Booker on Thatcher on climate change

Christopher Booker's guest post at EU Referendum is well worth a read. He discusses Margaret Thatcher's personal climate change journey from fearmonger to sceptic and the attempts by establishment figures such as William Waldegrave to draw a veil over her awakening.

I don't know whether Lord Waldegrave ever read the nine pages of her book, headed "Hot air and global warming", and I very much doubt whether he has ever read anything written by Prof. Lindzen - let alone much else written in recent years by those scores of other eminent scientists and other experts who have questioned every one of the a priori assumptions used to promote the belief in CO2-induced global warming.

Much easier, in deference to the fashionable orthodoxy, just to imply that Lady Thatcher's later views were no more than the senile ravings of an old woman in her retirement, and to place against them the ex cathedra pronouncements of his fellow-pillars of the establishment such as Lord May and Lord Rees, each carrying with him all the unimpeachable authority which goes with being a President of the Royal Society.

Comments

[Richard Drake]

Jiminy:

She achieved her goal.

She didn't think so - either the overarching one of making Britain great again or the fearsome multiplicity of the detail. Here's Frank Field in the Commons last Wednesday:

Mrs Thatcher was not uncritical of her own record. On one occasion I asked her, “Mrs T, what was your greatest disappointment in government?” Again, as though she had thought long and hard beforehand about it, she said, “I cut taxes and I thought we would get a giving society, and we haven’t.” She thought we would, by low taxation, see that extraordinary culture in America whereby people make fortunes and want, perhaps publicly, to declare what they are doing with them. That had not taken root here. I think we should look critically at her record. Of course, it is wrong of us to assume what Mrs T would be saying if she were listening to this debate, but I think she would want us to get on to what the differences were and how we take the debate forward.

And here's Lord Spicer an hour and a half later in the other place:

One memory I will share with the House goes back almost to her last day in government. I was Minister for Housing and she summoned me to the Cabinet Room. It was a one-to-one meeting-I was on my own with her-and she said the words that will always be in my mind. We had had our meeting and I was packing up my papers when she said, "Michael, you know we've failed to destroy the dependency culture". That stuck with me. A lot has been said today about her caution, and I will say a word about it myself. What has not been said is that she did in some cases regret that caution. That is something that has not fully come over.

The evidence is against you, my friend. But I do count you a friend. Let's come back to that.

It is easy to paint a union member or a miner or docker as an enemy of society.

Indeed. I don't think Thatcher ever did paint every union member this way - more of them voted for her than for Labour in her final general election, did they not? - but she was certainly interpreted that way by her enemies and that has poisoned political debate and I think whole communities, already reeling from lost livelihoods in the 80s and beyond. Here's the most intelligent of her heirs, for me, as reported in The Guardian on Sunday

It was left to Michael Gove, the education secretary who will debate whether Thatcher was the "mother of modernisation" with Lord Mandelson on Monday, to address the other element of the Thatcher burden: her divisiveness. In a Times article, Gove wrote that the Tories would do well to ape her radicalism, but added: "We will also need to heal and unite individuals as much as identify and defeat enemies."

They get it, at least as a soundbite. But real peacemaking is both backbreaking and sometimes heartbreaking work. Thatcher and peace is just three words but is not a trivial subject to untangle. Though the Bishop of London did well indeed to point out that in her coffin she had, finally, become "one of us". That I thought was genius.

[Roy]

What is most apparent in many (not all) of the criticisms of Margaret Thatcher in the past few days is their sheer dishonesty. For example, her saying that "there is no such thing as society." Any honest person who reads the relevant part of her speech is bound to conclude that she was simply pointing out that society is not something separate from us. If the individuals who comprise society do not do their duty, then how will "society" achieve anything?

It was the trade unions who stuck two fingers up to society with their selfish and self-defeating attitude of "I'm all right Jack" throughout the post-war period, even before the infamous Winter of Discontent. Isn't it strange how silent Thatcher's critics are about the Winter of Discontent. Whenever someone talks about the Nasty Party I always ask them "who was it who picketed hospitals and prevented the dead from being buried and allowed the streets to pile up with rubbish?" Sometimes I also remind them that evidence has come to light in recent years that some of the union leaders of the period were traitors, in receipt of money from the Soviet Union.

Margaret Thatcher should have run down the coal industry more slowly (even though she did not do it as fast as Harold Wilson) to allow more time for other businesses to be attracted to the mining areas. However Scargill never had a mandate for strike action, and the miners knew full well that the strike was being undertaken partly with the objective of humbling, if not removing, a government that had obtained a massive electoral mandate to curb the abuses of trade union power.

The fate of the British ship building, the motor cycle industry and many of the docks and most of the British-owned car industry was not very different from that of the coal industry. Who was to blame for that? Margaret Thatcher or the trade unions? Of course, the car industry is now flourishing in Britain under foreign ownership in the more competitive environment that Margaret Thatcher introduced by, among other things, curbing the dictatorial powers of the trade unions.

Turning back to environmental issues, I am sure it was Margaret Thatcher's scientific background that made her concerned about the possible dangers of the man-made CO2 emissions and the greenhouse effect. I also have a (rather old) chemistry degree and although I abandoned chemistry after graduation I remain interested in scientific issues and was also convinced by arguments about the dangers of the green house effect. However, after I studied the evidence a bit more I slowly came to realise that it was not nearly as convincing as I had been led to believe. I imagine that after retirement, when Margaret Thatcher had more time to consider the issue, she came to a similar conclusion.

[Jiminy Cricket]

Richard, Roy's comment elicited this instant response from me...

Did you ever work in middle management in the UK in 1960's,70's? I joined this merry band in the 1980's.

Jobs for lifer's? Incompetents? Time servers? Class snobs? Xenophobes? Racists? And let's be clear, then such people were middle/upper middle class and entry was restricted to those whose face fitted. Every one a Tory voter.

Thatcher won, and you are just repeating the triumphalist theme.

The fruits of society are shared, as are the faults. An interdependent system it is...

[Jiminy Cricket]

[I do not believe this is so off topic, Climate Change in the UK, is a function of Thatcher's bastard love child, Blair, and also I would hope that, although BH probably does not share my views, it does help having dissenting views on Thatcher - sceptics are "all sorts".]

And my dearly departed Mater has just made an appearance, after turning in her grace, to chastise me.

Who are the best multi-tasking "middle managers" around? Yes so add "Chauvinists" to the above list.

One of the reasons I "flourished" when leaving these shores? When I came to work in senior places in Central Europe no one gave a damn about my Liverpool accent. Other than causing a few translators to burst into tears, it had no detrimental effect on my career. Class "defined by accent" disappeared.

Working in Management Consulting we used get lots of Public Schoolboys coming out. And I worked out that they were no brighter than state school kids. In fact they were often not very bright at all. But they had been polished to respectability. They had been taught to swim in the closed pond in which they existed.

These people came and immediately labelled me due to my accent, not my abilities. However, they were isolated. And of course moved on after making little attempt to integrate. Friday night was drinks at the embassy night.

I am not generalising about Public School education. Many of you have had such an education and thrived. These people were sent to Central Europe because they were not very able (I suppose the equivalent of being sent to Rangoon or Batavia in Empire days), so I only had a selected exposure.

The only point I am trying to make about British society is that it wasn't just the Unions who ran a closed shop, who defended their rights, their members. A membership defined by rules not ability.

British social history is inevitably written by those of classical education, or by Poly Toynbee's of these lands (I actually prefer the former to the latter).

I am just giving a voice to people I knew and respected who have since passed away, and have been forgotten over the last week.

[Jiminy Cricket]

Richard, everyone needs their "heroes", and I have no wish to question your choice or respect.

But I was brought up a "humanist". I was taught to treat people as I see them (not to imply you were not). I do look at the history of society from the group up not just the bottom down.

I have known people to whom I give the equal of your respect, who never had the exposure. Or even the ability to to grant political or advancement favours that ensures obituaries will be positive. Who happened to outlive many of the people she effected. Who happened to pass away during the golden age of celeb and Hello, OK!.The Guardian commenting on Sam Cam's blouse? I mean really...

The treatment of Thatcher really leaves me cold to be honest.

Whilst at the height of her powers, she never once asked to be judged by her humanity, her femininity, her open-mindedness, her tolerance. She never hid behind these artefacts. What you saw is what you got.

Why should she be granted this privilege now? Because the media have column inches and websites to fill?

Despite all the over-the-top outpourings this last week, social history written in 30-40 years time will correct itself. As those who have a stake in perpetuating this positive viewpoint will have passed away. It was always such with history.

[Jiminy Cricket]

One day I will post something without errors. Unlikely though.

"I do look at the history of society from the bottom up not just the top down."

[Buck]

Jiminy

Great posts. The debates are too polarized with regard to Mrs T, I guess that's the nature of politics.

Roy

I can see where you are coming from when you say

The fate of the British ship building, the motor cycle industry and many of the docks and most of the British-owned car industry was not very different from that of the coal industry. Who was to blame for that? Margaret Thatcher or the trade unions? Of course, the car industry is now flourishing in Britain under foreign ownership in the more competitive environment that Margaret Thatcher introduced by, among other things, curbing the dictatorial powers of the trade unions.

But I think the debate is far more subtle and one you won't find in the crash bang wallop of the MSM. My father, his father, his brother and his brother in-law all worked on the shop floor of the same iron foundry. They were union men (GMB) but I can't remember them ever going on strike. I do remember my dad coming home from work when I was a kid absolutely steaming because he'd had yet another massive row with the union shop steward. I remember my dad and granddad discussing the unions at Longbridge after watching Red Robbo on the news and writing him off as a wrong 'un. I know that by and large the unions were packed full of good men, but headed by fools like Scargill and Robinson. People often like to write the unions off as some sort of plague. I'd invite them for a pint at the Labour club!

I believe that had Mr's T looked to reform the unions, with the best interest of their members at heart, then this country would be a better, more balanced place and more equal place. Unfortunately she didn't look to reform the unions, she looked to smash them and in the process, she smashed whole communities. In my view to be classed as great she needed to look after all of the communities of this country, not just half of them. If you come from the half she looked after, happy days. I think even the most biased commentator can see that this country has, since Mrs T's time, become relentlessly a more unequal place to live. The rich get richer and the poor get poorer (I know it was the same under Blair & Brown). The irony being that Mrs. T wouldn't get within a country mile of the cabinet these days, given her background.

Roy has provided the answer in his post "The car industry is now flourishing" - my view is the same could have been said of ship building (Cunard and P&O spend billions building ships in Italy, France & Germany) and other heavy industries had we reformed, invested and moved on.

[Hector Pascal]

Buck

I believe that had Mr's T looked to reform the unions, with the best interest of their members at heart, then this country would be a better, more balanced place and more equal place. Unfortunately she didn't look to reform the unions, she looked to smash them and in the process, she smashed whole communities.

I think you are missing the fundamental point. The Unions, or more specifically Scargill and Robinson weren't in the business of being reformed, however gently. They were in the business of controlling (and smashing) government. They had destroyed the Heath and Callaghan governments, and weren't interested in the country or playing nice. They were following their agenda (whatever that was). Compromise was never an option. Scargill and Robinson started the war, and Thatcher finished it

Coal mining was always going to die. Open cast is far cheaper and safer than underground mining. Scargill managed to split the miner's solidarity, with Notts splitting off. The car industry was in a shocking state, with restrictive practices, mickey mouse management and shoddy products. Ship building had already moved to Japan as it has now moved from Japan to Korea.

All these industries and communities were going to die. The only questions were when, and at what cost? Thatcher lanced the boil.

Heide de Klein (above) sneers that I don't have dirt under my nails, and when I show him to be a plonker sneers about my council house origins. We knew about dirt under the nails, and we lived in our own house, bought and paid for out of taxed income. We were (and are) the Respectable Working Class. My father and brother wore suit and tie to work, and changed into working clothes when they got there. Saturday night was pub night, We males wore suits, and the ladies put on their frocks and make up. My parents would have had us starve rather than swallow their pride and accept charity orgovenrment handouts.

Unions had and have their place, but running the country isn't one of them. Scargill and Robinson with their politics and fellow travellers were no friends to the working class. Men capable of turning raw materials and components into ballistic missiles, milling machines accurate to better than 1/1000 of an inch over 24 feet, or a ship could see right through them, as they could with Foot and Benn. Thatcher made sense.

[JamesG]

Everyone can change their mind, yes but an apology for such a gross error of judgement would have been nice. Not in her nature though - and there's the rub. And if she was as influential as now it is said then why could she not convince the current crop of tories prior to the climate change act? Did she not care enough? Ah yes, it is because likely they all thought she was senile. It may even have been the reason why they deposed her in favour of John Major in the famous 'stab in the back'. How soon they forget indeed.

[Richard Courtney]

Buck:

You say;
"It was in her interests, in the battle with the coal miners and the NUM, to make coal fired power stations obsolete. She latched onto the Global Warming meme as another weapon to use in this battle."

I have often seen that assertion, but it is not true. She had a much more personal reason for starting the AGW issue.

However, her political party was willing to go along with that campaign because it fitted their pro-nuclear and anyti-coal policies.

I hink you may want to read this
http://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2012/09/12/richard-courtney-the-history-of-the-global-warming-scare/

Richard

[Arthur Peacock]

Richard Courtney:

I'm sure you are right about Thatcher's reason for starting the AGW issue (i.e. to strengthen her authority). But I'm puzzled about the timing. As I understand it, she started making speeches about AGW in 1988. By then, her authority was at its height. This doesn't seem to make sense, and I would be grateful if you could tell me where I have gone wrong.

Thanks, Arthur.

[Richard Drake]

Good question Arthur. In Richard Courtney's Tallbloke piece (with which, surprise surprise, I may have some quibbles) he says:

Sir Crispin Tickell, UK Ambassador to the UN, suggested a solution to the problem. He pointed out that almost all international statesmen are scientifically illiterate, so a scientifically literate politician could win any summit debate on a matter which seemed to depend on scientific understandings. And Mrs Thatcher had a BSc degree in chemistry. (This is probably the most important fact in the entire global warming issue; i.e. Mrs Thatcher had a BSc degree in chemistry). Sir Crispin pointed out that if a ‘scientific’ issue were to gain international significance, then the UK’s Prime Minister could easily take a prominent role, and this could provide credibility for her views on other world affairs. He suggested that Mrs Thatcher should campaign about global warming at each summit meeting. She did, and the tactic worked. Mrs Thatcher rapidly gained the desired international respect and the UK became the prime promoter of the global warming issue.

With due respect to the author, whose presentation is helpful, a date when this process began would have been useful. According to Rupert Darwall (Age of Global Warming p105) it was on a flight back from Paris in May 1984 that Thatcher asked her officials if they had any new policy ideas for the forthcoming London G7 summit and Tickell suggested climate change. This led to Thatcher raising it that year, with environment ministers charged to report back at the next summit, and so the process began, sotto voce, at the intergovernmental level.

What Darwall also shows, however, is that Thatcher, as both scientist and realist, was never keen on cuts in emissions as the solution to what she did, at that time, consider a potential threat. She was looking to new trees for at least part of the answer and she refused even to send a UK observer to the 24-nation shindig in The Hague in 1989, one of the first of so many, because by this time emissions controls had already become all the rage.

Her most fearmongering speech - to use the Bish's term - was I think to the United Nations General Assembly in November 1989, where she did seem to put herself into the Malthusian, overpopulation camp. I'm firmly with Matt Ridley on that - but Matt wasn't quite so good as spotting the credit crunch in 2008. We all have our weak spots :) And I do remember feeling at the time that Maggie was struggling to retain her influence in an area that she knew could go badly wrong in the hands of unethical, internationalist power-seekers. I still feel that way.

I think Thatcher's greatness consists, not least, of courage, integrity, caution and cunning. I'm sure she did want to establish herself further on the world stage in 1984, after the Falklands, for the very best of reasons - it would give her extra clout in seeing off little matters like communism and apartheid, for one thing. I'm sure she also spotted the potential of the AGW challenge to lead towards both freedom-snuffing world government and policy measures very damaging to the poor. We can't know all that went on inside her mind now - situation normal - but it's a bit of history worth chewing over.

[Buck]

Hector you wrote -

Coal mining was always going to die. Open cast is far cheaper and safer than underground mining.

It's also far cheaper to buy sugar from sugar cane grown abroad than to pay British farmers to grow sugar beet, but that was / is allowed to continue. Simple economics isn't the only answer here. There is a political choice over which industries we support and I'd much rather we supported coal mining than wind farms, but our politicians including Mrs T have taken us in the opposite direction.

The car industry was in a shocking state, with restrictive practices, mickey mouse management and shoddy products. Ship building had already moved to Japan as it has now moved from Japan to Korea.

In the last 20 years P&O & Cunard have spent billions of pounds building ships built in Italy, France and Germany - not Japan & Korea. There's also this quote - 'Margaret wants rid of shipbuilding. Remember that,' a senior civil servant told Sir Robert Atkinson, then chairman of British Shipbuilders.

All these industries and communities were going to die. The only questions were when, and at what cost? Thatcher lanced the boil.

But the car industry hasn't died, in fact it's booming. As you correctly state, in the 70's it was in a shocking state. I am sure at the time you would have said that it was an industry that was going to die. Somehow though, despite the insurmountable problems with unions hell bent on destroying the country, the impossible happened, it was reformed. In my view it proves that more could have been done in other manufacturing industries.

[Arthur Peacock]

Richard Drake:

Many thanks for the information (I shall obviously have to read Rupert Darwall's book). A starting point of May 1984 makes much better sense.

As to Thatcher generally, I'm coming to suspect that she was manipulated by her officials more than she (or we) realised at the time. Europe is another example. A complex and contradictory person, and I wonder whether we shall ever really understand her?

[Richard Drake]

Nigel Lawson got it bang on in his letter to The Times on Friday 19th (h/t Benny Peiser this morning):

Sir, William Waldegrave has, I fear, fallen below his customary standard of meticulous scholarship in his article speculating on what Margaret Thatcher would do today about climate change (“On global warming she’d trust the science”, Apr 17).

There is no need to speculate. She made her views abundantly clear. Towards the end of her time in office she was persuaded that there was a potential threat to which the world should be alerted, but took no policy initiatives of any kind as she well understood that a great deal more needed to be known before that would be justified.

By 2002, when her book Statecraft appeared, she had concluded that the science was far more complex and less certain than it had first appeared, and that the motives of the “doomsters” (her term) were, to say the least, highly suspect. Her considered and well-researched views can be found on pages 449-458 of that book, in the section appropriately entitled Hot Air and Global Warming.

Note especially that she "took no policy initiatives of any kind as she well understood that a great deal more needed to be known before that would be justified". The whole area reminds me of what Roy said above:

What is most apparent in many (not all) of the criticisms of Margaret Thatcher in the past few days is their sheer dishonesty.

Not just many of the criticisms but in this case some of the praise. As climate realists we should, of all people, be careful to be accurate in such matters.

[Jiminy Cricket]

I am by disposition an iconoclast I suppose, and greatness is too easily used as a noun.

By chance, I watched ten mins of this Nostalgia TV: Victoria Wood's nice cup of twee. Ten mins was all I could stand.

The security blanket of nostalgia is very powerful. These last few weeks have shown that. However, you do ask yourself, culturally is the Punk "equivalent" just around the corner? Or even worse (riots?)?

Or is this it? We either become proxy Women's Institute members. Sewing, baking, making cups of tea (as Rome burns?) Or move to Hoxton or Hampstead discussing liberal left issues over chianti and brie?

Thatcher's children are all around, I think I will start a Punk band.

I hate mediocracy and Thatchers legacy is that.

Ps. my signing off this little detour into Thatcher's Cultural legacy of Britain.

[Buck]

Jiminy,

I don't think we will see a second punk wave or rioting on the streets, because we have 24 hour television and smart phones, ipads, lap tops etc etc etc. to keep the youth doped up.

Looking at "The Voice" or "The X Factor", wouldn't it be so wonderful to have another punk revolution?

[Jiminy Cricket]

Buck,

In today's society neo-Punk would never get off the ground authentically because as soon as the Media Industry spotters saw it trending (clubs, social media, old media) they would corporatise it.

In the future, this is how it will probably happen. Assume the info/media scape is like the Southern Oceans. Chaotic.

You have waves (trends, events) moving around, some growing quickly and dying. Some slowly blinding and lasting. All these waves are interacting. Unpredictable. Some cancelling each other out, others amplifying the other. Then...

As every seaman knows, there will be a super wave resulting. A Chaotic system. Unpredictable yet it will happen. It will engulf any who encounter it.

This is the likely that events will have to disturb the order of our social life. Just like the weather, some unique combination of events will occur to "instantaneously" alter world society.

As more people become interconnected, as the speed of information dispersal increases, as the vagaries of human nature all get added to this global interconnected system.

Just like the "butterly in Brazil", the trigger might just be a school kid in Botswana making some daft joke about his classmate. It could lead to war, to hurt or to progress.

We are building a worldwide chaotic system that can not be predicted.

[Jiminy Cricket]

As if to prove my cultural point...

New £5 note replaces Elizabeth Fry with Sir Winston Churchill

Mediocre, bland, security blanket, thumb sucking nostalgia on one of our most prominent cultural canvasses.

Soon to be replaced in 15 years by Maggie.