Reagan and Thatcher : the difficult relationship

399 Pages·2012·3.41 MB·English

by  Aldous

ALSO BY RICHARD ALDOUS
The Lion and the Unicorn: Gladstone vs. Disraeli
Macmillan, Eisenhower and the Cold War
Tunes of Glory: the Life of Malcolm Sargent
Great Irish Speeches
REAGAN
AND
THATCHER
THE DIFFICULT RELATIONSHIP
Richard Aldous
W. W. NORTON & COMPANY New York London
To my “A-Team”
CONTENTS
Prologue
CHAPTER 1 CHURCHILL, JEFFERSON, AND JESUS
CHAPTER 2 THINKING THE UNTHINKABLE
CHAPTER 3 COME IN, IT’S FREEZING!
CHAPTER 4 LITTLE ICE-COLD BUNCH OF LAND
CHAPTER 5 EVEN MORE OF A WIMP THAN JIMMY CARTER
CHAPTER 6 ANOTHER ISLAND, ANOTHER WAR
CHAPTER 7 THIS IS HOW LARGE POWERS BEHAVE
CHAPTER 8 NOT A GREAT LISTENER
CHAPTER 9 THE DAY THE EARTH SHOOK
CHAPTER 10 A THUNDEROUS ROUND OF APPLAUSE
CHAPTER 11 THE LAST WALTZ
EPILOGUE LEAD ME INTO THE SUNSET
Acknowledgments
Notes
Index
Photo Insert
PROLOGUE
P
RESIDENT REAGAN’S STATE FUNERAL, June 11, 2004. Margaret Thatcher
sat expressionless as her pre-recorded words rang around the National
Cathedral in Washington, D.C. Beside her was the man she had
famously introduced onto the world stage with the words, “I can do
business with Mr. Gorbachev.” Immediately in front sat Ronald Reagan’s
widow, Nancy, who had invited the former prime minister to speak and
later to accompany her on the Air Force jet to California for the interment.
The incumbent president, George W. Bush, watched intently, knowing
that his own eulogy would be judged against the standard set by the “Iron
Lady.” Few questioned Thatcher’s place in this gathering as an equal.
Her tribute to the former president—videotaped because doctors advised
against a live oration—was both affectionate and uplifting. She brimmed
with evident pride at the friendship they had enjoyed and their shared role
in changing the world.
“We have lost a great president, a great American, and a great man,”
she intoned in her familiar breathy delivery. “I have lost a dear friend. . . .
Others prophesied the decline of the West. He inspired America and his
allies with renewed faith in their mission of freedom.” Speaking
afterwards to CNN, Harold Evans, the eminent commentator and former
London Sunday Times editor, judged that “Churchill and Roosevelt had a
relationship; I think the relationship between Thatcher and President
1
Reagan was closer even than Churchill and Roosevelt.”
Reagan and Thatcher would have been delighted with Evans’s
assessment. It was a view they had consciously attempted to foster
during their shared time in office. Each had vigorously asserted it in their
memoirs and reminiscences. But their presentation masked the reality of
a complex, even fractious alliance.
Reconstructing this competitive relationship is possible through the
comprehensive primary material that is now available in public and
private archives. Historians no longer have to rely just on anecdotal
material or even the excellent published memoirs of the period. Instead,
the cut and thrust of vigorous debates on key strategic differences comes
alive in recently declassified documents. Tens of thousands of pages of
official documents relating to Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher
have been made available on both sides of the Atlantic. Reagan’s diaries
are in the public domain. Papers from Margaret Thatcher’s private
archive have been opened. Added to these written sources are the
extensive oral history projects that have recorded and interrogated the
recollections of key figures within each administration. In every sense the
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ReaganThatcher era is now history.
Even Margaret Thatcher herself has been, over time, prepared to let
down the guard a little about her relationship with the president. Visiting
Chequers in 2008, she confided to Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s wife,
Sarah, the secret of her relationship with Reagan. “It all worked,” Lady
Thatcher suggested, “because he was more afraid of me than I was of
3
him.”
Sir Nicholas Henderson, Thatcher’s ambassador to Washington when
Reagan was elected, would not have been surprised at this less than
flattering analysis. In a chance encounter with a former Labour cabinet
minister, Tony Benn, in the 1990s, Henderson was asked whether he had
ever known anything really secret.
After considering for a few moments, the ambassador replied, “If I
reported to you what Mrs. Thatcher really thought about President
4
Reagan, it would damage Anglo-American relations.”
What follows is the story of that difficult relationship.
CHAPTER 1
CHURCHILL, JEFFERSON, AND JESUS
N
“ ERVOUS.” IT WAS not a word often associated with Margaret Thatcher,
but that was how Ambassador Henderson found the prime minister in
Downing Street on February 18, 1981. It was exactly a week before
Thatcher’s first visit to meet the recently inaugurated fortieth president of
the United States, Ronald Reagan. “Mrs T. told me that she was a little
worried by her forthcoming visit to Washington,” Henderson wrote in his
diary afterwards. “She did not quite see how it would go. She admitted
being nervous about it.” Thatcher was taken aback when the ambassador
mentioned that the toasts at dinner would be televised. She fretted about
the allusions to the past that she would use—“I shall want all the best
historical advice I can get!” And when then they discussed what gifts she
might present to the Reagans, the prime minister rushed from the room
to retrieve the exquisite Halcyon boxes that she thought might be
suitable. Thatcher’s nerves and uncharacteristic giddiness were not the
only surprise. “It was noticeable how little we talked about the substance
of her discussions with Reagan,” the ambassador noted. What mattered,
1
he concluded, was that she wanted to see the president alone.
It was a point the new American administration could hardly have failed
to miss. “The Prime Minister wants, above all, to build upon her
relationship with you,” the new U.S. secretary of state, Al Haig, told the
president that same day, “and to have her visit perceived as a very strong
reaffirmation of the ‘Special Relationship.’”
No sooner had the Reagan transition team arrived in Washington
following an election victory in November 1980 than Henderson had
begun an elegant but relentless diplomatic offensive to secure an early
invitation for Thatcher to the White House. There was no better man for
the task. “Nico” Henderson was a charming character whose rumpled
appearance masked shrewd political instincts. He had shot to notoriety in
1979 when his valedictory dispatch as ambassador to Paris, which had
been scathing about the mentality of failure in British foreign policy, had
found its way into the hands of The Economist magazine. Thatcher was
impressed enough with his biting assessment, which matched her own,
2
to bring Henderson out of retirement and send him to Washington.
Henderson’s patrician blend of good-humored eccentricity combined
with a reputation for knowing how to play the game made him a prized
guest on the Washington social circuit. He exploited those connections
ruthlessly on behalf of his country in a way not seen since the days of
David Ormsby-Gore, friend of JFK and Britain’s representative at
“Camelot.” In early December 1980, Henderson attended a dinner for the
Reagans organized by Katharine Graham, the formidable owner of The
Washington Post. The Hendersons had spent the Thanksgiving weekend
with Graham and her family on Martha’s Vineyard, where the
ambassador had encouraged her to host a dinner for the president-elect.
Only when everything was in place did she phone Henderson to say that
her friend Henry Kissinger, the former secretary of state, had advised her
it would be most improper for an ambassador to attend. It took all the
fancy footwork at Henderson’s disposal to make sure he stayed on the
3
guest list.
Once in the door, Henderson made the most of his chance. He