History of England 1-6

When it became apparent that after two defeats Heath could no longer lead the party, Thatcher expected her friend and colleague Keith Joseph to put himself forward. Ever diffident, he declined, leaving Thatcher to uphold and defend the new creed known as ‘monetarism’. It remained to inform Heath of her decision; legend has it that he offered her the blunt retort ‘You’ll lose!’ The truth was that he heard her out and said simply, ‘Thank you.’ On her victory for the party leadership, knocking out Heath, Whitelaw, Prior and Peyton, Thatcher remarked that ‘I almost wept when they told me. I did weep.’ Plenty more tears would follow.

On 4 May 1979, Thatcher drove to Buckingham Palace, and so began one of the more unusual periods of English history. The economy was turbulent, but she had an instinctive conviction that her financial policies were correct. This was confirmed and encouraged by her more or less permanent dissatisfaction with, and distrust for, the nascent European Community. ‘They are much cleverer than us,’ she said; ‘they will run rings around us.’ But she was also guided by what many considered to be old-fashioned nationalism. She had been happy to support the ‘Common Market’ when it was still referred to as such, but the creeping federalism within Europe came to unsettle and even enrage her and she referred to VAT payments to Europe as ‘our money’ or ‘my money’.

Above all, Thatcher saw Conservatism as an ideal, not merely as a political stance. It was precisely the notion that Conservatism could be something as vulgar as a crusade that so displeased the patricians of the party, but it was to be her distinctive contribution to a party that had spent the post-war years in broad agreement with Labour. Another of her particular skills was sensing the mood of the nation, at least in her early years. ‘I think,’ she said in a television interview in 1978, ‘people are really rather afraid that this country might be rather swamped by people with a different culture.’ The remark caused intense outrage among the ‘media’, but not perhaps among the population as a whole.

She faced a nation directed by the fluctuations of the stock market and by the relentless drive of materialism, by the energy of popular music and the colourful panorama of television. Because of the latter medium, the nature of news and comment had an instantaneous visual impact that supplanted analysis and reflection. The country shone with screens, with flickering images lasting for no more than a few seconds. Thatcher was the ideal embodiment of such a world – if ever an ascending prime minister was willing to act as chameleon, it was she. Under the auspices of the PR consultant Gordon Reece, she doffed the faintly ridiculous hats which reminded too many of the Mothers’ Union. She underwent voice training. The playwright Ronald Millar provided her with mantras: ‘Let us be cool, calm – and elected’ was the first. Laurence Olivier himself assisted in her voice coaching sessions. The singer Lulu and the comedians Kenny Everett and Ken Dodd were all happy to be associated with Thatcher. This was to change – in the years to come, no self-respecting ‘artiste’ would dream of giving succour to the lady from Grantham.

Employment in the early Eighties became of paramount importance, with lists of the most significant redundancies read out on the television news as if they were casualties in a war. But for Thatcher, these casualties were the price to be paid if inflation was to be conquered. She had inherited a tax system that could be described as either ‘confiscatory’ or ‘redistributive’ according to personal conviction. The upper rate of tax was set at 83 per cent, but it began at £20,000; it was not levied only upon millionaires. Thus it seemed as if Labour had taxed the rich to feed the poor, only to render everyone poor. It is within this context that Thatcher’s ‘Franciscan’ exhortation should be understood.