British politicians in the early 1960s – and still in the early 1970s – that Britain would be joining the Community in order to lead Europe, or at least to share in the joint leadership. It was the confidence that Britain would still be a great power within Europe – indeed a greater power as part of Europe – which allowed them to contemplate with equanimity the loss, or pooling, of formal sovereignty. It is a striking illustration of this confidence that even so ardent a nationalist as Margaret Thatcher felt no qualms in 1961 on the subject which exercised her so furiously thirty years later.
Pensions minister
Less than two months later she was invited to join the Government as joint Parliamentary Secretary at the Ministry of Pensions and National Insurance (MPNI). The offer had come a little sooner than she would have liked, when the twins were only eight; but she knew that in politics, ‘when you’re offered a job you either accept it or you’re out’, so she accepted.9 It was an exceptionally rapid promotion – equal first of the 1959 intake. Probably Macmillan and his Chief Whip simply wanted another woman to replace Patricia Hornsby-Smith in what was regarded as a woman’s job. But their choice made Mrs Thatcher the youngest woman and the first mother of young children ever appointed to ministerial office.
She stayed in the Ministry of Pensions and National Insurance for three years, longer than she might have wished in one department; but it was a good department in which to serve her ministerial apprenticeship. The nature of the work suited her perfectly. Though she knew next to nothing about social security when she arrived, she quickly set herself to master both the principles of the system and the immensely complex detail. With her tidy mind – honed by both chemistry and law – and her inexhaustible appetite for paperwork, she rapidly achieved a rare command of both aspects which enabled her to handle individual cases confidently within a clear framework of policy. The MPNI was not a department where a minister – certainly not a junior minister – had large executive decisions to take, rather a mass of tiny decisions investigating grievances and correcting anomalies across the whole range of benefits and human circumstances. Three years of this gave Mrs Thatcher a close working knowledge of the intricacies of the welfare system which – since she never forgot anything once she had learned it – became a formidable part of her armoury twenty years later (though much of her detailed knowledge was by then out of date).
Her first minister was John Boyd-Carpenter, a pugnacious character who had been at the MPNI since 1955. ‘He was a marvellous teacher,’ she later recalled, ‘fantastic man, total command of his department.’10 He won her undying gratitude by coming down to meet her at the door the first morning she turned up bright and early at the department just off the Strand. This gallantry made such an impression on her that she made a point of extending the same courtesy to her own juniors at the Department of Education ten years later.
In her memoirs she conceded that generally ‘the calibre of officials I met impressed me’.11 Yet the enduring lesson she took from her time at the MPNI was that civil servants have their own agenda. She was shocked to catch them offering advice to Boyd-Carpenter’s successors which they would not have dared to offer him because they knew he would not take it. ‘I decided then and there that when I was in charge of a department I would insist on an absolutely frank assessment of all the options from any civil servants who would report to me.’12 Whether this always happened in Downing Street in the 1980s is debatable, but Mrs Thatcher never had any doubt of the need to show her officials very quickly who was boss. Even as a junior minister she always wanted the fullest possible briefing. On one occasion she found herself unable to answer a series of deliberately arcane questions put by her Labour shadow, Douglas Houghton, to catch her out. She was furious and told her officials that it must never happen again. It never did.13
In July 1962, when Macmillan sacked a third of his Cabinet in an ill-judged effort to revive his faltering Government, Boyd-Carpenter was finally promoted. His successor at the MPNI was Niall Macpherson, who in turn was replaced the following year by Richard Wood. Both were much milder personalities than Boyd-Carpenter. The result was that Mrs Thatcher, though still only joint Parliamentary Secretary in charge of National Insurance and National Assistance, was allowed to assume a much more dominant role within the Department than is usual for a junior minister.
Her finest moment in the 1959 Parliament came on the day following Macmillan’s culling of his Cabinet. The House met in a state of shock. By chance the first business was questions to the Minister of Pensions; but Boyd- Carpenter had been promoted to the Cabinet as Chief Secretary to the Treasury and his successor at the MPNI had not yet been named. Into the breach stepped the two joint Parliamentary Secretaries. Of fifteen questions tabled, Mrs Thatcher answered fourteen. It was not simply the fact that she answered, but the way she did it, that made an impact. ‘Amid the gloom and depression of the Government benches’, one observer wrote, ‘she alone radiated confidence, cheerfulness and charm.’14 It was a performance of exceptional composure under pressure.
In January 1963 General de Gaulle unilaterally vetoed Britain’s application to join the Common Market. The collapse of his European policy holed Macmillan’s Government very near the waterline: by the summer of 1963 it was listing badly and beginning to sink. The restructuring of the Cabinet had failed to rejuvenate the Government, which now faced a dynamic new Leader of the Opposition, Harold Wilson, twenty-two years younger than the Prime Minister. Macmillan was made to look even more out of touch by the titillating revelations of the Profumo scandal, which threatened to engulf the administration in a slurry of sexual rumour and suspected sleaze. There were stirrings in the party that it was time for the old conjuror to retire. Privately Margaret Thatcher made no secret of her support for this view.
Macmillan considered stepping down; but then, as Prime Ministers do, determined to soldier on – until, three months later, on the eve of the party conference, ill health suddenly compelled him to retire after all, leading to an undignified scramble for the succession. Mrs Thatcher’s first preference was for ‘Rab’ Butler, but she was quite happy with the unexpected ‘emergence’ of Sir Alec Douglas Home. If she was pleased by the result, however, she was disappointed that the new Prime Minister did not undertake a wider reshuffle.When Richard Wood arrived at the MPNI to replace Niall Macpherson he found his Parliamentary Secretary in ‘some turmoil’, on tenterhooks to see what her own future might be.15 She evidently felt that two years of Pensions and National Insurance was enough. She could hardly have expected promotion, but she had hoped for a sideways move to another department to widen her experience. It is not surprising that Wood found her a difficult subordinate over the last year of the Government’s life.
Retaining Finchley
As the 1964 General Election, which seemed certain to end the Tories’ thirteen-year rule, approached, Mrs Thatcher could not be absolutely confident of retaining Finchley. But she was an exceptionally visible Member who, in five years, had won herself a strong personal vote. Despite her family and ministerial commitments, the
Her vote was down by 4,000, her majority nearly halved; the Liberals had succeeded in pushing Labour into third place. But Finchley was still a safe Tory seat. More significant was the impact of the Liberal advance on the national result. By nearly doubling their share of the vote largely at the Conservatives’ expense, they helped Labour back into government with a wafer-thin majority of four. After thirteen years of Tory rule and the shambles of 1963, Douglas-Home came astonishingly close to winning re-election. But he failed, narrowly, and his failure ended Mrs Thatcher’s first experience of government.
More seriously, she also suffered a personal reaction. Her daughter Carol suggests that she was exhausted after a particularly strenuous campaign in Finchley on top of her ministerial work, and driving back to Farnborough late every night. In one respect her family life was eased, since both Mark and Carol were now at boarding school
