God and Mrs Thatcher (40 page)

‘F
OR HER IT
was about moral values or it was about nothing,’ according to George Urban, the Prime Minister’s speechwriter on foreign affairs.
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There was undoubtedly a moralistic fervour underscoring Thatcher’s denouncements of communism, but ultimately the Prime Minister was a mistress of realpolitik in her dealings with the Soviet bloc and, indeed, in all areas of her diplomacy. When it came to tying up the loose ends of empire for example, the Falklands campaign turned out to be the exception rather than the rule. Above all, pragmatism guided the Conservative government’s carefully judged settlement of black-majority rule in independent Zimbabwe with Marxist leader Robert Mugabe as its newly elected head. Pragmatism also ruled when it came to the hand-over of Hong Kong to communist China, which Thatcher signed, albeit reluctantly, with few stipulations.

Thatcher’s foreign policy has been raked over again and again by historians, but one aspect that is often overlooked is the part that religion played both as a motivation and as a factor in the personalities and policies of 1980s diplomacy. A religious motivation was clearly evident amongst the three key Western leaders – President Reagan, Pope John Paul II and Margaret Thatcher – who all confidently proclaimed that the fight against atheistic communism was a religious one. It was also true, but in a very different way, for the Church of England. Anglicanism had a global reach and network which rivalled that of the Foreign Office which, in certain circumstances, meant that the Church was able to wield influence in places where diplomats could not. Archbishop Runcie’s Falklands sermon in 1982, however, had proved that the Church was not willing to endorse any form of Tory nationalism, while it was also clear that it did not fully subscribe to Thatcher’s crusading rhetoric on the Cold War. Christians were busy promoting an alternative view on Britain’s priorities and place in global politics: leading the fight against poverty in the developing world; marching against nuclear rearmament and pressuring the government to impose sanctions on South Africa.

THE COLD WAR
was, first and foremost, an ideological conflict fought predominantly between Moscow and Washington and conditioned as much by domestic concerns as by the battle for global dominance. It was also one in which religion had, from its inception, been a central feature. For the chief protagonists involved, the Cold War was ‘one of history’s great religious wars, a global conflict between the god-fearing and the godless’ in the words of historian Dianne Kirby.
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In the USSR, religious persecution gathered apace after a lull during the Second World War, and while it was not as aggressive as it had been during the great purges of the 1920s, the suppression of religion was still considered as important as any other state initiative in order to ensure the strength and longevity of the communist cause. In the West, anti-communist posturing was often accompanied with a fanatical tone and biblical endorsement.

As early as 1947, President Truman had made overtures to Pope Pius XII, seeking to forge a united Christian front against communist ideology. This gave rise to a unity of purpose between the Vatican and Washington, which, despite some wobbles, was to last until the end of the Cold War. Truman appropriated Christianity (and co-opted the churches) as part of his plan to elevate the Cold War from a strategic conflict about East/West rivalry to one about ideology. Later, in 1956, President Eisenhower adopted ‘In God we Trust’ as the official motto of the United States. Displayed on all paper currency, there was no stronger indication of the harmony between the dollar and the cross. American evangelical fervour sat comfortably with Cold War paranoia and was best summed up by leading evangelist and pastor to presidents, Billy Graham: ‘When communism conquers a nation, it makes every man a slave; when Christianity conquers a nation, it makes every man a king.’
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The Catholic Church had always viewed communism as more of a problem than fascism, which partly explains why Mussolini was able
to nuzzle his way into the bosom of the Vatican in the 1930s. The rise of the communist party in Italy after the Second World War, however, was greeted with a wave of paranoia within the Church, and although the party never won a majority, its presence did prompt the Holy See in 1949 to publicly rule that no Catholic should belong, associate or promote communism in any form. This remained the Vatican’s hard line until Pope John XXIII, in the wake of the Cuban Missile Crisis, issued
Pacem in Terris
in 1963, which was unequivocal in its rejection of nuclear war as a just act and called for negotiation between nations towards disarmament. Coinciding as this did with the meeting of the second Vatican Council, to which Catholics from the Eastern bloc countries were invited (including Karol Wojtyla, the future Pope John Paul II), it aimed at a consensual approach to guarantee the protection of its churches behind the Iron Curtain.

Britain’s post-war leaders were not as bold as their American counterparts, although Winston Churchill, the great articulator of the cause, certainly was not averse to speaking of the threat that communism posed to Western civilisation and Christianity. The same was true for Ernest Bevin, Labour’s Foreign Secretary between 1945 and 1951, who considered ramping up the Christian rhetoric an effective way of convincing the Americans that there was a difference between socialism in Britain and communism in the East.
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In the early years of the Cold War, the Foreign Office was acutely aware of the influence of the churches at home and of their network of contacts abroad, particularly the Church of England with its close ties with the Russian Orthodox Church and the Episcopal Church in America. The Anglican Council on Foreign Relations established a working relationship with the Foreign Office and even had a Whitehall diplomat on its board.

During the early years of the Cold War, the Anglican hierarchy dutifully reinforced the state view of the Soviet aggressor, taking the opportunity of the 1948 Lambeth Conference to issue a forceful condemnation of Marxist ideology. In 1950, Archbishop Fisher established
a committee to ascertain the appropriate position of the Church of England on East–West relations, which the Foreign Office ensured was appropriately briefed. Lambeth Palace also monitored those members affiliated with the Society of Socialist Clergy and Ministers. This was no McCarthy-like witch-hunt, rather the Church’s approach was to subtly restrict the influence of communist sympathisers and noisy pacifists through lack of preferment. One clergyman who caused a headache for both the Foreign Office and Lambeth Palace was the Very Rev. Hewlett Johnson, known as the ‘Red Dean’ of Canterbury (who when abroad was often mistaken for the archbishop). A famous apologist of Soviet communism and holder of the Stalin peace prize, Johnson had been under MI5 surveillance since 1917 and had been banned from delivering sermons to troops during the Second World War. The Foreign Office tried to prevent his visit to Eastern Europe in 1947 and it was no coincidence that the Archbishop of York, Cyril Garbett, was sent on an official tour shortly afterwards. What is surprising, though, is not that men such as Hewlett Johnson existed, but that they were allowed to operate so freely.
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If the Fisher years saw the Church operating in semi-compliance with the state then it would become more of a critical friend under the leadership of Archbishop Ramsey. Nuclear weapons, from their inception, had been an issue that Anglicans had agonised over and had come to separate conclusions about, but this division became even more acute following the formation of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, founded in 1958, with Canon John Collins of St Paul’s as chairman. Many praised the emotionalism and the passion of CND, but those at the top were never attracted by the idealism of a unilateral policy. ‘I’m glad that the bulk of the clergy don’t spend their time organising a campaign for unilateral nuclear disarmament. I’m sure that there are more important things for them to be doing,’ Archbishop Ramsey told
The Economist
in 1964.
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The Church of England’s official position had not altered since Britain acquired its nuclear capability in the 1950s. No clergyman was likely to
declare the use of such weaponry as a just act of war, but most confidently endorsed Britain’s status as a nuclear power, which they defended on the not-so-strictly Christian grounds that Britain could be trusted to act responsibly whereas other nations could not. Over an issue on which theological judgement was clouded, most Anglicans adhered to the political consensus.

After the close call of the Cuban Missile Crisis, there followed a calming of tensions in East–West relations, culminating in the signing of the Helsinki Accords in 1975. On the one hand, détente was successful in halting the momentum towards a third world war, but tensions prevailed as the Soviets and the Americans clearly differed in their definitions of what was meant by a policy of accommodation. In the West, a retreat from aggressive posturing was coupled with a new emphasis on shaming the Soviets on their human rights abuses, particularly the persecution of believers. Anyone who read Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s moving memoir
The Gulag Archipelago
(published in the West in 1973), with its vivid first-hand accounts of the atrocities and terror in the Soviet prison camps, could not fail to be swayed by the dark portrait it painted of life in the Soviet Union. Those in Washington and London certainly recognised the political capital that such testimonies afforded, particularly as a rebuke to Soviet sympathisers at home.

In the East, religious organisations were still closely monitored as governments executed a twin policy of repression of churches and an ideological affront against Christianity. But it varied from country to country, with Russia being the most aggressive and East Germany the most relaxed. In Poland, the state adopted a heavy hand over the Catholic Church, particularly on the patronage of clergy and bishops, while the youth were subject to scientific materialism lessons in an effort to dislodge the tight grip of Catholicism amongst the populace. In Romania, party officials regulated publications and buildings and sat on church selection boards, often removing those priests who made a nuisance of themselves. Under such circumstances, it is a little wonder there emerged a generation of religious ‘yes’ men behind the Iron Curtain.
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For some in the West, détente was an acknowledgement that communism was a lasting reality and thus needed to be understood. One man who aimed to do just that for a Christian audience was the Bishop of Southwark, Mervyn Stockwood, in his 1978 work
The Cross and the
Sickle
, which included a supporting foreword by his former student, the then Foreign Secretary David Owen. Recounting his own tours of Eastern Europe in the 1950s and again in the 1970s, Stockwood praised Romania’s Nicolae CeauŞescu as a man of ‘exceptional ability and industry’ and considered Russia ‘a stable society’, which was ‘gradually reaping some benefits after years of hard work’.
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If only Christians would go to communist countries themselves, Stockwood reassuringly wrote, ‘prejudices would evaporate’.
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The most striking aspect of the Bishop of Southwark’s testimony was not his flattering account of communist rule or his fusing of Christianity with the proletarian struggle but his moral relativism. Russians, he insisted, simply had a different concept of human rights to the West, particularly on freedom of speech.

As Stockwood was composing these words, however, the mood was changing. That same year, Edward Norman delivered his BBC Reith Lectures,
Christianity and the World,
forwarding the intellectual and spiritual case against the politicisation of Christianity and specifically the accommodation of Marxist ideas. A year later, the Soviets invaded Afghanistan, which signalled the reigniting of the Cold War, and by 1980 there were three leaders in place – Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan and Pope John Paul II – determined to turn the policy of détente on its head.
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NO ONE WHO
knew anything about the newly elected President, Pope and Prime Minister could have been surprised by their virulent anti-communism. All three had been remarkably consistent in their position well before they assumed office. Reagan’s hostility could be dated back to the
1950s when as President of the Screen Actors Guild he had unmasked ‘un-American’ activities in Hollywood. He had fought the 1980 presidential election on an anti-détente ticket, capitalising on Americans yearning for some gun-slinging hard talk after years of soft diplomacy (which Jimmy Carter’s bungle over the Iran hostage crisis only reinforced).

Ronald Reagan’s Christian faith, much like Margaret Thatcher’s, though, is hard to pin down. From his days as Governor of California, Reagan had mastered the language of conservative evangelicals preaching a message of revival and salvation from the pernicious forces of humanism and hedonism, all of which stood him in good stead as President.
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As to his personal faith, he was known to pray regularly but was not an active churchgoer and appears not to have objected to his wife’s insistence that they consult an astrologer over all his actions and appointments. It was, apparently, the other great female figure in his life, his mother, who inspired his Christian faith. Nelle Reagan was a committed member of the Disciples of Christ Church in Illinois and would conduct church readings, run Bible study classes and, it was said, even perform healings, while the young Ronald was himself a Sunday school teacher and had led prayer meetings.
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Reagan eulogised his mother in the same way that Thatcher eulogised her father and yet, importantly, the Bible-based tutelage that Reagan received at the Disciples of Christ Church in Illinois was not a world away from that experienced by Margaret Thatcher at Finkin Street Methodist Church in Grantham.