The first volume in Charles Moore’s magisterial biography of Margaret Thatcher was published in 2013, the second in 2015, and the third volume earlier this month to round off one of the great political biographies of the age. Like the earlier volumes, Herself Alone as it is titled, is superbly researched and brilliantly written, and notwithstanding the years between the second and the third volume they naturally flow into each other.
Charles Moore is of course an established journalist with an acute understanding of and insight into British society and politics and the most likely person to produce a biography worthy of Margaret Thatcher‘s three terms of office as Prime Minister, her contribution to international politics and, of course, specifically to world political attitudes toward South Africa. This is something of which as South African ambassador to the Court of St James at the time, I came to appreciate enormously.
The volume begins with Thatcher's return to office in the election of June 1987 and ends with a chapter headed “The Light Fades: Good night, Margaret, sleep well". Behind her are the miners strike, the Falklands War, the Brighton bombing which killed five people and just missed Thatcher and her husband Denis, and two successful general elections. But to come in the period after June 1987 were Margaret Thatcher's increased participation in international affairs, the poll tax, budgetary problems and her growing unpopularity within the country and the Conservative Party leading, of course, to her failure to be re-elected leader in 1990 – in what Moore describes as her political assassination – and her subsequent resignation and retirement.
This is a fascinating read but I found Moore’s account of the period leading up to the Conservative leadership election riveting. She was absolutely determined to have another term – so much so that she and her remaining supporters in the Cabinet and Parliament didn't read the signs.
Many Conservative members of Parliament wanted to hold their seats in the coming election but didn't think they would under Thatcher. The results of what by-elections took place at the time confirmed this. The Cabinet was completely divided in its support for her. While few wanted Michael Heseltine who was expected to run, there was more undeclared support for John Major and Douglas Hurd than Margaret Thatcher.
Geoffrey Howe had been a member of Thatcher's first cabinet, and although they differed on certain issues (attitudes on South Africa for one), they had worked together over the years – although Hough had increasingly been the butt of her rudeness. His resignation from cabinet days before the leadership election was devastating and had senior party members concluding that she had to go.
The first ballot, which took place while she was in Paris attending a European security conference and which she won but not with the required majority, so necessitating a second ballot. Returning to London determined to continue the fight, she eventually got the message from various people close to her and including husband Denis who gently put it to her: "Don’t go on, love."
Once she had withdrawn, Major, whom she had bullied into nominating her, announced his candidature, Heseltine then stood down and Major went on to lead the Conservative Party and become Prime Minister. It is clearly much more complex than this and to really appreciate it one should read the book.
Retirement for Margaret Thatcher was not what it is for most people. Initially, after so many years in office, she was totally lost. She didn't immediately have a house to go to after number 10. Initially, the Fords loaned her their Eaton Square apartment where, incidentally, my wife Anita and I met with her to talk over a late afternoon whiskey about a speech Mrs Thatcher was going to make in South Africa.
It was a very sad occasion. She was clearly downcast and the apartment was filled with Ford memorabilia but totally impersonal as far as she was concerned. As we left the apartment which was marked off by arc lights and several security people, Anita remarked that she was like "a bird in a cage."
What is also clear, according to Moore, is that she didn't have any money. It seems Denis and she had very separate financial arrangements. Amazingly her parliamentary salary once she resigned as prime minister was £21,000 a year and her prime ministerial pension £25,000 a year. While as Moore says there was something admirably democratic about this penny-pinching, for Thatcher this created immense difficulties. She was a figure of global renown, receiving endless demands for speeches, media appearances and interviews, as well as many thousands of requests from the public for support which began to pile up in sacks.
She was also totally impractical in handling daily demands. Charles Powell, her long-term foreign affairs private secretary, tells of receiving a phone call from her on a Saturday morning complaining that the hot water system was not working. He told her to get a plumber. How do you do that? Look in the Yellow Pages. I haven't done that for years. In the end Powell had to go around and fix it. Moore says that she probably hadn't dialled anyone directly on the telephone since 1979 and consequently had no idea what anyone’s number was. She clearly didn't know how to use an answering machine.
All this changed when some well-connected admirers, friends and long-term associates got behind her. They organised an office and secretarial services for her and got her to write her memoirs. And then she began to give speeches all over the world Charles Moore says for 10 years after leaving domestic politics.
Moore obviously greatly respects his subject and this is reflected in several passages. But I found this epitaph, which also explains the title of this volume deeply moving: “As is often the case with great leaders – it makes them the subject of tragedy – – her vices were inseparable from her virtues. Her intelligence, courage, nonconformity and commitment set her way above the common run of politicians, but these involved a pig-headedness which was sometimes more than frail Tory flesh and blood could bear. So when she slipped, too few were left to break her fall. As she had begun, so she ended, a woman isolated in a man's world – herself alone."
I earlier mentioned Margaret Thatcher's thinking and role in respect to South Africa, and as much as anybody else I had looked forward to the publication of this volume. Moore had interviewed me and asked me to assist him. I first met Margaret Thatcher in 1971. She was then Education Secretary in the Heath government and was on an official visit to South Africa. I was editor of New Nation and teaching political science at Wits and professor Bozzolli the Vice Chancellor invited Anita and me to a small faculty lunch in her honour. The second time was early on in my ambassadorship and was at one of several private dinners Harry Oppenheimer organised for us at his Eaton Square apartment.
From about 1983 Thatcher was the only world leader who maintained continuous contact with the leaders of apartheid South Africa. She could rely on her good friend Ronald Reagan until Congress made that impossible. And later linked up with Helmut Kohl in pressing for reforms. What should be clear is that she strongly opposed racial discrimination and in fact, according to Charles Moore, as from 1984 called for Nelson Mandela‘s release. She wanted constructive and peaceful change and therefore vigorously opposed international sanctions against the country to the point where the Queen felt that she was alienating the Commonwealth.
When it came to South Africa she was a lone voice in the Cabinet, opposed even by Foreign Secretary Geoffrey Howe. As Moore points out, quoting Charles Powell Thatcher's private Foreign Secretary, she took personal control of policy on South Africa which was worked out at the highest level in Downing Street and cut out Geoffrey Howe and his officials. To quote Powell: "Mrs Thatcher took over the direction of policy with some help from me, and Denis Worrall was an invaluable source of information on debates within the South African government." In fact, he used me he says "almost as my spy within South African officialdom"!
The South African government's response to Prime Minister Thatcher under the presidency of President PW Botha was the main reason for my resigning as ambassador and returning to a political career in opposition to the government. And, as Moore says, when Thatcher said goodbye to me she made it clear “ her ability to hold out against sanctions was being steadily eroded by the failure of the South African government to make progress with reform; and she remained convinced that progress would only come with the release of Mandela.”
That was an important part of the message that I took as a political independent to voters of the Helderberg constituency six months later. I lost by 39 votes out of more than 18,000 cast in an election which many commentators said signalled the end of “whites only“ politics. And Margaret Thatcher played a role in it. As Moore puts it: "She privately authorised an experienced election manager from the Scottish Conservatives to go out to help him."
In President FW de Klerk, Botha‘s successor, she found the Afrikaner leader she was looking for. He was mainly responsible for the release of Nelson Mandela and others in February 1990, and together with Mandela saw in a constitutional democracy in 1994. Thatcher was, with the support of Robin Renwick the engaging and connected UK ambassador (he was a friend of Powell who recommended him to Thatcher,) the only world leader who could legitimately claim to have contributed to realising what was then known as “the South Africa miracle."
Denis Worrall is a former SA Ambassador to the Court of St James. His memoir, The Independent Factor, My Journey through Politics and Diplomacy was published earlier this year.
