History of England 1-6

She went back to the first principles of privatization. Her chancellor, Nigel Lawson, had written to her in 1983 warning that the new life of the private companies would impinge upon ‘the giant utilities and unprofitable companies’, but nothing could stop her now. Twenty-three enterprises, including the British Gas Corporation, British Telecom and the National Coal Board, were up for sale. Half of the shares of British Telecom were put on sale in November 1984 at a low price, which rose by 43 pence on the first day and never dipped. For the first time in its history, the stock exchange seemed a benevolent institution, and it spread a sparkle over the late period of capitalism that socialists could not overcome. In effect it changed the whole attitude of the country: private and public wealth now went hand in hand. The first mobile telephone sets were sold, and the proportion of homes that were owner-occupied rose from 55 per cent to 67 per cent. It was an extraordinary metamorphosis, though it went largely unnoticed at the time. But on 27 October 1986, the fissures of the financial volcano merged and created a mighty explosion which became known as the ‘Big Bang’.

53

The Brighton blast

On 12 October 1984, the Conservative party was to hold its conference at the Grand Hotel in Brighton. In the early hours of the morning, Norman Tebbit noticed the chandelier above his head swaying. Within seconds, the ceiling began to collapse. Tebbit sensed the cause in a moment. The building had been bombed. He survived, though his wife, Margaret, was left paralysed from the neck down. In later years, he would remember the friendly grip of Fred, a fireman, pulling him through the rubble and to safety.

The IRA’s principal target also survived, though her bathroom was wrecked. Five people were killed in the blast, among them the wife of the chief whip, John Wakeham. After she had visited the survivors and comforted the staff, Mrs Thatcher and her husband retired to bed for a few hours. ‘We said a prayer and tried to go to sleep,’ she recalled. Daybreak brought two urgent questions. The first was whether the delegates should immediately return to Westminster. But though shaken and sleepless, Thatcher was unmoved. ‘The conference will go on as usual,’ she told the press, pale-faced and wary-eyed. A second question now arose: given that most of the bedrooms in the hotel were now crime scenes, what were the delegates, still in pyjamas and nightgowns, to wear to the conference? Marks & Spencer were prevailed upon to open their doors at 8 a.m. And so, with all immaculately dressed, the conference started at 9.30 ‘precisely’, as Thatcher was quick to point out. She had proved yet again that she could be neither cowed nor deflected, and the nation took note.

‘We do not surrender to bullets or bombs,’ Thatcher had proclaimed in 1983. If she had, it would have been no wonder. The IRA had been intensifying its campaign, pressing ever harder on the nerve of British fears. Two members of the Irish security forces had been killed; a Unionist politician had been assassinated; and Harrods, the symbol of all that was affluent on the mainland, was targeted. Six people died. The IRA’s campaign had intensified since the late Seventies. In 1976, in the aftermath of bombings in Guildford and Birmingham, the Labour government had withdrawn political status from those convicted of terrorist offences, a policy that Thatcher continued. ‘There can be no question of granting political status,’ she said. ‘A crime is a crime is a crime.’ The IRA was only the most famous, and not always the most brutal, of the terrorist groups in the Province, but if every atrocity was presumed to be the work of the IRA, then it had only itself to blame. Moral considerations aside, the political folly of taking ‘the war’ to the British mainland should have been apparent to its high command. But the IRA was still riding high on the deaths of the hunger strikers in 1981, a cause which gained it yet more funds from the United States. With the Brighton bombing, however, direct attempts on the life of the premier ended. ‘Today we have been unlucky, but remember, we have only to be lucky once. You will have to be lucky always,’ the IRA offered. But it was bluster.