Read Online Margaret Thatcher: The Autobiography by Margaret Thatcher - Free Book Online
Authors: Margaret Thatcher
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does not mean ‘feel fond of him’ or ‘find him attractive’ … I can look at some of the things I have done with horror and loathing. So apparently I am allowed to loathe and hate some of the things my enemies do … Consequently, Christianity does not want us to reduce by one atom the hatred we feel for cruelty and treachery … Even while we kill and punish we must try to feel about the enemy as we feel about ourselves – to wish that he were not bad, to hope that he may, in this world or another be cured: in fact, to wish his good.
Such words had a special poignancy, of course, at this time.
The main contribution one can make as a student to one’s country in peace or wartime is to study hard and effectively. But we all also tried to do something more directly. For my part, I would serve one or two evenings a week at the Forces canteen in Carfax. British soldiers and American airmen from the nearby bases at Upper Heyford were among our main customers. It was hot, sticky and very hard on the feet, but also good fun, with plenty of company and wisecracking humour.
Reports of the D-day landings in July 1944, though, brought both apprehension and anxiety. The deadly struggle on those exposed beaches made us deeply uneasy. For perhaps the only time I wondered whether I was right to be at Oxford.
In fact we were now within a year of the end of the war in Europe. There were still the Battle of the Bulge and the tragedy of Arnhem to come. But slowly the emphasis came to be on preparing for peace. And among the peacetime activities which began to take an increasing amount of my time was politics.
Almost as soon as I came up to Oxford I had joined the Oxford University Conservative Association (OUCA), which was founded in the 1920s under the inspiration of a don at Christ Church – Keith Feiling, the historian of the Tory Party and later biographer of Neville Chamberlain. Although the national agreement to suspend party political electoral contests for the duration of the war had no direct implications for politics at the universities, in practice political life in Oxford was a good deal quieter than it had been in the 1930s. But, for all that, OUCA activities quickly became a focus for my life. In those days the Oxford Union, in which star speakers would come to debate issues of the highest importance as well as ones of unbelievable triviality, did not admit women to itsmembership, though I used sometimes to listen to debates. But I would never have excelled in the kind of brilliant, brittle repartee which the Union seemed to encourage. I preferred the more serious forensic style of our discussions in OUCA and of the real hustings. OUCA also provided a further network of acquaintance and friendship. It was, indeed, an effective forum for matchmaking, as a number of my OUCA colleagues demonstrated.
Oxford politics was a nursery for talent. I made friends in university politics who, as in the novels of Anthony Powell, kept reappearing in my life as the years passed by. Much the closest was Edward Boyle who, though he moved easily in a sophisticated social and political world which I had only glimpsed, shared with me a serious interest in politics. At this time Edward, the wealthy and cultivated son of a Liberal MP, was himself a classical liberal whose views chimed in pretty well with my own provincial middle-class conservatism. Although we were later to diverge politically, we remained dear friends until his tragically early death from cancer.
William Rees-Mogg, whom I knew in my final year, was a distinguished editor of
The Times
from a very early age. I was never as close to William as I was to Edward, but one sensed that he was marked out for higher things.
Robin Day was a prominent Liberal. Like Edward he was a leading light in the Oxford Union, and we later met as lawyers in the same chambers. One sometimes wondered what career would be open to the brilliant wits of the Union, until Robin Day invented a new one
Such words had a special poignancy, of course, at this time.
The main contribution one can make as a student to one’s country in peace or wartime is to study hard and effectively. But we all also tried to do something more directly. For my part, I would serve one or two evenings a week at the Forces canteen in Carfax. British soldiers and American airmen from the nearby bases at Upper Heyford were among our main customers. It was hot, sticky and very hard on the feet, but also good fun, with plenty of company and wisecracking humour.
Reports of the D-day landings in July 1944, though, brought both apprehension and anxiety. The deadly struggle on those exposed beaches made us deeply uneasy. For perhaps the only time I wondered whether I was right to be at Oxford.
In fact we were now within a year of the end of the war in Europe. There were still the Battle of the Bulge and the tragedy of Arnhem to come. But slowly the emphasis came to be on preparing for peace. And among the peacetime activities which began to take an increasing amount of my time was politics.
Almost as soon as I came up to Oxford I had joined the Oxford University Conservative Association (OUCA), which was founded in the 1920s under the inspiration of a don at Christ Church – Keith Feiling, the historian of the Tory Party and later biographer of Neville Chamberlain. Although the national agreement to suspend party political electoral contests for the duration of the war had no direct implications for politics at the universities, in practice political life in Oxford was a good deal quieter than it had been in the 1930s. But, for all that, OUCA activities quickly became a focus for my life. In those days the Oxford Union, in which star speakers would come to debate issues of the highest importance as well as ones of unbelievable triviality, did not admit women to itsmembership, though I used sometimes to listen to debates. But I would never have excelled in the kind of brilliant, brittle repartee which the Union seemed to encourage. I preferred the more serious forensic style of our discussions in OUCA and of the real hustings. OUCA also provided a further network of acquaintance and friendship. It was, indeed, an effective forum for matchmaking, as a number of my OUCA colleagues demonstrated.
Oxford politics was a nursery for talent. I made friends in university politics who, as in the novels of Anthony Powell, kept reappearing in my life as the years passed by. Much the closest was Edward Boyle who, though he moved easily in a sophisticated social and political world which I had only glimpsed, shared with me a serious interest in politics. At this time Edward, the wealthy and cultivated son of a Liberal MP, was himself a classical liberal whose views chimed in pretty well with my own provincial middle-class conservatism. Although we were later to diverge politically, we remained dear friends until his tragically early death from cancer.
William Rees-Mogg, whom I knew in my final year, was a distinguished editor of
The Times
from a very early age. I was never as close to William as I was to Edward, but one sensed that he was marked out for higher things.
Robin Day was a prominent Liberal. Like Edward he was a leading light in the Oxford Union, and we later met as lawyers in the same chambers. One sometimes wondered what career would be open to the brilliant wits of the Union, until Robin Day invented a new one
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