Margaret Thatcher: The Autobiography (41 page)

On television the following day Jim Prior replied to my interview. He said that nothing had been agreed between us on Social Security benefits for strikers and that he was against compulsory secret ballots. Thankfully, others reacted more positively. I had broken ranks. People could see that I was going to fight. Offers of support, information and new ideas began to flow into my office.

The strong support that I received for what I said in my
Weekend World
interview was in marked contrast to the reaction to Jim Callaghan’s remarks on his arrival back three days later from the Guadeloupe summit. His absence from the country at such a critical time had itself been politically damaging, helping to strengthen the impression that the Government was paralysed in the face of the strikes. The press coverage of the summit itself had not helped him; the sight of the Prime Minister sitting with the other leaders in the Caribbean sun, casually dressed, was a dangerous contrast to events at home. But the final disaster was the impression he left with the press when he flew into Heathrow. Although he never did use those precise words – ‘Crisis? What Crisis?’ – the myth faithfully represented his attempt to play down the scale of the problem. His image of unflappability and competence was never restored.

What should be our next move? Parliament was due to return on Monday 15 January. I wrote to the Prime Minister demanding a full statement and a debate on the industrial situation. We had a slot already arranged for a PPB on Wednesday 17 January and work began on a script.

The preparations I made for my speech in the debate were perhaps the most thorough I had ever made for an appearance in the Commons. My original idea had been to make a hard-hitting but essentially conventional speech from the Opposition benches – hammering the Government and demanding that they change course. But at Scotney over the weekend of 13–14 January and on Monday back in London several people urged a different approach. Peter Utley and Peter Thorneycroft sent me suggestions for a speech offering support for the Government if it was prepared to introduce the kind of legislative changes necessary to break the union stranglehold. Ronnie Millar and Chris Patten – working on the PPB script – were urging the same idea.

My own immediate inclination was to avoid offers of co-operation, for several reasons. First, unlike the more coalition-minded of my colleagues, I believed that the job of Oppositions is generally to oppose. We had a fundamentally different approach from that of the Government and our main duty was to explain it and persuade the country of its merits. Secondly, it was dangerous to make an offer of co-operation without having thought through clearly in advance whether we actually wanted it accepted or not. Probably nothing which went to the heart of the problem would – or indeed could – be accepted by Jim Callaghan’s Government. There was, therefore, a risk that in order to make a credible offer of support, we would have to set our sights too low as regards measures of reform. And if the Government then
did
accept the offer, we would have thrown away, for the time being at least, the opportunity of forcing it out of office. Moreover, reforms in trade union law alone would not suffice to deal with Britain’s underlying economic problems: that would need a much more comprehensive strategy to which the socialists could never agree.

That evening – Monday 15 January – I called a Steering Committee meeting. Most of my senior colleagues favoured the idea of a conditional offer and by this stage I had come round to the idea myself. Reforms were essential; and if the Government were prepared to introduce the necessary measures, how could we oppose them? By offering help we enhanced our moral authority. I believed – as did most of the supporters of the idea – that the offer should be set at a level which, though abundantly justified by events, would be unlikely to be accepted by the Government. This was a difficult matter to judge in detail: the Labour Party might just be persuaded to agree to the negotiation of no-strike agreements in essential services, the payment by the taxpayer of the cost of secret ballots in trade unions and even a code of practice to end secondary picketing – though the last was doubtful. Equally, I was clear that if the Government did accept, we were honour-bound to keep our side of the bargain. For me, however, there was an additional and very important consideration. By agreeing to offer co-operation with the Government on selected measures, Jim Prior and his supporters would find it impossible to refuse support to those same measures if and when a Conservative Government introduced them.

The upshot was that the Steering Committee agreed that the Government could rely on Conservative support if it took firmer action on picketing (to get essential supplies moving), legislated to outlaw secondary
picketing and to encourage secret ballots for union elections, and if it made efforts to negotiate non-strike agreements in essential industries. Events are a powerful advocate.

I opened the debate the following day. I began by describing the crisis. Transport of goods by road was widely disrupted, in many cases due to secondary picketing of firms and operators not involved in the actual disputes. British Rail had issued a brief statement: ‘There are no trains today.’ The CBI had reported that many firms were being strangled, due to shortage of materials and inability to move finished goods. There was trouble at the ports, adding to the problems of exporters. At least 125,000 people had been laid off already and the figure was expected to reach a million by the end of the week. The food industry, in particular, was in a shambolic state, with growing shortages of basic supplies like edible oils, yeast, salt and sugar. And all this on top of a winter of strikes – strikes by tanker drivers, bakers, staff at old people’s homes and hospitals; strikes in the press and broadcasting, airports and car plants; a strike of gravediggers.

I reminded the arch-moderate Shirley Williams that she had joined the Grunwick picket line. I made the conditional offer of support agreed in the Steering Committee, and I also made it a condition of co-operation that the Government should act on the closed shop; I felt too strongly on this subject not to include it.

The Prime Minister began his reply in a surprising way:

It was a good start. But all that the Prime Minister then had to offer in the body of his speech were further concessions to the unions – exemptions from the 5 per cent pay limit, tighter price controls and extension of the principle of ‘comparability’ under which public sector workers could expect more money. All these were intended as inducements to the unions to sign up to a new pay policy. But he signally failed to address what everyone except the far Left considered the main problem, excessive trade union power.

To my offer the Prime Minister made no direct reply. He had clearly been wrong-footed. The question now was whether I should repeat the
offer the following evening in our Party Political Broadcast – or limit myself to attacking the Government’s paralysis and pledging that a Conservative Government would reform trade union law.

I was still uneasy, and toughened the script when I saw it the following day. But after all, the offer had already been made, and the higher the profile we gave it, the more tightly it would bind reluctant colleagues and the more public support we would gain. So we went ahead, filming it in my room at the House of Commons. Again, the Government made no direct reply.

But now Banquo’s ghost came back to haunt the Labour Government. Devolution, which they had embraced solely as a means of staying in power with support from the Scottish and Welsh Nationalists, returned to grimace and gibber at Jim Callaghan at his lowest point. Following the defeat of the Scotland and Wales Bill in early 1977 Labour had reintroduced devolution legislation in the form of separate Bills for Scotland and Wales, with provision for referenda in each country before they came into effect. Backbench dissent on their own side led to the passage of a number of amendments, including the crucial additional requirement that a minimum of 40 per cent of those eligible to vote had to support devolution in each case. Although I had not publicly campaigned for a ‘No’ vote in the referenda in Scotland and Wales, that was the result I wanted. When the vote took place on 1 March 1979 in Scotland a bare majority of those voting was in favour – well below the required 40 per cent of the total electorate – and in Wales a large majority of those who voted rejected the proposal. For the moment, devolution was dead: I did not mourn it.

From this point on it seemed likely that the Government would be unable to continue in office; but the circumstances under which a general election would occur were far from predictable. The Prime Minister sought desperately to spin out discussion about devolution rather than go ahead immediately with the repeal of the Devolution Acts. But his potential allies were preparing to desert. The SNP now had no reason to keep Labour in office and wanted an early confidence motion. The Liberals were keen on an early election, even though their standing in the opinion polls was weak; this was principally in order to avoid the embarrassment of the forthcoming trial of their former Leader, Jeremy Thorpe, on a charge of conspiracy to murder, of which he was later acquitted. Admittedly, the Welsh Nationalists, who were more of a socialist party than their Scottish equivalents, might still be persuadable.

That meant that the Northern Irish MPs – ten Ulster Unionists, one member of the Social Democratic and Liberal Party (SDLP) and one Independent Republican – were likely to be decisive.

On Thursday 22 March the Prime Minister made a last effort to keep devolution alive and win over the SNP, making a parliamentary statement offering yet more talks and following it with a Prime Ministerial broadcast that evening. He never had any real chance of success, and when assurances of SNP and Liberal support for our motion seemed to be forthcoming – though there was none from the Welsh Nationalists – I agreed that it should be tabled, which was done a little before 7 p.m. The Conservative whips now went all out to persuade the minority parties to see that their less reliable members actually joined us in the lobbies. Equally important, of course, was ensuring that there was a full turn-out of Conservative MPs. Luckily, none was seriously ill – though one Member’s car overturned on the motorway as he was driving down and another insisted on voting for us though he had been shattered by the death of his wife the previous day.

Amid clamour and confusion we began to file into the lobbies. Having voted, I returned to my place by the side of Willie, Francis and Humphrey and waited to learn our fate. Humphrey had sought to ensure that I had some advance notice of the result. He asked John Stradling Thomas, one of the senior whips, to go through our lobby very quickly and then stand at the exit of the other one. For some reason, not just when they are in a minority, Conservative MPs go through the lobby more quickly than the Labour Party. As soon as we were all through, the message as to what our numbers were would be given to John Stradling Thomas, who meanwhile was listening to the other (government) lobby being counted out. As soon as they had finished, he would know whether we had won or not. If we had
not
won he would come back, and just stand next to the Speaker’s chair. If we
had
won, he would put up a finger so that Humphrey could tell me. Only later was I let into the secret code. I just saw John Stradling Thomas return – and then Humphrey leaned across to me and with a stage whisper said: ‘We’ve won!’

The announced figures bore it out. ‘Ayes, 311. Noes, 310.’ So at last I had my chance, my only chance. I must seize it with both hands.

Two days later I was attending a function in my constituency – a fund-raising event organized by Motability, which provided disabled people with special cars at a modest price. I was to make the presentation. My
mind was at least half on the Party Election Broadcast I was due to make that evening, when Derek Howe approached me to say: ‘I think you ought to know that a bomb has gone off in the precincts of the House of Commons, in the garage they think. At least one person has been very seriously injured, but we don’t know who.’

A hundred possibilities – though not the correct one – went through my mind as we drove down to the BBC studios in Portland Place. When I got there, and before I went in to be made up, one of the producers took me aside into a private room and told me who it was. It was Airey Neave. He was critically injured. The Irish National Liberation Army – a breakaway faction from the IRA – had placed a bomb under his car and it had exploded when he drove up the ramp from the House of Commons car park. It was very unlikely that he would survive – indeed, by the time I heard the news he may well have been dead. There was no way I could bring myself to broadcast after that. I telephoned the Prime Minister and explained. I felt only stunned. The full grief would come later. With it came also anger that this man – my friend – who had shrugged off so much danger in his life should be murdered by someone worse than a common criminal.