Should the lady have been leading?

John Biffen

DANCING WITH DOGMA: BRITAIN UNDER THATCHERISM by Ian Gilmour Simon & Schuster, £16.99, pp. 328 Ian Gilmour was a most affable cabinet colleague; relaxed, perceptive, and, by my book, usually wrong. He was a constant, Margaret Thatcher and the author at the Young Conservatives Ball four weeks after she had sacked him. (Photograph by Srdja Djukanovic)

albeit restrained, critic of the economic policies and political syle of Margaret

Thatcher. In Dancing with Dogma the languid manner disappears. Much of the book is an impassioned retrospective crusade against the policies to which he had so unwillingly lent his name.

The main thrust of the book is that Thatcherite economic policies were fatally flawed, inherently unconservative, and executed with a sense of mission that even contaminated the normally placid Geoffrey Howe. Nigel Lawson needed no infection.

On the other hand, Gilmour concedes that the policies of council house sales, privati- sation, and trade union reform were both necessary and successful. Indeed he concedes that Margaret Thatcher's unyield- ing personality was a factor in these political triumphs.

No one can seriously doubt that Gilmour makes a formidable case that the social consequences of Treasury policies in the early 1980s were harsher than expected. The triumphalism of ministerial language

also caused Gilmour the occasional twinge.,

or, in respect of Margaret Thatcher, a veri- table shudder. But politicians' words are wayward weapons. John Major's absurd post-Maastricht comment of 'game, set and match' conveys a boyish grin rather than a triumphalist smirk. In that sense, Gilmour

makes a pertinent comment about the style and rhetoric of Margaret Thatcher. She was ever absolute and rarely revealed the mildest of doubts. She radiated self- righteousness. Indeed, the dogma that offends Gilmour relates more to style than to content.

It would have been possible for Margaret Thatcher initially to have presented her policies as Tory and evolutionary. They certainly developed from realities that even Labour were obliged to face. The prologue to the 1979 Thatcher government included Barbara Castle's ill-fated trade union reforms; Anthony Crosland's brusque, avowal that 'the party was over' for local

government spending; and, crucially, .the public expenditure and monetary restraints undertaken by Callaghan and Healey With the connivance of the IMF in 1976. They provided a thread of continuity, but 1811 Gilmour almost as much as Margaret Thatcher is anxious to present heir government as a decisive and unparallelen break point in British politics. Margaret Thatcher was unquestionablY the mistress of her political style. With nmet I suspect that commentators will judge Oa she was driven not so much by dogma as a self-confident, intuitive judgment cif events and people. She had her version 0! St Joan's voices, and they were equal to h!,1 understanding of Friedman and von HaYel'' Similarly, her ebullient personality a _ well-organised press relations conveyed thc impression of a one-woman cabinet.,. I now know that it was very different. Mg Lawson, acclaimed by Gilmour as by fa..

". the ablest exponent of Thatcher economics', eventually turned maverick and decided that sterling should shadow the deutschmark. Margaret Thatcher either did not realise what was happening or was unable or unwilling to prevent it. Again, relations between her and Geoffrey Howe, as Foreign Secretary, were miserably unhappy over the European Community. In these key instances the real picture is of the Prime Minister's impotence rather than her pervasive autocracy.

Dancing With Dogma is a good title for a book about 'Britain under Thatcherism' and a superb photograph for the dust cover, but the evidence for it is collected somewhat partially. Of course, the book does contain powerful arguments against government policy and some of the more breathtaking economic ambitions of the early Thatcher years. Who now recalls the MTFS, or the almost mechanical relation- ship sought between money, if it could be measured, and other economic activities?

.The book is also memorable for the deep distaste, if not loathing, that Gilmour had for the policies of the early 1980s and their supreme architect. One wonders how on earth he could sit in cabinet and assent to such cruel heresies. It was a troubling experience, particularly in the light of Geoffrey Howe's 1981 budget.

Jim Prior and I later regretted that we had not resigned. Peter Walker thought we were right to stay because our resignations might have damaged sterling and the economy.

Quite so: it might have put Peter Walker on the spot. Ian Gilmour preferred to stay, but not for long. In September 1981 the Prime Minister returned him to the back-benches, an episode that is described with characteristic Gilmour Urbanity,

The book makes no reference to the tan- talising months when there was speculation that Peter Walker and he would join forces With Roy Jenkins in the newly formed SDP. This was the moment when the alleged tyranny of Thatcherite dogma might have been confronted. A sizeable Conservative defection could have been crucial to SDP fortunes. It was not to be; at heart Ian Gilmour was not a splitter and had a disdain for the street battle. Like many attractive politicians he preferred using his Pen to his fists.

As one would expect, Dancing With pogma is a skillfully written book, although It does involve some fairly heavy passages of economic analysis as the author champi- ons the views and methodology of the 364 anti-Thatcher economists: one for every day of the Treasury diary. Above all, the book is written with feeling, often mistaken

believe, as he views the vicarious upstart Who had inherited the traditions of one- nation Toryism. This is good, robust poli- tics, and having denied us the arguments during his sunset years in the Commons, I hope the author will inflict them in full measure upon their Lordships.