Yet she used this mandate with extraordinary discretion and restraint. This is a point which must be remembered. Thatcher's manner could be, and often was, combative. Yet her strategy was never aggressive. Her trade union reforms were quite the reverse. Unlike Heath's, they were a step-by-step process, essentially moderate and conservative, and aimed at obvious and undeniable abuses. In the two great union battles she fought, her posture was reactive and defensive. All the attacking was done by the miners and the printers. Thatcher was never provocative. She was always ready to negotiate. She was astonishingly well-prepared, and her key advantage was that the police had learned the lessons of early, large-scale battles with militant unions — vital in the case of the miners and their flying pickets. Equally important, the new Murdoch works at Wapping had been designed with earlier experiences in mind, which proved decisive in the case of the printers' strike. So Thatcher was lucky, as she usually was. (She is proof of how important luck is as an element in political success.) But she was also cautious, subtle, discreet, well-briefed and sensible. Indeed, if there was one characteristic which marked her tactics in her handling of the unions, it was common sense. It was pervasive and self-evident and it kept the public overwhelmingly on her side throughout. Nothing could be more historically inaccurate than to portray Thatcher as headstrong, strident and spoiling for a fight. Difficult though it may be to believe, Thatcher's instincts and inclinations in most political situations were eirenic. 

But in exceptional cases, where plain issues of right and wrong were at stake, Thatcher was an absolutist, and intransigent. The two major union battles and the Falklands invasion all fell into this category. On the last, she was taken by surprise, having been comprehensively misled by the Foreign Office and by expert lying by Costa Mendes, the Argentine Foreign Minister (as he subsequently admitted to me). Of those responsible for the deception, only Lord Carrington, himself misled, behaved with honour by resigning instantly, the last senior minister to do so on a point of principle. Made aware of the issues, Thatcher was adamant that the islands had to be retaken, if physically possible, whatever the risks. The ministry of defence was pusillanimous and deceptive, but Thatcher was saved from its cowardly advice by the insistence of the Royal Navy that a recovery operation was feasible and could be swiftly mounted. Once she was told this, Thatcher never hesitated. She remained resolute and unflinching during some very anxious moments. Thus an episode which, under different leadership — under almost any leadership at the time available — might have broken the spirit of the British people, was transformed into a triumph that kept Britain in the front rank for another generation. This was Thatcher's biggest single contribution to the nation's history, but it was gloriously characteristic of her ruling style at its best and deservedly set the seal on the rest of her long premiership. 

Her reform of the income tax structure and the introduction of privatisation were of course far more important financially and adumbrated an economic assault on deep-rooted domestic problems which all parties had funked for 30 years. I have no doubt that the redress of local government funding which Thatcher began would have been the first step in a fundamental reform of the welfare state, which the current coalition is timidly attempting. But Thatcher uncharacteristically lost the PR battle by allowing the term "poll tax" to gain currency, and treachery in her own ranks did the rest. But it may be that no administration, whatever the quality of the leader, is capable of sustaining a policy of high-pressure change for longer than a limited period. Thatcher's rule of over 11 years is without modern precedent in Britain. 

There are many myths about Thatcher. I have dealt with her supposed bellicosity. She is also accused of being ruthless. Certainly she was loath to allow an individual to stand in the way of the national interest. But her instinct was to be generous, especially with the lonely, the humble and the weak. She grew to despise those who were good at public relations and nothing else, like Michael Heseltine, or whose sense of self-importance was exaggerated, like Geoffrey Howe. Both turned on her with venom when she — belatedly, not ruthlessly — cut them down to size.