God and Mrs Thatcher (45 page)

When, in 1980, Cardinal Laszlo Lekai of Hungary visited England, the Foreign Office, Church of England and the Catholic Church all went out of their way to make him feel welcome. Lekai was an important figure within Eastern European Catholicism who was credited
with preserving the Catholic Church in his native land (his predecessor had had to run his ministry from the US embassy after the 1956 Hungarian uprising); but many considered that Lekai had gone too far in supporting the state. Within Hungary, he was satirically known as the ‘peace priest’. On his visit to London, Lekai was treated to some of the finer things in the ‘free world’; a lunch at the Athenaeum Club, tea at St Paul’s, a day at the Henley Regatta and, finally, a pilgrimage to Thomas à Becket’s tomb at Canterbury. (Perhaps it was hoped that Cardinal Lekai might be inspired by Becket’s example.)

Runcie was always mindful to tread a fine line between cordiality and criticism with the Russian patriarchs. When he publicly came out in support of the government’s proposed boycott the Moscow Olympics in 1980, it was misconstrued in Russia: ‘What you said was no doubt seen in Moscow as support for the Conservative line, just as the Patriarch has to voice support for Soviet foreign policy,’ noted one of his staff.
74
The concept of an Established Church that was openly critical of the state was not something that made much sense to the subservient patriarchs of the Russian Orthodox Church.

As the Archbishop of Canterbury’s diplomatic envoy, Terry Waite’s chief responsibility was as ambassador to the Anglican Communion, but it was not long before he veered off his official job description and became consumed by the more dangerous and exciting world of hostage negotiation. In the days when hostage crises in the Middle East were not a media show and negotiators had not yet realised the power of domestic public pressure, Terry Waite was to prove himself an extremely able man behind the scenes.

Since the 1979 Revolution, all clergy in the Anglican diocese of Iran had been either killed, imprisoned or exiled. The bishop had had his house broken into and his son had been murdered. His secretary, Miss Waddell, had failed to get an exit visa and had been ambushed in a hotel where she had been gagged, blindfolded and detained along with two missionaries and one English businessman. Tehran radio had reported that the
government had unmasked a plot to overthrow the revolution, involving the Church of England, with Miss Waddell allegedly a spy backed by the CIA. After weeks of silence, Tehran agreed to enter negotiations about the prisoners, but only in exchange for two Iranian students then imprisoned in Britain. The Foreign Office, though, was in no position to respond. Anglo-Iranian relations, which had weakened since the revolution, had completely frozen in the wake of the Iranian embassy siege in May 1980, which Tehran claimed had been deliberately staged by the UK and US governments. Unable to call on the Foreign Office for help, Terry Waite turned to Archbishop Capucci, the Vatican’s negotiator in the Middle East who was then playing a key role in the ongoing US-Iranian hostage crisis and was known to have the sympathetic ear of Ayatollah Khomeini. Capucci was a hero in the Middle East after serving twelve years in prison for smuggling arms to the PLO (they had been found in the back of his Mercedes limousine), with the governments of Egypt, Iraq, Libya and Syria all issuing stamps celebrating the archbishop. Capucci arrived in London in October 1980, where he was hosted by the Bishop of London, given full use of the Archbishop of Canterbury’s car and, with the agreement of the Foreign Office, allowed to visit the Iranian students being detained in Wormwood Scrubs. Runcie also handed Capucci documents refuting any conspiracy claims and a personal letter from himself to Ayatollah Khomeini reassuring him of the Anglican prisoners’ innocence. Four months later, to the Foreign Office’s surprise, the Iranian captives were released in a move that demonstrated not only the diplomatic skills of the archbishop’s envoy but also the level of trust and cooperation that existed between the Vatican and Lambeth Palace.
75

Waite’s next success came in negotiating the release of British citizens being held in Libya. Foreign Office relations with Libya at this point were as bad if not worse than they had been with Iran especially following the Libyan embassy siege in 1984, in which policewoman Yvonne Fletcher had been killed. So when it came to the capturing of four British nationals by the Libyan government, the Foreign Office
turned to Terry Waite for help. In what must have been a bizarre scene, Waite spent the Christmas of 1984 in a Bedouin tent with Colonel Gaddafi. Waite’s first smart move was to greet Gaddafiin Arabic; his second was to present the leader, who had a high regard of his own intellectual capabilities, with a book on the relationship between Greek and Arabic thought. Gaddafi treated his guest and the prisoners to a carol service and later insisted on phoning the Archbishop of Canterbury to wish him a Merry Christmas. Waite’s combination of flattery and ‘soft’ diplomacy had worked; months later the prisoners were released.

It was not long before Waite’s negotiating skills became of great interest to the Americans, who contacted him, via the Presbyterian Church of America, to help with the release of American captives in the Middle East. Robert Runcie, conscious of the need to rein in Waite, urged him to return to prepare for the forthcoming Lambeth Conference. Runcie had been warned by Cabinet Secretary Sir Robert Armstrong not to get too involved with the Americans, but Waite was adamant that he could do some good.

Waite was later to become implicated in selling arms for hostages as part of the US Iran-Contra affair. He always insisted that he did not know about the arms to Iran and that the Americans had double-crossed him by negotiating with Hezbollah. Waite was captured in Beirut and held in chains for five years with no word from his captors as to whether he was alive or dead. The only way that Lambeth Palace knew anything of his situation was through a Kurdish man whom Runcie’s PA used to meet at Victoria Station for information. Runcie kept a vigil and candle burning continually in the years that Waite was held in captivity.

Theories and rumours are still rife as to why Waite was released when he was, with some even suggesting that it had been Iran rather than the Libyans who had been responsible for the Lockerbie bombing of Pan Am Flight 103, but that the American and British were content to allow Libyans to be blamed to ease tensions with Iran. Days after
Libyan intelligence officers were charged with the Lockerbie bombing, Waite and his fellow prisoners were released.
76
Reflecting on Waite’s role, Runcie later said: ‘Of course it was totally absorbing to him, but if he was going to be an international negotiator, he oughtn’t [have been] on my staff.’
77

IN
1990,
AS
the Iron Curtain was being ripped down across Europe, Thatcher used the occasion of what would be her final party conference speech to declare that the ‘secular creed’ of socialism had ‘utterly failed’ and that the moral case for a free capitalist society reigned supreme: ‘Ours is a creed which travels and endures. Its truths are written in the human heart. It is the faith which once more has given life to Britain and offers hope to the world.’
78
According to Thatcher the victory of capitalism over communism was not an economic, or even diplomatic, success but a moral victory. Capitalism was presented as the natural order, one from which both Britain and Eastern Europe had temporarily diverted, but had been steered back onto the right path once more. Thatcher seemed to present the outcome of the Cold War as an act of divine providence, with herself as a victorious Christian warrior; a portrayal which her subsequent memoirs and lecture tour did much to cement. Delivering a speech to the Polish Senate in 1991, Margaret Thatcher declared: ‘it is not just that capitalism works. It is not just that capitalism is morally right. What we have to recognise and proclaim with the most intense conviction is that capitalism works because it is morally right.’
79