and the measure that emerged was neither the one she originally intended nor the one she introduced. It was a tough baptism.
An MP who wins a high place in the Private Members’ ballot is swamped with proposals for Bills which he or she might like to introduce. The issue Mrs Thatcher eventually chose was the right of the press to cover local government. This was thought to have been enshrined in an Act of 1908. Recently, however, some councils had been getting round the requirement of open meetings by barring the press from committees and going into a committee of the whole council when they wanted to exclude reporters. The 1959 Tory manifesto contained a pledge to ‘make quite sure that the press have proper facilities for reporting the proceedings of local authorities’.2 But the Government proposed to achieve this by a new code of conduct rather than by legislation. Mrs Thatcher considered this ‘extremely feeble’ and found enough support to risk defying the expressed preference of the Minister of Housing and Local Government, Henry Brooke, and his officials.
Her problem was that she needed the Department’s help to draft her Bill; but the Department would only countenance a minimal Bill falling well short of her objective. Eventually she settled for half a loaf. Her Bill published on 24 January 1960 was judged by
Maiden speech
The Second Reading was set down for 5 February. To ensure a good attendance on a Friday morning, Mrs Thatcher sent 250 handwritten letters to Tory backbenchers requesting their support. She was rewarded with a turnout of about a hundred. She immediately ignored the convention by which maiden speakers begin with some modest expression of humility, a tribute to their predecessor and a guidebook tour of their constituency. Margaret Thatcher wasted no time on such courtesies:
This is a maiden speech, but I know that the constituency of Finchley which I have the honour to represent would not wish me to do other than come straight to the point and address myself to the matter before the House. I cannot do better than begin by stating the object of the Bill…
She spoke for twenty-seven minutes with fluency and perfect clarity, expounding the history of the issue and emphasising – significantly – not the freedom of the press but rather the need to limit local government expenditure. Only at the very end did she remember to thank the House for its traditional indulgence to a new Member.4
Her seconder, Frederick Corfield, immediately congratulated her on ‘an outstanding maiden speech… delivered with very considerable clarity and charm’. She had introduced her Bill ‘in a manner that would do credit to the Front Benches on either side of the Chamber’.5 Later speakers reiterated the same compliments. It was practically compulsory in 1960 to praise a lady speaker’s ‘charm’; but the tributes to the Member for Finchley’s front bench quality were more significant and probably more sincere.
In any case, the Bill passed its Second Reading – on a free vote, with many Labour Members supporting and some Tories opposing – by 152 votes to 39. Eventually it went into committee in mid-March. Over the next few weeks Mrs Thatcher had to battle hard for her Bill. She suffered a serious defeat when she failed to carry a clause giving public access to all committees exercising delegated functions; she had to settle for committees of the full council only.
Back on the floor of the House the emasculated Bill carried its Third Reading on 13 May, without a vote. For the Government Keith Joseph paid another compliment to Mrs Thatcher’s ‘most cogent, charming, lucid and composed manner’, which had contributed to the passage of ‘a delicate and contentious measure perhaps not ideally suited for a first venture into legislation’.7 In the Lords the Bill earned another historical footnote when Baroness Elliot of Harwood became the first peeress to move a Bill in the Upper House, before it finally received the Royal Assent in October. After exactly a year it was an achievement of sorts, but rather more of an education. As a piece of legislation it was ineffective. Nevertheless Mrs Thatcher had learned in a few months more about the ways of Whitehall – and specifically about the ability of officials and the Tory establishment together to stifle reform – than most backbenchers learn in a lifetime.
Mrs Thatcher’s conduct of the Public Bodies (Admission to Meetings) Bill, as a novice backbencher taking on a senior Cabinet Minister of her own party, his Permanent Secretary and the parliamentary draftsmen, in the belief that they were all being either feeble or obstructive, displayed a degree of political aggression to which Whitehall was unaccustomed. Officials did not know how to handle a forceful woman who did not play by bureaucratic rules or accept their departmental wisdom. Their successors were to have the same problem twenty years later, multiplied tenfold by her authority as Prime Minister. No one in 1960 imagined that a woman could ever become Prime Minister. But her luck in winning a high place in the Private Members’ ballot, and her plucky exploitation of the opportunity, had certainly put her in line for early promotion.
The Common Market
In the summer of 1961, after months of cautious soundings, the Macmillan Government finally announced Britain’s application to join the European Economic Community – the Common Market, as it was then universally known. This was the biggest decision in post-war politics, which determined – even though it was another decade before Britain’s third application was successful – the gradual redirection of British policy towards ever closer involvement with the Continent. In time, Mrs Thatcher as Prime Minister came to feel that this process had gone too far, and set herself to slow or even to reverse it. She felt no such doubts in 1961. In a characteristically thorough speech in her constituency on 14 August, she tackled the question of sovereignty head-on.
First she denied that Britain faced a choice between Europe and the Commonwealth, as many older Tories feared, arguing that the Commonwealth would only benefit from Britain being strong and prosperous. Besides, she frankly admitted, the Commonwealth was not the same as twenty or thirty years earlier: ‘Many of us do not feel quite the same allegiance to Archbishop Makarios or Doctor Nkrumah or to people like Jomo Kenyatta as we do towards Mr Menzies of Australia.’ Seldom has that point been more bluntly put.
Second, she warned that it was important to join the Community quickly in order to be able to help shape the Common Agricultural Policy. In fact it was already too late for that: the Six were pressing on deliberately to settle the CAP before Britain was admitted. But the principle she enunciated – that Britain needed to be in at the beginning of future developments – was an important one whose truth did not diminish.
Third, and most crucially, Mrs Thatcher faced up to fears of loss of sovereignty and national identity and dismissed them as groundless. Britain already belonged to alliances – principally NATO – which limited her independence. These were an
Sovereignty and independence are not ends in themselves. It is no good being independent in isolation if it involves running down our economy and watching other nations outstrip us both in trade and influence… France and Germany have attempted to sink their political differences and work for a united Europe. If France can do this so can we.8
What is remarkable about this statement, in retrospect, is its unblinking acceptance of the political dimension of a united Europe and Britain’s proper place within it. Yet it only reflected the common assumption of
