The Iron Lady

embroiled in controversy over an honorary degree to President Bhutto of Pakistan. It funked it again in 1983 and by the time the proposal came up for a third time in 1985 the opposition had grown formidable. Supporters of the award argued that the university would look petty in the eyes of the world if it denied the customary honour to a Prime Minister who – like her or loathe her – was not only the first woman but already one of the longest-serving holders of the office. Opponents, however – with scientists to the fore – argued that it would be monstrous to award such an honour to the head of a government which had inflicted ‘deep and systematic damage to the whole public education system in Britain, from the provision for the youngest child up to the most advanced research programme’. By a majority of more than two to one – 738 to 319 – the dons voted to withhold the degree. The inevitable effect was to extinguish any lingering affection for her alma mater. ‘I went to Oxford University,’ she only half joked at the 1989 party conference, ‘but I’ve never let it hold me back.’³⁵ A decade later, when she had finished her memoirs, she pointedly donated her papers to Cambridge.

‘Trotskyists’ in the BBC

All Prime Ministers become paranoid about the BBC. As problems mount and their popularity slides, they invariably accuse the media of turning against them, unfairly criticising the Government while giving the opposition a soft ride. Margaret Thatcher was no exception. It is in the nature of governments to resent criticism, particularly at the hands of a state-owned broadcaster. But Mrs Thatcher disliked the BBC on principle, long before she became Prime Minister, just because it was state-owned and publicly financed. She saw it as a nationalised industry, subsidised, anti-commercial and self-righteous: like the universities, she believed, it poisoned the national debate with woolly liberalism and moral permissiveness at the taxpayers’ expense.

She was always particularly concerned about the reporting of terrorism. Her first public criticism of the BBC as Prime Minister was provoked by a contentious edition of Panorama in November 1979 which showed masked IRA men enforcing roadblocks in Northern Ireland: the allegation was that the programme makers had set up the incident in order to film it. She was still more outraged by the reporting – particularly the BBC’s – of the Falklands war. She thought that in this crisis the Corporation was not just anti-Government and anti-Conservative, as usual, but anti-British, as exemplified by programmes examining in great detail alternative possible landing places on the islands and above all by the broadcasters’ punctilious insistence on referring objectively to ‘British forces’ instead of ‘our forces’ as she expected.

The truth was that she did not really understand the idea of journalistic freedom. At a Chequers seminar with some of her favourite academics in January 1981, she worried about the penetration of the media by subversives. The historian Professor Michael Howard tried to assure her that the people she objected to were not Communists, just healthily opposition-minded sceptics exercising a hallowed British tradition of dissent; but she was not convinced.³⁶ She believed not only that in time of war the broadcasters should form part of the nation’s war effort, but that in the context of terrorism and the Cold War the BBC had a duty to be on ‘our’ side. Instead she believed it gave ‘covert support’ to unilateralism and was ‘ambivalent’ in its coverage of the IRA.³⁷

Mrs Thatcher had two means to discipline the BBC: first by exercising the Government’s power to appoint the chairman and governors, who in turn appointed the Director-General; and second by keeping it on a tight financial rein. Over five years she was able to appoint three chairmen and nine new governors who gave the board ‘a more hostile and opinionated composition’.³⁸ She also made no secret of her dislike of the licence fee – ‘a compulsory levy on those who have television sets’, whether they watched the BBC or not – but in March 1985 she was constrained to renew it for another five years, pegged for the first two years but rising in line with inflation after that, while making clear in the Commons that ‘we do not rule out the possibility of changes’ – specifically not excluding advertising – in the future.³⁹ The same month Leon Brittan set up a departmental committee which was expected to recommend funding the BBC by advertising. In the event the Peacock Committee came down in favour of the status quo, mainly because studies showed that there was not enough advertising to go round.⁴⁰ Mrs Thatcher was ‘greatly disappointed’⁴¹ and was obliged to back down; but she still hoped to reopen the matter in five years’ time.

Friends in Fleet Street

The constantly simmering conflict between Mrs Thatcher and the BBC certainly contrasted with – and arguably balanced – the generally reliable support she enjoyed from most of the printed media. Of course there were exceptions. Among the broadsheets, the Guardian was the house magazine of the progressive establishment, read by all those Labour and Alliance-voting teachers, lecturers, social workers and local-government officers who most hated her: in her view the printed equivalent of the BBC, but without the BBC’s obligation to at least appear impartial. Among the tabloids, the Daily Mirror remained solidly Labour, in opposition to its deadly rival the Sun. But the bulk of Fleet Street[l] from the relatively highbrow Times and Telegraph through the crucial mid-market Mail and Express – all with their Sunday sisters – to the soaraway Thatcherite Sun and the even more populist Daily Star, was firmly, if not always uncritically, in the Tory camp. Measured by total circulation, the press supported the Government in the 1987 election by a margin of roughly three to one.⁴²

Mrs Thatcher was naturally very happy with this situation. She was not worried by the Guardian’s hostility, but rather welcomed its opposition as confirmation that she was doing all right. She expected her enemies to oppose her, just as she expected her allies to support her. But she took it for granted that anyone not for her was against her.When a new broadsheet, the Independent, was founded in 1986 she quickly classed it as an enemy. ‘It is not independent at all,’ she told Wyatt in 1989. ‘It is dedicated to trying to destroy me.’⁴³ The corollary was that she took great care to keep her supporters loyal.

Unlike many Prime Ministers she did not actually read the papers very much. She received a daily digest from Bernard Ingham first thing every morning, which gave her the flavour and told her what he thought she ought to know. She was well aware of the importance of the press – particularly the Sun and the Daily Mail – in maintaining a swell of support for her personality and policies. She liked to have her attention drawn to helpful or supportive articles. But she did not often give interviews to favoured editors. If she did meet editors, it was not to learn what was on their mind but to tell them what was on hers.

On the other hand she was shameless in rewarding supportive editors with knighthoods and their proprietors with peerages. The great exception to this plethora of inky nobility was Rupert Murdoch, who could not be offered a peerage because he had become an American citizen and would probably not have accepted anyway. But Mrs Thatcher did everything else she could to show her appreciation of his support. In November 1979 she marked the tenth anniversary of News International’s acquisition of the Sun with a glowing message of congratulation, making clear that she saw the paper as a loyal ally, or even partner. In return she did all she could to advance Murdoch’s ever-expanding media interests.

First she helped him to snap up The Times and Sunday Times when Lord Thomson relinquished them in 1981. The rest of Fleet Street was dismayed and the Establishment horrified at seeing the former ‘top people’s paper’, known around the world as ‘The Times of London’, sold to a brash Australian who already owned the Sun, the New York Post and a whole stable full of other titles in Australia and the US. Though Murdoch gave assurances of editorial independence, and elaborate safeguards were erected to try to ensure that he observed them, in practice they quickly turned out to be worthless.

Second, the Government was very helpful towards Murdoch’s battle with the print unions when he moved his entire operation to Wapping in 1985. Like the miners’ strike, this was another symbolic struggle between old-