Bring up the bodies

I met Margaret Thatcher half-a-dozen times in the fraught 1980s. She was inquisitive, formidable, and indifferent to opinion of her,says Allan Prosser

DINNER at 10 Downing Street. Alongside the Beef Wellington, there are three things on the table — the economic regeneration of Britain’s industrial wastelands; a plan to introduce identity cards for football supporters; and Aids.

We didn’t see that coming.

At the head is Margaret Thatcher, at the height of her power. Next to her, Bernard Ingham, the beetle-browed, gruff and bombastic Yorkshireman who leads the government information service.

And then there is us — four daily-paper editors from the nation’s rust-belts: Wolverhampton, Birmingham, Newcastle and, my patch, the North-East of England, more heavily hit than most by the loss of steel, shipbuilding and coal, and reeling from the year-long miners’ strike of 1984/1985, when Britain seemed to be on the brink of civil war.

I thought of this encounter, one of half-a-dozen where I had the opportunity to study the Iron Lady at first-hand during her premiership, when the TV networks this week rolled out the defining sketch from Spitting Image. Thatcher is dining with her Cabinet, orders a steak from the waiter, and is asked: “what about the vegetables?” Glancing around, she answers: “They’ll have the same.”

But it wasn’t like that on this evening in Whitehall. While none of her dinner guests fell into the category of being “one of us” that her antennae were set to receive. Economic policy was argued-out, the notion of registering all football supporters into a central database (one of the maddest schemes of the Thatcher era, the other being the poll tax, which eventually brought her down) was challenged, and then, out of left field, arose the subject of HIV.

Britain’s first Aids-related death — Terrence Higgins — took place in 1982. In 1983, Thatcher, buoyed by victory in the Falklands, an improving economy, and a disastrous Labour manifesto, which became known as the longest suicide note in history, swept back into power with a majority of 144 seats.

During the following years, the death toll from HIV moved rapidly, but almost invisibly, upwards, with the only governmental action being the institution of needle exchanges for drug addicts in 1985.

Public opinion was clouded by the prevailing notion that victims were confined to the ‘innocent’ (haemophiliacs infected through tainted blood received in health-service transfusions) and the ‘culpable’ — the gay community. One of the high-profile views of the time was promulgated by the-then chief constable of Manchester, James Anderton, known in the media as ‘God’s Copper.’ Anderton referred to victims “swirling about in a human cesspit of their own making.”

Thatcher wanted to know how we were covering the Aids story, what our editorial opinions were, and, crucially, what readers were telling us. Her style was interrogative: “What do you think? Why do you think that? What is your evidence? What are the consequences?” Should the Government take more of a lead? she asked. How could that be done?

Within months, the department of health launched its iconic ‘iceberg and tombstone’ TV advertisement, voiced by John Hurt, and delivered a leaflet to every household. “Don’t die of ignorance,” it said. The campaign strategy was copied throughout the world

There is a myth that Thatcher didn’t listen. She liked conviction, but despised intellectual floppiness, to the point of hatred. She wanted to see how people responded to challenge. On another occasion, this time at a dinner on her home ground, in Finchley, North London, she sat next to my six-months pregnant wife, congratulated her and wished her well for the birth. Then came the question that mattered most to Thatcher. “And how soon, my dear,” she said, “will you be returning to work after you have had your baby?”

Next Wednesday’s funeral (‘full-day ceremonial without swords’; or ‘morning-dress black waistcoat and black tie’; or ‘dark suit’; or ‘day dress with hat’) already has the hallmarks of great theatre, as well as being a state occasion.

People are queuing to attend or decline. All living British prime ministers and American presidents will be there. Neil Kinnock (“It’s a pity others had to spill their guts at Goose Green to prove she has some”) has a previous commitment. So does Denis (“the Right Honourable Lady is La Pasionaria of middle-class privilege”) Healey.

A campaign is underway to ensure that ‘Ding Dong, the Wicked Witch is Dead’ tops the BBC charts tomorrow. Steve Bell’s memorable cartoon on Tuesday showed Thatcher being interred, while demanding “why is this pit still open?” George Galloway’s instant tweet, to news of her death, was “stamp down the dirt.”

Thatcher would not be disappointed, apart from the vulgarity. No democratic politician of the past century has been so supremely indifferent as to what people thought of her. She shared the view of her close ally, Norman Tebbit: “I don’t have any enemies I wouldn’t want.”

Modern political practice is the antithesis of this. Its calculation is about pushing the buttons that make politicians, and parties, more or less liked, by manipulating social media, by glossing the image, by listening to focus groups. That comparison, with what is known dismissively as ‘The Thatcher Years’, is why she was, and remains, not only a pivotal figure, but one of huge consequence and hypnotic impact.

After Thatcher’s predecessor, Ted Heath, who nurtured a lifelong animus for her, took over as leader of the Conservative party, in 1965, he said that it contained three types of people: “Shits, bloody shits, and fucking shits.”

But it was Heath who promoted the member for Finchley to his shadow cabinet in 1967, while searching for what was then deemed “the statutory woman.”

When Thatcher was recommended, he glowered during a long silence, before saying: “Yes, Willie Whitelaw agrees that she’s much the most able. But, he says, once she’s there we’ll never be able to get rid of her.”

On that occasion, for once, Heath was absolutely right.