Charles Moore was appointed by Margaret Thatcher as her authorised biographer. He published three volumes between 2013 and 2019. Now, timed to coincide with the centenary of his subject’s birth this month, he has condensed those into a single-volume thousand-pager, which I highly recommend for all those interested in the question of how to rescue Britain from chaos, rigor bureaucrasis and the greed of lazy people in high places with copper-bottomed pensions. Since Thatcher’s life is so well documented, I will not rehash the story here, but rather point out some of the more surprising thoughts to arise in a Scottish head when the realities of power in London are explained to it as clearly as Moore does.
Let me start by saying that I found the book almost unputdownable. Thatcher was undoubtedly the second greatest Prime Minister Britain has had since Pitt the Younger. Had she had more of a sense of humour, she might have given Churchill a run for his money. But she let herself down in her later years by her inability to see herself as others saw her. Moore gives a good example.
When once induced by a speechwriter to make a comparison between the LibDems and Monty Python’s “dead parrot”, she had no idea what the phrase referred to. Being thorough, “she insisted on studying a video, which she did carefully, without smiling.” She did not think John Cleese “delivered it very well”. (p. 868) Churchill, by contrast, would have had something engagingly witty to say about Norwegian Blues and/or deranged pet shop men. Thatcher did not.
Her main achievements changed the way Britain worked, which was particularly needed after the Pale Ale socialism of the 1970s. First, she retook the Falklands from fascists. Secondly, she cut the trade unions down to size and booted them out of the corridors of state power. As part of that, she put little Arthur Scargill across her knee and warmed his pale botty with an improving slipper. Thirdly, she sold council houses to their tenants and initiated, for good or ill, the inevitable financialization of everyday life. Fourthly, she liberated capital through the Big Bang, and thereby enabled all sorts of innovation, from financial technology to the National Lottery. Finally, she slowed down the giddy rush into Europe which the sinister insiders of the national bureaucracy were so keen on. They wanted government in general to be able, as the EU has done, to dispense with public opinion as a factor in government. (You can see more on that in this film of the EU’s legal shenanigans: 56 – Oxford Handbook – European Legal History – YouTube )
Most impressive, from a modern Scottish point of view, is that she never stole anything from government. As far as I can see, she never even lied about anything much, other than (arguably) the Belgrano incident. But for most people that was a case of an armed warship sunk during a killing war and so was within the “margin of appreciation”, as the ECtHR likes to put it.
She talked as she thought, and she thought in an intuitive, right-brain sort of way, which is how all creative government should be led. Dealing with the subject of council house sales, Moore quotes Richard Ryder: “This flexibility was evidence that ‘she was a brilliant, intuitive, instinctive politician’, rather than a doctrinaire one.” (p. 201)
That showed immediately after the Brighton bombing. ‘That was meant for me,’ she said. ‘Are you all right, dear?’ When Denis emerged, Bob Kingston, her detective, noticed he was rather shaken, but that she was calm and composed. Butler [the Cabinet Secretary, a smooth-cheeked bureaucrat] told them they must return to Downing Street at once, for the sake of her security. She said, ‘I’m not leaving.’” (p. 448)
Moore says, “She never found the formulation of a programme easy.” (p. 620) In one case, he specifically mentions “instinct”, as always mingled with pragmatism. “Mrs Thatcher’s opposition to Exchange Rate Mechanism entry on economic grounds was genuine; but she – and Alan Walters – were also instinctively against Europe… She consistently opposed extensions of political power to the EEC at the expense of nation states.” (p. 662)
Moore seems to me entirely correct to say: “Thatcherism is not a philosophy so much as a disposition.” (p. 935) He gives a striking example of the political instinct which emerges from that disposition. Giving a speech at the Hague after her fall from power, “she attacked the European Commission’s vision as ‘yesterday’s tomorrow’, which combined ‘all the most striking failures of our age’. She prophesied that large-scale immigration caused by free movement would cause ‘ethnic conflict’ and bring about the rise of extremist parties.” (p. 933) Quite so.
Thatcher was always like that. Early on, Moore notes: “John Hoskyns, an independent businessman, first met her in August 1976. He was impressed by her belief that ‘something had to be done’. ‘I don’t think she had any idea what to do, but she had a patriotic impulse and a sense of shame about what had happened to our country.’ He was struck by her combination of ‘insecurity, sense of destiny and reckless courage.’” (p. 131) Another official says, much later in the story: “She had her instincts, but no road-map.” (p. 783)
With her instincts came insight. (Road-mappers tend to be smugly incurious bureaucrats who have neither instincts nor insights.) Moore gives many examples relating to Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachov, but my favourite one concerned President Botha of South Africa, the “Vanderkaffirbasher” of the Dear Bill Letters. After having been told that for Britain to continue helping him, he had to start thinking of releasing Nelson Mandela from jail, he had a stroke. In response, Thatcher produced a definition of Status worthy of Henry Maine. “President Botha,” she said, “was the slave of his own fears and vanities.” (p. 790, emphasis added)
However, nobody’s perfect and there was one flaw in Thatcher’s world, and that was Denis. Smugger than a bureaucrat’s lanyard, and less friendly, he comes across as a narrow-minded free-loader who rarely had anything constructive to say, and never anything original, kind or genuinely sympathetic. He was not a varsity man. His pater owned a paint firm. He had studied accounting, drove a sports car and liked rugger. He could have been a sort of political Basil Fawlty except that he was so often drunk (and never funny, even unintentionally). And he was mean with it. Moore tells us that, after 1979, Denis never put his hand in his pocket, living high on the hog in 10 Downing Street, presumably saving a fortune on the housekeeping.
Denis was clearly self-centred to the point, I would say, almost of mental illness. He did not seem to finance his wife in any way beyond, perhaps, buying the famous house in Dulwich. There are few signs that this cold and shallow man even loved her. Moore describes him as fairly rich (after he sold Daddy’s firm). It did not make him generous. When he and his still beautiful wife went home to Dulwich after her tearful exit from Downing Street for the last time in November 1990, Moore tells a story that is both tragic and revealing about the emptiness of marriage to an emotional eunuch.
“Later that day,” he writes, “Amanda Ponsonby accompanied the Thatchers to their house in Dulwich. ‘There was no food. She and I sat in the kitchen. She was completely broken.’” (p. 911)
No food! Is that the best the rich English drunkard could do for his loyal, brave, intuitive and, in her own way, compassionate wife of fifty years just a couple of hours after the worst catastrophe of her life?
Get tae fuck, would I think be the conventional Scottish response to such a parody of manhood.
Republished with kind permission of ThinkScotland. Established in 2006, ThinkScotland is not for profit (it makes a loss) and relies on donations to continue publishing our wide range of opinions – you can follow ThinkScotland on X here – like and comment on facebook here and support ThinkScotland by making a donation here.
Ian Mitchell is the author of five books, including The Justice Factory: Can the Rule of Law Survive in 21st Century Scotland? (2020). He also makes films at Bumside Studios in Campbeltown. Mitchell is also the author of Hating Tories: How Nicola Sturgeon Got into Government (2023).
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Ian Mitchel paints a picture of a sainted Margaret Thatcher, which, surprising for a Scotsman, omits all mention of the fact that – generally speaking – she was detested in Scotland. Some of the reasons for that would have made interesting reading, methinks. One of my own stark memories of the Thatcher era is when she was due to come to Glasgow on a visit and some student friends of mine explained why they wouldn’t be joining the protest organised by their peers – reason: they were afraid they would be arrested for some level of violence such as throwing eggs and rotten tomatoes, such was their dislike (to put it mildly) of the then PM.
And when I lived in the north of England, I recall a story told by a former student priest about his family’s deprivation during the miner’s strike. Seminarians were treasured within the Catholic community and family and friends would generously gift them money, albeit relatively small amounts. His mother urged him to visit an aunt who was known to be comfortably off in the hope that she would give him a reasonable gift which he could then bring home to put food on the table. She didn’t. Mitchel’s description of Mrs Thatcher as “… in her own way, compassionate” brought to my mind the rather more typical Scots response “Ach away!” More typical (I sincerely hope) than “Get ta F…”
Why think of the Lottery or allowing some people to buy houses in part at other people’s expense as achievements?
Let’s not forget her main character weakness in increasingly believing that she alone was correct and everyone else wrong (delusions of grandeur and affectation of regal superiority).
Initially had the insight to marry for financial security and to undergo voice coaching etc. but unnecessarily ultimately fell due to a failure to read the room or adapt.
I am not for or against the blessed Margeret, but what is her lasting legacy, council house sales maybe, was that a good thing?. What she may be remembered for is instilling some hard economic facts that the electorate found distasteful as to quote Plato “No one is more hated then he who tells the truth”