The Downing Street Years. - book reviews

Contemporary Review, Dec, 1993 by Richard Mullen

HENRY Goulborn. Earl Granville. Sir Stafford Northcote. Even professional historians must pause for a moment to recall what these names mean. In the event, all three were either Chancellor of the Exchequer or Foreign Secretary in the governments of Peel, Gladstone, and Disraeli. The harsh fact is that reputations of even important Cabinet Ministers rarely out-last their own century. Rightly or wrongly we remember few politicians except Prime Ministers. The rest, no matter how grandly they once strutted upon the stage of politics, are doomed to join the historical chorus. This fact explains much of the hostility, arid even hatred, shown towards Margaret Thatcher by so many prominent politicians of her time. Her long dominance ruined their chance to enter 10 Downing Street thereby assuring their immortality. Denis Healey, Roy Jenkins, James Prior, Michael Heseltine and Geoffrey Howe will all eventually join the Goulborns and the Granvilles in historical obscurity. One name will certainly long be known and celebrated: Margaret Thatcher. For centuries to come, historians will seek to explain this extraordinary woman. Never one to hesitate, she has provided her own assessment of the eleven years (1979-1990) in which she dominated British politics as no other figure had done since the days of Winston Churchill.

The Downing Street Years has been greeted with tremendous fanfare in the press. For once a publisher's blurb is absolutely accurate: ~The appearance of Margaret Thatcher's memoirs has been one of the most eagerly awaited publishing events in many years'. The Sunday Times had paid a large sum to publish extracts for two weeks before the official publication date of 18 October. Extraordinary security surrounded the book but apparently one copy was acquired by the Daily Mirror whose inaccurate leaks of purported comments about John Major dominated the first days of the Tory Conference. This episode did show one essential fact about Lady Thatcher's memoirs. They are not, like ordinary memoirs, the final spluttering of an exhausted volcano. Hers are like her whole political life, part of a battle to support unflinchable beliefs. Nor did the publication of the book stop the wave of publicity. BBC Television began a four week series about her -- a series which has already been sold to many other countries -- and, in addition, there was a week of shorter programmes about the ~Thatcher Years' where former ministers, media pundits, and even that most curious of modern commentators, ~the rock critic', had their say.

Some people have protested about all this ~media hype' and have also criticised the idea of a former Prime Minister's writing memoirs, or, at least, writing them so close to the actual events. Prime Ministerial memoirs, like so many other things, can be blamed on the First World War. Victorian Prime Ministers, even those who wrote on other topics, did not produce full scale memoirs. Peel left behind him a pile of documents for some of his followers to edit, and Gladstone gathered volumes of his formidable articles. Disraeli completed one novel after he left Downing Street and received for it the highest sum paid for any Victorian work of fiction. It required the searing experiences of the Great War to make Prime Ministers anxious to publish justifications of their conduct. Since Asquith and Lloyd George, most Prime Ministers have brought out accounts, usually in several volumes, about their years in power. Winston Churchill's have become classics, both of history and of literature. Eden, Macmillan, and Wilson have all had their say. Edward Heath has yet to produce his memoirs although he agreed to do so years ago. If they ever do appear his short and disastrous time in Downing Street will no longer command much interest.

The first thing to be said about Margaret Thatcher's book is that it is characteristically well organised, with chapters divided into helpful shorter sections. It is also useful to have a chronology and four pages of the abbreviations that infest modern life. It is easy, and delightful, to forget the meaning of ECOFIN, NEDC, and NACODS. The index is very well done and provides great help to fading memories by listing the dates during which each person held office. The contemporary reader approaches the memoirs with a different perspective than those who will read the book in decades to come. In time, Lady Thatcher will bring out a volume which will describe her life from childhood in her father's grocery shop in Grantham until she entered Downing Street. One suspects, and hopes, that there will be yet another volume recording her work, travels, and reflections since leaving office. This volume is a well written account of eleven turbulent years and not surprisingly, some of the best writing centres on verbs, those ~action words'. Michael Heseltine's behaviour is perfectly summed up when we are told he ~flounced out' of the Cabinet.

This book begins with Margaret Thatcher's drive to the Palace on 4 May, 1979 to receive the Queen's commission to form a government and the book ends as her car drove through the security gates of Downing Street on 28 November, 1990 as she was on her way to the Palace to resign. There is one constant on both these journeys and indeed throughout the almost nine hundred pages that separate them. As she says of that first happy journey ~As we drove out through the Palace gates, Denis noticed that this time the Guards saluted me'. Of that second and sad drive she says ~I waved and got into the car with Denis beside me, as he always has been'. Throughout her book she is always anxious to pay tribute to the work of her husband. His knowledge of business, particularly the oil business, provided her with much practical information -- information that was so frequently wanting in her immediate predecessors and other politicians.