(narrator) margaret thatcher isbritain's longest-serving prime minister, the first female leader of the western world. during her 11 years in officeshe sought to change britain's way of life and its position on the international stage. both revered and reviledin almost equal measure, she bestrode the political sceneboth at home and abroad with a passion and in a mannernot seen before or since. but who was she,and where did she come from? and how did she come to power,
first as leader of her partyand then as prime minister? it's always supposed to be a tremendousordeal, a maiden speech. was it for you? (narrator) margaret thatcher was elected toparliament as the member for finchley in 1959. aged 33, an oxford graduate turned lawyer, married, with twins, mrs thatcher looked and soundedevery inch the tory lady. there's been universal praisefor your performance yesterday, talk of the front bench.how do you feel about that? i think we'll just tryto be a very good backbencher first.
until these two are older, i couldn't take onany more political responsibilities. these responsibilities are quite enough. (narrator) but this wasno girl' from the affluent shires. margaret thatcher wasa greengrocer's daughter from grantham whose father, alderman alfred roberts,had fostered her early interest in politics. her father became the mayor of grantham andwas involved a great deal in local public life. and he took his daughter,his younger daughter, who is the one he obviously saw as, in a way,carrying on his tradition - almost a kind of son -
with him on public duties. so she was, from a very early age -i think 13 or 14 - sitting in on public meetings, watching herfather conduct council discussions and so on, and at the same time conscious ofbeing very much loved by him. (narrator) marriage to a man of means had enabled mrs thatchernot just to establish a family but to pursue her political ambitions. i think denis was a very big influence on her. very... he encouraged her very much.
he met her through politics, of course, and it was as a politicianat the beginning of her career that they first got to know each other. (narrator) soon after her arrival in parliament,mrs thatcher was made a junior minister. her promotion attracted much attention -though not necessarily for the right reasons. what will it mean in your home life?obviously you'll have to make adjustments. i think it's going to meaneven more organisation and method. i'm a great believer in those two things. i could never do itwere it not for the fact.
that my home iswithin 35 minutes of westminster. i have an excellent nanny / housekeeper,which helps immensely. but i see the children every morningand they're at school all day, and of course i make a point ofbeing with them at weekends. if you run all the budgets in a racecalled the high taxation stakes, i am glad to say that conservative budgetsdon't come in any of the first four places. (narrator) off to a flying start, thatcher wasthen appointed to the shadow front bench as a treasury spokespersonafter the tories lost office in 1964. the fourth prize to callaghan in 1964.
this chap callaghan must go! (narrator) but it was followingthe 1' 970 conservative election victory that margaret thatcherreally came to public prominence. as education secretary in edward heath'scabinet, she put an end to free school milk. (man) the labour party decidedthey could hang this round her neck: "margaret thatcher, milk snatcher." and she wasn't as tough as she later became. i think, for a period,it had a very bad effect on her - the lady, the mother, who had snatched awaythe children's milk from them in schools.
in fact, the proposal had been on the tapisin the ministry of education for some time. it wasn't a sudden revolution in policy,and it wasn't really her fault. (narrator) having been dubbed by the "sun"as "the most unpopular woman in britain", it was an early test of her mettle and character. the criticism she receivedover the milk-snatcher business was unfair, but it was typical of the time, when it was felt the government's role wasto support everybody from cradle to grave. much of margaret thatcher's thinking andpolicy later was to move us away from that to spending public moneyonly on what was necessary - education -
and not on what peopleshould be providing for themselves - to a substantial degree, welfare, foodfor every child in the country, and so on. she would have been quite upsetabout the reaction, and prime minister ted heath wasmore than prepared to let her take the blame and indeed was on the point of dropping her. i suspect that some of that animositybetween heath and thatcher actually impelled herto stand against him in due time. (narrator) thatcher remained at educationuntil the fall of heath's government in 1974. as such, she remained an observerwatching from the sidelines
as edward heath battledwith the coal' miners over pay rises. and, as things started to fall apart in early1974 with power cuts and the three-day week, she was almost certainly out of the loopwhen it came to the decision by heath to call an election based on the question:"who governs britain?" the resounding reply of “not you“ saw margaret and the rest of the toriesback in opposition. despite election defeat,heath refused to resign, but it was not longbefore his leadership was being challenged. and almost by default,the challenge came from a woman.
she had not intendedto be a candidate for leadership. her man was keith joseph. and she was really shakenwhen keith joseph announced, for reasons which are well knownin that speech he made in birmingham, that he really wasn't the manto be prime minister. and she actually said to me: "somebody representing our point of viewhas to stand, so i will stand." and she just felt that the partyhad to be offered an alternative to ted. (narrator) margaret thatcherbeat edward heath by 130 votes to 119.
it didn't give her victory, but it did meanshe had a head start for the second round. a lot of conservatives wanted to punish himwithout pushing him out as leader. persuaded mrs thatcher could never win,quite a block of conservative mps voted for margaret in order to give ted heatha shot across the bows that would make him behave better. they didn't want to see him go -certainly not for her. (man) so you fully expect your wife to beleading the conservative party, do you? - i do.- how do you feel about it? delighted. terribly proud, naturally.wouldn't you?
(narrator) heath retired from the contest. almost immediately,four of his former allies entered the fray. in doing so, they split the vote. but even taken together,they couldn't catch thatcher. she won by 146 to william whitelaw's 79in february 1975. (reporter) mrs thatcher looked as though shetoo was well' content with the day's events. she's become accustomed to flashbulbsand arc lights over the fast days, but after one last session of posing,called a halt... ...six, five, four...
"pieading a need to returnto the committee stage of the finance bill and to tell mr thatcher all about it. (parkinson) the old guardwere totally shaken by her success. at her first shadow cabinet meeting after shebecame leader - i've often thought about this - she sat down at the table knowing thatvirtually everyone there had not voted for her. they'd voted for somebody else,or they'd been candidates themselves. so it was quite a has: fin her. (playing “scotland the brave“) (narrator) margaret thatcher had not expectedto be leader of her party.
she had once said that her ultimate ambitionwas to be chancellor of the exchequer. but now, as leader,she was also aware of being an outsider, a factor that informedhow she handled her leadership and her attitude towardsher senior people, insiders all. i remember vividlyher first appearance after her election on the dais at the end of the committee room to greet the 1922 committee,the assembled party. and there was a sense of history about it. i visualise it with this frailjoan of arc-like woman arriving,
the knights of the shires on the platformbeside her, looking deferential. and that was a change of mood and attitude. i don't think there wasmuch sedition rumbling along. obviously some were disappointed. i think that they actually thought thatit would be, as it were, a nine-day wonder. and i don't think that they thoughtshe was ever going to win an election. in fact, i can remember in those early days,even after she'd become prime minister, the general assumption was that she'd bea one-term inhabitant of number ten. (narrator) wary of those around her,she was also paironised by labour mps
and even the then prime minister,james callaghan. if the tory party were uncertain aboutmrs thatcher as leader of the opposition, the labour party was equally uncertain of her. they took a very nasty and unpleasantapproach to her in the house of commons - catcalling, deriding her, usingsqueaking voices to try to humiliate her. they were very well organisedat trying to undermine her confidence. and they pursued it tosome pretty ferocious and unfriendly degrees. jim callaghan also used to patronise heracross the dispatch box. and i remember her at timesgoing into the house of commons
almost shaking with...not anxiety but frustration because she knew she was going to receivea terrible battering by the labour party? and perhaps not get the entire supportof the conservative party behind her. (narrator) where margaret might struggleto maintain her supremacy within the party, among grass-root conservatives her bossy, no-nonsense politics andhabitual references to good housekeeping made her a popular figure. madam chairman, ladies and gentlemen. i presume this is to enable usto sweep britain clean of socialism.
(applause) she enunciated very clearly the fightthat most tories were involved in and really wanted to see pursuedwith some energy, and that was the fightagainst creeping socialism. hello, dear. of course.have you been across... (narrator) the novelty of a womanas leader of the tory party also lent mrs thatchera certain celebrity status. lovely dark red colour, isn't it?much prettier than the house of commons. it's half term, dear.can i borrow that to sign this one?
(narrator) and, unusuallyfor the leader of the opposition, margaret thatcheralso attracted attention from abroad, most notablydue to a speech she made in 1976 when she pronounced russia as"hell-bent on world domination". the soviet news agency respondedby labelling her "the iron lady". mrs thatcher went very much against thegrain of the western world in the mid-'70s on the whole question of the soviet union. this was an era of dã©tente, and president carter was pushing it forwardin the salt talks and the helsinki process,
and mrs thatcherwas highly skeptical about this and was influenced bysome rather unusual thinkers, some of whom were in russia, such assolzhenitsyn, or came out of russia, and others in the west, like bob conquest,who'd written of the great terror and stalin. and she wanted to sound the alarm about a - soviet military expansionand b - soviet subversion in the west. i stand before you tonight in my red star chiffon evening gown... (laughter and applause)
(narrator) it was the start of the soviet'sfascination with mrs thatcher, and inadvertently it gave her an identity asan international, not just domestic, politician. it was an image she would return tomany times throughout her leadership. ...the iron lady of the western world. she had the wit to seethat this was a wonderful gift to her, because you need recognitionwhen you're leader of the opposition. the enemy had called her the iron lady -they meant it as an insult, she took it, quite rightly, as a compliment. (narrator) mrs thatcher's periodas leader of the opposition
also gave her an opportunity to fully developthe ideology she would then pursue in power. we look back and we think she blazed intothe firmament fully formed - and she didn't. it took several years in opposition,from 1975 to '79, when she did a lot of the thinking andcommissioned a lot of the original thinking. all the political philosophyof the time was left-wing. there was nothing there.margaret had to start doing it from scratch. and with the help of people like keith josephand alfred sherman and the economists, she started to think throughhow you switch the economy from the very poor, sclerotic state it was ininto something much more dynamic.
she thought, "we have to rethink everything."? "this country is being ruined bycollectivism, socialism, inflation, too much trade-union power, and byour own failure to deal with these problems." and so that's what she started to think about. and in doing so, she combined a radicalism, that's to say a readiness to think of remediesthat were quite different - for example,how she was going to tackle inflation - with a conservatism in the sense that she waswishing to bring back what she saw as traditional british qualities,
which she felt had been sacrificedby socialism or by defeatism. yama a string of bad by-elections had left labourdependent on the liberals and other parties to get their legislation through parliament. the unions were at war with the governmentover its attempt to keep pay rises below 5%. a “winter of discontent“ in 1978 to early 1979, with public-sector unions on strike, newspaper headlinesabout the dead being left unburied and rubbish and rats on the streets,
w m) callaghan. margaret thatcher was bluntin her assessment of the crisis and in her opinion of union activists -and how they damage the union cause. now, these few menare the wreckers in our midst. they're not the massive trade unionists, but there are a few militantswho are the wreckers. and i think they do as much damageto the decent name of trade unionism as they do to our economy. she perfectly understoodthat the trade unions should exist,
that labour needed representationat the workplace. but she was shocked by how ordinarytrade unionists had almost no power because there was so little democracyin the system. and she was shocked by how that ledto manipulation by the hard left. and she also believed that the trade unions,even when they were led by moderates, should not be makingthe economic policy of the country. (narrator) the collapse of the lib-lab pact and the rejection of movestowards devolution in scotland further weakened callaghan's position
and provided ammunition for thatcher'scampaign to bring down the government. tayside said no, grampian said no. there is no sound or honourable basisfor the great constitutional change which labour have proposed. and the final insult would be for this dyinggovernment to try to bend our constitution to keep themselves in powerfor a few more wretched weeks. (narrator) on 28 march 1' 979, margaretthatcher brought a vote of no confidence and won by one vote. james callaghan was the first prime ministersince ramsay macdonald in 1924
to be forced into an election by the chamber. the result was far from a foregone conclusion,but the thatcher gamble paid off. callaghan sought the queen's permissionto dissolve parliament "as soon", he said,"as essential' business can be cleaned up". (reporter) you look cheerful.are you in good spirits? - i always look forward to a good fight.- (cameras click) - thank you very much.- not physically, of course. (laughter) he was going down in the polls and peoplewere saying, "he must stop these strikes."?
"this is terrible. they're getting worse."? and if a strike was settled,a new one would be announced the next day. it was a terrible period for him. and his opponents couldn't be moredelighted at the bad time he was having. (narrator) following their successin defeating the government, there was jubilation in the tory ranks -but not for long. on 30 march, airey neave was assassinatedin the house of commons car park. - (man speaking in low voice)- no... you don't know yet?
- terrible news, mrs thatcher.- i don't know about it yet. i've just only been... (narrator) thatcher's right-hand man,he'd encouraged her to go for the leadership and would have undoubtedly played a leadingrole in her government, but it was not to be. he was one of freedom's warriors. no one knew what a great man he was,how great a man he was, except those nearest to him. he was staunch, brave, true, strong... but he was very gentle and kind and loyal.
it's a rare combination of qualities. there's no one else... who can quite fill them. i and so many other peopleowe so much to him. and now we must carry onwith the things he fought for and not let the people who got him triumph. thank you. we do, to that end, publish this,our royal proclamation, and do hereby dissolvethe said parliament accordingly. (narrator) the electionwas finally announced on 9 april.
- good morning.- (reporters) good morning, mrs thatcher. can we have a little wordabout tactics before you go? mr callaghan is off todayin scotland starting his campaign. may we perhaps ask youwhy you aren't doing the same? we're just taking a little bit longer to plan.this is the longest campaign we've ever had. in february '74 and october '74, we wouldn'teven have had an election announced yet. i'm a little fearful that people might get fed upwith us before the end of the campaign. what's important is that you finish strongly. do you think you're giving him a head start?
mma? callaghan was ahead of margaret thatcherin the opinion polls. but by now the conservative party hadon board an ex-tv producer, gordon reece, employed to promote the tory “brand“. (singing) when people now tend to blamepeople like tony blair and so on for introducing "american electioneeringtactics" into british politics - not a bit of it. it was gordon reece and margaret thatcher. and between them they decided thatthe old-fashioned way of doing things -
flinging a union jack over a tablein a village hall - wasn't good enough. and so he was fascinated to hear from mehow the americans had done it, and then particularly he wanted to know what we in the television businesswould want during an election campaign. and we talked a lot about how we had to getto feed points and send things down the line, because this was the daysbefore satellites were commonly used. this was absolutely astonishing. i had never known any british political partytake any interest in what the media wanted. it was normally a case, up to then,of what the media was going to get.
(narrator) mrs thatcher, too, did her bestto display her prodigious energy, racing around the countryon a ceaseless exercise in self-promotion. (photographer)come right round, mrs thatcher. now, listen. i'm not standingfor 20 minutes like this. everywhere she went, she was regarded not with love and affection,but with curiosity and interest. and maggie would go into a high streetand the crowds would instantly come out. it was very significant that when jim callaghan went on walkabout,he didn't get the same sort of response.
people would be ignoring him or simply notshowing the same sort of curiosity about him. and it wasn't so much a matter of politicsat the time, it was a matter of personality. she had a different personality,a personality with a rough edge, a sharp edge, but that seemed to fascinate people too,and they responded. (narrator) during the election campaign, mrs thatcher said the conservatives wouldcut income tax, reduce public expenditure, make it easier for people to buy their ownhomes and curb the power of the unions. i just think it's simply terriblefor people listening to us when you put a similar question to each partyleader and they all say, "yes, we're confident."?
so i say we've got very good groundsto be optimistic. the '79 election was quite cautious. a great deal centred on the state ofpublic finances, public debts, balance of payments - which always featuredfar too much in economic conversation - and the general air of malaise in the country. but the idea that we set out -that margaret set out - a fiercely free-market,liberal, capitalist agenda is a complete myth. we'd have lost even tojim callaghan if we'd done that at the time. a lot of the language of oppositionwhen you are trying to get into government
has to be reassurance, and people forget how much of the languageof margaret thatcher in the '70s was reassurance that conservativescould live with trade unions. there was very little mentionof privatisation in the 1970s. she went out of her waynot to scare the electorate. (reporter) plain-clothes policeout of a car behind her, mrs thatcher out onto the doorstep. (narrator) on 4 may, margaret thatcherwas elected prime minister with a commons majority of 43 seats.
on arriving at downing street, she made one of the most memorableif not universally well-received speeches of her prime-ministerial career. it's the greatest honour that can cometo any citizen in a democracy. i know full well the responsibilities thatawait me as i enter the door of number ten and i'll strive unceasingly to try to fulfil the trust and confidencethat the british people have placed in me and the things in which i believe. and i would just like to remembersome words of st francis of assisi
- which are particularly apt at the moment.- (booing and uproar) "where there is discord,may we bring harmony, where there is error, may we bring truth, where there is doubt, may we bring faith, and where there is despair,may we bring hope."? st francis of assisi, the lines that she usedoutside of downing street, were not her lines and of course they didn't representher feelings at all - her real feelings. she didn't know what to sayon the doorstep. she wanted ideas. and one of her greatest colleaguesand friends, and her speechwriter,
ronnie millar,who was a wonderful playwright, came up with these lines for her. they were lines which would have donefor any politician, for any prime minister. sadly, they weren't the linesthat really reflected maggie thatcher. but they did for the moment anddid rather well, got a lot of notoriety and were then putin the drawer and forgotten. (narrator) the girl from granthamhad travelled a long way. it was an astonishing achievement. the first female leader of a britishpolitical party was now prime minister.
she had risen from nowhereto the top of what was a man's world. she had defeated her own predictionof how far a woman could travel in politics. (reporter) she's now doingan almost papal handshake, going down downing street, shakingevery hand that she can possibly get hold of. there is great enthusiasm. (narrator) her election had capturedthe imagination at home and sparked enormous interest abroad. the first female leader of the western worldhad assumed power. and little did anyone fully appreciate it then,but a new political era had truly begun.
her victory barely absorbed, margaretthatcher set about choosing her first cabinet. there was a balance to be struck betweenthe right and left wings of the party. with economic policy seen both asthe priority and the dividing line, she made sure that economic departmentswere kept under control', with her most loyal allies getting the top jobs. her first appointmentwas geoffrey howe as chancellor. many thought the job would goto her ideological mentor, keith joseph. keith joseph was a very thoughtful, originaland, in certain respects, useless politician. so this was very good for herbecause he posed no threat to her?
but he did constantly supply her with ideasand got her to think about things. one of his great skillswas to find interesting people who had ideas about economics,trade-union reform and so on. and he encouraged, through a bodycalled the centre for policy studies, which he set up with her assisting, all this... the power of ideas,to mobilise the power of ideas. (narrator) economic teams in place,the next surprise appointment was that of jim prioras employment secretary. a close ally of edward heath,
he had also forged good relationswith a number of trade-union leaders. on the other hand, we've also gotsome pretty nasty pills to come because one thing that's happenedover the last few months is that a number of decisions in shipbuildingand steel and coal and other heavy industries have not been taken. (narrator) mrs thatcher wanted to reformthe trade unions and employment practices, and the only argument was overhow fast she could do it. she reckoned that the unionswould be prepared to deaf with prior. jim prior was sympathetic to the unions.
i think he felt pragmatically that if you wantedto change industrial relations in britain, you couldn't do it with a big hammer. (wwm although one of the old guard,he became thatcher's right-hand man and the person who advised her on how torun the country and how to present policies. he could contribute very littlein the way of policy ideas. what he could do was give shrewd judgmentabout political situations and he could deliver opinion. he could reach bits of the tory tribewhich mrs thatcher couldn't.
and he did that loyally and skilfully and in a way which combinedapparent bumbling with actual cunning. (narrator) michael' heseltinewas made secretary at environment, peter walker was given agriculture and lord carrington was appointedher first foreign secretary. mrs thatcher understood when she came intooffice that she was in charge of a coalition and that she had toget the balance of power right. and though a woman of strong beliefs,she was not an ideological maniac, so she well understood practical politics.
and if you talk to people who were therewhen she was trying to select the cabinet, she did not say, "is he one of us?does he agree with us on everything?" that wasn't her way. she thought about theirskills, experience, the balance in the party. (narrator) cabinet appointed, now it was timeto set about the job of change. the first announcement camejust a day after the queen's speech. michael heseltine informed mps that local authorities would be ableto sell council houses to tenants for at least 30% below the market value. the whole policy depended ona discount being given.
i remember margaret beingquite iffy about all this. not at the cabinet meeting - i wasn't there -but i privately picked up that she didn't like the idea of people beinggiven assets at less than their full value. she had to be talked into agreeing to that. and it was peter walkerwho was the real enthusiast. peter walker, at one point, actually wanted togo further. he would have given them away. we do think that giving peoplethe opportunity to own their own homes is a major, central policyof the conservative government, and we cannot allow local authoritiesto frustrate the views and the wishes
of the british democratic process. it had a tremendous impact, the plan to sell council housesto their sitting tenants. there's some disputeover who should get the credit for it. michael heseltine, who had just become shadowsecretary of state for the environment, claims it was his idea. the more loyal supporters of mrs thatcherwould dispute that and say it was hers. be that as it may, the fact isit had a tremendous impact.
i remember a very bright labour mpat the time, brian walden, saying to me: "this is going to be lethal to us,tony, i'm telling you - what it's going to do to usin those sort of places like essex." and he was absolutely right.it had, i think, more electoral effect than any other single measure thatthat first government of hers took. and it really lost the labour partygreat swathes of support on the places where they'd always been ableconfidently to keep it - the council estates. it was an authentic application of their belief,their ideology, their doctrine at the time. but it also had enormousimmediate electoral benefits.
(narrator) next came the budget, on 12 june. income tax was the big headline, andthe shift from direct to indirect taxation. the basic rate was cut from 33% to 30%and the top rate from 83% to 60%. to make up the shortfall, vat was increased. everyone recognisedwe had to make this big change in the shape as much as the size of taxes. it was a great blessing we had. and if you take tax policy in particular, in every speech i made in opposition,i ended a paragraph by saying:
"pay as you spend is betterthan pay as you earn."? it always got a round of applause. in my very first budget,i reduced the top rates of income tax a lot, i knocked threepence off income tax,but i almost doubled value-added tax. (narrator) the government also announceda â£35 billion cut in public spending. i think that some of our colleagues -and, indeed, even we - didn't realise just how toughit was going to be. but the condition that was always dominant, if we were borrowing money still in orderto finance expenditure we couldn't afford,
we had to pay interest rates to borrow it, and the market wouldn't let us borrow moreexcept at higher interest rates. so we had to follow monetary policyby reducing our borrowing. it was really: there is no alternative. (narrator) geoffrey howe's first budgetwould pave the way for monetarism in britain. it was a huge nominal change, andthat meant that everything went up in price, and that meant that wages went up,because everything was still very stratified. and it caused all sorts of problems withthe exchange rate and with public spending and it undoubtedlycontributed to the difficulties.
and there was quite a row about thatwithin the cabinet before it happened and there was unhappinessabout it in the country. but the feeling that geoffrey howe had, whoreally carried the day on that more than her, was if you don't do it now, you'll never do it,and we must make this big step. (narrator) the budget gavea clear signal' of a government - and particularly a prime minister -eager to get things done. and it wasn't just spending at home. margaret thatcher also wantedto reduce the size of britain's contributionto the european community budget.
(reporter) they don't agreewith summit deadlines or changes in the common market rulesto help britain, as the french foreign ministerm. cheysson told me. i'm afraid that when britain say there shouldbe now a new permanent regulation, rule, that we cannot accept. but i'm ready, as a memberof the french government, to say we accept that, during the transition, some adjustment should be madein the budgetary contribution. (narrator) it would be almost a year beforea first reduction would be achieved.
it marked a two-thirds cut in the size ofbritain's net contribution to the ec budget - and the promise of a major reviewof that contribution the following year. she didn't really feel that was quite enough, so she was quite angry about that. but actually it was rather good,if the truth be told. but the fact remainsthat had she not been there and been absolutely adamant in getting that, it wouldn't have happened. of course she annoyed a lot of people.
helmut schmidt and giscard d'estaing usedto get rather frustrated by her on the budget. but the fact is that she was absolutely right. (narrator) thatcher's next battlewas over the trade unions. she was determined the events of the"winter of discontent" would not be repeated. radical reform of trade-union law, therefore,was of the utmost priority. jim prior was in charge of introducingthe appropriate legislation. but, as was evidentfrom his earlier dealings with the unions, he was not one for extreme measures. many of the provisions of these codes
have been contained in previous tuc ortransport and general workers' union codes. now, i think that most peoplewant to see some reasonable discipline in both the closed shop andthe way it operates and in picketing. jim prior was not one to have a head-to-head. he much preferred the step-by-step approach, which became the very famousstrapline of his approach. (narrator) in autumn 1' 979,jim prior was ready with an employment bill' that outlawed secondary picketing,limited the closed shop and imposed compulsory ballotsbefore action.
it was a sizeable package, but inmrs thatcher's eyes, it didn't go far enough. (parkinson) what jim wanted wasto have a measure that would stick. don't forget, nobody at this point knew that margaret thatcherwas going to be prime minister for 11 years. there was this feeling,well, would she get re-elected? and jim's argument was always, "well, let'sdo things that are so blatantly obviously right that a labour governmentwouldn't repeal them if it got the chance." (narrator) in the face of mrs thatcher'simpatience, and as if to test prior's resolve, on 2 january 1' 980, a national' strike beganat the national' steel' corporation.
the steelworkers were demandinga 20% pay rise. the management had offered a 6% increase,with tough conditions attached. the steelworkers' trade union, who weremy best client when i practised at the bar, the union which my grandfatherhelped to found. so one had a great deal of sympathywith them in the difficult situation. but they decided to go ahead, and all we could do wasto support the british steel corporation. there were some non-nationalisedsteel companies still in existence, and they were able to tradealongside the strike,
so the strike was always unlikely to succeed. (narrator) the strike lasted nearly 14 weeks. the plants reopened after the lever inquiryrecommended a package worth 16% in return for an agreement onworking practices and productivity deals. throughout, the governmentmaintained a position of non-intervention, leaving management to manage. but margaret thatcher and her allies made itclear they opposed the action of the unions. the steel strike was considered to bea win on points for the government. the reason for this is that, though the sumwas larger than the government wanted,
the government had managed to sustainits determination not to intervene. the way the unions workedwith all the nationalised industries was to create such a rumpus that the peoplewho ran the nationalised industries had to sort of crumple and the governmenthad to come in and sort it out. and the government didn't do that. (narrator) the strike had put pressure on priorto take a tougher fine in his union reform. as it was, prior kept his bill intact. (parkinson) margaret always feltthat jim was... too cautious. she wanted to move more quickly.
but the interesting thing was,when norman tebbit took over from jim, he was quite cautious too. he moved rather more slowlythan she would have expected him to. he, in a way, although he was a differentcharacter from jim, shared the same view. it was very importantto have laws that would stick, rather than play to the galleryand throw in the kitchen sink and give the labour partythe excuse to repeal them. (narrator) a similar challenge to thegovernment was british leyland, of which margaret thatcher later wrote:
“the company had become a symbolof britain's industrial decline and of trade-union bloody-mindedness.“. a lot of them didn't think i might... (narrator) once again, workers were on strike. this cutback in numbersfor purely financial reasons - as a result of government economic policy which makes it very difficultfor the company to exist at all - is being dealt with in an arrogantand dogmatic fashion by the company. i remember very wellher attitude to british leyland.
first of all that she was absolutely furiouswith michael edwardes when he came alongand effectively asked for a billion pounds. and, you know, this was againstevery instinct that she had. but this waswhere margaret was so pragmatic. margaret knew that the midlands wasfull of small and medium-sized companies that made their livingby supplying british leyland. (narrator) so, for ail' thatcher's talk ofnon-intervention in saving failing industries, politic-a!m) in agreeing to the british leyland corporateplan, the government also committed itself
to providing a furtherâ£990 million of state funding. she made it quite clear that this could neverbe paid in aid as a precedent. it was a one-off. and don't come to her and say, "you did itfor british leyland, now do it for me."? and this was where she was very clever. she knew she wanted to get from a to b. she knew you couldn't alwaysget there in a straight line. but she never lost sight,even if you made a detour, of where she was aiming to be at the end.
(narrator) if thatcher was unable to preventindustrial unrest in the country, she was also to experience dissentwithin her own government. rising unemployment, high inflation andcuts in public spending had split the cabinet. the lines were drawn betweenthatcher and her economic team and those who opposedher economic strategy.? it got very personal. i remember once, one of the wets went to lunch in the city, and he was reported to have said:
"the conservative party is a cavalry regiment led by a corporalin the women's royal army corps." and, of course, the silly man who made thatremark thought he could say these things - she'd heard about it within two hours. because people thoughtit was a very disloyal remark. and that was an extreme example. but he wasn't the only personwith an attitude akin to that. (narrator) the cabinet battle reachedits zenith the following year when chancellor geoffrey howe announcedhis first fully fledged monetarist budget -
just at the time the country was in the gripof the deepest recession since the 1930s. the great, i suppose, set-piece battlewas over the 1981 budget, which, people say,was sort of sprung on the cabinet. but the fact is cabinet doesn'tdiscuss budgets. never has. budget is a matter betweenthe prime minister and the chancellor. it's true that they only had 24 hours' noticeof it, but that's always been the case. but some people, including francis pym,who was very senior in the party - foreign secretary,leader of the house of commons - they were terribly affronted at being told
that this really...repressive budget was being brought in. now, geoffrey howe was absolutely equallyresponsible for it as margaret thatcher and, i suppose, history didin the end vindicate them. (narrator) cabinet battlesand industrial unrest would also presage the burgeoning unpopularityof the thatcher government. by 1981, we were so unpopular,it was extraordinary. i was quite convinced,as a junior minister in 1981, not only that we'd lose the next election,but i was beginning to doubt whether the conservative partywould survive as a national party,
because the public so yearnedfor those comfortable days when governments used to buy their wayout of trouble, only a few years before. (narrator) the 1981 budgetso alarmed many academics that it prompted 364 leading universityeconomists to publish a statement taking issue with the government'smacro-economic policy. there's no basis in economic theoryto indicate that this would be a permanent wayof bringing inflation under control and that this would lead automaticallyto recovery of output and employment. i think it was very encouragingto get the 364 economics,
cos i think it put her on her mettle. and she noticed, once the letter waspublished, that it didn't have any proposals. it had a criticism but not a set of proposals. and the famous phrase about the economicapproach of the thatcher government - a phrase actually developedby geoffrey howe, not by her - is "there is no alternative." and this rammed that home.they didn't have an alternative. they had an attack, but not an alternative. (narrator) but if the critics thoughtthey could persuade her
m; abandon ha? whose-n economic course,may ma? six months earlier at the toryparty conference in october 1980, margaret thatcher had made it clear she would not be deflected from reformingfiscal' policy in the manner she saw fit. to those waiting with bated breath forthat favourite media catch phrase, the u-turn, i have only one thing to say - you turn if you want to. the lady's not for turning. it was really aimed at ted?
and quite a gang in the shadow cabinet who were putting herunder a lot of pressure to... saying, "you can't haverising unemployment." "you cannot do this, you cannot do that.we've got to change policy."? and so the message was to them. "you change if you will,but this lady's not for turning."? and it was a clear message because,in the summer of that year, you know, the cabinet had rebelled and wouldn'tapprove of her and geoffrey's plans. and so she made that change
and she said, "it was deliberate." "we were elected to carry outa series of promises in our manifesto, and i'm going to do it."? "and i'm not going to be driven off courseby internal opposition." (narrator) if ever the prime minister had beenhaunted by doubts, she did not show it. thatcher gave a bravura performanceexpressing confidence in her own judgment (mam (heckler) tories out'. we want 'yobs! (thatcher) nevertheless...
never mind. it's wet outside.i expect they wanted to come in. you can't blame them.it's always better where the tories are. (narrator) thatcherism had been born. warm)m were now well established. she'd grown in statureand become more self-assured. her self-belief seemed stronger than ever. (ail sing "land of hope and glory')♪ wider still, and wider ♪ shall thy bounds be set...
she was always knowing whereshe wanted to be, where she wanted to get to, and just plotting and planningto find the right way to get there. willing to take risks in order to get there,particularly with her own job, and indeed, at times, with her own life. but always conscious of the factthat there was a long-term game to play. she was not just a politician,she was a statesman with a long-term view. let us stand together and do our duty and we shall not fail. (narrator) in the moment of thatcherism'sbirth, its leader had also to face terrorism
and engage in international diplomacy. but it was her actions at homeon the economic from that would come to definethe beginning of the thatcher years. ♪ wider still, and wider ♪ shall thy bounds be set ♪ god, who made thee mighty ♪ make thee mightier yet ♪ god, who made thee mighty... (narrator) in the next programme,a distant war in the falklands
mflagging. (man) you can order “margaret thatcher,a tribute in words and pictures" for the special half-price fee of â£10. call telegraph books on 08701557222, or order online atwww.books. telegraph. co. uk