The Downing Street Years, 1979-1990

THE MANIFESTO

The central importance of the manifesto in British general elections often strikes foreign observers as slightly odd. Party manifestos in Britain have acquired greater and greater significance over the years and have become increasingly detailed. In the United States and continental Europe, party ‘platforms’ have less authority and as a result they are not nearly as closely studied. Even in Britain it is only relatively recently that manifestos have been so full of detailed proposals.

The first Conservative manifesto was Sir Robert Peel’s 1835 address to his electors in Tamworth. The ‘Tamworth manifesto’, for all the obvious differences, has one basic similarity with the Conservative manifesto today: it was then and is now very much the party leader’s own statement of policies.

I was never encumbered with the ramshackle apparatus of committees and party rules which makes the drafting and approval of Labour’s manifesto such a nightmare. However, the party leader cannot dictate to senior colleagues: the rest of the government and parliamentary party need to feel committed to the manifesto’s proposals and consequently there has to be a good deal of consultation. I discussed the question with Cecil Parkinson and we agreed that Geoffrey Howe was the right person to oversee the manifesto-making process. There has never been a more devout believer in the virtues of consultation than Geoffrey. It had been necessary to exclude the Treasury from the Falklands War Cabinet and naturally he welcomed this chance to widen his role. As Chancellor of the Exchequer he had the seniority and experience to supervise the required policy work. Looking back, this arrangement was successful in one of its aims — that of reducing the burden on me — but, as we shall see, it turned out to have significant drawbacks. In 1987 I decided to oversee the preparation of the manifesto myself.

The whole process began almost a year before the election. On Saturday 19 June 1982 I approved the setting up of party policy groups with the remit of identifying ‘tasks for Conservative administration during the rest of this decade; to make proposals for action where possible; where not possible, to identify subjects for further study’. Eleven such groups were originally envisaged, though in fact two were never set up: we dropped the idea of a group on ‘constitutional reform’ because I felt that there was really nothing of note to say on that subject, and the terms of reference on ‘the extension of choice’ turned out to be too vague. (This was a theme better dealt with in detail by the other groups.) The nine we did set up covered unemployment, enterprise, family and women’s affairs, education, the cities and law and order, the poverty trap, the European Community, nationalized industries and urban transport. We decided that the chairman of each group should be a parliamentarian — an MP or peer — who would help to select members for their group from among the Conservative-minded in the worlds of business, academe, voluntary service and local government. To keep the Government informed, special advisers to the relevant Cabinet ministers would sit in on the meetings. (Special advisers are political appointees, and so free from the constraints of political neutrality which prevent the use of civil servants in such roles.) Secretarial and research work was done by members of the Conservative Research Department.

Essentially, the policy groups had two purposes. The first and more important was to involve the Party as a whole in our thinking for the future. In this I believe they were successful. The second was to come up with fresh ideas for the manifesto, and unfortunately in this purpose they failed. For one reason or another it took too long to find appropriate chairmen and the right balance of group members. It was not until October or November 1982 that the groups actually got down to work — originally, optimistically, we had thought that they might get started in July. The groups were due to report only at the end of March 1983, but by then of course we in government were all well advanced on our own policy work. Another problem is the human vanity of wanting to demonstrate that you are on the inside track. All too often their proposals trickled out through the press. Indeed, The Times published a detailed account of the report from the Education Policy Group.

The fact is that the really bold proposals in any manifesto can only be developed over a considerable period of time. Relying on bright ideas thought out at the last moment risks a manifesto that would be incoherent and impossible to carry out. So, in the end, the real work for the 1983 manifesto had to be done in No. 10 and by ministers in departments.

As head of my Policy Unit at No. 10, Ferdy Mount was ideally placed for manifesto drafting, and uniquely gifted for it too. He was able to see how ministers were thinking from the ‘Forward Look’ papers I received at the end of 1982. The next step was taken in February 1983, when Geoffrey Howe wrote to Cabinet colleagues, asking them to send him their suggestions for the manifesto not later than April. Their submissions would then be accepted, sharpened up or rejected by a smaller group of ministers and advisers directly responsible to me. The Treasury would keep a weather eye on the cost of proposals — another advantage of Geoffrey’s close involvement — with the result that we were able to say during the election that all of our proposals had been taken into account in the latest Public Expenditure White Paper. Since we expected the contrast between Tory prudence and Labour profligacy to be a central issue in the campaign, this made political as well as economic sense.

Ferdy, Geoffrey Howe, and Geoffrey’s special adviser, Adam Ridley, worked intensively together on Ferdy’s first draft during March and early April. Subsequently, they were joined by Cecil Parkinson, Keith Joseph, Norman Tebbit, David Howell and Peter Cropper (the director of the Conservative Research Department), over the weekend of 9–10 April at which departmental submissions were fully considered. By the end of April we had a fairly complete draft, on which I worked with Geoffrey, Cecil, Ferdy and Adam at Chequers on Sunday 24 April. Shortly afterwards, the Party’s Advisory Committee on Policy met under Keith Joseph’s chairmanship to give it the Party’s final seal of approval: interestingly, in the light of later events, the main criticism came from the two representatives of the ’22 Committee who thought that we were not doing enough to reform the rates. On Wednesday 4 May chapters of the draft manifesto were sent for checking and agreement to individual ministers. A few final changes were made later still at my last pre-election strategy meeting at Chequers the following Sunday, after which it was at last ready to go to the printers. It was finally submitted in proof to an unofficial meeting of Cabinet.

The most important pledges in the manifesto fell into three groups. First, we promised to accelerate privatization, which was fundamental to our whole economic approach. If elected, we committed ourselves to sell British Telecom, British Airways, substantial parts of British Steel, British Shipbuilders, British Leyland and as many as possible of Britain’s airports. The offshore oil interests of British Gas would also be privatized and private capital would be introduced into the National Bus Company. This was an ambitious programme — far more extensive than we had thought would ever be possible when we came into office only four years before.

The second important group of pledges concerned trade union reform. Building on the consultations on our Trade Union Democracy Green Paper, we promised legislation to require ballots for the election of trade union governing bodies and ballots before strikes, failing which unions would lose their immunities. As I have noted, there was also a cautious pledge to consider legislation on the trade union political levy and on strikes in essential services. The caution was justified: we legislated on the former. At a time when Labour was promising to repeal our earlier trade union reforms, we were moving ahead with new ones: the contrast was stark, and we were sure the voters would appreciate the fact.

The third significant group of manifesto proposals related to local government. In particular, we promised to abolish the Greater London Council (GLC) and the Metropolitan County Councils, returning their functions (which we had already limited) to councils closer to the people — the boroughs in London, and the districts in the other metropolitan areas. The proposal surprised most people and was subsequently portrayed as a last-minute measure, sketchily thought out. The truth was very different. The previous year a Cabinet committee had examined the issue very thoroughly and recommended abolition, though past experience of leaks led me not to put the question to Cabinet for final decision until shortly before the election. We also promised to introduce what came to be known as ‘rate-capping’ — legislation enabling us to curb the extravagance of high-spending councils, in the interests of local ratepayers and the wider economy.

Though the manifesto took our programme forward, it was somehow not an exciting document. The first years of Conservative administration had been dominated by the battle against inflation and by a different kind of warfare in the South Atlantic. Great as the achievements were, neither economics nor defence is the kind of issue that generates exciting material for manifestos. Social policy is very different, but we were only really starting to turn our attention to this area, which was to become increasingly important in the next two Parliaments. And on this occasion at least, perhaps Geoffrey Howe was too safe a pair of hands. I was somewhat disappointed, though tactically I could see that it made sense for us to produce a tame manifesto and to concentrate on exposing Labour’s wildness.

Perhaps the most important feature of the manifesto was what it did not contain. It did not promise a change of direction or an easing of the pace. It gave no quarter to the advocates of socialism and corporatism. In the foreword I stated my vision of Britain and the British:

Was I right in believing that this was the spirit of the time? Or was socialism what the people really wanted? The electorate would shortly give their answer.

PLANNING THE CAMPAIGN

On Wednesday 5 January 1983 I set aside a full day for discussion of our general election strategy. It was in the recess, so we held it at Chequers, always a relaxing place to think things out. The first half of the morning was spent with Cecil Parkinson, Michael Spicer (Deputy Chairman of the Party), Ian Gow and David Wolfson. We reached provisional decisions on a number of practical issues.

One of the most important things was to decide who would accompany me on my campaign tours. A coach had been hired and specially fitted out to take me around the country. We tried to keep the team as small as possible, though when the election was underway there always seemed to be a sizeable number on the bus. My PPS, Ian Gow, was a natural choice, with Michael Spicer taking his place on days when he had constituency engagements. At various times either Derek Howe or Tony Shrimsley would act as Press Officer. John Whittingdale, years later my political secretary and then only twenty-three, was chosen to do research. From Downing Street, Alison Ward and Tessa Gaisman would type the speeches, while one of the ‘Garden Room girls’ would keep me regularly in touch with No. 10 in case something happened which required my immediate attention. And last, but by no means least, we would be accompanied by my daughter Carol, who wrote and published a daily diary of the campaign. Harvey Thomas would go ahead to set up arrangements for meetings and reconnoitre for the press, while his wife typed text for the Autocue, which I now used for all big speeches. Travelling in the coach was bound to be tiring but we knew it would allow us to obtain better press and television pictures. Often it would be possible for me to fly or take the train to the spot at which the tour itself began, using the travel time to work on speech notes and briefing.

At this meeting we considered the arrangements for the manning of the correspondence unit which would be set up to deal with my mail during the election period. I decided to ask Sir John Eden, a former minister who was not standing again for Parliament, to take on this task. There was also the problem of deciding who should serve on the Questions of Policy Committee at Central Office, set up at each election to give authoritative answers to difficult questions put to our candidates. I concluded that Angus Maude, who was also standing down as a Member of Parliament, was the ideal person to chair this Committee.

Later that morning at Chequers we were joined by several other senior people from Central Office. They reported on their plans. One difficulty that came around at every election was to know when to produce the Conservative Research Department’s lengthy and rightly famous Campaign Guide — an encyclopaedia of political facts used by people of all political persuasions, including left-wing journalists too lazy to do their own research. The Campaign Guide’s appearance invariably triggered election speculation. We decided to aim at a publication date in July, though in the event the election came earlier and it had to be produced in a great rush to be ready for the start of the campaign in May. We discussed other literature which would be required for the constituencies. A Boundary Commission report was due and though the Party would benefit substantially from its proposals for the redistribution of seats, by the same token it was difficult to identify precisely the critical marginal seats in which the election would be won or lost. And it was vital that we focus our efforts on the marginals.

We discussed how to handle television: it was likely to be even more important than in earlier elections, though the new breakfast television would have less impact than had often been predicted. Gordon Reece had come over from the United States to help with this aspect of the campaign. Gordon was a former television producer with a unique insight into the medium. He had a much better grasp of popular taste than might have been expected from a man whose principal diet was champagne and cigars. He was always cheerful himself and he never failed to cheer others too. In fact, this was one of the few occasions when I can remember disagreeing with Gordon. He argued that we should be prepared to accept a series of televised debates between myself and Michael Foot, and (separately) with the Alliance leaders. This was an exceptional suggestion: British prime ministers have never accepted challenges to election debates of this kind. The calculation usually is that prime ministers have nothing to gain from them, and quite a lot to lose. But I stood so much better in the polls than Michael Foot that Gordon thought that on this occasion the orthodoxy was wrong and that I could only gain from such a confrontation. I rejected the idea. I disliked the way that elections were being turned into media circuses. And, as I have already said, I did not underrate Michael Foot as a debater. In any case, the arguments were too important to be reduced to a ‘sound bite’ or a gladiatorial sport.

One of our principal assets was the state of the Party’s organization. Cecil Parkinson had done wonders for Central Office. He had brought the Party’s finances into order in the year or so since he had become Chairman: this was essential, because it is only by husbanding resources in mid-term that you can afford to spend as heavily as required in a general election campaign. Cecil had also brought in some very able people. Peter Cropper had reintroduced rigorous standards in the Research Department. Tony Shrimsley, in charge of press relations, was a highly professional and talented journalist who shared my own outlook; sadly, this was to be his last campaign — he was probably already fatally ill. Cecil had placed Chris Lawson in charge of a new Marketing Department, which dealt with opinion research and publicity; Chris was that rare and useful animal, a businessman with acute political instincts.

In the afternoon Tim Bell presented a paper summarizing the strengths and weaknesses of our position, based upon opinion polls. Tim had a more sensitive set of antennae than most politicians. He could pick up quicker than anyone else a change in the national mood. And, unlike most advertising men, he understood that selling ideas is different from selling soap. Tim set out a communications strategy whose main theme was ‘keep on with the change’, an approach which I welcomed. Its wisdom lay in the perception that it was the Conservative Government rather than the Opposition parties which was the radical force in British society. As we ourselves had shown in 1979, there are few more potent slogans for an Opposition than that it is ‘time for a change’. Tim showed that we could deprive Labour of that slogan and turn the argument against them.

We held another all-day session on general election strategy at Chequers on Thursday 7 April. Manifesto work was in its final stages by then and I was worried that campaign planning seemed to be taking place in a separate compartment. However, that could not be helped. The key members of the Central Office team, along with Tim Bell, Ferdy Mount, David Wolfson, Ian Gow and myself ran over the style and content of the campaign and, in particular, my part in it. By now speculation about an early general election was feverish and there was little or nothing that I could do to prevent it, without firmly ruling out an early election, which of course would have been a very foolish thing to do. I had already stated in public that I would not go to the country before the end of our fourth year and at this meeting I made no secret of the fact that my own instincts were against an early election; I had in mind an election in October. Certainly, the argument was finely balanced. Were we to wait, there was a danger that if the polls started to turn in Labour’s favour the prospect of their grossly irresponsible economic policies being implemented would weaken sterling and hold back investment. It is also generally true, as Jim Callaghan learnt to his cost when he postponed the election in the autumn of 1978, that in politics the ‘unexpected happens’. However, on the other side of the argument, I was convinced that we were now seeing sustainable economic recovery, which would continue to strengthen the longer we waited: clearly, the more solid economic good news we could show the better.

But, of course, the overriding consideration in choosing an election date is whether or not you think you are going to win. On Sunday 8 May I had a final Chequers meeting with Cecil Parkinson, Willie Whitelaw, Geoffrey Howe, Norman Tebbit, Michael Jopling, Ferdy Mount, David Wolfson and Ian Gow. There had been local government elections on Thursday 5 May and we knew that the results would tell us a good deal about our prospects. Central Office staff had worked furiously to provide a detailed computer analysis by the weekend. We also had the evidence provided by private and public opinion polls.

Even when Cecil Parkinson took us through the information Central Office had brought together, I had some lingering doubt about whether the prospects really were good enough. I needed some convincing: calling an election is a big decision, and by constitutional convention it is a matter for the prime minister alone, however much advice is on offer. It was also, of course, a decision that I had never had to make before. Cecil and the others argued for June. It was pointed out that the main economic indicators would look slightly better then than in the autumn because inflation was due to rise slightly in the second half of the year. We would also probably face a by-election in Cardiff if we did not go soon: the Welsh Nationalists were threatening to move the writ and we had no way of stopping them. By-elections are unpredictable and there was the risk that the third-party bandwagon could be persuaded to roll if it went ahead. But the argument that told most with me was the level of election fever. The speculation was becoming impossible. Of course, I would be accused of ‘cutting and running’ if I went to the country in June, but the same critics would say I was ‘clinging to power’ if I put the election off; and probably the most damaging thing is to look as if you are afraid of testing your mandate.

By long-established custom, elections take place on a Thursday: if we were to go in June, which Thursday should it be? Again, Cecil and Central Office had done their homework, preparing a list of forthcoming events. From this it seemed that the second Thursday in June would be best, although this meant that the campaign would have to include a Bank Holiday — something electioneers prefer to avoid since it is almost impossible to campaign over that weekend. But Ascot began the following Monday and I did not like the idea of television screens during the final or penultimate week of the campaign filled with pictures of toffs and ladies in exotic hats while we stumped the country urging people to turn out and vote Conservative. Therefore, if we went in June it would have to be the 9th, rather than the 16th or 23rd.

These were persuasive arguments. But I did not make up mind finally that day, returning to No. 10 only provisionally convinced. When I am making a big decision, I always prefer to sleep on it.

UNFINISHED BUSINESS

The following morning just before 7 o’clock I rang down to the duty clerk asking my principal private secretary, Robin Butler, to see me as soon as he came in: Robin would arrange for an audience with the Queen later that morning. I had decided to seek a dissolution and go to the country on Thursday 9 June.

There was now much to be done. I saw the Chief Whip and the Party Chairman to tell them of my decision, summoned a special Cabinet for II.15 a.m. and went on to the Palace at 12.25 p.m. The rest of the day was spent discussing final election campaign preparations and the manifesto, and recording interviews. We had some important decisions to make about government business in Parliament. Two major bills — the Telecommunications and the Police and Criminal Evidence Bills — would have to be abandoned, though of course we would be able to reintroduce them if we formed the next government. The Finance Bill had to become law before Parliament dissolved — without it government authority to levy taxation would lapse — and to secure a quick passage for the bill we had to negotiate with the Opposition. Labour was inept: they gave us a parting gift by forcing the abandonment of a number of tax cuts proposed in the Finance Bill, including increases in the threshold at which the higher rate of income tax would begin and in the amount of tax relief for mortgages. They were quite happy to brand Labour the party of higher taxation: so were we.

I also had to make some decisions about my future engagements as Prime Minister, particularly meetings already arranged with foreign visitors: which, if any, should I see? A number of meetings were cancelled, but I carried on with as much of my diary schedule as I could. On Wednesday 11 May, I had talks and lunch with Robert Muldoon, Prime Minister of New Zealand, who had proved such a good friend to Britain in the Falklands crisis. That evening I also saw Alexander Solzhenitzyn and his wife. This courageous man sent a timely message to the British people at a press conference he gave, describing supporters of unilateral disarmament as ‘naïve’.

Another question was whether I should go to the United States for the forthcoming G7 summit at Williamsburg at the end of May. I decided immediately that I had to cancel my planned visit Washington on 26 May for pre-summit talks with President Reagan. As for the Williamsburg summit itself, I was minded to go but kept my options open for the moment. Politicians always have to be careful not to be seen spending more time with opposite numbers abroad than with their own people and that is never truer than in an election campaign. But the summit was important in its own right, not least because the President himself would be chairing it. Moreover, it would show Britain in a leading international role and lend international endorsement to the sort of policies we were pursuing.

We deliberately started our campaign later than the other parties. The electorate quickly becomes bored with incessant party politicking and it is important not to peak too soon: the ideal is to make an increasing impact in the last few days before polling day itself. Labour’s manifesto, all over the newspapers shortly before the dissolution of Parliament, was an appalling document. It committed the party to a non-nuclear defence, withdrawal from the European Community, enormously increased public spending and a host of other irresponsible policies and was dubbed by one of the wittier Shadow Cabinet ministers ‘the longest suicide note ever written’. We were very keen to publicize it and I understand that Conservative Central Office placed the largest single order for copies. But at my customary address to the ’22 that evening, I warned the Party against overconfidence: even a short election campaign is quite long enough for things to go badly wrong.

The next day I flew to Scotland to address the Scottish Conservative Party Conference in Perth. The hall in Perth is not large, but it has excellent acoustics. It is one of the best places to speak anywhere in Britain — perhaps only Blackpool Winter Gardens is better. In spite of a sore throat from the tail-end of a heavy cold, I enjoyed myself. Not only do I always recall that this is the nation of Adam Smith: the romantic strain of Scottish Toryism appeals to the non-economist in me too. As always after visits to the Scottish Conference, I returned to London encouraged and in fighting spirit. The atmosphere had been one of buoyant enthusiasm — a good omen for the campaign.

That weekend I was also able to study the results of our first major ‘state of battle’ opinion poll survey. It showed that we had a 14 per cent lead over Labour and that there had been a fall in support for the Alliance. This was, of course, very satisfactory. I was glad to note that there was no evidence that people thought I had been wrong to call the election; indeed, the great majority thought it was the correct decision. But the poll also showed that if the Alliance looked in with a chance there was considerable potential for an increase in its support from weakly committed Conservative and Labour voters. Obviously this was something we would have to guard against.

THE CAMPAIGN BEGINS

In 1983, as in 1979 and 1987, we usually began the morning with a press conference on a prearranged topic. Before the press conference I was briefed in Central Office — during this election by Stephen Sherbourne, who managed to be both quick and methodical and who would shortly join my team in Downing Street as political secretary. This briefing took place at 8.30 a.m. in a cramped room at Central Office. We would begin by approving the day’s press release and go on to consider questions likely to come up. Someone from the Conservative Research Department would come in part way through the briefing to report what had happened at Labour’s press conference — somewhat easier then than now, for at that time Labour headquarters was at Transport House, just across the road from Central Office in Smith Square. It was convenient too that Labour’s daily schedule ran ahead of ours. Our press conference would begin at 9.30 a.m. and was planned to last an hour. We had arranged my tours so that I spent very few nights away from London, and therefore I was nearly always available to chair it. I would field some of the questions myself, but try to give whichever ministers were appearing beside me that morning a chance to make their points. We were willing to change the subject of the day almost up to the last minute. In fact, during this campaign we were able to keep to the planned topics, though extra press conferences, which I did not attend, were arranged to deal with particular matters like Labour’s social security spending pledges.

Our main aim both in the press conferences and speeches was to deal with the difficult question of unemployment by showing that we were prepared to take it head on and prove that our policies were the best to provide jobs in the future. So successful were we in this that by the end of the campaign the opinion polls showed that we were more trusted to deal with this problem than Labour. People knew that the real reasons for the high level of unemployment were not Conservative policies but rather past overmanning and inefficiency, strikes, technological change, changes in the pattern of world trade and the international recession. Labour lost the argument when they tried to place the whole blame for this deep-seated problem on the callous, uncaring Tories.

Then there were the speeches. During the campaign I used Sundays — almost the only time available — to work on speeches for the forthcoming week with Ferdy Mount and others at Chequers. I often saw Ferdy for final revision when I arrived back in No. 10 from campaigning during the day. He had prepared about half a dozen speech drafts on different topics before the campaign. The actual speeches I delivered consisted of extracts from these, with additional material often provided by Ronnie Millar and John Gummer, and topical comment addressing the issue of the day. I would put on the finishing touches in the campaign coach, trains, aeroplanes, cars and just about anywhere else you can imagine along the campaign trail. There were a few big speeches during this election but a large number of short speeches on ‘whistle stops’, often delivered off the back of a lorry on a small mobile platform, always off the cuff. I preferred the whistle stops, particularly when there were some hecklers. People tell me that I am an old-fashioned campaigner; I enjoy verbal combat, though it has to be said that neither I nor the crowds derived much intellectual challenge from the monotonous chants of the CND and Socialist Worker protesters who followed me round the country.

Third, there were the tours themselves. The basic principle, of course, is that you should concentrate the Leader’s appearances in marginal seats. One day on the campaign bus David Wolfson chided me for waving too much to people watching us pass: ‘only wave in marginals, Prime Minister’. As the importance of television and the ‘photo-opportunity’ increases, the leader’s physical location on a particular day is rather less important than it once was. In this election, moreover, our objective was to hold our vote and our seats so that (with a limited number of exceptions) my task was to concentrate on campaigning in Conservative-held seats. But one thing you must do is to visit all the main regions of the country: nothing is more devastating to candidates and party workers than to think they have been written off.

Finally, there were the interviews. These came in quite different styles. Brian Waiden on Weekend World would ask the most probing questions. Robin Day on Panorama was probably the most aggressive, though in this campaign he made the mistake of plunging into detail on the problem of calculating the impact of unemployment on the public finances — a gaffe when cross-examining a former Minister of National Insurance. I made a gaffe of my own calling Sir Robin ‘Mr Day’ throughout. Alistair Burnet specialized in short, subtle questions which sounded innocuous but contained hidden dangers. One needed all one’s nimbleness of wit to make it unscathed through the minefields. Then there were the programmes on which members of the public asked questions. My favourite was always the Granada 500 when a large audience quizzes you about the things which really matter to them.

Our manifesto was launched at the first Conservative press conference on Wednesday 18 May. The whole Cabinet was there. I ran through the main proposals, and then Geoffrey Howe, Norman Tebbit and Tom King made short statements on their sections of the manifesto. After that I invited questions. Manifestos rarely make the headlines unless, as on this occasion, something goes wrong. The press will consign carefully thought-out proposals for government to an inside page and concentrate on the slightest evidence of a ‘split’. At the press conference a journalist asked Francis Pym about negotiations with Argentina. I felt that Francis’s reply risked being ambiguous, so I interrupted to make clear that while we would negotiate on commercial and diplomatic links, we would not discuss sovereignty. The press highlighted this: but there was in fact no split. That’s politics.

D-21 TO D-14

In Britain the general election campaign is only about four weeks long, usually less. For planning purposes during elections we always used the so-called ‘D- (minus)’ system, numbering each day in a countdown to ‘D-Day’ — polling day itself. The most intense period of the campaign is from D-21 on, which in this case fell on Thursday 19 May. We opened our campaign on D-20, Friday 20 May, two days after the launch of the manifesto. The first of our five Party Election Broadcasts (PEBs) had been shown on D-23.

It was not Francis Pym’s week. He told a questioner on BBC’s Question Time that in his opinion ‘landslides on the whole don’t produce successful governments.’ Naturally, people drew the inference that he did not want us to win a large majority. Of course, this was all very well for those with safe seats like Francis himself. But it was distinctly less good news for candidates in the Conservative marginals and those of our people hoping to win seats from other parties. And since complacency was likely to be our worst enemy in the campaign this remark struck a wrong note.

The first regular press conference on the campaign took place on Friday 20 May. Geoffrey Howe challenged Labour on the cost of their manifesto proposals and said that if they did not publish them we would. This was the first deployment of a very effective campaign theme. Patrick Jenkin, taking it up, drew attention to Labour’s plans for nationalization and regulation of industry. There were a number of questions about the economy. But, inevitably, what the press really wanted to know was what I thought about Francis’s remark. We had seen this coming and I had discussed what to say at the briefing session earlier that morning. Francis had been Chief Whip under Ted Heath and I made that the basis of my reply:

I left after the press conference for my first campaign tour, which was in the West Country. At 10.45 a.m. we drove from Central Office to Victoria Station, and from there went by train to Gatwick to catch the flight to St Mawgan in Cornwall. A group of around 40 or 50 journalists joined us, sitting together at the back of the plane. It was a pleasant rural day. I visited the fish market at Padstow Harbour and went on to Trelyll Farm, near Wadebridge. There I was caught out by the press. I was standing on a heap of cut grass and the Daily Mirror photographer asked me to pick some up. I saw nothing wrong with that, and so I obliged. He took his photograph — and the picture duly appeared the following day with the caption ‘Let them eat grass’. It does not do to be too co-operative.

It was on Monday 23 May (D-17) that my campaign began in earnest. We started as usual with a briefing meeting for that morning’s press conference where we spent some time discussing the Party’s advertising. Saatchi & Saatchi had devised some brilliant advertisements and posters in 1979. Most of those they produced in 1983 were not quite as good, although there were exceptions. One compared the Communist and Labour Party manifestos by printing side by side a list of identical commitments from each. It was a long list. A second poster set out 14 rights and freedoms that the voter would be signing away if Labour was elected and carried out its programme. Another poster aimed at winning us support from ethnic minorities with the slogan ‘Labour Think He’s Black, Conservatives Think He’s British’ caused some controversy. But I thought it was perfectly fair. I did, however, veto one showing a particularly unflattering picture of Michael Foot with the slogan: ‘Under The Conservatives All Pensioners Are Better Off’. Maybe that was a fair political point too: but I do not like personal attacks.

My speech that evening was at the Cardiff City Hall. It was a long speech, made a little longer but much more lively when I broke away from the text, which always seems to help the delivery. I covered all the main election issues — jobs, health, pensions, defence — but the lines I liked best related to Labour’s plans for savings:

I had returned early to No. 10 from Tuesday’s daily tour in order to prepare for a Question and Answer session with Sue Lawley on Nationwide. This unfortunately degenerated into an argument about the sinking of the General Belgrano.

The Left thought it was scoring points by keeping the public’s attention focused on this, exploiting minor discrepancies to support its theory of a ruthless government intent on slaughter. This was not only odious; it was inept. The voters overwhelmingly accepted our view that protecting British lives came first. On the Belgrano, as on everything else, the Left’s obsessions were at variance with their interests. But I found the whole episode distasteful.

Wednesday 25 May was a difficult day for both the major parties, though we suffered far less damage than Labour. The Labour Party was so ineffective during the campaign that the newspapers, in desperation for stories, concentrated heavily on leaked documents. The main interest on this occasion was the leaking of a draft report of the Treasury and Civil Service Select Committee, which attacked our economic policies. Cecil Parkinson contacted Edward du Cann, the Committee Chairman, who promptly issued a statement drawing attention to the fact that the report had not been approved by the committee. It was typical of the Labour Party’s lack of grip that they completely missed this opportunity to embarrass us, preferring to spend their morning press conference talking about ‘women’s issues’. We were amazed. As we joked about it I said to my male colleagues at the briefing session: ‘if they have their way, you’ll soon be having the babies.’

Our press conference that day, though allegedly on defence, was in fact devoted to the revelation that our candidate at Stockton South had once been a member of the National Front. He had left the National Front some years before and now claimed to be an orthodox Conservative and regretted his past. As far as we were concerned this was a peripheral embarrassment but some left-wing journalists seemed to see themselves as Woodward and Bernstein, fighting the Establishment. Again, it served to distract the Labour Party from issues of genuine interest to the public.

The Labour Party was now in deep trouble. That same day — the very day we had chosen to devote to defence — Jim Callaghan made a speech in Wales rejecting unilateral nuclear disarmament. The newspapers were full of contradictory statements about Labour’s position on nuclear weapons. Even among Labour front-benchers there was disarray: you could choose between Michael Foot, Denis Healey and John Silkin — each seemed to have his own defence policy. Michael Heseltine at our press conference and throughout the campaign was devastating in his criticisms of Labour’s policy.

I always realized that there were a few issues on which Labour was especially vulnerable — issues on which they had irresponsible policies but ones to which the public attached great importance. They were the ‘gut issues’. Defence was one. Another was public spending, where the voters always have a suspicion that Labour will spend and tax too much. For that reason I was very keen that Geoffrey Howe do a more comprehensive costing of Labour’s manifesto promises than usual. He produced a superb analysis that ran to twenty pages. It showed that Labour’s plans implied additional spending in the life of a Parliament of between £36–43 billion — the latter figure almost equal to the total revenue of income tax at that time. Labour’s economic credibility never recovered. Indeed, Labour’s profligacy has been its Achilles heel in every election I have fought — all the more reason for a Conservative government to manage the nation’s economic affairs prudently.

That Wednesday my election tour took me to the East of England, travelling by aeroplane and coach. It was a beautiful day. I spent part of it campaigning in East Dereham in Norfolk for Richard Ryder. As I have noted, he had been my political secretary, and I was glad to be able to help. And, of course, his wife, Caroline, had also worked for me. Almost a family occasion. I addressed a crowd in the packed market square. There were a few hecklers which made it more fun. I let rip with an old-fashioned barnstorming speech. Later someone told me that above the platform where I had stood to deliver the speech there was a large cinema sign advertising a film called The Missionary.

D-14 TO D-7

On Thursday 26 May (D-14) the opinion polls reported in the press gave us anything between a 13 and 19 per cent lead over Labour. The principal danger from now on would be complacency among Conservative voters rather than any desperate Labour attempts at a comeback.

Thursday was to be another pleasant day of traditional campaigning, this time in Yorkshire. One highlight was lunch in Harry Ramsden’s Fish and Chip Shop — the ‘biggest fish and chip shop in the Free World’ — in Leeds. I thoroughly enjoyed myself but the occasion was quite chaotic, with cameramen crashing around among the startled diners.

That evening I spoke at the Royal Hall, Harrogate, dwelling on a theme which was central to my political strategy. The turbulence of politics in the 1970s and 1980s had overturned the set patterns of British politics. Labour’s own drift to the left and the extremism of the trade unions had disillusioned and fractured its traditional support. The SDP and the Liberals failed to grasp the significance of what was happening. They projected their appeal to the middle-class Left, especially those who worked in the public sector, probably, I suspect, because Roy Jenkins and Shirley Williams instinctively sought out their own kind and allowed that instinct to overcome their judgement. In fact, the more numerous and dissatisfied Labour supporters were in the rising working and lower-middle class — the same group that in America Ronald Reagan was winning over and who were known as ‘Reagan Democrats’. They were benefiting from the opportunities we had made available, especially the sale of council houses; more important, they shared our values, including a strong belief in family life and an intense patriotism. We now had an opportunity to bring them into the Conservative fold, and I directed my speech at Harrogate to doing just that:

Politicians generally dislike elections. But one advantage is that in the course of a campaign you see a great deal of the country that would otherwise be concealed in reports and memoranda. For example, no official report could convey the excitement of the advanced electronics factories around Reading that I visited on the Friday. It was also my first encounter with the portable telephone.

By the time that I arrived back in London there had been yet another extraordinary development in Labour’s campaign. Labour’s General Secretary, Jim Mortimer, reported to an astonished press corps that ‘the unanimous view of the campaign committee is that Michael Foot is the Leader of the Labour Party.’ With statements like that one wondered how long either of them would keep his job.

My own mind that evening was very much on the forthcoming G7 economic summit at Williamsburg, for which I would leave for the United States at midday on Saturday. President Reagan was keen to have me there. He had sent me a message on 10 May to say that he would perfectly understand if I was not able to come to Washington for a pre-summit bilateral meeting, but that he very much hoped I would go to Williamsburg. The message concluded:

Above all, he wanted me to win — just as I always wanted him to win. I received a report whose authenticity I had no reason to doubt that the President had said that no pressure was to be put on me one way or another about attending the summit. ‘Hell,’ he was reported to have said, ‘the main thing is for her to get re-elected.’ I shared his analysis.

Whatever its electoral implications for me, there was no doubt that the Williamsburg summit was of real international importance. President Reagan was determined to make a success of it. At previous G7 summits the scope for genuine discussion had been somewhat limited by the fact that a draft communiqué had been drawn up even before the leaders met. This time the Americans had insisted that we should discuss first and draft later, which, however inconvenient for officials, was far more sensible. But I took along a British draft just in case it was needed.

The atmosphere at Williamsburg was excellent, not just because of the President’s own radiant good humour but because of the place itself. In the surroundings of this restored Virginian town each head of government stayed in a separate house. We were welcomed by friendly townspeople in old-style colonial dress. There was a complete contrast with the perhaps overluxurious feel of Versailles.

I had a long tête-à-tête discussion with the President. It ranged over a wide field: from nuclear disarmament negotiations to the state of the American economy and the protectionist leanings of the US Congress — something which was giving us increasing concern. Later I had a short but important talk with Prime Minister Nakasone of Japan. I had met him when I visited his country as Leader of the Opposition. He was perhaps the most articulate and ‘western’ of Japan’s leaders in the period when I was Prime Minister, raising his country’s international profile and fostering close links with the United States. On this occasion, my main interest was to press for Nissan to finalize its decision to invest in Britain, which I hoped would create thousands of jobs. Understandably, Mr Nakasone’s line was that this was a decision for the company. I should add here that it had been reported in the British press that Nissan would not have gone ahead with their investment had Labour been elected. This was publicly denied by the company, but it was probably true.

The two main objectives which President Reagan and I shared for the summit were the reaffirmation of sound economic policies and a public demonstration of our unity behind NATO’s position on arms control, especially as regards the deployment of Cruise and Pershing II missiles. I introduced the discussion on arms control at dinner on Saturday. In fact, by that morning we had what most of us considered a satisfactory draft communiqué. France’s position — as a country outside the NATO command structure — required to be taken into account. But President Mitterrand said that he had no dispute with the substance of our proposal. In fact, he came up with an amendment that we were able to accept, because it strengthened it in the direction we wanted. It seems improbable that President Mitterrand realized this.

Pierre Trudeau of Canada did have a problem with a strong line on deterrence. He urged us all to ‘speak more softly’ to the Soviet Union. There followed some exchanges between the two of us which I later described in a letter to him as ‘on the lively side’. In the end, a thoroughly satisfactory text on arms control emerged.

The text on the economy was pretty satisfactory as well, except for a little misty language on exchange rate co-ordination. President Mitterrand had been tempted at one stage by grand talk of a ‘new Bretton Woods’, shorthand for the system of fixed exchange rates which had operated from 1944 to 1973. But he did not press this view at Williamsburg.

I came home by the overnight British Airways flight, confident that the outcome of the summit vindicated my approach to the crucial election issues of defence and the economy. This summit also marked a change in the relationship between President Reagan and the other heads of government. They might previously have admired his eloquence and devotion to principle: but they had sometimes been dismissive of his grasp of detail. I, myself, had felt some concern about this earlier. Not so on this occasion. He had plainly done his homework. He had all the facts and figures at his fingertips. He steered the discussions with great skill and aplomb. He managed to get all he wanted from the summit, while allowing everyone to feel that they had got at least some of what they wanted, and he did all this with an immense geniality. What President Reagan demonstrated at Williamsburg was that in international as in domestic affairs he was a master politician.

Monday 30 May was a Bank Holiday. That day Denis Healey released what the Labour Party claimed was the ‘real’ Conservative manifesto, a fantastical affair, full of lies, half-truths and scares culled from reports of leaked documents, especially the CPRS long-term public expenditure document, the whole thing imaginatively embellished. I was not surprised. Labour had tried this tactic in 1979: it had not worked then either. Once again, Labour was catering not to the interests of the voter but to its own obsessions. They failed to realize that propaganda can never persuade people of the incredible. Apparently, you can persuade the press of this, however.

On Tuesday evening I was to speak at George Watson’s College in Edinburgh. My idea was to use the occasion to report on Williamsburg and to defend our record on the social services. But looking at the material we already had written, I realized that we had a lot of work still to do and the whole thing was finished in a tremendous rush, as not infrequently happens with my speeches. Several of us spent the early evening before the speech crawling around the floor of my room at the Caledonian Hotel, sticking together bits of text with sellotape. After that we flew further north to Inverness, where we stayed the night. A large crowd of chanting protesters outside our hotel serenaded us to sleep.

The next day (Wednesday 1 June, D-8) I held a press conference, gave television interviews, visited two Scottish factories, flew to Manchester, visited a bakery in Bolton and a brewery in Stockport, and flew back to London to begin work on another speech. I am not usually much affected either by pressure of work or by attacks from opponents. But this day was a little different. Denis Healey made the tasteless remark that I had been ‘glorying in slaughter’ during the Falklands War. I was both angry and upset. We had deliberately decided not to raise the Falklands in the campaign and had done nothing whatsoever to make it an issue. The remark hurt and offended many people besides me — not all of them Conservatives — particularly the relatives of those who had fought and died in the war. Mr Healey later made a half-hearted retraction: he had meant to say ‘conflict’ rather than ‘slaughter’ — a distinction without a difference. Neil Kinnock returned to the subject a few days later, in an even more offensive form, if that were possible. These remarks were all the more revealing because they were politically stupid: indeed they did enormous harm to Labour. They were not made from political calculation, but can only have emerged from something coarse and brutal in the imagination.

D-7 TO D-Day

Nonetheless at Thursday morning’s press conference there was yet more about the General Belgrano and I could not conceal my irritation at the failure of some journalists to grasp the harsh reality of war. I said:

On Friday, after the press conference, Cecil and I had now to decide whether we needed a full-scale newspaper advertising campaign over the weekend. Two opinion polls that day showed us with leads of 11 and 17 per cent over Labour. We were being told that we were home and dry. But many voters make up their minds in the last week, some indeed as they are on their way to the polling station; so I have always been a wary campaigner. Cecil was an equally battle-scarred electioneer and we had planned to run expensive three-page advertisements in the Sunday newspapers. But we decided to take a risk and save the money, cutting the advertisements to a more economical two pages. On this my political calculations coincided with my instincts as a Grantham grocer’s daughter. Obvious extravagance is bad advertising.

I spent Saturday (D-5) campaigning in Westminster North, then going on to the constituencies in Ealing and Hendon close to my own. I campaigned in Finchley for most of the afternoon and then went to support our candidate in Hampstead and Highgate.

On my return to No. 10 work began almost at once on the speech I was to deliver the next day at our Youth Rally at Wembley Conference Centre. My speech writers and I worked late into the night, breaking for a hot meal which I served up in the kitchen from the capacious store of precooked frozen food I always kept there for such occasions. Shepherd’s pie and a glass of wine can do a great deal to improve morale. Speech writing was for me an important political activity. As one of my speech writers said, ‘no one writes speeches for Mrs Thatcher: they write speeches with Mrs Thatcher.’ Every written word goes through the mincing machine of my criticism before it gets into a speech. These are occasions for thinking creatively and politically and for fashioning larger themes into which particular policies fit. I often found myself drawing on phrases and ideas from these sessions when I was speaking off the cuff, answering questions at Prime Minister’s Question Time and for television interviews. This helped to preserve me from the occupational hazard of long-serving ministers: so I was never accused of thinking like a civil servant. (They had to think like me.) These occasions often continued long into the night and can perhaps be described as fraught but fun.

So was the Youth Rally. Some of the sourer critics chose to take offence at joke remarks made by the comedian who preceded my appearance on stage. What they really took offence at was the broad social appeal of the new Conservative Party demonstrated both by the unconventional people on the stage and in the audience. As one punk rocker told a journalist at the time: ‘Better the iron lady than those cardboard men.’

One of the opinion polls on Sunday put the Alliance ahead of Labour for the first time. This gave the last days of the campaign a new feel and a new uncertainty. But personally I never believed that the Alliance would beat Labour into third place — even though the Labour leaders were doing their best to ensure it did.

I chaired our last press conference of the campaign on Wednesday morning (D-1), accompanied by more or less the same team as had launched the manifesto. There was an end-of-term feeling among the journalists, which we felt confident enough to share. I said that the vital issues on which the voters must decide between the parties were defence, jobs, social services, home ownership and the rule of law. I was keen to answer the charge that a large Conservative majority would lead us to ditch our manifesto policies and pursue a ‘hidden agenda’ of an extreme kind. I argued that a large Conservative majority would in fact do something quite different: it would be a blow against extremism in the Labour Party. And that, I think, was the real underlying theme of the 1983 general election.

Election day itself is an oddly frustrating time. I always voted early and then visited the Finchley committee rooms, each of which would be receiving information as to which of our known supporters had voted: later in the day party workers would visit those who had not done so to urge them on to the polling stations. All the opinion polls suggested a Tory landslide. But I have seen too many electoral upsets in my life to take such things for granted.

The Finchley count takes place in Hendon Town Hall. The result was late in coming through because of the number of other candidates anxious to gain publicity for their cause by fighting against me. It was made later still on this occasion because one of them successfully demanded a re-count. (My eventual majority was 9314.) It was not until well into the early hours of the morning that my result was declared and I was safely returned for the eighth time.

While waiting for my own count to finish I watched the national results coming in on television. The first three were not particularly encouraging: in both Torbay and Guilford the Alliance vote was up substantially, though we held the seats. Then there was worse news: we lost Yeovil to the Liberals. But the turning point came soon after — the first Tory gain from Labour: Nuneaton. From then on the shape and size of our victory became clearer and clearer. It really was a landslide. We had won a majority of 144: the largest of any party since 1945.

I returned to Conservative Central Office in the early hours. I was greeted by cheering party staff as I entered and gave a short speech of thanks to them for their efforts. After that I returned to No. 10. Crowds had gathered at the end of Downing Street and I went along to talk to them as I had on the evening of the Argentine surrender. Then I went up to the flat. Over the previous weeks I had spent some time clearing things out, in case we lost the election. Now the clutter could build up again.