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Mrs Thatcher’s leadership style and judgement on Europe and the poll tax create splits in her cabinet and public anger, leading to the challenge that ends in her dramatic downfall.
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00:00Right, now is that all right?
00:12We're in three-quarter shot to start with and then you come in close for most of the time
00:20and then you can have a wide shot for as we're faded out.
00:24Let's not worry about being faded out.
00:30Let's not worry, let's not worry, let's not worry!
00:59I think that if you look back over history, the great figures are always referred to by their surname.
01:08Churchill, Attlee, Wellington, Gladstone.
01:13And Thatcher was coming into that same category.
01:18It was said that a child said to its mother, can a man be Prime Minister?
01:22Having not known anyone else in their office.
01:25All political leaders should recognise that they have a sell-by date and they should leave the stage while people are still clapping.
01:34If you win the next election, you will remain unless defeated by your party in one of these leadership elections, which you're likely to have in the coming week.
01:50The first thing is to win the next election, then I will go on as long as the party wishes me to.
01:56As long as?
01:57As long as the party wishes me to and I hope that they would wish that for a long time.
02:01So that if...
02:02On performance.
02:03So that if...
02:04On performance.
02:05So that if...
02:06Please, let's not twist it anymore.
02:07You know that bit of Kipling?
02:09You have your words twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools.
02:13I'm not suggesting you're a knave, but everything I say, you know, has so much magnifying glass put on it, that in the end it is unrecognisable.
02:35Well, I don't have the expertise to know why people's personalities change.
02:39I know plenty of people whose personalities have changed over the years.
02:43Being in power must have an effect.
02:47And I think she'd been so successful that hubris took over.
02:55She was a major player on the international stage.
03:01She looked like Catherine the Great, you know, had popped in by mistake.
03:05And that didn't do any harm.
03:07I mean, that was good.
03:08The public back home liked it.
03:10Here was the British Prime Minister striding the world stage and everyone fascinated to meet her.
03:16Partly because she was a woman Prime Minister, but partly behind the force of her own personality.
03:20I really struggled with the fact that being inside Number 10 started to feel more real than the outside world.
03:34I remember telling a colleague at one point that the world seemed in colour when I was inside Number 10 and black and white when I was outside.
03:44And I think it's part of the seductive charm of the place, but also the person, Margaret Thatcher, that she sort of sucked you in.
03:51It was a professional Number 10, I can tell you.
03:55She called it by our Christian name, but I called her, I always said Prime Minister.
04:00And there was always that, some would say master servant, but I would say Prime Minister official relationship.
04:06Our job as civil servants was to remain objective, but I felt it had got a little out of control. Bernard and Charles Pohl both become effectively courtiers in a way.
04:19It was a role largely below the radar, but became more personal because it lasted a long time.
04:32I'm afraid I think the time seems a little bit...
04:34It's a little bit pushed, yes.
04:36Just take out the second half of page 11 versus half of page 12.
04:42Perhaps something clicked, but she seemed to be keen to hang on to me.
04:45I'm now getting bored with it, Charles, and you must be very bored with it.
04:49You can't imagine the feeling of being there alongside a powerful Prime Minister, and above all, one with a great agenda for change.
04:56Thank you very much.
04:58It was intoxicating stuff, and I think anyone could have been forgiven for enjoying it and going on doing it.
05:06Good morning, isn't it?
05:08Happy day, isn't it?
05:09Happy day.
05:10Glorious 10 years, they said.
05:13Just refer you to the next.
05:23I think probably every Prime Minister, once they've stayed a certain length of time, starts to get out of touch, and obviously that was happening to her.
05:31Are there any things you regret you can't do as Prime Minister?
05:34Yes, quite a lot of things. I don't get out walking as much. I... All sorts of things.
05:44Really, she'd forgotten what it's like to be ordinary. And that's a shame because one of her strengths was that she came from an ordinary background and she brought that authenticity.
05:54Do you crave anonymity ever?
05:57Um, yes, of course you do. Because you can't disguise yourself. I remember going out once with a scarf around my head and sunglasses on and was quite pleased, scarf and big coat.
06:13I hadn't got a hundred yards before someone said, hello, Mrs Thatcher.
06:17It doesn't, it doesn't really work.
06:19As she got older, the strain began to tell. She didn't enjoy the same almost undiluted confidence that she had in her middle period.
06:26But I think she did find managing political relationships ever more difficult.
06:32She was also always a bit paranoid about leadership challenges. She was always suspecting plots being formed here and there.
06:39And she had this suspicion that certain ministers were deliberately building up support for themselves, either to succeed her or even to challenge her.
06:51Michael Heseltine always was a man keen on dramatic gestures. At times it suited Mrs Thatcher when he's taken on Labour left-wingers, CND and the unions.
07:00I think in her thoughts Michael Heseltine was always circling her, vying potentially to take her job.
07:08They just clashed as personalities. I mean, they never could stand the sight of each other from the word go.
07:14They were both prima donnas. They were both one-offs. That doesn't mean that they might not have worked well together.
07:21It so happened they did for a while, but not for very long.
07:24We got into this essentially rather trivial argument between her and him over what should happen to this little, actually tiny, manufacturing company down in the West Country.
07:41And he wanted a European helicopter to be procured and she wanted the company to have the say.
07:48Obviously, throughout the unfolding saga, the question of resignation was raised by my friends and family and the press indeed.
07:58But my own judgement was that somehow or other we would find a way through.
08:05Today, Face the Press goes behind the best known front door in Britain, at a moment when the government, and in particular the Prime Minister, are in the midst of a major crisis.
08:14Now, had I moved in before Cabinet again and said, Mr Heseltine, either, in fact, you play as a team or you go, do you know what you would have accused me of?
08:25Being very anti-European and being peevish.
08:29Basically, I think that she behaved in a way that was completely unacceptable.
08:34There was a proposal from the Prime Minister that no Ministers would make any comments publicly on the issue.
08:40Michael Heseltine said he found that completely unacceptable.
08:43That was the point at which I folded my papers and said, I have no place in this Cabinet.
08:49I have resigned from the Cabinet and I will make a full statement later today.
08:55If you're going to have a Cabinet, then you better have collective responsibility and Heseltine wasn't prepared to live by it.
09:04He was prepared to die by it, as he did.
09:07Oh, I think that there's no doubt about it, that we expected him to cause trouble.
09:16My position from 86 onwards was basically a survival strategy.
09:22As long as she was there, I was going to be on the back benches.
09:25Er, Mr... Yes.
09:30Well...
09:32Heseltine!
09:34Heseltine, ah, that shouldn't be difficult to remember.
09:36Michael Heseltine.
09:38It was a belief that, in the end, Margaret would go, but four years waiting for that turn of events?
09:47Awful waste of my life.
09:49Hold on, Margaret!
09:52You know, Margaret Thatcher's downfall, one can see in hindsight, developed over a period.
09:57She had climbed this greasy pole to the very top of British politics against a lot of opposition.
10:03She hated people who appeared to be, sort of, conspiring against her or to trip her up and that sort of thing.
10:10In those days in the Conservative Party, very many senior heavyweight figures like Geoffrey Howell were deeply committed to the European community.
10:22And one of the areas where she was, you know, not entirely at ease was, you know, dealing with all these wretched foreigners.
10:30I don't think Margaret Thatcher had ever spoken to European leaders as though they were an amiable branch of the Rotary Club in Finchley that she needed to humour.
10:40Since their last direct meeting, the relationship between Chancellor Cole and Mrs Thatcher has been at best scratchy and at worst acrimonious.
10:48President Mitterrand has made his strongest criticism yet of Mrs Thatcher's attitude to Europe.
10:53She engaged in every argument and probably talked much too much anyway.
10:57And I used to steal into the council chamber with a glass of whiskey concealed under my jacket and put it in front of her and she was always delighted.
11:05Indeed, Geoffrey Howell used to rather plaintively say, why can't I have one too?
11:10Geoffrey Howell really believed in the European project. He wanted to see Britain influential right at the heart of it.
11:17I think he hated the rhetoric which Margaret Thatcher had been using, which sort of characterised the situation very confrontationally.
11:25She quite frankly had got very fed up with the wetness of the Foreign Office on several issues and, of course, inevitably the wetness of Geoffrey Howell, if she would see it.
11:40She behaved so aggressively that she became a unifying force within the European Union. They all united against her and that was not very clever, I thought.
11:53Mr. Chairman, you have invited me to speak on the subject of Britain and Europe.
12:11Perhaps I should congratulate you on your courage.
12:16If you believe some of the things said and written about my views on Europe, it must seem rather like inviting Genghis Khan to speak on the virtues of peaceful coexistence.
12:29I think that what must have been a red rag to their bull was the Bruce speech, which was impressively positive about Europe, except on its federalism and its attempt to build the United States of Europe, which she thought was going the wrong way.
12:52We have not successfully rolled back the frontiers of the state in Britain, only to see them reimposed at the European level, with the European super state exercising a new dominance from Brussels.
13:06She became part of the anti-Brussels, it's all them, it's the foreigners, it's not us, it's not our fault, world, fanned by her sort of Murdoch, Conrad Black friends in the press.
13:20It was a disaster for our relationship with the European Union, which has festered on and still does to this day.
13:31The trouble really came to a head, I think, before a European summit in Madrid.
13:41Nigel Lawson, her Chancellor and Geoffrey Howe, the Foreign Secretary, both went to her together and said that they would resign if she didn't say the words that they gave to her about joining the European exchange rate mechanism, which was a sort of early precursor of the Euro, I suppose.
13:59All 12 countries would fix their exchange rates permanently and hand control to a new European central bank.
14:08A single currency would be introduced and the old banks become regional branches, like the American system.
14:15It was Geoffrey Howe who took the initiative. He was very concerned that Margaret was going to take an aggressive, an obstructionist stand, which would get us nowhere.
14:29Well, Margaret Thatcher took the view that Geoffrey Howe and Nigel Lawson were ganging up on her ahead of a crucial European council by trying to get her to subscribe to something.
14:38She was not at that stage at all ready to subscribe to her. And she thought it was not the right way to sort of hold up like a highwayman and Prime Minister on the eve of an important, important meeting.
14:51I haven't the faintest idea why she considered it an ambush. I mean, I think it's just an indication of the state of mind that she had by that time.
15:02I mean, someone that she was completely self-sufficient. And cabinet government, even discussion with your most senior colleagues, was somehow unacceptable.
15:18I was sitting in Margaret Thatcher's part of the plane with Bernard Ingham and Geoffrey Howe and his staff were in the other part, and the communication between the two was forbidden.
15:32When we got to the hotel, Margaret Thatcher marched me off to her suite so I could redraft her speaking notes for the next day in the European Council.
15:51I was forbidden to show them to the Foreign Office or to Geoffrey Howe.
15:55Now, in hindsight, it all looks a bit childish, and no doubt it was. But she felt that she had been badly treated and was going to jollywell say what she wanted and wanted her draftsman to write it for her and keep it to himself.
16:08So in the course of the evening, little timorous knocks would come on the door. A Foreign Office official would ask if I could tell them what she's going to say.
16:15And the answer had to be, no, I'm afraid not. So she went into the European Council without her Foreign Secretary knowing what she was going to say, which is a slightly absurd situation, it has to be said, but there we are.
16:31Mrs Thatcher, urged on by Sir Geoffrey Howe and Mr Lawson, agreed in principle that Britain should join, but only on tough conditions.
16:39The French were put out. President Mitterrand, defeated on the idea of a strict timetable for a treaty change, referred to Mrs Thatcher as a break on Europe.
16:48Well, it's a bit rich, isn't it? Someone who hasn't got freedom of capital movement and who hasn't abolished exchange controls and who wants to put more taxes on in order to do it, calling me a break on Europe.
17:00He scarce got into the car yet.
17:02When she had got back from the Madrid European Council, where she said exactly what she wanted to say, not what they had asked her to say, then it was coming down to cabinet meeting in number 10, where all the ministers were gathered outside the door.
17:25She looked round and said, no resignations, I see, which I think rather made Howe and Lawson look a little sheepish, shall we say.
17:35After the Madrid summit, she certainly lost her trust, I think, in both Nigel and Geoffrey.
17:42Her relationship with Geoffrey had always been rather different, and she began to behave quite appallingly to him, sometimes in public.
17:47One of her great weaknesses was the way she treated Geoffrey Howe, which was unfair, sometimes mean, and she wasn't normally mean.
17:59Sir Geoffrey Howe has finally lost his battle to stay Foreign Secretary. He's moved, reportedly against his wishes, to the role of Deputy Prime Minister and Leader of the Commons.
18:09When she virtually sacked Geoffrey, she made him the Deputy Prime Minister. That is a non-job, like the Vice Presidency of the United States, and I could see he was being sidelined, he knew he was being sidelined.
18:22I don't think Geoffrey was the sort of chap who would have put in a formal complaint and gone to some procedure that he was being bullied.
18:29That was not the mood of the 1980s, not the mood of the Thatcher government, and Geoffrey wouldn't have done that.
18:36She had reached the view that, on political issues, her judgement was invariably better than those of her colleagues.
18:45And, unfortunately, that wasn't always the case.
18:50In the case of Nigel, she appointed Alan Walters.
18:54The sheer contempt of appointing one of his most public critics to be her key advisor, with the obvious message that she was going to overrule his economic policies and command what he did from now on, how on earth she thought he would put up with that, I have no idea.
19:14Good morning.
19:17It was not my intention, when I resigned, that it would, in any way, contribute to bringing her down.
19:25I'll make a short statement, if you like, in a moment, but let's get the photographs done first. Okay?
19:40There aren't many ways of softening the blow of the Chancellor resigning.
19:51Can you just give us a wipe, Mr Lawson, please?
19:54I mean, the only personal remark she made to me when I was seeing her in some other context, I think, was to express bewilderment as to why Nigel had resigned over this.
20:06She didn't, she didn't understand what she'd done.
20:09Mrs Thatcher gave little away about the reasons for last week's upheavals, no explanation of why she didn't sack her advisor to keep her Chancellor.
20:19I did everything possible to stop him.
20:23I was not successful.
20:25No, you're going on asking the same question.
20:27Of course, but that's a terrible admission, Prime Minister.
20:29I don't know, of course I don't know.
20:31You don't know. You could have kept your Chancellor, possibly, if you had sacked your part-time advisor.
20:37I wanted to keep my Chancellor in any event, because he was very good, his position was unassailable, and let's face it, Brian, he was Chancellor.
20:51I think it reached the point where many of the backbenchers felt that some kind of show of unease should be made,
21:02and Anthony Mayer came forward as stalking horse candidate.
21:07Stalking horse in the sense that no one ever thought he was seriously aiming to be leader of the Conservative Party,
21:14but it was thought to be a sort of thermometer, a sort of warning for the Prime Minister about how serious all this was.
21:21He was probably accurately described as a stalking donkey, but the fact is that I think 66 MPs, or thereabouts, did not vote for Mrs Thatcher.
21:33From Mrs Thatcher, there's continuing defiance. A recent farm visit brought this response to suggestions she was about to resign.
21:40Poppycock!
21:43I had the longest one-on-one meeting I ever had with the Prime Minister, in which I simply said,
21:50Look, this is a very serious matter, so far as your Prime Ministership is concerned.
21:55I remember very well as I left the room, I said, Don't forget, Margaret, they're lurking in the bushes,
22:02and a year from now, unless something's done, boom, they're going to try and kill you.
22:12Her judgement was no longer as sure, and she hadn't got the feel for politics and public opinion she once had.
22:20Does the panel think that after ten years, the Tigress is losing her teeth?
22:27I think Mrs Thatcher has her teeth very firmly fastened into the most disadvantaged people in this country.
22:33Just after noon today, the Bank of England signalled a rise of a half percent,
22:38and the main high street banks quickly raised their base rates to ten and a half percent.
22:41...British businesses says firms are now experiencing a severe recession.
22:45A quarterly survey by the British Chambers of Commerce...
22:48When democratic leaders have been there about ten years, they start getting too confident,
22:54and the public start getting more critical.
22:57I think there's a big shift of opinion taking place in the country just at the moment,
23:03and I think the strong perception of the British people is that she's gone too far.
23:07The annual rate of inflation has reached an eight-year high at ten point nine percent.
23:13It means many social security...
23:15...in London, where the number of families officially listed as homeless has doubled to 30,000 in the last year.
23:21A recent poll indicate that there's a higher level of fear, greed and selfishness,
23:26...so perhaps Mrs. Thatcher's actually going too much, possibly, the way of a dictator.
23:33There were concerns about the economy, because that wasn't going very well.
23:37But I think there was always a contradiction, and there is.
23:40If you argue about market forces in a way which assumes that there is no need to assert the social responsibility within which the market should operate,
23:52...then there are some fairly vulgar and unpleasant consequences.
23:55The community charge is the major issue in next week's local elections, according to a new opinion poll.
24:01Keep your hands up!
24:03Last Sunday, many Conservatives at a packed meeting in Maidenhead threw down the gauntlet to the government.
24:08The government have got their songs wrong!
24:11These aren't well-heeled Thames Valley Tories, but the less well-off who thrice elected Mrs. Thatcher.
24:16Suddenly you found that this huge tax was homing in like a heat-seeking missile,
24:24...on floating voters in marginal constituencies, exactly the sort of people who she normally understood.
24:32And I don't think she ever focused on the impact on ordinary families, which normally she was brilliant at.
24:41How can they justify that the Sultan of Oman, who lives in a £10 million mansion,
24:48...he is only going to pay about £800.
24:51My sister and I live in a mobile home, and we are going to pay twice about £477.
24:59Did you vote Conservative last time?
25:01I did. And I regret it.
25:04It was a difficult tax to introduce, to say the least, because it was so novel and different.
25:09It had certain advantages, it was totally eclipsed by the way it was introduced.
25:25Let us remember it as being a pretty good horror story.
25:28I mean, no justification for what was done.
25:44I could see the smoke and the devastation that those riots had caused.
25:48Things which had been long in the making, seeds that had been sown many, many months and years ago,
25:54...were suddenly coming to a head.
25:56It was just a disaster waiting to happen.
26:00I warned her that it would be a political disaster and tried to persuade her not to do it.
26:06Conservative MPs have been warned to stop complaining about the Prime Minister and the poll tax.
26:12The warning came from the Transport Secretary, Cecil Parkinson, who said divisions just helped political opponents.
26:18It followed newspaper polls of Tory backbench opinion, which show increasing criticism of Mrs. Thatcher's leadership.
26:24It's got to be made very clear to the party, there are going to be no changes in the poll tax.
26:29So colleagues have got to stop arguing about whether we can abandon or change the poll tax.
26:36Now, it isn't going to happen.
26:39It went through, it became part of our manifesto pledge.
26:42Then I think that it was pretty well, the goose was pretty well cooked by then.
26:47Look, no government gives in to a violent protest like that, in whatever the violent protest might be about.
26:56If a government gives in to a violent protest like that, its days are numbered.
27:10She must have been aware that the main concern was the poll tax.
27:14And she clearly made up her mind that she was going ahead with it.
27:18We ended up with the worst case scenario from the point of view of Margaret Thatcher's leadership.
27:23I think that the whole situation was pressing some of her panic buttons.
27:28We're the second biggest net contributor to Europe paying over £2 billion.
27:34Why did we say that? Why did we say that? That's a very powerful observation.
27:38It clouded her judgement and I think it was a factor, definitely, in the feelings that she was expressing at that time about Europe.
27:45Paying over £2 billion a year.
27:47It doesn't happen every year because the contribution to Europe goes up and down.
27:52More last year?
27:53I think I'd better not. Look, I've had one bash at Europe.
27:56I don't think Douglas can tell you.
27:59Her no, no, no speech in the House of Commons was an extraordinary performance.
28:06I mean, rhetorically very powerful.
28:08Of course the chairman or the president of the Commission, Mr Delors, said at press conference the other day
28:14that he wanted the European Parliament to be the democratic body of the community.
28:19He wanted the Commission to be the executive and he wanted the Council of Ministers to be the Senate.
28:24No, no, no.
28:29She had a clear script that she'd been given to say in the House of Commons,
28:33but when she'd finished reading it, she just let loose and really said what she thought.
28:40But what is the point in trying to get elected to Parliament only to hand over your sterling
28:45and to hand over the powers of this House to Europe?
28:48Perhaps the right honourable gentleman will understand his brief a little bit better next time.
28:53I think this was a huge bombshell for Geoffrey Howe.
29:03He was sitting there, I think, shocked by her tone and felt that he just had to do something.
29:09The Deputy Prime Minister, Sir Geoffrey Howe, has resigned from Mrs Thatcher's government.
29:14He tells her, I am deeply anxious that your mood will make it more difficult for Britain in the European debate.
29:20Sir Geoffrey was the last remaining member of Mrs Thatcher's original cabinet.
29:24Sir Geoffrey, can we ask your feelings about your resignation?
29:36Sir Geoffrey, do you think there will be a leadership challenge now?
29:39Lady Howe? Is he feeling Lady Howe?
29:42Well, obviously he's very sad.
29:45Do you think he should challenge for the leadership?
29:47If you're under pressure of that kind, you either give in or you stand out, don't you?
30:00I think she did toughen up and that, of course, would not please some people.
30:05Of course it wouldn't.
30:06Can we have one word? How do you feel this evening?
30:09Fine. How are you?
30:11Is your government stronger today than it was yesterday?
30:14Long time.
30:16That was the straw that broke the camel's back.
30:19And I remember it because I was at the theatre and I was pulled out of the theatre as party chairman
30:24to go and try and explain on television what had happened.
30:27That's the job of party chairman. It's been a difficult job at those sort of times.
30:31Turn it down a bit. Turn it down a bit. I can hardly hear a bloody thing.
30:34Tony, can you turn it down, please?
30:38No, turn it down.
30:40Do you see any prospect that Sir Geoffrey would challenge or be part of a challenge to Mrs Thatcher for the leadership of the party?
30:47No, I don't think that will happen.
30:48Geoffrey was a very kind and gentle person, but he turned out to be a brutal assassin.
30:57Order. Order.
30:59I remind the House that a resignation statement is heard in silence and without interruption.
31:05Sir Geoffrey Howe.
31:08I don't think it was just revenge. Margaret was no longer doing the job properly,
31:12so he was determined to actually get across to the House of Commons
31:17what he thought was wrong in the way she was leading the government.
31:22Mr Speaker, it's rather like sending your opening batsmen to the priests,
31:26only for them to find, the moment the first balls are bowled,
31:30that their bats have been broken before the game by the team captain.
31:34From the word go, you could feel the sort of knives thudding into Margaret sentence by sentence as the whole house was gripped by this compelling address.
31:51We've paid heavily in the past for late starts and squandered opportunities in Europe.
31:57We dare not let that happen again.
31:59It was an uncomfortable moment if you were sitting on the front bench seeing your leader attack.
32:05I don't think I really looked at her. I was much keener to look at him and his friends around and what they were quite clearly thinking and feeling which was very much in support of what he said.
32:22I no longer believe it possible to resolve that conflict from within this government. That is why I have resigned. In doing so, I have done what I believe to be right for my party and my country. The time has come for others to consider their own response to the tragic conflict of loyalties with which I have myself wrestled for perhaps too long.
32:44As we left, she turned to me and she said to me, I never thought he'd do it. I said, well, he's done it, Margaret. It's a game changer.
33:01We'd had our fellow Michael Hedeltine in 1986 with the Westland affair. And I was right. But Howe's resignation left him with no option. He was either a man or a mouse.
33:18I knew with Geoffrey's departure that the focus of media attention and political attention would be on me. There was no, it wasn't a very complicated or sophisticated judgment. That's what was going to happen. And it's what it did happen.
33:35The news this lunchtime, Tories at Westminster have a fight on their hands. Michael Hedeltine decides he will challenge Margaret Thatcher for the leadership of his party and country.
33:50That was the point where I think things went completely wrong for her.
33:58Mr. Hedeltine launched his campaign with the claim that he's more likely to win a general election and his camp are buoyed up this morning by a poll which says in a general election, Mrs. Thatcher would be four points behind Labour, but the Tories under Heseltine would be 10 points ahead.
34:16They just assumed that this was an irritation and that so long as she rather grandly did articles and television appearances and carried on with business as usual as prime minister, she would be confirmed.
34:29Mr. Speaker, after three general election victories, leading the only party with clear policies resolutely carried out and intend to continue.
34:41Mr. She had people advising her and whispering in her ear who weren't very smart and who gave her the wrong advice and got it wrong.
34:49And maybe they did that because they were scared to tell her the truth, or maybe they did that because they were stupid.
34:57I don't know, maybe a mixture of the two.
35:00I think that she must have been feeling the pressure enormously, but it didn't really show.
35:06I think I still have a job to do. Goodness me, my work isn't quite yet finished. That's why I think I need to go on.
35:18She was obviously very worried and regarded as very serious. There was none of this, woo is me, I'm going to have a go. I'm going to fight on.
35:30And she did until the cabinet let her down.
35:39I think what we're witnessing in these final days is that there was a kind of new passion rising up, a kind of personal tide of anger.
35:55I was editor of the Times at the time. It was a huge story. Was the Prime Minister going or was she not?
36:01I was invited down to Chequers to interview her, clearly a very important interview.
36:06Sunday evening, I'll never forget it.
36:08As I was driving through the Chilterns, it was abundantly clear that some storm was on its way.
36:14The clouds were gathering. And all the time I felt I was entering this world of the last days of Thatcher.
36:22You faintly thought you'd entered Churchill's bunker. She was in context there. Lonely, slightly pompous. It was all dark and thunderous.
36:34You expected the Rhinemaidens to come out of the staircase. It was very dramatic.
36:39She was impossible to interview because she didn't listen to the question. She just told you what she thought.
36:46But she had on the table, I'll never forget, she had on the table Michael Heseltine's book.
36:50And this book was just full of markers which her staff had sort of signified.
36:55Areas where, as far as she was concerned, Michael Heseltine indicated he was a socialist, not a conservative.
37:00And she kept referring to it. It was obsessional, I have to say.
37:04Are you ready?
37:06Whatever her shortcomings, physical or intellectual fatigue is not among them.
37:12She confronts Mr Heseltine with the same alert doggedness with which she has confronted miners, Argentinians and European diplomats.
37:22She fights them all. For Mr Heseltine, she has no time. Her aversion to him is long standing and personal.
37:31My case is proven. That's what she was like. Here. Started here.
37:37Call me a socialist. I've been at the centre of virtually every campaign the Tories have fought over the last 50 years against socialism.
37:49She was asserting all the time what she thought or what she decided. There was no give or take to her.
37:54I felt about Margaret Thatcher what I'd always felt about her. That she was a powerful lady.
38:01She reacted from the gut and you had to spend a lot of time battering your way through until you got to what was a very fine mind.
38:10She said over and over again in the course of our interview, I'm not finished.
38:14You know, I've given them three victories. I've given them three victories. It would be very cruel.
38:19Words like this came up time and again. So I was aware, I think I left feeling she was less secure than I thought when I arrived.
38:28Mrs. Thatcher is in Paris where she's carrying on with the business of an international summit.
38:40For Mrs. Thatcher, three days in Paris to mark the formal ending of the Cold War are a welcome respite from political pressures at home.
38:47I said, don't go to Paris for this meeting, but stay in London and I'll bring in MPs to talk to you and you must talk to them and persuade them to support you.
38:56And she said, Kenneth, I've won three elections. I haven't got to do that again, have I? She had to do it again.
39:04If this is for her one of the hardest days since becoming Prime Minister 11 years ago, Mrs. Thatcher isn't showing it.
39:13Oh, she had to go. She wanted to share the marking of the end of the Cold War.
39:21She couldn't have avoided going. If she'd not gone, what would they have said? Frightened to death.
39:35Conservative MPs have begun voting on whether to change their leader and the country's Prime Minister.
39:41Michael Heseltine leaves home a backbencher. He hopes to return tonight as party leader or as a contender in a second ballot.
39:48The ballot paper handed to each Tory MP contains two printed names, Margaret Thatcher and Michael Heseltine.
40:05I'll tell you exactly what happened on that final day in Paris.
40:09This leadership election was taking place back in London.
40:12A small group of us gathered in her room up in the Ambassador's residence.
40:18She was there. She was sitting at a stool in front of the make-up mirror in her room.
40:25We were all silent. We didn't talk at all.
40:29I'd made my own arrangement to have a telephone call to tell me the result.
40:35Because I was never quite confident the political office would get it right.
40:38Well, I got a brief report that it hadn't gone well.
40:43And so she was looking in the mirror so she could see me in reflection behind her on the bed.
40:49And I could see her face in the mirror.
40:52And she clearly deduced from my expression that it had not gone right.
40:58And I could see from her expression that she knew this was the end.
41:04Because, as I say, she looked for a brief moment defeated.
41:10Something I had never seen before.
41:12I'd seen her in victory many times.
41:14I'd seen her in trouble, in danger, all sorts of things.
41:18But I'd never seen her look defeated.
41:20She very quietly stood up, dusted herself down, smoothed her suit,
41:33and knew what she had to do.
41:36And that was to go out and talk to the media.
41:39What's she going to say? Is she going to resign?
41:43John Sargent is in Paris.
41:45The Prime Minister is in the building behind him.
41:47John, I don't know if you caught the result.
41:49204 to the Prime Minister, 152 to Michael Heseltine,
41:5316 spoiled or abstentions.
41:56We don't know precisely how that breaks down.
41:58But it does go narrowly to a second ballot.
42:01What do you think the reaction will be there?
42:04Well, I think considerable disappointment.
42:06We can now see why the Prime Minister was nervous today.
42:09We can see why she didn't feel that she had definitely won the election.
42:13Who is she taking counsel from there?
42:16Who will be the advisers there with her?
42:19Or will she be on the phone now to her people in London?
42:21I'd have thought now there will be a long series of consultations,
42:25backwards and forwards to London.
42:27Now, the Prime Minister is behind you, John.
42:30Mr Prime Minister, Mrs Thatcher, could I ask you to comment?
42:33Good evening. Good evening, gentlemen.
42:36It's here. This is the microphone.
42:37I'm actually very pleased that I got more than half the parliamentary party
42:42and disappointed that it's not quite enough to win on the first ballot.
42:46So I confirm it is my intention to let my name go forward for the second ballot.
42:50Isn't the vote against you, Mrs Thatcher, large enough for you to have to acknowledge that you no longer enjoy the confidence of the party?
42:56I have got more than half the votes of the parliamentary party.
42:59It was not quite 15% above those of Mr Heseltine.
43:04I think it's about 14.6%.
43:06So it means we have to go for a second ballot.
43:08So I confirm that I shall let my name go forward.
43:11Mrs Thatcher, I must go and do some telephone.
43:14Prime Minister, do you feel at all betrayed by some of your friends who have not voted back?
43:16Thank you very much. Thank you.
43:18Well, if anyone tells me that we're receiving the BBC in the embassy in Paris,
43:25I would believe them because actually came on cue to tell us that she will let her name go forward for a second ballot.
43:33And she didn't explode or anything.
43:36She, as it were, took it on the chin, really, as one would say, in her visible reaction.
43:47After she had given her press statement, she went off to change to go out to the great palace of Versailles
43:53with President Mitterrand and all the others.
43:56Well, I think when it's her own side that he tried to get rid of her,
44:01then that's a bit much to take.
44:04And I think that did not make her sorry for herself, but made her angry and more determined.
44:13That is Margaret Thatcher.
44:16Well, when it came, it was disappointment that things had reached this point, almost disbelief.
44:24All happening at a time, one of the most significant moments in world history, really,
44:29the culmination, the end of the Cold War, and the victory of the West.
44:33And it seemed so incongruous, really, that the person who had made a great contribution to that victory of the West
44:39was suddenly being chucked out.
44:41And the other leaders present simply could not believe it,
44:45whether it was President Bush, President Gorbachev, all of them.
44:49They just didn't understand what could conceivably have happened.
44:53One moment, she seemed to be an all-powerful Prime Minister.
44:56The next moment, she'd been chucked out by a band of tea-room rebels from the House of Commons.
45:00If, in 1940, our fighter pilots had looked at the arithmetic, they were going to lose the Battle of Britain.
45:21So hopeless battles can be won, but only if you fight them.
45:28Even if you believe you're going to lose, you have to carry on.
45:34It should be remembered that she got more votes than Hesseltine.
45:39But she was four votes short of the majority which was required for her to win.
45:46Mrs Thatcher returned to Downing Street to unceremonious questions from the press.
45:52Mrs Thatcher, when are you going to resign?
45:55Who would be Prime Minister of a Tory government?
46:01And I think a lot of Prime Ministers would have said that.
46:04Certainly Mrs Thatcher wondered at the end why on earth she'd led that lot.
46:09She decided to invite us in one by one, and I was one of the first to be invited in.
46:24And I thought it was important, as a supporter of her, to tell her the truth.
46:28And to tell her that I thought there was every chance she would not win a second ballot.
46:36And she was quite visibly shaken by it coming from me.
46:42At the time I felt pretty uncomfortable, particularly when I saw the reaction on her face.
46:49And she just went silent for a while.
46:51Undoubtedly it was the most difficult message I've had to deliver to her or to anyone that I liked and admired and loved in a way.
46:59If you've been appointed a cabinet minister and you've served as a cabinet minister for several years, then you shouldn't be there if you cannot give honest advice when it's requested.
47:08I told her, from my own point of view, that I'd voted for her in the first round, that I thought if she went forward to a second round, there was a real danger of her being humiliated.
47:20And I didn't think that was a very good idea.
47:23I said to her, you are gravely damaged.
47:26And I think I used the parallel of, you know, when a ship is damaged under the water, you don't see it from the surface, but that ship is sinking.
47:38If we had wanted her to stay, we could have made that happen.
47:45I don't, I don't feel entirely generous towards people who got it wrong and got rid of a prime minister.
47:57No, I think you're asking for a bit too much actually.
48:01Treasons, stratagems and spoils.
48:05According to Newsnight sources, a massive majority, including some of her staunchest supporters, advised her she should quit.
48:14Some, like Kenneth Clark and Chris Patton, bluntly told her it was time to go with honour.
48:19It was the only sensible advice to give her.
48:24Absolute waste of time going in and flattering her and saying, with one more effort, one more heave, Margaret, I'm sure we'll get through this.
48:33It was the end.
48:35She felt hurt and shocked and she described it as an act of vile and treachery.
48:42Our information is that 17 out of the 19 ministers told her she was likely to lose a straight contest against Michael Heseltine.
48:50I went to see her about 8.30 that night.
48:56She said, I'm afraid they're all deserting me.
48:58And she was rather tearful.
48:59So all I said was, well, we're not deserting you.
49:04I'm not sure that helped, but it was true.
49:08I went home on the basis of a formal position that the prime minister was going to sleep on it overnight.
49:16The cabinet turned up that morning and we were milling around outside.
49:28She came down that long staircase and you could see that she was very red eyed and went into the meeting and she said, I have to tell you that I feel I should stand down.
49:38And she broke down.
49:45There she was around what at that moment seemed like a coffin shaped table.
49:51Just one woman and surrounded by men.
49:57And her task was simply to read out a short statement, which she tried to do.
50:05But as soon as she started it, she started to cry and then to sob.
50:11And she was really struggling to get the words out.
50:13You couldn't be moved by the emotion of it.
50:16Others volunteered to read her statement before her.
50:19But no, she was going to get through it and do it through the tears.
50:24Having consulted widely amongst my colleagues, I have concluded that the unity of the party and the prospects of victory in a general election would be better served if I stood down to enable cabinet colleagues to enter the ballot for the leadership.
50:44I should like to thank all those in the cabinet and outside who had given me such dedicated support.
50:51I can't remember whether I actually let tears roll down my cheeks or brush them away before anyone could see.
50:59But certainly we were all lacrimose to some degree.
51:04These were the same men that she was reading this statement out to who had the night before told her that she, although they support her, they didn't think that she could win.
51:15I think we all know that quite a lot of crocodiles keep a handkerchief handy.
51:22Keep a handkerchief handy.
51:23I didn't like crocodiles very much.
51:29They had sought to bring her down.
51:33Most of them know how I regard them.
51:37I am very saddened indeed that our greatest peacetime prime minister has left government.
51:50She is an outstanding leader, not only of our country and of the world.
51:55And I do not believe we will see her like again.
51:58They can plan their entrances, but they very rarely can plan their exits.
52:12As soon as the news of her resignation came in, flowers started flooding in.
52:16And she said, look, you must take some of these home with you, otherwise they'll just be wasted.
52:20So we put them in bid liners and carried them away.
52:26There I was driving along, you know, with the flowers that people were sending in to try and make her feel better.
52:36It's absolutely marvellous.
52:38For ten years we've been fighting to get rid of her.
52:43There was jubilation all around, you know, this was massive news.
52:47And part of me was absolutely out there, you know, on the streets, as it were, mentally.
52:54Just as pleased as anyone that Margaret Thatcher had finally gone.
52:57And there was a, you know, chance for a fresh wave of politics.
53:01But at the same time, just feeling so incredibly sad for her.
53:07Britain will have a new prime minister later today.
53:10Mr. Major's victory in the Conservative leadership ballot was announced at twenty past six by the chairman of the...
53:15We know that, deep down, she didn't really believe that anybody else could do the job.
53:22I think that, inevitably, affected the way in which she left.
53:28Oh, I'd like to have led the Conservative Party. I'd like to have been prime minister.
53:39And it would be a different country if I had.
53:42Anyway, that wasn't to be.
53:45I'll actually be remembered for my trees.
53:47They will provoke people to say, who did this?
53:52That's why I think I will have planted a sapling in history.
54:03The Conservative Party realised that they had lost the most gigantic political leader that they had had since Churchill.
54:12And that those figures don't come that often.
54:18Where there is discord, may we bring harmony.
54:21Where there is error, may we bring truth.
54:24Looking into the mirror herself, she would have seen Thatcher, I think, much romanticised.
54:41The victor of the Falklands, the victor of the miners, the emotional, historic figure, as opposed to the calculating politician that she actually was.
54:51I have only one thing to say.
54:55You turn if you want to.
55:02The ladies not for turning.
55:05I don't think there was very much self-criticism or self-knowledge about what the impact on society had been of her years at the top.
55:22I think she would have very rarely asked herself, what did I get wrong?
55:26And would have been far more likely to say, what did they do wrong to me?
55:31The next morning she came downstairs with Dennis and Mark and the five private secretaries were waiting for her at the bottom of the stairs.
55:48And we shook hands and I think we were all, certainly I was crying, lots of others were.
55:58Along the corridor, through to the front door, there were staff lining it all the way and she just knew that she just couldn't, you know, she was going to lose it.
56:07So we saw her walk down the corridor and the lights were flashing, we could see the press were already anticipating the opening of the door.
56:16We could see the lights flashing above the number 10 door and she walked quickly down and the door opened and she walked outside.
56:23And when she was there, you know, there were tears in her eyes.
56:29Ladies and gentlemen, we're leaving Downing Street for the last time after 11 and a half wonderful years.
56:37And we're very happy that we leave the United Kingdom in a very, very much better state than when we came here 11 and a half years ago.
56:46The end of an era. Literally. There couldn't be another Thatcher. Not quite.
57:03She's leaving a place that had been her home, her office and her life for over a decade.
57:13It was a tremendous wrench. Must have been.
57:22I don't think she ever really had a happy day in her life from the moment she had to leave number 10.
57:32I really didn't talk to her very much after that.
57:35I felt that she didn't want me round about the place because all I would have been doing would have been to remind her what was and there was nothing I could do to help her with what was to come.
57:50When she, for less, acquired dementia, it was as though nothing had changed from number 10.
58:06When I went to see her, she said, will you have a coffee and then sit down.
58:13And then she looks at me expectantly. What is the problem?
58:16So on the way in on the train, I always acquired a problem from reading the papers.
58:23And we discussed this problem at least six times in the hour because she'd forgotten.
58:31It would have been funny if it weren't tragic.
58:33And she'd, in the end said, and why have we got into this mess?
58:40But more importantly, and what are we going to do about it looking at me?
58:49It was rather encouraging that she hadn't changed much.
58:52Over on BBC Four, Alan Clarke is convinced that his political career is on the slide in the penultimate dramatisation of the Alan Clarke Diaries.
59:10And on BBC Two this Thursday at nine, we follow the stories of those caught up in home office tangles in who should get to stay in the UK.
59:22To be continued...
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