Letters From London Page 7

  A new declaration of strident Euro-laggardliness, though no surprise to the eleven other EC leaders—or, for that matter, to the wider British public—was finally too much, however, for the Deputy Leader. Within a week, he had resigned, citing, among other reasons, “the mood” Mrs. Thatcher had struck in Rome. His resignation letter was that of a man weary of constantly papering over the cracks and of nudging his reluctant leader centimeter by centimeter along the road to Europe. “I shall, of course,” he concluded, “maintain my support for your government.” Mrs. Thatcher in her reply downplayed their differences on Europe—“not… nearly as great as you suggest”—and declared herself “most grateful for your assurance of continued support.” The Labour leader, Neil Kinnock, a man noted more for verbal fluency than for verbal finesse, declared that “Mrs. Thatcher has been bitten by the man she treated as a doormat, and she deserves it.”

  The resignation of a senior minister usually comes in two parts: the act of demission, which may or may not be timed to embarrass the Government, and the subsequent resignation speech before the House of Commons. The latter occasions are comparatively solemn moments in the continuing adversarial rowdiness of Commons life: the minister will be listened to in decent silence, the Opposition quietly working out the plus factor for them (and nodding sympathetically when the ex-minister explains how beastly She has been to him), the Government reckoning the damage limitation that might be necessary. Sir Geoffrey came before the House on the afternoon of Tuesday, November 13, and perhaps the fact that in the twelve days since his resignation former Cabinet colleagues and others had queued up to explain to the media that his differences with the Prime Minister were more of style than of substance had toughened his resolve. For the speech he proceeded to give was very much not that of a man maintaining his promised support for a government. Those who witnessed it from the Government benches judged it a devastating blow to Mrs. Thatcher and a signal for a leadership race to start; the Opposition called for an immediate general election (though Oppositions tend to call for an immediate general election whenever a mouse runs out of the wainscot). Later that evening, outside the House of Commons, Tory knights of the shires blinked into the TV lights like endangered moths and declared that they had not heard a resignation speech with such oomph in twenty—nay, twenty-five—years. The Biting Doormat had taken a chunk out of the Lady of the House. Or, as Peter Rost, MP for Erewash, put it, “A dead sheep has turned out to be a Rottweiler in drag. It was the most dramatic performance I have experienced in twenty years.”

  Dramatic here has to be understood in the context of Sir Geoffrey Howe. He stood halfway down the Tory benches, next to his fellow-sufferer Nigel Lawson, ex-Chancellor and the previous year’s Thatcher Euro-victim; he spoke quietly, hunched over his notes, occasionally letting go of them with one hand to saw the air vigorously to a depth of several millimeters. He looked and sounded as ovine as his reputation; in fact he was doing his best to bring down a Prime Minister. Were the differences between the two of them merely matters of style? “If some of my former colleagues are to be believed, I must be the first minister in history to resign because he was in full agreement with government policy.” (Perhaps Sir Geoffrey was forgetting the case of Nicholas Ridley.) He had, he said, shared something like seven hundred Cabinet or Shadow Cabinet meetings with Mrs. Thatcher over the previous eighteen years, and spent some four hundred hours alongside her at more than thirty international summits. Most of it had been a great privilege, and so on. But latterly things had changed. The Prime Minister, he said, “increasingly risks leading herself and others astray in matters of substance as well as style.” On style, he mentioned the PM’s habit of adding “background noise” and “personalized incredulity” to official statements, and cited what a British businessman working in Europe had written to him (with impeccable timing) the previous week. “People throughout Europe,” complained the businessman, “see our Prime Minister’s finger wagging, and hear her passionate No, No, No, much more clearly than the content of the carefully worded formal texts.” As for substance, Howe portrayed the PM as deeply uncommitted to Europe, as one who “seems sometimes to look out upon a continent that is positively teeming with ill-intentioned people, scheming, in her words, to extinguish democracy, to ‘dissolve our national identities,’ to lead us ‘through the back door into a federal Europe.’” Sir Geoffrey even quoted Winston Churchill against her—a matchlessly impudent move, since Mrs. Thatcher has herself copyrighted quoting from Churchill in recent years, the only exception granted being when a toadying MP desires to compare the two Premiers. Howe concluded by saying that in resigning, “I have done what I believe to be right for my party and my country,” and he added, “The time has come for others to consider their own response to the tragic conflict of loyalties with which I have myself wrestled for perhaps too long.” That perhaps was a classic moment of Howeish qualification (as in “I have perhaps married you” or “We are perhaps declaring war”), but the fact that in delivery and phraseology Sir Geoffrey remained throughout his speech almost parodically Howeish made—very well, perhaps made—its impact the greater.

  Tory MPs taken aback by Sir Geoffrey’s low-key vehemence couldn’t believe that he was the author of such disloyalty, and some fingered the ex-Minister’s wife, who was known to dislike Mrs. Thatcher’s policies. “A speech it took Elspeth Howe ten minutes to write and Geoffrey ten years to deliver” was one verdict. But the question of authorship was not pursued, for Sir Geoffrey, like a one-sting bee that had done its business, now fell down behind the radiator, his distant buzz drowned by the whirr of an arriving hornet. The day after Howe spoke in the Commons, Michael Heseltine, a former Cabinet minister who had whirred at the Prime Minister from the back benches since his resignation in January 1986, announced that he would stand for the leadership. Unlike Sir Geoffrey, who in forty years of politics has been compared only to a dead sheep and a biting doormat, Heseltine has always been a high-profile politician, whose active, warrior stance (and slight absurdity) is reflected in his nickname: Tarzan. Like Mrs. Thatcher, he is a rich, well-groomed, fairly glamorous blond who makes the rank and file’s heart beat faster; but, whereas Mrs. Thatcher is a millionaire only by marriage, Heseltine is one in his own right. His current fortune is put at approximately £65 million, which makes him the richest man in the House of Commons. It has also allowed him to fund what for nearly five years amounted to an undeclared campaign for the leadership. Now at last the challenge was in the open. “Tarzan vs. The Iron Lady”—it may sound like a novelty fight rather low down on a wrestling bill, but it engrossed the nation.

  In 1952, while still an undergraduate at Oxford (where he was known, variously, as Michael Philistine, for his cultural interests, and Von Heseltine, for his Aryan looks), Heseltine scribbled a campaign plan for life on the back of an envelope. Presidency of the Oxford Union, the successful pursuit of a fortune, a seat in Parliament, a post in the Cabinet—all of these he noted and duly achieved. Finally, in his master plan from all those years ago, he had written against the nineties: “Downing Street” It’s apposite, almost poignant, to note that in the 1979 Cabinet photograph Heseltine stands immediately behind Mrs. Thatcher’s chair—perfectly placed to be the smiler with the knife. From the beginning, he was openly ambitious (the ambition is not a sin in British politics, the openness is); he cut a flamboyant figure at Tory conferences, like a Chippendale at a Tupperware party; as a minister, he was a diligent Thatcherite, selling off council houses and privatizing government ordnance factories; he seemed bright but not damagingly intelligent. As his old friend and fellow MP Julian Critchley has written, “Michael is surely no intellectual, but that is no handicap in the Tory Party” A greater handicap might have been that to the Conservative Old Guard he seemed a bit flash, something of a counter jumper. From middle-class Swansea, via property development and publishing, to a house in Belgravia, plus a four-hundred-acre country estate whose park gates had been recast to include the self-promoting i
nitials MRDH—wasn’t that taking social mobility a little damn far? William Whitelaw, former Deputy Prime Minister to Mrs. Thatcher and one of the bluff-squire contingent, dismissed Heseltine as “a man who combs his hair in public.” But such sneers and snobberies from the aristocratic and squirearchical end of the Tory Party are inevitable, amounting mainly to an admission of a loss of power. The last two Conservative Prime Ministers have endured similar smirks: Edward Heath was widely known as the Grocer, Margaret Thatcher as the Grocer’s Daughter (not because of her political succession but because her father ran a corner shop).

  More pertinent than the charge of uppityness was the suggestion that Tarzan lived up to his nickname—that he swung unpredictably through the trees while letting rip with attention-grabbing howls. This reputation is based mainly on two incidents. In the first, back in 1976, he seized the mace during a debate in the House of Commons and waved it about in an indecorous fashion. In the second, ten years after the first, he stormed impetuously out of Mrs. Thatcher’s Cabinet, consigning himself to the wilderness of the backbenches. Those were two things that everyone knew about Mr. Heseltine; but now that he was transformed from flamboyant outsider into postulant Premier they were held up to the light again, and this time showed a quite different aspect. Did he seize the mace and wave it Tarzanically around, threatening to brain the poor, quivering front-bench members of the then Labour Government with this blunt and glittering object? Was it a rash and vulgar act, which offended against the dignity of the House? Not at all, according to the corrected version: it was a subtle gesture, a piece of stage irony, one that at the time had brought cheers from those old Tory graybeards who later tut-tutted.

  As for the resignation from Mrs. Thatcher’s Cabinet, both its matter and its manner are worth examining. Resignation in politics is a bit like creative bankruptcy: if effected in the right way and at the right time, it can restore the fortunes, and even the reputation. Look, the electorate says, here we are dealing with a man of principle, someone who puts wider considerations above his pocket and his badge of office—well remember that later. But you have to choose the right issue. A resignation over the Munich agreement with Hitler gave a career-long mark of sanctity. A resignation over the Anglo-French invasion of Suez was equally dramatic, though trickier. (Charges of treachery were subsequently laid by the Tory right.) Unfortunately, most politicians never obtain the required coincidence of a national event, a question of principle, and a moment in their career when reculer pour mieux sauter is the best policy. Michael Heseltine resigned from Mrs. Thatcher’s Cabinet over what is known as the Westland Helicopter Affair. Four years later, few can remember, and even fewer care about, the details of this imbroglio. Voters might recall the sale of a British helicopter company to an American firm; Heseltine, as Minister of Defence, wanting a European bid to be discussed; some paper shuffling and maneuvering by Mrs. Thatcher’s minions; Heseltine storming out of the Cabinet; the business of some leaked papers; then another ministerial resignation. But the principle involved? Something to do with a defense asset staying in European hands, something to do with the way Cabinet government should operate, and much to do with the principle of the Prime Minister being a beastly old bossy-boots.

  Most voters, however, would remember one thing about the event: that Mr. Heseltine had “stormed” out of No 10. The word was constantly applied. It was, after all, the verb of departure that fitted his image: he was Action Man, dynamic, Tarzanic. How else could he possibly depart? Over the past four years, everyone believed in the storming. But once Mr. Heseltine became a potential Prime Minister he began to deny in television interviews that storm was at all an appropriate word to describe his behavior that long-ago morning: no, he had merely expressed his inability any longer to serve, gathered up his papers, and left. Altogether more decorous and responsible, and more appropriate to one now seeking to return to No. 10 in a fuller capacity. And it has to be said that accounts given at the time by those present confirm the later, more sober version of events. Mr. Heseltine was overruled on a procedural matter and said quietly in response, “I cannot accept that decision. I must therefore leave this Cabinet.” Then he left. But his colleagues were comically unsure of what he had intended. By “this Cabinet” did he mean “this particular meeting of the Cabinet” or did he mean “your Cabinet, which you, Madam, run in an unacceptable way”? Only when news filtered back from the street outside that Heseltine had confirmed his resignation could colleagues be sure of what they had just witnessed. And then what did they do? Douglas Hurd, Home Secretary at the time, recalled a few days later how amusingly British the whole scene had been. According to him, the Cabinet carried on almost as if nothing had happened. There was a discussion about Nigeria and, after a coffee break, a perfectly sensible roundtable debate on rates reform.

  Rates reform: it is apposite that this was what the Cabinet went on to discuss, and, moreover, that their exchange appeared “perfectly sensible.” For if they had scarcely been aware at the time of what Heseltine had done, neither did they predict what rates reform would lead to in the next few years: deep unpopularity of the Government, street fighting in central London, renewed perception of the Prime Minister as an unfeeling autocrat, dismay at constituency level, disaffection among the skilled-working-class and lower-middle-class voters the Tories need to carry in order to win a fourth election in a row—and then, to an Elmer Bernstein score, the thunderous return from out of the west, sun glinting in his golden locks, of none other than Michael Heseltine. And this time it would be accurate to say that when he returned to center stage he did indeed “storm” back.

  The old rating system in Britain was the means by which citizens contributed to local government revenue. Each house or apartment was assigned by the local authority a “ratable value” based theoretically on the value of the place if anyone wanted to rent it. It was a rough-and-ready system, made more so by the long periods of time between the revaluation of properties for rating purposes (revaluations that were always unpopular), but it meant, more or less, that those who lived in large houses paid more toward the cost of local services than those who lived in small ones, and that the poor paid significantly less, or nothing at all. Every so often during the postwar period, there would be grumbles about the rates, but after other systems—such as a local sales tax or a local income tax—were examined, the existing method was concluded to be the least bad. What stirred the Tories into action in 1987 was three things. First, a series of run-ins between central Tory government and “high-spending” (as they were always dubbed) local Labour councils, which in Tory eyes needed bringing to heel. Second, fear that a forthcoming rates revaluation in England and Wales was likely to prove extremely unpopular. And, third, the simple fact that Thatcherism was a doctrine of radical reform, and after a while there weren’t too many things left still in need of radical reform. Mrs. Thatcher took a strong personal interest in the abolition of the rates, and orders were orders. It goes almost without saying that one of the most enthusiastic proponents of the self-mutilating course the Tories now embarked on was Mr. Nicholas Ridley.

  The new “community charge” to replace the rates was introduced in Scotland on April 1, 1989, and in England and Wales a year later. Based not on property value but on local citizenship, it was very easy to understand, and its justification went like this: since everyone living in the same area makes roughly the same use of the same amenities (roads, schools, hospitals, policing, refuse collection, libraries, street lighting, and so on), then everyone should pay roughly the same amount to support these services. Under the rating system, some £45 billion was raised from some 14 million electors. Millions paid nothing yet benefited from the services; how much fairer to spread the cost of these services more widely among the 34 million local electors. That was the logic; but importantly close to the surface of the reforming Tory mind lay the following social vignette: decent Tory voters in nasty Labour boroughs being squeezed for unfairly high rates and constantly outvoted by squ
alid nests of four-to-a-council-flat Labourites who were being featherbedded by rates rebates that acted as an open bribe to carry on voting Labour. The community charge, as its name implied, was about democratically equal fiscal responsibility within a given area. Opponents said that it was a poll tax, a straight per capita levy. Just as you can tell an Irishman’s politics from the use of Londonderry as opposed to Derry, so the employment of community charge or poll tax translates immediately into pro or anti. Within weeks of its introduction, only members of the Tory Cabinet and diehard loyalists were sticking to community charge.

  In the summer of 1989, the Tory Reform Group had predicted, “It has all the makings of a disaster. The poll tax is fair only in the sense that the black death was fair.” They were right: the tax was an immediate disaster. One trouble with very simple ideas is that what is wrong with them becomes swiftly apparent to even the dimmest opponent. In the present case, everyone could see what the tax implied: that two street sweepers living in a single room at the most fetid end of the Borough of Westminster would pay the same as a millionaire and his well-salaried wife living at No. 10 Downing Street. The earl in his castle (or Tarzan behind his monogrammed gates) would benefit by several hundred or several thousand pounds; massed farm laborers and their families would bear this cost. Mrs. Thatcher likes to offer patronizing economic homilies to her opponents, and a favorite, oft-repeated line goes “You don’t make the poor richer by making the rich poorer” Here, though, was the starkest possible case of making the rich richer while at the same time, and by the same process, making the poor (and middle-incomed) poorer.