1 John William Middendorf II, U.S. diplomat, telephone conversation, March 9, 2007.
2 One could argue for quite some time about these definitions, and many do. Karl Marx did not classify communism as a species of socialism; socialism, as he defined it, was the stage between the inevitable proletarian revolution and the emergence of communism. These doctrinal debates are interesting, if you like that sort of thing, but they are not my point. My point concerns the locus of property rights: If they tend to reside with the state, I define the system as socialist. So did Thatcher.
3 “I’m a Conviction Politician Like Maggie, Brown Taunts Cameron,” Evening Standard, September 5, 2007.
4 Speech to Grantham Conservatives, March 4, 1977, Guildhall, Grantham. Thatcher MSS (digital collection), doc. 103329. All documents from this collection may be consulted at www.margaretthatcher.org.
5 E. J. Hobsbawm, Industry and Empire: The Making of Modern English Society, 1750 to the Present Day (Pantheon, 1968), p. 1.
6 January 8, 1975, Ford Library (NSC NSA Memcons Box 8).
7 January 16, 1979, Hansard HC [960/1524–61].
8 The OECD, or Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, is a club for rich countries.
9 “Come on, there weren’t that many corpses,” Thatcher’s detractors tend to respond when this point is raised. Readers may decide for themselves how many corpses would need to be piled on their streets before the situation struck them as a legitimate cause for concern. My own view is that even one would be a corpse too many—unless it belonged to one of my enemies, obviously—but perhaps I’m excessively fastidious.
11 Margaret Thatcher, The Downing Street Years, 1979–1990 (HarperCollins, 1993), p. 20.
12 Peter Rawlinson, A Price Too High: An Autobiography (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1989), pp. 246–247.
13 Keith Joseph speech at Upminster, June 22, 1974, Thatcher MSS (digital collection), doc. 110604.
14 Speech at St. Lawrence Jewry, City of London, March 31, 1978. Oxford University Press CD-ROM of Margaret Thatcher’s Complete Public Statements, 78/039.
15 Speech to the Church of Scotland General Assembly, May 21, 1988, Thatcher MSS (digital collection), doc. 107246.
16 Speech to Conservative rally at Cardiff, April 16, 1979, Thatcher MSS (digital collection), doc. 104011.
17 Conservative Party Manifesto, April 1979, Conservative Central Office, THCR 2–7–1–23 (4). All documents prefaced by “THCR” may be consulted among the papers of Baroness Thatcher at the Churchill Archives Centre, Cambridge.
18 There are many versions of this story; it seems reasonable to conclude that if these are not precisely the words he used, they are close enough and certainly convey the mood of the encounter.
19 The Labour politician Healey was at the time favored to win his party’s leadership election.
21 Speech at Kensington Town Hall, “Britain, Awake,” Chelsea, January 19, 1976, Thatcher MSS (digital collection), doc. 102939.
22 Sir Nicholas Henderson, “Britain’s Decline: Its Causes and Consequences,” March 31, 1979, Diplomatic Report No. 129/79, Thatcher MSS (digital collection), doc. 110961. Almost all of this document was published in the Economist on June 2, 1979.
23 Speech to Conservative Party Conference, October 10, 1980, Brighton, Thatcher MSS (digital collection), doc. 104431.
24 When you see the words “council houses,” think “housing projects.”
25 Interview with Baron Charles Powell, June 15, 2007, London.
26 1979 Conservative Manifesto, p. 6.
27 Why Cambridge? After all, Oxford was her alma mater. But Oxford failed to award her an honorary degree, a deliberate snub to protest her parsimonious funding of higher education. Every previous prime minister educated at Oxford had been given one. She was neither the sort to forgive this kind of insult nor fail to return it; many years later, delivering a memorial to Keith Joseph, she was still furious enough to take a nice swipe at “those raging, spitting Trotskyite crowds at our great liberal centers of learning.” So Cambridge got her papers. Churchill College was the obvious choice; Churchill, after all, was the figure with whom she most wished to be associated.
28 John Hoskyns, “Stepping Stones,” draft, undated (circa 1977), THCR 2–6–1–247 (6) and (7), p. 46–47.
29 Memorandum from John Hoskyns to Thatcher, October 3, 1977, THCR 2–6–1–247 (410), p. 1.
30 THCR 2–6–1–247 (411), p. 2.
31 John Hoskyns, “Stepping Stones Review,” November 8, 1978, THCR 2–6–1–247 (442), p. 2.
32 David Cameron is the current leader of the Conservative Party. PPE, short for Politics, Philosophy, and Economics, is a famous degree course at Oxford.
33 John Hoskyns, Just in Time: Inside the Thatcher Revolution (Aurum Press, 2000), p. 8.
35 John Hoskyns, “Stepping Stones Review,” November 8, 1978, THCR 2–6–1–247 (447), p. 7.
36 “Stepping Stones,” November 14, 1977, THCR 2–6–1–248 (237), p. 55.
37 THCR 2–6–1–248 (32), p. 18.
38 THCR 2–6–1–248 (254), p. 29.
39 “Stepping Stones” draft, THCR 2–6–1–247 (6) and (7), pp. 46–47.
40 “Stepping Stones,” November 14, 1977, THCR 2–6–1–248 (257), p. 37.
41 Chris Patten, “Implementing Our Strategy,” December 11, 1977, THCR 2–6–1–246 (13), p. 2.
42 Note from Nigel Lawson to Thatcher, “Thoughts on ‘Implementing Our Strategy,’” January 15, 1978, THCR 2–6–1–246 (27), p. 1. Lawson is now even more famous for having fathered Nigella Lawson, the voluptuous television chef.
43 Memorandum from Nigel Lawson to Sir Michael Fraser, “Thoughts on the Coming Battle,” October 15, 1973, THCR 2–6–1–246 (34), p. 1 and (35), p. 2.
44 Memorandum from Alan Howarth to Thatcher, December 16, 1977, THCR 2–6–1–250 (16) and (17), pp. 2–3.
45 Memorandum from Alan Howarth to Thatcher, January 4, 1978, THCR 2–6–1–250 (26).
46 Alan Howarth, “Some Suggestions for Strategic Themes,” January 4, 1978, THCR 2–6–1–250 (32), p. 4. The end of this section of the document is mildly puzzling. Howarth concludes by calling for “an end to the depressing politics of guilt”—words rather at odds with all the words preceding them. But the word “politics” has been altered, by hand, to read “policies.” Whose hand did the altering? I don’t know. Is it significant? I don’t know. Archives are like that, sometimes.
47 Speech to Conservative Party Conference, October 8, 1976, Brighton, Thatcher MSS (digital collection), doc. 103105.
48 John Campbell, Margaret Thatcher, vol. 2: The Iron Lady (Jonathan Cape, 2003), p. 258.
49 George Bush and Brent Scowcroft, A World Transformed (Knopf, 1998), p.31.
50 Alan Clark, Diaries: In Power, 1983–1992 (Phoenix, 2001), p. 319.
51 Nigel Lawson, The View from No. 11: Memoirs of a Tory Radical (Corgi, 1993), p. 680.
52 The two Helmuts—Helmut Schmidt, then chancellor of West Germany, and Helmut Kohl, then chairman of Germany’s Christian Democratic Union.
53 Chequers is the prime minister’s country residence.
55 Diana Gould was a British housewife who on BBC TV in 1983 attacked the prime minister’s decision to sink the Belgrano. This exchange too may be viewed on YouTube: www.youtube.com/watch?v=rWOy23MLY1I.
56 TV Interview with David Frost for TV-AM, June 7, 1985, London. Transcript from Thatcher MSS (digital collection), doc. 105826.
57 Wyatt was a Labour MP and journalist who became an admirer of Thatcher.
59 John T. Gartner, The Hypomanic Edge: The Link between a Little Craziness and a Lot of Success in America (Simon & Schuster, 2005).
60 Thatcher, The Downing Street Years, p. 557. She is talking about the conference center, by the way, not the cruise ship.
61 He is now Lord Kinnock, but the man is, after all, a socialist (a “crypto-communist,” even, if you take Thatcher’s word for it), so the title seems a bit ridiculous. In fact, I finally just asked him, “What would you like me to call you?” He said, “Neil.”
62 June 4, 1985, House of Commons PQs, Hansard HC [80/149–54].
63 July 11, 1985, House of Commons PQs, Hansard HC [82/1256–60].
64 January 16, 1986, House of Commons PQs, Hansard HC [89/1203–08].
65 November 12, 1985, House of Commons PQs, Hansard HC [86/422–28].
66 January 22, 1985, House of Commons PQs, Hansard HC [71/855–60].
67 June 13, 1985, House of Commons PQs, Hansard HC [80/1007–12].
69 November 15, 1984, House of Commons PQs, Hansard HC [67/791–96].
70 June 13, 1985, House of Commons PQs, Hansard HC [80/1007–12].
71 January 17, 1985, House of Commons PQs, Hansard HC [71/506–10].
72 May 21, 1985, House of Commons PQs, Hansard HC [79/851–56].
73 April 30, 1985, House of Commons PQs, Hansard HC [78/133–38].
74 February 12, 1985, House of Commons PQs, Hansard HC [73/161–66].
75 I’ve heard variants on this story from a number of Thatcher intimates. One of her civil servants remembered desperately trying to finesse a compromise between Thatcher and her chancellor during a dispute over the budget. His delicate diplomacy was upended when Thatcher came back from the Commons, apparently quite drunk, and discovered her chancellor holding a secret strategy meeting behind closed doors. She strode in uninvited, kicked off her shoes, tucked her heels under herself, and declared, “Well, gentlemen, let’s just settle this now, shall we?” She “held court like a Queen Bee,” and what do you know, they settled it. Afterward, the other civil servants could be heard muttering among themselves, “Phwooarh, wasn’t she sexy tonight?” Mitterrand, according to the same civil servant, was “visibly moved” in Thatcher’s presence.
76 Alan Clark, Diaries: Into Politics 1972–1982 (Phoenix, 2000), p. 147.
77 George Orwell, Such, Such Were the Joys (Harcourt Brace, 1953).
78 Clark, Diaries: In Power, p. 35.
80 For a more complete discussion of Jaruzelski’s gambit, see John O’Sullivan, The President, the Pope and the Prime Minister: Three Who Changed the World (Regnery, 2006), pp. 294–299.
82 Thatcher, The Downing Street Years, p. 380.
84 Speech to Conservative Party Conference, October 12, 1984, Brighton, Thatcher MSS (digital collection), doc. 105763.
85 Speech to her constituency at Finchley, October 20, 1984, Thatcher MSS (digital collection), doc. 105769.
86 She told this version of the joke while giving a speech in Bermuda on August 7, 2001, Thatcher MSS (digital collection), doc. 109301. It pops up elsewhere; it seems to have been a staple of her repertoire.
87 Frank Hahn, “On Market Economies,” in Thatcherism, ed. Robert Skidelsky (Chatto & Windus, 1988).
88 Speech in Korea, “The Principles of Thatcherism,” September 3, 1992, Thatcher MSS (digital collection), doc. 108302.
89 When I spoke to Lawson about the definition of Thatcherism, he noted pointedly that Thatcher “was very much the captain of her team,” but her policies “were made by a team, and not just by her alone.” Of course they were. When I speak of Thatcherite reforms, I am using a shorthand for the reforms made by Thatcher and her team. Thatcher was the prime minister, however, so I think it fair to call the reforms that took place while she was in power “Thatcherite reforms.”
90 Samuel Smiles was the Victorian author of Self-Help, as well as the similar page-turners Character, Thrift, and Duty.
91 Lawson, The View from No. 11, p. 64.
92 For an excellent discussion of this point, see Shirley Robin Letwin’s The Anatomy of Thatcherism (Transaction Publishers, 1992).
93 Speech to Zurich Economic Society, “The New Renaissance,” March 14, 1977, Thatcher MSS (digital collection), doc. 103336.
94 Iain Macleod Memorial Lecture, “Dimensions of Conservatism,” July 4, 1977, Thatcher MSS (digital collection), doc. 103411.
95 Economists will quibble with my rephrasing. They will note that the First Theorem of Welfare Economics predicts only that given certain initial conditions, viz, that (1) there are markets for all the goods and services that people want to trade and (2) that economic agents act as price takers, a free market will generate a Pareto-efficient outcome. The theorem does not specifically predict that fewer people will starve to death. I added that part. I added it because it’s true, and we wouldn’t give a damn about Pareto-efficiency if it weren’t.
96 Again, this is not a far-fetched example. This is taking place right now. Food prices are rising precipitously, and governments around the globe are responding with price caps.
97 “Heresy in the USSR,” Commanding Heights, PBS, April 23, 2004.
98 Beyond this, the economist Georgios Karras has suggested, the drag on productivity begins to outweigh the benefits. See “The Optimal Government Size: Further International Evidence on the Productivity of Government Services,” Economic Inquiry 34 (April 1996). In developing, rather than developed, countries, the optimal size is larger. When governments cost more than this surprisingly small percentage of a nation’s gross domestic product, you do not tend to see commensurate improvements in critical social indicators such as life expectancy, infant mortality, or school enrollment. See, e.g., E. A. Peden, “Productivity in the United States and Its Relationship to Government Activity: An Analysis of 57 Years, 1929–1986,” Public Choice 69 (February 1991). This research was done after Thatcher’s rise to power, of course, but would have come as no surprise to her.
99 It is often said that inflation accelerates under these circumstances, but this is technically wrong. Acceleration refers to the rate of change. The inflation rate is the rate of change in prices. What is accelerating here is the rise in prices, not inflation. To say that inflation “accelerates” would better convey the drama of the problem, however, as in, This inflation is like a truck with failed brakes careening down a steep hill.
100 Again, the term, strictly speaking, should be non-increasing inflation rate of unemployment—but for some reason that’s not what economists call it.
101 Thatcher’s predecessor, Jim Callaghan, also tried to control inflation through monetary policy. It is incorrect to imply, as some do, that Thatcher’s was the first British government to try this. But Callaghan didn’t last long enough in office to be widely remembered for it.
102 Speech to Conservative Party Conference, October 10, 1980, Brighton, Thatcher MSS (digital collection), doc. 104431.
103 Speech at Georgetown University, Washington, D.C., February 27, 1981, Thatcher MSS (digital collection), doc. 104580.
104 Lawson, The View from No. 11, p. 137.
105 Various news reports from Channel 4. These were, not at all incidentally, race riots, very similar to the ones now common in France.
106 In fact, it grew 19.5 percent.
107 Lawson, e-mail correspondence, September 27, 2007.
108 I am greatly indebted to the economist Martin Davies for helping me to disentangle these policies and their consequences.
109 Before Thatcher, the state-owned Post Office provided all of Britain’s telephone, telecom, and postal services.
110 Per capita income of course is not the only measure of a nation’s economic health; it certainly proves nothing about a nation’s long-term economic prospects—if it did, Germany would still be at the top of the table. Moreover, it is not entirely reasonable to compare British performance with Germany’s, given that during this period West and East Germany were reunited. Even with these reservations, these are impressive statistics.
111 See, e.g., Stephen Nickell and Glenda Qintini, “The Recent Performance of the UK Labour Market,” Oxford Review of Economic Policy 18, no. 2 (2002). By their estimates, the NAIRU was roughly 9.5 percent during the 1980s. From 1991 to 1997 it fell to 8.9 percent, and thereafter to 5.7 percent. In “Falling Unemployment: The Dutch and British Cases,” Economic Policy (April 2000), Nickell and Jan Van Ours argue that the weakening of the unions was the most important reason for the decline of NAIRU, followed by changes to the tax structure and changes in benefits policy.
112 Speech to the Institute of Socio-Economic Studies, “Let Our Children Grow Tall,” September 15, 1975, BBC transcript, Thatcher MSS (digital collection), doc. 102769.
113 See, e.g., Urban Bäckström, “The Swedish Economy,” Svenska Handelsbanken’s Seminar, New York, October 7, 1998, and “Swedish Economic History: Structural Problems and Reforms,” Ekonomifakta (2008).
114 Thatcher, The Downing Street Years, pp. 173–174.
119 John Smith, 74 Days: An Islander’s Diary of the Falklands Occupation (Century, 1984).
121 Ali Magoudi, Rendez-vous: The Psychoanalysis of Francois Mitterrand, translated and reported in “The Sphinx and the Curious Case of the Iron Lady’s H-bomb,” (London) Times, November 20, 2005.
122 TV interview for ITN, April 5, 1982, transcript, Thatcher MSS (digital collection), doc. 104913.
123 Thatcher, The Downing Street Years, p. 181.
124 April 8, 1982, House of Commons PQs, Hansard HC [21/1083–88].
130 “Falklands Victory ‘A Close Run Thing,’” Guardian, April 3, 2002.
131 Thatcher, The Downing Street Years, p. 204.
133 Thatcher, The Downing Street Years, p. 214.
134 Speech to the Scottish Conservative Party Conference, May 14, 1982, transcript, Thatcher MSS (digital collection), doc. 104936.
135 “Reagan Asked Thatcher to Stop Falklands War,” Sunday Times, March 8, 1992, citing National Security Council files.
136 Thatcher, The Downing Street Years, p. 184.
137 June 17, 1982, House of Commons PQs, Hansard HC [25/1080–84].
138 Speech to UN General Assembly, June 23, 1982, Thatcher MSS (digital collection), doc. 104974.
139 Bernard Jackson with Tony Wardle, The Battle for Orgreave (Vanson Wardle, 1986).
140 June 19, 1984, House of Commons PQs, Hansard HC [62/137–40].
141 Linda Sheridan, e-mail, May 14, 2007.
143 Sheridan, e-mail, May 15, 2007.
144 The reader who is wondering why I bothered should know that this has worked for me before. You would be surprised how many people will give in and talk to you if only you pester them enough.
145 The publishing titan Rupert Murdoch was so close to Thatcher that he was described by critics as “the phantom Prime Minister.”
146 Morning Star, February 3, 1983.
147 Sunday Times, January 10, 1982.
148 The New Left Review, July/August 1975.
149 One may reasonably argue—and Trotsky did—that in this sense Stalin was not a Marxist: The central prediction of Marxism is the inevitability of a spontaneous revolution in the industrialized world, led by the proletarian vanguard. This discussion is beyond the scope of this book; my point is that an important, relevant current of sympathy runs between Stalin’s views and Scargill’s.
150 Marxism Today, April 1981.
151 LALKLAR, “Celebrating the October Revolution,” January/February 2000.
152 Seamus Milne, a journalist for the Guardian, argues that most of this money never reached the miners. The payment was authorized, he acknowledges, and sent to a Swiss bank, but the Kremlin developed cold feet when British courts ordered the union’s assets sequestered and had the money recalled. See Seamus Milne, The Enemy Within: Thatcher’s Secret War Against the Miners (Verso, 1994). After the fall of the Berlin Wall, well-placed Soviet officials confirmed claims that the Soviet Union had indeed funneled large amounts of cash to the union. Milne says those officials are lying and attributes their mendacity to post-communist factional infighting within the Kremlin. Milne may be right, for all I know. The essential point—which Milne ignores—is not whether the money in fact arrived, or when it arrived, or by which channel. It is that Scargill did not hesitate to appeal to Moscow for help, and Moscow was eager to give it, although understandably reluctant to risk the loss of hard currency and the diplomatic embarrassment should the transfer become public.
153 Telegraph, April 13, 1981.
154 New Left Review, July/August 1975.
155 Thatcher, The Downing Street Years, p. 339.
156 Morning Star, June 27, 1983.
157 From the annals of the Marxist wit and wisdom of Arthur Scargill: “In an attempt to prevent the movement of coal, Scargill appealed to the Communist General Secretary of the South Wales miners, Dai Francis, to send thousands of pickets to the Saltley coke works in Birmingham: ‘Yes, we can organize them,’ Francis told Scargill. ‘When do you want them?’ ‘Tomorrow, Saturday,’ Scargill answered. Dai paused: ‘But Wales are playing Scotland at Cardiff Arms Park.’ There was a silence before Scargill replied: ‘But Dai, the working class are playing the ruling class at Saltley.’” Patrick Hannan, When Arthur Met Maggie (Seren, 2006).
158 Pitmatic is the now-dying dialect of northeastern coal miners, e.g., “Te these canny lads we’d like to give a wee bit o’ advice: Watch yersels, an’ dee what’s reet an’ divvent be pit mice. We waddent like te see any o’ yer ivver cum te grief. There’s ne carl at arl te smash yersels or Rarfie’s perminent Relief.” You can listen to a sample, as well as an interesting discussion of the dialect, here: www.bbc.co.uk/radi04/routesofenglish/storysofar/ramfiles/roe1_ray1.ram.
159 She is referring to Milne’s The Enemy Within. Milne argues that Thatcher and her government went to extraordinary lengths to smear and discredit Scargill. I agree. Milne thinks this was a bad thing.
160 Sheridan, e-mail, July 14, 2007. I have standardized her punctuation.
162 Thatcher’s proposal to introduce a flat-rate poll tax was widely pilloried; indeed, it contributed significantly to her downfall. But the only difference between the poll tax and the coal tax was that one was out in the open, the other was hidden. Both were forms of taxation that targeted the rich and the poor equally. The unofficial coal tax cost the average Briton far more than the proposed poll tax.
163 Orwell, The Road to Wigan Pier.
164 This is only to say that the mines were now very dangerous, rather than unspeakably dangerous. Coal mining in the nineteenth century was an unmitigated horror. To better understand the militant culture of the miners’ union, consider the Risca Blackvein Colliery explosion of 1860, which claimed the lives of 146 men and boys. A random sample of names from the Death Roll: “Brimble, Thomas, Aged 12, After Damp. Brimble, William, Aged 13, Burnt . . . Pearce, George, Aged 13, Burnt . . . Saunders, Llew, Came Out Alive, but died later . . . Skidmore, George, Aged 35, After Damp . . . Thomas, Llewellyn, Aged 15, Burnt.” It goes on for pages in this vein. The local newspaper reported only the “severe financial loss suffered by the mine owner, with the death of 28 pit ponies at an estimated value of £1,000” (www.welshcoalmines.co.uk/). Only thirty miners were killed in Britain in the year before the strike: This is what was meant by “an improvement.” If the cruelty of the mining industry is not enough to sour you on it, the environmental costs should do it. Anyone who believes that global climate change is a manmade phenomenon must of necessity accept that coal is a large part of the problem. Burning coal produces greenhouse gases in such quantities that the Environmental Protection Agency has declared coal-burning power plants to be the single worst air polluters in America. EPA studies suggest that coal emissions kill some 30,000 Americans a year, causing nearly as many deaths as traffic accidents. See Barbara Freese, Coal: A Human History (Perseus, 2003). Clean-coal technology has been developed, but it raises the price of producing coal considerably. Bring on the nuclear power, I say.
165 Interview for Thames Television’s TV Eye, January 24, 1985, transcript, Thatcher MSS (digital collection), doc. 105949.
166 Lawson, The View from No. 11, p. 142.
169 Robin Renwick, Fighting with Allies: America and Britain in Peace and War (Macmillan, 1996), p. 230.
170 It’s not hard at all; you’d have to be deaf not to hear how her accent changed. But Kinnock’s Thatcher imitations are matchless, and I could hardly pass up an opportunity to hear more of them.
171 May 22, 1984, House of Commons PQs, Hansard [60/822–26].
172 March 13, 1984, House of Commons PQs, Hansard [60/56/276–82].
173 Thatcher, The Downing Street Years, p. 362.
174 Lawson, The View from No. 11, p. 144.
175 It refused to pay. The court then discovered the assets were missing. They had been transferred abroad.
176 BBC documentary, The Downing Street Years, 1993.
177 From script of “True Spies,” produced by BBC News, aired October–November 2002.
179 October 30, 1984, House of Commons PQs, Hansard HC [65/1156–60].
180 Orwell, The Road to Wigan Pier.
181 Press conference for American correspondents in London, December 7, 1984, transcript, Thatcher MSS (digital collection), doc. 105810.
182 The Downing Street Years, pp. 370–371.
183 Speech to Conservative Party Conference, October 11, 1985, Thatcher MSS (digital collection), doc. 106145.
184 Orwell, The Road to Wigan Pier.
185 Interview with CBI News, January 10, 1986, Thatcher MSS (digital collection), doc.106299.
187 Peter Walker claimed the flying pickets were paid forty pounds a day. My bet is that a pound a day is a lot closer to the truth.
188 The British National Party—fascists.
189 The Red Star was the Soviet newspaper that gave Thatcher her nickname—the Iron Lady.
190 The transcript, which I have shortened for the sake of economy, comes from the June 1993 International Civil Aviation Organization report.
192 Thatcher to Reagan, September 15, 1983, NSA Head of State File, Thatcher: Cables (3), Box 35, Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, Simi Valley, California. Documents from U.S. presidential libraries cited in this chapter may be consulted at www.margaretthatcher.com.
194 Thatcher, The Downing Street Years, p. 450.
195 Bullard note on Chequers Soviet seminar, September 5, 1983, Thatcher MSS (digital collection), doc. 111071.
196 John Coles, minutes on Chequers Soviet seminar, September 8, 1983, Thatcher MSS (digital collection), doc. 111075.
197 September 7, 1983, Thatcher Archive (FCO), D. J. Manning minute on Chequers Soviet seminar.
198 “Changing Power Relations among OECD States,” October 22, 1979, CIA National Foreign Assessment Center. Carter Library release 2005/01/28 NLC–7–16–10–14–1.
199 Robert Gates, From the Shadows (Simon & Schuster, 1997), p. 197.
200 When Stéphane Courtois argued for this figure in his 1997 masterpiece, Le livre noir du Communisme, many critics believed this number was inflated. It increasingly appears that his estimate was too low. The book was published in English as The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression (Harvard University Press, 1999). The death toll may well have been more than two hundred million by the end of the Cold War. See, e.g., R. J. Rummel, Death by Government (Transaction, 1997).
201 Radio interview for British Forces Broadcasting Service, June 10, 1982, transcript, Thatcher MSS (digital collection), doc. 104962.
202 Thatcher, The Downing Street Years, p. 157.
203 “Changing Power Relations among OECD States,” October 22, 1979.
204 “An Interview with Thatcher,” Time, February 16,1981.
205 Reagan meeting with Kinnock, February 14, 1984, briefing and background papers, National Security Council Country File, Box 91331, Reagan Library.
206 March 26, 1981, House of Commons PQs, Hansard HC [1/1073–77].
207 Radio Interview for British Forces Broadcasting Service, June 10, 1982, Thatcher MSS (digital collection), doc. 104962.
208 Ronald Reagan, “Margaret Thatcher and the Revival of the West,” National Review, May 19, 1989.
209 “An Interview with Thatcher,” Time, February 16, 1981.
210 October 29, 1983, House of Commons PQs, Hansard HC [10/985–90].
211 He had also been to Belgium in 1972 and West Germany in 1975.
212 I believe he is referring to Alexander Yakovlev, although his name doesn’t begin with a K.
213 Interview with Zamyatin, Kommersant, May 4, 2005.
214 Mikhail Gorbachev, Memoirs (Doubleday, 1996).
215 Thatcher, The Downing Street Years, p. 462.
216 Thatcher-Reagan meeting at Camp David, December 22, 1984, record of conversation, European and Soviet Affairs Directorate, National Security Council, Folder “Thatcher Visit—Dec 1984 (1),” Box 90902, Reagan Library.
219 Thatcher, The Downing Street Years, p. 463.
220 Weinberger to Thatcher, January 29, 1985, NSA Head of State File, Box 36, Reagan Library.
221 Ronald Reagan, An American Life: The Autobiography (Simon and Schuster, 1990). I leave the story of Mulroney’s influence on Reagan to the author of Sleeping Giant to the North: Why Canada Matters.
222 Reagan to Gorbachev, April 30, 1985, “To the Geneva Summit: Perestroika and the Transformation of U.S.-Soviet Relations,” Electronic Briefing Book No. 172, Document 9, National Security Archive, George Washington University, Washington, D.C.
223 Max M. Kampelman, “Bombs Away,” New York Times, April 24, 2006.
224 John Fund, “Freedom’s Team: How Reagan, Thatcher and John Paul II won the Cold War,” Wall Street Journal, June 7, 2004.
225 Lance Morrow, “The Mystery of Ronald Reagan Lives On,” Time, April 19, 2000.
226 Thatcher, The Downing Street Years, p. 472.
228 George Shultz, Turmoil and Triumph: My Years as Secretary of State (Scribner, 1993).
229 Andrei Sakharov, the Soviet Union’s most famous political dissident.
230 Interview for Soviet television, Vladimir Simonov, Novosci Press Agency; Boris Kalyagin, Soviet TV; Thomas Kolesnichenko, Pravda, March 31, 1987, transcript, Thatcher MSS (digital collection), doc. 106604.
231 Specifically, he bribed the Saudis with Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS) planes. If you’re curious about this story, you may consult my doctoral dissertation, Our Common Enemy: The Making of the United States Arms Transfer Policy Towards the Arab-Israeli Antagonists, 1967–1988. It is available for consultation at the Bodleian Library at Oxford University. You will be the only person ever to have been curious. When last I checked, I discovered that according to the library’s records, no visitor to the library—not one—had ever signed it out. Sic transit gloria mundi.
232 Peter Schweizer, Reagan’s War: The Epic Story of His Forty-Year Struggle and Final Triumph Over Communism (Doubleday, 2002).
233 Title VIII, Article 63, The Treaty Establishing a Constitution for Europe.
234 Alberto Alesina and Francesco Giavazzi, The Future of Europe: Reform or Decline (MIT Press, 2006), p. 122.
235 “Fighting against Overregulation and Red Tape,” Financial Times, October 9, 2006.
236 “Iron Grip Corrupted by Fatal Arrogance,” Independent, October 8, 1996.
237 Margaret Thatcher, Statecraft: Strategies for a Changing World (HarperCollins, 2002), pp. 323–325.
238 For example, see Hugo Young, This Blessed Plot: Britain and Europe from Churchill to Blair (Macmillan, 1991).
239 Claire Berlinski, Menace in Europe (Three Rivers Press, 2007), p. 235.
240 Needless to say, there will always be someone who places the blame on Germany’s notorious persecutors. The British diplomat Nicholas Henderson remarked that “People give all sorts of reasons why she became fanatically anti-German, one of which, I don’t know whether it’s true, is that her constituency was Finchley and it’s full of Jews. That may have had something to do with it . . . I don’t know.” Malcolm McBain interview with Nicholas Henderson, September 24, 1998, British Diplomatic Oral History Programme, Churchill Archives Centre, Cambridge.
241 Margaret Thatcher, The Path to Power (HarperCollins, 1995), p. 25.
242 I was told this by Sally McNamara, an analyst at the Heritage Foundation’s Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom. “It wasn’t relayed to me by Lady Thatcher herself,” she wrote, “but [by] one of her secretaries at a private event I organized with my former organization . . . It was particularly striking to the group we were meeting with because we were honoring her with our organization’s ‘Pioneer Award’ for her services to the advancement of the conservative principles of free markets, limited government, federalism (in the American sense and not the European sense!) and individual liberty.” E-mail, January 23, 2008.
243 Thatcher, The Path to Power, p. 27.
244 Speech to Finchley Conservatives, August 14, 1961, Thatcher MSS (digital collection), doc. 101105.
245 April 16, 1975, Speech to Conservative Group for Europe (opening Conservative referendum campaign), Thatcher MSS (digital collection), doc. 102675.
246 Speech to Helensburgh Conservative rally, April 18, 1975, Thatcher MSS (digital collection), doc. 102678.
247 Speech at Centro Italiona di Study per la Conciliazione Internazionale, Rome, “Europe as I See It,” June 24, 1977, Thatcher MSS (digital collection), doc. 103403.
248 Speech at dinner for French President Giscard d’Estaing, November 19, 1979, Thatcher MSS (digital collection), doc. 104172.
249 Thatcher, The Downing Street Years, p. 24.
250 Thatcher, The Downing Street Years, p. 742.
251 Craig R. Whitney, “Pressed at Home, British Unions Are Looking to Europe for Gains,” New York Times, September 11, 1988.
252 Speech to the College of Europe (“The Bruges Speech”), September 20, 1988, Thatcher MSS (digital collection), doc. 107332.
253 “Thatcher Sets Face Against United Europe,” Guardian, September 21, 1988.
254 Speech by Wilfried Martens, September 28, 1988, Brussels, in Europe: Documents 1527 (December 10, 1988): 7–8, Agence Europe S.A.
255 Geoffrey Howe, Conflict of Loyalty (St. Martin’s Press, 1994), pp. 537–538.
256 Speech in Wales, April 28, 1989, Archives historiques des Communautés européennes, Florence, Italy.
257 Lawson, The View from No. 11, pp. 659, 956.
259 October 28, 1989, The Walden Interview, Thatcher MSS (digital collection), doc. 107808.
260 TV Interview for TV-AM, November 24, 1989, Washington, D.C., Thatcher MSS (digital collection), doc. 107829.
261 October 30, 1990, Hansard HC [178/869–92].
262 Clark, Diaries: In Power, pp. 342–343.
263 Thatcher, The Downing Street Years, p. 839.
265 You may watch highlights of the speech here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1C2hieHKgA . Note that John Major—Thatcher’s chancellor—is sitting to Thatcher’s left and nodding sagely in seeming approval of Howe’s remarks.
266 Clark, Diaries: In Power, p. 349.
269 I don’t wish to be misleading: They were often found that way. A good handful would have been in those bushes on any given evening.
270 November 22, 1990, HC S: [Confidence in Her Majesty’s Government], House of Commons Speech, Hansard HC [181/445–53].
271 I was wrong too, but my opinions are obviously of less historical significance.
272 Speech paying tribute to Ronald Reagan, Washington, D.C., March 1, 2002, Thatcher MSS (digital collection), doc. 109306.
273 Again, my own judgment on this issue was no better at all. I was in full agreement with this speech.
274 See Stefan Theil, “Europe’s Philosophy of Failure,” Foreign Policy, January/February 2008.
275 I mention this as evidence that this is still one of the world’s most active political conflicts. I do not mean these remarks to be construed as any kind of approval of the excessive force used by the Turkish police. Under Thatcher, the police did not tear gas people sitting peacefully in cafes, and they did not tear gas women and children who were caught in the melee, and they did not tear gas leukemia patients in hospitals.