under savage and unremitting attack that was only distantly related to my crimes.

I have described the arguments about grammar schools and comprehensives. Yet these caused me only limited trouble, partly because many people – and not just Conservatives – agreed with me and partly because I was the bringer of good tidings in other matters. For example, I was hailed in a modest way as the saviour of the Open University. In Opposition both Iain Macleod and Edward Boyle had committed themselves in public against it. And although its abolition was not in the manifesto, many people expected it to perish. But I was genuinely attracted to the concept of a ‘University of the Airwaves’, because I thought that it was an inexpensive way of giving wider access to higher education, because I thought that trainee teachers in particular would benefit from it, because I was alert to the opportunities offered by technology to bring the best teaching to schoolchildren and students, and above all because it gave people a second chance in life. On condition that I agreed to reduce the immediate intake of students and find other savings, my Cabinet colleagues allowed the Open University to go ahead.

There were more discussions of public expenditure that autumn of 1970. The Treasury had its little list of savings for the education budget – including charges for libraries, museums, school meals and school milk. I persuaded the Cabinet to drop the proposed library charges, while reluctantly accepting entry charges for museums and galleries. (We kept one free day.)
But pressure for more cuts was maintained, and I had to come up with a list of priority targets.

Savings on school meals and school milk were, I had to admit, an obvious candidate. There seemed no reason why families who could afford to do so should not make a larger contribution to the cost of school meals. I thought that I could defend such cuts if I could demonstrate that some of the money saved would go towards meeting the priority which we had set, namely the primary school building programme. And within the Department of Education budget it seemed logical that spending on education should come before ‘welfare’ spending, which should in principle fall to Keith Joseph’s department, Social Services.

As for milk, there were already mixed views on health grounds about the advantage of providing it. By 1970 very few children were so deprived that school milk was essential for their nourishment. Tony Barber, who became Chancellor in July 1970, after the death of Iain Macleod, wanted me to abolish free school milk altogether. But I managed to hold the line at an increased price for school meals and the withdrawal of free milk from primary school children over the age of seven. These modest changes came with safeguards: children in need of milk for medical reasons continued to receive it until they went to secondary school. All in all, I had defended the education budget effectively.

Nor was this lost on the press. The
Daily Mail
said that I had emerged as a ‘new heroine’. The
Daily Telegraph
drew attention to my plans to improve 460 of the oldest primary schools. The
Guardian
noted: ‘School meals and milk were the main casualties in a remarkably light raid on the education budget. Mrs Thatcher has won her battle to preserve a high school-building programme and turn it to the replacement of old primary schools.’

It was pleasant while it lasted.

The trouble was, it didn’t last long. Six months later we had to introduce a Bill to remove the legal duty for local education authorities to provide free milk and allow them discretion to make it available for a small charge. This gave Labour the parliamentary opportunity to cause havoc.

Even before that, however, the newspapers had unearthed the potential in stories about school meals. One report claimed that some local education authorities were going to charge children who brought sandwiches to school for their lunch. ‘Sandwich Kids In “Fines” Storm’ was how the
Sun
put it. I introduced a circular to prevent the practice. But that story in
turn restored attention to the increase in school meal charges. Overnight the number of children eating such meals became a politically sensitive indicator. The old arguments about the ‘stigma’ of means-tested benefits, which I had come to know so well as a Parliamentary Secretary in the 1960s, surfaced again. It was said that children from families poor enough to be entitled to free school meals would be humiliated when better-off classmates paid for their own. Probably unwisely, I came up with a suggestion in a television programme that this could be avoided if mothers sent dinner money to schools in envelopes. The teachers could put the change back in the envelope. A poor child entitled to free meals would bring an envelope with coins that would just be put back again by the teacher. This just added a new twist to the story.

In any case, it was not long before the great ‘milk row’ dwarfed debate about meals. Newspapers which had congratulated me on my success in protecting the education budget at the expense of cuts in milk and meals suddenly changed their tune. The
Guardian
described the Education (Milk) Bill as ‘a vindictive measure which should never have been laid before Parliament’. The
Daily Mail
told me to ‘think again’. The
Sun
demanded to know: ‘Is Mrs Thatcher Human?’ But it was a speaker at the Labour Party Conference who seems to have suggested to the press the catchy title ‘Mrs Thatcher, milk snatcher’.

When the press discover a rich vein they naturally exhaust it. So it seemed as if every day some variant of the theme would emerge. For example, a Labour council was discovered to be considering buying its own herd of cows to provide milk for its children. Local education authorities sought to evade the legislation by serving up milky drinks but not milk. Councils which were
not
education authorities took steps to provide free milk for children aged seven to eleven under powers contained in the Local Government Act 1963. Only in Scotland and Wales did the action of councils involve a breach of the law, and it was for my Cabinet colleagues in the Scottish and Welsh departments to deal with the consequences of that rather than for me. But there was no doubt where the blame for it all was felt to lie. The campaign against me reached something of a climax in November 1971 when the
Sun
voted me ‘The Most Unpopular Woman in Britain’.

I learned a valuable lesson. I had incurred the maximum of political odium for the minimum of political benefit. I and my colleagues were caught up in battles with local authorities for months, during which we suffered constant sniping in the media, all for a saving of £9 million
which could have been cut from the capital budget with scarcely a ripple. In future if I were to be hanged, it would be for a sheep, not a lamb, still less a cow.

The image which my opponents and the press had painted of me as callously attacking the welfare of young children was one which, as someone who was never happier than in children’s company, I found deeply wounding. But any politician who wants to hold high office must be prepared to go through something like this. Some are broken by it, others strengthened. Denis, always the essence of common sense, came through magnificently. If I survived, it was due to his love and support. I later developed the habit of not poring over articles and profiles in the newspapers about myself. I came to rely instead on briefings and summaries. If what the press wrote was false, I could ignore it; and if it was true, I already knew it.

Throughout 1971 as the assault on me was being mounted over the issue of school milk, I was locked in battle within the Cabinet on public spending. It was politically vital to my argument about school meals and milk that the primary school building programme should go ahead as envisaged. So within the department I rejected early suggestions of compromise with the Treasury budget cutters. In a note to Bill Pile in April 1971 I laid down our last-ditch position: ‘We cannot settle for less than last year in real terms.’

I could not reach agreement with Maurice Macmillan, then Chief Secretary, and so appealed, as any Cabinet minister has a right to do, to Cabinet. But I was then irritated to learn that No. 10 had decided that I would not be allowed to put in a paper. I wrote a sharply worded letter to Ted pointing out the pressures I was under to announce the 1973/74 school building programme.

I won his agreement to put in my paper in June 1971 – and I got my way. At Cabinet later that month I succeeded in obtaining almost everything that I wanted for the school building programme. It was just in time to announce to the annual conference of the Association of Education Committees in Eastbourne and prompted such headlines as ‘Record Programme to Improve Old Primary Schools’.

On my arrival at the DES, that really had been
the
priority for me. Because of it, I had to make (or at least accept) spending decisions which made life extraordinarily difficult. I felt that in the 1970s it was wrong for schools still to have leaky roofs, primitive equipment and outside lavatories. Moreover, now that the demographic ‘bulge’ of primary-school-age
children had more or less been accommodated – the peak was in 1973 – there was some financial leeway to improve the quality of the often very old and gloomy schools which had been kept in use.

Whether or not the acclaim for my defence of the primary school building programme was justified, it soon faded away as a new agitation over the financing of student unions got under way. Unlike the controversy over school milk, this was largely a campaign organized by the hard Left. It was, therefore, less politically dangerous. But it was very vicious. Nor was it just directed against me. My daughter Carol, reading Law at University College, London, also had a hard time.

In both Europe and the United States this was the height of the period of ‘student revolution’. Looking back, it is extraordinary that so much notice should have been taken of the kindergarten Marxism and egocentric demands which characterized it. In part, it was a development of that youth cult of the 1960s whereby the young were regarded as a source of pure insight into the human condition. In response, many students accordingly expected their opinions to be treated with reverence.

The Left had managed to gain control of many student unions, and therefore of the public money which financed them, using this position to mount campaigns of disruption which infuriated ordinary taxpayers and even many students who simply wanted to study. There were two aspects: first, the financing of student bodies, and second what those bodies did. On the first, the main source of money for student unions was subscriptions out of mandatory grants received from their local education authorities. Union membership was normally obligatory and the union subscription was then paid direct to the student union. Some student unions took advantage of this to spend the revenue on partisan purposes, often in defiance of both their constitution and the wishes of their members.

In July 1971 I put proposals to the Home and Social Affairs Committee of the Cabinet (HS) for reform. I proposed that in future the union subscription should not be included in the fees payable to colleges and universities. The student maintenance grant would be increased slightly to enable students to join particular clubs or societies on a voluntary basis. Responsibility for providing student union facilities would then be placed on each academic institution. The facilities of each union would be open to all students, whether or not they were members of the union. Besides dealing with the question of accountability for public money, these changes would also abolish the closed-shop element in student unions which I found deeply objectionable on grounds of principle. HS
was not prepared to go along with my proposals immediately, but I came back to the argument, fully recognizing how controversial they would be, and gained the Committee’s approval.

Bill Van Straubenzee was the minister directly responsible for dealing with consultations on the proposals. But I was the one immediately marked down as the hate-figure to be targeted for them. In early November in Leeds, where I was laying a stone to mark the construction of new buildings, about 500 students tried to shout me down. Later that month 2,000 screaming students tried to prevent my presenting the designation document of the South Bank Polytechnic at the Queen Elizabeth Hall. A dozen mounted police had to protect my car. In December the student protesters found time from their studies to organize a nationwide day of protest. My effigy was burnt at various universities.

By now many of the Vice-Chancellors and college authorities were giving tacit approval to the protests. Edward Boyle even addressed a mass meeting of students at Leeds to declare his opposition to my proposals. Since these had only been put out for consultation it was perfectly possible to allow tempers to cool and to delay action, which I did. The main problem was that until university authorities themselves were prepared to uphold the values of a university and exert some authority, no proposal for reform was likely to succeed. This was also the time when freedom of speech began to be denied by groups of students, who were then indulged by nervous university authorities. University intolerance was at its most violent in the early seventies. But, less visible and more institutionalized, the same censorship continues today.

Nineteen seventy-one had been a crucial year for the Government and for me personally. The pressures which mounted were all the more intolerable because they were cumulative. As I shall describe, the Government’s self-confidence broke in early 1972. Somehow, although under greater strain than at any time before or since, my own held.