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Margaret Thatcher: a Legacy of Freedom John O’Sullivan Executive Editor, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty

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Margaret Thatcher: a Legacy of Freedom John O’Sullivan Executive Editor, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty a PubLication of hillsdale CollegE ImpOrVER 1,600,000imi READERS MONTHLYs June 2008 • Volume 37, Number 6 Margaret Thatcher: A Legacy of Freedom John O’Sullivan Executive Editor, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty JOHN O’SULLIVAN, executive editor of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, has served as a senior editor at the London Times and the Daily Telegraph and as a special advisor to former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. He has also been editor-in-chief of the United Press International, editor of The National Interest and National Review, and a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute. His most recent book is The President, the Pope, and the Prime Minister: Three Who Changed the World. The following is adapted from a speech delivered at Hillsdale College on May 9, 2008, at the dedication of the third statue on the College’s Liberty Walk and the first statue of Margaret Thatcher to be erected in the United States. It is a great pleasure to be back at Hillsdale. It is some 32 years since I first visited the College for a meeting of the Mont Pelerin Society. Those few days were an important education in American politics for me. The conference was attended by many people who had just returned from the Republican Convention at which President Ford had narrowly defeated Ronald Reagan. They were full of enthusiasm for Reagan and full of conviction that one day he would become president. Their enthusiasm—and their passion too for sound doctrine—swept me along. I think I became a firm Reaganite at that conference here in Hillsdale. And I have never had cause to regret my conversion. I was already “a Thatcherite of the first hour,” to use Gaullist terminology. Indeed, along with Ralph Harris, Arthur Seldon, Keith Joseph, and such distin- guished alumni of that Hillsdale meeting as Madsen Pirie and Stuart Butler, who went on to found the Adam Smith Institute in London in the late 1970s—well, we all have a good claim to have been Thatcherites even before Lady Thatcher. Most of the intellectual groundwork for what became Thatcherism was done in places like the Institute of Economic Affairs, the Adam Smith Institute, the Center for Policy Stud- hillsdale.Edu Hillsdale College: Pursuing Truth • defending liberTy sinCe 1844 JuNE 2008 • Volume 37, number 6 < hillsdale.edu ies, the Mont Pelerin Society—and Hills- tive philosophy of ordered liberty applied dale College. in somewhat different national circum- But I have to add some words from stances. Lady herself when someone made the That is why Thatcher and Reagan were same claim in her presence: “The cock such a natural and successful partnership. may crow, but it’s the hen that lays the They did not always look like a natural eggs.” We couldn’t have implemented partnership, however. One acute and those ideas of freedom without her cour- well-placed observer, Sir Percy Cradock, age, leadership, stamina, and commit- who served as Lady Thatcher’s foreign ment to those same ideas. So it is fitting policy advisor in Downing Street, pointed that Hillsdale College should be erecting to some very sharp differences between a statue to Lady Thatcher—you were them in the following contrast: “the bossy allied with her in the same cause of free- intrusive Englishwoman, lecturing and dom long before she became a personal hectoring, hyperactive, obsessively con- friend of the college. cerned with detail” and “the lazy, sunny I congratulate the sculptor, Bruce Irish ex-actor, his mind operating mainly Wolfe, on his magnificent achieve- in the instinctive mode, happy to delegate ment. Not only is it a superb likeness and over-delegate, hazy about most of of Lady Thatcher at the apogee of her his briefs, but with certain stubbornly political authority, but it also captures held principles, a natural warmth, and the extraordinary energy that she always an extraordinary ability to communicate projected—even when, as here, seated in a with his constituents.” comfortable armchair. I will be especially That sounds like criticism. And recent nervous delivering Reagan scholarship these remarks today, suggests that the presi- Imprimis (im-pri-mis), −´ feeling that Herself is [Latin]: in the first place dent was somewhat less seated just behind me lazy and delegation- EDITOR and likely to catch me douglas a. Jeffrey happy than he liked out in some error. DEPUTY EDITOR people to think. But in It is, finally, a timothy W. caspar fact, Sir Percy was an great pleasure to COPY EDITORS admirer of the partner- Monica VanderWeide be here under the Jeremy Young ship as well as one of gavel, so to speak, of ART DIRECTOR its close advisors. As your President Larry angela Lashaway he went on to say, these Arnn. I first met PRODUCTION MANAGER different personalities Lucinda grimm Larry at the dinner complemented each CIRCULATION MANAGER table in London of Patricia a. dubois other very well. They the late Peter Utley, STAFF AssISTANTS were not oil and water, a great conservative Wanda Oxenger but oil and vinegar— Kim tedders journalist, who was Mary Jo Von Ewegen no prizes for guessing another Thatcher- who was which—and copyright © 2008 hillsdale college ite of the first hour. not entirely by acci- the opinions expressed in Imprimis While I was learning are not necessarily the views dent. Both were deter- Reaganism in Hills- of hillsdale college. mined to make the Permission to reprint in whole or dale, Larry was learn- in part is hereby granted, provided partnership work. Both ing Thatcherism in the following credit line is used: shared the same essen- “Reprinted by permission from Imprimis, London, in both cases a publication of hillsdale college.” tial philosophy. And from the best possible SUBscRIPTION FREE UPON REQUEST. both were prepared to teachers. In the end, iSSN 0277-8432 back each other up in of course, Reagan- Imprimis trademark registered in u.S. public even when they Patent and trade Office #1563325. ism and Thatcherism differed in private— are the same Anglo- almost all of the time, American conserva- at any rate. 2 Hillsdale College: Pursuing Truth • defending liberTy sinCe 1844 JuNE 2008 • Volume 37, number 6 < hillsdale.edu Left: A photo with the headline “First Statue of Margaret Thatcher in the U.S. Dedicated at Hillsdale College” appears on the Reuters Newswire sign in New York City’s Times Square. Right: Sculpted in bronze by Bruce Wolfe and made possible by a gift from the Patricia and William E. LaMothe Foundation, the statue of Lady Thatcher stands over six feet in height. Europe protesting against the Soviet- Winning the ordered imposition of martial law against Solidarity in Poland. Cold War She fought a war to evict the Argen- Now I shall not devote this speech entirely tineans from the Falklands—a war that to the Cold War partnership of Thatcher not only showed the fighting spirit of the and Reagan. You know most of that story British forces but also compelled the Sovi- from the American end. Besides, its essence ets to accept that the West would fight to can be summed up in Lady Thatcher’s own defend itself. tribute to the President: “Ronald Reagan She supplied Blowpipe missiles to the won the Cold War without firing a shot.” Afghan resistance that gave Reagan the But she added a little coda too: “Not with- incentive and justification to insist that out a little help from his friends.” American intelligence agencies should That summarizes the truth very supply them with the more effective crisply. Reagan’s friends in this cause Stinger missiles. included Pope John Paul II, Lech Walesa, She prevented—it was almost her last Helmut Kohl, Vaclav Havel, Italy’s Fran- political act of importance—she pre- cesco Cossiga, arguably Mikhail Gor- vented the European Union from accept- bachev (who has ever since referred to “my ing the legitimacy of the Soviet incorpo- friend Ron”), and the peoples of Eastern ration of the Baltic countries inside its Europe and the Soviet Union. All those multi-national Gulag. friends were important and all played Above all, she rallied the Europeans crucial roles in restoring freedom to the to ensure the installation of U.S. missiles “captive nations.” But Margaret Thatcher in Western Europe to match the Soviet was the most consistent, the most outspo- planting of SS-20s in the Soviet satellites. ken, the most determined, and the most Let me give one example of the many reliable friend to Reagan and the United times she acted to stiffen the spines of States in this final climactic struggle with Western European governments either totalitarian communism. weakened by the leftward drift of their She matched Reagan’s military build- social democratic parties or frightened up with a strengthening of Britain’s by the massive anti-installation rallies of defense forces. the so-called “peace movement.” West She was the strongest voice in Western Germany’s Helmut Schmidt—another 3 Hillsdale College: Pursuing Truth • defending liberTy sinCe 1844 JuNE 2008 • Volume 37, number 6 < hillsdale.edu friend of America’s and a strong anti- As the Prime Minister was being communist—was losing the battle to keep driven to the London airport on her way his left-leaning SDP from opposing the to Soviet Premier Yuri Andropov’s funeral, installation of U.S. missiles. He asked Robin Butler, the most senior civil servant Thatcher if she would take some of the in attendance, noticed that she was wear- missiles that West Germany had origi- ing high-heeled court shoes. Would she be nally accepted in addition to those taken attending the funeral, he asked, in those by Britain.
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