By Michael Barone
Tuesday, July 23, 2013
The first volume of Charles Moore's authorized biography
of Margaret Thatcher, covering her life up to Britain's victory in the
Falklands, is out. It takes its place among the finest political biographies of
all time.
Thatcher gave Moore full access to her papers and to all
her friends and relatives, on condition that she never see the book. It was a
wise precaution.
Moore is a conservative, more traditionalist than Mrs.
Thatcher (as he always calls her) and broadly sympathetic to her causes. But he
was able to get frank responses from relatives, friends, and colleagues that
might never have been forthcoming had they thought the book would be published
in her lifetime.
Moore catches her in some lies and omissions. A cache of
letters to her sister showed she had four boyfriends before she married the
rich businessman Denis Thatcher. She always wanted to wear fetching clothes and
have her hair done.
The most important single fact about her, he says, is not
that she was a conservative but that she was a woman, ready to use her charms
as well as her intellect in dealing with men.
That's not quite in sync with the common understanding of
her in this country, particularly among conservatives, who saw Thatcher as the
Iron Lady, fearlessly putting her ideas into effect, eschewing compromise and
never flinching from principle.
Such an approach, Moore indicates, would have been doomed
to failure and was usually not her way. Her ideas developed slowly and changed
over time. She waited to fight for many of her great victories -- over the coal
miners, in privatizing government entities, subjects for volume two -- until
she had laid the groundwork and was fully prepared. Hers was a strategy of
conviction tempered by prudence, compromise in pursuit of later success.
Consider her early parliamentary career, unfamiliar to
American admirers. As education secretary, she acquiesced in phasing out
grammar schools which provided upward mobility to brainy lower-class children.
She didn't like the policy, but support was too strong.
She ended up being cheered by the teachers union.
Nor was she was an early opponent of the European Union
(then called the Common Market). Like most centrist politicians of both major
parties, she supported British entry.
As a tourist I watched the debate on the issue in the
House of Commons in October 1971. West Country gentlemen with plummy
pronunciation and Scots and North of England Laborites in incomprehensible
regional accents spoke out against the Common Market. Thatcher may well have
been in the hall, but I have no recollection of her speaking.
Four years later, after Edward Heath led the party to
defeat, Thatcher was elected Conservative Party leader. Most senior party
leaders voted against her.
In four years as leader of the opposition, Thatcher was a
strong debater but not always a propagator of new ideas. Then Prime Minister
James Callaghan made the miscalculation to delay the election until May 1979.
The 1979 Winter of Discontent -- strikes by coal miners,
public employees, garbage men, even gravediggers -- turned voters away from
Labor. The Conservatives ran a negative campaign, with the slogan "Laboor
isn't working," and won a solid majority.
As prime minister, Thatcher did not always spur her
colleagues to go as far as she liked. She acquiesced in tax increases until she
got a budget with deeper spending cuts in 1981.
She started the process of privatizing public housing and
privatized one public company by time of the June 1982 Falklands victory. She
stocked up on coal and gave the miners union a lavish settlement; confrontation
would come later.
Argentina's capture of the Falklands in April 1982 came
as an unwelcome surprise at a time when Conservatives were running third in
polls, far behind the new Social Democrats, led by four former Labor ministers.
Moore shows how she made the decisions that led to
victory. And contrary to American conservatives' assumptions, she was angered
at times by Ronald Reagan's support of U.S. mediation efforts and by the
pro-Argentina stance of Jeane Kirkpatrick.
Charles Moore leaves off with Thatcher speaking at a dinner
of 120 all-male officials celebrating victory in the Falklands. Spouses were in
another room. At the end she rose and said, "Gentlemen, shall we join the
ladies?"
"It may well have been," he writes, "the
happiest moment of her life."
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