Downing Street Years - Margaret Thatcher [516]
Accordingly, I increased the amount of time set aside in my diary for meeting back-benchers. I made more frequent visits to that fount of gossip, the Commons tea-room. I also began regular meetings with groups of back-benchers, usually recruited according to region so as to ensure a wide spectrum of views. At these meetings, which usually took place in my room in the House, I would ask everyone around the table to speak their mind and then come in at the end to answer point by point. There was frank speaking on both sides — on one occasion a back-bencher told me it was time for me to go. I may not have complied, but I did listen.
But no amount of discussion or attention to personal sensitivities could compensate for the political situation in the summer of 1990. High community charge bills made Conservative MPs anxious about their seats. Inflation and interest rates were still high. Divisions in the Parliamentary Party and the Government over Europe sharpened as the pace of the federalist programme accelerated. The rank and file of the Party was still with me, as they would show at the 1990 Party Conference, indeed perhaps stronger than ever in their support. But too many of my colleagues had an unspoken contempt for the party faithful whom they regarded as organization fodder with no real right to hold political opinions. And in the event, no one would seriously listen to them — though they were formally consulted and pronounced heavily in my favour — when it came for my fate to be decided.
For my part, I remained confident that we could ride out these difficulties and win the next election. High interest rates were already doing their work in bringing down inflation, whatever the headline RPI figures showed. I was only waiting for signs that the money supply was firmly under control before cutting interest rates — and continuing to cut them even if that would entail a changed parity in the ERM. At the end of April I had my first serious discussion with the Policy Unit about policies that might be in the next manifesto. And that summer I had discussions with colleagues on setting up manifesto policy groups. My Party Conference speech in October 1990 raised the curtain on just a little of this, outlining proposals for privatization, training vouchers (and hinting at education vouchers), and increasing the number of grant-maintained schools. I had not decided when we would go to the country. But I wanted to be ready for the summer of 1991.
I had also been thinking about my future beyond the next election. There was still much that I wanted to do. Most immediately, we had to defeat Saddam Hussein and establish a durable security framework for the Gulf. The economy was fundamentally strong, but I wanted to overcome inflation and recession and restore a stable framework for growth. I thought there was a good prospect of mopping up communism in central and eastern Europe and establishing limited government under law in the new democracies. Above all I hoped to win the battle for my kind of European Community — one in which a free and enterprising nation-state like Britain could comfortably flourish. But I also knew that the wider framework of international relations which was needed in the post-Cold War world — one in which international bodies like the UN, the GATT, the IMF, the World Bank, NATO and the CSCE held the ring, while nation-states and international commerce were left to their own proper spheres of activity — would not be built in a day. This was a substantial long-term programme.
My problem was the lack of a successor whom I could trust both to keep my legacy secure and to build on it. I liked John Major and thought that he genuinely shared my approach. But he was