Bitter Betrayal
Roberts, Andrew
Bitter Betrayal Historians have not had long to wait for the true story behind the fall of Margaret Thatcher. Since her ouster on November 22, 1990—the anniversary of the Kennedy...
...Both display an 1 A Conservative Coup: The Fall of Margaret Thatcher, by Alan Watkins (Duckworth, 204 pages, £14.99...
...instinct for British politics born of a profound knowledge of history, a deep understanding of human nature, and a wide network of friendships and contacts with major politicians...
...One is left agreeing with Paul Johnson's verdict: that Mrs...
...She was a poor judge of people and failed to bolster her position among parliamentary Conservatives with anything like the dedication her opponents have shown...
...Two books recently published in the United Kingdoms have captured the imagination of those for whom the overthrow of the most remarkable prime minister since Churchill was a national tragedy on the scale of the fall of Singapore in 1942...
...The sheer volume of reminiscences is hardly surprising, for the coup against Mrs...
...When she should have been in London, canvassing for votes in the first ballot, she characteristically went off to Paris to fulfill Britain's international obligations...
...His journalistic enemies—who if they ever held a convention would have to book Wembley Stadium—accuse him of forsaking Mrs...
...It was they, not the British public that gave her three consecutive election victories, who showed a stupendous lack of vision...
...Explanations have ranged from the wildest Andrew Roberts is the author of The Holy Fox: A Biography of Lord Halifax, published in London by Weidenfeld and Nicol-son...
...The speed with which he attached himself to the chancellor's campaign is more indicative of a keen journalist's sense of where history is being made than of any desire for self-advancement...
...Thatcher, they are eight points behind in the polls...
...Of course, in politics—let alone the frenzied hackery of those frantic few days in Westminster?what-if" meetings take place all the time...
...Thatcher had her faults...
...Alan Watkins is a man of the left, but one with as many friends in the Conservative party as in Labour...
...Thatcher was simply too good for Britain...
...A second-division post-imperial power in desperate need of leadership (especially in hacking out a reasonable deal for itself in Europe), Britain dumped the one leader of consequence she had had since World War II...
...Seeing that the Conservatives were eight points behind in the polls, and terrified at the prospect of losing their seats, ungrateful Tories unseated her...
...Above all, she expected gratitude and support from old friends, forgetting that gratitude is something politicians are constitutionally incapable of showing...
...the riots it caused in Tunbridge Wells were as unthinkable to the English as a Communist uprising in the Hamptons would be to Americans...
...Wakeham then went on to become her campaign manager, leading Watkins to ask whether he was "the cheer-leader or the undertaker...
...by Andrew Roberts of "grassy knoll" conspiracies to the soberest—and dullest—psephology...
...Nonetheless, Watkins, who knows all of the principals intimately, makes a strong case for a "betrayal...
...Both books make exciting, vivid, and profoundly depressing reading...
...Since her ouster on November 22, 1990—the anniversary of the Kennedy assassination—there have been five books, a "faction" drama, dozens of TV analyses, and an avalanche of ministers' memoirs so deep that former foreign secretary and chancellor of the exchequer Sir Geoffrey Howe is having trouble finding a publisher for his own...
...When, on page 194, he leaves the events of November 1990 and turns to the life of John Major, most people stop reading...
...Like Jacobites after the defeat of Bonnie Prince Charlie, many Thatcherites have still not got over the trauma...
...Rather than sack old colleagues who had outstayed their usefulness, she allowed them to linger on, silently loathing her and sharpening their knives...
...Former trade secretary Nicholas Ridley "smokes cigarettes with dedication, as if engaged in an athletic activity from which he hoped eventually to attain national recognition...
...Fixit—held a secret meeting just prior to the crucial first ballot, at which it was agreed that the Prime Minister "was not going to make it," and should be persuaded not to run again...
...Health secretary William Waldegrave has been "educated out of his wits," and of Mrs...
...When students of the future are given the essay question "Account for the fall of Margaret Thatcher," they will need to do little more than turn to these two books...
...The authors of these books are highly respected political journalists, and national figures in their own right...
...I, for one, cried for the first time since I had been tortured at my private school...
...He believes he has unearthed a conspiracy of momentous proportions...
...Her poll tax was badly timed and too high...
...B ruce Anderson—called "Brute" as much for his tough physiognomy and harsh tongue as for any pun on his Christian name—is a man of the right...
...Or, rather, Britain didn't—I54 disgruntled, liberal, ungrateful, myopic, or just plain frightened MPs did...
...The result is a superb, if undeniably biased (at one point he writes, "When John Major wins the next 24 The American Spectator February 1992 election . . .") inside view of the Major campaign...
...In fact, Anderson has been on close terms with Major for many years...
...We can all remember where we were when we heard the news...
...Today, a year later and without Mrs...
...He has proved, using the diaries of an unnamed cabinet minister who is widely suspected to be education secretary Kenneth Clarke, that John Wakeham—a confidant of Mrs...
...Thatcher and joining John Major's camp with undue haste...
...Thatcher was a unique political event: the only time this century that a peacetime prime minister in good health and whose party commands a substantial majority in the House of Commons has been removed...
...r71 The American Spectator February 1992 25...
...Thatcher's opponent Michael Heseltine, Watkins writes: "There is something of the pine-forest about him...
...Watkins writes felicitously, and treats us to dozens of witty pen portraits...
...Mrs...
...and John Major: The Making of a Prime Minister, by Bruce Anderson (Fourth Estate, 324 pages, £16.99...
...Thatcher and the Tory party's Mr...
Vol. 25 • February 1992 • No. 2
