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Showing posts with label Geoffrey Howe. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Geoffrey Howe. Show all posts
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.
Thatcher's Trial goes through the various events in great detail, something that even a hefty three-volume biography cannot do but there is a problem with it all: one gets the distinct impression that Mr Kwarteng dislikes Margaret Thatcher and would like to side with her various opponents, particularly the wet grandees she eventually got rid of. It is of them that he writes with affection and admiration and it is of her that he is rather dismissive.
We hear a great deal about her "uncomplicated" attitude, her very simple religion, her continuing behaviour as if she were a prize-winning grammar school girl (Mr Kwartend is, as we all know, an Old Etonian), her black and white attitude to the world, which is a complicated and delicately shaded affair.
It is not entirely clear why saying that the riots were a matter of law and order and criminal behaviour is rather simplistic and worthy of disdain, whereas saying that spending more government money was politically astute, subtle and complex.
Nor can one be all that impressed by Mr Kwarteng's sympathetic attitude to the various opponents of Geoffrey Howe's budget because they were people who cared about the social fabric of the country. Those riots could not have been caused by the less than two years of the Thatcher government. Even David Owen wrote about the problems that had accumulated for twenty years though he seems to have forgotten that for more than half of that period there was a Labour government and towards the end he was part of that. The social fabric of the country had worn very thin, indeed, by 1979 under the great care of those who were wringing their hands at Thatcher's "cruelty" and "uncompromising hardness".
The same applies to the problems of Northern Ireland, inherited by Thatcher from three of her predecessors. Even the rule to which the Maze prisoners objected to and, which pushed them into those hunger strikes had been put into place by the Labour government.
The truth is that Thatcher was faced with a very difficult situation and had to take very difficult decisions. Had some of her predecessors who allegedly cared so much about that social fabric, were more subtle and did not take a supposedly uncomplicated attitude she had imbibed with her Methodism taken some of those decisions, those early months of her government (as well as the later struggle with the unions) would have been very different.
She was, however, lucky in her opponents from the "wets" in her own party to the Argentinian junta, from the outdated and increasingly extreme Labour party to the incompetent Social-Democrats. Even Arthur Scargill played it all wrong but one cannot really blame him: he thought he was still dealing with her complex, politically subtle. intellectually broad-minded (or so Mr Kwarteng will have us believe) predecessors.
If one can put up with the author's rather unexpected attitude to his subject one finds a great deal of interest in the book. Mr Kwarteng has done his research and has shaped it into a very interesting, fluent account. Higher praise one cannot give.
Kwasi Kwarteng: Thatcher's Trial
Six Months That Defined A Leader
2015 Bloomsbury, London
The news in yesterday's Evening Standard that among those invited to Lady Thatcher's funeral are her old "friends and colleagues" the Lords Howe and Heseltine (what glorious revenge to make them listen to all those eulogies) reminded me of the time I took over the editing of the Conservative History Journal.
The issue came out in summer 2004 and naturally enough we had to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the 1979 Conservative victory that was to become momentous in the history of the country and the Conservative Party. I decided to ask some of Margaret Thatcher's colleagues to write short pieces about her. For reasons I can no longer recall, only two were approached, the Lords Tebbit and Howe. Both agreed with alacrity and sent me their pieces (in hard copy, being true Tories).
The time has come to republish them. This is what Lord Tebbit wrote:
Margaret Thatcher took office as Prime Minister of a country possessed by both hope and fear. The Heath government had been defeated following its failure to defeat a miners’ strike in 1974. The Callaghan government fell in 1979 , following the “winter of discontent” during the strike of local government workers. Many voters hoped she would go the same way. Rather more hoped she would not - but many even of these feared that she might.
Foreign embassies were reporting to their governments that Britain had become ungovernable. Multi-national companies had all but ceased to invest as the English Disease, a lemming-like propensity to strike, savaged businesses. The vast stateowned sector of industry gorged itself on taxpayers’ money with no prospects of profitability.
Inflation was endemic and conventional wisdom held that it could be restrained only by a state sponsored “prices and incomes policy”, that is either voluntary or state control of prices and incomes.
During Margaret Thatcher’s term British industrial relations changed from the worst in the developed free world to the best.
She went on to win two further elections, defeated the unions’ “nuclear option” of a miners’ strike, and was brought down not by an ungovernable nation - but an ungovernable cabinet.
In the meantime inflation had been controlled by monetarism - not incomes policy - and foreign investment had poured into Britain. The financial haemorrhage of the nationalised industries had been stanched. After privatisation they became profitable corporation taxpayers.
Living standards soared, millions of the “working classes” had become homeowners and shareholders and Britain’s occupational pension schemes were the envy of Europe.
In passing Margaret Thatcher defeated Argentina, bringing down the junta and by a military operation pursued with purpose, skill and daring, established that Britain still had the will and power to defend unilaterally its people and its interest.
She left a great deal still undone, having had neither time - nor enough competent Ministers with courage to resolve other issues. Neither education, the Health Service, nor the welfare system were properly reformed. Local government finance reform was botched by Christopher Patten. Reform of the European Community was sabotaged by Geoffrey Howe. Nor did Thatcherism cure the sickness of the permissive society, which has - as some forecast - become the yob society of the 21st century.
Abroad Margaret Thatcher stiffened the resolve of President Reagan to defeat the challenge of the Soviet Union and bring a decisive victory in the Cold War. Thatcherism” was widely adopted throughout the world.
So much achieved - so much more to be done.
Who can argue that it was a fine piece in Tebbit's inimitable style? The same could be said for the piece sent to me by Lord Howe, which had been typed on a typewriter with the paper clearly torn out of the carriage with fury. There was a corner missing. Perhaps, he had been chewing it.
This is what the article said:
No government, in my judgement, did more in the last quarter of the twentieth century to change the shape of our world. Some mistakes, of course - but overall it was fundamental and enduring change for the better.
Margaret Thatcher’s most important domestic achievement was the dismantling of the unspoken, but crippling, compact between state ownership and monopoly trade unionism. Almost as crucial was the recovery of control over the public finances and the key switch of Britain’s tax structure away from on which positively obstructed enterprise.
The real triumph was to have transformed not just one party but two - so that when Labour did finally return, these changes were accepted as irreversible. The irony is that Thatcherism might never have survived at all, had it not been for John Major’s success in consolidating it.
The one sadness is that Michael Heseltine might have done better still, by securing as well the European role for Britain, which Ted Heath had made possible.
As editor, I was overjoyed to have these two pieces, so clearly in furious disagreement with each other. (We editors are a heartless race.) Readers were pleased. Not so Lord Howe, who wrote to me soon after the journal's publication. He thought I ought to have warned him that his contribution was going to go in next to Norman Tebbit's.
