Thatcher – a right wing ‘baboon’?

Thatcher wasn’t at all well and had nothing to eat for 24 hours because of a severe stomach upset when she took to the dance floor with President Kenneth Kaunda (see picture) at the end of an unexpectedly harmonious and successful gathering that led to the Lancaster House Conference in London later that year.

“I thought she was going to faint at one moment,” recalled a Thatcher aide. ”She did terribly well at Lusaka. She really was brilliant. She had never been to Africa and I think she though they were a lot of savages. When they turned up and Kaunda was a smooth old guy and they were all agreeable, I think she thawed a bit.”

The “smooth old guy” also did

“terribly well” when it came to a display of traditional African hospitality towards a British dignitary, considering the way he and his young country had been treated by the former colonial power since its Independence on 24 October 1964 and Ian Smith’s infamous UDI in Rhodesia in November 1965.

But it was party time and Margaret Thatcher went home with flowers in her lovely hair, author Charles Moore tells us in this, the long awaited biography of one of the most remarkable politicians of the last century.

“I don’t want to sound like a sycophant, but you did very, very well in Lusaka,” Sir Nicholas Parsons, British Ambassador to the UN told her in Downing Street.”

Modestly, the woman described by French Prime Minister, Francoise Mitterand, as having the eyes of Caligula and the hair of Marilyn Monroe, replied – ”I think I did it a great deal better than you could have done.”

Margaret Thatcher was the daughter of an English grocer and her economic policies were – ‘Run a country as you’d run a shop and you won’t go far wrong.’

When it came to Africa she was ignorant and took her early opinions from husband, Denis.

Writes Moore -”He had an unreconstructed belief in the political and economic incompetence of black regimes and a natural sympathy, based on ethnicity and sport, for the whites of southern Africa.” Margaret also had a fierce dislike of armed African nationalists who she labeled “terrorists”.

Two years before coming to power in June 1979, she’d met President (Jimmy) Carter in Washington and angered him and his advisers on Africa (some increasingly falling under the influence of Tanzania’s President Julius Nyerere) by expressing her strong sympathy for Rhodesia’s whites.

Chapter 16 is headed ‘Downing Street’ and underneath is a reference to how most Americans saw the Iron Lady in 1979 – “They thought she was some sort of right-wing baboon.”

After the March 3, 1979 agreement in Salisbury between Ian Smith, Bishop Muzorewa, Ndabaningi Sithole and Chief Chirau, Mrs Thatcher sided with the right wing of her Conservative Party and hoped to see the British Government legitimise the new set-up in Rhodesia. “

But later on, her Foreign Secretary persuaded the new Conservative Premier to see things differently.

Peter Carrington – educated at Eton and Sandhurst Military Academy succeeded his father as 6th Baron Carrington when he was only 21.

He was close to Winston Churchill and Sir Anthony Eden and like so many Old School Tories (la crème de la crème) was amazed to find himself taking orders from a woman who was, after all, only the daughter of a grocer.

But he was clever and charming and made her laugh. Eventually even she realised that any real settlement of the simmering Rhodesian problem had to involve Nkomo, Mugabe and the Commonwealth.

Carrington steered her towards Lusaka (she was frightened of going to Zambia because she felt someone would hurl acid in her face).

He let her take the glory and return home victorious. Carrington went on to chair Lancaster House which saw a British Governor return to Salisbury (Lord Christopher Soames) and elections in March 1980 – 57 seats for Mugabe’s ZANU (PF), 20 for Nkomo’s ZAPU, and only three for Muzorewa’s UANC. Whites were handed 20 parliamentary seats to keep them quiet for the time being.

British diplomat Robin Renwick said that Thatcher was excellent at Lancaster House “because she refused to intervene at all.”

Charles Moore has written a long and very important book about a woman many Britons still worship. She gave economists a word -Thatcherism. But a lot still detest her. A song from Wizard of Oz -“Ding Dong, the witch is dead,” was chanted by unruly elements as her coffin as it was wheeled towards St Paul’s Cathedral at her funeral.

But while alive, she was a legend, an Iron Lady swinging her handbag at former public schoolboy (privately and expensively educated) colleagues who served her often with fear and loathing. For a long while, aristocrats like Carrington hid their true feelings towards a woman with policies that delighted the middle class but which froze the hearts of the poor.

Part One of the Authorised Biography doesn’t tell us very much that’s new about Rhodesia or Africa.

But it contains some delightfully irreverent gems. Example being the note at the bottom of page 453: Carrington. . . “He had a genuine respect and affection for Mrs Thatcher but he was also driven mad by what he saw as her stubbornness and lack of realism. One day, climbing the stairs to her study, he turned to Clive Whitmore (her parliamentary secretary) and said : ”Clive, if I have any more trouble from this f ***ing stupid, petit-bourgeois woman, I’m going to go.”

For many readers, that remark alone will be sufficient to justify the high cost of a book which will only be available in libraries and colleges (and the shelves of the wealthy) in Africa. It certainly made me laugh. I’m pawing the ground for part two.

MARGARET THATCHER – The Authorised Biography, Volume One: Not for Turning by Charles Moore (Allen Lane, London, 859 pages £30 in the UK)