Memo that told her: you’re a bully

THE late summer of 1981 was the lowest point of Margaret Thatcher’s time in Downing Street, apart from the dark days when she was ousted from power some nine years later.

As riots hit Toxteth, there were bitter divisions within the Cabinet, with only three of her 23 Cabinet ministers fully supporting her economic strategy.

Throughout August she had forebodings of a serious threat to her position, discussing it melodramatically with trusted members of her in inner circle, even giving a gloomy vis vision of her future employment pro prospects: ‘ I can always get a job,’ sh she told one of her team. ‘I can always s scrub floors. And I will if they kick me out.’

This wild talk worr worried her staff. Her closest personal aide, Caroline Stephens, asked he her speechwriter Ronnie Millar to come co in and talk about the PM’s ‘physical ‘phy and mental exhaustion, harsh p public image and alienation from her friends’.

Millar was usually usua a soothing presence. But he evidently felt s o upset about his heroine’s prospects that he co-authored a blistering private submission su to her, ‘Your Political Surv Survival’. This passed into folklore as ‘T ‘The blockbuster memorandum’.

The headlines on the th various sections of the memo must have come as a shock to her. They in included:

‘ You lack management competence.’ ‘Your own leadership style is wrong.’ ‘The result is an un unhappy ship.’ ‘You have an absolute duty to change the way you operate.’

The specifics were worse than the rebukes. ‘You break every rule of good man-management. You bully your weaker colleagues. You criticise colleagues in front of each other and in front of their officials. They can’t answer back without appearing disrespectful, in front of others, to a woman and to a Prime Minister. You abuse that situation.’

The blockbuster was right on these counts, but Margaret Margar did not see it that way. ‘I got your letter. No one has ever written a letter like that to a Prime Minister before,’ she hissed.

Although she resented being hauled over the coals so brutally by insiders, she took their political advice seriously, for she followed their main recommendations on reshuffling the Cabin Cabinet and changing the party chairman chairmanship.

As for their more personal suggestions, she was too angered by them to change her style of man-management. It remained her long-term Achilles heel.