The Path to Power

transformed into opposition on hearing a powerful speech by Lord De L’Isle and Dudley to OUCA in the Taylorian. It would certainly have been difficult, and perhaps impossible, to force the Soviets to respect democracy and the right of national self-determination in the countries which they now occupied. It was understandable that weary and wounded American and British forces wanted to put the horrors of war behind them and not to risk some new conflict with their former ally. But to set a seal of approval on agreements which we knew in our hearts would not be honoured — let alone to try to force the exiled non-communist government of Poland to accept them — was wrong.

Yalta made me begin to think hard about the military aspect of the communist threat. Little by little, I was also piecing together in my own mind other features of the reality of communism. For example, I read Arthur Koestler’s Darkness at Noon with its poignant account of a communist show trial. Unlike Valtin’s description of Gestapo brutality, Koestler’s book allowed me for the first time to get inside, as it were, the mentality of the communist. Even more subtly, it showed that through the eyes of the communist himself the communist system makes no sense. Koestler’s character, Rubashov, reflects:

The Party denied the free will of the individual — and at the same time it exacted his willing self-sacrifice. It denied his capacity to choose between two alternatives — and at the same time it demanded that he should constantly choose the right one. It denied his power to distinguish good and evil — and at the same time it spoke pathetically of guilt and treachery. The individual stood under the sign of economic fatality, a wheel in a clockwork which had been wound up for all eternity and could not be stopped or influenced — and the Party demanded that the wheel should revolt against the clockwork and change its course. There was somewhere an error in the calculation; the equation did not work out.

Years later, when as Leader of the Opposition I met Koestler, I said how powerful I had found his book. I asked him how he had been able to imagine Rubashov and his tormentors. He told me no imagination was required. They were real.

As with the whole question of the atomic bomb, so with the (alleged) theoretical basis of Marxism: the fact that I was a scientist gave me a somewhat different insight into some of the arguments. It was in fact after I left university that I read Karl Popper’s The Open Society and its Enemies. Popper, whose analysis in many ways complemented that of Hayek, approached Marxism from the point of view of the philosopher of the natural sciences. This meant that he was ideally equipped to expose the fraudulent claim of Marxists to have discovered immutable laws of history, social development or ‘progress’ — laws which were comparable to the laws of natural science. It was not just that the ‘inevitable’ course of events which Marx had prophesied had not occurred and showed no signs of occurring. Marx and Marxists had not even understood the scientific method, let alone practised it in their analysis. Unlike the Marxists — whether historians, economists or social scientists — who tried to ‘prove’ their theories by accumulating more and more facts to sustain them, ‘the method of science is rather to look out for facts which may refute the theory… and the fact that all tests of the theory are attempted falsifications of predictions derived with its help furnishes the clue to scientific method’. The political consequences of this basic error — perhaps more properly described as basic fraud — were summed up by Popper in the dedication of his later book The Poverty of Historicism: ‘In memory of the countless men, women and children of all creeds or nations or races who fell victims to the fascist and communist belief in Inexorable Laws of Historical Destiny.’

With such a background of reading, it is therefore easy to imagine how I reacted to Churchill’s speech of 5 March 1946 in Fulton, Missouri. It is, of course, rightly famous for its powerful warning that ‘from Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic an iron curtain has descended across the Continent’, and that in these Russian- dominated states ‘police governments’ were prevailing. But no less significant in my eyes was Churchill’s evocation of the special relationship between Britain and the United States, and of the idealistic ‘message of the British and American peoples to mankind’ which lay behind it. The ideas of liberty found their fullest development in the political traditions and institutions of our two countries. The speech is now rightly seen as extraordinarily prescient. But at the time it was bitterly criticized as warmongering hyperbole by commentators on both sides of the Atlantic. It would not be long, however, before their tone started to change, as Soviet intentions in Eastern Europe and Greece became unmistakably clear.

By the time I left Oxford with a second-class degree in Chemistry under my belt, I knew a great deal more about the world and particularly about the world of politics. My character had not changed; nor had my beliefs. But I had a clearer idea of where I stood in relation to other people, their ambitions and opinions. I had, in short, grown up. And, by that mysterious process which leads people to every kind of prominent or obscure vocation, I had discovered what I really wanted to do with my life.

Shortly before my university days came to an end I went back to Corby Glen, a village some ten miles from Grantham, to a dance. Afterwards a few of us gathered for coffee and a sandwich in the kitchen of the house where I was staying. Not unusually, I was talking about politics. Something I said, or perhaps the way I said it, prompted one of the men to remark: ‘What you really want to do is to be an MP, isn’t it?’ Almost without thinking I said: ‘Yes: that really is what I want to do.’ I had never said it before — not even to myself. When I went to bed that night I found that I had a lot on my mind.

CHAPTER III House Bound Marriage, Family, Law and Politics 1947–1959

MY POLITICAL APPRENTICESHIP

If going up to Oxford is one sort of shock, coming down is quite another. I had made many like-minded friends at Oxford, I had enjoyed my adventures in chemistry and I was passionately interested in university politics. It was a wrench to leave all that behind.

The newly created Oxford University Appointments Committee, which helped new graduates to find suitable jobs, arranged several interviews for me, including one at a Northern ICI plant, I think at Billingham. We hopefuls were interviewed by several managers whose written comments were passed on to the general manager, who gave us our final interview. The remarks on me were lying on the table at the interview, and I could not resist using my faculty for reading upside down. They were both encouraging and discouraging; one manager had written: ‘This young woman has much too strong a personality to work here.’ In fact, I had three or four interviews with other companies and, though I was unsuccessful, I enjoyed them all. Not only was I given entry to a new world of industry, but the interviewers in those days were invariably courteous and interested in one’s own hopes and ambitions. Eventually I was taken on by BX Plastics at Manningtree just outside Colchester to work in their research and development section. BX produced a full range of plastics both for industrial use and consumer use, including for films.

Very few people greatly enjoy the early stages of a new job, and in this I was no exception. It had been understood when we originally discussed the position that it would involve my being in effect Personal Assistant to the Research and Development Director. I had been looking forward to this because I thought it would allow me to get to know more of how the company as a whole operated and also to use the talents I had, over and above my knowledge of chemistry. But on my arrival it was decided that there was not enough to do in that capacity and so I found myself donning my white coat again and immersing myself in the wonderful world of plastics. The Research and Development Section had only just been created as a separate unit and its teething troubles compounded mine. But by the time Christmas 1947 was approaching I had made one or two friends and things became easier. My supervisor helped me along. The Section moved into a separate and rather pleasant house in nearby Lawford. Like many others at the company, I lived in Colchester — a town which I increasingly came to like and where I had found comfortable lodgings. A bus took us all out to Lawford every day.