FOR 11 1/2 YEARS, MARGARET Thatcher presided over the British government like a strong-minded headmistress. She reshaped the economy, broke the unions and starched up Britain’s languid posture in world affairs. Through it all, she thoroughly dominated the “wets” in her own cabinet, clobbering them with a metaphorical handbag whenever they showed too little spine in the defense of conservative ideology–or too much in opposing her will. Now, three years after the moderate Tories finally got their revenge, rudely evicting her from 10 Downing Street, the former prime minister has published a memoir of her stirring years in power. The wonder and pity of it is that the “Iron Lady” has produced a dull book.
“The Downing Street Years” is an all too thorough accounting of Thatcher’s stewardship. Rousing moments–victories in the Falklands War and three national elections–are interspersed with the most mundane details of running a country. Eyes glazing over, the reader skims across vast stretches of governmental tundra, past subheadings like “The 1980 Budget and the Medium Term Financial Strategy (MTFS).” That’s all very well, but what does Thatcher have to tell us about her dealings with the issues and personalities of global statecraft? What can she say about her own downfall and the subsequent performance of John Major, her slightly damp successor? Nothing much, unfortunately.
Thatcher can be readily forgiven for not blabbing about her meetings with Queen Elizabeth II; that sort of thing just isn’t done. But on other, less sacrosanct topics, she is far too circumspect, telling little that wasn’t known already. Ronald Reagan is portrayed affectionately as a staunch conservative visionary with a “detached” approach to his work. Mikhail Gorbachev is described again, in Thatcher’s own famous phrase, as “a man with whom I could do business.” George Bush is pictured more tartly, as a leader “who had never had to think through his beliefs.” He needed a lot of stroking; Thatcher learned “that I had to defer to him in conversation and not to stint the praise.”
She is understandably bitter about the way the Tory establishment abandoned her in 1990, forcing her to withdraw in favor of Major. She writes that she had wanted to stay on the job until “about two years into the next Parliament”–say, early 1994. But many members of her own cabinet concluded that Major was better equipped to win the next election, which is just what he did last year. Even on this painful subject, Thatcher’s tone is relatively muted, compared with her usual standard for blunt speaking. She describes a phone call to Major in which she asked him to second her nomination in the Conservative Party leadership contest. “The hesitation was palpable” before he agreed, she writes. Then, recalling that Major had some dental work a few days before, she adds, with mock sympathy: “No doubt the operation on John’s wisdom teeth was giving him trouble.”
Thatcher damns Major with faint criticism. She writes that in 1990, “he was relatively untested and his tendency to accept the conventional wisdom had given me pause.” She says almost nothing about what he has done to her political legacy since then; the book stops with a sudden thud on the day she leaves office. Thatcher was tougher on her successor in an article she wrote for NEWSWEEK 18 months ago. “There isn’t such a thing as Majorism,” she declared then, adding: “Thatcherism will live.” There must be a lot of rage bubbling inside the rejected Margaret Thatcher. It might be interesting for us, and therapeutic for her, if more of it got out.
