everybody’s nerves have become frayed with tiredness. And the pressure was still building. I knew I had further important media interviews, the last PEB to record and big speeches at Bolton and the final Conservative Trade Unionists’ rally. Moreover, the opinion polls now seemed to suggest that our lead was being eroded. The Central Office view was that it had fallen from about 10 per cent to about 6 per cent. Unfortunately, there was no reason to give any more credence to the internal Party opinion polling — which was on the optimistic side of the median — than to other polls. I had to cancel my visit to the Fulham constituency that afternoon in order to work on the PEB text and the CTU speech. But someone told the press that the real cause was that my voice was failing, which was used to paint an exaggerated picture of a ‘battle-worn Maggie’ trying to stop the election slipping away. In fact, my voice was in remarkably good order — but I now had to risk real strain by raising it so as to convince interviewers and audiences that my larynx was alive and well.
Saturday morning’s
Sunday 29 April would be crucial. The opinion polls were all over the place. I ignored them. I had my hair done in the morning and then after lunch was driven to the Wembley Conference Centre for the Conservative Trade Unionists’ rally. Harvey Thomas, drawing on his experience of Billy Graham’s evangelical rallies, had pulled out every stop. A galaxy of actors and comedians livened up the proceedings. Ignoring previous instructions from perhaps over-serious Party officials concerned about the dignity of ‘the next Prime Minister’, Harvey played the campaign song ‘Hello Maggie’ when I entered. And dignity certainly went by the board as everyone joined in. I had never known anything quite like it — though compared with Harvey’s extravaganzas of future years this came to seem quite tame.
The speech itself was short and sharp. And the reception was terrific. Then I went on to Saatchi & Saatchi to record the final Election Broadcast. From four o’clock in the afternoon Gordon, Ronnie, Tim and I worked and reworked the text. Then there was an apparently endless succession of ‘takes’, each of which — until the final one — seemed not quite right to at least one of us. At last, well after midnight, we were satisfied.
The main event of my campaign on Monday was the
But the following (Tuesday) morning there was a further opinion poll by NOP which showed Labour 0.7 per cent ahead. There was only one real question on people’s lips at that morning’s press conference: how would I react to the poll? I just brushed it aside, saying that I hoped it would stir Conservative Party supporters to go out and vote on the day. Not only did this line serve me at a difficult moment: I suspect it was a correct judgement. For if anything really threatened our victory it was complacency, and from this moment there was no chance of that. I went on to campaign in the North-West, finishing up, of course, by addressing a rally in Bolton, where the comedian Ken Dodd appeared on stage with a blue feather-duster to greet me. After Ken Dodd’s message from Knotty Ash — which he made sound a pretty true blue constituency — any speech would have seemed over- serious. But there was only one real message for this stage of the campaign, which was that those who wished to throw the Labour Party out of government must not fritter their votes away on minor parties, but rather vote Conservative.
Moreover, the same message had to be repeated insistently until polling day. It was my theme at the final press conference on Wednesday (2 May). I returned to it as I went around the London constituencies, finishing up at the Woodhouse School in Finchley — where I had to push my way through protesting feminists chanting: ‘We want women’s rights not a right-wing woman.’ As I drove back to Flood Street I felt the tiredness flow over me. I had had my chance and had taken it. It was oddly satisfying to know that whatever happened now was out of my hands. For the first time in many nights Denis and I had a full six hours’ sleep.
I woke on election day to learn from the radio news that all of that morning’s opinion polls showed the Conservatives with a lead ranging from 2 per cent to 8 per cent. Denis and I went out to vote at 9 o’clock in Chelsea before driving on to Finchley, where, as was my wont, I toured the committee rooms followed by photographers. I went back to Flood Street for a light supper and to try to have some rest before what I knew would be a long evening. At the Finchley count in Barnet Town Hall, where I arrived shortly after midnight, I kept out of the way in a side room, equipped with a television and supplied with coffee and sandwiches, where I could listen to the results as they came in. Roger Boaden was with me, supplementing the television reports with early information telephoned through from Central Office. I kept a running tally, referring to the detailed briefing which Keith Britto had prepared for me. The first few results suggested that we had won, though among them was the upsetting news that Teddy Taylor had lost Glasgow Cathcart. The projections of our majority steadily began to mount. Local councillors, my Constituency Chairman and his wife, my agent and others came in and out looking more and more cheerful. But I deliberately suppressed any inclinations to premature euphoria: calculation, superstition and above all the knowledge that it is easiest to cope with bad news when you are not expecting good entered into this. In the end, however, not even I could remain non-committal. It was clear to everyone by the time I went out to hear the results of my own count that we would form the next Government.
The events of the early hours of Friday — the welcoming clamour of supporters at the count, the visit to Central Office, the warmth and relief of brief relaxation with my family — are no more than blurred recollections. That afternoon’s visit to Buckingham Palace to receive authority to form a government and my subsequent arrival at Downing Street I have described elsewhere.[62]
The scale of the victory took everyone — or almost everyone — by surprise. It was not just that we had won an election: we had also won a new kind of mandate for change. As the psephologists and commentators mulled over the detailed results, the pattern of our success bore this out. We had won a majority of forty-three seats over all other parties. The 5.6 per cent national swing from Labour to the Conservatives was the largest achieved by either — and our 7 per cent lead over Labour was also the largest — since 1945.
Equally significant, the biggest swing to us was among the skilled workers; and over a third of that lead had apparently built up during the campaign. These were precisely the people we had to win over from their often lifelong socialist allegiances. They were confronted in a particularly acute form by the fundamental dilemma which faced Britain as a whole: whether to accept an ever greater role for government in the life of the nation, or to break free in a new direction. For these people, above all, it was a severely practical matter of choosing whether to rely on the comforting security of state provision or to make the sacrifices required to win a better life for themselves and their families. They had now decided to take the risk (for it was a risk) of voting for what I offered — for what in a certain sense I knew that I now personified. I would always try to keep faith with them.
Beginning Again
