Downing Street Years - Margaret Thatcher [260]
David Young did not claim to understand politics: but he understood how to make things happen. He had revolutionized the working of the Manpower Services Commission (MSC) and at the Department of Employment his schemes for getting the unemployed back into work made a major contribution to our winning the 1987 general election. He shared Keith Joseph’s and my view about how the economy worked and how jobs were created — not by government but by enterprise. He understood the relationship between the price of labour and the number of jobs. And he had that sureness of touch in devising practical projects which make sense in the marketplace that few but successful businessmen ever acquire. The ‘Action for Jobs’ programme was the single most effective economic programme we launched in my term in office. As a general rule I did not bring outsiders directly into Cabinet, feeling that previous experience of this — as with John Davies in Ted Heath’s Government — had not been altogether happy. David Young was an exception and proved eminently worthy of being so.
If the Government’s presentation was to be improved something had to be done about Conservative Central Office. Central Office rightly claims that it is a universal scapegoat for whatever goes wrong. It is blamed by the Government when the Party is restive or lethargic. It is blamed by the Party when the Government seems insensitive or out of touch. But equally there is no doubt that the performance of Central Office is variable and by this point it was causing alarm. John Gummer just did not have the political clout or credibility to rally the troops. I had appointed him as a sort of nightwatchman: but he seemed to have gone to sleep on the job. It was time for a figure of weight and authority to succeed him and provide the required leadership. In many ways, the ideal man seemed to be Norman Tebbit. Norman is one of the bravest men I have ever met. He will never deviate on a point of principle — and those principles are ones which even the least articulate Tory knows he shares.
There were, though, arguments against Norman’s appointment. He was still not well and would indeed have to undergo more painful surgery at a very difficult political time for us. He was not a first-class administrator. I later came to have some vigorous arguments with him. There were also those who said that he and I were too close politically. They argued that what was needed, in John Biffen’s foolish phrase, was a more ‘balanced ticket’, which seemed to me a recipe for paralysis.
But there was no doubt in my mind that Norman was the man for the job, and so it proved. I knew he wanted it, though he never asked me for it. I thought that one day he might succeed me if we won the election, though Party Chairmanships have generally been something of a poisoned chalice. Above all, I knew that the rank and file of the Party would give their all for Norman Tebbit, whom everyone admired for bearing his sufferings with such heroism, never complaining but never concealing either that, whatever politics might bring, it was his own family and Margaret Tebbit’s needs which came first. Norman was better than an inspiration: he was an example. So I appointed him Chairman of the Party; he remained a member of the Cabinet as Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. At least for the moment, party morale soared.
Norman needed a Deputy Chairman who would be able to make those visits to the Party around the country