God and Mrs Thatcher (21 page)

Howell of course said very little about the main cause of the riots: the sense of helplessness amongst the unemployed or the frustrations of the victims of police harassment. Instead he focused his attention on inflation: ‘a world of stable money would be a world of stable values’; a sentiment with which Thatcher no doubt concurred.
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Nor was Howell naive about the political consequences of policies such as home ownership and share ownership: ‘The more that people become familiar with capital and profits and how the social market economy works, the weaker the political support for attacks on capital.’
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Willie Whitelaw, who as Home Secretary was responsible for the government’s response to the riots, offered a much more straightforward solution to ill-discipline amongst Britain’s youth. His perspective, though, stemmed not from a dogmatic belief in popular capitalism but probably what he had experienced during his schoolboy days at Winchester. ‘Sport’, i.e. enabling teenagers to ‘unleash their physical energies through games rather than bricks and petrol bombs’, was in Whitelaw’s view one credible solution to the crisis in law and order.
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Keith Joseph, on the other hand, was sceptical of Mount’s proposed curriculum on values. He was not against the idea in principle, just not convinced that the left-wing teaching profession could be trusted to teach it. He also used the FPG as an opportunity
to peddle his favoured policies of education vouchers and apprenticeships. Another of Joseph’s ideas, which would only get the green light under the Conservative-led Coalition in 2010, was to enable parents to set up their own schools. Returning to his favourite subject of irresponsible parenthood, which he had first outlined in his controversial speech at Edgbaston in 1974, Joseph pondered on the problem of young single mothers who saw pregnancy as a ‘means of escape’ and wilfully shifted their dependency to the state. His solution was a series of government-funded ‘scare films’ on the realities of parenthood. Advisers at Downing Street were clearly wary; a note accompanying his paper read: ‘Keith Joseph on important but sensitive ground.’
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Chancellor Geoffrey Howe responded with characteristic pragmatism. While he acknowledged that ‘state paternalism’ was the ‘enemy’, Howe saw it much more in terms of managing people’s expectations at the time of recession rather than an ambitious desire to rid the nation of its collectivist ethos.
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Howe, too, was the only one to recognise the inherent contradiction of a government committed to shrinking the state while implementing a centralised programme to reinvigorate values. Michael Heseltine’s paper, on the other hand, simply listed his own successes, chiefly the ‘Right to Buy’ scheme and his ambitious plans for the regeneration of Liverpool, while Patrick Jenkin at Industry made the rather un-Thatcherite point that the prevalence of long-term unemployment was ‘profoundly anti-family’ and that job creation was the best way of ensuring that couples stayed together.
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Norman Tebbit at Employment was the only minister to remark on the profound changes occurring within British society – notably the rise of women in employment and the decline of the male breadwinner – although he took a somewhat blinkered view of the problem. On the changing make-up of Britain’s workforce, Tebbit considered that the growth of women in the workplace was out
of necessity rather than aspiration and was ultimately a regressive step that distracted women from their roles as ‘mothers and homemakers’.
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Surprisingly, there is no evidence that Margaret Thatcher, the ultimate career woman, ever challenged him on this point.

Tebbit was much more concerned, however, with the decline of the male breadwinner and the void that it created, which was now being filled by ‘anti-social groups, ranging from left-wing social workers … to the criminal elements within whom the political extremist collaborate in areas such as Toxteth’. Tebbit added that this phenomenon was most noticeable amongst ‘immigrant Caribbean families’.
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Tebbit also wondered whether the government’s incentives should be directed at the poor, who were apparently unlikely to be responsive, and that it would be much more worthwhile to encourage those ‘who have the will and the dedication to restore values in their family lives’.
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This is, of course, what actually happened. Thatcher’s policies would isolate and disenfranchise certain sections of the poor, while providing the conditions in which the upwardly mobile could take full advantage.

Mount took a much more positive view on the perceived problem of values amongst Britain’s immigrant population, pointing out that many ethnic minorities were ‘imbued with precisely the sorts of values which the Group is trying to encourage’, citing the ‘Asian corner shop open in the evenings and at the weekends’ as an example of the Protestant work ethic in operation.
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It was agreed that the government should ‘publicise success stories of immigrants who have made good’ and encourage ‘immigrant behaviour in accordance with the philosophy of self-reliance’.
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A cynic might see this as a Conservative strategy to win over new voters. An optimist might see it as a desire to counter the public denigration of immigrant communities. Nonetheless, there was a clear demarcation being made between Asians and West Indians; the latter were believed to have adopted the blame, dependency and defeatist culture of Britain’s white working class.

Thatcher’s ‘values project’ demonstrated the ideological impetus at the heart of government and, more specifically, how values rather than policies were the starting point for reform. Yet the discussions also revealed a failure to recognise how British society was changing. There was no sense that deindustrialisation was something that needed addressing, and yet it arguably posed a greater threat to the body politic than ‘collectivist’ values. Nor was there any substantial consideration given to the globalisation of industry, trade and finance and its inevitable consequences for employment as well as consumption. More parochial and petty concerns dominated, evident in the targeting of ‘left-wing’ teachers, rioters, students, single mothers and immigrants, and likewise in the encouragement of Asian shop keepers and autonomously minded civil servants.

The rise of married women working was thought to be equally damaging to the family as divorce, not permissive behaviour. Solutions, ranged from encouraging couples to marry later (thereby apparently halting divorce) and tweaking the tax system to incentivise women to stay at home. The government’s economic policy hinged on tackling inflation at the cost of unemployment, but this led it to make a frankly odd link between cause, consequence and solution in the realm of social policy. High inflation and recession had apparently forced mothers to go out to work, thereby weakening the motivation of the father, leading to ‘latch-key’ unruly children, and ultimately divorce, with the woman believing that the state would support her where her ex-husband had been unable to. Such was the Thatcher government’s assessment of the dissolution of family life and morals in Britain. Under the spell of monetarism, this was how social policy in the early 1980s was discussed and enacted.

The group were, however, adamant that these plans should not be presented as a ‘spiritual revival’ – no doubt wary of how badly this would go down with the British public although this is exactly what it was.
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Margaret Thatcher was enthused by these proposals; she marked all
her ministers’ papers with approval and was fully prepared to do the rhetorical ‘sell’ to the electorate. She contributed little to the formation of policy although she was said to be particularly concerned that discipline be restored. This was a virtue she believed was best exuded by the armed forces. In this post-Falklands era, the army was already for her the best demonstration of an ordered and responsible ethic and, indeed, it would become the one institution in British life upon which she felt she could always rely. The 1983 election would be fought and won on the back of her Falklands’ success and also on the values and policies that emerged out of the Policy Family Group.

THERE ARE MANY
reasons why the Conservatives won three successive elections under Margaret Thatcher. One could point to the decline of the traditional working class, the weakness of the Labour Party leadership or the split of the anti-Conservative vote between Labour and the SDP-Liberal Alliance, but, if opinion polls are to be believed and the pollsters are correct, the main reason a significant number of Britons voted Conservative in 1983 and 1987 was down to the personality and leadership of Margaret Thatcher herself. Writing soon after the Conservatives’ third election victory in 1987, political scientist Ivor Crewe concluded that there was little evidence that the British electorate had become ‘suffused with Thatcherite values on either the economic or moral plane’; rather he attributed the Conservatives’ electoral dominance down to the figure of Margaret Thatcher, whom the public appreciated as a leader who ‘knows what needs doing’.
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This was certainly how Thatcher’s press secretary Bernard Ingham saw it. Writing to the Prime Minister of the state of her leadership in 1982, Ingham was brutally honest but hopeful: ‘You are … heartily disliked and indeed hated, though still commanding respect … Your merit is
that you appeal to [the British public’s] understanding of reality.’
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Ivor Crewe, on the other hand, attributed Thatcher’s success to her ‘warrior style’ and the way that she was perceived to be ‘setting objectives, leading from the front, confronting problems, holding her position’.
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It hardly needs adding that these were qualities that Thatcher exuded, and ones that her rivals, Michael Foot and Neil Kinnock, clearly did not. As if to prove a point, the puppet satirical television show
Spitting Image
always portrayed Thatcher as a dominant presence in a man’s suit, and, in a nod to Churchill, chomping on a cigar; Thatcher seemed an unstoppable force next to her less than impressive rivals: the ageing Michael Foot, the arrogant yet indecisive David Owen, and Neil ‘the Welsh Windbag’ Kinnock.

It is often remarked that the Falklands War was transformative for Margaret Thatcher’s image. Up until that point she was certainly a vulnerable leader who seemed to excel in alienating everyone; in 1981 she was voted the most unpopular prime minister in history. But Thatcher emerged from victory anew; appreciated for her steely resolve and constancy; known for rolling up her sleeves and getting on with the job; a masculine figure lacking in feminine frailties. ‘NOW IS THE HOUR – MAGGIE IS THE MAN’ ran the headline in the
Daily Express
on the day of the 1983 election. This image was only to be reinforced by her future battles with Arthur Scargill’s National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), the ‘loony-left’ councils and the ‘wets’ within her party. By the late 1980s, Thatcher appeared to morph into Liberty herself: brandishing the torch of freedom amidst the rubble of communism abroad and socialism at home and with a dogged determination ‘to go on and on’. The religious aura and providential air that surrounded Margaret Thatcher was one that the public bought into, opposition leaders found impossible to counter, and historians and commentators still find remarkably difficult to dislodge. It is, of course, necessary for all political leaders to cultivate a public image, but if it is too distant from the reality, it fails to
be credible. Important though the press and her supporters were in bolstering the perception of Iron Lady, much of its source and power was down to the fact that the public Margaret Thatcher was never far from the private woman.

That the sleeping patterns of the Prime Minister should become public knowledge or even the stuff of legend tells us much about the connection between Thatcher’s image and authority. Perhaps it was necessary for the first female leader to be associated with a masculine tenacity, but, this aside, the idea of Margaret Thatcher working tirelessly for the nation projected a vision of moral energy, conviction and a determination ‘to get things done’ that was politically invaluable. Callaghan’s infamous ‘Crisis? What crisis?’ comment made during the Winter of Discontent may have been a misquotation but its reportage generated an air of complacency that soon spiralled into election defeat. Margaret Thatcher, in contrast, was always pictured caught in the action, whether it was driving a tank, on the production line of a factory, or on a sofa with her heels kicked off attending to her red box. She became the living embodiment of the Protestant work ethic, always on the move in her characteristic speedy shuffle. But this was not just for the cameras; it is no secret that relaxation did not come easily to her. Margaret Thatcher’s attitude towards holidays was much like her attitude towards sleep; it was for the idle. It is hard to imagine Thatcher ever indulging in something akin to Ted Heath’s passion for yacht racing, which would take him away from Westminster for weeks on end. She was by anyone’s standards a workaholic and, in contemporary parlance, could have been said to have had a poor work-life balance. She was addicted to politics, had little life outside it and, in some senses, was the first of a new breed of professional politicians that would later become the norm in Britain.

The presentation of Margaret Thatcher as the thrifty housewife is equally notorious. On this matter, perhaps more than any other, Thatcher really did practise what she preached. Even though money was never
a problem once she was married, Thatcher maintained her mother’s standards. Old curtains were transformed into duffle coats for the twins, her wedding dress recycled into an evening gown, and she continued to drive around in a battered second-hand car while Denis enjoyed his passion for fast, expensive vehicles. On arriving at No. 10, Thatcher insisted on paying for a new ironing board and bed linen out of her own pocket; used her old crockery and raided nearby Admiralty House for spare furniture. She also famously had the swimming pool drained at Chequers when she discovered that the heating bill was £5,000 per year. Certainly, at a time of recession, it was politically wise to demonstrate personal fiscal prudence, but it was also something that came naturally to her, unlike some of her ministers. In 1981, she berated Welsh Secretary Nicholas Edwards for his proposed £26,000 renovation of his residence in Cardiff. ‘Get some other estimates’ she scribbled across the page when the bill came in.
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Edwards obediently reduced it to £12,000. Such distaste for excess, as Cecil Parkinson observed, was ingrained in her: