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By Root 2681 0

Britain and other European capitals to show us a dossier of evidence substantiating the US claim that arms from Cuba, acting as a surrogate for the Soviet Union, were pouring into El Salvador to support the revolution against the pro-western, if undoubtedly unsavoury, government there. There was still some difference of view about whether the threat was as serious as the US claimed. But the evidence which we now saw made it easier to expess support for the American objectives in the region and to resist the pressure from other lobbies. A statement was issued by the Foreign Office just before I left for America to this effect. President Reagan explained to me his determination to pursue a new policy to resist communist subversion via Cuba, which also involved closer US relations with what it saw as a vulnerable and important neighbour, Mexico. I understood all this and agreed with it: but I warned of the danger of losing the propaganda war on El Salvador — the reporting was very one-sided.

The second and much more important development was a speech by President Brezhnev, proposing an international summit and offering a moratorium on theatre nuclear forces (TNF) in Europe. Discussion about how the new Administration should respond dominated the hyperactive Washington media world. I had publicly expressed caution both about the prospect of an early summit meeting and about the Russian TNF proposals, which would have left them with overwhelming superiority since they had deployed and we had not. President Reagan turned out to be of the same mind. Both of us were well aware of Soviet tactics and of the likelihood that this was only part of their attempt to disorientate and divide their western opponents. This was the latest phase in a Soviet propaganda battle in which they proposed no further deployment of nuclear weapons just when they had completed stationing their own modernized weapon systems. This issue was to dominate alliance politics for the next six years.

When I arrived in Washington I was the centre of attention not just because of my closeness to the new president but for another less flattering reason. As I left for America, US readers were learning from a long article in Time entitled ‘Embattled but Unbowed’ that my Government was beset with difficulties. The US press and commentators suggested that given the similarity of economic approach of the British and US Governments, the economic problems we were now facing — above all high and rising unemployment — would soon be faced in the US too. This in turn prompted some members of the Administration and others close to it — but never for a moment the President himself — to explain that the alleged failures of the ‘Thatcher experiment’ stemmed from our failure to be sufficiently radical. Indeed, while I was in Washington Treasury Secretary Donald Regan spoke on similar lines to Congress before slipping away to join a lunch at which I was the main guest; this predictably received plenty of press coverage in Britain. I took every occasion to explain the facts of the case both to the press and to the Senators and Congressmen whom I met. Unlike the US, Britain had to cope with the poisonous legacy of socialism — nationalization, trade union power, a deeply rooted anti-enterprise culture. Labour’s prices and incomes policy, combined with lax monetary policies, had greatly increased the inevitable difficulty of transition, as the public sector pay explosion forced up state spending. At one meeting, Senator Jesse Helms said that some of the US media were playing a requiem for my Government. I was able to reassure him that news of a requiem for my policies was premature. There was always a period during an illness when the medicine was more unpleasant than the disease, but you should not stop taking the medicine. I said that I felt there was a deep recognition among the British people that my policies were right.

After another short talk over coffee with the President, at which we were joined by Nancy and Denis, my party left Washington for New York. In the afternoon I