In July 1971 I put proposals to the Home and Social Affairs Committee of the Cabinet (HS) for reform. I proposed that in future the union subscription should not be included in the fees payable to colleges and universities. The student maintenance grant would be increased slightly to enable students to join particular clubs or societies on a voluntary basis. Responsibility for providing student union facilities would then be placed on each academic institution. The facilities of each union would be open to all students, whether or not they were members of the union. Besides dealing with the question of accountability for public money, these changes would also abolish the closed-shop element in student unions which I found deeply objectionable on grounds of principle. HS was not prepared to go along with my proposals immediately, but I came back to the argument, fully recognizing how controversial they would be, and gained the Committee’s approval.
Bill Van Straubenzee was the minister directly responsible for dealing with consultations on the proposals. But I was the one immediately marked down as the hate-figure to be targeted for them. In early November in Leeds, where I was laying a stone to mark the construction of new buildings, about 500 students tried to shout me down. Later that month 2,000 screaming students tried to prevent my presenting the designation document of the South Bank Polytechnic at the Queen Elizabeth Hall. A dozen mounted police had to protect my car. In December the student protesters found time from their studies to organize a nationwide day of protest. My effigy was burnt at various universities.
By now many of the Vice-Chancellors and college authorities were giving tacit approval to the protests. Edward Boyle even addressed a mass meeting of students at Leeds to declare his opposition to my proposals. Since these had only been put out for consultation it was perfectly possible to allow tempers to cool and to delay action, which I did. The main problem was that until university authorities themselves were prepared to uphold the values of a university and exert some authority, no proposal for reform was likely to succeed. This was also the time when freedom of speech began to be denied by groups of students, who were then indulged by nervous university authorities. University intolerance was at its most violent in the early seventies. But, less visible and more institutionalized, the same censorship continues today.
Nineteen seventy-one had been a crucial year for the Government and for me personally. The pressures which mounted were all the more intolerable because they were cumulative. As I shall describe, the Government’s self-confidence broke in early 1972. Somehow, although under greater strain than at any time before or since, my own held.
But a number of commentators, with varying mixtures of relish and regret, thought that I was done for. On my return after the Christmas holiday at Lamberhurst, I was able to read my fate openly discussed in the newspapers. One described me as ‘The Lady Nobody Loves’. Another published a thoughtful article entitled ‘Why Mrs Thatcher is so Unpopular’. But I pushed the stuff aside and concentrated on my red boxes.
In fact, it was not long before the tide – for me personally, though not for the Government – began to turn. The far more serious issues of 1972 were now upon us – the miners’ strike and the various elements of the U-turn – and these dwarfed the personal campaign against me. And, of course, I was evidently not going to buckle or depart – at least voluntarily. But I owe a debt of gratitude to Ted Heath as well.
Ted asked me and my officials down to Chequers on Wednesday 12 January to have a general discussion about education. I took with me an aide-mémoire summing up the situation and looking ahead. In spite of all the difficulties, there was only one pre-election commitment which still remained to be implemented: the expansion of nursery education. More money was needed if something substantial was to be achieved. The other area was secondary school organization. There the problem was, as I put it, ‘many of our own local councils are running with the comprehensive tide. The question is what sort of balance should be struck between defending existing grammar schools and leaving local education authorities free to make their own decisions?’ We discussed both these points at Chequers. Ted was keen on nursery education; he had been pressing for action on student unions; and he very reasonably asked whether we could not use educational arguments in justifying our policy on selection, rather than just resting on the arguments about local authority autonomy.
From my point of view, however, at least as important as the discussion was the fact that by inviting me down with my officials Ted implied that there was no intention to move me from Education in the foreseeable future. This was a vital reinforcement for my authority. Ted went on a few days later in the House to list my achievements. Why did he give me such strong support? Some felt that he needed a woman in the Cabinet and it was difficult to find a credible alternative candidate. But I like to think that it also showed Ted’s character at its admirable best. He knew that the policies for which I had been so roundly attacked were essentially policies which I had reluctantly accepted under pressure from the Treasury and the requirements of public finance. He also knew that I had not tried to shift the blame onto others. However unreliable his adherence to particular policies, he always stood by people who did their best for him and his Government. This was one of the better reasons why his Cabinet reciprocated by remaining united behind him.
From the spring of 1972 the chilly political climate in which I had been living began noticeably to thaw.
It was, however, the Education White Paper, published in December 1972, which restored the fortunes of our education policy. The decision to publish it stemmed from discussions of the three Programme Analysis and Review (PAR) Reports which we had prepared in the department.*Education: A Framework for Advance was the original suggested title but, in a change which appears in retrospect to be all too typical of these over-ambitious, high-spending years, this became Education: A Framework for Expansion. The White Paper set out a ten-year plan for higher spending and better provision.
The White Paper received a disconcertingly rapturous reception. The Daily Telegraph, although making some criticisms about the lack of proposals for student loans or vouchers, said that the White Paper established me ‘as one of our most distinguished reforming – and spending – Ministers of Education’. The Daily Mail described it as a ‘Quiet Revolution’ and commented, ‘there has been nothing like it since the war’. More unsettling was the Guardian’s praise for a ‘progressive programme’ and the comment – I hoped tongue in cheek – that ‘apart from not mandatorily ending 11-Plus segregation, Mrs Thatcher is more than halfway towards a respectably socialist education policy’.
With the exception of some vigorous exchanges with Labour’s new and highly articulate Education spokesman, Roy Hattersley, about the rate of increase of education expenditure, the early months of 1973 were as near as any at the DES to being quiet. But the consequences of the Government’s fiscal and monetary policies were shortly to catch up with us. The first instalment was in May – a round of public expenditure cuts designed to cool the overheated economy. Capital spending in education, particularly the less politically sensitive area of higher education, was an obvious target. The reduction in the DES budget for 1974/75 was £182 million – out of £1,200 million total cuts in public spending. But I did manage for the time being to salvage the nursery school programme and also building programmes for special schools.
By now, however, my mind was fast focusing on the cataclysmic events overtaking the Government. It was not long before I would have to mount my soapbox and defend the policies I had pursued in my years at Education. I found no difficulty in doing so, for on almost every front the record was one of advance. And if the measures by which ‘advance’ at this time was assessed – resources committed rather than results achieved – are accepted, it was also a record of genuine improvement. Nearly 2,000 out-of-date primary schools