what did you get?’ he asked.
‘Umm … foreign secretary,’ I said. ‘I’m a bit concerned about it.’
‘Crikey,’ said Norman, pushing his glasses up his nose. “Crik-ey!’
The following morning I left Durand Gardens at 7.30 as usual and arrived at the Foreign Office at 8 a.m. I hadn’t told anyone I would arrive so early, and no one was there to meet me except a posse of press photographers. I posed for the inevitable first-day photographs until Sir Patrick Wright, the Permanent Secretary, appeared. He greeted me warmly, a little embarrassed at not having been there when I arrived, and in we went.
Cecil Parkinson said later that ‘there was a feeling Margaret had overdone it’ in appointing me foreign secretary. He was right. But what were her reasons? She’d already said to Willie Whitelaw that in the next generation I would be her successor. Was she now anticipating that day by putting me into a job from which I would be well placed to win any forthcoming leadership election? I cannot know what was really going on in her mind. Nevertheless, it was an extravagant gesture of support.
The move to the Foreign Office changed my life in ways that were not all welcome. I was now considered to be a target for terrorists, and for security reasons I had to move out of my flat in Durand Gardens – let to me by Stan Hurn, an old friend from banking days. But the real disruption was to my lifestyle at Finings, a sanctuary in good and bad days, that changed beyond recognition.
Overnight, security moved in. A caravan disfigured my garden to house a detachment of the Cambridgeshire constabulary, and my garage was surrendered to the same cause. Electronic devices invaded the house and garden like unwanted Daleks. Changes were made to the house and to the perimeter of the garden. An armoured car and protection officers accompanied me every day, and that most precious of gifts – freedom of movement – was gone.
No longer could I walk down the road alone or call in at a shop. I was always accompanied. In time I became accustomed to this, and the protection officers became part of an extended family. At the time, however, Norma and I were desolate at our loss of privacy. The first few weeks of adjustment were miserable.
The Foreign Office were shellshocked at losing Geoffrey after more than five years. And they didn’t expect me as his replacement. Did I really know or care about foreign affairs? Was I to be Mrs Thatcher’s hatchet-man at the Foreign Office? They had reason to fear so, since all they knew of me was that as chief secretary I had questioned the expenditure of their department, as of all others. It was not the best of introductions, but the officials were too professional to let it show.
Their fears about me soon went away when they realised I did not have a mandate to reverse our European policies, and when I negotiated a satisfactory public expenditure settlement. This was not difficult. I saw Norman Lamont, who had taken my place as chief secretary, alone. Norman knew that I had approved the Treasury’s bottom line as chief secretary, and would remember it. Moreover, being familiar with the layout of Treasury expenditure briefs, I could read Norman’s notes upside down as they lay in front of him. We soon reached an agreement. A very good one, too.
My new office was outrageously grand (the staff apologised that the foreign secretary’s room was being redecorated, and would this do?). It was entirely suitable for impressing visitors, and equally unsuitable for serious work. I prefer a plain room to work in, with a large table on which to spread everything out comfortably, and with few distractions. My new office did not meet these specifications, so, except when receiving guests, I decamped to the anteroom next to the Private Office.
I also took an instant dislike to Carlton Gardens, the foreign secretary’s gilded but somewhat faded London home. Geoffrey and Elspeth Howe were in no hurry to move out, and I was in no hurry to move in. I told them to take their time, and settled into a flat at the Foreign Office so I could work longer hours and keep a closer eye on everything that happened. This was thought rather eccentric.
Geoffrey was stunned, almost disbelieving, at what had happened. ‘Incredible, bizarre, astounding,’ was apparently his reaction. The party was equally astonished. When he first appeared in the Commons in his new role as Leader of the House he received a tumultuous reception. It went on and on, and was clearly for Geoffrey and against Margaret. It was a warning that should have been noticed.
Geoffrey, whatever his private feelings, went out of his way to help me settle in at the Foreign Office. We met for what was intended to be a briefing but turned out simply to be a friendly chat. It was an odd encounter: the man who had loved the job wishing good luck to the man who did not want it. But he was supportive in public and in private – the perfect predecessor. If he felt any rancour, it was not directed at me.
I found the Foreign Office a revelation. Patrick Wright, the genial Permanent Secretary, went out of his way to be helpful. The officials were very high-calibre, and so was my ministerial team, all of whom, except William Waldegrave, were new to the Foreign Office. And yet whole forests were felled to produce long, comprehensive, written briefings. The professionalism was impressive, but it seemed to me that even trivial matters were sent to the foreign secretary for his decision, or simply to keep him informed. The Foreign Office was far more hierarchical than the Treasury.
Within days of my arrival I decided to devolve decision-making. In this I had the energetic support of Stephen Wall, who was a tower of strength, and Patrick Wright. My ministers William Waldegrave, Francis Maude, Tim Sainsbury, Ivon Brabazon and my old friend Lynda Chalker were perfectly capable of taking decisions on all sorts of matters without reference upwards. William Waldegrave had a brilliant academic mind, and was often talked of as a future prime minister. He had a phenomenal breadth of knowledge, but his intellect was not invariably an asset: it did not always equip him to understand the hopes and fears of lesser minds. Francis Maude was another with a first-class brain. He doesn’t just look at things, he looks behind them. With Francis, there was no doubt that he had the ambition to sustain his ability. Lynda Chalker, whom I’d known since she was seventeen, was to become something of a legendary figure in sub-Saharan Africa, where they adored her, and called her the Great White Mother. I remember her shaking her finger at Kenya’s President Daniel arap Moi, who was towering above her, holding a fly whisk.
I wanted to clear the decks for the big issues – especially Europe – that I knew I would soon have to face. I soon realised that the Foreign Office was very bruised and hurt by the open contempt in which it believed the Prime Minister held it – too many of her private bons mots had been reported back. I thought it ironic that the Prime Minister who so admired many individuals in the department should be so suspicious of it as an institution.
But I also soon saw why Mrs Thatcher felt as she did. Papers would be prepared in support of a recommendation, setting out facts which it was thought the Prime Minister would like, but omitting others which it was thought she would not. Charles Powell would of course swiftly rumble this tactic and assume that the Foreign Office was trying to hoodwink him and his boss. I stepped in at once, and personally altered any papers I considered at fault in this respect. From then on there was far less trouble between the Foreign Office and Number 10.
Treasury briefs, which concern the hard facts of finance, came easily to me, since I have always had a facility for absorbing figures. Briefs at the Foreign Office were different. They were about themes, and were less precise than economic papers. I did not immediately find them as easy to absorb as those I had been used to. It was said subsequently that during my time at the Foreign Office I did not like handling several issues at once. This was absurd. I had done that at the Treasury as a matter of course, and would do so later as prime minister. What I did not like was being asked to approve documents twenty times a day without having the time to digest them and consider their impact on policy. I did not like receiving bits of paper with a few scraps of generalised information and a request for
