Conservative History Journal

It is quite extraordinary and can be attributed only to a deliberate amnesia but I can never remember that November 22 is the anniversary not just of the physical assassination of President John F. Kennedy but of the political assassination of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, the 25th one this year, to be quite precise. And yet, if you ask me where I was when I heard about those events I can describe it in great detail in both cases.

Let us turn, instead, to the Thatcher premiership before that assassination; let us turn to the beginning when everything seemed to be going wrong and yet she managed to impose her authority on the party and the government.

There has already been a reference on this blog to Kwasi Kwarteng's book about those crucial six months from Geoffrey Howe's budget of March 1981 to the party conference (oh happy days when there was only one of those a year) of October 1981 in Blackpool. The book is topped and tailed by a chapter by a Portrait of a Lady and an Epilogue that takes us to the summer of 1983 and the triumph of that year's election. Mr Kwarteng acknowledges that the Argentinian junta did Margaret Thatcher a favour by its invasion of the Falklands but also acknowledges that the landslide of 1983 was not occasioned solely by the Falklands war, which is unlikely to have been fought by any other Prime Minister, in any case.

The six months in question were eventful: the March budget, now seen as the foundation of Thatcherite economic policy that eventually turned the country round, was attacked on all sides, including the Conservative. Among other derisory descriptions it was characterized as one that gave no hope to the young and the unemployed, often by the politicians and economists who had brought the country to the economic crisis. which necessitated the budget.

Those six months also saw the death of Bobby Sands, the Sinn Fein MP, and other hunger strikers in the Maze, riots in Toxteth, Brixton, Moss Side and one or two other areas as well as a split in the Labour Party, which could have resulted in a genuine social-democratic party that might have been victorious in 1983. But it did not do so.

This, as it happens, came out before the second volume of Charles Moore's magisterial (the only word one can use) biography and concentrates on just two years of Margaret Thatcher's premiership: the first two, before she established her control over the party and laid the foundation for her achievements (or otherwise, if you happen not to like what she managed to do).

I found Kwasi Kwarteng's Thatcher's Trial on the shelves for new books of London Library and took it down immediately.

This is how the author sums up the theme of the book:

Thatcher's Trial is a short account of the six months which defined Thatcher as a leader. These six months started with the budget delivered on 10 March 1981 and ended with the reshuffle of her government which took place on 14 September. during this period, Margaret Thatcher showed herself to be inflexible, tough minded and courageous.

Her judgements were clear but often wayward; her self-belief sometimes faltered, although publicly she never let any hesitation blunt her message. She always conveyed an image of utter certainty, even when some of her closest allies openly expressed reservations.

I am looking forward to reading Mr Kwarteng's description of all of that.

In the first place, however, I was reminded of the fact that the famous September 1981 reshuffle got rid of a number of wets and, more to the point, a number of grandees who had assumed that the Conservative Party was theirs to run. Among these were Sir Ian Gilmour and Lord Soames whom Mr Kwarteng describes as having had "a political career of considerable distinction" but whose achievements (with the possible exception of his stint as Our Man in Paris) depended very largely on the fact that he was Sir Winston Churchill's son-in-law. Neither of them every forgave her.

Various versions of what happened when Thatcher had given Soames his marching orders have circulated the political world then and have done so ever since. Quoting from Thatcher's own The Downing Street Years, Mr Kwarteng says:

His sacking was a notable scalp for the daughter of a Lincolnshire grocer. To Margaret Thatcher, who was not so often as obviously class conscious, Soames gave 'the distinct impression' that he felt the natural order of things was being 'violated' and that he was, in effect, 'being dismissed by his housemaid'.

Other versions were more colourful, notably Hugo Young's in One of Us, which is the basis of this:

Soames decided to give Thatcher a piece of his mind as is reported to have 'assailed her for twenty minutes for her various shortcomings'. His irritation was manifest and it was said that his 'thunderous' and booming voice 'could be heard out of the open window halfway across Horseguards Parade.

Exactly as he would have spoken to a recalcitrant footman or under-gardener (housemaids being in his wife's domain). The lady must have given as good as she received because Soames was by the account many of us have heard, severely put out. Charles Moore describes his reaction in his first volume:

Christopher Soames reportedly complained to friends that he would have sacked his gamekeeper with more courtesy than Mrs Thatcher had shown him (though why one should expect gamekeepers to be shown less courtesy than Lord Soames in matters of employment was not clear).

On the other hand, it is abundantly clear that Margaret Thatcher had summed up Christopher Soames and his attitude to her and to the Conservative Party fairly accurately.

The most appropriate reading matter at the moment is The Tory World, edited by Professor Jeremy Black and published earlier this year. The book's subtitle is Deep History and the Tory Theme in British Foreign Policy, 1679-2014, which speaks for itself. It is a collection of essays by various luminaries (some more than others and none of them female) about Tory and Conservative ideas about foreign policy, not as simple a subject as it might appear to those who think only in terms of Disraeli or Churchill.

In fact, on reading the Introduction by Professor Black himself, I recalled a conversation I had with Professor John Charmley, who has made a few appearances on this blog already, in which he argued forcibly that we  misunderstand Conservative thinking about foreign policy because we concentrate on the adventurous, often imperialist and always pro-active ideas of such people as Benjamin Disraeli and Winston Churchill. In the light of that, I am looking forward to reading Richard Toye's chapter in this collection, entitled Winston Churchill - Conservative or Liberal Imperialist?.

Here is Professor Black's definition of 'deep history' or, at least, an attempt at a definition. Thus, the extent to which there is 'deep history' in Conservative views on the outside world and to which views on this subject provide a 'deep history' and continuity for Conservatism, are central issues. 'Deep history' is the long-term, seemingly inherent assumptions, the emotions of policy that help create teh context for the politics of the shorter term.

As they used to say, discuss. That is precisely what I intend to do as I continue reading the book.

It is fortuitous that Lord Lexden, the official historian of the Conservative Party and of the Carlton Club as well as the Chairman of the Conservative History Group should have a birthday on April 20, immediately after Primrose Day. He is, among other things, the historian of that very fine organization, his book having been reviewed on this blog soon after it was published.

When the CHG tweeted about the fact that Lord Lexden was 70 somebody replied that, given his extraordinary knowledge, he must be at least 150. And, indeed, it is hard to imagine how any one person can have packed that amount of learning into 70 years. I may add, as someone who has had to "edit" the then Alistair Cook's articles for the printed version of the Conservative History Journal is that he is every editor's dream: not a single comma had to be changed in his learned but crisply written pieces.

Not so long ago, this blog directed readers towards an article in the 2014 issue of the Journal about the end of the Stuart dynasty and the beginning of the Hanoverian one, written by Alistair Lexden. His most recent appearance in print was a letter in The Times that called attention to a long-standing Conservative idea: the property-owning democracy, which was originated by Noel Skelton in 1923 though he was more interested in a wider ownership of industry. That, of course, is a little out of date as industries tend to be smaller in size and ownership is more widely dispersed.

We can rely on Lord Lexden, however, for putting politicians and opinion-mongers right on details of Conservative history.