A buffoon? No, Denis was her £90bn secret weapon: How he helped Margaret pull off Britain's greatest ever arms deal... and stopped their 'idiot son' Mark from cashing in on it
By Jonathan Aitken|
Revelation: Jonathan Aitken had an inside perspective on the Saudi arms negotiations
Denis Thatcher had enjoyed more than a few ‘snifters’ and was in the mood to speak his mind to ‘the boss’.
He’d been having a long, boozy lunch at his club in St James’s Square with an old friend and fellow rugby enthusiast, Dick Evans, managing director of British Aerospace, and it was 5.30 pm before they got back to Downing Street.
Dick Evans told me how they went into No. 10 by the back entrance and up to the Thatchers’ private flat, where Denis poured a large whisky.
A few minutes later, the Prime Minister came in.
‘Have you done it?’ an unusually aggressive Denis demanded.
There was no clear reply, so the question was repeated at louder volume.
‘What are you talking about, dear?’ asked Margaret Thatcher. Denis grew angry at her dissimulation.
‘You know perfectly well what I’m talking about,’ he shouted. ‘Have — you — done — it?’ Each word was accompanied by a bang of his fist on the table.
Eventually she replied: ‘No, I haven’t.’
Denis was even more furious. ‘I knew you weren’t going to. When you agreed at breakfast this morning, I just knew you wouldn’t. So why the hell didn’t you?’
‘Denis,’ she replied, ‘there is a limit to the number of enemies we can afford to make.’ Amid further noises of protest from her spouse, she turned to Evans to explain.
‘At breakfast this morning, he persuaded me to fire Nigel Lawson — and I haven’t done it.’ It was a telling encounter.
Mrs Thatcher was seriously at loggerheads with her Chancellor of the Exchequer over his policy of intervening in the foreign exchange markets so that sterling could shadow the Deutschmark.
Husband and ally: Denis Thatcher was pivotal in the Saudi arms deal
But, over-cautious for once, she put off sacking him — and had to endure another 18 months of an increasingly toxic relationship which, if she had followed her husband’s advice, she would have avoided.
Denis was always the realistic one, with a wicked sense of humour to boot. For their wedding, it was he who chose the hymn ‘Lead us, heavenly Father, lead us/ O’er the world’s tempestuous sea’ — highly appropriate for the marriage that lay ahead.
But he had the ability like no other to calm her down when she went over the top. During a particularly vicious row about the Falklands over lunch with her Foreign Secretary, Lord Carrington, it was Denis who cooled the temperature by telling her: ‘I think you’re being a little extravagant, my dear.’
During the actual war, he was the one at her side in the darkest moments. His Army experience in World War II, combined with a husband’s love, provided unseen dimensions of strength during sleepless nights in the Downing Street flat as she waited for news.
Casualties were her biggest fear, and she broke down in floods of tears when the first Royal Navy ship was lost, sobbing that the sailors drowned in the South Atlantic were the same age as their 22-year-old son, Mark.
Flattery: Mrs Thatcher was able to charm King Fahd Bin Abdul into favouring Britain to fulfil their arms needs
The ever-grounded Denis grew tetchy at his wife’s overwrought reactions.
‘What are you making all this fuss for?’ he asked. ‘When there’s a war on, you’ve got to expect things not to go right all the time.’
On another night of bad news, he woke up to find his wife sitting on the end of the bed sobbing: ‘Oh no, oh no! Another ship! All my young men!’
He sat down beside her and said: ‘That’s what war’s like, love. I’ve been in one. I know.’
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'MILK SNATCHER' LABEL LEFT HER SHAKEN TO THE CORE
Mrs Thatcher never threw off the jibe of being the ‘Milk Snatcher’.
At her funeral, it was still being tossed contemptuously at her memory, 40 years after it was first coined.
The fact that it was never justified was ignored by her enemies.
The whole row about free milk and schoolchildren in 1971 when she was Education Secretary was artificial in its political substance.
Labour had withdrawn free milk from secondary schools two years before with no fuss and no ill effects on the health of Britain’s children.
It was only logical to extend that to primary schools, where many of the archaic one-third-of-a-pint glass milk bottles went unopened anyway because children’s tastes had changed since the scheme was introduced in the Forties.
As Mrs Thatcher argued, free milk was no longer a priority or a need.
But all hell descended on her head, with the ‘Milk Snatcher’ jibe launched by a floor speaker at the Labour party conference turning into the most pejorative and personalised campaign against her.
The Sun voted her ‘The most unpopular woman in Britain’, and asked readers: ‘Is Mrs Thatcher human?’
In the House of Commons, Labour MPs described her as ‘mean and vicious’, ‘Mrs Scrooge with the painted face’ and ‘a reactionary cavewoman’. Gerald Kaufman likened her to Attila the Hun.
These exaggerations were mild compared to the offensive and obscene taunts I heard as an observer in the public gallery. ‘Ditch the bitch!’ was one of many insults from the Labour benches, along with repeated ‘Snatcher’ chants.
Margaret was unnerved by the abuse. One senior civil servant recalled her ‘shaken to the core’ and ‘temporarily unhorsed’.
The most hurtful aspect was the venom directed against her as a wife and mother, caricatured as a wicked witch who snatched milk bottles from the lips of young, thirsty innocents.
It was unmerited but it had a devastating impact on Thatcher’s reputation that never went away.
At her funeral, it was still being tossed contemptuously at her memory, 40 years after it was first coined.
The fact that it was never justified was ignored by her enemies.
The whole row about free milk and schoolchildren in 1971 when she was Education Secretary was artificial in its political substance.
Labour had withdrawn free milk from secondary schools two years before with no fuss and no ill effects on the health of Britain’s children.
It was only logical to extend that to primary schools, where many of the archaic one-third-of-a-pint glass milk bottles went unopened anyway because children’s tastes had changed since the scheme was introduced in the Forties.
As Mrs Thatcher argued, free milk was no longer a priority or a need.
But all hell descended on her head, with the ‘Milk Snatcher’ jibe launched by a floor speaker at the Labour party conference turning into the most pejorative and personalised campaign against her.
The Sun voted her ‘The most unpopular woman in Britain’, and asked readers: ‘Is Mrs Thatcher human?’
In the House of Commons, Labour MPs described her as ‘mean and vicious’, ‘Mrs Scrooge with the painted face’ and ‘a reactionary cavewoman’. Gerald Kaufman likened her to Attila the Hun.
These exaggerations were mild compared to the offensive and obscene taunts I heard as an observer in the public gallery. ‘Ditch the bitch!’ was one of many insults from the Labour benches, along with repeated ‘Snatcher’ chants.
Margaret was unnerved by the abuse. One senior civil servant recalled her ‘shaken to the core’ and ‘temporarily unhorsed’.
The most hurtful aspect was the venom directed against her as a wife and mother, caricatured as a wicked witch who snatched milk bottles from the lips of young, thirsty innocents.
It was unmerited but it had a devastating impact on Thatcher’s reputation that never went away.
He also knew her foibles and how to deal with them. When the war was won and she visited the islands in the South Atlantic, bustling around in her usual bossy fashion making everyone exhausted, he restrained her from inspecting some discarded boxes of ammunition.
‘For God’s sake, woman, don’t get out and count them!’ he called out in exasperation.
It was Denis, too, who had the instincts she did not. After her third general election victory, as his wife acknowledged the cheers of well-wishers outside Downing Street, he turned to their daughter, Carol, and said presciently: ‘In a year she’ll be so unpopular you won’t believe it.’
If she had retired after ten years in office, as he had urged her to do, she would have departed to a level of public acclaim unequalled by any other previous occupant of No. 10.
As it was, she ignored him, determined to remain at the helm, and finally left in bitterness and rancour.
During her premiership, Denis played a previously undisclosed role in securing a vital business contract for Britain to supply military aircraft to Saudi Arabia.
It was the largest export contract in the history of Britain, worth £5.2 billion at the time it was signed in 1986, and growing in value to more than £90 billion during the next two decades.
The deal for 72 Tornados, 30 Hawk and 30 PC9 trainers ensured the survival of British Aerospace and many other companies, creating at least 50,000 new jobs.
It inflicted a painful defeat on the French, who thought they had won the contract, and was a game-changer in terms of increasing Britain’s political influence across the Middle East.
It was Margaret Thatcher who struck the deal, deploying some of the most original, unorthodox and secretive aspects of her personality in her dealings with the Saudi royal family.
Intriguingly, she did not mention the project in her memoirs, though it was one of her greatest achievements. I can reveal what happened.
It began with tensions between the two most powerful men in Saudi Arabia — Defence Minister Prince Sultan and his elder brother, King Fahd.
Prince Sultan was strongly pro-French and favoured the French firm Dassault to build more than 100 new Mirage aircraft for the Saudi air force. Indeed, a letter of intent had been signed, and word came back to Downing Street from Saudi that the deal had been lost.
But Margaret Thatcher was not prepared to accept this. There was an historic link with the Saudis, she insisted. ‘We trained their pilots. We taught them English. We built a close relationship with them. I will not accept that we should be kicked out by the French! This contract is vital to our aerospace industry — we must fight back.’
Taking the advice of Wafic Saïd, a well-connected Saudi businessman, she made contact with the defence minister’s son, Prince Bandar, who was the Saudi ambassador in Washington and was staunchly pro-British, having trained as a pilot at RAF Cranwell.
He was also a great admirer of Mrs Thatcher in the aftermath of her Falklands victory.
At their first meeting, the handsome and well-informed Prince Bandar was immediately recognised by Thatcher as ‘one of us’.
He became an immediate and enthusiastic collaborator with her to win back the huge aircraft order from the French.
One of the few insiders who knew and understood the tensions between his father and King Fahd on defence issues, Bandar guided Mrs Thatcher in the king’s direction.
Muscling in: Denis Thatcher was locked in a struggle to keep his son Mark, right, out of the deal
King Fahd was flattered.
These contacts were all unofficial and secret because that was the way the conspiratorial Saudi king wanted it, so Mrs Thatcher created a uniquely secure back-channel to him: Denis.
His invisible hand nurtured, facilitated and watered the Al Yamamah (Arabic for ‘dove’) deal.
He became a pivotal player for four reasons. His wife wanted him to do it. His business acumen enabled him to understand the magnitude of the opportunity and its complexities.
His patriotism caused him to love the idea of beating the French or, as he called it, ‘stuffing the Frogs’.
And he had a crucial rapport with the key executive at British Aerospace, Dick Evans, who acted as the link man to Bandar.
Prescient: Denis predicted the unpopularity that would surround Mrs Thatcher's downfall
Evans recalled having ‘completely open access to No. 10 through Denis, who was bloody marvellous. I would ring him up to say that I had a message from Bandar, and could I come round?
‘I’d have a drink with him in the flat until the Prime Minister came up from her study and I’d give her the message, and often take one back.’
These messages were partly about the positioning of the British bid for the contract but, more importantly, inside information about what King Fahd was thinking.
There were also at least six unrecorded private meetings between Prince Bandar and the Prime Minister, including one in Salzburg when she interrupted her holiday in Switzerland to see him.
Well guided by Bandar, Margaret Thatcher played the Saudi king brilliantly.
She recognised that the battle for the deal was not really about aircraft specifications or prices, but convincing him that Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher of Britain would be a more reliable long-term ally than President François Mitterrand of France.
Slowly the deal was moving Britain’s way, and King Fahd suggested to Bandar that it might be clinched if he and Mrs Thatcher met.
Bandar called Dick Evans, who in turn called Denis, and it was arranged for Mrs Thatcher, who was flying back from the Far East, to stop off at Riyadh for her plane to re-fuel.
Over dinner, she won King Fahd’s political heart with the forthrightness and power of her personality. It also helped that he thought her a beautiful and charming woman.
Around midnight, the king quietly said the momentous words: ‘Prime Minister, the deal is yours.’
For the next six months, before the deal went public, there were intense negotiations to solve some major problems. These included the knotty issue of how to handle Mark Thatcher.
This worried Denis more than anything. He knew better than anyone that ‘the boy Mark’, as he called his son, was a loose cannon.
Self-promoting his skills as a wheeler-dealer of influence in the Arab world, Mark had caused earlier embarrassment to his mother by inserting himself as a consultant in a construction contract in Oman.
Thatcher's mother graphic
Critical press coverage made unfounded suggestions of impropriety. The last thing the Al Yamamah deal needed was similar bad headlines.
Yet there was a real danger of this because, having got wind of the magnitude of the contract under negotiation, Mark was offering his services to some of the key players.
What those services could be was a mystery. ‘Access and influence’ were unnecessary because his mother was already totally committed to the deal for reasons of national interest.
On the other side, Denis was already providing ample access for British Aerospace and facilitating back-channel messages from Prince Bandar to the PM.
But still Mark persisted in trying to climb on-board. ‘He was a complete distraction,’ recalls Dick Evans. ‘He brought nothing that could be helpful or useful. He simply wasn’t needed.
‘But his efforts to be involved really worried Denis, who was fiercely protective of Margaret. It was hard work containing Mark, and Denis was exceedingly bloody angry with him.
‘I remember one moment of madness in the flat at No.10 when Mark rang me and said he was in a hotel in Europe standing on the balcony and that he would jump off if he wasn’t allowed in on the deal. Denis just said: “Tell him to jump!” It was the idiot son at his worst.’
Support: Denis was an invisible yet effective ally in negotiations
Denis ensured Mark was kept at arm’s length. If there were any issues concerning the deal that the PM needed to know, fast-track access to her was provided not by her commercially ambitious and highly visible son but by her invisible and loyal husband.
This protective mechanism succeeded. Contrary to some Press rumours, British Aerospace and its subcontractors did not hire Mark Thatcher or make any commission or fee-paying deals with him.
Levity: Denis's sense of humour was a great asset to his wife
The son never came close to compromising his mother’s integrity.
Al Yamamah was undoubtedly a triumph for her, but it was not without subsequent controversy.
Some MPs and journalists were hostile, attacking the project as an unsavoury arms deal with a reactionary monarchy.
There were also allegations of corruption, including unsubstantiated insinuations that Mark had benefited from it.
Inevitably, it was true that some individual Saudis and Saudi companies made fortunes from commissions, consultancies and success fees.That is a fact of life in the Middle East.
But not Mark. He has always denied being involved, and I believe him — first because there was no value he could possibly have added to any part of the project, and second because Denis worked so hard to keep him out.
(Like many other people linked to Al Yamamah, I, too, was subjected to press insinuations of corruption. This was untrue. The only allegations to this effect were withdrawn in the High Court in June 1997.)
The hero of Al Yamamah was undoubtedly Denis, as Dick (now Sir Richard) Evans confirmed to me years later. ‘His only motive for being so incredibly helpful was that he loved his wife and he loved his country,’ he said. ‘He was the best British patriot I ever saw.’
Patriotism also explains Mrs Thatcher’s role. She took patriotic risks in her dealings with the Saudis: but they paid off handsomely in terms of jobs, exports and a revived — indeed, saved — aerospace industry for Britain.
Why did she omit this success story from her memoirs? Perhaps she felt vulnerable about Mark’s rumoured involvement.
She need not have done. As usual, she was in the dark about her son’s business activities.
Had she been in the know, she would have been grateful that Denis protected her from filial embarrassment while playing his usual quiet but pivotal role as her loyal consort.
Extracted from Margaret Thatcher: Power And Personality by Jonathan Aitken, published by Bloomsbury Continuum on October 24 at £25. © Jonathan Aitken 2013.
To order a copy at £20 (p&p free), call 0844 472 4157. Jonathan Aitken will speak about his book at the Royal Institution on November 7. For details, visit bloomsburyinstitute.com
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