Bernard Ingham: When the Wall crumbled at the hands of the people

It is a moot point who was more shaken: the Canaanites inside their city walls or the Soviets behind the Iron Curtain.

It was 25 years ago come Sunday that they began hacking down this monument to repression. Mayor Willi Brandt’s “Wall of Shame” was purported to have been erected to protect those who wanted to develop a socialist society from the “fascist” West, but in reality it was to stop them leaving communism.

More than 3.5 million had fled East Germany before the concrete rose to seal off West Berlin from East Berlin and the German Democratic Republic (East Germany). Subsequently, about 5,000 tried to make their escape and an estimated 100 were shot trying to do so.

I only once went to view the dictators’ handiwork. It was with Margaret Thatcher and Chancellor Helmut Kohl at the end of October 1982. This was a sombre occasion notable for a powerful, passionate passage in Thatcher’s speech.

“There are forces more powerful and pervasive than the apparatus of war,” she said.

“You may chain a man – but you cannot chain his mind. You may enslave a man – but you will not conquer his spirit. In every decade since the war the Soviet leaders have been reminded that their pitiless ideology only survives because it is maintained by force. But the day comes when the anger and frustration of the people is so great that force cannot contain it.

“Then the edifice cracks: the mortar crumbles... one day, liberty will dawn on the other side of the wall.”

When it cracked and crumbled, she said her prophecy had been vindicated far earlier than she could ever have expected.

There had, however, been straws in the wind. The most moving was on her visit in November 1988 to Poland to meet Lech Walesa who, as leader of Solidarity, was under some sort of house arrest. I found it comical that the so-called “hammer of the unions” in Britain was in Gdansk supporting the unions against their Marxist government.

Such was the fervour for freedom of the people she met that I became convinced it could not be denied.

This emotive realisation came after lunch at St Bryggida’s Presbytery when Father Jankowski, Walesa’s priest, led her into his church, which turned out to be packed with Polish families. They immediately stood up to sing Solidarity’s anthem “God give us back our free Poland”. She shed tears.

Just over a year later East Germany announced the opening of the border with West Germany.

Soon afterwards Czechoslovakia ended Communist rule and Romania overthrew Ceausescu.

Why did Ronald Reagan’s 70 year-old “evil empire” collapse so quickly? I suppose the truth is that Mikhail Gorbachev was, thank God, a defective Soviet apparatchik. He had a soul and an interest in reform.

Unlike his predecessors he did not send in the troops when things went on the slide as they had done in Hungary and during the Prague “Spring”.

It is impossible to say how much Thatcher’s pursuit of reform with him contributed. But, apart from loosening control over satellites, other things happened. The Kremlin got out of Afghanistan, opened the gates to refusniks and Jewish emigrants and paved the way for the elimination of a class of nuclear weaponry.

It is sufficient that it happened. It left Thatcher in another minority of one. As first George Bush Sr and then Mitterrand caved in, she was the last to stand out against German reunification because of the ultimate power the united nation would have.

The collapse of Communism also reinforced the driving force of the EU – federalism – for which she had no time. France saw federalism as a means of keeping Germany under the thumb; Germany saw it as a means of ensuring it never threw its weight about again.

Thatcher’s fond hopes of a wider, looser Europe through the admission of Eastern European countries soon bit the dust. They have perhaps too readily accepted new constraints on their freedom.

That brings us up to date as David Cameron struggles with the EU’s federal drive. Meanwhile, the Berlin Wall has something to teach us as we grapple with assorted Muslim fanatics and the likes of Vladimir Putin.

The way to bring down ideological walls is to stay resolute, keep focused, remain strong and jaw jaw.