New Cabinet Appointed by Thatcher : Minister Who Quit Over Sex Scandal Rejoins Advisers

Less than 48 hours after winning her third five-year term as prime minister, Margaret Thatcher reshuffled her Cabinet on Saturday, calling back into government Cecil Parkinson, an old confidant who was forced to resign in a blaze of publicity nearly four years ago after admitting an affair with his secretary.

Parkinson, 56, was named energy secretary in a post-election Cabinet change that saw four of the Cabinet’s 21 members leave and seven others change portfolios.

Although the moves constitute one of the larger reshuffles in Thatcher’s eight years as prime minister, they leave the key ministries of foreign affairs, home affairs, defense and finance unchanged.

Former Atty. Gen. Michael Havers takes over the country’s senior legal job of lord chancellor, replacing an aging Lord Hailsham, who at 79 retires after a 50-year political career that once saw him as a possible successor to the late Harold Macmillan as prime minister.

Lord Young, who spearheaded the previous government’s fight against unemployment, was named trade and industry secretary and is expected to direct Thatcher’s program for inner-city revival.

Appointment Criticized

John Smith, the opposition Labor Party’s spokesman for industrial affairs, criticized the appointment of Lord Young, who sits in the House of Lords and so does not need to face election to the House of Commons. “I find it incomprehensible that an unelected person should be appointed to the key ministry for British industry,” Smith said.

The lone member of Thatcher’s old Cabinet considered as a political moderate, Energy Secretary Peter Walker, was effectively neutralized by being named secretary of state for Wales.

Thatcher also avoided any attempt at reconciliation within the party by overlooking former Prime Minister Edward Heath, an old rival who had reportedly voiced interest in a Cabinet job.

She once again failed to appoint another woman to Cabinet rank.

The promotion of hard-line, right-wing Conservatives and the demotion of the Cabinet’s leading moderate are viewed as the first clear indication that Thatcher is likely to quicken rather than slow down the pace of implementing her unusual brand of popular capitalism.

Unassailable Position

The inclusion of Parkinson also demonstrates her present unassailable position. It was widely believed that she had wanted to bring him back into the Cabinet in two previous reshuffles but felt that it might be politically too costly.

Parkinson had a meteoric rise in Thatcher’s first government, starting as a junior minister of trade before taking over as Conservative Party chairman and masterminding her 1983 election victory.

He was promoted to trade and industry secretary in Thatcher’s 1983 post-election Cabinet and was widely seen as a possible heir apparent as prime minister when scandal interrupted his career.

Britain’s notorious tabloid press published details of his affair with his secretary, Sara Keays, who then revealed that she was pregnant with Parkinson’s child.

After a brief period of indecision, Parkinson pledged loyalty to his wife, left Keays to her fate and resigned from the Cabinet.

Keays later gave birth to a daughter and wrote a book about the affair.

Influential Member Leaves

The most influential Cabinet member to go in Saturday’s reshuffle was Norman Tebbit, the Conservative Party chairman, whose largely symbolic job as chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster gave him Cabinet rank.

He is believed to have asked to leave the government to be able to spend more time with his wife, restricted to a wheelchair as a result of injuries suffered in a 1984 bombing attack by elements of the Irish Republican Army on a Brighton hotel.

Explosives experts said at the time that the attack came within inches of wiping out the entire British Cabinet, including Thatcher. The Cabinet was staying at the hotel for a Conservative Party conference.

Parkinson and Lord Young, seen as those closest to Thatcher in her new Cabinet, are both self-made men of the type the prime minister is known to admire most.

Like Thatcher, a grocer’s daughter, they are in sharp contrast to the men of landed wealth and inherited privilege who once ruled Britain’s Conservative Party.

Parkinson was the son of a railroad worker who became a successful businessman, while Lord Young was born of Lithuanian Jewish immigrants and left school at 16 to launch an eventually successful business career.