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Simon Jenkins |
Thatcher’s children
Simon Jenkins’ analysis of Margaret Thatcher’s legacy could have been improved by interviews with people in her cabinet, says Lord Peter Walker
Thatcher and Sons, A Revolution in Three Acts by Simon Jenkins. Allen Lane. £20.
AS someone who was a member of all Margaret Thatcher’s Cabinets, I was naturally fascinated to read Simon Jenkins’ book.
Simon Jenkins has for a long time been one of the country’s leading journalists, often expressing novel and surprising views, but always expressing them well and with enthusiasm.
His book is no exception and should be read by all of those who are fascinated by the impact that Margaret Thatcher made on Britain and on the world.
I do find, however, one important weakness in the book. The author has relied on the fact that he was there and observed the scene year by year but, of course, he observed the scene, like any of us, from his own viewpoint and the successes and failures were judged in accordance with his belief as to what should have happened.
But the book would have been better if instead of relying on his own memories and views he had interviewed some of the leading personalities and characters during this era.
For example, he expresses his view that two of the greatest successes of Margaret Thatcher were defeating Arthur Scargill in the coal strike and the sale of council houses. It so happens that by chance I was the person most connected with both of those policies.
On the coal strike, I telephoned Margaret Thatcher, as Prime Minister, every day throughout the very long period of the strike to brief her as to what had happened the day before and what was likely to happen on the day ahead.
She had asked me to take on the post of Secretary of State for Energy because having seen how Mr Scargill constantly tried to get a strike in the years before the General Election, but failed because he could not win a ballot of the miners, she was sure he would keep on trying. She was right.
But as Peter Walker was known to be very much to the left of the Tory Cabinet the right wing naturally suspected that he might not be strong enough in opposition to Mr Scargill.
In practice I was determined that he must be defeated in the strike he had created if the British economy and if British democracy was going to prevail.
Throughout the dispute I had the total support of the Prime Minister on every action I took and when some of the right wing members of the Cabinet suggested alternative policies I always had the backing of Margaret Thatcher for she realised that one of the reasons Mr Scargill was defeated was that the railwaymen and lorry drivers kept delivering coal to the power stations which they would not have done if the dispute had become a dispute over Tory trade union reform.
On council house sales, it was Ted Heath’s Government that launched the policy for the sale of council houses, and it was Margaret Thatcher who continued the policy.
But when I proposed a more radical policy to transfer all council houses to the private sector, under pressure from Nick Ridley, the then Secretary of State for the Environment, who argued that tenants needed a landlord and not the privileges as well as duties of being an owner occupier, my radical approach did not proceed. I mention these two facts as illustrations of Simon not carrying out the in-depth interviews that would have been needed to clarify what actually happened.
Perhaps the greatest debates about this book will be on his theme that John Major, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown are, in terms of policy, the sons of Margaret Thatcher, pursuing her policies.
Tony Blair and Gordon Brown have pursued taxation policies that she would never have pursued. They have built up substantial deficits on budgets and trade which she would have intensely opposed, and their contempt for Parliament and the judicial traditions of this country have, I know, horrified her.
John Major certainly agreed with her economic approach and was the Chief Secretary to the Treasury at a crucial period of her Government.
He was more liberal in his approach to social problems and I believe if elected for a second term by a united Conservative party he would have been very successful. But it was a small group of anti-Europeans who destroyed the unity of the Conservative party, a small group that did not contain Margaret Thatcher.
The great advantage of the book is that it is, as always with Simon Jenkins, very well written, an easy and enjoyable read and one that will give a younger generation a very objective summary of the leadership of a very remarkable lady.
I hope that Simon Jenkins will again write on this subject. I would very much like someone with the ability and writing skills of Simon to write a book on what is, in fact, the great political issue of the coming years, the balance between compassion and efficiency.
If you just go for compassion you never have the means to deliver the compassion you would like to deliver. If you just go for efficiency you create a divisive society where the less able and the less energetic suffer a miserable life and divide society and thus destroy the efficiency. It may be in a simplistic judgement one can say that Margaret Thatcher concentrated too much on the efficiency which, heaven knows, the country needed and that Labour Governments post-war at times concentrated purely on the compassion and could never provide the economic growth necessary to achieve their objectives.
When in a few years’ time Simon Jenkins writes a major book on David Cameron it would be interesting to see whether David Cameron will have created the consensus in British Government where the correct balance between compassion and efficiency has been achieved.
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