Death of a Member: Baroness Thatcher

Lord Lamont of Lerwick Excerpts

Wednesday 10th April 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lamont of Lerwick]

My Lords, I will follow directly on from what the noble Lord, Lord Bhattacharyya, has just said about manufacturing. However, before I do so, what a wonderful treasure trove this session had been. It is going to be of great value to historians and people who write about Margaret Thatcher, because so much material has been produced in the period that we have been here.

I will not go over the economic points. I agree with the things that have been said about how she saved our country and how her name is synonymous with courage. I, as a huge admirer of her, of course accept that there was bound to be argument after her death. However, I have been somewhat shocked and saddened by some of the comments made outside the House. I was so pleased that the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, was so direct in her condemnation of those today.

I do, however, understand some of the anger that was felt in some communities that were impacted by our industrial policy. I want to comment on that because I was in the Department of Trade and Industry under the noble Lord, Lord Tebbit. I was in charge of all the state-owned, loss-making industries. When Mrs Thatcher appointed me, she said, “Your job is to work yourself out of a job”—that is, I was to try, with Norman Tebbit, to make them profitable and then privatise them. There was, as the noble Lord said, a real problem of competitiveness and the cost to the taxpayer of sustaining those industries at a time when we were desperately trying to reduce borrowing. There was the fact that the jobs in so many of those state-owned, loss-making industries were not real jobs—they were supported only by the taxpayer.

I always remember discussions with Ian MacGregor, the chairman of the British Steel Corporation. In one instance, he told us that it was necessary to make tens of thousands of people redundant in order that other people could keep their jobs later on. He said that all the jobs would go if we did not grasp the nettle and take the firm, painful decisions that were necessary. It was indeed, as the noble Lord, Lord Bhattacharyya, said, because of inadequate management that people such as Ian MacGregor, Graham Day and Michael Edwardes were asked to take charge of industries to try to improve their productivity and move them towards profitability.

The problem of the one-industry or one-firm town was always in Margaret Thatcher’s mind. Special measures were devised but, of course, when an industry goes, it goes quickly; it takes much longer to get new investment in. Sometimes it happens, as with Corby, but it is a difficult process. Some people said that Mrs Thatcher and Sir Keith Joseph were going too fast and that we should go slower, but to her and to her Ministers it appeared that those who said, “Go slower”, did not really want to make the changes at all.

It will be for historians to judge, but I think that when they look back, they will be struck by the fact that so many other European countries saw a similar decline in manufacturing to us during that period and that things that were blamed on her were really an inevitable progression of European economies.

One thing that Margaret always did when there were factory closures in a constituency was to agree to see the local MP. I know that she had innumerable meetings with Labour MPs representing some constituencies because there were frequent closures. Some very improbable and unlikely friendships were struck up between Margaret and people who opposed her and her policies on the Floor of the House.

Much has been said, and I support it, about how she was really a person of compassion and concern. The stationer Smythson once told me that Margaret Thatcher was the biggest purchaser it ever had of little notelets, because she was always writing personal notes to people when they had hard luck or bereavement or illness in the family. I have a little collection of notelets that I received. She was extremely loyal to people. I always remember when one of her PPSs, Fergus Montgomery, was accused of shoplifting. It was all over the Evening Standard that the Prime Minister’s aide was accused of shoplifting. What was the first thing she did? She took him into the tea room and went around the House of Commons with him, showing that she thoroughly supported him. Of course, the charges were all subsequently dropped.

I remember hearing of a meeting at which Ferdy Mount in the policy unit was present, an important Cabinet sub-committee. He had a terrible cold and kept coughing. Margaret said to him, “You’ve got to do something about that cough. What you need is this”. She named a particular medicine. He said, “No, no, no, no”. She said, “Just a minute”, and disappeared out of that important meeting, went upstairs for about 10 minutes and came back with a whole packet of capsules which she then insisted that he took there and then. Of course, colleagues were thoroughly annoyed that that very important meeting had been disrupted, but she was so informal in that way.

I remember once helping her to host a party in Downing Street. I do not remember quite what it was for but after it was all over she invited the waiters who had been pouring the wine to sit down with her on the sofas and chairs. She poured them all a glass of wine and carried on chatting to them, discussing the party.

It was sometimes said that she was compassionate and concerned about drivers, secretaries and doorkeepers but not at all about Ministers. That is not true, although on one occasion I protested to Keith Joseph about how she had handled a particular colleague during a meeting. He looked at me in utter astonishment and said, “Oh really? You know her method. She deals in destructive dialogue”. Then he said, “She gives me the lash. They send a stretcher for me”.

She could sometimes be very unpredictable in meetings. I remember one occasion when she had been on a plane coming back from the United States. She sat next to the head of MGM—“More Gutsy Movies”—a man called Lew Wasserman, who was the chief executive. Somehow on that journey he persuaded her that her crowning glory as Prime Minister would be the state financing of film studios in Rainham Marshes in Essex. I was Chief Secretary to the Treasury at the time and this was revealed to me. I expressed some bewilderment and astonishment at this proposal and said to her, “But I thought we believed in controlling expenditure”. I received a glare. I said, “I thought we believed in low taxes. I thought we didn’t believe in subsidies to inefficient industries”. I got more and more desperate and said, “Prime Minister, there’s no unemployment in Essex. We would have to build the roads in order to get to Rainham Marshes”. I remember her glowering at me very fiercely and in desperation I said, “You do know, Prime Minister, that we’ll have all the environmentalists against us because there’s a very rare bird”—I knew about these things—“called the Brent goose that breeds there”. She looked at me and said, “You are utterly hopeless. All you ever say is ‘No, no, no’. You do not have a constructive idea in your head. If you had been in my Government since 1979, I would have achieved nothing”. I said, “Well, Prime Minister, you’re always right about everything but there’s one thing you’re wrong about. I’ve been in your Government”—[Laughter.] I went back to the department and said, “The Prime Minister’s made a very strange decision but we must get on with it”. A few hours later, a call came through saying that she did not wish to pursue the matter. I saw her the next day, beaming. She congratulated me on something but there was no reference whatever to that matter.

Dealing with Margaret Thatcher was always unpredictable. She used to say, “Thatcher’s law is that the unexpected always happens”, and she made sure that that was the case. She was a wonderful person —someone whose name will, as I said, always be synonymous with courage. She was a person who always did things for the right reasons. It was a huge privilege to have known her and an even greater privilege to have been in her Government. I send my condolences to all her family.