Downing Street Years - Margaret Thatcher [208]
On Tuesday I had a working breakfast with President Mitterrand. We were so far apart that there was no point in spending much time discussing Community issues at all and we largely concentrated instead on the Lebanon. The French President seemed blissfully unaware of the damage his own turnabout had done. He said jokingly that unless we demonstrated that discussions between Britain and France were continuing, the press would soon be talking about a return to the Hundred Years’ War. So in what I hoped was a suitably nonbelligerent way I told him how his attitude at the Council had taken me by surprise, given the fact that I was going along with the proposals on the budget which the French Finance minister, one M. Jacques Delors, had been advancing. The President asked me precisely what I meant and I explained. But I received no very satisfactory or clear response.
Where we did see eye to eye — at least in private — was about Germany. I said that even though the Germans were willing to be generous because they received other political benefits from the Community, a new generation of Germans might arise who would refuse to make such a large contribution. This would risk a revival of German neutralism — a temptation which, as President Mitterrand rightly said, was already present.
The meeting had been an amicable one and I tried to keep the atmosphere relatively friendly after the Council broke up, as in press interviews I avoided being too harsh about France’ performance. After all, M. Mitterrand was to be the next President of the Council and so it would fall to him to chair the crucial meetings as we at last approached the time when the Community’ money ran out. It did cross my mind that he might have wished to delay a settlement until he could take credit for it in his own presidency.
No communiqué was issued at the end of the Athens Council: we had had no time in plenary sessions to discuss any of the wider international issues and agree a line on them. The Council was widely and accurately described as a fiasco. But my frustration was diminished by the fact that I knew that time was on my side.
* Until 1982 the Canadian Constitution was still based on British Acts of Parliament, which only Westminster could amend, though of course in every practical sense Canada has long been an independent state. In that year at Canadian request we legislated to ‘patriate’ the constitution and the process of amendment, passing it over to full Canadian control.
* See pp. 451–3.
* Monetary Compensatory Amounts (MCAs) were a system of border taxes and levies on CAP products.
CHAPTER XIII
Mr Scargill’s Insurrection
The background to and course of the year-long miners’ strike of 1984 — 1985
PRELUDE
The 1983 general election result was the single most devastating defeat ever inflicted upon democratic socialism in Britain. After being defeated on a manifesto that was the most candid statement of socialist aims ever made in this country, the Left could never again credibly claim popular appeal for their programme of massive nationalization, hugely increased public spending, greater trade union power and unilateral nuclear disarmament. But there was also undemocratic socialism, and it too would need to be beaten. I had never had any doubt about the true aim of the hard Left: they were revolutionaries who sought to impose a Marxist system on Britain whatever the means and whatever the cost. Many of them made no effort to conceal their purpose. For them the institutions of democracy were no more than tiresome obstacles on the long march to a Marxist Utopia. While the electoral battle was still being fought their hands had been tied by the need to woo more moderate opinion, but in the aftermath of defeat they were free from constraint and thirsting for battle on their