Coming to terms with Thatcher

Once, when travelling from Hong Kong to the US, Sir Robin Butler, then Cabinet Secretary, told Margaret Thatcher he was going to bed. You can, she replied, I certainly won't, I have papers to read. He had a point. On this trip they had already met Gorbachev, still Communist Party secretary, in the USSR. Then Deng Xiaoping in Hong Kong to sort out the details of the handover of the British colony. And they were now en route to the US to meet Reagan. Rest was required. She had a point too—her legacy.

So far, just an anecdote that confirms what you probably already thought about Thatcher. But like most VIP trips from the Asia-Pacific to the US they stopped at the American airforce base in Honolulu. Principals get VIP-ed, but staffers still need visa checks, and jets need refuelling anyway. Wide-awake, the Prime Minister asked to see Pearl Harbor. It's complicated she was told. The water is close, but it is a long way round by road. Why, she asked, direct as ever, can't we just walk there across the tarmac. It's too dark, came the reply. (And to be fair it was the middle of the night). Don't worry, said Margaret Thatcher, I have a torch in my handbag—and guided by this light a group walked to the water's edge arriving just in time for sunrise.

Why has the Prime Minister got a torch in her handbag? Because every day since the IRA failed to kill her in the 1984 Brighton bombing she has carried one with her. Just in case there is another attack by the Provos and the lights fail again as they did in The Grand. A very human, indeed humble, response to a horrendous moment. Her husband Denis had given her a watch after the failed assassination with the inscription "Every moment is precious."

These stories, recounted by Charles Moore—Margaret Thatcher's official biographer—at a Policy Exchange event do a service to Thatcher. They rescue her from myth and misunderstanding by making her human again. Which is, of course, what she always was. But she has suffered from Liberty Valance syndrome—as it says in that John Ford film “when the legend becomes fact, print the legend.” It is only now, after her death, and after the election of the first majority Tory government for nearly a quarter of a century, that we can start to come to terms with Thatcher.

Moore's magisterial biography is a crucial part of that—the second volume Everything She Wants has just been published. But as important is the response of modern Conservatives. In an unusual and completely successful role reversal, Charles Moore—a journalist—was interviewed by a serving politician George Osborne, the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Moore was his usual brilliant self—urbane, witty, insightful and direct. Osborne was the revelation—funny, self-deprecating, a brilliant interviewer. Most importantly, the Chancellor was relaxed. Able to talk, for example, about the poll tax and ask Moore what his advice would be to a (hypothetical) Chancellor who had a bad tax decision forced on them.

The reason for Osborne's relaxation? Apart from his natural ease and humour—which this format of interviewer/interviewee brought out—was the fact that Margaret Thatcher has become history. Moore vividly brings to life the conflicts of the middle period Thatcher but takes a judicious distance from them too. He is never afraid to correct or contradict one of our few genuinely great Prime Ministers. More importantly, perhaps, Osborne is able to lead an honest conversation about Thatcher—warts and all. And, in the end, it is the human Thatcher who comes through. The one who, in Charles Moore's words knew that “there is only one chance for a woman.” When a woman falls, Margaret Thatcher believed, no one tries to catch her. When a woman doesn't fall or fail? Well, look around you. She did this, she made our modern world.