Death of a Member: Baroness Thatcher

Lord Armstrong of Ilminster Excerpts

Wednesday 10th April 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Armstrong of Ilminster]

My Lords, I have hesitated to venture to add to the hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of words which have been spoken and written about the noble Baroness, Lady Thatcher, these past three days but perhaps something should be said from the perspective of one who, as a civil servant and Secretary to the Cabinet, worked closely for and with her for eight of the 11 and a half years for which she was Prime Minister. Statistically speaking, the turnover of Prime Ministers has been higher than that of Cabinet Secretaries. Most Cabinet Secretaries have served more than one Prime Minister and sometimes three, such as my noble friend Lord Butler of Brockwell, or even four, as my predecessor Lord Hunt of Tanworth did. I am a relatively rare bird in that I served only one Prime Minister.

I was summoned one morning in July 1979 to a meeting with the Prime Minister at No. 10, which I hoped—but did not know—would result in an appointment as Secretary to the Cabinet. I was taken upstairs to her room and shown in at the door of the study. As I went through the door, she looked up at me and said, “Robert, you’re looking very tired”. It was not the most promising opening to an interview in which I was hoping to be offered one of the most onerous jobs in the public service, so I stammered out something about having been up rather late the previous night. Then she said, “Robert, I have asked you to come in order that I can tell you that I want to appoint you as Cabinet Secretary to succeed John Hunt in October”. Of course, I was delighted and accepted the offer. I went downstairs and told the private secretary that the Prime Minister had offered me the job and that I had accepted it. But I said, “It was a little bit odd that she started by saying, ‘Robert, you look very tired’”. That private secretary said, “Oh, don’t worry about that—she’s saying that to everybody this morning”.

The noble Baroness, Lady Royall, spoke about Lady Thatcher’s lack of aspiration to be a feminist, if I may sum it up in that way. That may have been fair but she was nothing if not feminine and many of her colleagues, and many of those who were her civil servants, will recognise that. My recollection goes back to the first visit that we had from President Mitterrand of France to Downing Street, in 1981. We were all dreading it because he had no English, or claimed not to, so that everything had to be interpreted—and, of course, he was French.

[Noble Lords]

Oh!

[Lord Armstrong of Ilminster]

Lady Thatcher had greatly disliked his predecessor and Mitterrand was said to be a socialist, but the meetings went rather well. Despite the interpretation, they went smoothly and there were good speeches by both parties at a dinner. When the President finally came to leave the next afternoon, I went with the Prime Minister to see him off at the front door of No. 10 Downing Street. As we walked back, I said to the Prime Minister in what I suppose was a tone of some surprise, “That visit went rather well, didn’t it, Prime Minister?”. She said, “Yes, I suppose it did”. Then there was a pause and she said, “Of course he likes women, you know”.

[Noble Lords]

Oh!

[Lord Armstrong of Ilminster]

Looking back, I recognised that the President had been—how shall I put it?—flattering her femininity throughout the meeting, and that she had recognised that and enjoyed every minute of it.

More than once during the time that I was with her, she told me that her role as Prime Minister was to be the guardian of the strategy. She had a clear vision of what that strategy should be and of the policies required to carry it out. She displayed great courage and determination in pursuing this strategy and in introducing and sustaining the policies which it required, and she could exercise great firmness and all the strength of her personality in making sure of the active support of her colleagues and her civil servants in putting the policies into effect.

She respected the Civil Service as an institution and valued the traditional virtues of integrity and impartiality. She liked and respected many but not all of the individual civil servants whom she had to deal with, and she went out of her way to be considerate and kind to those who worked in her office. But I think that she thought that civil servants in general were too set in their ways and had become too accustomed to the management of decline.

In discussing appointments with her, she never once asked, “Is he one of us?”. She wanted to know whether someone was a doer as well as a thinker, and whether he or she had what it took not just to advise cleverly on policy but to manage a department or division effectively.

As many have remarked, she expected her colleagues and those who worked with her to work very hard, and she set us all an example in that respect. She was a glutton for work and took an infinity of trouble to master the detail of every subject that she was called on to consider, often to the discomfiture of those with whom she was going to discuss it.

That was all made easier for her and more challenging for the rest of us by her capacity to manage on three or four hours of sleep a night, not just for a night or two but seemingly indefinitely. For her, the working day was two or three hours longer than it was for any of the rest of us weaker vessels. There was no cat-napping during the day. There were times when it seemed like a very unfair advantage. She kept up the pace throughout my time, although I believe that there were some slight signs of weakening towards the end of her time in office.

One of my duties was to advise her on issues about the organisation of the machinery of government. I do not think that she was ever much interested in those issues: she thought that they were of secondary importance. What mattered to her was having the right policy and having the right person in place to put the policies into effect. Tinkering with organisations diverted energy from what really mattered and was a waste of time, energy, and money.

As has been said, she was a conviction politician with skill and determination in expressing her convictions. But she was also, as I very often saw, a shrewd, cautious and pragmatic political operator in government and adept at adopting and presenting pragmatic outcomes in a framework of principled conviction.

In 1982, the Government committed themselves to a policy of “rolling devolution” in Northern Ireland. The policy made little progress and after the election of June 1983 the Prime Minister was persuaded to explore the possibility of an agreement with the Government of the Republic of Ireland, which might give that Government, as a surrogate for the minority community in Northern Ireland, the opportunity to have a say in aspects of the governance in Northern Ireland without compromising—and this was very important for Mrs Thatcher—the sovereignty of the United Kingdom Government in Northern Ireland.

After nearly two years of negotiation, closely supervised and monitored by the Prime Minister and her colleagues, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Howe, and the noble Lord, Lord Hurd, will remember, we achieved a draft agreement. The draft was never going to set the Thames on fire—or the Liffey for that matter—and it could not be expected to go down well with the unionist community in Northern Ireland. It cannot be claimed that Mrs Thatcher was enthusiastic about it even at the time, but she clearly preferred an outcome that she could proclaim as a success, and which would certainly be welcomed in Washington, to a breakdown of negotiations and a failure of the policy that it expressed and represented. So she signed the agreement and so long as she remained Prime Minister she unwaveringly defended and adhered to it. After her retirement she was apt to say that she wished it had not been made. I believe that she was mistaken in that. Unlike the noble Lord, Lord Trimble, I think that the agreement, which has certainly been of lasting benefit to relations with the Irish Republic, was one of the foundations for the subsequent developments in Northern Ireland’s affairs brought about by Sir John Major and Mr Blair.

This is not the time or place for reminiscing about the good and not so good times during the years when I worked with Lady Thatcher. However, I am glad to have this opportunity to put on record not only my sadness at her passing and my condolences to her family, which we all share, but my gratitude for her unwavering confidence and support and for her many kindnesses during those years, my respect and admiration for her qualities and achievements as Prime Minister, and my lasting affection for her as a friend.