Remembering Margaret Hilda Thatcher

I arrived in the United Kingdom in September 1984 from Ghana, via Cote d'Ivoire as a young 25 year old.

The elected government of Ghana, my beloved country had been overthrown in a coup d'etat on the last day of 1981. I had not been a supporter of that government but as a student at the University of Ghana at the time of the coup, I and some of my friends were determined to oppose the military regime of the PNDC led by the then Flt-Lt Jerry Rawlings.

We found the attempts to impose a pseudo Cuban cum Libyan style of governance on Ghana repulsive and directed our youthful enthusiasm to fighting the PNDC. We learnt the very hard way that opposing such a regime invariably ended in tears.

It was from this background that I arrived in Margaret Thatcher's Britain, traumatized but still enthusiastic about politics. Mrs. Thatcher had just won a second election with a landslide victory and she was in the midst of the miners' strike and other social upheavals.

It was the single-minded pursuit of her goals that first attracted me to Mrs. Thatcher but it was her performances in Parliament that turned me into an admirer. It was a delight to see her energetic work rate and performance as a woman Prime Minister, the first ever.

I longed for the day that a Prime Minister in Ghana would come into a Ghanaian Parliament day after day and be subjected to questions and be held accountable to the people in the open. As even her bitterest critics would attest, Mrs. Thatcher was a formidable debater in Parliament and her Prime Minister's Question Times became compelling spectacles.

With one eye always kept on events in Ghana, I tried to make a life in the UK. I joined with the increasing numbers of Ghanaians that were coming to the UK to continue with the fight for a return to constitutional rule in Ghana and joined in the Conservative Party local politics in my exile home.

If Mrs. Thatcher was winning kudos for her uncompromising stand against oppressive rule in the Soviet Union and its allies, she was dismaying those of us who were her supporters in her attitudes to and pronouncements on the major issue of Apartheid. Knowing her beliefs in freedom and liberty for the individual, formed on Christian principles, it was difficult to understand her opposition to sanctions being applied to the Apartheid regime in South Africa.

I think it is fair to say that she allowed her determination to protect British business interests in South Africa to push her onto the wrong side of history. It might well be that according to F.W. de Klerk, the last Apartheid President of South Africa, Mrs. Thatcher was influential on his decision to release Nelson Mandela and go into negotiations with the liberation movements; but I retain the pain of seeing my idol Mrs. Thatcher being counted among the supporters of Apartheid South Africa.

When it came to events in Ghana, Mrs. Thatcher had indicated she was for “positive engagement” with the regime and in our meetings with Linda Chalker, her Minister for Overseas Development, that position came through clearly.

I recall a meeting I attended with Linda Chalker, and Prof J.W. de Graft Johnson, the vice president in the government overthrown by Rawlings, J.H. Mensah, R.O. Frimpong Manso, Shanko Bruce and others. Flt-Lt Jerry Rawlings at the time was succumbing to pressure to return the country to constitutional rule.

We were however anxious about the constitution that had been drafted which seemed to us as having been crafted to suit the continuing ambitions of Jerry Rawlings to shed his military uniform and be metamorphosed into an all powerful president of Ghana.

We felt Britain could put some pressure but the message from Downing Street, through Linda Chalker was to accept whatever would put Ghana on the road to constitutional rule.

With hindsight it must be admitted that Constitution has given us our current political dispensation, albeit with its imperfections that has brought 20 years of political stability and economic growth. I still wonder about how things would have turned out if Ghana had a constitution that had a Prime Minister who had to come to Parliament every day and was subjected to the hurly burly of political debate and had to answer questions in the open. I dream of the situation when “collective responsibilities” of the ruling party would work to harness the talents of all rather than our current all-powerful executive presidency that puts power in the hands of one person.

I suspect I am still enamoured by that scene of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher at the dispatch box in Parliament at Westminster. She was impressive, she displayed political acumen and she showed hard work paid dividends and she enchanted a young political exile who was to become a Member of Parliament and a Minister of State in his own country much later.

She had a great influence on me and I continue to admire her achievement and the electricity she brought to politics. Her life's work was done and may the Almighty grant her eternal rest.