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(narrator) In November 1990, after more than 11 years in power,
Margaret Thatcher left office.
Far from being voted out in a general election, the prime minister
was ousted out of Number Ten by members of her own parliamentary party
in a manner redolent of intrigue and full of high drama.
Only a year before, the prime minister had declared herself fit for ten more years.
Retirement from the top job was not on her agenda.
But while the end was traumatic for Mrs Thatcher,
the warning signs had been visible for some time.
(man) We're now in Smith Square. Mrs Thatcher has arrived.
(narrator) It's not uncommon for political' careers to end in tears.
For a prime minister, from the moment of their first cabinet reshuffle,
they create potential' enemies keen to see their leader cast out.
For Prime Minister Thatcher, the incident that would foretell her downfall
came in the middle of her premiership.
It would expose splits within government and feature the resignation of not one,
but two cabinet ministers.
Mrs Thatcher has been under pressure from dismayed Tories
to end the damaging row over Westland.
She came to the cabinet this morning determined to stop Mr Heseltine's
vigorous and highly public campaigning.
(narrator) By December 1985,
the row inside government over who should buy out Westland Helicopters
had spiralled out of control.
Defence Secretary Michael' Heseltine favoured a European consortium,
whereas Trade and Industry Secretary Leon Britten preferred an American option -
also supported by Mrs Thatcher.
Furious that, in his view, he was not being listened 10,
Michael Heseltine resigned.
I have today tendered my resignation from the government -
not because of the discussion of today's cabinet,
but because of the way that the reconstruction of Westland plc
has been handled over a period of months.
(narrator Then, following his departure, he engaged in a war of words,
accusing Mrs Thatcher of being complicit in efforts to undermine him
ma?
I think any minister has got to have the full confidence of his colleagues.
I didn't have any doubt about that until this morning.
This morning, I made inquiries,
I discussed the matter with friends and colleagues,
and I came to the conclusion that I didn't have the full confidence,
without which you can't really do the job.
(narrator) With two cabinet resignations in as many weeks,
Mrs Thatcher's authority was now in question.
That tactics of it all became very confused,
but what did not become confused was the prime minister's loss of authority.
Whatever the truth about this letter or that, or this publication,
what was quite clear is that, amazingly, the Iron Lady had lost control.
She knew that if things had turned very badly against her,
and if she was not able to carry her own party and her own backbenchers with her,
then there was a real risk that she was not going to be prime minister any more.
So that was the first really serious wobble.
(narrator) if ministers thought Mrs Thatcher would learn from the experience,
they were wrong.
Towards the end, she became more presidential.
She began to believe her own propaganda, began to fly by the seat of her pants,
and her intuition was no longer as sound as it had been when she started.
It did become irritating towards the end.
(narrator) Heseltine's resignation was clearly a dangerous moment for Mrs Thatcher,
but one she survived.
Indeed, in the following year, she was re-elected for a third term.
The campaign, though, was not the happiest.
In Central Office itself, in Smith Square,
there were these extremely serious disagreements,
particularly after one quite early bad poll.
What happened was, she brought in a son of rival campaign operation.
So you had Lord Tebbit's campaign,
but you had another select group that she picked to run almost a rival campaign.
And there was terrible friction.
She should've saved our money.
We could all have gone on three weeks' holiday and we'd have had a perfectly...
The public could see that Thatcherism was working.
It is wonderful to be entrusted with the government of this country,
this great country, once again.
And I want to say this to you:
the greater the trust, the greater the duty upon us to be worthy of that trust.
And we will indeed endeavour to serve the people of these islands in the future
as we have in the past.
(narrator) Eight years into her premiership, and Mrs Thatcher looked invincible.
It was said she was becoming increasingly intolerant of those who disagreed with her
and less and less willing to listen,
particularly to the pro-European lobby within the Tory Party.
(Clarke) It became an increasing problem in the cabinet.
I was in the cabinet by the late 1980s.
And I was in the cabinet when we were doing the Single European Act.
As time went on, we were picking up the fact she was getting more scratchy about Europe,
and various European issues began to come up.
I didn't realise, because the three of them were so discreet about it,
that she, Geoffrey and Nigel were falling out so badly over monetary policy, really -
the ERM, whether or not we were gonna join the ERM,
whether or not we were engaging
in what became the construction of the single currency.
Margaret had a blind spot on that.
(narrator) In Brussels, the talk was all of economic and monetary union.
There was even discussion of a European social charter.
Mrs Thatcher was less than impressed,
and in a speech to the College of Europe in Bruges in September 1988,
she set out her views of what the European Community should be and what it should not.
Europe will be stronger precisely because it has France as France,
Spain as Spain, Britain as Britain,
each with its own customs, traditions and identity.
It would be folly to try to fit them into some sort of identikit European personality.
We have not successfully rolled back the frontiers of the state in Britain
only to see them reimposed at a European level,
with a European superstate exercising a new dominance from Brussels.
Mum; mam
and the pro-Europeans in the party started to despair.
It's certainly not fair to describe it as an anti-European speech.
It was a revisionist European speech -
it was trying to move away from trends in European development which she didn't like.
She had not carried her senior ministers with her and her relations with them were poor,
and so were her relations with Jacques Delors and various other people - Helmut Kohl -
and so she was sort of in an antagonistic position.
(narrator) Thatcher, though, knew the mood among Tory supporters,
as was evidenced by the ecstatic welcome
she received at the party conference the following month.
One interesting thing about Mrs Thatcher's position on Europe
was that it was always quite popular,
except, and this turned out to be fatal, with her senior colleagues.
(narrator) Divisions within the cabinet were growing stronger.
By 1989, the relationship between Geoffrey Howe and Mrs Thatcher had broken down.
Their political marriage was heading towards a messy divorce.
In July '89, Mrs Thatcher reshuffled her cabinet
and dropped Howe as foreign secretary.
He was made Leader of the House and given the title "deputy prime minister".
It remains to be seen how much damage has been done to government.
Mrs Thatcher may have created enemies very close to her.
It may be that, in the run-up to the election, she'll have reason to regret that.
Geoffrey Howe began to irritate the prime minister
by the way, the slow measured way, in which he liked to argue a case,
and by his unwillingness to sort of leap quickly to fresh conclusions.
And she didn't realise, she genuinely didn't realise,
how much... how badly she was reacting to this, how it showed,
and how much of fence he was taking.
He was very badly treated in cabinet and outside.
(narrator) Three months later, and a disgruntled chancellor was about to resign.
Nigel' Lawson walked out in protest at being upstaged, second-guessed
and, as he perceived it, attacked by Mrs Thatcher's economics adviser, Alan Waiters.
The issue was Europe, the Exchange Rate Mechanism
and economic and monetary union.
(man) This is the man who Mr Lawson felt he couldn't work alongside.
Sir Alan Waiters, seen here at his home in Washington,
was refusing to comment to ITN.
(man #2) You appreciate there's a substantial row going on, do you?
(Waiters) I'm saying nothing.
- Have you changed your mind at all? - No.
The biggest row of all really was about whether or not we join the ERM.
Nigel Lawson had been converted to the idea that we should
and had been defeated, first of all, in a meeting in November 1985,
but it continued as a running sore.
Walters, very keen not to join the ERM, always backing up Mrs Thatcher on this,
Lawson pushing.
So, gradually, you had the development of a separate policy,
in which the chancellor does one thing and the prime minister argues for the other.
So it was heading for the rocks.
(narrator) John Major, who'd replaced Geoffrey Howe as foreign secretary,
and who'd only been in the job three months, was now made chancellor.
I think Mrs Thatcher chose Major partly for good reasons -
that he was a rising star and he was able
and he had that ability to get on with all sorts of people.
He was an emollient figure.
She also believed him to be a loyal part of her project,
which was not really the case.
I don't think he ever was a Thatcherite, but he's a good flatterer
and she believed that he was.
I think she found it easier to deal with people who were really the next generation down
than the people she'd been with all the time.
(narrator) Next came the first challenge 10 Thatcher's leadership.
In December, backbencher and lifelong European, Sir Anthony Meyer,
launched his campaign to topple the leader.
Nobody else joined in and Mrs Thatcher won an easy victory,
but it was another sign that there was a growing movement for change.
I'd like to say how very pleased I am with this result and how very pleased I am
to have the ovenrvhelming support of my colleagues in the House
and of people from the party in the country.
Nobody thought Anthony Meyer could be prime minister, least of all himself.
He knew perfectly well it was not his temperament, not his style.
He couldn't have done it.
Butjust to put down a marker, in the hope her power would be checked and controlled...
It paved the way to her, in the end, being deposed.
But at the time, I think all these people were doing was making themselves feel better
by registering their severe discontent and concern.
(narrator) If Euro enthusiasts were dejected,
others were alarmed by Mrs Thatcher's intransigence
over a new community charge dubbed the "pol! tax".
It was intended to replace the old rating system
and was set for full implementation by April 1990.
The plans attracted widespread criticism and provoked public unrest.
mama? mm
and more difficult to collect than the rates.
But not even rioting could stop the charge being introduced.
Nothing but nothing warrants this.
The place to discuss these matters is Parliament.
These people... are totally against democracy.
She couldn't understand the opposition to the poll tax.
She felt very strongly by then
that if people were made to pay their actual share, as it were,
of the costs of local government and they didn't like it,
then the democratic process would work
and that they would then go and turf out their local councils.
But local government is not like national government -
partly because of the low turnout in local elections, for a start.
People are not quite that politically activated or minded.
What she didn't realise is people would look at it and say it was an unfair tax.
(narrator) By autumn 1990,
Labour was averaging a lead of 13 points in the opinion poll's.
The mood at the Tories' annual conference was subdued.
In an attempt to try and lift their spirits,
Mrs Thatcher used an attack on the Liberal Democrats to tell a joke.
(woman) As for the Liberal' Democrats, they were as dead as "Monty Python "'s parrot.
It is not merely stunned, it has ceased to be, expired and gone to meet its maker.
(Brunson) She was trying to make the point that the Liberals were a spent force.
I'm told that when she went through the first rehearsal,
apparently she looked up and said:
"Is this meant to be funny?"?
And they said, "Yes, Prime Minister. It's based on Monty Python."
She said, "Really? I mean, will people laugh?"
They said, "They really will." "Oh, well, I... I must..."
And she tried it once again and, apparently, she herself never really got the point.
(narrator) The joke backfired.
Tory MP Sir Ian Gow had been murdered earlier in the summer
and a by-efection was subsequently held to elect his replacement.
On 19 October, the people of Eastboume delivered a blow to the Tories
by voting in a Lib-Dem with a dramatic swing of 20%.
It'll be a moment that people will remember.
It'll be a moment when they remember the hopes so many voted for at the last election
for a decent alternative to the Tories and Labour Party come alive again.
(narrator) So the stage was set.
The divisions within the party over the community charge and Europe,
plus bad poll ratings and rising inflation,
were all fanning the flames of discontent.
A potential challenger, Michael Heseltine, was waiting in the wings.
Now all that was needed was a trigger,
and it came from the most mild-mannered member of Thatcher's cabinet.
Geoffrey Howe had accepted his dismissal from the foreign office,
but he finally fell out with Mrs Thatcher over the European single currency.
At the end of October, while Mrs Thatcher was at a summit in Rome,
Geoffrey Howe went on television and suggested the govemmem
was not against the principle of a single currency.
Mrs Thatcher was furious.
She'd formed this view of Geoffrey,
not when he was in the treasury, but when he got to the foreign office.
From that moment on, she behaved, I think,
in a totally hectoring and disgraceful kind of bullying manner to him.
And he put up with it for six or seven years, but eventually that was it.
(narrator) When Thatcher rebutted Howe's remarks in the Commons
and further rejected Jacques Defors' plan for Europe with a vigorous “No, no, no”,
Geoffrey Howe felt he had no option but to resign.
(man) Geoffrey, I'm told, remohstrated with Thatcher over her tone on Europe.
She went for him in no uncertain terms.
Six hours later, he decided he'd had enough of that sort of treatment and resigned.
The fact that Margaret and I had moved so far apart from each other
on central questions of policy - foreign policy, European policy...
As I said in my resignation speech,
that involved a conflict of loyalty.
I had been loyal to Margaret, and we'd been loyal to each other for 15 years - 15, 16 years.
That was a very strong feature in my mind, obviously.
On the other hand, I'd been strongly in favour
of a strong British position in Europe for a very long time indeed.
I felt that the way we were going was threatening to destroy that British interest.
That was the key feature.
But we'd also drifted apart in terms of the partnership
which had worked so well for so many years.
The magic had gone out of the relationship.
I've often said people should concentrate on our long marriage, not on our divorce.
(narrator) In the first weekend of November,
there was a renewed bout of leadership contest fever.
Sensing the mood and applying Tory Pany rules,
Thatcher cleared the way for a leadership challenge,
setting a date of 15 November for the close of nominations
and 20 November for the first ballot.
Initially, there was no firm challenge, only an atrocious by-election result.
(woman) Labour's victory in Bradford was never in question,
but the scale of it has further undermined Tory morale.
Despite the Conservative attempts to put a brave face on it,
it was the third-largest fall in the Tory vote in a by-election since Thatcher came to power.
(narrator) Geoffrey Howe had also made il clear he would be making a speech
setting out the reasons for his resignation.
This came in response to Mrs Thatcher's speech after the State Opening of Parfiameht,
in which she insisted there were no significant differences between ihem on European policy.
On 12 November, the prime minister addressed the Lord Mayor's Banquet.
In it, she started comparing herself 10 a cricketer facing hostile bowling.
But she said:
There will be no ducking the bouncers, no stonewalling, no playing for time.
The bowling's going to get hit all round the ground.
Mm my Wm“
(narrator) The metaphor proved a mistake, as the next day Geoffrey Howe
picked up her sporting references with devastating effect.
(man) It is rather like sending your opening batsman to the crease
only for them to find, the moment the first balls are bowled,
that their bats have been broken before the game by the team captain."
(narrator) Then he delivered the killer blow.
(man) The time has come for others to consider
their own response 10 the tragic conflict of loyalties
with which I have myself wrestled for perhaps 10o long."
I decided that if one's going to resign at all
then, as people advised me,
one needs to make it clear people understand why one is resigning.
And to make a speech in those circumstances which didn't get that across
was a damp squib, I suppose.
It would not have been a sensible thing to do.
It had to make an impact, and I spelt it out as clearly as I could,
but as candidly and as sadly as I could.
That's why I ended up by saying I'd wrestled for so long with this conflict of loyalty.
Some of us had tried to warn her, but she hadn't hoisted it in.
She was genuinely surprised and shocked that someone who had been such a good ally
had suddenly, as she saw it, turned against her.
(narrator) The next day, Heseltine announced he'd stand for the leadership.
Thatcher was immediately nominated by Hurcl and seconded by Major.
The campaign was under way.
We've got to rethink the community charge.
Michael has promised that.
The other good thing about Michael is that his track record in my constituency,
in Tavistock where he was a member of Parliament,
shows that his keynote quality is that he listens.
The challenge was a perfectly legitimate one, but it aroused in her mind great irritation.
And certainly it was a... it came as a shock.
And in the final days,
she had to decide whether to go and sign a European treaty in Paris -
not an EU treaty, but a big one with the Americans and others.
And people advised her to stay and canvass in the tea room.
In those days, the leadership was entirely a matter for Members of Parliament.
But I thought, as foreign secretary, she ought to do her job as prime minister
and that it would be a sign of weakness, and interpreted as weakness,
if she didn't go to Paris.
(man) Mrs Thatcher and those close to her believe they'll win in the first ballot.
I most earnestly believe that I shall be in 10 Downing Street at the end of this week...
and a little bit longer than that.
(narrator) On the following clay, Tuesday 20 November,
the result of the first ballot was phoned through to the British Embassy in Paris.
Mrs Thatcher had won, but her majority was not big enough.
There would be a second ballot.
My own view was that this was a prime minister
who'd done absolutely necessary things for the country,
and that she ought only to be overthrown either in a general election
or by a vote in the House of Commons.
I didn't think, particularly when I moved among foreigners
that night in Versailles at the great French dinner,
when I listened to people like Kohl, listened to people who knew Margaret well...
Most of them carried scars that she'd inflicted on them,
but nevertheless, they had a huge respect for her?
And couldn't understand how it was possible in the British system
for a prime minister with a majority in the House of Commons
to be overthrown from within her own party.
Listening to them and thinking about it, I came to the conclusion it wasn't right either.
So that's why I went on supporting her right through.
(narrator) In London the next day, Thatcher made it clear she was not about to quit.
I fight on. I fight to win.
(man) “I fight on. I fight to win.“
(narrator) On returning to Downing Street, she had a stream of visitors,
including, one at a time, most of the cabinet.
All ministers promised support, but many expressed the view that she couldn't win.
Kenneth Clarke, education secretary, was more blunt.
He advised her to step down.
I think the reason I was the first cabinet minister to be called in
was because of a conversation I'd had with, I think, John Wakeham earlier in the day.
I'd been rung up and asked if I would take over the leadership of her campaign
for the second ballot.
And I reacted to that angrily, along the lines of, "What campaign?"?
"Why isn't anybody pointing out to her that she has lost and should step down?"?
"I'm not gonna vote for her in the second round, let alone campaign for her."?
I'd obviously bitten the head off one of my friends on the phone,
so she'd obviously been advised that I was in some truculent mood
and she'd better see me first to help handle the others, and she failed to persuade me.
(narrator) It was a long night, and despite pledges of support
and even promises to campaign for her, the overall' message was that she couldn't win.
At the next day's cabinet meeting on 22 November,
Mrs Thatcher announced her resignation as leader of the party and as prime minister.
This is a...
This is a typically brave and selfless decision by the prime minister.
Once again, Margaret Thatcher
has put her country's and party's interests before personal considerations.
This will allow the party to elect a new leader who will unite the party
and build upon her immense successes.
(narrator) That afternoon, Mrs Thatcher made her last speech.
It was a bravura performance.
She said to the audience:
"I'm enjoying this. I'm enjoying this."
And she was absolutely at her peak.
(narrator) The field was open for others to enter the race.
Michael Heseltine was joined by Douglas Hurd and John Major in the battle for leadership.
The prime minister announced a very sad decision this morning.
I believe the overriding need now is for the Conservative Party to find a leader?
Who can unite it in handling present problems
and in winning the next general election.
(narrator) Mrs Thatcher backed Major.
Many years later, I was sitting next to Margaret Thatcher at a dinner for Ted Heath.
She made a nice speech about Ted and said to me privately afterwards:
"I learned an awful lot from Ted Heath." And we went on to that a bit.
She said, "The real problem for the party is there", and indicated John Major,
who was sitting a few places behind.
And I said, "Margaret, you say that, but why then did you tell everyone to vote for him?"?
And she lowered her voice, forgetting entirely my role in this in 1990,
and said, "I'll say to you something that I wouldn't tell everybody."?
"He was the best of a very poor bunch," she said.
(narrator) John Major was elected to the leadership.
Mrs Thatcher left Downing Street for the last time on 28th November 1990.
Ladies and gentlemen, we're leaving Downing Street for the last time
after 11 and a half wonderful years.
And we're happy that we leave the United Kingdom
in a very, very much better state
than when we came here 11 and a half years ago.
(man) But then the Iron Lady's composure almost broke.
Watch her face as she reaches her car.
She recovered quickly for one last wave.
Friends say that she is deeply shocked by the seeming injustice of it all'.
Three election victories and a clear, though insufficient, majority in the first ballot,
rewarded, as she sees it, with the sack.
(narrator) On arriving at her home in Dulwich,
Mrs Thatcher bravely declared she'd be back at work the next day.
We shall be in Parliament tomorrow.
I went across to the House today to establish my office,
to get everything running smoothly.
(man) “We've always worked“, Mrs Thatcher added.
“It's the only thing we know.“
(narrator) Seven months after she left office, in an interview with lTN's Michael Brunson,
Mrs Thatcher would recall her last days as prime minister.
Could I just, first of all, ask you to recall
what must've been a very difficult meeting of the cabinet?
Yes, of course it was. Of course it was.
You don't take a decision like that without it being difficult,
without heartbreak.
Heartbreak there may have been, but it was the right decision.
But you had to get through it. Bernard lngham said it was a traumatic experience.
- Those are his words. - Yes, it was.
And it would've been very strange if it hadn't been.
- But we got through it. - You broke down.
- We got through the House. - You broke down during that cabinet.
Yes, but I carried on.
And then the House...
By that time, I was back fighting fit... as you saw.
Just before that, though, the image that people will perhaps remember...
You said the cabinet was extremely difficult,
then you had to come into Downing Street and you had to face the cameras.
- In effect, you had to face the world. - Mm-hm.
You had to come and make what was perhaps the statement of your life.
And then I see that... we notice now that it's affecting you now and it must've been...
Yes, it's not affecting my voice. It's not affecting my voice.
You're thinking back to traumatic things.
But I managed to get through them.
I managed to get through the television, I managed to get through the cabinet,
again, because there was something else to do.
I had to get on to people.
I must say this - both Douglas Hurd and John Major said:
"if you wish to go on, we will propose you and second you again."
And that was marvellous. That was marvellous.
And then, one had to get through cabinet,
and one or two people wanted to leave because they too
wanted to make provision for their own... for their own candidature.
Quite right. Quite right.
By that time, I had other things to do, and so I got on with them.
I think she always simply saw it as betrayal.
She used the phrase quite openly many, many times,
about the way she'd been betrayed, she'd been stabbed in the back.
There were these people who she thought she could rely on,
and when it came to it, they wouldn't stand by her.
Of course, that was rewriting history
because what she was having to deal with was political reality.
It wasn't a case of stabbing her in the back.
It was a case of people coming in - notably, of course, Kenneth Clarke -
who were prepared to be blunt with her?
And to say that, no, they would not be able to support her?
If she continued in the way that she did.
(narrator) The Iron Lady was defeated.
By all parliamentary standards, this had been a brutal' way to oust a sitting prime minister.
After 11 years and 6 months,
Mrs Thatcher was consigned to the backbenches
to sit among the very people who had brought about her downfall'.
The Thatcher years were finally over,
and no one could quite believe it.
In the next programme, Margaret Thatcher's legacy -
from her impact on domestic policy to her role on the world stage
and her influence over the future of politics in Britain.
(man) You can order “Margaret Thatcher, A Tribute In Words And Pictures"
for the special half-price fee of £10.
Call Telegraph Books on 08701557222,
or order online at www.books. telegraph. co. uk