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PRESS TRUST OF INDIA
London, OCT 3: John Major, former British Prime Minister broke years of public silence to launch a sustained and bitter attack on his predecessor, Margaret Thatcher, describing her as "autocratic, profoundly unconservative and crude in her anti-Europeanism."
He also accuses her of relentless opposition against his premiership from the backbenches.
Lady Thatcher distrusted Germany and frequently asserted in private that two World Wars had been caused by the German expansionist instinct, John Major said last night in a BBC interview.
In his memoirs, major Writes "her warrior characteristics were profoundly unconservative. In public her certainties were off-putting, in private, she was capable of changing her mind with bewildering speed until she had worked out her public position."
Lady Thatcher is expected to hit back when she speaks at a rally, at the Conservative Party conference, on Wednesday in defence of General Pinochet, the former Chilean dictator.
The prospect of two former conservative primeministers feuding with one another will do little to help William Hague as he struggles to use his party conference to prevent a panoply of new policy measures designed to distance himself from the Major-Thatcher years. Major writes in his memoirs, to be published later this month, "too often good arguments ran into the slammed door of her closed mind."
"By the end she lacked political agility, leading to the poll tax and the crude anti-Europeanism."
The memoirs, being serialised in The Sunday Times, say that first sign that Lady Thatcher saw Major as a successor was when she made him a social security minister, with the comment "It's where I started." Major privately threatened to resign at least three times during his seven years as Prime Minister and even drafted a resignation letter, The Sunday Telegraph reported today.
The Sunday Telegraph quoting former colleagues, said Major suffered deep depressions that brought him to the brink of leaving No.10 (Prime Minister's office) years before heeventually stood down to win back his authority in the 1995 leadership showdown against John Redwood.
He came close to resigning twice in 1992, around the time that sterling crashed out of the exchange rate mechanism, and again two years later, when criticism of the government was at a peak ahead of the European elections.
Copyright © 1999 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.
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