History of England 1-6

At root, it was the tale of an ailing helicopter company that some felt needed to be rescued. Two bids for Westland had been made, one American and one European. Michael Heseltine, as defence secretary, had strongly supported the European bid. Given that it was the less ‘capitalist’ of the alternatives, offering far more bureaucracy than its rival, it was never likely to have Thatcher’s support. In an effort to contain him, Thatcher placed Heseltine under something like a gagging order, but it proved quite ineffective. On 9 January, he demanded in cabinet that all the options be discussed, and when Thatcher refused, he swept out and announced to the press outside that he had resigned. As he gathered his papers, she said simply, ‘I’m sorry.’ Whether or not she was sincere, the sentiment was widely shared. Indeed, ‘Tarzan’, as Heseltine had become known, enjoyed far greater popularity than the prime minister herself. Moreover, he had not been idle in his five years on the back benches. He had toured constituency associations all over the country, sounding out support obliquely but unmistakably.

Heseltine’s gesture dominated the headlines, but the matter of greater moment was the cabinet’s agreement to approve the community charge, introduced on 1 April 1989 in Scotland and a year later in England. The choice of April Fool’s day was an unhappy one; the sly, bland misnomer never caught the public imagination and it was soon replaced by ‘the poll tax’. A fomenter of riots and a slayer of kings, the poll tax had brought down Richard II himself, and the attempt to implement it proved disastrous from the outset. It was formidably difficult to collect, and its manifest inequities enraged even natural Conservatives. While it might have seemed only fair that the citizen should pay for what he or she received in services from the local council, the less well-off were immediately disadvantaged. How could it be just that a poor widow should pay as much as a millionaire? A campaign of non-compliance began, under the slogan ‘Can’t pay, won’t pay’. Kenneth Baker, architect of the tax, assured the country on television that ‘the community charge is here to stay’. The bland complacency in his smile seemed to many to sum up the government’s attitude to all popular discontent, and then came the riots.

On Saturday, 31 March 1990, a protest in Trafalgar Square was blocked by the police. In minutes, violence had erupted. The nation saw mounted policemen charging at civilians, but felt no sympathy for the forces of the law. Thatcher blamed ‘Marxists’ for the violence, and the Marxists blamed the anarchists, but behind the whole protest movement lay the Militant tendency. Thatcher’s sympathies were plain: at the sight of smashed windows and overturned cars she could only exclaim, ‘Oh, those poor shopkeepers!’

After her grand ‘No, no, no’ in the Commons, popular perceptions of Thatcher shifted. She was increasingly regarded as unhinged as well as tyrannical. Spitting Image presented her with the manner of a Nero or Caligula, with rolling eyes and fiddle in hand. But she was not deranged nor even deluded, merely blinkered. She was, however, alone, having sacked more ministers than any other prime minister in British history. The poll tax had put her at odds with the nation, and her position on Europe with her own party. With Whitelaw incapacitated by a stroke, and Tebbit having left the cabinet to care for his wife, she had lost both her protectors, the guard dog and the guardian angel. Like many ministers before and since, Howe resigned when there was comparatively little to resign from. As far as he was concerned, the captain seemed bent on scuttling the ship. It was a just cause for mutiny.

56

The curtain falls

In the first ballot of the leadership contest, Thatcher won her majority, and expressed almost oleaginous pleasure to the cameras. But it was a charade and all knew it; her majority was not large enough to fend off a second ballot. Had only two of Heseltine’s supporters voted the other way, she would have won outright. The outcome of a second ballot was far from certain. Heseltine was not popular enough to win, but the fact that he had lost by a whisker boded no good. One by one, her ministers came to visit her. None could guarantee the loyalty of his colleagues.