Margaret Thatcher: The Autobiography. Margaret Thatcher
a prison from which, in my view, they should be released. In these circumstances divorce might be the only answer. But if divorce became too easy it might undermine marriages simply going through a bad patch. If people can withdraw lightly from their responsibilities they are likely to be less serious about entering into the initial obligation. I was concerned about the spouse who was committed to make the marriage work and was deserted. I was also very concerned about what would become of the family of the first marriage when the man (or woman) chose to start a second family. So in 1968 I was one of the minority who voted against a Bill to make divorce far easier. Divorce would be possible where it was judged that there had been an ‘irretrievable breakdown’, broadly defined, in the marriage. I also supported two amendments, the first of which made available a special form of marriage that was indissoluble (except by judicial separation). The second would seek to ensure that in any conflict of interest between the legal wife and children of the first marriage and a common-law wife and her children, the former should have priority.
Similarly, I voted against Sydney Silverman’s Bill to abolish the death penalty for murder in 1965. Like all the other measures listed above this was passed by Parliament, but subject to a Conservative amendment to the effect that the Act was to expire at the end of July 1970 unless Parliament determined otherwise. I then voted against the motion in December 1969 to make the Act permanent.
I believed that the state had not just a right but a duty to deter and punish violent crime and to protect the law-abiding public. However sparingly it is used, the power to deprive an individual of liberty, and under certain circumstances of life itself, is inseparable from the sovereignty of the state. I never had the slightest doubt that in nearly all cases the supreme deterrent would be an influence on the potential murderer. And the deterrent effect of capital punishment is at least as great on those who go armed on other criminal activities, such as robbery. To my mind, the serious difficulty in the issue lay in the possibility of the conviction and execution of an innocent man – which has certainly happened in a small number of cases. Against these tragic cases, however, must be set the victims of convicted murderers who have been released after their sentence was served only to be convicted of murder a second time – who have certainly numbered many more. I believe that the potential victim of the murderer deserves that highest protection which only the existence of the death penalty gives.
As regards abortion, homosexuality, and divorce reform it is easy to see that matters did not turn out as was intended. For most of us in Parliament – and certainly for me – the thinking underlying these changes was that they dealt with anomalies or unfairnesses which occurred in a minority of instances, or that they removed uncertainties in the law itself. Or else they were intended to recognize in law what was in any case occurring in fact. Instead, it could be argued that they have paved the way towards a more callous, selfish and irresponsible society. Reforming the law on abortion was primarily intended to stop young women being forced to have back-street abortions. It was not meant to make abortion simply another ‘choice’. Yet in spite of the universal availability of artificial contraception the figures for abortion have kept on rising. Homosexual activists have moved from seeking a right of privacy to demanding social approval for the ‘gay’ lifestyle, equal status with the heterosexual family and even the legal right to exploit the sexual uncertainty of adolescents. Divorce law reform has contributed to – though it is by no means the only cause of – a very large increase in the incidence of marriage breakdown which has left so many children growing up without the continual care and guidance of two parents.
Would I have voted differently on any of these measures? I now see that we viewed them too narrowly. As a lawyer, I felt that the prime considerations were that the law should be enforceable and its application fair to those who might run foul of it. But laws also have a symbolic significance: they are signposts to the way society is developing – and the way the legislators of society envisage that it should develop. Moreover, taking all of the ‘liberal’ reforms of the 1960s together they amount to more than their individual parts. They came to be seen as providing a radically new framework within which the younger generation would be expected to behave.
Although Britain gave a distinctive gloss to these trends, the affluent consumer society to which they catered was above all to be found in the United States. I had made my first visit to the USA in 1967 on one of the ‘Leadership’ programmes run by the American Government to bring rising young leaders from politics and business over to the US. For six weeks I travelled the length and breadth of the United States. The excitement which I felt has never really subsided. At each stopover I was met and accommodated by friendly, open, generous people who took me into their homes and lives and showed me their cities and townships with evident pride. The high point was my visit to the NASA Space Center at Houston. I saw the astronaut training programme which would just two years later help put a man on the moon. As a living example of the ‘brain drain’ from which over-regulated, high-taxed Britain was suffering, I met someone from my constituency of Finchley who had gone to NASA to make full use of his talents. I saw nothing wrong with that, and indeed was glad that a British scientist was making such an important contribution. But there was no way Britain could hope to compete even in more modest areas of technology if we did not learn the lessons of an enterprise economy.
I travelled to Moscow with the amiable Paul Channon and his wife. We had a full schedule including not just the sights of Moscow but also Leningrad (formerly, and now once again, St Petersburg) and Stalingrad (Volgograd). But though the name might vary, the propaganda was the same. It was relentless, an endless flow of statistics proving the industrial and social superiority of the Soviet Union over the West. Outside an art gallery I visited there was a sculpture of a blacksmith beating a sword with a hammer. ‘That represents communism,’ my guide proudly observed. ‘Actually, it doesn’t,’ I replied. ‘It’s from the Old Testament – “And they shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning-hooks”.’ Collapse of stout aesthete. Methodist Sunday School has its uses.
Yet, behind the official propaganda, the grey streets, all but empty shops and badly maintained workers’ housing blocks, Russian humanity peeped out. There was no doubt about the genuineness of the tears when the older people at Leningrad and Stalingrad told me about their terrible sufferings in the war. The young people I talked to from Moscow University, though extremely cautious about what they said in the full knowledge that they were under KGB scrutiny, were clearly fascinated to learn all they could about the West. And even bureaucracy can prove human. When I visited the manager of the Moscow passenger transport system he explained to me at great length how decisions about new development had to go from committee to committee in what seemed – as I said – an endless chain of non-decision-making. I caught the eye of a young man, perhaps the chairman’s assistant, standing behind him and he could not repress a broad smile.
On my return to London I was moved to the Education portfolio in the Shadow Cabinet. Edward Boyle was leaving politics to become Vice-Chancellor of the University of Leeds. There was by now a good deal of grassroots opposition at Party Conferences to what was seen as his weakness in defence of the grammar schools. Although our views had diverged, I was sorry to see him go and I would miss his intellect, sensitivity and integrity. But for me this was definitely a promotion, even though, as I have since learned, I was in fact the reserve candidate, after Keith Joseph: I got the job because Reggie Maudling refused to take over Keith’s job as Trade and Industry Shadow.
I was delighted with my new role. I had risen to my present position as a result of free (or nearly free) good education, and I wanted others to have the same chance. Socialist education policies, by equalizing downwards and denying gifted children the opportunity to get on, were a major obstacle to that. I was also fascinated by the scientific side – the portfolio in those days being to shadow the Department of Education and Science.
Education was by now one of the main battlegrounds of politics. Since their election in 1964 Labour had been increasingly committed to making the whole secondary school system comprehensive, and had introduced a series of measures, to make local education authorities (LEAs) submit plans for such a change. (The process culminated in legislation, introduced a few months after I took over as Education Shadow.) The difficulties Edward had faced in formulating and explaining our response soon became clear to me.
The Shadow Cabinet and