Downing Street Years - Margaret Thatcher [163]
The ‘Falklands factor’ certainly punctured the Alliance: together with mounting optimism about the economic prospect, it helped us win back those Conservative supporters who had defected to what seemed a more comfortable, moderate option. Nor was there any joy in the polls for poor Michael Foot, whether one looked at Labour support as a whole, or his personal standing as leader.
However, by-election results in the last part of the Parliament confirmed that in some constituencies there was a real danger of the Alliance splitting the centre-right vote and letting Labour in. A good Alliance result always risked setting off the bandwaggon which its friends in the media longed to see rolling. In March 1982 Roy Jenkins had won a stunning victory over us in Glasgow Hillhead. Only two months later we held our vote — and the seat — in Beaconsfield and in June we actually gained Mitcham and Morden from a defector to the SDP. Yet on 28 October there were by-elections in Peckham and Birmingham (Northfield) in both of which the Conservative vote was badly squeezed by the Alliance. As a result, we lost the Birmingham seat to Labour. The risks were evident, though looking at the figures in detail, the news was not all good for Labour: we knew that they would have to do a great deal better to stand any chance of winning a general election.
The last two by-elections of the Parliament were at Bermondsey in February 1983, where a far-left Labour candidate was routed by the Liberals, and Darlington in March which was held by Labour. We did not do well, but neither of these by-elections really harmed us. Labour was the main competitor in London, so Bermondsey was not likely to do us much damage. And although Labour won at Darlington, they did not do well enough to threaten our position nationally. The commentators loved to speculate, but no one knew how much tactical voting there would be against us in a general election — that is, how many people would vote for the candidates who seemed best placed to beat those standing for the Government, rather than for their preferred party. In fact, this sort of behaviour occurs much more rarely than predicted.
I always took a close interest in by-elections. I was regularly briefed by the Party Chairman about the issues and tactics, and I also received a detailed statistical breakdown from Keith Britto, our resident psephological genius at Central Office, on swings and their implications. I myself never took part in by-election campaigns in case I caused the Government to run unacceptable political risks in the event of a bad result: and results usually are bad when you are in power, especially in mid-term when many people wish to register a protest, safe in the knowledge that the result will not bring about a change of government. But I always sent public messages of support to our candidates and spoke privately to them afterwards to congratulate or — more usually — to console.
DEFENCE AND UNILATERALISM
Inevitably, defence was the political issue on which the Falklands War had the greatest bearing. During the Falklands campaign itself the nuclear issue was almost entirely edged out of public debate, though my speech at the UN Special Session on disarmament in June 1982 was an attempt to show how the same fundamental principles underlay the whole of defence policy.* However, in the autumn of that year, I