Downing Street Years - Margaret Thatcher [348]
So I set in train a series of steps to make plain that the Government encompassed — and was receptive to — a wide range of views. My first concern was to deal with the impression — that was apparently very widespread — that the Government was unaware of people’s worries. I could do this without diluting the Thatcherite philosophy because, whatever commentators imagined, the hopes and aspirations of the great majority were in tune with my beliefs. It was because I did listen to people that I knew this. But I never confused the leader page of the Guardian with vox populi.
I used my speech to the Scottish Party Conference in Perth on Friday 16 May (1986) to stress that we were indeed listening to what people were concerned about. And in some cases we had already acted to put matters right. The Scots had been up in arms because of the effects of the domestic rate revaluation, which had sent some people’s rates bills soaring while others had apparently inexplicably dropped. So I reminded the 1986 Scottish Conference:
A year ago, when I came to this same conference, you made clear your deep worries about rates. We listened. We understood. We’re dealing with it. And because of the urgency, domestic rates will be abolished in Scotland ahead of England and Wales.
I went on to promise the same radical but sensitive approach to people’s concerns in education, where there was much discontent, and health where there was still more. I acknowledged:
There are genuine concerns. How long will your elderly relative have to wait for the hip operation which will relieve so much pain? Will the expectant mother be cared for by the same medical team throughout her pregnancy?… I know your worries, and we are determined to deal with them…
What was important in this speech, and was remarked upon, was the tone. Of course, it is never enough just to listen: you have to come up with answers. But this was a time to demonstrate sensitivity and the speech went down well.
RESHUFFLE
A second step towards getting the Government and Party off to a new start was provided by the reshuffle a little later that month. Keith Joseph had decided that he now wished to leave the Cabinet. The departure of my oldest political friend and ally, indeed mentor, saddened me. He was irreplaceable; somehow, politics would never be the same again. But Keith’s departure gave rise to important changes. What I needed was ministers who could fight battles in the media as well as in Whitehall.
Any analysis of the opinion polls revealed that where we were strong was on economic management; where we were weak was on the so-called ‘caring issues’. There is nothing new about this. No matter how unjust — and I personally resented the injustice because I have always found no one more willing to give time and money without reward than the typical Conservative — this is what was to be expected. In Health I felt that the best answer was to set out the record: but there was no evidence that it made much impact; indeed, it was widely disbelieved. In Education, however, the Conservatives were trusted because although people thought we would spend less than Labour on schools they rightly understood that we were interested in standards — academic and nonacademic — parental choice and value for money; and they knew that Labour’s ‘loony Left’ had a hidden agenda of social engineering and sexual liberation. Ken Baker had won hands-down the propaganda battle against the Left in the local authorities and he and William Waldegrave, stimulated by the advice of Lord Rothschild, had set out what I had long been looking for — an alternative to the rates. But I felt that a first-class communicator like Ken Baker was now needed at Education.
John Moore, who had done an excellent job pressing ahead the privatization programme from the Treasury and was highly regarded