{"id":5369,"date":"2013-04-12T05:00:49","date_gmt":"2013-04-11T20:00:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=5369"},"modified":"2013-04-15T10:07:03","modified_gmt":"2013-04-15T01:07:03","slug":"margaret-thatcher-on-the-verge-and-after-the-bacon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/margaret-thatcher-on-the-verge-and-after-the-bacon\/","title":{"rendered":"Margaret Thatcher: on the verge and after the bacon"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Then<\/a>Margaret Thatcher sent me to cover a war, she showed me how leaders do diplomatic knife fights at the summit and she gave me a front row seat as she bruised and bent Britain in the effort to remake it. She was brilliant and she was a bulldozer.<\/p>\n

Mrs Thatcher was like a few other big leaders I\u2019ve covered\u2014think Mahathir or Lew Kuan Yew or Paul Keating. They always produce a story\u2014whether by friction, force or lightning\u2014a \u00a0reporter can ask no more.<\/p>\n

For such leaders, it\u2019s not just the politics or the power. It\u2019s the personality: their ambition, intellect and impatience mean they can\u2019t help themselves\u2014the tongue can\u2019t be still and the hand can\u2019t be at rest.<\/p>\n

The Soviet Union did Mrs T. a huge favour by attacking her as the Iron Lady. Beyond that useful insult, Francoise Mitterand got closer to the complexity with his judgement that she had the \u2018the eyes of Caligula and the mouth of Marilyn Monroe\u2019. And there you have it\u2014the war of the sexes and the war of politics all in one great line.<\/p>\n

Part of the Thatcher effect was an ability to capture a big issue in a single phrase. As she fought the European Union to cut British budget payments, the London tabloids loved the idea that this was Mrs T. in handbag mode, insisting loudly: \u2018I want my money back\u2019.<\/p>\n

As she did battle with Britain itself, the phrase that became a mantra was TINA, standing for, \u2018There is no alternative\u2019. In politics, of course, there are always choices; the war I reported from Buenos Aires was the ultimate war of choice. Still, the leader who could, with a straight face, say \u2018The lady\u2019s not for turning\u2019 had created a powerful weapon.<\/p>\n

She clashed repeatedly with Australia in the Commonwealth over sanctions on South Africa. CHOGMs got much duller when Thatcher departed. Sandy Holloway gives a fine version of those fights<\/a> between Thatcher and Bob Hawke:<\/p>\n

It was the big issue which dominated these forums for years, and one of the few on which the makeup of the Commonwealth gave it a role of real significance. Hawke and Thatcher were the leading champions for two very different viewpoints about the role of sanctions and pressure in achieving change. It was a diplomatic rolling maul of an intensity and duration which I have not seen before or since, and I confess to sometimes wondering whether it was one which they each enjoyed: very tough, very blunt, very strongly felt on both sides, but never nasty. It may also be one of the clearest cases of Mrs Thatcher being on the wrong side of history.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The diplomatic knife fight that glitters in memory was one that Thatcher won. At the Kuala Lumpur summit in 1989, Bob Hawke was trying to get his predecessor, Malcolm Fraser, elected as Secretary-General of the Commonwealth. Margaret Thatcher cut that bid down with one warning\u2014\u2018If Malcolm gets in, he\u2019ll want to do things\u2019. It was a great attack line from a leader whose whole purpose was to do things.<\/p>\n

Let me finish with two, true Thatcher anecdotes. The first was from some Australian diplomats who went to 10 Downing Street for talks late one afternoon. As the meeting was warming up, the Prime Minister called a break, saying she had a short errand to run. Back 25 minutes later, she explained that the butcher had not been providing the right bacon for Denis\u2019s breakfast, and there are some things a wife must explain to a butcher in person.<\/p>\n

The second takes place on the morning of the 1983 British election. My family and I were living in East Finchley, in the PM\u2019s electorate, and awoke to find her across the street visiting the local Party hierarchy. As she left, Mrs T. paused in deep thought on the grass verge, no doubt pondering what became one of biggest electoral victories in a century and the firm basis for Thatcherism.<\/p>\n

After the declaration of the poll for her seat that night at the Town Hall, the Prime Minister paused before rushing off to Tory HQ to savour the triumph. She grabbed the Mayor, brushing aside congratulations, and admonished him: \u2018I was in Abbots Gardens this morning. The verges are a disgrace\u2019.<\/p>\n

And the next day, several energetic chaps from the council were around quite early to mow the verges and trim the edges. If there\u2019s a Thatcher moral in this, perhaps it\u2019s that the vision has to be built, one detail at a time. And Margaret Thatcher was a demon for the detail as much as warrior for the vision.<\/p>\n

Graeme Dobell is the ASPI journalism fellow. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Margaret Thatcher sent me to cover a war, she showed me how leaders do diplomatic knife fights at the summit and she gave me a front row seat as she bruised and bent Britain in …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":79,"featured_media":5385,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[141],"class_list":["post-5369","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","tag-united-kingdom"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nMargaret Thatcher: on the verge and after the bacon | The Strategist<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/margaret-thatcher-on-the-verge-and-after-the-bacon\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" 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