The Downing Street Years (50 page)

Another question was whether I should go to the United States for the forthcoming G7 summit at Williamsburg at the end of May. I decided immediately that I had to cancel my planned visit Washington on 26 May for pre-summit talks with President Reagan. As for the Williamsburg summit itself, I was minded to go but kept my options open for the moment. Politicians always have to be careful not to be seen spending more time with opposite numbers abroad than with their own people and that is never truer than in an election campaign. But the summit was important in its own right, not least because the President himself would be chairing it. Moreover, it would show Britain in a leading international role and lend international endorsement to the sort of policies we were pursuing.

We deliberately started our campaign later than the other parties. The electorate quickly becomes bored with incessant party politicking and it is important not to peak too soon: the ideal is to make an increasing impact in the last few days before polling day itself. Labour’s manifesto, all over the newspapers shortly before the dissolution of Parliament, was an appalling document. It committed the party to a non-nuclear defence, withdrawal from the European Community, enormously increased public spending and a host of other
irresponsible policies and was dubbed by one of the wittier Shadow Cabinet ministers ‘the longest suicide note ever written’. We were very keen to publicize it and I understand that Conservative Central Office placed the largest single order for copies. But at my customary address to the ’22 that evening, I warned the Party against overconfidence: even a short election campaign is quite long enough for things to go badly wrong.

The next day I flew to Scotland to address the Scottish Conservative Party Conference in Perth. The hall in Perth is not large, but it has excellent acoustics. It is one of the best places to speak anywhere in Britain — perhaps only Blackpool Winter Gardens is better. In spite of a sore throat from the tail-end of a heavy cold, I enjoyed myself. Not only do I always recall that this is the nation of Adam Smith: the romantic strain of Scottish Toryism appeals to the non-economist in me too. As always after visits to the Scottish Conference, I returned to London encouraged and in fighting spirit. The atmosphere had been one of buoyant enthusiasm — a good omen for the campaign.

That weekend I was also able to study the results of our first major ‘state of battle’ opinion poll survey. It showed that we had a 14 per cent lead over Labour and that there had been a fall in support for the Alliance. This was, of course, very satisfactory. I was glad to note that there was no evidence that people thought I had been wrong to call the election; indeed, the great majority thought it was the correct decision. But the poll also showed that if the Alliance looked in with a chance there was considerable potential for an increase in its support from weakly committed Conservative and Labour voters. Obviously this was something we would have to guard against.

In 1983, as in 1979 and 1987, we usually began the morning with a press conference on a prearranged topic. Before the press conference I was briefed in Central Office — during this election by Stephen Sherbourne, who managed to be both quick and methodical and who would shortly join my team in Downing Street as political secretary. This briefing took place at 8.30 a.m. in a cramped room at Central Office. We would begin by approving the day’s press release and go on to consider questions likely to come up. Someone from the Conservative Research Department would come in part way through
the briefing to report what had happened at Labour’s press conference — somewhat easier then than now, for at that time Labour headquarters was at Transport House, just across the road from Central Office in Smith Square. It was convenient too that Labour’s daily schedule ran ahead of ours. Our press conference would begin at 9.30 a.m. and was planned to last an hour. We had arranged my tours so that I spent very few nights away from London, and therefore I was nearly always available to chair it. I would field some of the questions myself, but try to give whichever ministers were appearing beside me that morning a chance to make their points. We were willing to change the subject of the day almost up to the last minute. In fact, during this campaign we were able to keep to the planned topics, though extra press conferences, which I did not attend, were arranged to deal with particular matters like Labour’s social security spending pledges.

Our main aim both in the press conferences and speeches was to deal with the difficult question of unemployment by showing that we were prepared to take it head on and prove that our policies were the best to provide jobs in the future. So successful were we in this that by the end of the campaign the opinion polls showed that we were more trusted to deal with this problem than Labour. People knew that the real reasons for the high level of unemployment were not Conservative policies but rather past overmanning and inefficiency, strikes, technological change, changes in the pattern of world trade and the international recession. Labour lost the argument when they tried to place the whole blame for this deep-seated problem on the callous, uncaring Tories.

Then there were the speeches. During the campaign I used Sundays — almost the only time available — to work on speeches for the forthcoming week with Ferdy Mount and others at Chequers. I often saw Ferdy for final revision when I arrived back in No. 10 from campaigning during the day. He had prepared about half a dozen speech drafts on different topics before the campaign. The actual speeches I delivered consisted of extracts from these, with additional material often provided by Ronnie Millar and John Gummer, and topical comment addressing the issue of the day. I would put on the finishing touches in the campaign coach, trains, aeroplanes, cars and just about anywhere else you can imagine along the campaign trail. There were a few big speeches during this election but a large number of short speeches on ‘whistle stops’, often delivered off the back of a lorry on a small mobile platform, always off the cuff. I preferred the whistle stops, particularly when there were some hecklers. People tell me that
I am an old-fashioned campaigner; I enjoy verbal combat, though it has to be said that neither I nor the crowds derived much intellectual challenge from the monotonous chants of the CND and Socialist Worker protesters who followed me round the country.

Third, there were the tours themselves. The basic principle, of course, is that you should concentrate the Leader’s appearances in marginal seats. One day on the campaign bus David Wolfson chided me for waving too much to people watching us pass: ‘only wave in marginals, Prime Minister’. As the importance of television and the ‘photo-opportunity’ increases, the leader’s physical location on a particular day is rather less important than it once was. In this election, moreover, our objective was to hold our vote and our seats so that (with a limited number of exceptions) my task was to concentrate on campaigning in Conservative-held seats. But one thing you must do is to visit all the main regions of the country: nothing is more devastating to candidates and party workers than to think they have been written off.

Finally, there were the interviews. These came in quite different styles. Brian Waiden on
Weekend World
would ask the most probing questions. Robin Day on
Panorama
was probably the most aggressive, though in this campaign he made the mistake of plunging into detail on the problem of calculating the impact of unemployment on the public finances — a gaffe when cross-examining a former Minister of National Insurance. I made a gaffe of my own calling Sir Robin ‘Mr Day’ throughout. Alistair Burnet specialized in short, subtle questions which sounded innocuous but contained hidden dangers. One needed all one’s nimbleness of wit to make it unscathed through the minefields. Then there were the programmes on which members of the public asked questions. My favourite was always the
Granada 500
when a large audience quizzes you about the things which really matter to them.

Our manifesto was launched at the first Conservative press conference on Wednesday 18 May. The whole Cabinet was there. I ran through the main proposals, and then Geoffrey Howe, Norman Tebbit and Tom King made short statements on their sections of the manifesto. After that I invited questions. Manifestos rarely make the headlines unless, as on this occasion, something goes wrong. The press will consign carefully thought-out proposals for government to an inside page and concentrate on the slightest evidence of a ‘split’. At the press conference a journalist asked Francis Pym about negotiations with Argentina. I felt that Francis’s reply risked being ambiguous, so I interrupted to make clear that while we would negotiate on commercial
and diplomatic links, we would not discuss sovereignty. The press highlighted this: but there was in fact no split. That’s politics.

In Britain the general election campaign is only about four weeks long, usually less. For planning purposes during elections we always used the so-called ‘D- (minus)’ system, numbering each day in a countdown to ‘D-Day’ — polling day itself. The most intense period of the campaign is from D-21 on, which in this case fell on Thursday 19 May. We opened our campaign on D-20, Friday 20 May, two days after the launch of the manifesto. The first of our five Party Election Broadcasts (PEBs) had been shown on D-23.

It was not Francis Pym’s week. He told a questioner on BBC’s
Question Time
that in his opinion ‘landslides on the whole don’t produce successful governments.’ Naturally, people drew the inference that he did not want us to win a large majority. Of course, this was all very well for those with safe seats like Francis himself. But it was distinctly less good news for candidates in the Conservative marginals and those of our people hoping to win seats from other parties. And since complacency was likely to be our worst enemy in the campaign this remark struck a wrong note.

The first regular press conference on the campaign took place on Friday 20 May. Geoffrey Howe challenged Labour on the cost of their manifesto proposals and said that if they did not publish them we would. This was the first deployment of a very effective campaign theme. Patrick Jenkin, taking it up, drew attention to Labour’s plans for nationalization and regulation of industry. There were a number of questions about the economy. But, inevitably, what the press really wanted to know was what I thought about Francis’s remark. We had seen this coming and I had discussed what to say at the briefing session earlier that morning. Francis had been Chief Whip under Ted Heath and I made that the basis of my reply:

I left after the press conference for my first campaign tour, which was in the West Country. At 10.45 a.m. we drove from Central Office
to Victoria Station, and from there went by train to Gatwick to catch the flight to St Mawgan in Cornwall. A group of around 40 or 50 journalists joined us, sitting together at the back of the plane. It was a pleasant rural day. I visited the fish market at Padstow Harbour and went on to Trelyll Farm, near Wadebridge. There I was caught out by the press. I was standing on a heap of cut grass and the
Daily Mirror
photographer asked me to pick some up. I saw nothing wrong with that, and so I obliged. He took his photograph — and the picture duly appeared the following day with the caption ‘Let them eat grass’. It does not do to be too co-operative.

It was on Monday 23 May (D-17) that my campaign began in earnest. We started as usual with a briefing meeting for that morning’s press conference where we spent some time discussing the Party’s advertising. Saatchi & Saatchi had devised some brilliant advertisements and posters in 1979. Most of those they produced in 1983 were not quite as good, although there were exceptions. One compared the Communist and Labour Party manifestos by printing side by side a list of identical commitments from each. It was a long list. A second poster set out 14 rights and freedoms that the voter would be signing away if Labour was elected and carried out its programme. Another poster aimed at winning us support from ethnic minorities with the slogan ‘Labour Think He’s Black, Conservatives Think He’s British’ caused some controversy. But I thought it was perfectly fair. I did, however, veto one showing a particularly unflattering picture of Michael Foot with the slogan: ‘Under The Conservatives All Pensioners Are Better Off’. Maybe that was a fair political point too: but I do not like personal attacks.

My speech that evening was at the Cardiff City Hall. It was a long speech, made a little longer but much more lively when I broke away from the text, which always seems to help the delivery. I covered all the main election issues — jobs, health, pensions, defence — but the lines I liked best related to Labour’s plans for savings:

I had returned early to No. 10 from Tuesday’s daily tour in order to prepare for a Question and Answer session with Sue Lawley on
Nationwide.
This unfortunately degenerated into an argument about the sinking of the
General Belgrano.

The Left thought it was scoring points by keeping the public’s attention focused on this, exploiting minor discrepancies to support its theory of a ruthless government intent on slaughter. This was not only odious; it was inept. The voters overwhelmingly accepted our view that protecting British lives came first. On the
Belgrano
, as on everything else, the Left’s obsessions were at variance with their interests. But I found the whole episode distasteful.