Margaret Thatcher: The Autobiography

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Let’s move on to Robin Harris’s book. I think he was Margaret Thatcher’s speech writer and helped her write her memoirs. But what does he add to this story that is not in the official biography? Charles Moore focuses very much on her private decision making processes, rather than discussing the broader social and political landscape. Does Harris do more of that? in science, reason and maths can get you so far, but you need inspiration on top. There is a fascinating link between art and science.” For me, the heart of politics is not political theory, it is people and how they want to live their lives.”

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The other reason that I put Robin’s book in, as well as Charles’, is for people who can’t bring themselves to read three massive volumes—although they’d be wrong to think that way. Robin’s is the best single-volume biography, without question. And it’s more intimate than Charles’s. Of course, he writes about policy and everything, but he does so in a more instinctive way than Charles does and he does so with the benefit of having been there. And if you are at the side of somebody for years, as he was, you must give a slightly more nuanced picture of her, which I think he does. But, anyway, Charles brings all that out in the books and if you read them you will—slightly dangerous thing to say—know everything you need to know about her. Above all, Charles has presented to the world a completely honest and accurate account of Margaret Thatcher. A newly edited, single-volume commemorative edition of The Path to Power and The Downing Street Years; this is Margaret Thatcher in her own words. In foreign policy, she got on well with American President Ronald Reagan. They often met and talked of a ‘special relationship’ between the US and the UK. Mrs Thatcher also expressed respect for Russian President Mikhail Gorbachev. She famously said of Gorbachev, that ‘he was a man who we could do business with’ Oddly enough I have read all three volumes and I agree that it’s immensely readable. I think Moore ends the final book by saying that the key thing about Margaret Thatcher was that she ‘gave it everything she could’ and that was the central theme of the whole book, at least with respect to her character.For my review, I am copying from a message I sent to my Aunt. "Ironically, I've been completing this first of 3 volumes of Margaret Thatcher's official biography while watching the new "The Crown" season involving Mrs Thatcher. I am on Episode 6 of the TV series, but, although the series gets some things right, I think it ultimately doesn't do justice to the incredible accomplishments and humanity of this amazing leader, the first female leader of a major Western nation in Europe (of course, we haven't had a female President yet). I haven't seen the last 4 episodes, and the first volume of the biography only goes until victory in the Falklands War in 1982 - but there is no doubt that, if it wasn't for Mrs Thatcher, the UK wouldn't have risen out of the socialist doldrums of the 1960/1970's to again be a relevant power in the world and help defeat the Soviet Union in the Cold War as well. It is one of the beneficial coincidences of history that she and Reagan served during much of the same time and shared a world view fostering democratic capitalism and fighting socialism and communism to win the Cold War. The Crown is a TV show and it's popular nowadays, as so many did in the 1980's, to portray Mrs Thatcher as cold and inhuman, when, in fact, her steadfastness in economic reform literally saved the country. How inhuman is that?" He first came across Americans at the Casablanca Conference in 1943. And he was horrified by the Americans he met because he thought they acted like they owned the world. But he thought, ‘But we own the world—what’s going on?’ The catastrophic moment for him was 20 February 1947, the night that Clement Attlee got up in the House of Commons and said that Britain would be leaving India on 15 August. Enoch was horrified because he wanted to be Viceroy. That was his principal ambition. He told me, ‘I walked the streets of London. I couldn’t sleep. I kept walking around Westminster, thinking ‘what has he done?’ And at that moment I realised that, if that was what was going to happen, then the whole British Empire was over. All our pretensions to be a world power were gone.’ It was a delusion. Mrs T wasn’t grand, but she knew that her coming into some people’s lives was a big deal for them and she wanted them to be happy” Readers not familiar with the British system of government (where the Prime Minister and the Cabinet are all elected members of Parliament) it will seem amazing that from the beginning Thatcher had to fight not only with the opposing Labour party, but with members of her own cabinet. Many in her cabinet considered her as nothing more than a fluke and wanted to remove her from power so that they would be able to resume the game of politics as normal. That was not to happen. At least not for a long time. No, she was. He made that speech when he was shadow defence minister. He says that there was no point in Britain being east of Suez. The point of being east of Suez was India. He took the view that, once India had gone, we should be realistic about where we were. This also ties in with his anti-Americanism. He believed, with some justification, that one of the main aims of American foreign policy from Versailles onwards had been to dismantle the British Empire.

Margaret Thatcher: The Authorized Biography, Volume Three Margaret Thatcher: The Authorized Biography, Volume Three

It was Powell who, in 1964 after the defeat of the Home government, took Keith Joseph into the Institute of Economic Affairs, the IEA, and introduced him to Ralph Harris and Arthur Seldon, who were very close to Enoch, and said, ‘Give him some of your pamphlets. He’s a clever man with a mind that is tilting towards us.’ I remember Ralph Harris saying to me—and he got this from Hayek—’If you pay people to be unemployed, you’ll have unemployment. If you stop paying them to be unemployed, jobs will turn up.’They’re casting their problem on society. And, you know, there is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first. It’s our duty to look after ourselves and then, also to look after our neighbour. People have got the entitlements too much in mind, without the obligations.” ( transcript of interview) Mrs Thatcher was elected Prime Minister in the Conservative landslide of 1979. Mrs Thatcher wasted no time in introducing controversial economic policies. She believed that a strict implementation of Monetarism was necessary to overcome the economic ills of inflation and low growth, which she blamed on the previous Labour government.