The Real Iron Lady by Gillian Shephard Page B

was a note in her own hand: ‘Well done in a difficultHouse. We have cut the 5.30 meeting – come this evening [for a pre-arranged working dinner] when you are ready. TV presentation matters more than anything else. Your quiet confidence goes over very well there, as in the House.’
    I cannot recall Margaret ever coming closer to an apology than this. Neither of us ever mentioned the incident again.
    He describes the Falklands conflict as a time when Margaret Thatcher felt isolated, at least partly because she had no confidence in the strategy of Francis Pym, who had replaced Lord Carrington as Foreign Secretary after his resignation. She would use her regular Sunday evening chats with Geoffrey Howe
    to discuss the ‘progress’ of Pym’s persistent, but intrinsically hopeless, search for an honourable settlement of the Falklands dispute. On those occasions, when I sensed that she felt at her most lonely, we reached perhaps the high point of our relationship. It was clear to me that the Argentine leadership was never seriously committed to such an outcome.
    When victory finally came, there was a transformation in Margaret’s standing, throughout the world, even more than at home, and deservedly so. There can be no doubting the extraordinary importance, from start to end of the crisis, of her sustained courage in the face of uniquely personalised pressures. The role of victorious warrior queen was one into which she grew very naturally. Her confidence in her ownjudgement was certainly not diminished. And her respect for the wisdom of the Foreign Office had certainly not been enhanced by the whole story. Nor, I have to confess, had mine. On the day after the invasion (Saturday 3 April 1982), I had to preside over a ministerial meeting to consider the economic consequences of the conflict. The only department not represented there was the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. ‘Surely,’ I exploded, ‘they’re going to send someone along to tell us whether or not there’s a war on?’ It was a serious question, with important legal consequences, but it went, that day, unanswered. At any rate, these changes in Margaret’s perception did not bode well for the years ahead.
    Early in their relationship, Geoffrey Howe, like John Wakeham, also devised ways of dealing with what he calls ‘the problems of managing Margaret’.
    In my case, (at least in my Treasury days) I had the satisfaction of knowing that Margaret and I were working to basically similar guidelines, even if we should not always handle the details in the same way. This sense of ideological security is what came, I suppose, from being ‘one of us’. This central sympathy of purpose gave one more rather than less room for manoeuvre in the management of policies. Often indeed I was able to enlarge or accelerate actions on which we both agreed, and less often, to modify or tailor their impact so as to make them more sensitive to the anxieties of others: restraining, for example, Margaret’spassionate wish to preserve the real value of mortgage interest relief or even to embark upon the replacement of the rating system.
    This kind of unspoken deal is to be found, I suspect, in many management or team relationships – is indeed essential to their survival. It becomes intolerable or unacceptable, either to the partnership itself or to the world that is affected by it, only if the relationship is manifestly or chronically unbalanced or irretrievably fissile.
    Margaret’s most important weakness – the flipside of her strength – was the extent to which her partners were driven in the end to choose between submission or defection. Perhaps inevitably, the closer the original bonding, the longer the life of the partnership, the more dramatic the final rupture. ‘I must prevail’ was the phrase that finally broke Nigel Lawson’s bond of loyalty and affection. Is almost all real