Aldous Richard - Reagan and Thatcher: the difficult relationship

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REAGAN

AND

THATCHER

THE DIFFICULT RELATIONSHIP

Richard Aldous

W. W. NORTON & COMPANY New York London

To my A-Team

CONTENTS

PROLOGUE

P R ESIDENT REAGANS STATE FUNERAL, June 11, 2004. Margaret Thatcher sat expressionless as her pre-recorded words rang around the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. Beside her was the man she had famously introduced onto the world stage with the words, I can do business with Mr. Gorbachev. Immediately in front sat Ronald Reagans widow, Nancy, who had invited the former prime minister to speak and later to accompany her on the Air Force jet to California for the interment. The incumbent president, George W. Bush, watched intently, knowing that his own eulogy would be judged against the standard set by the Iron Lady. Few questioned Thatchers place in this gathering as an equal. Her tribute to the former presidentvideotaped because doctors advised against a live orationwas both affectionate and uplifting. She brimmed with evident pride at the friendship they had enjoyed and their shared role in changing the world.

We have lost a great president, a great American, and a great man, she intoned in her familiar breathy delivery. I have lost a dear friend.... Others prophesied the decline of the West. He inspired America and his allies with renewed faith in their mission of freedom. Speaking afterwards to CNN, Harold Evans, the eminent commentator and former London Sunday Times editor, judged that Churchill and Roosevelt had a relationship; I think the relationship between Thatcher and President Reagan was closer even than Churchill and Roosevelt.

Reagan and Thatcher would have been delighted with Evanss assessment. It was a view they had consciously attempted to foster during their shared time in office. Each had vigorously asserted it in their memoirs and reminiscences. But their presentation masked the reality of a complex, even fractious alliance.

Reconstructing this competitive relationship is possible through the comprehensive primary material that is now available in public and private archives. Historians no longer have to rely just on anecdotal material or even the excellent published memoirs of the period. Instead, the cut and thrust of vigorous debates on key strategic differences comes alive in recently declassified documents. Tens of thousands of pages of official documents relating to Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher have been made available on both sides of the Atlantic. Reagans diaries are in the public domain. Papers from Margaret Thatchers private archive have been opened. Added to these written sources are the extensive oral history projects that have recorded and interrogated the recollections of key figures within each administration. In every sense the Reagan-Thatcher era is now history.

Even Margaret Thatcher herself has been, over time, prepared to let down the guard a little about her relationship with the president. Visiting Chequers in 2008, she confided to Prime Minister Gordon Browns wife, Sarah, the secret of her relationship with Reagan. It all worked, Lady Thatcher suggested, because he was more afraid of me than I was of him.

Sir Nicholas Henderson, Thatchers ambassador to Washington when Reagan was elected, would not have been surprised at this less than flattering analysis. In a chance encounter with a former Labour cabinet minister, Tony Benn, in the 1990s, Henderson was asked whether he had ever known anything really secret.

After considering for a few moments, the ambassador replied, If I reported to you what Mrs. Thatcher really thought about President Reagan, it would damage Anglo-American relations.

What follows is the story of that difficult relationship.

CHAPTER 1

CHURCHILL, JEFFERSON, AND JESUS

N ERVOUS . IT WAS not a word often associated with Margaret Thatcher, but that was how Ambassador Henderson found the prime minister in Downing Street on February 18, 1981. It was exactly a week before Thatchers first visit to meet the recently inaugurated fortieth president of the United States, Ronald Reagan. Mrs T. told me that she was a little worried by her forthcoming visit to Washington, Henderson wrote in his diary afterwards. She did not quite see how it would go. She admitted being nervous about it. Thatcher was taken aback when the ambassador mentioned that the toasts at dinner would be televised. She fretted about the allusions to the past that she would useI shall want all the best historical advice I can get! And when then they discussed what gifts she might present to the Reagans, the prime minister rushed from the room to retrieve the exquisite Halcyon boxes that she thought might be suitable. Thatchers nerves and uncharacteristic giddiness were not the only surprise. It was noticeable how little we talked about the substance of her discussions with Reagan, the ambassador noted. What mattered, he concluded, was that she wanted to see the president alone.

It was a point the new American administration could hardly have failed to miss. The Prime Minister wants, above all, to build upon her relationship with you, the new U.S. secretary of state, Al Haig, told the president that same day, and to have her visit perceived as a very strong reaffirmation of the Special Relationship.

No sooner had the Reagan transition team arrived in Washington following an election victory in November 1980 than Henderson had begun an elegant but relentless diplomatic offensive to secure an early invitation for Thatcher to the White House. There was no better man for the task. Nico Henderson was a charming character whose rumpled appearance masked shrewd political instincts. He had shot to notoriety in 1979 when his valedictory dispatch as ambassador to Paris, which had been scathing about the mentality of failure in British foreign policy, had found its way into the hands of The Economist magazine. Thatcher was impressed enough with his biting assessment, which matched her own, to bring Henderson out of retirement and send him to Washington.

Hendersons patrician blend of good-humored eccentricity combined with a reputation for knowing how to play the game made him a prized guest on the Washington social circuit. He exploited those connections ruthlessly on behalf of his country in a way not seen since the days of David Ormsby-Gore, friend of JFK and Britains representative at Camelot. In early December 1980, Henderson attended a dinner for the Reagans organized by Katharine Graham, the formidable owner of The Washington Post . The Hendersons had spent the Thanksgiving weekend with Graham and her family on Marthas Vineyard, where the ambassador had encouraged her to host a dinner for the president-elect. Only when everything was in place did she phone Henderson to say that her friend Henry Kissinger, the former secretary of state, had advised her it would be most improper for an ambassador to attend. It took all the fancy footwork at Hendersons disposal to make sure he stayed on the guest list.