Margaret Thatcher: The Authorized Biography (65 page)

The result was a process known as Stepping Stones designed to produce a plan for preparing the ground, campaigning and then governing. Hoskyns explained to Joseph that he was following the business concept of the ‘critical path’. By mid-November 1977 the first report was ready. It said that the ‘one major obstacle’ to the national recovery which the Tories sought was ‘the negative role of the trade unions’ and that ‘To compete with Labour in peaceful coexistence with an unchanged union movement will ensure continued economic decline.’
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What Hoskyns called the ‘secret garden’ had a key marked ‘trade union power’.
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Stepping Stones tried to establish a project, both to unstitch the unions in public debate and to get the Tories to make explicit commitments to trade union reform which would give them an electoral mandate on which the Civil Service would have to work if they won office.
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At a working supper in the Commons which Hoskyns regarded as the ‘turning-point’, Mrs Thatcher endorsed the report. On this occasion, Hoskyns saw her virtues more clearly, but some of his criticisms stood: ‘Margaret’s key contribution is guts and determination and a complete lack of the self-importance and pomposity which would make it so hard for many politicians to take advice of this kind. She
is quite limited intellectually … and philosophically. The problem intellectually … is that she is unaware of the fact that other people’s intelligence may be superior to her own.’
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Emboldened, Stepping Stones then set up small groups to investigate details such as the payment of benefits to strikers’ families, involving people like Nigel Lawson, David Howell and Norman Lamont.

A battle then ensued, along fairly predictable lines, with Jim Prior, Lord Thorneycroft, Ian Gilmour and Chris Patten most opposed. Their opposition was ideological, but also tactical. Patten saw Stepping Stones as the work of the CPS, which he greatly disliked. Many years later, he described the document as an ‘inflexible strategy’ which ‘read as though it lay somewhere between a management consultant’s brief and a plan of battle. It showed little political understanding or touch.’
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In a paper called ‘Further Thoughts on Strategy’ written at the end of February 1978, he tried to push Stepping Stones to one side: ‘The authors of “Stepping Stones” have described their political strategy in terms of painstakingly building a model of St Paul’s with matchsticks. I would use a different metaphor. A successful strategy is like an artillery bombardment with half a dozen properly targeted heavy guns.’ Stepping Stones should therefore be confined to an ‘up-market campaign’ ‘without interfering with any of our other plans’.
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Patten’s ‘heavy guns’ would aim at tax, law and order, housing, education and other matters. On the subject of the unions, they were silent. Although Patten used the word ‘strategy’, his approach was not strategic, but tactical.

As the Patten paper approached, Hoskyns confided his fears to his diary:

the breathtaking vision and innovation which the situation calls for is [sic] not going to come from Thatcher – of that I am almost certain. Alfred has been warning of a ‘putsch’ against her from Prior, Whitelaw, Gilmour – but this seems unlikely at such a time. Pym is seen as the successor … it seems a preposterous fear. But there’s no doubt she does
not
lead and
manage
her Shadow Cabinet. There is much press criticism (leaks by Patten, Alfred says) of this and of her failure to debate policy and philosophy.
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Had Hoskyns been allowed to attend the meeting of the Steering Committee on 30 January 1978, he would have been even more depressed. With a remarkable frankness which led Mrs Thatcher to write on them a note to Ryder saying ‘Richard – please keep in safe,’ the minutes recorded her as saying that there was ‘too much detail in the “Stepping Stones” paper … it was generally desirable for members to exercise self-discipline on the problem of the unions. Mrs Thatcher stressed that Mr Prior would lead the campaign and would speak where appropriate.’ They went on: ‘When Mr Davies [John Davies, who had replaced Reggie Maudling as shadow
foreign secretary] argued that if we told the truth about the unions we should certainly lose the election, Mrs Thatcher acknowledged that this could not be the centrepiece of our strategy.’
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In the end, bursting with frustration, Hoskyns and Strauss went to see Mrs Thatcher to tell her to get rid of Prior. She naturally refused and ‘thought we were naive’,
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but ‘She was not too put out by it. I think she sees Jim as a disaster in the context of any really intelligent and resolute plan for recovery … Now he’s in a very strong position and, with an election pending, she can do nothing.’
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It might have been a comfort to Hoskyns to have known that some people on the other side of this argument felt equally uneasy. In an interview given privately that summer, Chris Patten said that the moderates dominated the Shadow Cabinet and the draft of the manifesto, but ‘had to lie low because of the impossible behaviour of Ted’. Patten set up Mrs Thatcher’s future behaviour towards Adam Ridley as the litmus test of her own moderation.
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As the election expected in October 1978 approached, the Tories fought themselves to a stalemate. Mrs Thatcher’s heart was with Joseph, Stepping Stones and taking on the unions. She realized that Stepping Stones ‘gave her a clear, practical and intellectual path which she didn’t have before’.
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But her head was with those – who included the ideologically supportive Gordon Reece – who argued that a fuzzier, more cautious approach was electorally necessary. As late as 22 August, Airey Neave told David Butler in a private interview that it had taken eighteen months’ work to move Mrs Thatcher towards centre position on the trade unions and to accept the Prior approach.
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She was trapped in moderation. But Jim Callaghan’s decision about the date of the election was to make a huge difference to the type of campaign she eventually felt able to fight.

In the autumn of 1977, Arnold Ashdown, one of the joint treasurers of the Conservative Party, died, and a memorial service was held for him in north London, attended by all living Tory leaders. Ashdown was Jewish, and so all the men, as well as Mrs Thatcher, wore hats for the ceremony. In appearance, each leader fulfilled his popular caricature. Harold Macmillan wore an Edwardian silk top hat. Alec Home had on the more modest Homburg that had been customary in his youth. Ted Heath forgot that a hat was needed at all, and had to borrow a paper yarmulke from the Jewish organizers. Mrs Thatcher, in the view of those present, stole the show, looking striking all in black, with a hat with a very large brim.
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The occasion was a small example of how she was successfully achieving a presence on the public stage.

For all her inexperience, nervousness and social insecurity, she had undoubted public impact. She displayed the conspicuousness and panache which are inseparable from leadership. This was partly because of the uniqueness of her sex in her chosen sphere, but also owed much to her physical presence and her force of character. There were others within her party who had enjoyed far longer and more distinguished careers than she, but there was none, with the partial exception of Heath, who could rival the hold on the popular imagination which she was beginning to exert. She liked being seen; she liked being noticed; she liked leading. Michael Portillo,
*
then a young employee of the Conservative Research Department, was detailed to help in the campaign for the Cambridge by-election of November 1976. He had to meet Mrs Thatcher and her team early in the morning outside a pub in Trumpington. As she got hurriedly out of the
car, she flashed her eyes at him and said, ‘Take me to the battle!’ Although it was a semi-comic moment, it also impressed him deeply: ‘She had a thing about needing to look and play the part of leader.’
²

No leader can play the part of future prime minister without a presence on the international stage. It was the beginnings of this that Mrs Thatcher had sought – and achieved – with her visit as party leader to the United States in 1975. She had complemented this, in policy terms, with her ‘Iron Lady’ speech the following year. She needed to overcome the disadvantage that when she became leader, as Lord Carrington unkindly put it, ‘She hardly knew where Calais was.’
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*
In the ensuing years, she visited European capitals, the Middle East, China
^†
and Australasia. All these helped to some extent to build her reputation, and certainly increased her knowledge, but none had great impact on the public. More important, though not wholly successful, was her second visit to the United States. The victory of the Democrat, Jimmy Carter, over Gerald Ford, in the US presidential election of 1976, had been marginally unhelpful to Mrs Thatcher’s cause. Although she did not have a very high opinion of Ford, her links to Republicans were better than those to Democrats. Besides, Carter, with his rather starry-eyed belief that the hearts of dictators could be changed by the expression of the West’s sincere desire for peace, was emotionally at odds with her alert suspicion of the Soviet Union. So she saw the need for new work – to establish friendly relations with the President and to
maintain a flattering profile in a United States whose policy elites were now more likely to be in sympathy with the right wing of the Labour Party than with her.

A September visit was planned in March 1977, but before this took place Mrs Thatcher met Carter for the first time during his visit to Britain in May. The courtesy call, at Winfield House, the American Ambassador’s residence in London, lasted for twenty minutes. Carter was accompanied by Cyrus Vance, the Secretary of State, and Zbigniew Brzezinski, his National Security Advisor. Brzezinski’s assistant Robert Hunter, who was taking notes, recalled: ‘The most striking and memorable thing about this meeting was how vigorous and enthusiastic Mrs Thatcher was. Carter was very impressed by this. And she endeared herself to Brzezinski at the very beginning: “Oh yes, Dr Brzezinski,” she purred, “I spent all afternoon reading your books.” This left Zbig immensely pleased.’
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Brzezinski’s contemporary diary confirms these recollections: ‘P[resident] met with Thatcher in the evening. She impressed me as a shrewd and forceful politician. She amused me by mentioning a number of times that she had read several of my books … Perhaps she would have done better to have read Carter’s book. She didn’t mention this at all(!)’ Then Brzezinski sounded one note of anxiety: ‘The views on Africa expressed by Thatcher … were not quite what we would have liked. She did not come right out and say it, but I formed the distinct impression that she was inclined to support the white position.’
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For her part, Mrs Thatcher later remembered a successful meeting ‘in spite of my growing doubts about his foreign policy’.
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The
New York Times
reported: ‘Brimming with self-confidence, she told Mr Carter that her party would win the election no matter when it came, with the size of the majority the only matter in doubt.’
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It was this desire to convince people that she was the Prime Minister in waiting, more than any policy issue, which shaped Mrs Thatcher’s second US trip as leader. ‘I’m the next government,’ she told a group of American journalists. ‘I think I should meet your Cabinet.’
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As the visit approached, certain obstacles presented themselves. Mrs Thatcher found the cursory briefing produced for her by the Foreign Office inadequate. ‘She thinks it’s terrible,’ Caroline Stephens told Rob Shepherd of the Conservative Research Department, who was tasked with rewriting the document to Mrs Thatcher’s more exacting standards.
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More worryingly, the White House was trying to impose a rule upon itself that the President would not normally meet leaders of foreign opposition parties. The administration had already rejected just such a request from François Mitterrand, the leader of the French Socialists (and future President of France). In a memo for Carter, Brzezinski suggested that in light of this precedent ‘and at
the risk of offending Mrs. Thatcher, it seems to me that the principle should be established that opposition leaders meet with the Vice President, not you.’ He advised Carter to ‘plead a heavy schedule’ and pass Mrs Thatcher off to the Vice-President.
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Carter’s aides may also have had ideological objections to Mrs Thatcher
*
and they certainly did not want to upset Callaghan, to whom they were close. Faced with these concerns, Carter dithered. ‘Leave possibility open,’ he wrote on Brzezinski’s memo. ‘Tell them either VP or I will see them.’
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A good deal of bureaucratic toing and froing followed. In the end, according to a White House aide, ‘It was due to the general closeness of the UK/US relationship that we agreed to see her. Peter Jay also intervened on her behalf and said, in effect, you ought to get to know this lady.’
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Mrs Thatcher actually benefited from the fact that Peter Jay, the new British Ambassador in Washington, was Jim Callaghan’s son-in-law, and therefore, since he was also not a professional diplomat but a journalist, a controversial appointment. Given his ‘unusual connections’ with the Labour government, Jay felt he should ‘lean over backwards’ to help Mrs Thatcher, so much so that David Owen,
^†
the Foreign Secretary, felt he was going ‘a little too far’.
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She got her meeting with the President.

Before the meeting, Mrs Thatcher flew first to New York City. Emphasizing her commitment to free enterprise, she travelled on the fledgling, cut-price Laker Airways rather than British Airways, which was then still in public ownership. In her main speech there, to the British American Chamber of Commerce, she took as her text President Theodore Roosevelt’s words that ‘In this life we get nothing save by effort’ and won applause from her audience for her attack on statist economic fallacies and her declaration that the Western world was now moving into a post-socialist era,
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but media interest in her was less than in 1975, and the speech was not extensively reported. At a dinner given by NBC, she nearly fainted because of a combination of heat, exhaustion and a lifelong tendency to low blood pressure. Caroline Stephens who was on the trip, discussed the problem with Adam Butler, her PPS, and recorded it at the time: ‘She retires and ACB [Butler] and I discuss these bouts which are really quite serious
and we decide that she should really play the grande dame more and demand to sit down if she feels faint. But she is too polite and socially insecure.’
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