LINCOLN CATHEDRAL AND MARGARET THATCHER: The Essence of England (19)

[This is the nineteenth of a series of articles giving a brief description of each of the 26 ancient Anglican cathedrals coupled with a sketch of a person, activity or institution connected to the area]

Certainly in the view of John Ruskin, who thought Lincoln worth any two other English cathedrals, Lincoln Cathedral is widely recognised as the finest cathedral in England. Perched on its limestone ridge, it has majesty, richness and beauty to a unique degree. The visitor’s first sight of Lincoln is heart-stopping, a moment remembered for a lifetime.

Lincoln Cathedral

 The cathedral we see is the third on the site, its predecessors succumbing to fire and earthquake.  The striking West front is mainly Norman, even richer than that at Peterborough, with a profusion of decorative stone carving. Work began on the Choir (now known as St Hugh’s) and transepts in 1192 and the Early English nave followed, later embellished by a lovely ribbed vault.

In the 13^th century the towers were raised, though the central tower collapsed in 1237, soon to be replaced by a larger one. In about 1310 a tall lead-encased wooden spire was added to this tower, making Lincoln, at a claimed 525 feet, the tallest building in the world until the spire was blown down in 1549. The much admired Angel Choir (comprising the presbytery and retro-choir) dates from 1256 to 1280; the charming decagonal Chapter House is also 13^th century while the fine window tracery and misericords were later medieval additions.

The Angel Choir at Lincoln

 It is the richness of Lincoln that delights; everywhere carved stone and wood, corbels and bosses: a tremendous Judgement Porch: an exquisitely carved Decorated pulpitum; two fine Rose windows: Cloisters supporting an important library by Wren of 1674.

The buttressed 10-sided Chapter House

 Lincoln Cathedral is simply unmissable and all should make the journey there.

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It is entirely appropriate that the finest cathedral in England should be linked to the finest Prime Minister of Britain of the post-war era, a native of Lincolnshire. Margaret Thatcher was born Margaret Roberts in 1925, the younger of two daughters of Alderman Albert Roberts, who ran two small grocer’s shops in the historic town of Grantham in Lincolnshire. Alderman Roberts was a pillar of the community, serving as Mayor in 1945-6 and becoming a Methodist lay preacher. He imbued into her his old-fashioned (laissez-faire) Liberal ideals and the virtues of self-help.

Margaret shone at her local school, Grantham Girls’, and won a place reading Chemistry at the then all-woman Somerville College, Oxford. She latterly specialised in X-ray crystallography graduating in 1947. She had been president of the University Conservative Association and was an admirer of the writings of economic liberal Friedrich Hayek. She worked as an industrial chemist and stood unsuccessfully in the Tory cause in the 1950 and 1951 elections. In 1951 she met and married Denis Thatcher (his second marriage) and they had two children in the 1950s, Mark and Carol. Margaret moved to the Anglican Church. Denis had become a wealthy businessman selling his paint company and being appointed a director of Castrol and then Burmah Oil. Margaret decided to read for the Bar and qualified as a barrister, specialising in taxation, in 1953. Denis was to prove an irreplaceable supporter throughout her career.

A young Margaret Thatcher

 Mrs Thatcher finally entered Parliament as member for Finchley in 1959. She joined the Conservative front bench in 1961 under MacMillan as a junior minister and held a succession of shadow ministerial posts in opposition from 1964 to 1970. She was not a particularly prominent figure but she joined Edward Heath’s cabinet as Secretary of Education from 1970 until the Tories lost office in 1974. She came to public notice when she ended free school milk for primary children being dubbed by Labour “Thatcher, Thatcher, Milk-Snatcher!”

But Thatcher was about to experience a political conversion. The Conservatives were totally disillusioned with Heath whose economic policies had utterly failed. Thatcher had heard a speech on monetarism from Enoch Powell, the brilliant maverick Tory intellectual and former Treasury minister. She began to see there was another way than the Keynesian demand management consensus and she expressed her views accordingly. Heath had to stand for re-election as Tory party leader in 1975 and Thatcher stood against him, more prominent Tories declining to do so. To general surprise, Thatcher first defeated Heath and then Whitelaw in a second ballot and became Leader of the Opposition facing Wilson and then Callaghan. In opposition Thatcher found inspiration in discussions with deep-thinking cabinet colleague Sir Keith Joseph and with Ralph Harris’ Institute of Economic Affairs; she also absorbed the proposals of the free-market apostle US’s Milton Friedman.

Enoch Powell

                

                                                  

Sir Keith Joseph

 When Callaghan lost a vote of confidence in Parliament in 1979 and the subsequent election, the Conservatives were thus well prepared intellectually for office. Mrs Thatcher was the first woman Prime Minister in British history and her 11 continuous years in this position made her the longest-serving Premier of the 20^th century.

Margaret Thatcher enters Downing Street with Denis 4 May 1979

 The Thatcher era went off with a bang. The Chancellor Sir Geoffrey Howe’s first act was to abolish exchange controls – a strong signal that regulation was to be reduced – and floating sterling held up perfectly well. A savage squeeze of the money supply, intending to tame inflation, followed. Interest rates rose, vulnerable companies failed and unemployment rose sharply. There was party pressure for a policy U-turn but Mrs Thatcher’s response to the 1980 Tory party conference was uncompromising “You turn if you like. The Lady’s not for turning” Her government went through a tough spell but by 1982 the UK economy was performing much better, though unemployment stayed at 3 million.

Then in April 1982 Argentina seized the Falklands, not expecting much British resistance. It reckoned without Mrs Thatcher. Despite hostility from Spain, Italy and Belgium, silence from Germany and duplicity from France, the inevitable innate enmity of the United Nations and pussy-footing from Haig’s US State department, Mrs Thatcher decided to fight and sent a naval task force. She had earned the friendship of US President Ronald Reagan and he and his Defence Secretary Casper Weinberger gave vital material and intelligence assistance. After a hard campaign, and much to the credit of the UK forces, the Argentines surrendered in June 1982 and the islands were liberated. This was a defining moment for Mrs Thatcher. She was hailed as cool under pressure and the patriotic “Falklands factor” helped her easily to win the 1983 election against shambolic, loony-leftist Labour leader Michael Foot.

Mrs Thatcher re-elected in June 1983

 Mrs Thatcher inherited a group of senior Tories many of whom were by no means in tune with her aspirations and policies. They came to be called “The Wets” and after many a reshuffle, they all fell away. Prominent among them were Ian Gilmour, Norman St.John-Stevas, Francis Pym, Jim Prior and the combative Michael Heseltine, all intelligent and capable men but not keepers of the Thatcherite flame.

“Thatcherism” in the words of Nigel Lawson meant “Free markets, financial discipline, firm control over public expenditure, tax cuts, nationalism, 'Victorian values' (of the Samuel Smiles self-help variety), privatisation and a dash of populism”

Her programme was very ambitious but Thatcher was a conviction politician who did not brook much obstruction. Her ethos revolved round work and she lectured a glowering Edinburgh General Assembly of the Church of Scotland in 1988 with her Sermon on the Mound quoting St Paul “If a man will not work, he shall not eat”. She was not heartless, as her enemies claimed but she deplored welfare dependency. She viewed poverty as a misfortune, which government should do what it could to alleviate, not as a badge of honour deserving special rights or privileges. She did not believe government should bail-out failing enterprises and watched several such go to the wall. When people in the North complained, she briskly dismissed them as “Moaning Minnies”.

She saw that Britain had suffered grievously from irresponsible trades union power. The laws on the closed shop and secondary picketing were strengthened and financial penalties for breaches of the law increased. She prepared carefully for a clash with the miners which duly came with a bitter 12 month strike in 1984. The strike failed, the NUM was effectively destroyed and the union movement weakened. Britain’s strike record hugely improved thereafter. It was the most significant event of Mrs Thatcher’s second ministry.

William Whitelaw

Norman Tebbitt

Mrs Thatcher liked to work in a small team of close colleagues. She leant heavily on patrician Willie Whitelaw, a former Home Secretary, a man of sound judgement and able to dispense moderating advice to her. He chaired many cabinet committees and exercised his charm to keep recalcitrant backbenchers on tune. Ill health forced his resignation in 1988, a major blow to her government. “Everyone needs a Willie” she quipped.

More committed and a Thatcher loyalist to the very end was Norman Tebbitt, of working class origin and epitomising “Essex Man”. Tebbitt held various portfolios including Secretary for Employment. After town centre riots in 1981, Tebbitt mused:"I grew up in the '30s with an unemployed father. He didn't riot. He got on his bike and looked for work, and he kept looking 'til he found it." This very reasonable remark was twisted by the media to mean that Tebbitt had told the unemployed to get “on yer bike” but he had not. However the Thatcherite value of Self-Help was invoked. Tebbitt was a tough political street-fighter, close to Mrs Thatcher, and a good man to have on your side. He reduced his workload to look after his wife, permanently disabled by the IRA Brighton bomb.

Mrs Thatcher faced physical dangers too. An Irish terrorist bomb nearly killed her (5 others died) at her Brighton hotel in 1984. Her close aide and Colditz escaper Airey Neave was murdered by the INLA in 1979 and her loyal and talented PPS Ian Gow was killed by an Irish terrorist car bomb in 1990. She did not deviate from her firm but conciliatory policy on Ulster, winning national support.

Above all, Mrs Thatcher was a liberator. To give many working people a first step on the property ladder she had a highly popular policy of selling council houses. Many key public corporations were successfully privatised: water, British Telecom, gas, BP, the airports. The arcane City system of jobbers and brokers was swept away by “Big Bang” in 1986. The nonsense of Labour’s 83% (98% on “unearned” income) marginal tax rate was drastically reduced to a top rate of 40% by Thatcher’s most capable Chancellor, Nigel Lawson. After 35 years of feeble economic performance, Mrs Thatcher ushered in a period of sustained UK prosperity.The marked improvement in living standards for those in work earned Mrs Thatcher a 3^rd election victory in 1987, only losing 21 seats and retaining a comfortable majority.

Enoch Powell once said that “All political lives end in failure” and Mrs Thatcher’s was entering its final phase.

Europe became a central concern. She had long been a doughty opponent of Brussels’ interference and extravagance: its fat-cat bureaucrats offended every fibre in her body and she regularly worked over Helmut Kohl and Francois Mitterrand at EU gatherings. But the UK was often isolated and the Tory party was split between the euro-sceptic and euro-enthusiast factions. In a prescient speech in Bruges in 1988 she argued against federalism and centralisation in Europe: “We have not successfully rolled back the frontiers of the state in Britain, only to see them re-imposed at a European level, with a European super-state exercising a new dominance from Brussels”. She was a voice crying in the wilderness and Brussels charged on to its disastrous Eurozone project.

She made mistakes; her reform of local government finance via the Community Charge (aka “poll-tax) galvanised the opposition and riots ensued. Many Scots, highly dependent on state spending and welfare, long hated her and deserted the Tories for the absurd nationalist fantasies of the SNP.  Her implacable self-belief alienated first Nigel Lawson and then fatally Geoffrey Howe. Her leadership was challenged by Michael Heseltine in 1990 and she did not achieve the required margin of victory in the first ballot .Tearfully she resigned; it was time for her to go. She accepted a life peerage and Denis was created a hereditary baronet.

But what a legacy she left! Her economic reforms changed the landscape of British politics and no attempt was made to reverse them. The Thatcher prosperity continued throughout the Major and Blair eras. Blair said “We are all Thatcherites now”. Her influence remains in the US and Europe fears her still.

Lady Thatcher is now 87 and sadly beset by Alzheimer’s. It has been ordained that at her passing, she will be honoured with a State Funeral at St Pauls (not, alas, Lincoln). It is hugely deserved and I hope some latter-day Tiepolo paints The Apotheosis of Blessed Margaret, trailing blue clouds of glory and escorted by smiling cherubs. We can be sure that she will brook no delay at the Pearly Gates and if necessary firmly put St Peter’s hat straight.

Lady Thatcher

SMD

26.11.12

Text Copyright © Sidney Donald 2012