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By Sam Macrory - 22nd November 2010
It is 20 years since Margaret Thatcher, the UK’s first female prime minister and longestserving leader of the 20th century, left office. To mark the milestone Sam Macrory speaks to John Whittingdale, now Conservative MP for Maldon, but then Thatcher’s political secretary and close aide.
In the six days between resigning as prime minister on November 22, 1990 and leaving Downing Street for the final time, Margaret Thatcher lost her job, her home, and her entire staff. Except for one – her political secretary John Whittingdale, who moved with Thatcher to loaned offices on Little College Street. “She was distressed, traumatised, and angry,” remembers Whittingdale of Thatcher’s mood in the aftermath of her resignation. He recalls that at the start of the year the feeling in Downing Street was “that things were beginning to unravel”.
The previous year had seen Anthony Meyer’s ‘stalking horse’ challenge to Thatcher’s leadership – “there were a substantial amount of abstentions, more than we had expected” – and the resignation of Nigel Lawson as chancellor. There had also been a steady stream of visits from Tory MPs who had been unsettled by constituents left angered by the unpopular Community Charge, or ‘poll tax’, a policy which contributed to 18 months of negative poll ratings for the Tories.
“MPs would say to her: We’re not against you, but we’re against the poll tax – it has to change,” Whittingdale recalls. “Because she was defending it, they came to the conclusion that the only way to get rid of it was to get rid of the prime minister.”
When Thatcher’s ardent Euroscepticism prompted Commons leader Geoffrey Howe to resign on November 1, 1990, her long-standing adversary Michael Heseltine launched a leadership challenge.
In response, Thatcher’s parliamentary private secretary Peter Morrison was appointed, along with George Younger, to run her campaign. Morrison shared a Downing Street Office with Whittingdale, who describes him as: “Hopeless. His idea of canvassing MPs was to say: ‘You’re okay, aren’t you – good!’.”
But with Morrison’s complacent assurances, Thatcher set off to Paris for a European security summit, leaving the UK with her leadership in the balance. “The idea that she would be prevented from representing Britain’s interests at an international summit by some malcontent Tory backbenchers was completely unacceptable to her,” Whittingdale explains. “She felt it was her duty to go.”
Every possible outcome of the vote had been prepared for by Whittingdale and the team, an approach dismissed as “going through the motions” by Morrison. However, Thatcher fell short of the 15 per cent lead over Heseltine required for an outright victory. “I fight on, I fight to win,” was the agreed line for the ‘near-miss’ outcome and, after declaring her intentions on the steps of the British Embassy in Paris, the prime minister returned to London.
“We met immediately. The Labour Party had tabled a no-confidence motion, so we began to work on her speech for the following day’s debate,” Whittingdale remembers.
It was also agreed that Douglas Hurd, the foreign secretary, and John Major, the chancellor, would sign Thatcher’s nomination for the leadership. “Of course, Major was unavoidably absent with that toothache,” Whittingdale recalls with a smile, pointedly adding: “There were lots of manoeuvres going on.”
At the same time, energy secretary John Wakeham was asked to take over her leadership campaign. “It was fair to say he was reluctant,” Whittingdale admits. “He just didn’t think we could do it.”
The prime minister then held a series of one-on-one meetings with cabinet ministers, with their largely unsupportive messages leaving her “shocked – she realised that she didn’t have their backing”.
Speaking to The House Magazine, the now Lord Wakeham recalls his advice. “I told her she should first talk to her husband and, in my view, sleep on it before making a decision. I think she took the decision to retire because she realised a minority – but a significant minority – of her cabinet felt she ought to retire and would be unlikely to continue to serve in her cabinet.”
Once the visits were over, her team returned to speech-writing duties. One word remained off-limits: resignation. “It was frankly surreal. We didn’t talk about the fact that she was going to announce her resignation the next morning,” says Whittingdale, who ended up working until nearly 3am.
That evening, Downing Street received more visitors, including Labour MP Frank Field, who warned Thatcher that “Michael Heseltine is in the Lobby, mopping up votes”.
Later on, a delegation from the No Turning Back Group – described by Thatcher as “my loyal soldiers” – arrived at the door. With the speech still half-written, Whittingdale sent them away. At 11pm, at the prime minister’s request, he called Michael Portillo, a key figure in the group, to request their return. Portillo arrived at Downing Street with Michael Fallon, Michael Forsyth, Edward Leigh and Michael Brown, with the quintet intent on persuading Thatcher to carry on. “They had some bizarre suggestions. Fallon said she should stay in the contest but invite other people to enter. It clearly wasn’t realistic, and her mind was already made up.”
Recalling his late-night visit to Downing Street, Michael Fallon, now a deputy chairman of the Conservative Party, describes Thatcher as being “very angry that she had been betrayed so quickly by the cabinet and the right of her party, supposedly her natural supporters”.
Fallon says the arguments on what Thatcher’s next move should be “raged all evening – I was more or less the last person to leave Downing Street, at around 2:30am”. Fallon remains convinced that Thatcher would have won on a third ballot, but the prime minister’s mind was made up.
Word of the impending resignation began to spread, with the Sun’s then political editor Trevor Kavanagh phoning Whittingdale’s home at midnight, and then at 2am for confirmation of the story. “We never spoke – but he went with the story anyway. It was a bloody good bit of journalism,” says Whittingdale.
At the following morning’s meeting of the cabinet, Whittingdale, whose office was next door, looked on as the “guilty schoolboys” trooped past: “They looked sheepish. I don’t think they could believe what they had done.” Thatcher was in tears. She wasn’t alone. “All but one or two in the cabinet room that day were overwhelmed by the sadness of the occasion – I certainly was,” recalls David, now Lord, Waddington, the then home secretary.
Thatcher then read out her resignation statement, with the cabinet responding by banging their desks in support of their leader. “I don’t think she was wildly impressed – some of them were the conspirators,” notes Whittingdale.
Later that day, in one of the House of Commons’ most memorable occasions, an “emotionally distressed” Thatcher rose to speak. One backbencher shouted out “My God, what have we done?”, while Labour’s Dennis Skinner quipped that the Eurosceptic Thatcher become head of the European central bank. “What a good idea!” she replied, to the delight of her supporters.
Less than a week later, she moved out of Downing Street. Her new office belonged to Tory Treasurer Alistair McAlpine, while her new home, a flat on Eaton Square, was lent to her by a wealthy American woman who “came to London once a year”. “Margaret didn’t know her though,” explains Whittingdale of Thatcher’s temporary address before she relocated to Chester Square, her current home.
Tim Bell, her former adviser, appointed Julian Seymour to take charge of her financial matters and Abel Haddon to run her press operation. Whittingdale turned his attention to the 20,000 or so letters which she had received, on one occasion finding the former prime minister attempting to work her way through a pile of handwritten replies. Thatcher, of course, also remained firmly in the public eye, much to the discomfort of her successor, John Major.
Whittingdale, who left Thatcher’s office in 1992 when he entered Parliament as MP for South Colchester and Maldon, didn’t ease Major’s worries by arranging for MPs of his intake to meet with Thatcher.
“She didn’t choose to leave office and she was incapable of small talk, so of course she went on speaking out – about Europe. Major thought it was a plot to destabilise him and, as I was seen as the person in Parliament whom she was closest to, he thought I was deliberately causing discontent,” Whittingdale recalls, adding: “I had an uneasy relationship with Major, but I am proud that I will always be seen as someone close to Mrs Thatcher. I admire her enormously.”
Margaret Thatcher’s resignation leaves many unanswered questions. Should she have stood down, after a decade in power, in 1989? Could she have led the party to election victory in 1991 or 1992? How much lasting damage did the manner of her departure inflict upon the Conservative Party?
Beyond question, however, is that Margaret Thatcher’s final days in power were a suitably dramatic end to one of the most extraordinary careers in British political history.
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