Margaret Thatcher: The Autobiography. Margaret Thatcher
maintained, and I had to come up with a list of priority targets.
Savings on school meals and school milk were, I had to admit, an obvious candidate. There seemed no reason why families who could afford to do so should not make a larger contribution to the cost of school meals. I thought that I could defend such cuts if I could demonstrate that some of the money saved would go towards meeting the priority which we had set, namely the primary school building programme. And within the Department of Education budget it seemed logical that spending on education should come before ‘welfare’ spending, which should in principle fall to Keith Joseph’s department, Social Services.
As for milk, there were already mixed views on health grounds about the advantage of providing it. By 1970 very few children were so deprived that school milk was essential for their nourishment. Tony Barber, who became Chancellor in July 1970, after the death of Iain Macleod, wanted me to abolish free school milk altogether. But I managed to hold the line at an increased price for school meals and the withdrawal of free milk from primary school children over the age of seven. These modest changes came with safeguards: children in need of milk for medical reasons continued to receive it until they went to secondary school. All in all, I had defended the education budget effectively.
Nor was this lost on the press. The Daily Mail said that I had emerged as a ‘new heroine’. The Daily Telegraph drew attention to my plans to improve 460 of the oldest primary schools. The Guardian noted: ‘School meals and milk were the main casualties in a remarkably light raid on the education budget. Mrs Thatcher has won her battle to preserve a high school-building programme and turn it to the replacement of old primary schools.’
It was pleasant while it lasted.
The trouble was, it didn’t last long. Six months later we had to introduce a Bill to remove the legal duty for local education authorities to provide free milk and allow them discretion to make it available for a small charge. This gave Labour the parliamentary opportunity to cause havoc.
Even before that, however, the newspapers had unearthed the potential in stories about school meals. One report claimed that some local education authorities were going to charge children who brought sandwiches to school for their lunch. ‘Sandwich Kids In “Fines” Storm’ was how the Sun put it. I introduced a circular to prevent the practice. But that story in turn restored attention to the increase in school meal charges. Overnight the number of children eating such meals became a politically sensitive indicator. The old arguments about the ‘stigma’ of means-tested benefits, which I had come to know so well as a Parliamentary Secretary in the 1960s, surfaced again. It was said that children from families poor enough to be entitled to free school meals would be humiliated when better-off classmates paid for their own. Probably unwisely, I came up with a suggestion in a television programme that this could be avoided if mothers sent dinner money to schools in envelopes. The teachers could put the change back in the envelope. A poor child entitled to free meals would bring an envelope with coins that would just be put back again by the teacher. This just added a new twist to the story.
In any case, it was not long before the great ‘milk row’ dwarfed debate about meals. Newspapers which had congratulated me on my success in protecting the education budget at the expense of cuts in milk and meals suddenly changed their tune. The Guardian described the Education (Milk) Bill as ‘a vindictive measure which should never have been laid before Parliament’. The Daily Mail told me to ‘think again’. The Sun demanded to know: ‘Is Mrs Thatcher Human?’ But it was a speaker at the Labour Party Conference who seems to have suggested to the press the catchy title ‘Mrs Thatcher, milk snatcher’.
When the press discover a rich vein they naturally exhaust it. So it seemed as if every day some variant of the theme would emerge. For example, a Labour council was discovered to be considering buying its own herd of cows to provide milk for its children. Local education authorities sought to evade the legislation by serving up milky drinks but not milk. Councils which were not education authorities took steps to provide free milk for children aged seven to eleven under powers contained in the Local Government Act 1963. Only in Scotland and Wales did the action of councils involve a breach of the law, and it was for my Cabinet colleagues in the Scottish and Welsh departments to deal with the consequences of that rather than for me. But there was no doubt where the blame for it all was felt to lie. The campaign against me reached something of a climax in November 1971 when the Sun voted me ‘The Most Unpopular Woman in Britain’.
I learned a valuable lesson. I had incurred the maximum of political odium for the minimum of political benefit. I and my colleagues were caught up in battles with local authorities for months, during which we suffered constant sniping in the media, all for a saving of £9 million which could have been cut from the capital budget with scarcely a ripple. In future if I were to be hanged, it would be for a sheep, not a lamb, still less a cow.
The image which my opponents and the press had painted of me as callously attacking the welfare of young children was one which, as someone who was never happier than in children’s company, I found deeply wounding. But any politician who wants to hold high office must be prepared to go through something like this. Some are broken by it, others strengthened. Denis, always the essence of common sense, came through magnificently. If I survived, it was due to his love and support. I later developed the habit of not poring over articles and profiles in the newspapers about myself. I came to rely instead on briefings and summaries. If what the press wrote was false, I could ignore it; and if it was true, I already knew it.
Throughout 1971 as the assault on me was being mounted over the issue of school milk, I was locked in battle within the Cabinet on public spending. It was politically vital to my argument about school meals and milk that the primary school building programme should go ahead as envisaged. So within the department I rejected early suggestions of compromise with the Treasury budget cutters. In a note to Bill Pile in April 1971 I laid down our last-ditch position: ‘We cannot settle for less than last year in real terms.’
I could not reach agreement with Maurice Macmillan, then Chief Secretary, and so appealed, as any Cabinet minister has a right to do, to Cabinet. But I was then irritated to learn that No. 10 had decided that I would not be allowed to put in a paper. I wrote a sharply worded letter to Ted pointing out the pressures I was under to announce the 1973/74 school building programme.
I won his agreement to put in my paper in June 1971 – and I got my way. At Cabinet later that month I succeeded in obtaining almost everything that I wanted for the school building programme. It was just in time to announce to the annual conference of the Association of Education Committees in Eastbourne and prompted such headlines as ‘Record Programme to Improve Old Primary Schools’.
On my arrival at the DES, that really had been the priority for me. Because of it, I had to make (or at least accept) spending decisions which made life extraordinarily difficult. I felt that in the 1970s it was wrong for schools still to have leaky roofs, primitive equipment and outside lavatories. Moreover, now that the demographic ‘bulge’ of primary-school-age children had more or less been accommodated – the peak was in 1973 – there was some financial leeway to improve the quality of the often very old and gloomy schools which had been kept in use.
Whether or not the acclaim for my defence of the primary school building programme was justified, it soon faded away as a new agitation over the financing of student unions got under way. Unlike the controversy over school milk, this was largely a campaign organized by the hard Left. It was, therefore, less politically dangerous. But it was very vicious. Nor was it just directed against me. My daughter Carol, reading Law at University College, London, also had a hard time.
In both Europe and the United States this was the height of the period of ‘student revolution’. Looking back, it is extraordinary that so much notice should have been taken of the kindergarten Marxism and egocentric demands which characterized it. In part, it was a development of that youth cult of the 1960s whereby the young were regarded as a source of pure insight into the human condition. In response, many students accordingly expected their opinions to be treated with reverence.
The Left had managed to gain control of many student unions, and therefore of the public money which financed