INTRODUCTION

Sir Geoffrey Howe (1926–2015) was foreign secretary during Margaret Thatcher's second and (most of her) third terms as prime minister, from June 1983 to July 1989. He was not her first choice for that post. She had already decided to appoint Cecil Parkinson, who as chairman of the Conservative Party had masterminded the successful 1983 general election campaign. But on election night Parkinson warned her that his former secretary was pregnant with his child, and she reluctantly concluded that sending him to the Foreign Office would be unwise. She turned instead to Howe, who had been chancellor of the exchequer since 1979, and with whom, despite their close ideological affinity, there were the beginnings of temperamental and psychological differences that were to widen over the next seven years into a full-blown, and eventually for her, fatal rift.

The 1980s was the decade in which the UK-Japan relationship bore real fruit. Japanese industrial investment in Britain began to develop, with the opening of the Nissan plant in Sunderland paving the way for a major presence for the Japanese automobile industry to match that already achieved by electronics companies. With the revaluation of the Japanese yen after the Plaza Accord in 1985, the trade environment for exporters to Japan began to improve. Official government-to-government dialogue, as well as broader contacts in the political, business and cultural spheres, began to expand, and Britain's image in Japan, which only a few years before had been one of decline – the so-called Eikokubyō or ‘English disease’ improved. Much of this was driven by Margaret Thatcher, who despite her ambivalence about and in some respects distrust of Japan, greatly admired its technological and economic dynamism, and recognised its wider global significance. The full story of the Japan/Britain relationship of those years is told in Sir Hugh Cortazzi's essay on Mrs Thatcher (see 26).

Geoffrey Howe played an important role in that work, particularly in the second half of the decade, especially in expanding political contacts and thickening up the dialogue on foreign policy. It is difficult to argue conclusively that he was integral to giving Japan a higher profile in the government's international priorities: much of that work was underpinned by ministers and officials in other departments.