With Respect, Minister: A View from Inside Whitehall 9781350989795, 9781786731357

Table of contents :
Contents
List of Illustrations
List of Abbreviations
Preface
1 Early Days
2 National Service (1953–5)
3 University: Oxford and Yale (1955–60)
4 First Steps in Whitehall: Commonwealth Relations Office (1960–1)
5 Rhodesia and the End of the Central African Federation (1961–4)
6 Death of Dag Hammarskjöld (September 1961)
7 A Brief Interlude in Ghana (1964–5)
8 Return to Whitehall and Rescuing Zambia (1965–8)
9 Starting in HM Treasury (1968–75)
10 Controlling Spending and Managing the Budget: HM Treasury (1975–81)
11 Information Technology Tsar in the Cabinet Office (1981–3)
12 Getting Our Money Back from Europe: HM Treasury (1983–5)
13 At the Centre: Cabinet Office and the Westland Affair (1985–7)
14 Collecting Tax and Protecting Our Border
15 Financing Europe’s Infrastructure: European Investment Bank (1993–2000)
Epilogue: 2000–
Sources
Image Section
Index

Citation preview

Sir Brian Unwin studied at the universities of Oxford and Yale. After a career in the Civil Service he became president of the European Investment Bank. He has a long-standing interest in European history and is the author of Terrible Exile: The Last Days of Napoleon on St Helena, which was shortlisted for the Fondation Napoléon History Prize, and A Tale in Two Cities: Fanny Burney and Adèle, Comtesse de Boigne (both I.B.Tauris).

With Respect, Minister • A View from Inside Whitehall

Brian Unwin

Published in 2017 by I.B.Tauris & Co. Ltd London • New York www.ibtauris.com Copyright © 2017 Brian Unwin The right of Brian Unwin to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or any part thereof, may not be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. Every attempt has been made to gain permission for the use of the images in this book. Any omissions will be rectified in future editions. References to websites were correct at the time of writing. Line drawings by Mike Unwin Frontispiece by Chris Unwin ISBN: 978 1 78453 873 6 eISBN: 978 1 78672 135 8 ePDF: 978 1 78673 135 7 A full CIP record for this book is available from the British Library A full CIP record is available from the Library of Congress Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: available Text design, typesetting and eBook by Tetragon, London

To my wife, Diana, and all my family, past and present

CONTENTS •

List of Illustrations List of Abbreviations Preface

ix xiii xv

1 Early Days 2 National Service (1953–5) 3 University: Oxford and Yale (1955–60) 4 First Steps in Whitehall: Commonwealth Relations Office (1960–1) 5 Rhodesia and the End of the Central African Federation (1961–4) 6 Death of Dag Hammarskjöld (September 1961) 7 A Brief Interlude in Ghana (1964–5) 8 Return to Whitehall and Rescuing Zambia (1965–8) 9 Starting in HM Treasury (1968–75) 10 Controlling Spending and Managing the Budget: HM Treasury (1975–81) 11 Information Technology Tsar in the Cabinet Office (1981–3) 12 Getting Our Money Back from Europe: HM Treasury (1983–5) 13 At the Centre: Cabinet Office and the Westland Affair (1985–7)

1 19 35 55 67 85 99 107 119 141 161 173 185

14 Collecting Tax and Protecting Our Borders: HM Customs and Excise (1987–93) 15 Financing Europe’s Infrastructure: European Investment Bank (1993–2000) Epilogue: 2000– Sources Image Section Index

209 235 255 261 265 283

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS • All images courtesy of the author.

Chapter Illustrations 1 Chesterfield Crooked Spire. 2 Bren gun, boots and officer’s cap. 3 Oxford’s gleaming spires. 4 Briefcase and brolly. 5 The Balancing Rocks, Southern Rhodesia. 6 Memorial to Dag Hammarskjöld, Zambia. 7 Elmina Castle, Ghana. 8 Oil airlift into Zambia. 9 HM Treasury. 10 Budget box. 11 Acorn computer. 12 The Union and the EU flags. 13 Westland helicopter. 14 HM Customs cutter. 15 The Øresund Bridge, from Denmark to Sweden. Epilogue  Leisure at last.

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Black and White Plates 1 My paternal grandfather, Company Sergeant Major Matthew J. Unwin, DCM, MM. 2 Mother and Father on holiday at Bridlington. 3 PC Reg Unwin, on Merryweather fire engine, late 1920s. 4 With my father, grandmother and great-grandmother, c.1936. 5 My first innings. 6 Chesterfield’s crooked spire in the snow. 7 Holy Trinity Church Chesterfield choir, 1944. 8 My father in the army, 1944. 9 Chesterfield School first XI cricket, 1951. 10 Sergeant in the Chesterfield School CCF, 1953. 11 Eaton Hall Officer Cadet School, November 1954. 12 Second lieutenant, First Battalion Suffolk Regiment, Sennelager, Germany, May 1955. 13 Rt Hon. Lord Alport, British high commissioner to the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, 1961–3. 14 New College rugby first XV, 1956–7. 15 Wreckage of Dag Hammarskjöld’s plane, near Ndola, Northern Rhodesia, 18 September 1961. 16 Picnic at Lake McIlwaine near Salisbury, Southern Rhodesia, with Vera, Andrew, Diana and Robert Scott, and myself, 1962. 17 With Margaret Thatcher at the Fontainebleau European Council, night of 25 June 1984. 18 Leaving the Scott inquiry, 1994. (From the Private Eye special Not the Scott Report, published November 1994.)

List of Illustrations

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colour Plates 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19

With Winston Field, prime minister of Southern Rhodesia, at his farm, 1964. Our wedding at Guildford, 5 May 1964. Going away – author and Diana, 5 May 1964. With my mother and brother, Roger, playing for RAF Officers XI against Sussex Police, 1973. Princess Diana launching new Customs Cutter at Cowes, December 1988. My wife Diana launching a French Customs Cutter at Menton, December 1988. Benazir Bhutto, prime minister of Pakistan, visiting HM Customs and Excise headquarters at New Kings Beam House, London, 1989. With prime minister John Major at the annual customs chairman’s and Cabinet secretary’s XI cricket match, 1992. Author and Robin Butler, the two captains in the annual customs chairman’s and Cabinet secretary’s XI cricket match, 1991. EIB, Luxembourg, 1993. Greeting HRH Prince Charles, EIB dinner at National Museum of Wales, Cardiff, October 1994. Meeting with Felipe González, prime minister of Spain, Madrid, 1996. At the EIB with two former Luxembourg prime ministers, Jacques Santer and Pierre Werner, father of the euro, 1997. With King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden, Stockholm, October 1997. Visiting Stavronikita monastery, Mount Athos, September 1998. Meeting with French prime minister Lionel Jospin at the Matignon, Paris, May 1998. ‘With respect, Mr Brown…’ EIB London conference, October 1998. With the president of Portugal, Jorge Sampaio, and his wife at the EIB, 1998. With French finance minister Dominique Strauss-Kahn at the EIB London conference, October 1998.

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20 At the EIB with Jean-Claude Juncker, prime minister of Luxembourg, 1999. 21 Our three grandchildren, Fabian, Florence and Oliver. 22 With Diana in Brazil, 2009. 23 Our sons: Nick, Chris and Mike. 24 Family on holiday in Tanzania, Christmas 2012. 25 The Cabinet room, No. 10.

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS •

BOT CAP CCF CCTA CCU CO CRO CST DEA DHSS DOI DTI

Board of Trade [after October 1970 the DTI] Common Agricultural Policy Combined Cadet Force Central Computer and Telecommunications Agency Civil Contingencies Unit Colonial Office [until 1966]; Commonwealth Office [1966–8] Commonwealth Relations Office Chief secretary to the Treasury Department of Economic Affairs Department of Health and Social Security Department of Industry [1974–83] Department of Trade and Industry [October 1970–February 1974; 1983–2007] E(A) Ministerial Steering Committee on Economic Strategy EBRD European Bank for Reconstruction and Development EC European Communities [association including the EEC] ECNC European Centre for Nature Conservation Ecofin Economic and Financial Affairs Council EEA European Economic Area EEC European Economic Community [part of the EC] EFTA European Free Trade Association EIB European Investment Bank E(LF) Cabinet Subcommittee on Local Government Finance

xiv ENO FO HF ID ITAP MCC MOD MOU MRA MTTA NADs OC OECD OF OPEC PAC PCC PII PSBR RRAF TA TEN TUC UCRN UDI UNIP

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English National Opera Foreign Office Home Finance [division of the Treasury] Investigation Division [of HM Customs and Excise] Information Technology Advisory Panel Marylebone Cricket Club Ministry of Defence Memorandum of understanding Moral Rearmament Machine Tools Technologies Association National Armaments Directors Officer commanding Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development Overseas Finance [division of the Treasury] Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries Public Accounts Committee Policy Coordinating Committee Public Interest Immunity [certificate] Public-sector borrowing requirement Royal Rhodesian Air Force Territorial Army Trans-European Network Trades Union Congress University College of Rhodesia and Nyasaland Unilateral declaration of independence United National Independence Party [Northern Rhodesian political party] WCC World Customs Council WOSB War Office Selection Board

PREFACE •

I

n September 1960, fresh from Yale, I nervously reported to the Commonwealth Relations Office in Downing Street for my first civil service job. I could not then possibly have foreseen what course my career would take. I was a generalist in the old civil service administrativeclass tradition, with no specialist qualifications except a fair knowledge of Latin, Greek and ancient history and a readiness to tackle whatever job was assigned to me. It is hard even now to credit that it led me to a ringside seat at the death throes of the Central African Federation in the early 1960s; to direct involvement in the tragic events of the night of 17–18 September 1961 when the secretary general of the UN, Dag Hammarskjöld, died in an air crash; to being taken on a glider flight in Ghana by Hitler’s personal pilot, Hanna Reitsch; to advising and drafting Budgets for Denis Healey and Geoffrey Howe in the Treasury in the 1980s; to arguing about nightingales with Margaret Thatcher and fighting to get ‘our money back’ with her at the Fontainebleau summit in June 1984; to witnessing Michael Heseltine destroy his chances of becoming prime minister by walking out of Cabinet in January 1986 over the Westland helicopter affair; and, as chairman of HM Customs and Excise, to launching the arms-to-Iraq prosecutions in 1990 that nearly brought down the government of John Major. Moreover, for two years in the early 1980s I oversaw government IT policy – an unexpected interlude, especially for one so technically illiterate – and, as the cream on my career cake, I spent my last seven years of public service in Luxembourg, financing most of Europe’s major infrastructure projects, including the Channel Tunnel.

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This book tells the story of that career. It progresses through my early days at home and school in Chesterfield during World War II and its austere aftermath; my obligatory two years as a soldier serving the Queen on national service; my five years at Oxford and Yale; my 33 years in the diplomatic service, HM Treasury, the Cabinet Office and HM Customs; and finally my time as the first British president of the European Investment Bank (EIB) from 1993. Apart from that last job, I never actively sought a post but took what the civil service offered me and made the best of it. Some of it was very serious and of high drama and importance, and some of it was hilarious, both in retrospect and at the time. But without that element of hilarity I would probably not have survived it. I hope readers will find it interesting, both as casting some light on the way in which the public service has changed over the years and on particular events that might merit a footnote – or at least a footnote to a footnote – in history, and as the personal record of one civil servant. I am once again deeply grateful to my wife, Diana, for encouraging me, allowing me to monopolise our home computer over many months, and for reading each chapter as it emerged and making many valuable corrections and suggestions. My thanks go also to the many other members of my family, not least my brother, Roger, and old friends and former colleagues – even going back to primary-school days – whose memories I have been able readily to tap. The sad thing is that many others with whom I shared experiences during childhood, schooling, university and later life are no longer with us to be consulted. As with my previous books, my special thanks go to my eldest son, Mike, who has once again found time in his own hectic writing, illustrating and publishing schedule to produce the chapter-heading illustrations that illuminate the book. Finally, I am grateful to I.B.Tauris for their support, not least to my editor, Jo Godfrey, who encouraged and guided me in this project from the start; and to Sophie Campbell, Alex Billington and Alex Middleton, each of whom added their considerable professional skills to the final production of this volume. Needless to say, any errors of fact or judgement are entirely mine.

ON E

Early Days

I

was born on 21 September 1935 – appropriately, the day of St Matthew, the tax collector – and brought up in Chesterfield in Derbyshire, at that time the self-styled ‘Centre of Industrial England’. A busy market town, known for its dramatically crooked spire – twisting skywards above the beautiful thirteenth-century parish church of St Mary and All Saints – it lies between the crags and moorland of the Peak District to the north and west, and a cluster of small mining towns and villages in almost every other direction – Clay Cross, Creswell, Bolsover, Whitwell, Langwith, and others. When I was a boy they were thriving colliery communities – I was once taken down Bonds Main colliery, where they still had pit ponies – with their miners’ welfares, working men’s clubs, cricket and football teams, co-ops and brass bands, and landscapes dominated by towering winding wheels and smoking pyramidal slag heaps.

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Since the depredations of the Thatcher governments in the 1980s all the pits have closed; the slag heaps have been grassed over, and little remains of the old community mining culture and institutions – so much so that, as one local once ruefully but vividly put it to me, ‘even the pigeons now fly upside down, as there’s nowt worth shitting on!’ But Chesterfield remains a fine town, retaining much of its old character, including the medieval Shambles, with one of the biggest and busiest open markets in the country, and a handsome restored Victorian market hall. The Peak District also retains its natural wild beauty, and it is only a short scenic bus or car ride – or even hike – from the centre of Chesterfield over Beeley Moor to the rugged crags of Baslow, Froggatt and Calver edges; or to Bakewell and Tideswell – the latter’s St John the Baptist village church rightly known as the ‘Cathedral of the Peak’ – and the plague village of Eyam and welldressing villages of Holymoorside, Tissington and Hathersage, among others. Nearby too are three of Derbyshire’s great historic houses, among the finest in the country: Chatsworth, Hardwick and Haddon. Being free to roam on a family, church or Scout-troop outing in the vast acreage of Chatsworth Park, with real live deer roaming the woods and pastures, and fishing furtively for tiddlers – and on one occasion even crayfish – in the clear, fast-flowing waters of the River Derwent, are some of my abiding childhood memories. We even imagined we could sense the phantom presence of the captive Mary, Queen of Scots as she paced the ramparts of her bower-house prison down by the bridge over the river, below the great house.

Life at home in Chesterfield We lived in the suburb of Newbold, where my parents in the mid-1930s had bought a small semi-detached house – I believe for some £350. It was only 15 or 20 minutes’ walk from Chesterfield town centre, with a frequent bus service nearby, and closer still to fields and open country (now housing estates), where we played cricket and football, organised ‘wide games’, hunted butterflies (which we mounted on plywood boards by a pin through the thorax, after killing them by shutting them in a jam jar with crushed laurel leaves), searched

Early Days

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for rare caterpillars (my greatest ever find being a dramatically eyed elephant hawk-moth caterpillar) and, shame now, collected and blew birds’ eggs. In the absence of television and other modern distractions we spent much more time playing out of doors, following a traditional seasonal pattern of children’s games: hopscotch, roller-skating, whip and top, marbles and ‘conkers’ in the autumn, and, of course, sledging and snowballing in winter when it snowed (which it seemed to do more often then). As hardly anyone in our road owned a car it was much safer to play football and cricket (with a lamp post as wicket) in the street, but woe betide anyone who kicked the ball into old Mrs Gee’s garden and had to go and ask her for it. We lost several that way. I was terrified of her. As I grew older I became a fanatical trainspotter and devoted hours and hours to this pastime during school holidays. Chesterfield was brilliant for this, with three stations, supporting the London, Midland and Scottish Railway (LMS) main line from London to Glasgow, a subsidiary London and North Eastern Railway (LNER) central line from London to Sheffield, and a curious little cross-country line from the old marketplace station to Lincoln. Horns Bridge, a stone’s throw from the centre of the town, was a paradise spot where all three railways crossed and we could feast all day on locomotives of every variety, from huge freight-hauling 2–8–0 Garratts to exciting 4–6–0 ‘shielders’, like the extraordinarily named E. Tootal Broadhurst (I never discovered who or what he was). Our house had two main rooms up and two more down, with an exposed bathroom on one side that was icy cold and often frozen-piped in winter. The bottom of the bath felt cold even when filled with hot water. But I fondly recall my father rubbing me dry with a warm towel in front of the fire after I had come downstairs wet and shivering. When I drive past the house now – as I do whenever I revisit Chesterfield – I cannot believe how we all – my brother, Roger, was born three years after me – managed to fit into such a tiny home. But manage very well we did. Family life centred on the kitchen-cum-living room, warmed by a blazing coal fire in the colder weather, where we ate, talked, played games, listened to the radio – especially the Home Service, It’s That Man Again (known as ITMA) and the football results late on Saturday afternoon, when Dad would check his football pools – and where the table was cleared as necessary to make room for our homework.

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We were not a particularly book-rich household, but my parents ensured that we had a stock of wonderful reference works on science, nature, geography and British history (largely the imperial version), and many of the standard English classics. I still have a collection of large, dark-blue hardback volumes with titles such as The Marvels and Mysteries of Science, The World’s Greatest Wonders, Wonders of the Modern World, The Miracle of Life, The Nature of Living Things and Their Evolution, and so on. I suppose some of these books inspired my lifelong interest in natural history. When I was about 13 my father gave me a microscope and a set of mounted slides, so that I could peer in wonder at such magnified miracles as a butterfly’s antennae, a water flea, a dragonfly’s wing or grains of sugar that looked like building blocks for the Pyramids. We also devoured comics, graduating from the Dandy and the Beano, with fabulous characters like Desperate Dan, Korky the Cat and Lord Snooty and his Pals, to Radio Fun and Film Fun, and then to the fabulous adventures in the Wizard, the Rover and the Hotspur, where we thrilled at the exploits of Wilson, the ‘Wonder Athlete’, Alf Tupper, the ‘Tough of the Track’, Morgyn the Mighty, Limp Along Leslie, who could bend a football from the corner flag in ways David Beckham never even dreamed of, and Joe Bones, ‘the Human Fly’. As we grew older our reading diet was leavened by the Eagle, a rather worthy educational comic with a Christian message (although it did at least feature Dan Dare and had marvellous cutaway drawings of ships and aircraft), and by the subscriptions that Dad took out to Reader’s Digest and the wonderful National Geographic magazine. To my delight (since I was able to sneak a look at them), our own boys lapped up the successors to those early comics, taking Whizzer and Chips and the Victor, full of similarly improbable characters who, as George Orwell pointed out in his wonderful essay ‘Boys’ weeklies’, always reflected the age of the author’s childhood and not that in which he then lived. Later on, when I was studying for my School Certificate, A levels and ultimately university entrance, I was allowed to take my books into the front room, with its upright piano, lace curtains and precious uncut-moquette three-piece suite, where a fire was lit on winter evenings to enable me to work without freezing – but not, of course, until I had listened at about seven o’clock to the latest episode of Dick Barton – Special Agent, which was tragically terminated to make way for an everyday story of country folk called The Archers. I never

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believed it would catch on. Although small, the house had a privet-hedged lawn and flower borders at the front, and a back garden which, provided we respected the vegetables and the hen coop that my father built for precious egg-laying bantams during the war, served us every bit as well as Lord’s or Wembley for cricket and football. We never played in the small front garden, partly because we were terrified of Hedge-Cutting Jo, the demon figure who patrolled the streets with a large pair of shears, offering eponymously to cut hedges for a shilling a time.

My parents After leaving Chesterfield Grammar School with his School Certificate – almost the equivalent of university-entrance qualification in those days – my father joined the Chesterfield borough police force, which entailed serving as a fireman too. I have a wonderful photograph of him sitting proudly in full fireman’s regalia on top of an old Merryweather fire engine. He told marvellous stories of those times, including an occasion when, in the middle of the annual police ball, they were called out to a large department store in the town and, rapidly throwing his fireman’s clothing over his dinner suit, he went off to deal with the fire, returning to the ball with a hole burned in the bottom of his dress trousers. During the first part of the war, when he was a sergeant, he remained in Chesterfield, as the police service was a reserved occupation, but he was later commissioned into military government and served with both British and American forces in France, Belgium and Germany until the end of the war, emerging with the rank of major. I remember his stories and letters about reappointing burgomasters and town councils in occupied German towns and on one occasion setting up a firing squad to execute a condemned Nazi. He was also among the first Allied soldiers to enter Belsen after its liberation, but did not talk about this. He was offered promotion to lieutenant colonel to stay on for a time after the war, but my mother, who was bitterly anti-German, would never agree to go and live in Germany. Some years later I much admired his courage when, on retirement, he bought a Volkswagen, the most reliable then on the market, as our first car. My mother was not amused. Hitherto he

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had not owned his own car, but had always borrowed one from a friendly local garage owner for our annual holidays. This seemed a good idea in principle, except that the cars invariably broke down, and I have vivid memories of being stranded somewhere on the journey home, or of my brother and me pushing the car up and down the parking area at Bridlington harbour while the veteran attendant struggled to keep up with us while shouting breathlessly to my father, ‘Tickle your throttle!’ On returning to Chesterfield after the war he was promoted to inspector and became a well-known and enormously respected figure in the town. Everybody knew Reg Unwin. There is no doubt that his subsequent refusal to move from Chesterfield when the old borough force was amalgamated into the Derbyshire county police force was motivated by his not wishing to take my brother and myself away from Chesterfield School (as the grammar school had now been renamed), and that this cost him promotion to the highest ranks in the county force. This was but one of the many sacrifices my parents made to keep us at such a good school and to avoid disrupting our education. They even turned down a scholarship I was offered to Repton because they wanted to keep me at home, and in any case there was no academic advantage in moving there. It was a tough choice as the police were far from well paid in those days: I remember the headlines in later years when police constables first became £1,000-a-year men. My father, who had grown up in Clay Cross, a solid Labour stronghold and the birthplace of Dennis Skinner, that scourge of the Tory front bench, was kind, considerate and even-tempered, and popular and at ease with people of all kinds. He was clearly an excellent police officer and an outstanding leader in the local force and community. He regularly conducted prosecutions in the local magistrates’ court (there was no Crown Prosecution Service then), spoke passable French and German as a result of school and army service, and played the piano well, though more at the concert-party and family-sing-song level than the classical. He could pick up and vamp to any tune, and I fondly remember the rousing duets that he played with my mother’s brother, Uncle Stanley, at our annual New Year’s Eve parties, when we crammed an unbelievable number into the house overnight, prior to a traditional breakfast fry-up the next morning. He also wrote beautifully descriptive and informative letters to me when I

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was away from home (I have bundles of them), and was a brilliant athlete: tall, handsome, muscular and wiry. He was a natural at any ball game, but in cricket he excelled. Known locally in his prime as the ‘demon bowler’, he turned out for Derbyshire Club and Ground in the county side’s heyday when they won the championship in 1935, and some said he was even faster than Derbyshire’s opening bowler, Bill Copson, who toured Australia with Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) and took hundreds of county wickets at minimal cost. I have many cuttings of my father’s triumphs for Chesterfield and Clay Cross in Derbyshire league cricket and for various representative police sides, including a return of ten for 36 against Sheffield City Police, of whom eight were clean-bowled. Many locals said that if he had turned professional he could have gone on to play for England. I still have several of his cricket caps up in the attic (how small they were then) along with my own more recently discarded gear. Cricket was a religion for us at home. We played wherever there was a bit of space and a bat and ball available – in the garden, on the street, on bumpy grass in the ‘bottom field’ and, of course, on the fine firm sands at Bridlington, our usual summer holiday destination, at which my parents had spent their honeymoon. With my mother (a patient scorer and uncomplaining tea and sandwich maker), my brother and I often accompanied Dad after the war to watch him play for the Derbyshire County Police XI, which he captained. He had by then, of course, lost his high speed, but bowled a mixture of off-cutters and away-swingers at brisk medium pace with metronomic length and accuracy and still took a stack of wickets. I recall seeing him bowl out for a duck the record-breaking Indian Test batsman Vijay Hazare in a celebrity Sunday charity match at one of the then first-class colliery grounds. My mother in later years often recalled the grunt that Hazare gave when his off stump went flying. One of my proudest memories is of opening the bowling with my father for a Chesterfield local government side (captained by Keith Miller, whose son, Geoff, went on to play many times for England) when he was at the veteran stage and I at university, and we each took five wickets to register a rare victory over arch-rivals Rowsley, a beautiful village tucked away at the foot of the moors by the River Derwent, on the edge of Chatsworth Park. My younger brother, Roger, inherited my father’s athletic ability and became a fine footballer and cricketer who excelled at all ball games at school and St

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Luke’s College at Exeter – then the premier sporting college in the country – and went on to represent the British teacher-training colleges and then the RAF and Combined Services at football. He too could probably have turned professional. I was keen but much less talented, but a combination of Dad’s coaching and constant practice (including, like Don Bradman and Len Hutton, bouncing a golf ball against a wall in the garden and playing it back innumerable times with a cricket stump, and – Dad’s favourite – using a straight bat to repeatedly hit a cricket ball suspended from the washing line) enabled me to hold my own on the cricket field. Len Hutton, with his unmatched cover drive – a thing of true beauty – was my hero, but the real god of cricket at that time was Don Bradman, and I had the thrill, at my first Test match at Trent Bridge in June 1948, of actually seeing him complete a century innings – a memory fully comparable to seeing David Garrick play Richard III at Drury Lane or hearing Caruso in Turandot at La Scala. I was not, however, much good at football – far too clumsy and aggressive. After being dropped from the school under-14 XI, I turned to rugby, where, as a forward, there was more scope for sheer vigour, energy and legitimate violence. My mother, Winifred Annie, whose family came from Newport Pagnell, was very different from my father. Less tolerant and easy-going, she was stubborn, argumentative, always determined, competitive, aggressively suspicious of strangers – especially southerners, whom she labelled ‘never friendly’ – until they had established their credit with her – and a staunch Conservative (she devoured the Daily Express) with very strongly held views. After shorthand and secretarial training when she left school, she worked as a secretary in a local firm of wine merchants, T. P. Woods & Co., before getting married and devoting herself to establishing a new home and bringing up her two sons. She was a marvellous pastry cook and her oxtail stew, richly stocked with added steak and kidney, was the world’s best. She had a sharp and enquiring intelligence – she was very good at word puzzles – and would, I am sure, have benefited greatly from further education if it had been available to her. She sometimes looked back on her secretarial days with both pride and nostalgia, and perhaps felt frustrated that, both for family reasons and because that was how things were then, she had not been able to take her education further. I suppose I inherited more of her determination, competitiveness and suspicion of strangers than I

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did my father’s sporting ability and more laissez-faire approach. But I am still no good at word puzzles.

Wartime Looking back, I am astonished at how well my mother coped during the war, especially when my father was away and rationing was strict and most goods in short supply. We even had a soldier billeted on us in our small house for a time. This was a period of real, not relative austerity, lasting throughout the war and into the early 1950s, when Roger and I were still at school. I remember that we still had to produce sweet coupons to buy an iced bun from the school tuck shop at morning break; and I used to look salivatingly at those advertisements for tins of mouth-watering Hormel ham in the National Geographic magazine. There were no shelf-packed supermarkets then, and every item of food – and clothing too – had to be sought, bought and begged for, within the ration and when it was available, from individual shops – and carried back home on foot or on the bus. In later years my mother, partly out of loyalty and habit, still largely kept up the practice of trudging round to separate shops for her groceries and other purchases, and I sometimes blessed her for this as I did the shopping for her on one of my regular weekend visits, carrying with me her carefully written list of all the different shops I had to visit and items to procure. I was still greeted at the butcher’s in the market hall as ‘Mrs Unwin’s lad’. With two hungry schoolboys to feed, the modest family budget must have been severely strained, but we fared very well. Meat was particularly scarce, but, supplemented by the occasional rabbit from one of Dad’s farmer friends, and imaginative use of every variety of offal, the weekend joint, such as it was, lasted amazingly, reappearing in various forms until at least Wednesday dinner time. I have only vague memories of the war itself, as we were not really affected directly in Chesterfield. But I do recall being hauled out of bed during the night on a number of occasions to spend the rest of it in a damp, cold underground shelter in the Willetts’ garden next door as the air-raid sirens wailed and we could heard the throbbing drone of the German bombers overhead on their way to attack the steelworks and other industrial installations in Sheffield only

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12 miles away. Sheffield was our nearest big city – I remember my mother after the war taking me to the Mappin Art Gallery, with its fine collection of paintings by Joseph Wright of Derby, and to the Lyceum Theatre to see my first performance by the Carl Rosa Opera Company – and was a prime target. In the raids of December 1940 – the Sheffield blitz – over 600 people were killed, and there were still uncleared bomb sites and piles of rubble in Sheffield until well after the war. The German bombers occasionally offloaded a few bombs in the Chesterfield area on the way back, and my mother even recalled a German fighter machine-gunning an early-morning crowd of girls (known locally as ‘Robo’s angels’) on their way to Robinson’s works in a street not far from our home. I do not think that anyone was hit – the pilot was obviously getting rid of his spare ammunition – but my mother said she could hear the rat-a-tat of the bullets hitting the tarmac surface and it brought the war closer to us. I also remember her taking me to see a crashed German bomber, a Junkers, in a field on the outskirts of Chesterfield, and that I was morbidly disappointed not to see any trace of the dead crew; and walking with her into Chesterfield to join the wildly excited and celebrating crowds in front of the town hall on VE day. I think I have an earlier memory too of the greatcoated brother of our Cub-pack leader, Akela, arriving home weary, dirty and dishevelled from the evacuation at Dunkirk, still carrying his rifle, backpack and steel helmet – but perhaps I have since watched too many war films.

Scouting for boys Although they occasionally attended church on special festival days, my parents were not religious, but they packed us off to Cubs, Scouts, Sunday school and choir at our local church, Holy Trinity, whose main distinction was that George Stephenson, a long-time resident of Chesterfield, was buried there. The church Scout troop gave us marvellous summer camps, despite the lumpy porridge, the charred sausages, the doorstep margarine-spread jam sandwiches and the large, heavy ex-army tents, which we dragged down to Chesterfield station on a trek cart and which took ages to erect and leaked like sieves when it rained, especially if you scraped your finger along the canvas inside. We went to new

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seaside places like Looe, Westward Ho!, Bognor Regis, the Isle of Wight and Penmaenmawr in North Wales, which were exciting to those of us who had only known family holidays in Bridlington, Scarborough and Flamborough Head on the chilly, windswept Yorkshire coast, where the water always seemed to be goose-pimply cold and put me off sea-bathing for years. I am not sure that Baden-Powell would have approved of all the antics we got up to at camp; some were definitely not recommended in Scouting for Boys and would have made the hair of present health-and-safety experts stand on end. I remember on one occasion lowering one of the smallest Scouts down a steep quarry cliff side in order to test whether or not what we were told about the reliability of the fireman’s chair knot was true. I blush whenever I meet him in Chesterfield now and thank the Lord that the knot held. We were given free rein at annual camp by our scoutmaster, ‘Sparks’ Gwinnett (a naval radio operator during the war), who viewed it as a reward for all our allegedly hard scouting work throughout the year. He was particularly useful to have around at camp because he was some sort of Scout commissioner, and if any local scouting bigwig visited to inspect us Sparks would pull rank on him. I gained a sleeveful of the many badges on offer, including the coveted ‘bushman’s thong’ – although I never really knew what it was supposed to represent – and, although not normally bold or adventurous, I earned my spurs one year by accepting the challenge to dive off Bognor pier into the sea while clinging to the back of the one-legged showman Peg-Leg Pete (we both survived). I think my fellow Scouts clubbed up to raise the two shillings or so that I had to pay for the privilege of this daredevil experience. Our most dramatic experience at camp was when we were washed out of our tents in a sloping farmer’s field at Lynmouth in August 1952 during the great flood disaster when much of the town was destroyed. As there were no mobile phones then, and in any case few if any of the Scouts’ parents possessed a telephone at home, as a more senior boy I was sent back by train to Chesterfield to go round and reassure families personally that their offspring were safe and sound. In later years, during university vacations, I signed on as an assistant scoutmaster to help take the boys to summer camp and make some repayment for the wonderful times I had had in earlier days. But I never quite got over the embarrassment of walking down the main road to the church institute where Scout meetings

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were held, wearing my shorts, woggle and neckerchief, and trying to hide my broad-brimmed Baden-Powell Scout hat behind my back.

Expulsion from the church choir To the church choir – two or three times every Sunday and practice on Thursday evenings – I owe my still-comprehensive knowledge of Anglican hymns and liturgy. Although God has long since gone by the wayside, I can still sing at least the first verse of almost every number in Hymns Ancient and Modern, and have a good stab at the Magnificat, Te Deum, Nunc Dimittis and Venite, or even, during Lent, the Benedicite. I am also still fairly conversant with the Creed, although as a choirboy for many years I puzzled as to why an ‘unconscious pilot’ featured in it – as it was recited I always had a mental picture of a helmeted Spitfire pilot slumped in his cockpit! I fear, however, that my days in the choir came to an ignominious and premature end when, having become head choirboy and treble soloist, leading the cantoris side of the choir stalls, I was summarily dismissed one Thursday evening by our choirmaster in front of the whole choir, gentlemen, ladies and all, for allegedly being the instigator of noise and disturbance during the previous Sunday evening service. I may or may not have been guilty on this occasion. We were not always well disciplined, to say the least, and it really was difficult not to burst into a bout of uncontrollable behind-handkerchief sniggering when, for example, our venerable and respected lay reader, Mr ‘Clacker’ Fisher, read the first lesson to the unfortunate accompaniment of various clacks and splutters from his ill-fitting palate, or our leading baritone, Bobby Barnes, grunted and growled from the choir stall behind us to cover the rustle of opening one of his favourite throat sweets. Our veteran top tenor, too, made a worryingly wavering evangelist, and kept us on edge as to whether he would ever get the glad tidings over to the Virgin Mary; and our on-the-mature-side leading soprano had obviously sung Brünnhilde in better days. As my voice was on the point of breaking I did not take my dismissal too hard, and slunk off home, not even stopping to buy the usual post-practice six pennyworth of chips at the chip shop on the way. But my mother was furious

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and sailed down like a galleon in full rig to the church to give the choirmaster, ‘Pop’ Sadler, who had been my father’s music master at the grammar school, a piece of her mind for the appreciation he had (not) shown me for all my years of faithful choir service. I had some regret at no longer being able to join them in lustily flinging wide the gates in the annual performance of Stainer’s very muscular Crucifixion; and I missed the walk to choir practice on dark Thursday evenings, when, as I peered over the castellated stretch of wall on Newbold Road, overlooking (then) open fields, I would imagine I was a Roman legionary on Hadrian’s Wall defending the northern frontier of the civilised world against the barbarian Picts and Scots lurking out there in the darkness. In later times I blessed my years in the choir; for instance, in the army on an exercise out in the training-area wilds in Germany in 1955, I found myself conducting, without hymn or prayer book, an open-air Easter Day service, which my platoon had demanded as their right on that holy day. I did pretty well on ‘Onward, Christian soldiers’, ‘Fight the good fight’ and a couple of other militant hymns, muttered a few prayers, stumbled through most of the Creed, and came into my own again in the final blessing. They seemed satisfied.

Schooldays As Newbold was in its catchment area we went to probably the best primary school in Chesterfield, Highfield Hall. It was barely 15 minutes’ walk away, situated in its own pleasant grounds and next to a public park where we later spent hours playing football and cricket. Apart from problems in the infant section with a certain rather terrifying Miss Blatherwick, who apparently reduced me to a nervous state commensurate with her name, and once sent me home when I had messed my trousers with scrumpled-up newspaper stuffed up my trouser legs, I had a happy time there. As a function of my birthday in late September and early entry to primary school before I was five, I was always the youngest in my class and passed my scholarship, or ‘11-plus’, at the age of nine and was thus set to move to the local boys’ grammar school. I gave little thought then to the discriminatory system which destined the great majority of boys and girls to move on to an inferior education in local secondary modern schools,

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which most of them then left at 15 (later 16), in many cases (at least the boys) to go straight down the pit or into one of the other local heavy industries. My ambition was to get to the grammar school, and in any case I had an incentive and reward for passing in the form of a new bike. The inequity of the system was graphically symbolised by an illustration that the teacher of the top class at Highfield Hall put up on the blackboard showing on the one side the happy smiling face of a pupil who had received a large brown envelope which signalled that he or she had passed the scholarship, and on the other the sad face of one who had received a thin envelope that indicated failure. In September 1945 I presented myself at Chesterfield School, proudly wearing my new school blazer, cap and tie in the blue colours of Foljambe House, in which my father and his brother had been many years before (as was Roger later). Godfrey Foljambe had been one of the founders and benefactors of the school in 1594, and his much brass-rubbed tomb can be found in Chesterfield parish church. The school flourished in the eighteenth century. Its most illustrious pupil, the great Erasmus Darwin, doctor, natural philosopher and poet, and grandfather of Charles, was sent there as a boarder from Lichfield as it was reputed to be the best school at that time in the north of England After leaner times in the nineteenth century it came into its own in the twentieth as one of the best academic grammar schools in the north midlands. By the time I entered it was regularly sending ten or more students each year on scholarships or entrance to Oxbridge and offering an extraordinarily wide educational, cultural and sporting curriculum. I was always a year or more younger than the class average, so that I passed the old School Certificate (later, GCE O Level) at the age of 13 and entered the lower sixth form, as it were, still in short trousers. Without ever consciously making a choice, and despite my early interest in natural history, I was somehow steered towards becoming a classicist. I had showed little aptitude for more practical studies and indeed had been thrown out of the woodwork class in the junior school, and given extra Greek, for producing the worst seed label the woodwork master claimed to have seen in over 20 years. After one further year in the lower sixth of almost entirely literary French – I could recite large chunks of Racine and Corneille, but not actually converse in French with anyone – I did little but Latin, Greek and Ancient History thereafter. My Classics master, Arnold Jennings, an inspirational

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teacher who unsuccessfully contested for the Labour Party a constituency in Sheffield and had been a school and Oxford friend of Denis Healey (whom I later came to know well and admire as chancellor of the exchequer), was determined that some of us should follow in his steps to read Classics (known as Mods and Greats) at Oxford, and he devoted hours beyond any call of duty to coaching us for this purpose. I recall sessions at his home in Sheffield during school holidays when he drilled the complex mysteries of Aeschylean and Sophoclean dactylo-epitrites and anapaestic pentameters into our heads over their cluttered dining-room table. Sometimes, at the weekend, we would also go on to a concert by the Halle Orchestra, conducted by Sir John Barbirolli, at the Sheffield City Hall. But it was not all Arnoldian Greek and Latin at school. I am amazed now at the variety of extracurricular activities and opportunities which were on offer, and even more at the amount of their own time which the staff and their spouses devoted to them. I cannot recall staff ever going on strike. Every Saturday in season numerous football, rugby, hockey, cricket, cross-country and tennis teams turned out at different age levels, all of which required referees, umpires and coaches. Every Christmas we staged a major school play production, often Shakespeare, which required hours of rehearsals, and, come the night, staff wives generally did the make-up and made many of the costumes. In the summer we also staged classical plays in the open air, and every afternoon after school one society or another held its meetings – with the school Combined Cadet Force (CCF) on parade on Fridays. During the summer holidays school parties went on walking or cultural trips to many parts of Europe and the UK – each accompanied by staff members and sometimes their spouses. My very first trip abroad was a camping and walking tour in Brittany, with a bonus visit to the Festival of Britain in London en route. I had a go at most things. I captained the school first XI cricket and made the first XV rugby, and represented Derbyshire schools in both these sports; became secretary of many societies, including the senior literary and debating society (the school-magazine debating characters described me as tenax propositi, immo pertinax – tenacious in purpose; indeed, very tenacious) and the Socratics; rose to the dizzy rank of lance sergeant in the CCF; and took part every year in the school and classical plays, graduating in the former from a lowly part in Macbeth to the title role in Richard of Bordeaux

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by ‘Gordon Daviot’ (in reality Elizabeth MacKintosh, better known by the pen name Josephine Tey) in my last year. My greatest failure was not making the finals in the Sheffield University Latin reading competition when my spirited declamation from memory of a lengthy extract from the first book of Vergil’s Aeneid was described by the adjudicating professor as ‘crashing around in the verse’. I was a little upset as it was, after all, a violent storm scene. After becoming a successful boys’ comprehensive in the 1970s, Chesterfield School was converted in 1991 into a mixed community school with a different name on the same site. It was in many ways a vindictive local political decision and, while I do not for a moment defend a system which condemned so many of my contemporaries at the age of 11 to a second-class education and poorer job and earning prospects, I am sorry that some means could not have been found to preserve the school and its 400-year-old traditions within the comprehensive system. They are still, however, maintained by a flourishing Old Cestrefeldian Society, whose annual reunion dinner I always try to attend, but numbers and mortality will in due course put an end to it.

Oxbridge entrance Whatever the merits and demerits of the grammar-school system, it did me extremely well, and after the new-fangled GCE A and S levels, I entered for Oxford-scholarship examinations in December 1952. Arnold Jennings ruled out Cambridge, whose classical tripos he regarded as inferior to Mods and Greats at Oxford, which involved the study of Roman and Greek history and both modern and ancient philosophy, as well as Greek and Latin literature. I did not win an Oxford scholarship (as opposed to a state scholarship, which I gained on the strength of my A level results), but was awarded a place at the college of my first choice, New College, with entry deferred to 1955 to allow me to complete my two years’ compulsory national service first. I was now on course for a privileged career. None of this would have been possible without the unstinting willingness of my parents to put my future and that of my brother first, undoubtedly at the expense of their own welfare and standard of living. I could cite so many examples of this that deeply touch and almost shame me

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now, not least the purchase for me of an extremely expensive two-volume edition of Liddell and Scott’s great Greek–English Lexicon, which must have cost at least a week, if not several, of my father’s then police salary. It is still on the bookshelves at my elbow as I type this text. Many of the children who had ‘failed’ the 11-plus and gone out to work at 15 or 16 had long since been taking their pay packets to Mum at home. Apart from the army, and occasional vacation jobs, I did not earn anything until I was 25 and working in Downing Street, but I never heard a note of regret from either my mother or father about this. The debt I owed them increased my sense of obligation to work hard and show a return from my Oxford years. My greatest sadness is that my father died in 1974 from a heart attack at the far too early age of 67 and was never able to share with me the experiences and achievements of my later career. After a happy final summer term, in which I proudly led the first XI out in front of the whole school during cricket week wearing my white colours cap, and played ‘Just Logic’ opposite my best friend Keith Yates’s ‘Unjust Logic’ in a performance of Aristophanes’ Clouds, I obtained an early call-up and, still only 17 and three-quarters, reported nervously in July 1953 to Normanton Barracks in Derby, the regimental depot of the county regiment, the Sherwood Foresters, in which many Unwins had served both in World War I and subsequently in the territorials. One of the most distinguished was my paternal grandfather, Matthew James, who, as company sergeant major, had won the Military Medal (MM) and the Distinguished Service medal (DSM) in the trenches in France and had been severely injured. Sadly I never knew him as he died in an accidental fall at home before I was born. My grandmother, however, tough as nails, and always eager to hear from me what was going on in Whitehall when I visited her in later years, lived on to just short of 108.

TW O

National Service (1953–5)

Normanton Barracks and the Sherwood Foresters

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n late July 1953 I reported for two years’ service as Private Unwin, No. 22909973 (how on earth do I remember that number when I have forgotten so many more important ones?) to the Sherwood Foresters regimental depot at Normanton Barracks in Derby. I was still only aged 17 years and ten months. The Foresters was our county (Notts and Derby) regiment, to which the school CCF had been affiliated. I was the youngest of an intake of over 100 nervous and bewildered recruits. Three of us, who had gained our School Certificates and GCE A levels, were automatically classified by dint of that educational achievement as ‘OR1s’, or potential officers. The rest, mainly between 18 and 20 years old, with the odd veteran further into his twenties, had

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mostly left school at 15, and had gone into low-skilled industrial and manual jobs. Some had been down the pit, although mining was a reserved occupation and exemption or deferment was easy to obtain. We were paid, after stoppages for ‘barrack damages’ (whatever that meant – I do not recall damaging anything) and taking into account our clothing and keep, the princely sum of about 30 shillings a week – a good deal less than most of the recruits had been taking home. We were all scared of what we were in for and even some of the toughest characters broke the silence of the lights-out barrack room with sobbing during the night. This was probably the first time many of them had ever been away from home on their own. I felt the shock myself, and, although I thought that as an upper sixth former and seasoned rugby player (I had played several games for the Chesterfield Rugby Club senior sides while still at school – usually on Saturday afternoons after a school game in the morning) I was quite tough and worldly, the poverty of the relentless obscenity of my new colleagues’ language in the barrack room soon told me what a sheltered life I had really lived so far. We were divided into three platoons, named after Foresters battle honours. Mine was Badajoz, from the siege of that name in the Peninsular War, when a Foresters ensign hoisted his bloodied scarlet jacket on top of the citadel after, at great cost, it had been taken. Each platoon was housed in a single long barrack room, with the beds and lockers lining the walls with military precision on either side, like an old-fashioned Nightingale hospital ward. Each room was under the direct control of a regular corporal, who was our god and occupied the bed closest to the door. His word, generally obscene, was absolute fucking law. The slightest objection, demurral or answer back, or failure to respond immediately to any order, however humiliating, obscene or unreasonable, would result in immediate retribution, if necessary by being put on a charge and marched before the officer commanding (OC) for more formal punishment. This could take the form of being confined to barracks (CB or, in soldiers’ parlance, ‘jankers’) for several days, with attendant drills, inspections and extra fatigues during the night. The OC invariably backed the corporal. For a minor offence I was once given a toothbrush and ordered to use it to scrub the walls of the barrack block’s ‘ablutions’. We were terrified of the platoon corporal, and if he told you that you were a shit or a fucking arsehole, and asked you to repeat it, you did so without hesitation.

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The treatment dished out to us was no doubt no more or less severe than that inflicted on new recruits in dozens of other barracks throughout the country. But it came as a real shock to us conscripts. Its objective was to transform a bewildered collection of young men of different backgrounds, education and abilities into a uniform body of military automatons who had absorbed the rudiments of drill, discipline and weapon training, and were now programmed to obey orders without question. We were given no time to reflect on its merits or demerits, or why it was happening to us, let alone to protest. From dawn to dusk we were harried, drilled, chased, bullied, taught how to maintain and fire our weapons, and drilled again. The only precious moment of quiet and solitude was sitting on the lavatory in the early morning – and that did not last very long. By the evening we were so exhausted that all we wanted to do was to fall into our hard, single, iron-framework beds and go to sleep. But this was not possible because we had to spend the rest of the evening sitting by our beds, to the accompaniment of an ever-blaring barrack-room radio tuned in to Radio Luxembourg (my first acquaintance with Frankie Laine and Johnny Ray), cleaning our rifles, bulling our boots, polishing our brasses and blancoing once again our webbing equipment, packs and ammunition pouches, which had been messed up and muddied during the day. Friday evenings were double jeopardy. In addition to the usual bulling, we had to polish the whole of the wooden barrack-room floor, which we did by crawling in a line on our knees across the room, pushing in front of us old blankets with polish slapped on them, and then covering the floor with the same blankets to avoid anyone making a mark on it during the night. Perhaps ironically, in such a Radio Luxembourg-dominated culture, my main recollection of those evenings is that we shoved the dirty, polish-impregnated blankets up and down the floor to the accompaniment of a communal rendering à la Feodor Chaliapin of the ‘Yo heave ho’ chorus from the ‘Song of the Volga boatmen’. We also had to prepare all our kit, from rifles and squared-off bedding to every smallest item in our packs, such as our ‘eating irons’ and the ‘housewife’ containing needle, cotton and mending material, for inspection by the OC on the following Saturday morning. Failure to pass muster could result in cancellation of a 36-hour weekend pass or some other collective punishment for the whole platoon.

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This went on for 12 weeks, the days interminable at first, but gradually speeding up as we became more used to it – or perhaps, more accurately, were beaten into submission – and the end of basic training came in sight. We marked each day off on calendars pinned on the insides of our lockers (which also contained the usual selection of pin-ups from Reveille or Health and Efficiency, the only magazine to display nudes, albeit airbrushed, that in those days got past the censor) and compared notes on how many ‘days to do’. The language remained rich in obscenity and invective, if limited in variety and invention; the barrack room stank of sweat and smoke (nearly everyone smoked, and in pauses for a smoke break those who didn’t were told to ‘go through the motions’); and the food was plentiful but stodgy and monotonous. I had never previously realised that there were only two varieties of jam, red and green. But we began to develop a spirit of camaraderie, if only in competition with the other two platoons. I thought I was pretty fit, as a result of rugby and other sports at school, but I could not compete in upper-body and arm strength with most of my fellows, who had developed powerful arms and shoulders down the mine or in other manual jobs, and I had great difficulty in meeting some of the obligatory pull- and press-up tests that we faced in the gym. I established some credibility, however, by somehow reaching the finals of the recruits’ boxing championships, knocking out an erstwhile Nottingham Forest professional footballer with a lucky uppercut on the way. There was no choice on boxing. We were all weighed and assigned an opponent in the same weight group, and the fighting then began. In the finals, on a grand evening before the OC and assembled officers, their ladies and guests, I was thoroughly beaten up by a much tougher and more skilled opponent, but managed to survive the three rounds without being knocked out and, with a black eye, bruised cheekbone and painfully cut mouth (no army issue of gumshields then), was presented with the light heavyweight runner-up certificate before my proud, if concerned, parents on passing-out day. Although I had not been a particularly keen cadet, I naively believed that my experience as a sergeant in the CCF at school, in which we had learned all the elements of drill and small-arms weapon training (I was a fair shot and could strip a Bren gun and reassemble it blindfold), would hold me in good stead during basic training. The reverse was the case. For my corporal it simply

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indicated that I thought I knew it all and had nothing to learn. I was therefore frequently ordered, in the dark early mornings, to get down behind a Bren gun on the dew-wet grass of the depot training field and show the rest of the platoon how not to reload or reassemble it. The result was that my denims were soaked and muddied for the day; I was required to stand to attention and tell the corporal – repeating after him – precisely what my ancestry and sexual proclivities were; and I was generally given an extra fatigue to do. I hated him and vowed that if ever I got a commission and came across him again in the army, I would do for him – hardly a Christian sentiment, but understandable. Luckily I never did so, but I later heard, with mixed emotions, that he had run amok when serving with the battalion in Germany and shot himself. It all sounds brutal, as indeed much of it was, and many incidents in more recent years have exposed the extent of army bullying, sometimes with tragic results. In his superb study, National Service: Conscription in Britain 1945–1963, Richard Vinen, quoting a former conscript, summed it up aptly in the following terms: ‘Anyone who can survive the first few weeks of basic training in the British Army […] can survive anything; nothing in the rest of one’s military service or subsequently can ever be so bad again.’* But survive it we did, and the transformation was astonishing. By the time of the passing-out parade at the end of 12 weeks – as I saw from the other end of the telescope when I was a junior training officer a few months later – this rabble of young Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire men had been turned into a cohesive, confident, disciplined squad of soldiers, drilling as one and actually proud of their uniforms and bearing. Whether it was all worthwhile is another question, to which I will refer later. But we marched on our final passing-out parade, backs ramrod straight, heads high, immaculately turned out and with a swinging pride in our uniform step, anxious to show off to our parents and friends and to know to which battalion or other unit we were to be posted. My fate, however, was already to be different from most of the rest. After a preliminary in-house selection interview with the OC and other officers, I was sent off to the War Office Selection Board (WOSB) at Barton Stacey to compete for selection for officer training, in competition with other *

Richard Vinen, National Service: Conscription in Britain, 1945–1963 (London: Allen Lane, 2014), pp. 141–2.

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fit and eager young soldiers. As a grammar-school boy, the odds were against me as the great majority of national-service commissions in the army (about 80 per cent) were awarded to former public-school boys who were deemed more likely, by their similarly public-school-educated adjudicators and selectors, to demonstrate those qualities of leadership, style and enthusiasm deemed requisite for joining the officer class – indeed, something like the qualities expected of public-school prefects. The fact that I was, however, destined for Oxford (and to read for an arts degree) and played rugby must have given me some brownie points and offset my less privileged school background. After a brief initiation we were divided into small groups of six or seven, and the procedure, over two days, consisted of a mixture of intelligence, psychological and intellectual tests, interviews, discussion groups, and extraordinary physical and practical challenges, such as getting the rest of your group across a river with only an oil drum and two planks whose total length was shorter than the river’s span. It was highly competitive and nerve-racking. Everybody was out to seem keener and show more leadership qualities than the others, and I felt pessimistic about my chances. To my surprise, however, I passed and was selected to enter the infantry Officer Cadet School (OCS) at Eaton Hall, the Duke of Westminster’s massive neo-Gothic ancestral pile (now demolished) near Chester. In the few weeks before reporting there I was also, to my delight, promoted to acting unpaid lance corporal at Derby, which enabled me to put one stripe on my arm and use the NCOs’ mess instead of the other ranks’ canteen, and look patronisingly down on a new intake of terrified recruits.

Eaton Hall Officer Cadet School Eaton Hall was in some ways a repeat of basic training, writ very large. It was longer (four months), tougher and far more demanding, both physically and mentally, and there was always the fear of failure. On the other hand, however, we were at least mostly of similar educational attainment, if not background, and, as officer cadets, supposed to be gentlemen who, with luck and effort, would eventually emerge as second lieutenants with a pip, rather than a chip, on our shoulders. As in basic training, we were divided up into platoons,

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each under the immediate charge of a Guards sergeant and under the overall command of a smart cavalry captain. For the first few weeks, drill under the sergeant was always at the double and we were told to forget all the miserable habits we had learned at our regimental depots. On Saturday mornings the whole intake paraded under the fearsome authority of a stentorian Grenadier Guards regimental sergeant major (RSM), who told us, or rather bellowed at us – as he had done to many previous intakes – that he would call us ‘Sir’, and we should call him ‘Sir’, but that only we would mean it. As time passed, drill, drill and more drill reverted to normal marching pace, and the routine was varied with weapon training (extending to more sophisticated weaponry, such as 3.5″ rocket launchers, mortars and anti-tank Energa grenades, which seemed cutting edge at the time), lectures on platoon tactics and man-management, the secrets of night patrolling, military law and mess etiquette. I learned from a hilarious training film that the welfare of my platoon, consisting of about 30 private soldiers plus three corporals and a regular sergeant, must become my paramount concern, and that I should encourage them to bring me their problems and treat me like their father – a bit rich, I thought, for a wet-behind-the-ears 18-year-old who had lived a pretty sheltered life and was still likely to be among the youngest in the platoon. We also escaped Eaton Hall for several weeks by being taken on punishing field exercises at battle camps on the moors at Trawsfynydd in Snowdonia, and at the height of winter in the snow on Dartmoor near Okehampton. There we learned how to dig foxholes in frozen ground, avoid freezing overnight, shave from weak tea in our mess tins, establish ourselves on forward and reverse slopes, conduct platoon attacks and withdrawals, carry out night patrols and generally exhaust ourselves until we were glad to get back to the comparative warmth and comfort of Eaton Hall again. All bad things come to an end, and for most of us it was a happy ending. One or two felt the pressure and fell by the wayside, and one cadet in my platoon tragically shot himself. I discovered later that there had been more than one cadet suicide at Eaton Hall and that a formal inquiry had been established and the press invited in during my time there to investigate – but I do not recollect hearing anything about this at the time. The great majority of us, however, survived to parade again proudly in front of our parents and friends

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in a passing-out parade under the RSM in the great courtyard of Eaton Hall and receive our commissions as fully fledged second lieutenants. We then waited anxiously to learn which regiments we had been posted to. There was a hierarchy of regiments, and top cadets, almost exclusively from the most prestigious public schools, hoped to be commissioned into the Household Division (the Guards and the Household Cavalry) or other more fashionable infantry regiments such as the Rifle Brigade. I had applied to remain in the Sherwood Foresters, a solid line regiment, which had distinguished itself way back in the Peninsular and Crimean wars, but to my disappointment, together with two or three others for whom it was also not their first choice, I was assigned to the Northamptonshire Regiment – in order, we were told, to bring the battalion up to full strength to go to Korea.

Korea and the Northamptonshire Regiment Although an armistice had been declared, there was still technically a state of war in Korea, and the Northamptons were to form part of the Commonwealth Division on the front line. I was disappointed not to be joining the Foresters, but naively excited at the prospect of seeing active service (after all, what was I in the army for?), and, after a brief return to Chesterfield, where I had arranged for my officer’s uniform and other paraphernalia to be delivered from the gentleman’s outfitters Cox & Kings – cap, cane, blue No. 1 dress uniform, riding mac and pips – I reported to the regimental depot at Quebec Barracks in Northampton. This was to be a short stay prior to joining the battalion at a temporary camp near Quorn in Leicestershire in order to meet our platoons, get kitted out with full tropical gear and webbing, undergo some further basic briefing and specialist training and, after embarkation leave, move to Southampton for the long sea journey to Korea. My unthinking and ill-informed vision of glory in Korea, where I would have qualified for two undeserved medals (the Commonwealth and British army one), was not to be. I was taken off the draft at the last minute, even though I still took my platoon down by train to Southampton, put them on the boat and regretfully waved them off. I was told that this was because the

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government had just decided, in view of casualties to young soldiers under 19, that in future no one under that age should in future be sent to Korea. I was apparently too young to die. I have subsequently discovered, however, that this was the policy from the start of the Korean War, so the decision to commission me into the Northamptonshire Regiment in order to go to Korea had been a clerical cock-up from the outset. But for that, I might have joined the Sherwood Foresters, as I had wanted, and gone straight with them to Germany. I was nevertheless greatly disappointed at the time to miss out on Korea, but I now realise how lucky I was to avoid it. The chances are that I would not have been involved in fighting – the battalion was withdrawn from the front line and sent to Singapore after a few months – but many conscripts had been and had lost their lives or been mentally and physically mutilated and scarred for life. In all, over 1,000 British soldiers died in the Korean War, and many more were wounded or taken prisoner by the Chinese. Of the total killed, nearly 300 were national-service men, many of them young infantry platoon commanders like myself. I am thankful now that I missed it, but it was embarrassing when I next put in an appearance at Chesterfield as the Derbyshire Times had published a feature about the local boy going out to defend the free world in Korea. I had some explaining to do, but fortunately white feathers were no longer in vogue. I returned somewhat shamefaced to the regimental depot at Northampton and waited several months for an alternative posting, in the meantime notionally occupying the role of training subaltern. This was a quiet and agreeable period of my national service, as the training was really done by the regular corporals and sergeants who were nominally under my command. I lived in a comfortable mess, complete with a television and billiard room; played rugby some weekends for Northampton Casuals and later captained the depot cricket team (by virtue of rank, not merit); got away frequently; gave a few lectures on regimental history; looked busy by striding round the barracks clutching a clipboard with my cane firmly gripped under one arm, and returned the salutes of the sergeants, corporals and the platoons of recruits who were undergoing the same basic training misery I had suffered at Derby only a few months earlier. I never quite knew what the short, leather-covered cane, my symbol of commissioned rank, was for, but it at least proved useful for checking at a non-contagious distance the state of

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the feet of platoons returning from hard route marches. A little more seriously I took parties out to the ranges, where they had their first experience of firing live ammunition. This was not always relaxing, as on one occasion I nearly had my foot shot off by a recruit waving around a Sten gun, which had supposedly jammed but burst into rapid fire. It was sometimes a slightly lonely life, as few other officers lived permanently in the mess, but I received little interference from the adjutant or other senior officers at the depot, who had wives and families in married quarters to preoccupy them. In fact, the only reprimand I received was for not wearing a hat one day as I left the barracks in civilian clothes, thus preventing me from properly returning a salute to the sentry at the barrack gates. This was definitely contrary to the officers’ code. My most unnerving experience was when the OC of the depot, a rather dour and bristly moustached major, sent for me one day in connection with an older and real bruiser of a recruit who had been causing trouble for the NCOs in his platoon and threatening to undermine discipline. The OC said that he would like to hear unofficially that I had taken this man – I think he had among other jobs been a nightclub bouncer – into the gym one evening and given him a ‘damn good thrashing’. I was appalled and terrified. I did not see how, even if I went utterly berserk in the ring, flailing like a maniac with both arms and fists, I could avoid being beaten up and humiliated, with even worse consequences for discipline in the ranks. I could not sleep for a couple of nights, lying awake trying to think of some way in which I could either use foul tactics (a knuckleduster in one glove?) to defeat him or contract an injury or illness which would get me out of it. Eventually I went to see the adjutant, a more urbane and understanding captain, and told him all. He simply advised me to do nothing and forget it, as he was sure the OC would. This was an immense relief. I did, however, suffer an embarrassing humiliation later on when a blood-donor unit visited the barracks. The current intake of recruits were ordered to volunteer to give blood, and I decided, like a good officer leading his men by example, to go first in order to show them how easy and painless it was. Unfortunately, as I emerged from the donor unit, after the obligatory cup of sweet tea, just as the sergeant brought the recruits to attention to salute my departure, I fainted and crashed to the floor. When I came round in the mess later an exceedingly tactful and understanding medical

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officer assured me that this was prone to happen to intelligent and sensitive people. Tony Hancock could not have performed the whole episode better.

Germany in the Suffolk Regiment At last my posting came through and, shortly before Christmas, I joined the First Battalion of the Suffolk Regiment in cavernous barracks in Wuppertal in the Ruhr in West Germany. Life there was equally enjoyable, even if a bit more like proper soldiering. I had a good platoon, mainly composed of young fellow conscripts, an experienced and congenial platoon sergeant, and the company of several like-minded national-service subalterns who were also going on to university later. We did all the usual drilling on the barrack square – not least in preparation for a ceremonial visit by Princess Margaret to present the battalion with new colours – but the monotony was broken by frequent and extremely realistic training exercises with other battalions, and sometimes with Centurion tank squadrons, on some of Hitler’s great army training grounds, such as Sennelager and Paderborn. The dust the tanks kicked up was incredible, and I have never been so filthy in my life. Sadly, in retrospect, I met hardly any Germans. We were still an occupying force, memories of the war were not all that far behind us (there were still rubble-strewn, bombed-out building sites in Wuppertal) and we were not encouraged to ‘fraternise’. Life revolved almost entirely round the officers’ mess, the battalion and the barracks. As a consequence, and to my great regret, I learned little German, except how to negotiate with farmers the use of their barn by my platoon for overnight sleeping in the straw when we were sent off on a 60-mile three-day march into the neighbouring countryside with full packs and equipment but no prearranged overnight abode. This particular section of my limited German vocabulary has proved of little use in my various visits to Germany since then. Hotels are generally prepared to provide more than straw to sleep on. I fear that, despite my CCF training, these expeditions also exposed my lamentable sense of direction and ineptness at map-reading. I recall once marching the platoon for a couple of hours in the snow through a dense forest, getting completely lost but trying not to show it, and being relieved finally to

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come across the tracks of marching boots, only to realise that they were ours from a couple of hours previously. Like Winnie-the-Pooh, I had led my men in a complete circle. I tried to expiate my incompetence by volunteering to carry the platoon’s Bren guns as we marched on! In a full and active battalion the inevitable tensions between nationalservice subalterns and regular officers became more evident. In a provocatively arrogant and perhaps uncharitable way we considered ourselves superior to regular subalterns who in our view had only gone to Sandhurst because they had not qualified for university. In turn they regarded us as inept, amateurish and unprofessional. They were backed in this by some of the more senior captains and majors. Matters sometimes came to a head on formal mess dinner nights when, in our smart blue No. 1 dress uniforms, which we had had to buy ourselves, we were less than enthusiastic, under the eagle eye of the colonel commanding, about joining in some of the traditional but violent after-dinner mess games that were obligatory on these occasions – such as ‘husky fusky’, ‘hopping Tommy’ and crawling under the carpet. These could be highly dangerous. I remember my company second in command, a relatively elderly captain (that is, well into his thirties), being carried off screaming and locked in a bedroom upstairs for the night, in order to sober and shut him up and get him out of the way, only for us to find the next morning that he had a broken leg. I generally preferred a quieter method of protest. Knowing that at New College I would have to plough through virtually the whole of extant Greek and Latin literature, I took to sitting ostentatiously in a corner of the mess reading Homer (in Greek) – not a usual sight at the heart of a regiment that had triumphed at Minden and in other great English victories, although Wellington would no doubt have been capable of it. In general, however, we found compensations and distractions, particularly out on exercises and manoeuvres, when the regiment developed a strong communal spirit, as we were often pitted against other infantry battalions. This was the nearest we ever got to actual soldiering, and with thunderflashes, sometimes live overhead covering fire, barbed-wire entanglements and street- and houseclearing assaults through ruined German villages, with ‘enemy’ facing us, it sometimes seemed almost real. But in truth, of course, we were only playing at soldiers and we must thank our stars that we were in a generation that, apart

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from Korea, Malaya, Kenya, Suez and Cyprus, were not generally called on to face active service and kill people. My own company commander, an exIndian Army officer, endeared himself to us (three national-service subalterns and one regular) by insisting on a code that would have gone down well with Ritchie-Hook and Guy Crouchback in Evelyn Waugh’s Men at Arms. Even when dug in on a muddy reverse slope we company officers ate our tinned compo rations (which I actually rather liked) on a tablecloth with a bottle of wine and a selection of mess china and silver; and he was insistent that, even in foxholes or in cramped one-man bivouac tents, at night we changed into pyjamas. He even came round to check that we did so. It all added to the rich tapestry of our closing months in the army. We also discovered that by volunteering to represent the battalion at various sports – athletics, rugby, cross country – we could escape normal duties (that is, skive) for days on end. I was not really a runner but I busted a gut to come about halfway up the field of about 300 competitors in the Rhine Army cross-country championships, only to be reproved by the colonel for not coming in earlier. By being willing to make up the team I had, in his eyes, given a signal that I thought myself a good runner. I also really let them down by almost being lapped in a 4×110 metres hurdle relay before hundreds of spectators in the Rhine Army athletics championship in the great stadium at Düsseldorf. I wangled a few days away too by appearing in a minor part in an Agatha Christie play before the assembled army top brass at divisional headquarters in Mönchengladbach. I achieved some notoriety for this as I was fetched for the performance from a remote barn in which I had settled my platoon for the night and taken back after the show to join them and resume our march in the early hours of the next morning. I also managed to get away on leave for ten days with a fellow subaltern to visit Venice, Florence and Rome for the first time.

Demob My demob date came up in July 1955 and I returned to England, handed in my rifle, so to speak, and resumed civilian life, except for a not very onerous obligation to serve four years part-time as a full lieutenant in the Territorial

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Army (TA) – in this case back with the Eighth Battalion Sherwood Foresters, TA, based at Worksop, not far from Chesterfield. We were among the last to be called up for national service and it was soon shortened to 18 months, and then ended in 1960, five years later. The total number conscripted (the term ‘national service’ was, of course, just a persuasive definition of or euphemism for ‘conscription’) into the three services from 1948 to 1960 was just over 1,700,000. Was it all worth it – that is, either to those of us conscripted or to the nation? No doubt, pace Kitchener’s recruiting success in the early days of World War I, some form of compulsory call-up was unavoidable to make up the numbers for Korea, the colonial campaigns and the Suez adventure. But there must at least be a question about the social and quasi-moral claims that are often made by advocates of compulsory service nowadays. When the concept was first seriously debated in 1908, as fear of a war with Germany was growing, the great Maurice Hankey, then assistant secretary to the Committee of Imperial Defence and later to become the first Cabinet secretary, summed up one of the main arguments in favour as a belief that ‘it would improve the physique, discipline and morale of the whole nation’.* Variants of this argument have been fashionable in some circles – mainly elderly and right-wing ones – ever since. Conscription, they claim, would instil a bit of respect and discipline into the younger generation, and produce better balanced and mature people, more able to mix. I am not so sure. National service as I knew it certainly did not cause much crossing of the social classes. In fact, much of my time was spent embedded into restricted groups at each end of the then class divide, and when I became a junior officer the relationship with ‘other ranks’ was essentially a formal and disciplined one (I even had a private soldier as my batman, or ‘servant’). This may be less true of the RAF, where the officer caste system during and after the war was less rigid and hierarchical, but in the army, in which the great majority of conscripts were enrolled, there was little mixing of the classes. Other ranks were other ranks; NCOs were NCOs; and in much of the army the officer class still remained rooted in a public-school hierarchy and ethos, so that pretty rigid class distinctions were maintained. In the Household Division, potential officers *

Stephen Roskill, Hankey: Man of Secrets, vol. 1 (London: Collins, 1970), pp. 95–6.

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were even segregated from the start in their basic training. At least we, in a less fashionable line regiment, did all our basic training together. It obviously had a different effect on different people. It certainly made some of us fitter, exposed us to types of people we had hardly known before, took us to places we had never previously visited, and subjected us, whether we liked it or not, to one concept of strict discipline. But at the same time it was a massive intrusion: two years of our lives taken away, without any choice, at great opportunity cost. Think of all the other things we could have been doing – travelling, volunteering, earning some money, or simply going on to higher education two years earlier. In any case the potential conscript of today is very different from the nervous and largely poorly educated and more deferential recruits of my day in the early 1950s. My head therefore prompts me to deliver a negative verdict. I have to confess, however, that my heart sometimes sneakily veers towards a more favourable conclusion, based on my own experience – perhaps, of course, because by gaining a commission I became one of the heavenly ones; I joined the privileged club. Despite the brutality and profanity of the early weeks of training, I acquired new skills, some more relevant and useful than others, not least taking responsibility for other people and adjusting to their different habits (and language) and backgrounds. I gained in physical maturity and self-confidence; travelled in Continental Europe for the first time; and hopefully became better prepared to take advantage of the four years I was to spend at university. I even did a useful amount of quiet scholastic work in my chair in a corner of the mess. In a sometimes masochistic way I suppose I also actually enjoyed much of it. But that is not to say that I could not have achieved much of this by spending that time in other ways, and although I am in favour of gap years before university, I would not now wish compulsory military service on anyone. I had better, however, keep this text hidden from my two Anglo-Norwegian grandsons, Fabian and Oliver, both of whom have completed a year of compulsory service in the Norwegian armed forces. They actually seem to have enjoyed it!

TH RE E

University Oxford and Yale (1955–60)

New College

O

n a dark, wet and chilly evening in October 1955 I arrived for the Michaelmas term at New College, with its late-fourteenth-century front quad, towering chapel and hall, and the magnificent gilded, wrought-iron gateway into the gardens, which are dominated by the sixteenthcentury Mount, said to have been used as a gun emplacement during the Civil War, and bordered by the medieval Oxford city walls. I was as apprehensive as when I had reported to Normanton Barracks two years earlier. The trunk containing my worldly goods had been sent by rail in advance and, to my relief, awaited me, with others, in the porter’s lodge beneath the lofty fourstorey entrance tower on Holywell Street. This forms the centrepiece of the

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mid-Victorian neo-Gothic ‘New Buildings’, where I was to be housed for my first two years. I was directed to my rooms on the ground floor of the New Buildings and asked to present myself in hall at 7 p.m. to hear an introductory welcome talk from Lord David Cecil, the professor of English Literature and author, among other well-known works, of The Young Melbourne. ‘Rooms’ sounds rather grand, but they consisted of a small, high-ceilinged sitting room, with a desk, two or three chairs, a table and bookshelves, and a small bedroom with barred windows looking directly onto Holywell Street, along which heavy traffic still thundered (it is now closed at one end and much quieter). The bedroom was unheated, and the sitting room contained only a small gas fire, which had to be fed with coins and was quite inadequate to heat the room in cold weather. I soon learned to work at my desk wearing a sweater and mittens, my lower half in a sleeping bag, and doing hourly press-ups to keep the circulation going. (I later discovered that 100 rotations of a hula hoop was almost as effective.) Even then I developed chilblains in my first winter. Accommodation in the army, even in huts on Dartmoor, had been snug and comfortable in comparison. Having unpacked I reported to hall with the other freshmen (no women in the college then) to listen to Lord David, whose flowery diction reminded me of Mr Fisher at Holy Trinity, Chesterfield, at his best, with a mouth seemingly half full of saliva and froth. Most of his no doubt wise and welcoming words were largely unintelligible to me, but as he left us, and we began our first formal dinner, we began to relax and friendships to develop. On the following morning I was greeted by my ‘scout’, a genial and long-serving college servant (as they were still designated), who brought me a small can of hot water for shaving, and a pitcher of cold water for the washbasin balanced on a stand in the bedroom. I also discovered that there was a lavatory on the staircase above my rooms, showers in the ‘Long Room’ at the far side of the college, and several four-legged stand-alone baths somewhere in the chilly basement below me. So to enjoy a shower involved a dressing-gowned excursion across the quad in whatever weather, often to the astonishment and amusement of tourists, who were then free to roam the college without charge, particularly as my mother had sent me off with a huge dark-brown hairy dressing gown she had made which resembled the skin of a grizzly bear. All this seemed to

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me a bit primitive, to say the least, but it was no doubt normal to many of my contemporaries who had been toughened at boarding schools. Many of them were Wykehamists, as a number of closed scholarships were still available to students at Winchester, with whom New College shared the same founder.

Classical Honour Moderations (Mods) After breakfast I joined my fellow freshman classicists to meet our Mods tutor, Eric Yorke. He was to be our genial guide and mentor for the first five terms, in which time, before we moved on to Greats, we were expected to read practically all extant Greek and Roman literature and master the arts of textual criticism, manuscript reconstruction and unseen and prose compositions. He was an avuncular and understanding don, who had published very little – I was only ever aware of a single article on an obscure Roman inscription, which appeared in the Journal of Roman Studies – and whose reputation rested not on publications or research but on tutoring generations of New College classicists. There was no pressure to publish in order to make reputations in those days. We were all very fond of him, and this helped to cement friendships among our small Mods group, some of which have lasted to the present day. The most colourful personality of our group was the brilliantly ebullient Leo Aylen, a dashing, tousle-haired Wykehamist who gave piano recitals, wrote verse, ran for the university, directed plays and was clearly destined for firsts. Of all Leo’s subsequent achievements I prize most the fact that he is the only professional poet I know. I had not met his like in Chesterfield or the army. Oxford was very different then. Emerging from the war austerity there was still just a whiff of Brideshead Revisited about it. New College had more than its share of undergraduates from top public schools and even still ran a pack of beagles (which I never heard, let alone saw or followed). Colleges were unisex, and women were not allowed in New College after 7 p.m. Anyone found harbouring a female, even their mother, in their rooms after then risked immediate rustication, that is to say temporary sending down. I only really became aware of the overdue change to a mixed-sex college when, returning after many years for a gaudy, I noticed the condom dispenser on the wall of the

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historic Long Room urinals. Although we were mostly comparative veterans in our early twenties, having completed national service after leaving school, we were still treated as if we were at boarding school. The gates were locked at 11 p.m., and the only means of entrance after then was a dangerous climb over the vicious spikes at the back of the library. There were many tales of drunken undergraduates being impaled on them in the early hours. I only struggled over the spikes once after a rugby-club dinner. We were also generally deferential and respectful of college authority and we dressed soberly, invariably wearing a jacket and tie – often a college one – beneath our gowns, which were mandatory for tutorials, lectures and dinner in hall. Suits were regularly worn on Sundays, particularly by those who attended college chapel. The college servants, like Downton Abbey retainers, were also generally deferential – still looking after the ‘young gentlemen’ – and the elderly college butler who jealously guarded access to the cellar stocking the exclusive New College port and sherry still frequently referred to American, Australian, South African students and the like as ‘our colonial cousins’. So far as physical conditions were concerned, strong echoes of Parson Woodforde and the celibate monastic traditions of medieval times could still be felt in the college. Alas, the food was not up to Parson Woodforde’s gourmandising standards. Apart from the occasional exotic dish, such as kedgeree for Sunday breakfast, which most of us had never heard of, the diet was rather solid and monotonous, with plenty of bread, potatoes and vegetables, but not a great deal of meat or fish to go with them. It was, however, augmented by the dishing out at the buttery each day after lunch of a small bottle of milk and a half-size loaf, which were charged to our battels whether we took them or not. Accepting the bread meant that I had to rush off to Woolworths to buy a toasting fork so that I could toast it on my little gas fire. We looked enviously at what we assumed the dons were dining on up on the high table. Hopes for freshmen were raised when, in groups of two or three, we were invited to lunch with the venerable warden, the philosopher Alic Halford Smith, who seemed to us a worthy successor to his eccentric nineteenth-century predecessor, W. A. Spooner. Mine were dashed, however, when it was my turn and the butler ceremonially raised the gleaming domed cover from the wide silver salver to reveal one small sausage each.

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I have surprisingly few other memories of my four years there, full though they were. I was initiated into Balliol Sunday evening concerts by my school friend at that college, Keith Yates, and heard Alfred Deller for the first time. I was bewitched by him – the first countertenor I had ever heard, albeit a large, burly bearded man, but with a flute-like alto voice. I still treasure the old 78 recordings of his madrigal consort that I possess. I did not, however, speak at the Union; seldom seemed to go to parties, glamorous or otherwise; knew no one in the Bullingdon; performed no great roles in the Oxford University Dramatic Society (OUDS), although I was once a reserve Nubian slave for a Covent Garden production of Aida at the New Theatre (you were paid a bit more if you were prepared to black your whole body); did not win a blue; and did not have a girlfriend until well into my final year, and then only for a short time. Furthermore, although Oxford was frequented by many eminent and celebrated figures, most of them must have eluded me. Nevertheless, one or two celebrities came my way, largely by chance. One damp evening in the fog I bumped (literally) into W. H. Auden on his way to speak to a college poetry society meeting; I sometimes looked down from the bay window of my much nicer second-year rooms in the New Buildings onto Iris Murdoch striding manfully across the quad in the direction of John Bayley’s rooms just below me; I often observed in my last year C. S. Lewis holding court across the smoky bar of the ‘Bird and Baby’ (Eagle and Child) pub as I grabbed a sandwich lunch there; and I interviewed the brilliant Dennis Potter for a place in the college rugby squad but could only offer him an occasional game in the second XV (he quickly found better and higher things to do). I even managed to shake hands with Bulganin or Khrushchev (I forget which) when they visited the college in 1956 (before the Soviet invasion of Hungary), as Warden Smith was then taking his turn as university vice chancellor and they had to suffer his tour of New College. He was rather famous for these tours. Rumour had it that he took so long showing a Japanese parliamentary delegation round the college and gardens one day that it entirely ruined their programme. When taxed about this afterwards by a fellow don, he is said to have replied: ‘But that was one back for the Burma road.’ Although he was a remote figure and we seldom had any direct contact with him, we were curiously fond of him and I smile whenever I am dining in college and see the lean and spare bust

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of him by his friend Jacob Epstein, looking down at me from a plinth on the wall near the high table. I took no active part in university politics. The only political issue which really set Oxford alight while I was there was the ill-fated Anglo-French invasion of Suez in 1956. I demonstrated with the majority against it and joined in booing and ushering out a fellow New College undergraduate, Viscount Colville of Culross (later a Conservative minister), who unwisely at a Junior Common Room ( JCR) meeting warned any of us thinking of joining the civil service not to get involved in demonstrations against the government as MI5 would have their eyes on us. It was a crass thing to do and he deserved the reaction. The celebrity highlight of my New College career was to host at our annual college cricket-club dinner one of my predecessors as college cricket captain, D. R. Jardine, the legendary MCC captain in the famous 1932–3 Ashes bodyline series in Australia. He was dry, taciturn and humourless – obviously not well, as he died a few months later – but I rated him in a higher astral league than either Auden or Iris Murdoch. We also had Brian Johnston, the ‘Johnners’ of Test Match Special fame, another former college cricket captain, to dinner the following year, but, though very amusing, I would rate him below Auden and Murdoch. Oxford was also full of eager Christian proselytisers and evangelists at that time. Although I had shifted from my early Church of England beliefs into agnosticism, if not straightforward atheism, I still attended college chapel on Sunday evenings, both to absorb the bewitching atmosphere of that glorious building, with its magnificent reredos, El Greco’s starkly austere portrait of St James, and Epstein’s haunting statue of Lazarus confronting worshippers menacingly from the centre of the antechapel, and to hear the ‘world-class’ New College (men and boys) choir. I even, out of curiosity, went along to St Aldates church one evening to hear the American evangelist superstar Billy Graham, and go forward to be blessed by him. But I was hard pressed to fend off eager acolytes of the Oxford Intercollegiate Christian Union (OICCU), who wanted me to get up early in the morning and study the New Testament with them, and Moral Rearmament (MRA). The latter, which had had the effrontery to call itself the ‘Oxford Group’, although it had no formal connection with Oxford, had been founded by the American Frank Buchman, who dabbled with the Nazi

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regime in the 1930s (he believed he could convert Hitler) and proved a great nuisance to me in my second year. The leading undergraduate representative of that somewhat sinister organisation, an Australian, happened to live in rooms across the staircase from mine, and frequently tried to entice me to meetings which purported to be ones of general political or current-affairs interest (at which a Nigerian bishop or an Indian trade-union leader would be speaking, for instance) but turned out to be sessions of an MRA cell. I was duped a few times, but beat a final retreat when on one evening I was asked to confess all my sins publicly and told that with MRA faith I could do three hours’ work in one. My life was centred rather narrowly on my own college and my work. I became treasurer of the JCR, in which role I was very excited to negotiate and buy a painting from John Piper, and in my first two years, when I lived and invariably ate in college, I seldom left it except for lectures in other colleges, the occasional concert or call on friends, or for away sporting fixtures (I also captained the college rugby team – rather a case of ‘after the Lord Mayor’s show’, as my immediate predecessor as captain, Robin Davies, went on to win a blue and play for Wales). Even in my last two years I normally dined in college, a good way of meeting friends who were now scattered in digs around Oxford, and often in summer joined them for a pre-dinner game of bowls in the college gardens. I worked very hard and thanks to a retentive memory, I managed to get a first in Mods – with 13 three-hour papers, excluding Greek verses which I did not do, said to be one of the longest exams in Europe – despite having my left arm in a sling due to a broken bone in my shoulder from playing rugby the previous week (luckily I was right-handed). In the light of this the college generously made me an ‘honorary exhibitioner’ and awarded me a college prize worth some £35, which in those days bought a lot of books. I was then allowed to wear a long flowing gown in place of the short commoner’s one I had worn hitherto.

Greats But Greats in my last two years, when I had moved to very comfortable digs in St John Street, with a caring and great breakfast-providing landlady, Mrs

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Payne (she often gave me two fried eggs for breakfast, on the pretext that she had accidentally broken one in the pan), was a different kettle of fish. I thought I could more or less cope with Greek and Roman history and I could make a decent stab at Aristotle and Plato in the original. But I found modern philosophy and logic – especially the then fashionable Oxford school of logical positivism spearheaded by A. J. Ayer and his Language, Truth and Logic – rather baffling. At my first tutorial I was simply asked to go away and read Bertrand Russell’s Problems of Philosophy and write an essay. On enquiring what the subject of the essay was, I was told that that was entirely up to me. Although the subject sometimes went under the rather grand title of ‘epistemology’, it often seemed more concerned with quibbling about words, winning arguments and demolishing the interlocutor’s point of view, than in establishing knowledge or truth. But I suppose there was little new in this. As portrayed by Plato in the dialogues, Socrates always seemed more intent on reducing his dialectic opponent to a state of aporia or perplexity than on actually discovering what justice or happiness was (or was not). I needed something more pragmatic to get hold of. I had excellent and sympathetic tutors in Bernard Williams (whose desk photograph of the attractive Shirley often distracted my attention) and Anthony Quinton, later the urbane question-master of radio’s Round Britain Quiz, at New College, and I attended lectures by great philosophers such as Professor The Ghost in the Machine Gilbert Ryle and Professor ‘Other minds’ J. L. Austin. But a term being farmed out to the redoubtable Stuart Hampshire at All Souls proved extremely embarrassing for both of us – our minds moved at such different levels, and up in the philosophical stratosphere he must have found the essays I read out to him exceedingly jejune and painful. My strongest card was Greek history, where I developed a very good relationship with my tutor, the Marxist historian Geoffrey de Ste Croix, whose best-known work in the classical-history field was a dense volume on ancientGreek mercantile shipping and ‘bottomry bonds’ (whatever precisely they were). We got on very well together and it helped that he was a keen sportsman, having played tennis at a high level. He usually watched college cricket matches on our lovely nearby sports ground and occasionally came along to bowl at me in the nets. Tutorials with him were an instructive joy. I loved Thucydides, and in later years became a bore by balefully comparing the likely

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fate of the Falklands campaign to the disastrous Athenian Sicilian expedition of 415–413 BC (I was wrong, of course – in the Falklands we won). On Roman history, we were farmed out to the legendary C. E. Stevens, aka Tom Brown, at Magdalen. I was told what an immense privilege this was, but like a spoilsport I found it rather unsatisfactory. Whenever I arrived in the late afternoon to read an essay on the Catilinarian conspiracy or some other such subject to him, I found him still surrounded by earlier pupils, mostly squiffy, with several bottles of white wine strewn around the room. I suppose this was another echo of the Brideshead era I had missed, especially as one of the late stayers was usually Teresa, the daughter of Evelyn Waugh. But I rather peevishly regarded it as a waste of my time and complained to de Ste Croix about it. It did not accord with my determined Chesterfield work ethic, especially as I was then playing cricket for the college and the Oxford University Authentics two or three days a week during the summer term and needed to optimise the use of the rest of my available time. I went into Schools (finals) with a faint hope of a first in Greats. Geoffrey de Ste Croix encouraged me to believe in this, and I thought I might just scrape it on the strength of my performance in the history papers. But I was not really first-class material, particularly on the philosophy – nothing like as clever as a legendary predecessor at New College, who was said to have got a first by answering the question ‘Is this a fair question?’ in the logic paper with the brilliant ‘Yes, if this is a fair answer.’ I nevertheless came quite near as I was given an exceptionally long three-hour viva for a first, but was scuppered by the wise and celebrated Mary Warnock on Aristotle and by the Wykeham professor of Ancient History, Professor A. Andrewes, on early Sparta. I had foolishly neglected Sparta in my revision, finding Athenian history much more interesting and rewarding, and it was perhaps bad luck that the expert on early Sparta, Andrewes, was on the viva panel. So I emerged with a near miss, after a thoroughly enjoyable four years at a great college which in later years did me one of the most unexpected and gratifying honours, that of making me an honorary fellow and president of the New College Society. It was also some comfort to me to discover that that great poet and classical scholar A. E. Housman, whose critical edition of Juvenal’s satires is my favourite classical text, also got a first in Mods but apparently failed in Greats entirely.

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The grand tour Apart from TA camps and temporary jobs (of which more later) I worked quite hard on my books at home during the vacations, but in the summer of 1957 I set off with three former school friends from Chesterfield, Keith Yates, Benj Parker and Simon Harcourt-Webster (Keith read Greats at Balliol and the other two medicine at Cambridge) on a grand four-week tour across Europe. We were four men in a taxi rather than three men in a boat as Simon’s father owned an ancient London black cab, with the old-fashioned open luggage platform next to the driver and a press-bulb hooter to signify our presence to pedestrians and other traffic. It was a truly epic adventure, utterly hilarious and full of stories that we have dined out on for a lifetime. The dynamo went before we reached Dover, and we had to meander from Calais along the Belgian and Dutch coast for a few days, never far from a garage and obliged to charge the battery every night, until we got a new one shipped over to Ostend. We made a triumphal and bumpy circuit of the cobbled Grand Place in Brussels, collecting a Balliol boater full of francs from an applauding and admiring crowd. We camped somewhere overnight in a forest clearing in Switzerland, only to find ourselves surrounded the next morning by half the Swiss army, who seemed completely unconcerned by our presence. We coaxed the rapidly overheating engine of the taxi up to nearly 12,000 feet on the Grossglockner in Austria, and on the homeward return through Germany we completely lost our way in deep, dark forest and, having taken the wrong fork at a junction, and driven for a mile or two along a remarkably good road surface, we were staggered to find ourselves passing between brightly lit grandstands, illuminated oilcompany advertisements and thousands of slowly dispersing spectators. We discovered that we were about halfway round the Nürburgring race circuit, where Juan Manuel Fangio had won the German Grand Prix only a couple of hours earlier. Fans from all over Europe had come there to see it and could not believe that we had strayed on to the track by pure chance. We learned later that after the main race part of the circuit was opened to amateur drivers and we had got onto it unwittingly. We thanked the racing gods that we had not completed the whole circuit as we had luckily not yet come to a steeply cambered bend on which our top-heavy vehicle, with a maximum speed of

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barely 45 mph, would probably have toppled over. It was a truly great trip, the only sadness being that although the primary objective of our expedition was to reach Salzburg and attend an opera or concert or two, when we reached that city we found the prices so high, and our pockets so low, that we could not afford to attend anything except a public performance of Jedermann by Hugo von Hofmannsthal, which was free. Up to finishing my final year at Oxford I had really done little but tackle a succession of different hurdles that faced me – usually in the form of exams – and, if successful in surmounting them, move on to the next one. I had become a classicist almost by default, and I had no vocation or strong views on what career I wished to pursue. Unlike more recent times, we were in the extraordinarily lucky position that none of us worried about whether we would get a job – only what job to choose. We were surprisingly unambitious. Some of us, weary of revising, in our last year began to dream of an undemanding and reasonably well paid job (say £2,000 a year) which required few decisions or responsibility, and no revision, and left plenty of time for quiet reading – perhaps in a library with someone else to look after the practicalities of lending and taking back books. In my earlier muscularChristian days I had actually thought of the Church, but as my beliefs faded and I understood that there was no guarantee of making bishop at an early age, I cast this aside. It was natural, therefore, that in my last year I entered the open entrance competition for the administrative (higher grade) of the civil service. It was another exam to take and the public service seemed as honourable and prestigious a profession as any to enter at this level. Absurd as it may now seem, we felt a general distaste at going into commerce or ‘trade’ – no doubt one of the reasons for Britain’s poor economic performance in many of the postwar years.

The civil service competition At that time there were two entry methods. The first was through an almost entirely academic exam, largely in a chosen discipline, followed for the successful by a final selection-board interview. A minority of candidates were taken

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on through this route. The second was a less academic exam, including some chosen subjects as well as general essay papers, followed by a two- to threeday Civil Service Selection Board (CSSB) in London, which was a bit like the army WOSB without the oil drums, planks and river-crossing. We competed in small syndicates of seven or eight, each striving to show that he or she (unlike WOSB in the army, there were female candidates too) was superior in arguing, drafting, chairing meetings, precis-writing, formulating conclusions, and so on. As I was academically less than first class, I chose the second method, and after surviving CSSB and appearing before the final selection board I was told that I was successful, coming quite high up on the national list, which was published in The Times in those days. Required to nominate a first-choice government department I chose the Commonwealth Relations Office (CRO) – for reasons I will explain later – which was responsible for conducting diplomatic relations with Commonwealth countries. While immersed in the civil service competition I also received a mysterious invitation to attend an interview in London with a very distinguished retired admiral who had commanded the cruiser HMS Ajax at the Battle of the River Plate in 1939. I duly attended and had a curious session in which nothing was said explicitly about the job that I was presumably being considered for, but certain oblique remarks such as ‘You may have to deal with ruthless men’ and ‘You may never get public recognition of your services’ gave me a sniff of what it was all about. Before leaving I made it clear that if I was successful in the open civil service competition I would not want to trouble them again – and so it came about. Before I left they asked me to say nothing about our conversation when I returned to college. However, as I was telling all and sundry about it in the college bar later that evening a friend from the college rugby team took me quietly aside and said that he had also been there a few days previously. I later met him in Central Africa posing as an Observer foreign correspondent but clearly working for MI6, which of course at that time did not officially exist. This was confirmed to me many years later. I think that both I and the service were lucky that I did not join. Although my brother’s genealogical researches have revealed that one of our eighteenthcentury ancestors was a famous mole catcher in the midlands, I would have made a hopeless 007.

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Vacation jobs Money was always tight at Oxford, although my state scholarship just about covered the basics and my parents kept me during vacations at home. In addition to the modest college prize I had won, during my last two years I also earned a few pounds at New College by teaching medieval Latin to freshman historians, who were required to read Bede in the original and translate unseen Latin texts. It was a qualification which did not impress Margaret Thatcher later when I was involved in an argument with her over whether a foreign language should be an obligatory part of the school core curriculum, but it occasionally gave me a glow of pride when I met grand people in the City who introduced me to their colleagues as their former medieval-Latin tutor. To earn a bit more cash I also, through my father’s contacts, took on a few vacation jobs. I did two spells as an extremely unskilled fitter’s mate with a local engineering contractor. I was so incompetent with spanners and the like that I was soon relegated to cleaning the managing director’s car – the most basic job in the yard. I also earned some easy money by, as a full lieutenant, turning up for occasional evening drills and summer camps with the Territorial Eighth Battalion of the Sherwood Foresters at Worksop. I think I earned £10 for each appearance, but such were the bus timetables that my drills usually consisted of a quick pint in the mess before I had to rush to catch a bus back to Chesterfield. I even carried the Queen’s colour in a full dress march through the streets of Nottingham, preceded by the regimental band and the gorgeously coiffed and manicured mascot of the regiment, the Derby ram, when the battalion received the freedom of the city. I was not very popular with the troops at summer camp, however, when, still fit and keen from national service, I ran them around far too energetically in exercises on the Yorkshire moors and my company commander had to take me aside and tell me to steady on a bit (they were not used to this level of activity as annual camp was basically the main summer holiday and a rest for many of them and their families!). For the next exercise I was relegated to being in command of the more elderly members of the regimental band, who doubled as stretcher-bearers and on this occasion had a static role as ‘enemy’ in face of a mock battalion attack. In good Dad’s Army fashion some of them kept asking me which end of the musket they should put the powder in.

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My most taxing job was as a salesman for Mother’s Pride, introducing ‘Nimble’, the new slimming and ‘lighter loaf ’, to retailers in the tough workingclass districts of Darnall and Attercliffe in Sheffield during a steel strike. My introductory spiel of ‘Good morning, I’m the Nimble man’ drew an appropriately blunt Yorkshire response. A bizarre by-product of my employment with Mother’s Pride was that, when playing in a needle evening match for Chesterfield Rugby Club, which, along with the Derbyshire county XV, I represented regularly during vacations, I found myself on the opposite side to my boss, the sales manager, and we both ended up in Chesterfield Royal Hospital – he with a broken arm, and I with a nasty cut to my forehead. When I reported for Nimble duty early the following morning he had his arm in plaster and I a bandaged head.

Rotary Foundation fellowship During my last year at New College I was approached by my former Chesterfield headmaster, W. E. Glister (known to us as ‘Black Jake’), on behalf of the Chesterfield Rotary Club, to ask if I would be interested in being put forward for one of the handful of Rotary International Foundation fellowships that were awarded annually in the UK for a year’s postgraduate study in another country. I leaped at the chance and, after interviews in Chesterfield (at which, I subsequently learned, the local archdeacon sought to disbar me on the grounds that I was godless, but was overruled by others who, recalling my devoted service to Holy Trinity Church, assured him that I was devout – little did they know!), and a final North of England selection panel in Harrogate, I was awarded a fellowship for the academic year 1959–60. It was worth about £1,000 (compared with the annual state scholarship of some £350 I had received at Oxford) and would more or less finance me for a year at a foreign university. I made my own arrangements to enter the graduate school at Yale University in New Haven, influenced in my choice by an American Rhodes scholar friend at New College, Van Doorn Ooms, who was also proceeding to Yale. I informed the CRO and they helpfully deferred my entry until September 1960.

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New Haven and Yale I set off from Liverpool on the Cunard liner the Britannic, in September 1959. For a week or so crossing the Atlantic I lived, even in the economy class, a life of unprecedented glamour and endless sumptuous meals. There were other students of my age and we lived it up to the full. On reaching New York – surely the most exciting arrival by sea in the world, past the Statue of Liberty, with the fabled Manhattan skyscraper silhouette as a backcloth – I came back down to earth and made straight by Greyhound bus for New Haven and to the lodgings that Ooms (later to become chief economist of the Budget Committee of the US House of Representatives) had already arranged for us in a traditional white clapboard house conveniently near the Yale Graduate School. I remember that the weather was oppressively hot and humid, and I was sweating and sweltering in my totally unsuitable English clothes. It was a bizarre household, owned by an extremely orthodox Jew. On the first night, to my bewilderment, he asked me to go downstairs and turn the lights out for him. I thought I was being given a lesson on how to economise on electricity, but it transpired that it was the evening of the Sabbath, which disbarred him from such activity. His wife, who came from the Deep South, seemed to spend much of her time reclining on a sofa downstairs, while occasionally shouting orders in a loud voice out of the window to an elderly, intimidated and clearly bolshie gardener, and I was never sure whether she had adopted her husband’s faith or not. The house was also occupied, in addition to Van and myself, by a librarian playwright who lived like a troglodyte in the basement and was always on the brink of his big Broadway breakthrough, but never quite made it. We became good friends and spent many evenings down in his basement putting the world to rights together. Finally, an elderly retired businessman, Mr Beeby, lodged there in the summer and migrated to Florida for the winter. His room was next to mine and whenever I emerged in the morning he would pop his head out of his door and greet me with ‘How are you now, boy?’ and respond with ‘Fine, boy, fine’ to whatever I said – even when I once told him I had seriously injured my leg the previous day playing rugby. Sadly, relations with our landlady became rather strained after a time and we moved to a flat elsewhere in New Haven with another Oxonian graduate student.

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Yale Graduate School I enrolled in the graduate school for my MA. As Yale, unlike most British universities at that time, allowed an accumulation of credits in different courses to count towards a degree, I signed up primarily in the Classics faculty, but also for some courses in the Sociology department. My motives were questionable. Since, with Mods and Greats under my belt, I was well ahead of most of my fellow students on Latin and Greek language and literature, I really did not have to work too hard. I wrote a mini-thesis on Roman provincial administration in North Africa; assisted my Greek professor to reconstruct some Sophoclean choruses; and helped my new American girlfriend, Viola, to translate her Lucretius (such is one way to the heart). As a result, I had plenty of time to enjoy myself and to discharge my obligation of speaking to Rotary clubs in the Connecticut and New England area, which was the quid pro quo for my Fellowship. I quickly contacted the New Haven Rotary Club and was invited to speak at an early lunch. I had prepared a fairly weighty discourse on the difference between the British and American educational systems, but soon found that something a little lighter would be better received. In any case, after all the business and joshing that took place at a typical Rotary lunch or dinner, there was not usually all that much time left to the visiting speaker. But I was received with great warmth and hospitality, and as a result of my visits to Rotary clubs in the region and occasionally to a conference in New York, often staying with a family overnight or for a weekend, I got to know a section of American society – albeit largely a white Anglo-Saxon middle-class one – with which a visiting student would probably normally have had little direct contact. I even once had lunch with a Rotarian who claimed to be Frank Sinatra’s uncle. I also ate more varieties of chicken à la king than most people have had hot dinners. It was, however, great fun. I learned a lot, developed my public speaking skills, and have always been eternally grateful to Rotary International for giving me this marvellous year. I did not really take full advantage of the great academic strengths and facilities of Yale. Having lived a more confined and very work-related existence at Oxford, I wanted, apart from Rotary, to enjoy the year and make space for other things. I attended political meetings, booing the ultra-conservative William

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F. Buckley Jr and campaigning for the Democratic candidate Adlai Stevenson for president (I wore a badge with ‘All the way, with Adlai’); went to drama productions with my playwright friend (once having to point out to the Yale Drama Society that their playbills were wrong in attributing The Importance of Being Earnest to Thornton Wilder); watched professional ice hockey for the first time and boggled at its speed and violence; spent much time with my girlfriend; and on several occasions took a Greyhound bus with her to New York to marvel at the Museum of Modern Art and other wonders of the Big Apple. Work was easily fitted in between all this. I also continued to play rugby, representing and helping to coach the Yale XV, which I captained in a victory over Harvard (our regular captain being injured and unavailable). This brought me into greater contact with undergraduates, in addition to my fellow students in the graduate school. I subsequently discovered – to my relief – that playing rugby for Yale was the only thing I had in common with George W. Bush, but there is no evidence that Tony Blair also turned out for them on the right wing, having been selected on the left. I even went with them on an Easter tour to St Louis in Missouri, after initially pulling out of the tour when they dropped from our squad a huge black forward, a former American football star, when the Missouri Rugby Union objected to his inclusion. He later – allegedly – changed his own mind about going and, with a slightly uneasy conscience, I rejoined the team. For some historical reason rugby union flourished in St Louis, and in addition to the University of St Louis, whom we beat, we were up against a couple of semi-professional teams at the top of the local league. One of them, called the Schuhmachers, who wore all black and were sponsored by a funeral parlour, beat us, and beat us up, soundly. Their captain, called the ‘Creature’, did press-ups whenever there was a pause in play, and their sheer violence (I suffered a badly gashed leg and our former Cambridge scrum half broke an arm) and substitution of almost a whole new pack at half-time suggested that they were seeking to provide clients for their sponsors. My rugby career, and possibly my life, also nearly came to a premature end when playing against New York City Rugby Club in Central Park. After due warning, in a very British fair-play way, I threatened to strike an opposing (Australian) forward who was continually obstructing me in the line-outs, but fortunately we did not come to blows. I was horrified to see him on television

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a few years later being awarded the silver light heavyweight boxing medal at the Olympics. If I had struck him he would have murdered me.

Crossing the Continent At the end of the academic year I was awarded a very easily earned MA and with two English friends who were also graduates travelled in a large but ancient Plymouth right across the United States to California and back in just over four weeks. It was an astonishing journey, revealing the vastness of this great continent. England and Europe seemed tiny and a world away and we realised how unreasonable it was to expect the people we met in the towns and cities on our route to have any informed knowledge of them. We managed to visit nearly all the great national parks, from the Rockies and Grand Tetons to Yosemite, Yellowstone, Mesa Verde, Zion, the Badlands, Mount Rushmore, Sequoia and the incredible red-rose rocks of Bryce Canyon and the Navajo. We gawped spellbound at the stream-like Colorado River, miles down below, from the rim of the Grand Canyon, one of those wonders of the world that is even vaster and more awe-inspiring than we had ever conceived; stood beneath the Golden Gate Bridge and took buses up and down the frighteningly steep sloped streets of San Francisco; spent a daring evening gambling modestly in Las Vegas and taking in a couple of strip shows (of which the transvestite one disoriented me for weeks); and drove through Death Valley during the night when the temperature was only as high as the normal hottest day in an English summer. It was a fantastic journey. When we reached the coast in California, and after a night or two sleeping on gym mats in the Stamford University track house, I even managed to get us a free meal by contacting the Monterey Rotary Club and speaking at their weekly lunch.

Farewell But time was now getting short and I had to be back in New Haven to see my girlfriend, make my farewells, settle my affairs, pack my cases and get to

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Montreal by train to board an Italian liner back across the Atlantic to Britain. I had had a wonderful year, getting a feel of the dynamism and diversity of this great, rich, multi-ethnic country, and perhaps getting nearer to some sections of American society than the average visiting student. But I only really got to know in any depth one particular region of the country, with a strong white Anglo-Saxon tradition, and many of the fundamental problems facing America, particularly the still great racial divide, largely passed me by. My Rotary speaking commitments brought me into contact with many local businessmen and professionals and their families, but they too represented a particular stratum of East Coast middle-class society. New Haven had a large, mainly poor black population, but I do not remember ever meeting socially any local black residents. I certainly never saw a black face at a Rotary gathering and did not at the time think that very odd. As I have stated, playing rugby introduced me to undergraduates, many at Yale from privileged and well-off backgrounds, who had been at private prep schools. But I had little to do with them outside the sports field. The only occasion I directly confronted racial prejudice was the attempt I have referred to of the Missouri rugby authorities to exclude a black player from our touring team. Other members of the Yale squad seemed willing to accept this, and my initial decision to withdraw caused puzzlement and concern. I met few black undergraduates, and my impression was that most of the freshers who entered Yale were academically at about lower-sixth-form level in British terms. They did not begin to specialise unless they moved on to the graduate school, so that a postgraduate degree was, unlike then in Britain, a necessary qualification for moving to a senior position in the professions, business or government. The great majority of my friendships were in the graduate school, which was much more cosmopolitan and contained many students with a much higher level of academic attainment. But I met few other British postgraduate students during my time there – an English accent still seemed to be a novelty and an exception. Our epic journey across the United States drilled into me what a diverse society it was, as varied in its climate, customs and ethnicity as the whole of Europe, despite a common language, and how foolish it was to generalise. I do not think, however, that the year left any indelible mark on me, and by the time I returned to the United States in an

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official capacity many years later, my time at Yale seemed to belong to a very distant and different past. I had at one stage been tempted to stay on at Yale by offers of an academic post (in Classics), but I was not really cut out to be an academic and I thought I ought to return and see what Whitehall and the CRO had to offer. I had also rejected a less serious invitation to coach cricket in Philadelphia, the traditional home of American cricket, where in September 1872 W. G. Grace had taken 18 wickets for Robert Allan Fitzgerald’s MCC side (but failed with the bat) against Twenty-Two of Philadelphia. The plan was that Viola would follow me to England at the end of the next academic year when she had completed her PhD and that we would then get married, but sadly this came to naught. So much for Lucretius – as friend Vergil said, felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas.

F OU R

First Steps in Whitehall Commonwealth Relations Office (1960–1)

A

fter leaving Yale, and making my last Rotary speech and enjoying my last chicken à la king at the New Haven club (who offered me warm best wishes for my future career in the ‘Foreign Legion’), I returned to Britain via Montreal on the MS Italia, sailing down the St Lawrence River past Quebec, and navigating excitingly between icebergs and spouting whales. Arriving at Southampton absolutely broke, I was met by my mother and father, who crammed my luggage into their little Ford Anglia and drove me to Chesterfield for a short stay before I reported for duty as an assistant principal, the lowest grade in the administrative class of the civil service, in the CRO. Again my father funded me until I could collect my first pay cheque as a civil servant. The prospect of moving to London was almost as daunting as

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setting off for the United States, as I had only ever been there on a few occasions and never for a prolonged period. In entering the open civil service competition in my last year at Oxford I had stated a preference for the CRO, which, although responsible for diplomatic relations with Commonwealth countries, was technically a home department. It seemed to me that British high commissions, particularly in newly independent Commonwealth countries, were likely to be more involved, relevant and influential, at least in the early years of independence, than our embassies in many foreign countries. In many cases, despite rapid promotion of local nationals, former British colonial officials were still serving as permanent secretaries or in other influential positions (partly, of course, because of our failure to educate more local people for the jobs – at the time of independence in Malawi there were shamefully only about a dozen African graduates) and formed an important channel of information and contact. Both because of and despite this imperial/colonial heritage, the British high commission, compared with most other diplomatic missions, still mattered, even if in some respects the local relationship had a love–hate dimension. Furthermore, at the personal level, I was assured that the expectation was that in the CRO you would spend about 50 per cent of your time overseas, compared with 75 per cent or more in the Foreign Office (FO), which meant that it should be more feasible to establish a home in the UK and avoid having to send children away to boarding school.

Working in Downing Street Like the FO, the CRO was in a prime location in Downing Street, overlooking St James’s Park and with the main entrance almost opposite No. 10. At that time access to Downing Street was unimpeded – no security barriers or other obstacles, even to Cabinet ministers on bicycles – so that tourists and would-be future prime ministers could freely pose for their photographs on the No. 10 doorstep, sometimes linking arms with the solitary unarmed bobby on duty. It was even possible to walk down the narrow passageway at the side of the No. 10 complex, which led directly on to Horse Guards Parade. This became a

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frequent lunchtime walk, often on the way via Horse Guards Parade to a brief circuit round the lake in St James’s Park. I duly travelled to London and found my way to the CRO and reported to the principal establishments officer, who advised me first to find lodgings and then come back. I quickly found a comfortable bed-sitting room in a house in Streatham Hill, close to a convenient bus route for central London, and reported again for duty. My second coming, as it were, at the CRO was positively Trollopean, and reminiscent of The Three Clerks and its fictional Internal Navigation Office. The CRO, like the FO, was mainly organised into separate departments, each headed by an assistant secretary (counsellor, in diplomaticrank terms) with responsibility for a different country or group of countries. I was, however, assigned to the Constitutional Department, a portmanteau title again reminiscent of Trollope. I was taken to meet the head of department, John Wakeley, a tall and somewhat grey and austere figure, who welcomed me briefly from behind his desk and said a little about the department, but whom I do not recollect ever seeing again. He did, however, indicate that I would in some way be concerned with Cyprus, whose independence was shortly due and to be marked by a visit by the Queen. I was then escorted to a large openplan room in which I was placed at a desk directly facing and contiguous with that of a distinguished former attorney general of Cyprus, by the name of either Sir James Henry or Sir Henry James – I still cannot remember which. He treated me with great tolerance and politeness, given my lowly status, but I never discovered quite what he was working on – presumably something to do with Cyprus, although he seemed to be heavily preoccupied with private correspondence. As I was a generalist, with a good knowledge of classical literature and history but no experience of working in an office of any sort, I expected some training for my job, but little was forthcoming. Entrants like me were presumably expected to learn their trade by some process of Whitehall osmosis on the job. I did, however, attend a short week’s course with a handful of other FO and CRO new entrants. This consisted of a few lectures, of which the only ones I recall were given by the CRO permanent under-secretary, Sir Alexander Clutterbuck, a name Trollope would have been hard pressed to invent, and by the great former Labour prime minister Lord Attlee. Alas, I remember little of

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the latter or the contents of his talk, except for his short-clipped moustache and equally clipped diction. Back in the Constitutional Department, where I could at least make myself useful by helping to keep the coke fire well stoked as the colder autumnal weather drew on, my days were marked by the periodic delivery of large official black boxes, to which I had been given a magic key. They were normally deposited on the left-hand side of my desk by elderly messengers, who struggled to open the door and carry them in on account of some physical disability (often an arm or leg missing). I assumed they were war veterans and I felt embarrassed at not being able to help them, but there seemed no inclination on anyone’s part or precedent for doing so. After opening a box, reading the telegrams or other documents it contained, and ticking off my name on the circulation list, I replaced the documents, locked the box again, struck out my name on the distribution tag protruding from the side of the box, and placed it on the right-hand side of my desk, to be collected in due course by the same struggling messengers and taken on to the next victim. So the cycle continued. The contents of the boxes made fascinating reading for a newcomer like me, but it was never clear to me what if anything I was supposed to do about them. Some real work eventually came my way, however, in the form of a request to write a short summary of the role of Islam in Cyprus (was someone extraordinarily prescient then?) and an instruction to arrange for blood plasma to be sent out to Cyprus to be on hand for any emergency that might befall the Queen when she attended the imminent independence celebrations. I duly liaised with the RAF, the Health Ministry and other authorities and arranged for consignments to be flown out, but prayed that Her Majesty would not suffer any accident requiring use of the blood I had despatched. Happily, I remained in the clear, and she survived. I also found that, with my knowledge of classical Greek still reasonably fresh, I could, with some difficulty, translate some of the contents of the Cyprus opposition newspapers – I recall the young leader of the National Organisation of Cypriot Struggle (known by the acronym EOKA), Nikos Sampson, featuring prominently – and send a rough digest round the department. I do not know if anyone read them or whether they were found to be of any use. The most thrilling piece of work I had to do was to provide the first draft of a letter – I cannot remember the subject; it must have been pretty

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humdrum to be entrusted to me – for eventual signature by an actual minister, the parliamentary under-secretary of state for Commonwealth affairs. It made me feel incredibly important – well before the days when I realised that few junior ministers really counted for very much, as the Labour politician Chris Mullin’s marvellously entertaining diaries have subsequently confirmed. A most agreeable custom at that time, which would surely be outlawed in Whitehall today by the efficiency hawks in the Cabinet Office, was for members of the department who were free – which seemed to be most of them – to meet for coffee mid-morning and for tea at about 4 p.m. This took place in the departmental registry, a large room lined by filing cabinets but with a suitable table for the tea and coffee cups and urns. I never discovered who laid them out, organised the ingredients, brewed the tea or coffee and washed up – certainly not me, although I made a modest weekly contribution to help cover the costs. This, I thought, would be the occasion for me to meet all my fellow ‘constitutionalists’ and discover what the department really was doing. I do not, however, recall much enlightenment. My colleagues, many of whom were former senior colonial civil servants of mature years, often lawyers, whose jobs had ended as their territories gained independence – we called them ‘retreads’ – were incredibly nice, considerate and encouraging to me, but conversation normally turned on anything but departmental ‘shop’. The atmosphere was one of calmness, civility and control on the surface, betraying the fact that (presumably) someone somewhere else down below in the department was grappling with a serious constitutional crisis. I felt a bit like Malcolm Muggeridge, who, when being inducted into the secret service during the war at a remote country house, claimed that he thought that the blimpish and eccentric characters who greeted and took care of him were covers for the actual agents, but subsequently realised that they were the real thing. A further welcome break from routine was that on one or two occasions I was sent to consult the department’s special constitutional guru, Sir Charles Dixon, who seemed to me to be incredibly old and worked alone, a bit like the Sibyl at Cumae, in a rather hidden and very dusty and Dickensian book-lined room down some dismal steps, where he dispensed the constitutional wisdom of ages to those who could find him. I learned with delight some time later that appropriately he lived alone in the Constitutional Club not far from Whitehall!

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One thing I did learn at an early stage was the etiquette in corresponding with civil servants at my level in other departments. The standard procedure was, with males, to use the surname – hence, ‘Dear Smith’ or ‘Dear Jones…’ Closer acquaintance justified progressing to ‘Dear Mr Smith’ or ‘Dear Mr Jones…’ Real intimacy – a sign that you were now accepted as a colleague and equal – was ‘Dear Albert’ or ‘Dear Henry… ’. I remember the feeling of daring – that I had arrived – when I first addressed a letter – no emails then – using the recipient’s first name. It was so remote from the current practice of prefacing messages with ‘Hi’.

Resident clerk Life changed dramatically for me again when, after only a couple of months, I was asked to stand in for the occasional night as resident clerk. As in the FO, the CRO resident clerk – normally a young official of my rank – lived in a flat above the shop, high over Downing Street, close to the old India Office Library. His or her job – never ‘her’ in my time – was to be on duty to receive and deal with all inward telegrams, telephone calls, enquiries and other communications after working hours during the week, and throughout the weekend – and this after a normal day’s work (on weekdays) in the office. Sleep was obviously often greatly interrupted and two resident clerks usually lived in so that they could share duties. On this occasion one of the resident clerks had left, and I was required to fill in on an occasional basis. This was a nerve-racking new world as I still had limited knowledge of the CRO or of what I was supposed to do. I rapidly had to get up to scratch and at the very least discover who to consult for advice when telegrams or other communications requiring action out of hours descended on me. It was impossible to ignore telegrams. They arrived with a whoosh and a clanging thump from the diplomatic wireless service operators somewhere in the even more remote recesses of the building (decoded, if they were confidential or secret) via a pneumatic tube system, like that in old-fashioned department stores. They were folded up and stuffed into locked metal canisters and I had another magic key with which to open and access them. My task was then to read them

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and make a judgement on whether simply to leave them for the next morning, or to track down a relevant senior official and seek advice on what action to take – or in desperation, I suppose, simply to ignore or destroy them. The appropriate action would often be to arrange for distribution to the relevant senior officials and ministers first thing (that is, around 10 a.m. sharp) the following morning; or in some urgent cases to send an immediate reply back to the high commission that originated them. This really started my education, as I soon began to have contact with most senior officials and ministers in the department, and to learn who was helpful, who would take responsibility and who was more likely to pass the buck back to me, leaving me to search again for someone who would give me constructive advice. I was at my most unpopular when I had to ask someone actually to come into the office to help draft a telegram reply – interestingly, coming in at the weekend often seemed to be less objectionable than after work in the evenings. Some senior officials clearly were not particularly anxious to spend more time with their families. I must have passed muster in the first few weeks as I was soon asked to move into the flat on a permanent basis, sharing duties with a fellow Oxford classicist, Brian Gilmore (a much more distinguished one than I), who had already been in the department for a year or so and knew the ropes. I readily agreed since, although it meant a huge intrusion on any private life in London I had hoped to have, and many sleep-deprived nights, a free flat in Downing Street and a modest allowance on top of my modest salary was not to be sniffed at. It also enabled me to become even more embedded in the department, and I discovered that the long empty corridors of the CRO and former India Office were ideal for practising my run-up and bowling action. Although my day job in the Constitutional Department remained relatively (in fact extremely) undemanding, and revealed little of the ‘big picture’, by being resident clerk I quickly got a synoptic view of all the major political and other developments occurring in the Commonwealth, not least in Central Africa. The pressures increased, however, when Brian Gilmore was posted and no one replaced him permanently. I thus was often on my own and did more than my fair share of evening and weekend duty. This made many of the practicalities of life, like shopping, catering and getting cash from the bank (no ATMs in those days) – and meeting friends – difficult to manage, and my nights were

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constantly interrupted. I was once completely marooned in the building one weekend by massed CND demonstrators milling round the FO/CRO and Downing Street block, and can still vividly recall looking down from my perch and seeing Bertrand Russell sitting cross-legged on the steps facing St James’s Park and being carried away by the police. It gave him other problems to think about than those of philosophy. I recall too an occasion when I had put the kettle on the stove to make a cup of tea in the large, cold, sparsely equipped kitchen, and immediately got swamped with incoming telegrams and telephone calls. By the time I remembered and rushed back to the kitchen I found the bottom of the kettle glowing and dripping molten metal onto the gas cooker. A few more minutes and the India Office library, and indeed much of the FO/CRO Downing Street complex, could have gone up in smoke, making my residency even more memorable. I had one particularly remarkable exchange with the secretary of state for Commonwealth relations, Winston Churchill’s son-in-law, Duncan Sandys, a remote figure of great authority in the department, whom lesser mortals like me seldom saw, let alone talked to. It was at the height of one of the periodic rows with Sir Roy Welensky, the prime minister of the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, the future of which, in the face of mounting pressures for secession and independence from the African-nationalist leaders in Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland, was the subject of fierce political debate within the Conservative Party and at Westminster. Indeed, it was at that time perhaps the hottest external political issue facing the Macmillan government, with the Conservative right, egged on by Lord Salisbury, rallying to their white ‘kith and kin’, and the Labour Party and liberal opinion generally supporting African independence aspirations. Little did I know then that I would soon become much more closely and personally engaged in this political crisis. Late one evening I received an emergency telegram from the British high commissioner in Salisbury (now Harare) containing an important message from Sir Roy Welensky to the prime minister and secretary of state. After consulting a senior official I was asked to contact Mr Sandys at the House of Commons and read the telegram over to him (all this done quite openly despite the secret classification; I had a red ‘scrambler’ telephone for secure communication but never trusted it, and generally my interlocutor would not

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have a receiver to unscramble it anyway). I duly tracked him down, read over the telegram to him, and he asked me to present myself at the end of Downing Street in about half an hour’s time, when he would arrive in his official car en route from the House of Commons and give me a response to Welensky to send back by telegram to Salisbury. As the journey through the long office corridors and down the many staircases to the Downing Street entrance of the CRO could take some time I hastily discarded my slippers and dressing gown, threw a sweater and trousers over my pyjamas, and set off on the long trail to the end of Downing Street. Once arrived, I stood discreetly back in the shadow of the FO/CRO building, waiting for the secretary of state’s car to arrive. Car after large black car approached, and I stepped hopefully up to the pavement edge, only to withdraw again when the cars shot past and there was no sign of my man. Eventually, as I grew colder, and noticed that one or two policemen across the road were beginning to take an interest in me, I turned tail, ran back up Downing Street, into the office and up to my flat, shouting on the way to the duty doormen to explain who I was if the police arrived. As I entered the flat the telephone was ringing, and it was Sandys himself to tell me that he had decided after all to defer the reply until the following morning and would not therefore be coming along Whitehall in his car. With a mixture of anger and relief I turned to the pile of telegrams that had accumulated during my absence and got on again with my job. The next morning I received a handwritten note from the secretary of state apologising for inconveniencing me – a rare such gesture on his part, I was told. The doormen also later told me that the police did arrive in pursuit of me and said they thought it was a Candid Camera stunt.

Private secretary After a few weeks as full-time resident clerk I was summoned to the office of the minister of state, the Rt Hon. Cuthbert (‘Cub’) Alport, then the MP for Colchester, who said he would like me to take over as his private secretary. This was another daunting prospect as I had little idea of what a private secretary’s job entailed – not much more than reading about Johnny Eames and Sir Raffle

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Buffle in The Small House at Allington or Jack Robarts and the Lord Petty Bag in Framley Parsonage. I thought the minister was taking a great risk, but in career terms I could not possibly turn this down. It also carried with it a small private secretary’s allowance. So I left the Constitutional Department, still not having found out exactly what my job there was, and entered the private-office network. With the support of the excellent assistant private secretary already in situ, and the other experienced secretarial and clerical staff, I soon bedded in and found Alport an extremely congenial and considerate boss. Although he had been a prominent – indeed founder – member of the Tory ‘One Nation’ group, with Rab Butler, Ian Macleod, Bill Deedes and (before his later conversion) Enoch Powell, he had climbed more slowly up the ministerial ladder and of late had specialised in Commonwealth and African affairs. During the then Lord Home’s spell as Commonwealth secretary he had been the government’s principal spokesman on Commonwealth affairs in the House of Commons and could probably be labelled as a progressive paternalist in regard to the process of decolonisation and independence. We got on well together and established the relationship of trust that is essential between a minister and private secretary. As well as being a confidant and sounding board, and efficient interface between the minister and the department, by cultivating the right contacts and keeping eyes and ears open, a private secretary is often in a position to brief the minister on many points which do not emerge on the face of departmental papers and submissions, and if necessary even to caution or take the minister to task if he or she believes the minister is at risk of acting improperly or in breach of the ministerial code of conduct. The advent of numbers of political and special advisers surrounding ministers may, however, have blunted or diffused this role and relationship in more recent times. I enjoyed the job enormously. I met many of the African leaders who were in London to attend the various constitutional meetings and conferences, and I particularly remember going down to the CRO Downing Street entrance to meet a cold, drenched and forlorn Joshua Nkomo, the then leader of the main African-nationalist party in Southern Rhodesia (the National Democratic Party, or NDP), and taking him up to meet the minister and give him a hot cup of tea. Alport was keen to try to persuade Nkomo to stand by his earlier (reluctant) acquiescence in the modest constitutional advances that Sandys

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had secured at the recent Southern Rhodesia Constitutional Conference in London, knowing that Nkomo was under pressure from his party associates to repudiate this (which in fact he subsequently did). My new job in the CRO did not last long. After a few weeks in which I rapidly learned the private-office drill and further extended my knowledge of the department and the Whitehall machine, Alport returned to the office one morning from a meeting at No. 10 with prime minister Harold Macmillan, with the surprise news that he had been asked by him to go out to Salisbury as British high commissioner to the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, with a mission to make a last-ditch effort to save it and keep it together. He had decided to accept this, partly, I believe, out of a sense of duty and genuine belief that he might just be able to make a decisive contribution to British interests by preserving this great Central African politico-economic experiment, and partly because he perhaps saw himself following romantically in the line of great British proconsuls such as Baring, Milner and Lugard. He was to have a peerage and, of course, resign his seat in the House of Commons. Since he was moving from a ministerial post he would have a status somewhat higher than a normal high commissioner or ambassador and would be entitled to take a private secretary from London out with him. He asked me if I would accept that post and accompany him. It did not take me long to say yes, particularly as I had recently been ditched by my American girlfriend at Yale and an escape to Africa, or anywhere, seemed a classic way to get over this. Thus began the most exciting period of my short diplomatic career.

FIVE

Rhodesia and the End of the Central African Federation (1961–4)

L

ord Alport lost no time in winding up his Commons affairs, sorting out his peerage and seat in the Lords, and setting off on a reconnaissance visit to the Central African Federation. We flew to Salisbury (now Harare) together on 3 March 1961. It was the first time I had ever flown, and particularly exciting as it was on a Comet, the first commercial jet airliner in the world. Although a little apprehensive at first, I was not unduly concerned by the metal fatigue and structural problems that had caused three crashes in 1953 and 1954 and led to the Comet’s temporary withdrawal from service. We lodged initially at the high commissioner’s residence, Mirimba House, a few miles from the centre of Salisbury. It was a bewildering adventure for me and I will never forget my first night in that house, lying long awake listening

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to the throbbing, humming, reverberating silence of the African night and absorbing its unfamiliar smells – a curiously acrid mixture of woodsmoke and pungent foliage. I could scarcely believe that in the twinkling of a jet I was now thousands of miles away from home in the middle of Central Africa.

Preliminary reconnaissance The Central African Federation was in a ferment, with nationalist politicians in all three territories – Southern and Northern Rhodesia, and Nyasaland – seeking secession from the federation and independence, and the federal government under its powerful prime minister, Sir Roy Welensky, strongly opposing it. The Southern Rhodesian situation was doubly complicated because the predominantly white-led government, which had enjoyed self-rule since the 1920s, only wanted independence provided government remained in its (minority) hands. On this first visit Lord Alport’s objective was to meet as many of the principal political leaders as he could, both African and European, in each of the territories. In Salisbury he held tetchy talks with Sir Roy Welensky, and more relaxed ones with Sir Edgar Whitehead, the prime minister of Southern Rhodesia. Welensky, a bulky figure, was a pugnacious and straight-talking former Rhodesia Railways union official and champion heavyweight boxer, who already believed the British government was spineless and about to betray him. Whitehead, bespectacled and academic-looking, seemed as if he would be more at home in the Reform Club than among the ‘Rhodies’ at Meikles Hotel in Salisbury. He was less aggressive and more open to proposals for African advancement. He was indeed already planning modest changes to the Land Apportionment Act, which allocated a disproportionately small share of decent land to Africans in the Tribal Trust areas. Welensky was particularly suspicious of the British government’s intentions at this time since a squadron of RAF transport aircraft had been assembled during February at the RAF base in Nairobi in case it proved necessary in an emergency to deploy British troops to help the federal and Northern Rhodesian authorities cope with a worsening security situation in Northern Rhodesia – there had already been serious rioting and some deaths. He feared that British

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troops might be used to usurp the role of the federal army and security forces, or even to impose a political settlement. In practice nothing like this could have happened by surprise as there were very close links between the British and federal militaries, many of the latter having served in the British forces during World War II, and intelligence would have been freely exchanged. Indeed, in later days, when there was talk of using force to coerce Southern Rhodesia after its unilateral declaration of independence (UDI) under Ian Smith in 1965, it was widely reported that many British soldiers would refuse to fight against their white ‘kith and kin’ in Rhodesia. We then flew to Lusaka, the capital of Northern Rhodesia, on a Central African Airways Dakota to meet the governor of Northern Rhodesia, Sir Evelyn Hone, a quiet and softly spoken figure, but calm, resolute and experienced. He seemed to have established a good relationship with Kenneth Kaunda, the leader of the main African political party in Northern Rhodesia, the United National Independence Party (UNIP), who later became the independent Zambia’s first president. After a brief visit to the Copperbelt, we went on to Nyasaland to meet the departing and somewhat dispirited governor, Sir Robert Armitage, who had been severely criticised by the Devlin Report into the handling of the state of emergency in Nyasaland in 1959 in which a number of black people had been shot and killed. We found him more preoccupied with his imminent return to the UK than with briefing us on the current political situation and the tasks ahead. Alport had had little luck in meeting any of the senior African-nationalist leaders in Salisbury or Lusaka – neither Joshua Nkomo nor Kenneth Kaunda had been willing to see him – but a meeting was arranged in Blantyre with Dr Hastings Kamuzu Banda. Banda, a qualified medical doctor, who had returned to Nyasaland from Britain in 1958 after an absence abroad of over 40 years, had been arrested in 1959, and then released by the colonial secretary, Iain Macleod, in 1960. He was now the undisputed leader of the Malawi Congress Party (MCP). We had an extremely friendly and constructive meeting with him at one of the provincial commissioner’s residences. He clearly sensed that secession from the federation and independence were now on the horizon – Macleod had probably hinted as much to him in London – and at a dinner at Government House in Zomba, the Nyasaland government capital, I was

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surprised but flattered to find myself seated next to Banda himself. Since I had been told that, as was said of most troublesome African-nationalist leaders, he was supposed to be suffering from every conceivable venereal and related disease, I watched closely throughout the dinner for signs of his imminent disintegration and collapse. I saw none, and he went on, on best estimates, to survive to the age of 99 (no one knew quite when he had been born) and to rule Malawi as a dictatorial president for some 30 years. This preliminary visit was not all official meetings. We were flown by the Southern Rhodesian ‘minister of native affairs’ in a light aircraft to the Bumi Hills, both to meet the chief of the Batonka people (who were being displaced from their traditional tribal home) and to see the extraordinary concentration of game in that area. The region was destined to be inundated by the rising waters of the great Kariba Dam, which was still in the process of being flooded, and as a result huge numbers of every kind of animal and wild creature were concentrating into it to escape the oncoming waters. We saw extensive herds of elephants and buffaloes, antelopes of every kind, and large numbers too of black rhinos, now virtually extinct – hunted for their horn – in that part of Central Africa. One, a mother with a calf, charged the rear of the truck to which we had transferred on landing and it was only the minister’s rapid crash through the gears and acceleration that saved our bacon and the truck. During a final visit to Bulawayo, the second city of Southern Rhodesia, to meet local politicians there, Lord Alport also arranged a short trip to the nearby Matopo hills – ‘the Bald-Headed Ones’ – to lay a wreath on the grave of Cecil Rhodes. This was the place where Rhodes had negotiated a ceasefire with the Ndebele leaders in 1896. The plain horizontal tombstone lay hidden among the sun-scorched granite boulders, deserted except for scurrying numbers of large red, green and purple agama lizards, at a remote spot high in the hills known by the white settlers as ‘World’s End’. For Alport it was a pilgrimage which both moved him and reminded him of who had got the British government into this situation in Central Africa in the first place. I fear I was more fascinated by the lizards and the prospect of seeing a black eagle, for which the Matopos were famous. We both flew back to London at the end of April to make final arrangements for our posting and returned to Salisbury in May (Alport by sea with his family, dog and chattels and I again by air).

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The future of the federation Lord Alport’s own account of his mission, Sudden Assignment, and the deputy high commissioner David Scott’s memoir, Ambassador in Black and White, give a detailed account of the federation’s birth, growth, decline and fall. I will not try to repeat that here, but it may be helpful to summarise the essence of the situation as I witnessed and then understood it. The British government were keen on federations as part of the decolonisation process. There were similar experiments in the West Indies and in East Africa, neither of which survived – the former lasting only four years, from 1958 to 1962. The Central African Federation had been established as a bold experiment in August 1953, comprising, as stated above, the self-governing (since the 1920s) colony of Southern Rhodesia and the two protectorates of Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland. The motives were mixed, depending on which point of view you started from. Economists saw sense in establishing economies of scale in a larger market, combining the agricultural and mineral resources (mainly tobacco, copper and coal) of the two Rhodesias with Nyasaland’s black labour force (the primary resource that it had to offer); Southern Rhodesians welcomed the prospect of getting their hands on Northern Rhodesian copper; and at Westminster many on the right in the Conservative Party saw an opportunity to establish an area of British and European domination against communist encroachment in Central Africa. More liberal politicians at Westminster also had visions of creating a democratic multiracial society as a bulwark against the white-supremacy apartheid regime now established in South Africa following the victory of the Nationalist Party in 1948. The constitution was an impossibly complex one. In broad terms, under the overall international responsibility of the British government, the federal government was responsible for inter-territorial matters such as defence, foreign relations and economic affairs, as well as European education, while the Southern Rhodesian and the two protectorate governments were in charge of most domestic matters, particularly those affecting the African people, ranging from agriculture and roads to health and African education, on which per capita spending was only a fraction of that spent on Europeans. In addition to a governor general and a (non-executive) governor, there were two parliaments and

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prime ministers in Salisbury, and two executive colonial governors in Lusaka and Zomba. All this led to many overlaps and ambiguities. This was reflected in the responsibilities of the British high commissioner in Salisbury, who was formally accredited diplomatically to the federal and Southern Rhodesian governments, and reported to the CRO, but by dint of his remit and appointment had a locus in the affairs of the two protectorates, whose governors reported to the Colonial Office (CO). Although black Africans formed the great majority of the federation’s population (in 1960 there were about 8 million black people compared with 300,000 white people, of whom some 220,000 were in Southern Rhodesia), and black opinion, where tested, had been opposed to the federation, only a tiny minority of black people had the vote, and the franchise was the hotly disputed crux of separate constitutional conferences on both the Rhodesias at the time Lord Alport took up his appointment. Some progress seemed to have been made in the early days, at least on the economic front. Federal GDP grew by around 30 per cent in the first three years, and common services such as Rhodesia Railways and Central African Airways served the federation well. But thereafter it was an inexorable process of decline and fall. The security situation in all three territories deteriorated, and despite frequent states of emergency and banning of African political parties and detention of their leaders ( Joshua Nkomo in Southern and Kenneth Kaunda in Northern Rhodesia, in addition to Banda), it became clear that the federation could not survive without a substantial expansion of the franchise and black people’s rights, and the consent of the majority of the people. In Nyasaland Banda was becoming increasingly dominant, with encouragement from the new governor, Sir Glyn Jones (later to be known as ‘Malawi Jones’ and to become the first governor general of the independent Malawi), and whenever an African political party was banned and had its head cut off another (the same but with a different name) arose, as from the Hydra, to replace it. There were serious disturbances, with loss of life, especially in the African townships, in both the Rhodesias, and from 1959 onwards events in the Congo on the northern frontier were threatening to exacerbate the situation. (I will deal with this, and the death in an air crash of the UN secretary general, Dag Hammarskjöld, in September 1961 separately in Chapter 6.) Moreover, the British government had already begun to undermine its own creation by the

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appointment in 1959 of the Monckton Commission, which in October 1960 had concluded that ‘the Federation cannot, in our view, be maintained in its present form’, and that ‘If some form of federal association is to continue, Africans must in the immediate future have a much higher proportion of seats in the Federal Assembly.’* Welensky strenuously and noisily opposed every concession the British government made or contemplated. He (rightly) regarded the Monckton recommendations as the death knell of the federation and used all his power to try to delay the end. One of the weapons he used, but almost certainly overplayed, was to appeal directly for support over the government’s head to his Conservative and other right-wing supporters in the UK, and particularly Conservative MPs at Westminster. He was always ready to drop everything and fly to London to meet his friends and if possible confront the prime minister and secretary of state in person. Lord Alport made strenuous efforts to dissuade him and to spare the prime minister awkward and unpleasant meetings. On one notable occasion, we heard at the last minute that Welensky had decided to fly to London that evening. As I manned the telephones at Mirimba House in case the secretary of state, Duncan Sandys, called, the high commissioner, decked out in full evening dress and decorations to attend a formal dinner with the head of the federal army, drove out at high speed to Salisbury airport just in time to persuade Welensky to turn back and abandon his evening flight to London. It was a considerable achievement on the high commissioner’s part as it entailed a distinct loss of public face for Welensky. On another occasion we only just got wind of his intention to fly to London that evening through an anonymous telephone call to me in which all I heard was a voice simply singing – or trying to sing – a few bars from the great ‘Nessun dorma’ aria from Turandot. I knew instantly that it was a coded tip-off from Welensky’s private secretary, with whom I had established a friendly relationship, and who, as a fellow opera lover, had been hoping to get a trip to London with his prime minister and attend a current production of that opera at Covent Garden. We had talked of it several times. Welensky nevertheless made several descents on London on other occasions to lobby Mr Macmillan and gain publicity for his *

David Scott, Ambassador in Black and White: Thirty Years of Changing Africa (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1981), p. 78.

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cause. He did not achieve any fundamental changes by this but British policy frequently wobbled, not least during the protracted negotiations in 1961 on the extraordinarily complicated voting arrangements for a new constitution for Northern Rhodesia and the timing of the eventual announcement of Nyasaland’s right to secession. On Northern Rhodesia it took a mathematician to understand the proposed new franchise, and just when Welensky believed he had extracted some concessions, the colonial secretary, Iain Macleod, restored earlier provisions that were more favourable to black voters. As with the eventual Nyasaland decision, Alport had the unenviable task of breaking the news of this change to Welensky and, as the messenger, was subject to considerable abuse by some of Welensky’s senior ministers. One of the reasons for the uncertainties and changes in British policy was the differences of opinion in London between the CRO under Sandys, which was more sympathetic to the federal cause, and the CO under Macleod, which attached greater priority to the rights and welfare of the black populations in the two protectorates. This both reflected the broad tradition in the two departments and the political stance of the two secretaries of state, with Sandys a good deal further to the right than the more liberal Macleod. There was also some element of resentment by the CO at the CRO treading on their toes so far as Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland, for which the CO had executive responsibility, were concerned. In November 1961 Macleod was replaced as colonial secretary by Reginald Maudling, but this made little perceptible difference to CO policy, and it was not until March 1962 that a serious attempt was made to get the act together in Whitehall. To Lord Alport’s delight, Rab Butler, a former home secretary and perhaps the most famous British prime minister who never was, was appointed first secretary of state (the first to hold that office) and secretary of state for Central Africa, in charge of a new Central Africa Office (CAO) staffed by senior officials seconded from both the CRO and CO under the leadership of Mark Tennant, the former secretary general of the Monckton Commission. Although not a man of obvious decisiveness – at least that was my impression from seeing him at close quarters during his several visits to the federation – to me he seemed decidedly flabby and indecisive, and I suspected that Macmillan had put him in this job to get him out of the way for a time and get Welensky

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off his own back – Butler had great seniority and prestige, and in early May 1962 announced the appointment of a small team of advisers to examine the consequences of a Nyasaland secession. The team was led by a senior FO official, Sir Roger Stevens, and the British deputy high commissioner, David Scott, was nominated as a member. David was vastly experienced, having also been one of the joint assistant secretaries of the Monckton Commission. Welensky fiercely opposed it and warned Butler that he would take every means available to him to ensure the British government took no further action to break up the federation. The advisers got on with their work, however, and their report, while paying lip service to the continuation of the federation as a primarily economic association, conceded the right of Nyasaland to secede. This was the death sentence that Welensky had feared, and despite his continual huffing and puffing the inevitable now followed. After much further toing and froing and recriminations from the federal government side, Butler set up and skilfully chaired a dissolution conference at the Victoria Falls in late June 1963 which concluded that Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland should be granted independence as Zambia and Malawi respectively, but that the question of independence for Southern Rhodesia should be left for consideration later (a decision which in due course led to Ian Smith’s declaration of UDI in 1965). Suitable arrangements were also made for further talks to sort out the complex question of allocation of federal assets and liabilities between the three territories.

Lord Alport’s departure Lord Alport’s task was a thankless one. I believe that, against the advice of many of his friends, he took up his appointment both out of a strong sense of duty and with a fair belief, if not an absolute conviction, that with carefully controlled concessions and goodwill on all sides there was still a chance of preserving the federation in some form and maintaining a zone of British influence in the region. Like many of his more liberal Conservative colleagues – he was sometimes described as an ‘enlightened imperialist’ – he believed in the process of decolonisation and self-government, but only when the local black population were more experienced and better prepared for it. In all his

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negotiations within the federation and in his advice to ministers and senior officials in London he worked on this basis, believing it to be in the British national interest. He was certainly no white supremacist. Even when the writing was on the wall under Butler he still tried to sell the concept of what he called a composite approach, under which the right of Nyasaland to secede would not be treated or announced as a separate act of state, but tied to an acceptance of the right to secede for all three territories, to be exercised only after a transitional period towards a new association of states linked by a system of common services covering transportation, customs, central banking, power, research and similar subjects. But it was too late. I had myself concluded that there was no chance of keeping the federation together and that the best hope was to dismantle it in as orderly a fashion as possible, retaining as many of the cooperative economic arrangements as proved politically acceptable. The wind of change was now blowing at gale force, having been unleashed by Harold Macmillan in his famous speech to the South African parliament in Cape Town in February 1960, and there was no possibility of any of the three territories willingly accepting less than full and early independence. Alport fell between two stools. He was bitterly disappointed that Butler, his old political patron and mentor, whose appointment he had warmly welcomed, had turned down his compromise proposals. Indeed, he saw Butler’s appointment of an advisory team that excluded him, but included his deputy, as a slap in the face. In Salisbury, he was really the fall guy. As the messenger bearing unwelcome news he increasingly incurred Welensky’s anger and distrust, which turned to outright hostility. There were rumours that at one stage he was planning to declare the high commissioner persona non grata and expel him from the federation, and Alport himself began to wonder whether he should step down as he could no longer play a useful role on the spot. Alport’s task was also bedevilled initially by the division of views and responsibility between the CRO and the CO in London, to which I have already referred. He tried very hard to offset this on the ground by establishing a close working relationship with the two northern governors. He got their agreement to regular tripartite meetings, normally held in succession in Salisbury, Lusaka and Zomba, and arranged the secondment of a senior Northern

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Rhodesian official to the high commission. These meetings were both useful and entertaining. I was always directly involved, and for me the most splendid was combined with an unforgettable state visit to the Litunga, the paramount chief of Barotseland, at his summer palace at Lealui. Barotseland was a separate protectorate within a protectorate stemming from a treaty made with Queen Victoria, and the Litunga was anxious to preserve this direct link with Britain if and when Northern Rhodesia eventually gained independence. Our visit was treated with great traditional ceremony, and we were eventually ushered past the royal band and the kneeling elders into the Litunga’s presence by his major-domo, a commanding figure splendidly dressed in the green braided uniform and cap of a commissionaire of the Strand Palace Hotel in London. Words and gifts were exchanged, and we eventually withdrew to a temporary thatched fishing camp constructed for the occasion on the banks of the Zambezi. It seemed to me that little in appearance had changed in this scene since David Livingstone was there just over 100 years previously. All was honey on the surface in the relationship with the two governors, but I sensed that they sometimes resented Alport’s interference in what they regarded as properly their executive responsibilities, and saw him as attempting to play the role of a rather grand proconsul rather than that of a diplomatic representative. At the same time Welensky resented the meetings with the governors, which he thought concealed plotting behind his back and reduced his own direct contact with them. But I thought it was right of the high commissioner to try to get closer to the two governors, as he was perfectly entitled to do in view of his accreditation to the government of the whole federation.

Life as a second secretary As a second secretary, the most junior diplomatic rank in the high commission, I was a small cog in the machine, but as private secretary to the high commissioner I was at the centre, privy both to the high commissioner’s thinking and to all major policy papers and developments. I managed his diary, saw all the letters and telegrams, attended and took minutes on internal meetings, and invariably accompanied him to meetings with Welensky and other political

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figures, and on visits elsewhere in the federation, such as the conferences with the governors. I was extraordinarily lucky that, despite my inexperience, he trusted me enough to take me with him, both as a witness of what took place (and a recorder of the proceedings) and, increasingly, as a sounding board afterwards. After significant meetings we would invariably return either to the high commission or to Mirimba House, where Alport would dictate a reporting telegram to the secretary of state in London, perhaps after summoning the deputy high commissioner, David Scott, to join us. My contributions to the drafting were encouraged and Mirimba, like the Scott residence, became my second Salisbury home. Indeed, during my first few weeks in Salisbury, before my flat became available, David and Vera Scott kindly invited me to stay with them at their official residence, Wahroongu, and I was taken there several times later to recover from malaria and other illnesses that I contracted. It was through this that Rhodesia had the single greatest influence on my future life, because it was there that I met their daughter, Diana, who eventually became my wife. I worked long hours, often in the evenings and at weekends, as my job was to be available to the high commissioner at all times. But I really lived the life of Riley. I was unattached, had a nippy little car (my first, a Morris 1000 convertible) and a spacious flat 20 minutes from the office, where, as was the norm for most Europeans, a young black servant did the cooking and household chores for me. When I was not required by the high commissioner I was able to get away, increasingly with Diana, to one or other of the many beauty spots within easy reach of Salisbury, such as Lake McIlwaine, Domboshawa and Shawanowe, where game in its wild state was still plentiful and the variety of exciting birds further stimulated my interest in birdwatching. On one occasion Diana and I were seriously threatened by an aggressive troop of baboons, excited by the Scotts’ boxer which accompanied us; on another Diana narrowly missed stepping out of my car onto a large, fat, sluggish but deadly puff adder; and shortly after one visit to Shawanowe a white Rhodesian police constable lost his arm at the very place by the river where we had picnicked, trying to save from a crocodile a local woman doing her washing. When the high commissioner was absent on leave I made even longer expeditions, once with one of my high-commission colleagues to camp in the bush on the banks of the Zambezi near the Southern Rhodesia–Mozambique border at Tete (where

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we were terrified during the night by the booming grunts of hippos echoing across the water in the nearby river), once to the Chimanimani mountains, and once on my own across the Limpopo through South Africa to join holidaying friends in Lourenço Marques (now Maputo), the capital of Mozambique, and back via the Kruger National Park. Distance, albeit sometimes on bumpy dirt or strip roads, was no object. Diana and I once drove over 300 miles to attend a Saturday-evening party near Bulawayo, Southern Rhodesia’s second city. We went at the invitation of an extremely nice and seemingly liberal-minded Rhodesian receptionist at the high commission, but were dismayed to find that her husband and his friends were real right-wing Rhodies. Appropriately enough, the place where the party was held was called Nyamandhlovu, or ‘The place where the elephants meet’. I also played cricket whenever possible in the summer season for the Commonwealth Schools Club in the Salisbury league, on one once-in-a-lifetime occasion taking nine wickets for eight runs and, to my chagrin, catching the last man in the slips. It was the only occasion that I got really drunk after a match. In the winter on Sundays I played in ‘friendlies’ against country district teams for an XI representing the great mineral company Roan Selection Trust (RST). We were really cricket mercenaries as only the captain actually worked for RST. This was some of the most enjoyable cricket I have ever played, and of a very high standard, and again I thought nothing of driving 100 miles or more early on a Sunday morning for an all-day fixture at one of the beautiful country club grounds, with a lavish lunch at midday and equivalent hospitality afterwards. On the cultural side, I acted in high-commission plays, wrote the script for and presented a programme on fifth-century Athens for Rhodesian educational television, and gave a lecture to the Central African Classical Association. All this reflected the privileged side of life in white-European Rhodesia (well portrayed in Doris Lessing’s earlier novels), and it was sometimes all too easy to forget the unrepresented majority, the squalor of the townships and the simmering discontent which lay beneath the Rhodesian political surface. Contact with black people, apart from domestic servants, was very difficult. While there was no formal apartheid, in practice there was a colour bar which it was hard to penetrate. The streets, shops and offices of Salisbury, an attractive modern city laid out on a grid pattern, were dominated by white Europeans, the great

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majority of black people in view being domestic workers or others in similarly subordinate positions. Only two hotels in Salisbury, the Ambassador (owned by a Greek) and the Jameson, officially admitted black people, but precious few had the nerve or money to enter them. No black person would dare to cross the threshold of Meikles, the great colonial hotel in the middle of Cecil Square, where the elite of Rhodesian white society congregated and stayed. The vast majority of the black population lived either in crowded and poorly serviced townships outside the main cities and towns (the biggest near Salisbury being Harare, which later replaced Salisbury as the name of the capital) or in primitive wattle-and-daub huts in villages in the so-called Tribal Trust Lands, where there were rarely any tarred roads, public utility services or amenities such as running water, sanitation or electricity. As I travelled in or near such areas I was constantly amazed that they hardly seemed to have changed since Cecil Rhodes had obtained the territory by a dubious charter near the end of the nineteenth century. Most better-off urban white people lived in comfortable houses in leafy jacaranda-lined suburbs and had little contact with black people other than with their domestic servants or, for those in the country, their farm workers. They regarded black politicians as a minority of communistinspired troublemakers and, on the evidence of talking to their nannies or ‘cook boys’, were convinced that the majority of ordinary black people had no interest in politics. An extreme example of the way in which the black–white divide manifested itself was pressure for the exclusion from Rhodesian television of the popular British television police soap Z Cars, because it showed white people talking, eating and behaving in a decidedly uncouth, vulgar and lower-class manner. So far as letting Africans see this was concerned, it was a case of pas devant les enfants. One of my tasks was to try to establish contact with the local population and gain insight and intelligence into African-nationalist political thinking. I had little success. Nationalist politicians were generally unwilling to talk to members of the British high commission, and the only black people who would generally accept invitations to a high-commission function were either the few black ministers in Welensky’s government or tribal chiefs, who were effectively paid civil servants and regarded by the nationalists as ‘Uncle Toms’. The only serious political figure I developed any meaningful contact with in Salisbury

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was Nathan Shamuyarira, then the editor of the African Daily News, but later to become a Cabinet minister in the first independent Zimbabwe government and foreign minister for a time under Robert Mugabe. I had no contact with Mugabe himself, then one of the few rising African politicians with a university degree. The nearest I got to him was a confrontation with his first wife, Sally Mugabe, who led a protest delegation of African women with their babies which blockaded the high-commission building. The high commissioner’s response to their request for a meeting was to send me down repeatedly to deal with them and try to dissuade them from washing their babies’ nappies in the rather smart pond and fountain in the high-commission entrance lobby. I later, however, met Mugabe when visiting Harare as president of the European Investment Bank (EIB) and read him a lecture on the risks to investment in Zimbabwe if he persisted in dispossessing white farmers without compensation, but it obviously had no impact on him whatsoever. I had to be content with cultivating other contacts either at the University College of Rhodesia and Nyasaland (UCRN), which was multiracial, or among the Asian and mixed-race communities. At the former there were a number of liberal lecturers who supported the African cause, notably Terence Ranger, who shocked local European opinion by encouraging mixed bathing in the university swimming pool, and was nearly deported as a result. The fact that Diana was now studying at UCRN helped me to establish contacts there, and we both joined a discussion group in Salisbury attended by university staff and a small group of mainly ‘white liberals’ – in European Rhodesian eyes a highly subversive cell. It was enjoyable and we talked a lot, and thought we were very progressive, but I am not sure it achieved very much. Both Diana and I also made real friends in the Asian and mixed-race communities, many of whom had been well educated but were in Rhodesia effectively barred from entering the professions or senior white-collar jobs. As a result they tended to set up in commerce and retail businesses and many of them became wealthy and, if in some cases only to hedge their bets, gave financial and other support to the African-nationalist cause. One of them was Suman Mehta, who had been to school in England and now owned a chain of popular stores in downtown Salisbury, near the African townships. He became a good friend and we often played tennis with him and his Asian and mixed-race friends on Sunday

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mornings at the residence of the Indian high commissioner, whose daughter was at the university with Diana. I doubt whether I ever gleaned any startling intelligence from all these contacts, but I felt that I was making a creditable effort to do so. We were both much touched when they gave a farewell party for us at the Jameson Hotel. Suman was later appointed Zimbabwe high commissioner to Canada in the first post-independence government.

Acting first secretary I was sad when Lord Alport left and felt that he been very badly treated. He left Salisbury a disappointed man in June 1963 and met a cool reception in London. This was reflected in the headline of the obituary published by the Daily Telegraph on 29 October 1998 following his death, which described him as ‘Macmillan’s emissary to Rhodesia and Nyasaland before UDI who found on return that his political career was over’. In some quarters he was made a scapegoat for the failure of British policy on the federation, and apart from his seat in the Lords he was not offered any further government employment until 1967, when prime minister Harold Wilson invited him to advise on UDI and sent him to talk to Ian Smith. In the 1980s he became very critical of Margaret Thatcher’s policies, and after voting against the government and with the Labour Opposition on an unemployment issue, he had the Conservative whip in the Lords taken away from him and thereafter sat as an independent Conservative. I remained in occasional contact with him and he was always as generous and considerate to me as he had been when I was his private secretary. He was replaced in Salisbury as high commissioner by Jack Johnston, a career diplomat. I benefited as I was appointed acting first secretary (equivalent to principal rank in the home civil service) and stayed on for a few more months. I continued to monitor and report on local political developments as opinion among the white community in Southern Rhodesia veered further to the right and Whitehead was defeated and replaced by a new Dominion Party government under the moderate right-winger Winston Field. My one triumph in this job was getting an invitation from Winston Field to go out and have Sunday lunch with him and his family at their farm outside Salisbury. My job

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was also varied by being appointed secretary of a conference to establish a medical school at UCRN. The chairman was the distinguished New Zealand surgeon (and later governor general) Sir Arthur Porritt, and to my delight the principal British delegate was Sir Christopher Cox, a legendary professor of ancient history at New College and long-standing educational adviser to the CO. I arranged a programme of visits for Sir Christopher and took him to meet Ian Smith, then minister of education in Field’s new government. As with the account by prime minister Harold MacMillan of his talks in their respective languages with the German foreign minister in the immortal Beyond the Fringe sketch, ‘precious little came of it in the way of understanding.’ In the meantime, the Scotts had also returned to England at the end of David’s tour as deputy high commissioner, but Diana remained to finish her year at UCRN and we spent more time together, culminating in our engagement when my tour came to an end in April 1964. My last months were, however, marred by recurrent dysentery, seemingly the result of a series of illnesses such as malaria, jaundice and glandular fever. Whatever it was, on return to London I went straight into the grim Hospital for Tropical Diseases overlooking the noisy, clattering railway yards at St Pancras, and just managed to obtain my release on the evening before our wedding in Guildford. The hospital staff were so dedicated that when I asked the ward sister, who had taken away my clothing, including my trousers, if she could tell me how long I was likely to be in her charge, because I was due to get married on 5 May, she replied very firmly that personal considerations could not interfere with their course of treatment. However, I escaped in the nick of time, thus saving my future father-in-law from the task of organising a rescue party. After a short honeymoon in England (the first night in Salisbury, Wiltshire!) we started making preparations to go to Ghana, the first of the British West African colonies (the Gold Coast) to be granted independence, as I had just been notified that I was to be posted on substantive promotion to first secretary to the British high commission in Accra.

SI X

Death of Dag Hammarskjöld (September 1961)

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referred in the previous chapter to the high commission’s involvement in the events in the Congo on the northern frontier of Northern Rhodesia. The night of 17–18 September proved to be the most dramatic of my official life. I was present – probably now the only surviving British government official to be so – at Ndola airport in Northern Rhodesia when the aircraft carrying Dag Hammarskjöld, the then UN secretary general, crashed in the bush about nine miles away, killing the secretary general and all its other occupants, except for one security guard, who died in hospital later. This tragedy was described by the international commission set up to reinvestigate it in 2012 as ‘an event of global significance which deserves the attention both of history and justice’. This chapter will relate my memories of it.

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Katanga declaration of independence As already explained, the main preoccupation of the British high commission in Salisbury at that period was with the constitutional future of the Central African Federation, and of its three constituent territories. At the same time, however, we were faced with a rapidly deteriorating situation in Katanga, the Congolese province on the federation’s northern border, which threatened to overtake and dominate all other developments. The background may be summarised very briefly. Following the sudden and chaotic independence of the Congo from Belgium on 30 June 1960, when there was considerable bloodshed and many refugees, both black and white, fled over the border into Northern Rhodesia, in July 1960 the president of the province of Katanga, Moise Tshombe, declared Katanga independent from the rest of the Congo. At an independence anniversary ceremony in the principal town, Elizabethville (now Lubumbashi), in July 1961, led by a march-past of some 3,500 troops under Belgian and French officers and a fly-past of the tiny Katanga air force, Tshombe made it clear that, although he wished to collaborate politically and economically with the rest of the Congo, Katanga must claim the right to settle its own constitutional future. The reaction from the Congolese central government in Léopoldville (now Kinshasa), led by Cyrille Adoula, was predictable. Without the mineral wealth of Katanga – copper, uranium and four-fifths of the West’s supply of cobalt – the prospects for the Congolese economy were bleak. Accordingly, with the active encouragement of the United States, which was particularly concerned that Congo’s resources, especially uranium, should not get into Soviet hands, and the somewhat less enthusiastic support of the British government, they secured a Security Council resolution (161 of 21 February 1961) despatching a UN mission to Katanga. This was under the political leadership of the controversial Irish diplomat Conor Cruise O’Brien, and backed by a substantial force of 15,000 troops under an Irish general, Sean McKeown. Their mission was to procure the integration of mineral-rich Katanga back into the Congo. Soon after Lord Alport and I arrived in Salisbury in April 1961 fighting had broken out in Elizabethville between the UN force and the largely mercenary-led Katangan army, which provided tougher opposition than the UN had expected. Early in September 1961 UN forces seized, in classical fashion, the central post

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office, radio station and other important buildings, and O’Brien was reported to have said that he was determined to break Tshombe and force him to go to Léopoldville to capitulate to the central government. These developments caused great alarm in the federal government in Salisbury, particularly to the prime minister, Sir Roy Welensky, who had always seen the pro-Western Tshombe as a moderate ally of the federation and had cultivated his friendship. Apart from his instinctive sympathy with Tshombe, and his suspicion of the Soviet-sympathising Adoula-led Congolese government in Léopoldville, he feared the unrest and even chaos that civil war in Katanga could cause on the federation’s northern border and for the federation generally. This was not an irrational fear. There were strong economic and ethnic links between the territories. The Northern Rhodesian Copperbelt depended for a significant part of its power supplies on Katangan sources; the direct route between the populous Western province of Northern Rhodesia and its Luapula district lay across the Pedicle road, which, by a pen stroke of nineteenth-century imperial map-makers, traversed Congolese territory; and an increasing proportion of the copper mined in the Congo was transported by Rhodesia Railways to the Mozambique port of Beira, and many of its essential supplies imported by the same route. There were also strong, overlapping tribal affinities, and both rivalries and alliances between the main African political parties in both countries, so that events in Katanga were bound to have an impact on the already-deteriorating Northern Rhodesian security situation. These developments were therefore of immense concern to Welensky, who, under the overall international accountability of the British government, was responsible for the defence and external affairs of the federation. He was itching to intervene, and in the high commission we received reports that he was preparing to move major units of the federal army and Royal Rhodesian Air Force (RRAF) up to the Katanga frontier. This was no small matter since the army comprised five effective infantry battalions (mixed black and white, but almost exclusively white officers), armoured cars and appropriate transport and other logistical support, and the RRAF, in addition to Canberras and transport planes, had a squadron of Vampire jet fighters. Such intervention would have been disastrous and put the British government in an impossible position at the UN and in international opinion generally. The principal task of

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the British representative on the spot, Lord Alport, was, therefore, to dissuade Welensky from intervening with forces on the ground, to persuade him that the British ambassador at the UN was already doing everything possible to gain understanding of the federation’s position and to urge moderation on the part of the UN force under O’Brien in Katanga. This Alport did forcefully in several difficult meetings and conversations with Welensky, at most of which I was present. Welensky reluctantly agreed to hold back, pending developments. The line became very difficult to hold, however, when we heard on 12 September that a fresh ultimatum had been given to Tshombe, to the effect that he should dismiss all the white officers in his army within 48 hours and report to Léopoldville without delay. Tshombe could not possibly agree to this as it would be tantamount to a death sentence. At the same time UN troops were reported to have reoccupied the post office and other principal buildings in Elizabethville, and to have arrested a number of Tshombe’s ministers. In such circumstances it was no longer possible for Alport to continue dissuading Welensky from moving some federal army units from Southern to Northern Rhodesia, if only on the pretext of being available for humanitarian purposes to help deal with refugees, and the high commissioner saw no point in continuing trying to do so. The situation was now at breaking point, with further fighting developing in Elizabethville and reports that Tshombe had fled his capital for an unknown destination close to the Northern Rhodesian border, near a small town called Kipushi. We were kept very well informed at the high commission of developments in Katanga. In addition to the regular intelligence we received from the Northern Rhodesian administration and from our own security-service sources, much of our information came from the British consul in Elizabethville, Denzil Dunnett. He should formally have been reporting to his own ambassador in Léopoldville, but since he had no diplomatic wireless link with him, he in practice communicated by telephone primarily with the Northern Rhodesian colonial authorities and with the high commission in Salisbury. (By a curious coincidence, Dunnett’s son, Roderick, was one of my senior legal advisers in later years at the EIB in Luxembourg.) While this was a sensible practical arrangement, it was a potential source of protocol friction for the future. A further absurd complication was that, at the time, CRO and FO overseas missions

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also operated on different diplomatic wireless and coding systems, so that any confidential telegram sent from Salisbury to the embassy in Léopoldville had to be despatched first to the CRO in London, decoded there and passed on to the FO, and then encoded again and sent to Léopoldville. This was no doubt among the reasons for the merger of the CO (which became the Commonwealth Office in 1966) with the FO in 1968.

Ceasefire talks at Ndola At this stage the game changed dramatically again. We learned that the UN secretary general, Dag Hammarskjöld, had gone to Léopoldville on 13 September to meet the Congolese prime minister, Cyrille Adoula, and had declared himself prepared to hold direct talks with Tshombe provided a ceasefire in Elizabethville was observed. This seemed to us a courageous, if somewhat foolhardy – and in the event fatal – decision, but on 17 September the high commissioner was instructed by telephone by the secretary of state, Duncan Sandys, to proceed forthwith to Ndola, the principal town on the Northern Rhodesia Copperbelt, in order to arrange, but not participate in, a meeting between Tshombe and Hammarskjöld. He was to act strictly as ringmaster, as it were, and facilitator, but not to take part in the ceasefire negotiations. Thus began my involvement in the dramatic events of the night of 17–18 September, as Alport instructed me to accompany him to Ndola. As an additional surety for what he now set out to do, I arranged for Alport to speak on the telephone to the foreign secretary in London, Lord Home, in order to assure himself that his peacekeeping mission also had full FO approval. They were good friends, Lord Home having been his boss as secretary of state for Commonwealth relations before Sandys, which had meant that Alport had had to deal with all the department’s business in the House of Commons. Two immediate preliminaries were necessary. The first was for the high commissioner to speak to Welensky, who at once welcomed the development and put an RRAF VIP Canadair aircraft at our disposal to fly to Ndola. The second was to locate Tshombe himself. Happily, this was achieved by our MI6 representative in the high commission, Neil Ritchie. Although Neil was

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formally listed as just one of several first secretaries in the high commission – and of course at that time MI6 was not supposed to exist – most people knew who and what he was working for. In true James Bond fashion he had already located Tshombe near Kipushi and was ready to commandeer a couple of light aircraft to bring him to Ndola. The high commissioner and I flew to Ndola airport in the RRAF Canadair and arrived at about 3 p.m. We were followed by Ritchie, Dunnett, Tshombe, two of his ministers and his chef de cabinet in the two light aircraft a couple of hours later. We still had no confirmation of Hammarskjöld’s likely arrival time or details of his delegation, so we set out to make Tshombe comfortable and allay any suspicions he might have that he had been lured into a trap. For this purpose, with the help of the tough and experienced provincial commissioner stationed in Ndola, Ewan Thomson, and the airport manager, John Williams, we took over and sealed off the small airport building and set up a conference room and separate delegation offices. We also arranged for two Northern Rhodesian police transport vehicles to be parked in front of the large meeting-room windows to obscure the view from the public and press representatives who would gather in numbers as soon as news of the meeting got out. My main jobs were to help Alport set up the physical arrangements for the meeting, keep Tshombe and his delegation supplied with refreshments, and, in the absence of Ritchie, who had discreetly withdrawn, do my best to keep them happy, as I was the only one then present who could speak any French. They, like the secretary general, were taking a big gamble in coming and, as the late afternoon and evening progressed and there was still no further news of Hammarskjöld’s arrival time, they were becoming increasingly edgy and suspicious. I was also charged with maintaining communication with the high commission back in Salisbury, particularly with the deputy high commissioner, David Scott, my father-in-law to be.

The long wait at Ndola We sat down uneasily to wait and occupied some time by arranging dinner from the airport cafe for Tshombe and his colleagues. The situation was, however, further complicated by the arrival from Léopoldville in a UN plane at about

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10.30 p.m. of a junior FO minister, Lord Lansdowne. He had been sent to Léopoldville to talk to Hammarskjöld and appraise the situation on the spot, and had decided to come on to Ndola to consult Lord Alport, but with firm instructions to avoid meeting Tshombe and to leave before Hammarskjöld arrived. His visit seemed to me wholly unnecessary and confusing, and as much designed to satisfy FO amour propre, which was offended by seeing the Salisbury high commission, representing the CRO, in the lead rather than the embassy in Léopoldville, as to achieve any useful purpose. It certainly fooled the press, some of whom, seeing him from a distance greeted by Lord Alport in the darkness on the tarmac, believed Lansdowne was Hammarskjöld, and so reported in the early editions of the next morning’s newspapers. We also felt obliged to press Lansdowne to shake hands and have a very brief conversation with Tshombe, despite his instructions to the contrary. We felt sure that Tshombe would be offended and suspicious if he learned that a British minister had arrived and not greeted him. Shortly before midnight the airport control tower reported that they were in contact with an aircraft coming from Léopoldville, which – although we still had no official confirmation – was assumed to be Hammarskjöld’s plane. According to the log composed after the events from the manuscript notes made at the time by the senior Rhodesian air traffic controller on duty, the aircraft first called control at 11.35 p.m., saying it would be over the airstrip at 11.47 p.m. and arrive at 20 minutes past midnight. Control responded, and after providing weather and barometric data gave the requested permission to land. I heard the aircraft overhead and in a subsequent statement a young Northern Rhodesian policeman said that at about midnight he saw it approach fairly low over the airport and then head away towards the west. In the very small airport building I could also hear from above me exchanges between the control tower and the aircraft, which were presumably those referred to above, but these were broken off as the pilot appeared to decide to observe radio silence and make a sight landing using his own instruments rather than rely on further guidance from airport control. In the meantime, Lord Lansdowne had taken off and departed in short order – honouring at least his undertaking not to be there when the secretary general arrived – and we had telephoned Ewan Thomson to wake Tshombe and bring him quickly back to the airport. In the continuing

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absence of news about Hammarskjöld’s movements, Tshombe had not long since been taken to his nearby house for a more comfortable rest. The next few hours were extremely tense. There was no further contact with or news of the plane from any source, and we had no alternative but to continue to await developments. Neither Lord Alport nor I conceived for a moment that a disaster might have happened. We both assumed that at the last minute Hammarskjöld, for reasons of his own, had decided to change his plans and abort the mission. One possibility was that he had decided to go to Elizabethville for a consultation with O’Brien and his UN staff there. We knew that he had expressed an earlier intention of going there first. Another, and in my view more likely, explanation was that he had heard that some fighting had broken out again in the streets of Elizabethville during the day (we had heard this from the consul, Dunnett) and that since a condition of coming to Ndola was that a temporary ceasefire there held, he had decided to cancel the planned talks. This news may have been relayed to him on his aircraft, which could well have been in communication with a Dakota parked on the Ndola apron belonging to the US air attaché from Léopoldville. We were told that it had such communications capabilities.

The crash We continued hopefully to await further news, and after an hour or so Alport asked the airport manager to activate the standard ‘aircraft missing’ procedures. Although the Northern Rhodesian police sent out one or two road patrols in the early hours to search the areas near the airport, there could be no question of an aerial search operation until daylight later in the morning, and in any case we were simply not thinking in those terms. At about 3 a.m. we decided to try to snatch a few hours’ sleep and Lord Alport and I stumbled across the dark tarmac, climbed up a steep ladder into our parked RRAF Canadair and settled uncomfortably into a couple of seats for the rest of the night, disturbing crew members as we did so. We left the aircraft at about 6 a.m., as dawn began to break. There was still no news, except that we were told that RRAF Provost aircraft had now started an air search for the missing plane and further police

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patrols had been sent out to contact and question any potential witnesses in the surrounding bush. We were then driven to the Thomson household for breakfast, and Alport issued a holding communiqué to the press. In the meantime, Tshombe and his colleagues had had to be allowed to return to Katanga in the two aircraft that Ritchie had commandeered. As Lord Alport and I saw no point in waiting in Ndola any longer we returned on our RRAF plane to Salisbury, where we arrived shortly after lunchtime. We were greeted by Lord Lansdowne and David Scott, with the shocking news that the wreckage of Hammarskjöld’s plane had been found in the bush about nine miles from Ndola airport, and that the secretary general and all the other occupants had been killed, except for one security guard, Harold Julien, who died in hospital later and, although there is controversy over his condition and exactly what he said, was unable to impart any meaningful information on the crash. The riddle of the crash remains unanswered. The Rhodesian Federal Department of Civil Aviation conducted an immediate investigation, which concluded that pilot error ‘was a possibility’, but that they ‘could not rule out a wilful act of some person or persons unknown which might have forced the aircraft to descend or collide with the trees’. This was followed by two public inquiries, one by the Rhodesian federal chief justice, Sir John Clayden, and the other by a UN Commission. The former, published in February 1962, in effect blamed the pilot, who had chosen to use a visual descent procedure, for allowing the aircraft to descend so low that it struck the trees. The latter, published in April 1962, stated that there was no evidence of sabotage or attack, but that these possibilities could not be excluded. In the meantime, much international opinion, led by India, Ghana and the Afro-Asian bloc, immediately claimed that there had been foul play, and that Hammarskjöld had been murdered by the British or federal government, in collusion with Tshombe. Some reports even accused Lord Alport of being personally complicit in the murder.

Commission of inquiry These accusations and many other conspiracy theories have been revived from time to time since then, notably as a result of a book entitled Who

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Killed Hammarskjöld? The UN, the Cold War and White Supremacy in Africa, by a British academic, Susan Williams, published in 2011. This claimed that Hammarskjöld’s aircraft had been shot down by mercenaries fighting for Katanga and the issue was taken up by the Guardian newspaper in feature articles in August of that year (to which I responded in an article published in the same paper on 25 August 2011). Based on a variety of new evidence, including from (now) octogenarian charcoal-burners who were near the crash site on the fateful night and claimed to have seen flashes in the sky and another plane fire at Hammarskjöld’s aircraft before it plunged to the earth, the book concluded that there was sufficient evidence to believe that the crash had not been an accident and that a new official inquiry should take place. Following this a private commission under the chairmanship of a former British High Court judge, Sir Stephen Sedley, a specialist in human-rights matters, comprising jurists and diplomats from South Africa, Sweden and the Netherlands, was set up by the Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation in Sweden to review the evidence about his death once again. I gave oral evidence to that inquiry and it published its findings on 9 September 2013. I found the outcome disappointing. Despite a mass of evidence, which was heard in private, they reached no new conclusions except that the ‘possibility that the plane was in fact forced into its descent by some form of hostile action is supported by sufficient evidence to merit further enquiry’. The report put great weight on the possibility that critical evidence in the form of US CIA and National Security Agency radio intercepts of air traffic in the region on the fatal night, including the plane’s approach to Ndola, and possibly from listening posts as far away as Cyprus, might reveal the hidden truth. So far the US authorities have refused to reveal any of this information, which, if it exists, could also have some bearing on the presence of the US embassy Dakota parked at Ndola airport to which I have already referred.

Criticism of Lord Alport I was particularly concerned at criticism in the report of Lord Alport, which I believed was unjustified (Lord Alport died in 1998 and could not, of course,

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defend himself). The report described him ‘as a strong supporter of the federation’s white supremacist policies’ and alleged that ‘he conducted himself on the night of the crash with an unconcern about the disappearance of the secretary general’s aircraft’. The former is quite untrue. As I have already described in Chapter 5, although he did not favour immediate African advancement to independence, he was strongly opposed to the racially discriminatory policies of both the federal and Southern Rhodesian governments and consistently pressed them to move in a faster, if measured, way to an enlarged franchise and majority rule. As for unconcern about Hammarskjöld’s aircraft, he did all that was possible in that situation on the night to ascertain its whereabouts, including asking the airport manager to activate the ‘aircraft missing’ procedures. He attached great importance to the meeting going ahead – it would be a great personal achievement for him if it succeeded, and the reverse if it did not – and did not give up hoping for news until about 3 a.m. In any case, we had good reasons for believing that the secretary general might have received information which made him decide to abort the meeting with Tshombe and return to Léopoldville or elsewhere. I conveyed my strong concern to the commission secretariat about these unwarranted comments but received no more than a brief acknowledgement. So far as I know they made no amendment to the report. The Sedley Commission duly submitted their report to the current UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, and the Swedish UN delegation, with sponsor support from about 20 other countries, introduced to the General Assembly on 15 December 2014 a resolution calling for a further ‘independent panel of experts’ to reopen the inquiry. This was approved as General Assembly Resolution A/RES/69/246 of 29 December and a small panel consisting of ‘independent experts’ from Tanzania, Australia and Denmark was appointed with a remit to submit their findings to the secretary general by mid-June 2015 – an unreasonably short time given the complexity of the affair. They accordingly did so, and it remains to be seen at the time of writing this book what action the UN will decide to take. The secretary general has indicated that he is not satisfied with the responses from the US and British governments to the questions put to them by the expert panel, particularly in relation to possible CIA intercepts, and wishes to pursue the matter yet further. I was not approached

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for further evidence and indeed did not become aware of the establishment of the expert panel until after the deadline for it to report. Sweden, of course, has a particular interest in establishing the truth, and would understandably dearly like to prove that the plane had been brought down by hostile action rather than by pilot error. The aircraft was an Albertina DC6, recently painted in white UN livery and bought by a Swedish company, Transair, for charter to the UN, and the crew were Swedish, as, of course, was the secretary general.

Causes of the crash As I made clear in my evidence to the Sedley inquiry and in other public comment, unless the US authorities release intercept evidence that sheds a decisive new light on the tragedy – and there is no guarantee of this – I still doubt whether the truth of what exactly happened on the night of 17–18 September 1961 will ever be established. Some of the stories supporting the conspiracy theory are obviously far-fetched and implausible, and there are many inconsistencies. There is one version claiming that Hammarskjöld’s body was found riddled with bullets and propped up against a termite mound near the burned-out wreckage, with an ace of spades playing card stuck in his collar. A number of versions, putting great trust in dubious evidence from former mercenaries, often in the form of bar chat, also place weight on Tshombe’s possession of the two small mercenary-piloted Fouga jets which, it is claimed, intercepted the UN aircraft and shot it down. I think this most unlikely. Other reports state that one of the jets was not serviceable on that evening, and most experts I have spoken to do not believe that a Fouga would have had the capability to intercept and shoot or force down the Albertina in the middle of the night in the circumstances suggested. I certainly did not hear any other aircraft at about midnight when Hammarskjöld’s plane was overhead. As for the charcoal-burners, it is difficult to draw any firm conclusions from what they claim to have seen so long after the event. It would be foolish to rule out the possibility of hostile action or sabotage altogether, but I continue to believe that the great probability is that the crash was due to pilot error. This was also the conclusion of Hammarskjöld’s senior

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UN colleague, and first biographer, Brian Urquhart. The inquiries show that the aircraft was flying near-horizontally in landing mode, with its wheels lowered and locked, banking slightly and completing a turn to the airport when it hit the trees. Its engine was under power at the moment of impact. It was the middle of the night and the pilot was unfamiliar with the small airport, located near a small town in a vast area of unlit bush, and he had chosen, for security reasons, to break off contact with airport control and trust to his own sight line and instruments for landing. It is also significant that, security conscious from the start, he had not filed a flight plan to Ndola, but had set course for a radio beacon near Luluaburg (now Kananga), the capital of Kasai-Occidental Province, from where he then had to navigate himself to Ndola. It is difficult not to imagine that the pilot, nervous and under stress, given the importance of the mission and his VIP passenger, misjudged his approach, with fatal results. The evidence from the wreckage of the plane itself was limited, as 75–80 per cent of the fuselage was destroyed or melted by the intense heat that engulfed it, and there were no black boxes in those days. There is a long history of crashes of this kind – during World War II almost as many RAF planes were lost as a result of accidents and false landings as were destroyed by enemy action. Some of the wider political accusations, such as that the British or federal government deliberately had the plane shot down in order to sabotage the ceasefire talks, are also utterly preposterous. There was no motive for this. We had worked very hard and gone to great lengths to arrange the meeting and it was greatly in the British and federal governments’ interest, and Lord Alport’s personal interest, that it take place and succeed. In her book already referred to, Susan Williams identified several possible motives for murdering the secretary general – white racists opposed to his support of African liberation; Belgian mining interests aligned with the breakaway Tshombe government; and even rivalry between the CIA and KGB over control of the Congolese warring factions – but she did not prove that any of these parties was responsible. It was a tragic end to an outstanding secretary general’s courageous attempt to restore peace by personal intervention. My involvement ended when I returned to Salisbury with Lord Alport, and later on helped him to draft the formal despatch to the secretary of state in London describing these events. I should, however, record that he flew back to Ndola later the same day in

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order, with the governor of Northern Rhodesia, Sir Evelyn Hone, to arrange the lying in state and funeral of Dag Hammarskjöld and, once again, to set up peace talks between Tshombe, who had flown back briefly to Katanga but had agreed to return, and a new UN delegation from New York led by undersecretary Mahmoud Khiari, of Tunisia. That the talks were successful and a peace accord signed hardly supports the idea of a British representative trying to sabotage the occasion.

SE V E N

A Brief Interlude in Ghana (1964–5)

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ith my period in hospital, our wedding, honeymoon and a frantic rush to purchase and pack the household and other goods we were taking to Ghana, I had little time to brief myself on my new post. In any case the CRO provided me with little, true to the tradition of teaching oneself on the job. We were, however, able to relax on what was in effect a second honeymoon on an Elder Dempster liner, the MV Accra, which called in at Las Palmas and an oppressively steamy Freetown before docking at Tema, then the port serving Accra. It must have been among the last occasions when diplomats were allowed to proceed to a posting in this leisurely way. The great advantage was that you could take your ‘loads’ with you, although it was some weeks before our gleaming new white Ford Corsair GT also arrived. A spacious flat on the outskirts of the city was soon available for us and I quickly settled

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into the British high commission as first secretary monitoring internal political developments – or that was what I gathered I was supposed to do; there were no job descriptions in those days. The climate was warm, but kept reasonably dry by the harmattan, the dusty wind sweeping in from the Sahara, and – a colonial throwback – we did not work in the afternoons, starting at 8 a.m. and finishing at 2 p.m. There were also pleasant palm-fringed beaches within fairly easy reach – if you were prepared to risk your car on bone-shaking corrugated dirt roads – and we took a half-share in a small beach hut at Prampram with Tony and Mary Crassweller, the high commission security liaison officer – that is, MI5 man.

British high commission, Accra It was now the dying days of Kwame Nkrumah’s totalitarian regime, with most political gossip centred on how long he would last and who would be responsible for removing him. Ghana, previously the Gold Coast, was the first sub-Saharan African country to become independent of colonial rule, when in 1957 Nkrumah became prime minister; he subsequently became president on declaration of a republic in 1960. A well-educated man, he was one of the most successful, influential and initially enlightened of the early African independence leaders, and the first to promote the concept of pan-Africanism. As such he occupied a prominent role in the so-called Afro-Asian bloc, with its developing associations with the Soviet Union. But under his presidency for life Ghana had developed into an authoritarian one-party state, with the press and media tightly controlled and opposition suppressed. There were sickeningly sycophantic reminders of the president on every hoarding in public places and in the government-controlled press. He was presented as the great Osagyefo, or ‘Redeemer’, who was not only the liberator and father of the nation but portrayed as a great thinker and philosopher in his own right too. Having studied for a time under A. J. Language, Truth and Logic Ayer in England, he published an almost unreadable philosophical treatise, called Consciencism, which was said to have been ghostwritten by the first African fellow of All Souls College in Oxford, the Ghanaian academic Willy Abraham, and seemed to me to contain

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little truth and less logic. It was sad to see such an outstanding reformer and freedom fighter degenerate in this way. As a result of Nkrumah’s economic policy of protectionism and reliance on trade and other links with the Soviet Union and the communist bloc, foreign exchange was scarce and imports of many basic commodities restricted. Life in Accra was therefore rather bittersweet. We had been advised to take out with us a year’s supply of basic household requirements, such as sugar, flour, tea, coffee, tinned food, loo paper, china, glasses, cleaning materials, and so on. But we still had to shop locally, and some of the most exciting moments in the high-commission working day were when news reached us on the grapevine that sugar (or potatoes or whatever) was available in the local supermarket, so that we all dropped our pens and rushed down to the store to queue and claim our share (queuing at the checkout, no doubt, in order of diplomatic precedence). On the other hand, despite the authoritarian regime – which fortunately was not efficient enough to impose its control in every way – we found life in general much happier, freer and more colourful than in racially divided Rhodesia. It was such a refreshing contrast. There was no colour bar, and native middle-class Ghanaians, who were generally better-educated than many white Rhodesians, were more outgoing, cheerful and accessible. The streets and markets were full of gaudy, smiling, kente-clothed market mammies – it was largely a matriarchal society – and other traders selling their fruit, vegetables, bushmeat and other wares. There was also a substantial and prosperous black professional class who, so they told us, were opposed to Nkrumah but generally kept their heads down so far as expressing political views in public was concerned. Social contact with them was easy, and, despite some of the bitter memories associated with Britain’s long colonial rule, there were still many friendly institutional links with the former mother country and invitations to dinner or other social functions were readily accepted. This applied particularly to senior members of the civil and armed services, and many Ghanaian officers – some with extraordinarily pukka Sandhurst accents – came discreetly to weep on our shoulders and speculate with us on when Nkrumah would be removed and by whom. (It always pleased me later that the main leader of the eventual military coup in 1966, Flight Lieutenant Jerry Rawlings, who, after a series of both civilian

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and military governments, became president from 1981 until he stood down in 2001, retained that rank and did not do an Idi Amin by promoting himself immediately to air marshal.) I did what I could to cultivate these contacts and report any relevant developments to London. I also made modest progress in establishing contact with some of Nkrumah’s more senior ideological supporters, such as John Tetegah, the Marxist trade-union leader and director of the mysterious left-wing indoctrination college at Winneba. But reliable information about Nkrumah, as opposed to rumours, was hard to obtain and a great deal of our time seemed to be spent in swapping gossip with other embassies and high commissions (especially the Americans) and entertaining each other at cocktail and dinner parties.

Excursions from Accra I was allowed to get away from Accra occasionally on duty, which resulted in some bizarre and hilarious consequences. On more serious business, I made a consular visit to Takoradi in order to make myself available for the day in the local Elder Dempster offices to any British resident who wished to consult me about visas or passports, or just to remind the high commission that they were still there. Among those who did so was Judith Cripps, the daughter of the former Labour chancellor of the exchequer Sir Stafford Cripps, who had married a Ghanaian. I particularly remember that visit because it was there that I received a call with the shocking news that my father had suffered a serious heart attack, and communication with my mother at home was difficult – at that time you often had to book international telephone calls in advance. On another less serious occasion I made an official visit to a small town north of Accra to call on the paramount chief of the region and present a collection of British Council books to the local town council. Handing out books seemed to be the 1960s version of exerting Britain’s soft power. This visit ended in a series of events reminiscent of a Carry On film. The paramount chief insisted on celebrating my arrival – at mid-morning on a sweltering hot and humid day – by ceremonially breaking the seal on a new bottle of Scotch and inviting me to share a series of toasts with him. The catch was that after consuming the

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first tot he poured his own successive glasses down the throat of a genuflecting, open-mouthed lackey crouching at his feet, whereas I, under public scrutiny, had to swallow all mine like a man. When I eventually staggered from the chief ’s sprawling, single-storey palace compound to the town hall for the formal book presentation, I found that the councillors had already consumed most of the food and drink and were in as incapable a state as I was. We eventually got away, the boot of our car filled with a huge hand of ripening bananas and a wingflapping, leg-tied cockerel causing mayhem in the back of the car with Diana. It was a tough old bird, but later served its purpose when we were required to provide at short notice lunch for a hungry and travel-stained party of British students who had just made it to Accra after a Land Rover trek across the Sahara. They seemed to relish it, but our cook would only prepare it after being given a bottle of gin with which to make libations before he wrung its neck. A further sequel to this visit – which no doubt did no end of good for Britain’s relations with Ghana – was that some weeks later, when both Diana, who was now pregnant, and I were both far from well and rushing to the bathroom every few minutes, the paramount chief arrived with a considerable entourage at our flat in Accra with no notice. According to all the laws of reciprocal hospitality we had no choice but to improvise a decent lunch for them. Over tea and coffee afterwards, declaring that he had a diploma in sexual studies – we thought at first that he said social studies – the chief kindly offered to predict the sex of our child if we could give him precise details of the timing and method of its conception. I cannot remember how we extricated ourselves and got him on his way. Another occasion designed further to demonstrate Britain’s soft power provided the most memorable event of my short tour in Ghana. I was required to present yet another consignment of books as a gift to the Ghana National Gliding School, situated quite near to Accra. I duly did my duty, and after the presentation ceremony and speeches the director of the school, an attractive blue-eyed, silver-blonde female in her fifties (who, like several other expatriate women, was said to be Nkrumah’s mistress), offered to take me up in a glider flight with her. I accepted, having assured myself that she was herself an experienced pilot, and we did a few circuits of the airfield before returning safely to ground. It was only later that I learned (I had inexplicably not been briefed

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beforehand) that she was Hanna Reitsch, the celebrated Luftwaffe ace and test pilot, and Hitler’s personal pilot. I found it staggering that she should be here in West Africa and I looked into her fascinating story. A dedicated Nazi, she had flight-tested the early V1 rockets and was in the bunker in Berlin with Hitler until shortly before his death. She had flown in on 26 April 1945, landing under Russian fire in the Tiergarten near the Brandenburg Gate, with Generaloberst Robert Ritter von Greim, who was badly wounded in the legs on the descent. He had just been appointed by Hitler as head of the Luftwaffe in place of Göring, whom Hitler had dismissed and ordered to be shot for treason. Hanna Reitsch offered either to remain with Hitler or to fly him out, but he ordered her to leave and fly von Greim back to Munich, where he was also to arrest and arrange the execution of Heinrich Himmler, who had been in contact with the Swedes to try to arrange a surrender of the German forces in the West. She obeyed the deranged Führer’s order and successfully flew out with von Greim under Russian fire again on 28 April. Hitler committed suicide the next day, with the Russians only a few hundred yards from the bunker. After detention by the Americans, when she received the horrific news that her sister had killed her three children, their parents and then herself to avoid falling into the hands of the Russians, she was released and took up gliding, becoming German champion in 1955, and after running a similar school in Delhi for Pandit Nehru, accepted Nkrumah’s invitation in 1962 to establish the Ghana National Gliding School. I suspect I am probably now the only living Englishman who flew with Hitler’s pilot, but what it achieved for our influence in Ghana at the time I have no idea. Very little of the rest of our time in Ghana sticks in my memory. My job was fairly routine and memorable more for some of the curious events I have described than for any serious diplomatic activity. For example, Diana and I were given the onerous task of entertaining the hierarchy of the Ghana Boy Scout movement and showing them the film of Winston Churchill’s funeral. Another coup for soft power. In contrast to Rhodesia, where the British high commission, rightly or wrongly, played an important role in influencing policy towards the Central African Federation (initially trying to find a way of keeping it together, but subsequently steering the path towards its dissolution), I did not, contrary to my original expectations of the CRO, really get the sense that

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our presence made any significant contribution to the promotion of British interests in Ghana. Life was difficult for Diana too. She was left alone for much of each day and, without any previous experience of running a household, quickly had to adapt to sorting out our flat (albeit with a cook to help), organising official entertainment (cocktail and dinner parties) and responding to any requests from the high commissioner’s wife. Colleagues were friendly and welcoming, but the pecking order for wives in the high commission was traditionally hierarchical – even to the extent of who made which sandwiches and cakes for the annual Queen’s birthday party. Diana hoped to be able to complete her stillunfinished first degree with London University (of which she had done two years at the University College in Rhodesia before we left) on a correspondence basis, but this did not prove feasible, and although she helped part-time with teaching English at a British Council-sponsored domestic-science school, she often felt rather isolated. She was still learning to drive, so being dependent on lifts increased this isolation. Looking back, I am ashamed that I was not more supportive and aware of the problems she faced. We did, however, get away together from time to time, and after reading the excellent book Trade Castles and Forts of West Africa (1963) by A. W. Lawrence, T. E.’s younger brother, we planned to try to visit all the 40-odd historic slave-trading forts and castles on the Ghanaian coast and if possible to go further afield to Mali and Timbuktu. We succeeded in visiting forts at Axim, Elmina, Fort Jago, Takoradi, Dixcove, Commenda and Cape Coast, but got no further. Our plans were cut short by a recurrence of my illness. The good sister at St Pancras had not completed her job, and I suffered renewed dysentery and sickness and lost an alarming amount of weight. As Diana was now suffering increasingly from morning sickness, she sympathetically kept me company. I ended up in a military hospital in Accra, where, on the basis of a preliminary diagnosis, they decided to cure me by removing my gall bladder. Luckily a visiting RAF surgeon took one look at me, said it was nothing to do with my gall bladder and instructed that I should return to England immediately as, in his opinion, I would not survive an operation in Accra. This both saved my life (probably) and removed a source of embarrassment to my high commissioner, His Excellency Mr Harold Smedley. On

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visiting me he was shocked to find a placard stuck on the end of my bed which simply said ‘PAGAN’. This was not really commensurate with the dignity of a British diplomat and was the result of my denial of any of the other religious affiliations put to me when an orderly took down my personal particulars when I first entered the hospital. I thus escaped hospital in the nick of time once again and flew back with Diana to London in April 1965. We felt that we had not really done justice to Ghana but were glad to be back home.

E I GH T

Return to Whitehall and Rescuing Zambia (1965–8)

O

n return to England from Ghana I went immediately to the Sheffield University teaching hospital, chosen so that Diana could stay during my treatment with my parents in nearby Chesterfield. The doctors quickly discovered that my problem was nothing to do with my gall bladder, which had nearly been gratuitously removed in Ghana, but was due to giardiasis, a parasitic intestinal infestation which, once discovered, could easily be cured by the appropriate drugs. It was something I might even have picked up in Rhodesia or Nyasaland before going to Ghana and had not been detected at the Hospital for Tropical Diseases at St Pancras. The only benefit of having contracted this and the other previous tropical nasties was that I was disbarred from being a blood donor for life – a great relief to me in view of my shameful exhibition as a blood donor in the army.

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As soon as I was out of hospital I reported to the CRO, who told me, sensibly, that they had decided I was not to be sent back to West Africa but to remain in London. This caused some problems as we had left our smart new car and most of our other worldly goods in Accra on the assumption that we would return there after I had been cured, but the ever-helpful administration officer in the high commission, Bertie Sear, went to enormous trouble to sell the car and other effects we did not need back home, and despatch the rest by sea to us. The bonus was that they arrived a few weeks later when my mother was staying with us and she was able to open all the wedding presents, which she had not seen since they had mostly been packed up hurriedly before our wedding and sent out direct to Ghana.

Commonwealth Relations Office The news for me was that I was to take over the Zambia desk in the Zambia and Malawi Department in the CRO. It was encouraging that – and this was not always the case in the service – someone had thought of putting me into a job for which I at least had some relevant previous experience. The job was in principle a fairly routine one, but turned out to be much more demanding and exciting than I had expected. In the meantime, after a rapid search in the fringes of commuter-land Surrey and a temporary stay in a flat in Streatham, we found and bought our first house in Epsom – apparently, at a time of mortgage famine, one of the very few mortgages to be awarded in the area that year. The Halifax evidently regarded my respectable job in the civil service, with a salary that had now rocketed to just over £2,000 a year, a sound credit prospect. This was before those carefree days in the early years of the new millennium when lenders were falling over each other to offer loans at several multiples of income. We were much relieved to have settled this so quickly as our first baby was now due in a few weeks’ time. As the desk officer for Zambia I was the middle-level link for political reporting and assessment between the British high commission in Lusaka and the CRO in London – interesting, but not particularly taxing. With my existing knowledge of Zambia it did not matter that my predecessor had already

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departed and left me no other briefing than a cryptic note in the top left-hand drawer of my desk which simply said: ‘Look up Mrs Castle’s briefs’ – Mrs Barbara Castle being the minister in charge of the newly formed Ministry of Overseas Development at the time. But the context and challenge changed dramatically with the UDI by the Southern Rhodesian prime minister, Ian Smith, on 11 November 1965 after months of abortive negotiations with the government of Harold Wilson. Wilson stuck firmly to the principle of NIBMAR (no independence before majority African rule) and the requirement that any independence settlement should be acceptable to the people of Rhodesia as a whole. Smith, frustrated by seeing Zambia, Malawi and other former colonies who had not had Southern Rhodesia’s long experience of self-rule gain independence, decided to go it alone.

UDI and rescuing Zambia One of Smith’s first decisions was to close the border with Zambia. This was a potential economic death blow. Although the Kariba hydroelectric station on the Zambezi River still ensured a reasonable electricity supply, in all other respects the newly independent Zambian government, which had very few qualified African officials, was totally unprepared to cope with such a situation. Stocks of most commodities were very low – only around 12 days of petrol and 22 days of diesel at the declaration of UDI, as the main storage facilities were in Salisbury and Bulawayo – and the closing of the Rhodesia Railways line between the two countries meant that they could neither export the bulk of their copper, which constituted over 90 per cent of their export and foreignexchange earnings, through Rhodesia on to South Africa or Mozambique and the sea, nor import the coal and oil vital to keep that industry and the economy generally going. The only other rail route to the sea was the Benguela line to the Angolan port of Lobito Bay, but this had limited capacity, and in any case the sympathies of the Portuguese colonial administration, although formally neutral towards the illegal Smith regime, lay with Rhodesia and the apartheid regime in South Africa. A possible alternative was the so-called Great North Road from Lusaka to Dar es Salaam, a distance of some 1,100 miles, but this

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was no more than a dirt track in parts and almost impossible to negotiate during the rainy season. It became known as ‘Hell Run’ and could take up to 11 days to traverse. Kenneth Kaunda, the leader of UNIP, who had now become the first president of Zambia on independence in October 1964, not unreasonably blamed the British government for his country’s predicament and demanded that they should either bring Smith to heel, by military force if necessary, or take whatever steps were required in the meantime to keep the Zambian economy afloat. The former was out of the question, despite pressure on the government from the official Opposition and from Jeremy Thorpe, the leader of the Liberal Party – who soon became known as ‘Bomber Thorpe’ – even if the loyalty of British forces against their Rhodesian ‘kith and kin’ could be relied on; and as for the latter, initially the British government prevaricated on economic assistance to Zambia. This was both on cost grounds and on the wishful assumption that economic sanctions against Smith, on which Harold Wilson had reached an agreement with US president Lyndon Johnson, would bring him to heel in ‘weeks rather than months’ – an increasingly implausible and embarrassing prediction that haunted Wilson for many years.

Emergency action It soon became clear that rapid emergency action had to be taken to get oil and petrol into Zambia, if the economy was not quickly to collapse. The CRO, with oversight from the Department of Economic Affairs (DEA), which had been established by Harold Wilson under George Brown in October 1964 – the prime minister was evidently not convinced that the CRO was sufficiently economically literate to handle this affair on its own – was required to produce an appropriate plan in short order to achieve this. In practice the detailed work on this quickly filtered down the hierarchy to my desk since frequent changes of head of the Zambia and Malawi Department, for a variety of reasons, meant that I became the main continuity fixture in the department and regarded as the expert on Zambia’s economic problems. With responsibility well beyond my pay grade I put together an emergency plan, which I costed at £13.85 million,

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which gained the approval of the upper reaches of the CRO, the Treasury and No. 10. I was even told that his Hungarian economic adviser, Tommy Balogh, specially commended the plan to the prime minister. The figure of £13.85 million seems ridiculously small now to prevent an economy from collapsing, but it seemed enormous to me at the time – it was by far the largest amount of money I had ever dealt with – and it has always stuck in my memory. The plan involved oil airlifts from Nairobi and the Congo, improvements to the cargo capacity of the ports at Dar es Salaam, Mombasa in Kenya and Lobito Bay in Angola, the mobilisation of a fleet of transport lorries and petrol bowsers and a rapid upgrading of the Great North Road. To put the plan into practice also required cooperation from the Americans in mounting an airlift from the Congo and, with Canadian help, using the RAF to fly in oil from Nairobi. In order to achieve the former, the distinguished economist and permanent secretary of the DEA, Sir Eric Roll (later Lord Roll of Ipsden), was despatched to Washington for talks at the State Department with Gerhard Mennen ‘Soapy’ Williams, the controversial and flamboyant assistant secretary of state for Africa, and I was asked to accompany him. While I held the briefcase and turned up the papers Eric did the negotiating and, with the immense prestige he had gained from his former days in Washington as economic minister at the British embassy and UK director at the IMF and World Bank, he soon got the Americans on board. It was an extraordinary privilege and learning experience for me to accompany him and we kept in touch over the years, not least when I was later at the EIB and persuaded him to chair a panel of eminent European economists which awarded our biennial economic prize. He later became a legendary figure at the merchant bank Warburgs, working until well into his nineties and appearing at every conceivable important international finance meeting. I just knew at the annual IMF and World Bank jamborees that at some stage he would appear from under the table, or round the corner, so to speak, full of energy, wisdom and brilliant conversation. These were heady days for me back at the CRO. With the advice and cooperation of the Overseas Development Ministry and the Crown Agents, the traditional suppliers and procurers for the colonies, I had authority, within the £13.85 million package, to initiate engineering and upgrading work on the Great North Road, order hundreds of petrol bowsers and other trucks for getting oil

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and other imports in, and also to engage Freddie Laker, a fellow Epsom resident, who founded his famous Laker Airways in 1966, to supply aircraft to support the oil airlift from Nairobi. Ironically, since the subsequent Lusaka International airport had not yet been constructed, the only airfield capable at this time of receiving the large oil-carrying transport planes was that at Ndola, where I had been present when UN secretary general Hammarskjöld had crashed and been killed only some four years previously. We also considered proposals, supported by the economic consultants Maxwell Stamp, for constructing a new railway from Dar es Salaam to the Copperbelt and an oil pipeline from the Mozambique port of Beira, but, on the British government’s unrealistic assumption about the duration of UDI, the construction timescale for both these projects would have been far too long (years rather than weeks!), and the estimated cost was unacceptable to the Treasury at a time of public-expenditure restraint. We therefore rejected the proposals but in the event both were completed in the 1970s, the former, the Tazara, by the Chinese, although it has subsequently fallen into disrepair, and the pipeline under the management of the American engineering consultants Bechtel. The Americans also later constructed an allweather road to Dar es Salaam and the Zambian government itself established Zambia/Tanzania Road Service Ltd, which, with hundreds of trucks procured from Italian suppliers and financed by an Italian bank, became the principal freight carrier for many years. All these projects turned out to be important for the longer-term survival of Zambia’s economy as the illegal Smith regime, which declared a republic in 1970, did not capitulate until 1978, following a costly and bloody bush guerrilla war which cost over 100 European lives, but many times more that number of African lives. Although I believe our support succeeded in protecting Zambia from immediate economic collapse (much of the economy, especially in the rural areas, was in any case subsistence and could manage at a basic level for a very long time), it was certainly not over-generous, and Kaunda felt that he had been treated shabbily. I accompanied the minister of state at the CRO, Judith Hart, on two missions to Lusaka to negotiate our aid package and try to persuade the Zambian government that it was an adequate and reasonable response to their needs. I had the slight advantage of having previously met Kenneth Kaunda when, during my Salisbury high-commission days, I once drove out

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to Salisbury airport with an American academic friend, Bob Rotberg, to give him dinner in the airport restaurant when he was passing through on the way back to Lusaka but forbidden to leave the airport as he was a prohibited immigrant in Southern Rhodesia. The talks, however, were distinctly tetchy and Kaunda was not impressed, but we did not improve our offer. I fear that one of my most vivid memories of these missions is of returning to the high commissioner’s residence late one night after dining with friends elsewhere and, in order to gain entry to the dark, locked and silent house (I could simply not make the key I had been given work), throwing pebbles at a bedroom window which showed a bit of light. Unhappily it turned out to be that of the Rt Hon. Malcolm MacDonald, the venerable former Cabinet minister and proconsul and son of the first Labour prime minister, who had been invited to accompany our delegation because of his friendship and good standing with Kaunda and other African leaders. It woke him up and he came down in his nightgown and let me in. He was tremendously nice about it, just observing that if woken up at that hour of the night he could never get to sleep again. I was mortified, and tried to avoid Malcom MacDonald thereafter, but in my defence I should say that I had been given the wrong key by the high commissioner’s wife. As the immediate threat to Zambia’s economy subsided the government’s focus switched to economic sanctions against Rhodesia, including the mounting of the famous ‘Beira patrol’ by the Royal Navy to prevent illegal oil shipments entering the port of that name and other African ports. Inconclusive talks with Smith dragged on and within the CRO the Rhodesia Economic Department took the strain, although the DEA still exercised a general oversight and chaired the main interdepartmental committees, Sir William (Bill) Neild having succeeded Sir Eric Roll as permanent secretary. My job thus became more routine and I felt ready to move on to something more demanding.

Leaving the diplomatic service At the same time the nature of the old CRO was changing. It had itself been formed in 1947 from an amalgamation of the Dominion and India offices,

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and in 1966 it merged with the Colonial Office to form the Commonwealth Office (CO), with many former Colonial Office staff also transferring to the Ministry of Overseas Development. Plans were now announced to complete the rationalisation by amalgamating the new CO with the FO in 1968, to form a single HM Diplomatic Service within a new Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO). Diplomatic missions in Commonwealth countries would, however, continue to be called high commissions rather than embassies, and heads of mission high commissioners rather than ambassadors. Existing CO staff, who were still technically members of the home civil service, would be given the option of either becoming members of the new combined office and diplomatic service, or transferring to another home department in Whitehall if suitable places could be found. Whilst in Ghana Diana and I had begun to have second thoughts about a lifetime spent in the diplomatic service. Diana, a diplomat’s daughter, had had plenty of experience of it. She had been to six schools before the age of ten, and had been separated from her parents for long periods and often boarded out at school and with grandparents during school holidays. The allowances for children to join their parents overseas in the early postwar years had been far from generous – for example, when her mother and father were in Singapore she only had one paid flight to visit them in two years. Having now settled in our comfortable little house and garden in Epsom and had our first child, Michael, we were becoming more attracted by the prospect of remaining in England and less inclined to subject our children to boarding schools and the kind of disruption Diana had experienced. It was thus of concern to us that the liability for overseas service in the new combined department seemed likely to be significantly greater than that in the old CRO. From a professional point of view too I was beginning to have serious doubts. I had had an exceptionally exciting time in Rhodesia, and a quite testing job in my first couple of years back at the CRO after the short and colourful but not very satisfying interlude in Ghana. But I increasingly questioned how satisfying I should find a diplomatic career over the long term. My experience so far had, of course, been limited, at a junior grade and only in African posts, but I could not escape the feeling that, at least in some posts, a great deal of diplomats’ time and energy went into swapping gossip, entertaining other diplomats and

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losing touch with the realities of life back in the UK. In this rather arrogant and earnest, and no doubt inadequately informed way, I felt that, while I still had the chance, I ought to move to another department where I would do some more substantial work, though this was not something I could say to my father-inlaw, now holding an important post as the acting British high commissioner in India. Clearly, for high-flyers there would always be posts of major importance to British interests where the presence of skilled professional diplomats could make a meaningful difference. But there were many posts where it did not seem to me that the British presence, except perhaps for consular functions, made much difference to British interests either way. I was not sure, therefore, that I wanted to end my career after many years’ service in a country marginal to British interests and for which I found it difficult to generate any real interest or enthusiasm. Moreover, with the rapid development of communications technology (and the more so, of course, in recent years with the astonishing digital and internet revolution), governments would have so many other sources of instant news and information and become progressively less reliant on the traditional diplomatic telegrams and despatches. I observed too that there was an increasing tendency to usurp the role of ambassadors and high commissioners by sending out ministers or senior officials to take the lead in conducting important negotiations. I had witnessed this in Rhodesia, where we had had to cope with a regular succession of visits by secretaries of state and other ministers and senior functionaries, and I had myself been part of the tendency in a small way with my participation in the missions to Zambia and Washington. As events turned out, Britain’s accession to the European Economic Community (EEC) in 1973 also greatly accelerated this tendency as most government departments began to develop their own direct relationships with their counterparts in other member states, effectively bypassing the FCO and its European embassies. I certainly did so later both at the Treasury and at HM Customs and Excise. There was also finally some concern among officials in the CO that they might be treated as second-class diplomats and not given their fair share of the more interesting and attractive postings, despite the fact that the permanent under-secretary of the CO, Sir Saville ( Joe) Garner was, by seniority of appointment, made the first head of the new diplomatic service.

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Moving to the Treasury I therefore informed the CO personnel department that I would like to transfer to a home department, if possible to the Treasury. I chose the Treasury not just because it was the most powerful and prestigious department, but because, apart from the Cabinet Office, which was largely staffed at senior levels by seconded staff (often from the Treasury), the Treasury uniquely dealt with every aspect of government business and no other department could offer such a varied and comprehensive career. I was told that there was little chance of such a transfer, but that they would offer me round to departments and see what could be done. A complication was that such transfers had to be made on a reciprocal head-for-head basis – in other words, the department to which I was transferred would have to provide a substitute of my rank who was acceptable to the diplomatic service. I had, however, in the meantime been quietly ploughing my own furrow by cultivating a relationship with the Treasury officials with whom I had negotiated the Zambia aid package, and the Treasury assistant secretary in charge of the department concerned, Stanley Wright, had actually asked me if I had ever thought of transferring to the Treasury. If so, he would like to know. The wheels ground slowly, but after a few weeks the personnel people informed me that, to their very great surprise, the Treasury was willing to take me and had found an official in its orbit at my level – ironically in HM Customs – who wished to transfer to the diplomatic service and was acceptable to them. Thus in early 1968 I moved across the road to the Treasury as a principal, demonstrating that it was not what you know, but who you know, that really counted. I also reassured myself by recalling that the great Maynard Keynes had begun his career in the India Office, the precursor of the CO, and then transferred to the Treasury. My move was not completely straightforward or without anxious moments. Shortly before I was due to move I received a telephone call from Judith Hart, who was now in the Cabinet as paymaster general, after a spell as minister of social security. She said that the prime minister had asked her to set up a new social-policy unit in the Cabinet Office and she would like me to head it, with immediate promotion to assistant secretary. While flattered to be approached

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in this way by a Cabinet minister, and one whom I liked and had worked with well in the past, I asked for a day or so to consider it. After a restless night I went to see her and turned the offer down. I was just about to make my move to the Treasury, which might not be available again if I backed out now, and in any case it did not seem to me wise as a civil servant to hitch my wagon to that of a minister who might not last long in the job anyway. In the event she did move on to become minister of overseas development in the following year, and I might have been left high and dry. It also saved me the task of explaining to my mother why I had apparently been demoted from the lofty rank of principal to a mere assistant secretary – I dreaded to think of her reaction if I ever made under-secretary.

NINE

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oining the Treasury was not just like taking a cold shower, it was a positive ice bath. The shock was intense. Regardless of previous experience, or lack of it – and I had practically none in financial or economic affairs – a newly arrived Treasury official was expected to be the expert at his or her job from day one. Soon after arriving I was summoned by my under-secretary, Leo Pliatzky (later Sir Leo, a legendary second permanent secretary in charge of public expenditure), and told that although you could get a first at Oxford by answering only one or two questions in your finals papers, in the Treasury you answered every question and got them all right. I got the message. The Treasury, situated in a vast nineteenth-century pile near Parliament on Great George Street at the end of Whitehall, has two broad main functions,

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controlling public expenditure and managing the economy. When I joined it was divided into four main policy sectors, responsible for public-expenditure control, fiscal policy and economic management, the banking and financial sector and international finance respectively. At the official level these were in the charge of the ‘Treasury knights’: the permanent secretary, two second permanent secretaries and the chief economic adviser (who was also the head of the government economic service), who reported to the chancellor of the exchequer and, where necessary, other Treasury ministers. In practice the only other minister to whom Treasury officials at this level would normally deign to report was the chief secretary to the Treasury (CST), who was responsible for public expenditure and often a member of the Cabinet. The number of junior ministers (financial secretary, economic secretary, and so on) varied under different governments and the position of the chancellor was much more prestigious and dominant than that of a secretary of state in any other department. Except on public expenditure, where the CST took the lead, it was what the chancellor said and decided that counted. At official level, the international-finance divisions were the glamour boys and girls of the Treasury, who travelled regularly to New York, Washington, Paris, the IMF and other exciting places. The foot soldiers slogging it out in the trenches were the public-expenditure-control divisions, who battled unceasingly on the taxpayers’ behalf against the demands of the spending departments. It sometimes seemed a bit like holding the fort at Rorke’s Drift against overwhelmingly superior numbers of attacking Zulus. But the greater the unpopularity of the department and the odds against it, the higher Treasury morale seemed to climb. As David Lipsey, who served as a special adviser under Labour governments in the 1970s, put it in his admirable The Secret Treasury, ‘criticism and unpopularity go with the Treasury’s territory.’* Given its immensely wide responsibilities, the Treasury was also a remarkably small department in numbers – about 1,000 overall when I joined – so that internal communication was excellent and a strong camaraderie prevailed. *

David Lipsey, The Secret Treasury: How Britain’s Economy Is Really Run (London: Viking, 2000), p. 10.

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Controlling public expenditure The public-spending sector was divided into divisions shadowing individual spending departments. I was assigned as a principal to Agriculture and Trade (AT), a run-of-the-mill division which looked after the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries (MAFF), the Board of Trade (BOT), regional and industrial policy, and the smaller budgets of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. I was responsible for all these except agriculture and fisheries and had a small section of executive officers of different grades to support – and initially carry – me. It was not the largest spending block, but not trivial. The BOT administered investment grants to industry, which were largely demand-determined and running at several hundred million pounds a year, in addition to a range of regional and employment loans under the Local Employment Act and other grants and subsidies which added up to a similar amount. I was hardly settled in my desk before the annual BOT estimates arrived (their spending bids for the coming year), and my task was to scrutinise these and make my recommendations through the hierarchy to the CST. The prospect was a daunting one, given my inexperience in Treasury lore and practice. At that time, before the further development of the more sophisticated Public Expenditure Survey Committee (PESC), which produced a four-year forward look at expenditure at constant prices, an almost religious ritual still surrounded the processing of the estimates, which had eventually to be submitted to Parliament for approval. The normal custom was for departments to come to the Treasury for estimates discussions – not a matter of amour propre, but a sensible practical arrangement because we were few and they many, and they were in any case the demandeurs – but as we had so many people to see we arranged to spend a day at the BOT, a short walking distance away at the end of Victoria Street. In an office set aside for the purpose, and in the presence of their principal finance officer, we received the various heads of departments and divisions – assistant and under-secretaries – with their estimates proposals. I was accompanied by my senior executive officer, Ray Allwood, whose presence was an enormous support and reassurance. It took me back to my national-service days when, as a wet-behind-the-ears 18-year-old second lieutenant, I had been propped up by an experienced regular platoon

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sergeant. I had stayed up much of the previous night at home making detailed briefing notes on every estimates proposal, but Ray was vastly experienced and ate estimates for breakfast. It also helped appearances, physically if not necessarily intellectually, that Ray was about six foot four and 16 stone and played in the second row in the civil service rugby team. He became a good personal friend, being prominent in the Civil Service Sports Council (CSSC), of which I later became chairman. We listened to all the special pleading, challenged many of their proposals, said yea or nay as reason or prejudice moved us, suggested some reductions and returned to the Treasury to draft our recommendations to the CST. The largest single item in the estimates was investment grants to industry, where, since allocation was largely demand-determined provided the rules of eligibility in the statute were met, it was not easy for us to challenge the BOT bid. As with social-security benefits, the only way we could significantly affect spending was by altering the eligibility criteria, which would normally require at least subordinate legislation. Of the many smaller bids that I sought to reduce, the one that still sticks in my memory is a relatively paltry sum to maintain the marker buoys above an American Liberty ship which had sunk with a huge cargo of TNT during the war just off the Isle of Sheppey. I argued that it would be far cheaper over time to salvage the vessel and remove the cargo and so terminate the need for the continuing annual expenditure, but had to withdraw my clever suggestion when it was pointed out that a Ministry of Defence study had conclusively demonstrated that any disturbance of the cargo carried a very high risk of an explosion that would demolish Sheerness and most of the rest of Sheppey. I backed off – it seemed rather foolish to destroy Sheppey to save a few pounds on annual maintenance costs, and as a keen birdwatcher I wanted in any case to be able to continue to visit the Elmley nature reserve. In addition to my expenditure-control responsibilities, which also included negotiating the annual grant to the Highlands and Islands Development Board – whose chairman was the former ambassador Sir Andrew Gilchrist, famous for playing the bagpipes as his embassy was being burned down in Jakarta – I was also expected to monitor regional policy, keep an eye on the DEA and represent the Treasury at meetings of the National Economic Development Council

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(NEDC) and its sectoral offshoots, the ‘little Neddies’. The NEDC had been created in 1962 by a Conservative government under Harold Macmillan, but was now a creature of the DEA, which had been set up as a counterweight to the Treasury by the Labour government of Harold Wilson in October 1964 and as an economic-planning instrument for the deputy Labour leader, George Brown. It was, however, never likely to succeed. The DEA’s heyday had passed with the departure of George Brown to become foreign secretary in August 1966, and his successors, Michael Stewart and Peter Shore, never carried the same weight. Although it still ran many Whitehall committees and had a finger in many other departments’ business, as long as the Treasury remained in control of the main economic levers – public expenditure, taxation and monetary policy – it was like the proverbial man in the signal box whose levers were not attached to the signals. As for my representational role with the DEA, it was less a sign of any importance attached to me than of the lack of importance the Treasury attached to the department itself.

Private secretary to the chief secretary I had nevertheless just about survived so far, the only setback being a characteristic reprimand from Leo Pliatzky for some mistake I had made, which ended with him telling me not to worry about it further; he would simply hold it against me for the rest of my career. I was soon, however, reassured as to my future Treasury prospects by being summoned in June 1970 for an interview with the new Conservative government CST, Maurice Macmillan, the son of former Premier Harold, who needed to appoint a new private secretary. We got on well and he offered me the post. Although it meant very long hours again, and being at beck and call instead of having my own divisional job, it was a prestigious post and would take me to the centre of the Treasury and Whitehall private-office network, dealing daily with the Cabinet Office, No. 10 and other ministerial offices as well as with senior officials and ministers across the Treasury. It would also give me, really for the first time, an overview and hopefully an understanding of the Treasury’s conduct of macroeconomic policy, which it was not easy for someone battling away

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down in an expenditure-control division to grasp. With luck, if I did not blot my copybook, it would also ensure me promotion when I had done my stint in the post. Successful private secretaries usually got a step up when they had finished their job. I gladly accepted it. The first CST had been a Conservative minister, Henry Brooke, in 1961, but the Treasury’s favourite and paradigm was Jack Diamond, who had been CST in the first Wilson government from 1967 to 1970. He was a hard, uncompromising negotiator and his photograph looked down on me sternly from the wall of the private office. The CST’s principal job, as de facto deputy to the chancellor, is to control public expenditure and deliver the government’s spending targets. He is helped in this by a standing Cabinet Office requirement that any paper submitted to Cabinet or a Cabinet committee which has expenditure implications must be cleared in advance with the Treasury. But this does not necessarily resolve any dispute, and the CST must be ready and equipped to stand up forcefully to his spending colleagues and not be afraid to be unpopular – and perhaps not too ambitious for subsequent ministerial advancement. A later and very effective Labour CST (from 1974 to 1979), Joel Barnett, in his entertaining and informative Inside the Treasury, related how Harold Wilson told him when offering the appointment that he would have to make himself very unpopular with his colleagues.* I shall say more about him in the next chapter. I thoroughly enjoyed the 18 months or so that I worked for Maurice Macmillan. He was thought by many to have suffered from reverse nepotism by not being made a minister sooner by his father and only making it to CST under Edward Heath. Even then, unlike Jack Diamond, he was not in the Cabinet but entitled to attend Cabinet meetings whenever expenditure issues were on the agenda – which in practice meant almost every Cabinet. I found him a kind, considerate and congenial boss – I was even let off for a whole day to move house in Epsom! – with an original and creative mind, more suited to writing imaginative policy and position papers than resisting his colleagues’ spending bids. He was not really suited to the daily grind and negativism of being CST. He was not always fully well – he was a chain-smoker and had *

Joel Barnett, Inside the Treasury (London: André Deutsch, 1992), p. 3.

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had alcohol problems – and found it hard to get through the continual pressure and incessant red boxes of work that I had to send him each night and at weekends. I sometimes found myself going round to his London house during the week in the early morning to rouse him, sort out his scattered papers and get him back to the Treasury for his first meeting. On one occasion he had forgotten his keys and forced the box open with a crowbar or some similar instrument. I collected the remnants, sorted them out and became known as ‘Nanny Unwin’ in the Macmillan household. He certainly did not appreciate the special adviser assigned to him under the initiative by Ted Heath to get private-sector business expertise into government under a team led by Sir Derek Rayner, the boss of Marks & Spencer. I found it difficult to get Maurice to see him and often had to act as his surrogate, interpret Maurice’s views to him and find him work to do myself. Getting him in to see Maurice was a bit like trying to meet Major Major in Catch-22, who was only willing to see people when he was out. One of my most important functions was to act as the link between the CST and the official Treasury, relaying information both ways and ensuring that he was fully briefed and officials fully debriefed. I was a sort of bureaucratic scrum half, especially when it came to Cabinet or other ministerial meetings when Treasury officials were not present. I had to get the ball from the CST in the Cabinet scrum and pass it out as quickly as possible to the anxiously waiting Treasury official three-quarters. It was not always easy or even possible. Maurice’s boredom threshold was quite low and sometimes, when the department was breathing down my neck to hear whether we had won or not on a particular expenditure issue, the red box which he returned to me (when he had disappeared to lunch) would contain not a summary of the Cabinet conclusions but a short think piece or cleverly composed limerick or other scrap of verse which he had scribbled in traditional CST green ink during the meeting. I then had to try to find someone in the Cabinet Office to tell me the outcome of the meeting. This sometimes happened too during the Budget debate or those awful late-night sessions of the committee stage of the Finance Bill, which the CST was responsible for taking through the House. I still have the original of the following ditty, which he sent back to me after a particularly gruelling Budget debate session:

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with respect, minister Oh! How I hate the Budget debate. Listening is a bore; Speaking is a chore – Besides one’s bottom gets sore And itches more and more – and more. Oh! How I hate the Budget debate. It goes on far too long, The words are too strong, But the arguments weak – and wrong; I would very much rather hear a good song. Oh! How I hate the Budget debate. The Chair calls a name. The others think: ‘shame’ It’s not playing the game That the speakers each time are the same. In the Budget debate It’s getting too late, The House in a state, The numbers frustrate, No wonder I hate The Budget debate.

I much enjoyed my time with Maurice Macmillan. There were both hairy moments and some ludicrous ones. We spent a long time, for example, debating whether we should accept an invitation to go on an early proving flight of Concorde, which the Treasury regarded as a scandalous waste of public money but was unable to stop, and take some radical step to sabotage the flight. We eventually declined the invitation. Within the private office I was not very clever with the telephones and usually delegated requests from the CST to be put through to his father, Harold, at Birchgrove to my assistant private secretary, Tony Bachelor. On one occasion I listened as Tony had a lengthy wrangle with an obviously senile family retainer at Birchgrove who seemed incapable

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of fetching the former prime minister to the phone, only to hear him finally in horrified tones gasp out, ‘Oh, you are Mr Harold Macmillan!’ But we were grateful to the elder Mr Macmillan for the pheasants shot on his estate which Maurice kindly gave to us at Christmas, despite the spots of blood dripping onto the private-office floor, which we had to clean up afterwards. To Diana’s enormous relief, my mother was staying with us for Christmas and knew how to pluck them. I was therefore sorry when he left the Treasury in April 1972 and was made secretary of state for employment – another job for which I did not really think he was suited. He was replaced by Patrick Jenkin (later Lord Jenkin of Roding), who was a different kettle of fish and a perfect fit for his new job. He was tough, a very hard worker, and with his legal background extremely good on detail. He knew the Treasury well as he was promoted from being financial secretary, the third-ranking minister in the Treasury hierarchy, and was therefore already familiar with Treasury business. Life in the private office became much more brisk and work-intensive, and there was no problem in getting the heavy load of papers through him and obtaining the necessary decisions and debriefing for Treasury officials. He was generally actually looking for work rather than having to have it forced on him. He would often come out and look over my desk to see what I was keeping from him. Light relief was, however, provided by his huge and booming-voiced parliamentary private secretary, Spencer le Marchant, the MP for the High Peak district of Derbyshire. Spencer was totally different in image from Patrick Jenkin – a legendary champagne-quaffing figure in the House of Commons bars and smoking rooms – and I assumed he had been appointed to the more earnest Patrick as a sort of leavening for that reason. Like Maurice Macmillan (and myself), Spencer found long nights in a Finance Bill committee room unbearable, and I still have the following sequence of notes addressed to me, ostensibly from the chancellor of the exchequer, Anthony Barber, which he solemnly brought across the floor to me on one particularly drawn-out and exhausting all-night session on the VAT Bill, as if they conveyed important requests for briefing from the CST: Unwin: You are doing so well that you may keep your present job for two more years, yours, Anthony Barber.

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Unwin: Change of plan. Your briefs encourage too long speeches. Please report early Monday morning to Customs and Excise Department. With all good wishes for your future, Anthony Barber. Unwin: Much regret new Cabinet decision. Following your most unsatisfactory committee sittings, please report to sanitary department, Customs and Excise Glasgow, Monday morning. With every good wish for your future in this exciting and challenging appointment, Anthony Barber. Unwin: In view of your gross neglect of duty I am no longer able to offer you the attractive post conveyed to you in my last note. I suggest you jump out of the window. Please use the Lords end, Anthony Barber. In such a fashion was the nation’s financial legislation taken through the House. But Spencer must have been psychic, as I later did join HM Customs and Excise, whereas he sadly died at the age of 55 in 1986.

The banking and financial sector: 1972–5 I did not, however, remain long with Patrick Jenkin, as after a few months I was, pace my mother, promoted to assistant secretary, with a PA and office of my own, and put in charge of HF (Home Finance) 2 Division, with responsibility for relations with the Bank of England and the banking and financial sector, and National Savings. Patrick Jenkin also moved out of the Treasury fairly soon afterwards on promotion to the Cabinet in February 1975 as secretary of state for energy, in which post he is unfortunately best-remembered for advising people to clean their teeth in the dark and being caught by press cameras doing so in his own bathroom with the lights on. Such are the hazards of being a politician rather than a grey and anonymous civil servant. My new job took me into fresh territory. Policy continued to be dominated by the struggle against inflation, explosively stoked up by the first great

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Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) oil-price increase in 1973. After Harold Wilson succeeded Heath as prime minister in 1974, average earnings reached 27 per cent and inflation nearly 30 per cent, despite the agreement on a Social Contract announced in chancellor Denis Healey’s November 1974 Budget (one of three during that year). We all suffered in Whitehall, holding meetings in the dark during the three-day week and squabbling for our share of the candle ends that the Treasury famously hoarded. My division was not in the immediate front line of incomes policy, but many aspects of our daily business were affected by it. In 1973, as a sop to the unions and a concomitant to restraint of wages and salaries, I was required at very short notice to produce an equivalent statutory scheme of dividend restraint. Neither I nor my principal working on this, Nigel Wicks (later Sir Nigel and second permanent secretary in charge of the international finance side of the Treasury), had any specialist knowledge of the technicalities of dividends or the corporate sector, but we brought ourselves up to scratch very quickly by consulting our contacts at the Bank of England, the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI – the former Board of Trade) and in the City, and within a few days produced a workable scheme. It was not perfect, but it passed muster and, after a few blips, was incorporated in the incomes-policy legislation being put to Parliament. It was, I suppose, a classic example of generalists rising to the occasion. I am not sure that it made much difference to the effectiveness of incomes-policy restraint – like punitive tax measures the unions assumed it would largely be avoided or evaded – but it did not appear to cause any significant market distortions and on the whole proved acceptable. Our main preoccupation in the division, however, was with the secondary banking crisis from 1972 to 1974, the biggest threat to the British banking system until the far bigger global crisis of 2008–9.

The secondary banking crisis Chancellor Barber’s Competition and Credit Control policy, which had led to a period of monetary expansion, credit explosion and increasing investment in equities and property, combined with a relatively relaxed and divided

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system of banking supervision, had encouraged a new generation of entrepreneurs and institutions which became known collectively as secondary banks. The larger institutions, which most people would recognise as banks, were supervised informally by the Bank of England, heavily reliant on the raising of the governor’s or chief cashier’s eyebrows, while smaller lending institutions were authorised, though not very actively supervised, by the DTI under Section 123 of the 1967 Companies Act. In a slack credit context lending grew rapidly, much of it highly speculative, and some of the secondary banks became seriously over-leveraged. Following a reversal of fiscal and monetary policy in a tough Barber Budget, which raised the Bank of England’s minimum lending rate to a record 13 per cent in December 1973, and a drying up of credit in the wholesale money markets, a small fringe bank called Cedar Holdings was in danger of collapse. As fears developed in the Treasury and the Bank that this could easily spread to other secondary banks, posing a systemic threat to the wider banking sector, it was decided to mount a rescue operation. Resultant developments are described in detail in the excellent The Secondary Banking Crisis, 1973–75 by Margaret Reid. The Bank of England quickly took the initiative, corralling the major clearing banks into mounting a rescue operation called ‘the Lifeboat’ in which the Bank undertook to meet 10 per cent of the cost and the clearing banks, in proportion to their eligible liabilities, the other 90 per cent. The estimated cost of the rescue was up to £1.2 billion, to be spent on assisting or rescuing about 30 secondary banks. Among them were some well-known names such as Bowmaker, First National Finance Corporation, United Dominion Trust, Keyser Ullmann Holdings, Slater Walker Securities and Anglo-Portuguese Bank. Among their directors were also some equally well-known figures from the political and business worlds such as Sir Edward du Cann, the former chairman of the Conservative Party, Gerald Caplan, John Stonehouse, Jeremy Thorpe, Lord Chalfont, Sir Isaac Wolfson and Jim Slater. The rescue was expertly managed by the Bank of England with the deputy governor, Sir Jasper Hollom, and the former chief cashier, George Blunden, in the lead, and was a resounding success. No money was lost by ordinary depositors; no British bank defaulted on its obligations on Euromarket loans,

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which were centred on London; and the rot did not go beyond secondary banks. Confidence in the City was restored. The Treasury had no executive role, but we monitored developments and kept ministers informed in case the government found itself having to take a more active part. As the Treasury owned the Bank, following its 1945 nationalisation, and received an annual payment in lieu of a dividend, which it was my responsibility to negotiate, we also had a formal locus in seeking to ensure that the Bank’s profit, and therefore our payment, was not unreasonably reduced by its participation in the Lifeboat. It is tempting to draw parallels between this banking crisis and the seismic events of 2008–9 stemming from the sub-prime debacle in the United States and the collapse of Lehman Brothers. On the surface there are many similarities. Both were preceded by a period of monetary expansion, lax regulatory control, excessive reliance on the wholesale money markets and development of innovative credit instruments, followed by a sudden deterioration in the economy and a sharp tightening of fiscal and monetary policy in face of increasing inflation. Property values and equities in which banks had overinvested declined, liquidity dried up and confidence collapsed. The obvious difference, of course, is that in 2008–9 the crisis was global, stemming from the collapse of the housing market in the US and extensive investment in so-called ‘subprime’ loans and other dubious and rubbishy bundles of derivatives, and the numbers were immeasurably higher – it was a case of billions, even trillions, in place of millions. There could be no question of stemming the crisis this time by coercing the major commercial banks into a second Lifeboat operation – indeed, many of them were in danger of early collapse themselves. Only governments, with the taxpayer behind them, could prevent the banking ship, and indeed the whole financial system and the wider economy too, from sinking. The story of how this happened and of the British Treasury’s role in it is better told elsewhere, but I cannot suppress a perhaps rather smug feeling that the authorities in 1973, particularly the Bank of England, were a bit quicker to sense and respond to the crisis. But I am full of admiration for the way in which my official successors at the Treasury eventually handled the 2008–9 crisis.

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Collapse of the Crown Agents One fallout from the crisis that directly affected the Treasury concerned the Crown Agents, with whom I had enjoyed a constructive partnership during the economic rescue of Zambia in 1965–6. The Crown Agents was a state body, though now of a somewhat ambiguous status, originally set up in 1837, and for most of its existence it had provided procurement and investment services for Crown colonies and overseas governments. From the late 1960s, however, it had embarked on an investment venture on its own account, Finvest, which had without many people noticing it developed into a substantial secondary banking business using funds deposited with it by governments, supplemented by borrowing on the money markets and invested in a wide range of assets, including shareholdings in some of the other fringe banks that were now in trouble. Ironically, in the early stages of the Lifeboat, they were invited by the Bank of England to participate in it and pledged some £45 million to the support operation. Oversight of the Crown Agents formally rested with the Overseas Development Administration (ODA), the former Ministry of Overseas Development, which had been incorporated into the FCO. Neither the Bank of England nor the DTI regarded it as being its responsibility. In the Treasury it fell within the purview of the overseas-finance division (OF), which looked after the FCO and ODA. In practice, however, there was little effective supervision by anyone and, following rumours in the City, it became clear that the Crown Agents had overextended themselves and were in deep financial trouble. I had in fact picked up a whiff of these rumours earlier and, although it was not strictly my business, sent a note within the Treasury suggesting that a close eye should be kept on them. The full picture did not, however, become clear until a meeting at the Treasury on 13 May 1974, chaired by Sir Douglas Wass, then the second permanent secretary in charge of the domestic economy sector. It was outside Douglas’s sector but he chaired it in the absence of his counterpart, Sir Derek Mitchell, the head of the overseas side of the Treasury, and he asked me to attend and take a note of the meeting. The others present were the chairman of the Crown Agents, Sir Claude Hayes, his finance director, and the deputy Bank of England governor, Sir Jasper Hollom.

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The grisly predicament of the Crown Agents soon became clear. They were effectively insolvent, their losses amounting to some £200 million, and they would collapse without immediate backing. Given that the investment in them by overseas governments, some of them oil-rich Middle Eastern countries, and in some cases their sterling reserves, was substantial, and a collapse would have had serious effects on confidence in sterling and the City, immediate action to prevent their collapse had to be taken. I was therefore deputed after the meeting to draft an immediate submission to the chancellor of the exchequer, Denis Healey, recommending an early statement that the government stood by the Crown Agents and would provide whatever support was necessary to keep them solvent. I duly did this and attached to the submission a rough balance sheet which I had drawn up on the basis of what Claude Hayes and his finance director had told us during the meeting. The chancellor accepted this advice and Hayes was replaced by John Cuckney (later Sir John of subsequent Westland Helicopter crisis fame) and the Crown Agents instructed to terminate their banking activities on own account. They later received a ‘repayable grant’ of £175 million from the Treasury and a standby borrowing facility from the Bank. In later years, after first being taken fully within the public sector, they were privatised under Mrs Thatcher. The sequel to this disaster, which saddened me in view of happy memories of my earlier relationship with the Crown Agents over Zambia, was a committee of inquiry into the affair by His Honour Edgar Fay, followed, in the light of his report, by a full-scale tribunal in 1978. I gave oral evidence to the inquiry, and on being asked how I had constructed the balance sheet I replied figuratively that I had done it ‘on the back of an envelope’ on the basis of what Hayes told us at the meeting. I was later amused to be asked formally by the inquiry to produce the envelope! But the main lesson was clear – inadequate supervision. Both this and my experience of the secondary banking crisis in general convinced me that the system of banking supervision needed an urgent overhaul and, in my view, to be put on a fully statutory basis. The City was no longer the gentleman’s world in which everyone’s word was his bond and the Bank of England could exercise control by moral suasion. In any case the ambiguities about who was responsible for what needed to be clarified and put straight. The Crown

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Agents was an absurd example of falling between several stools within government, and the Bank of England/DTI relationship urgently needed to be sorted out.

Banking supervision and European harmonisation I was strengthened in my view that banking supervision should be put on a statutory basis by my experience in Brussels, where, in preparation for our entry into the EEC, I now led a small team, with Bank of England support, representing the UK at a European Commission working party on the harmonisation of banking law. The purpose of this was to establish common standards for the authorisation and certification of all deposit-taking institutions operating within the EEC, and for the qualifications required by senior directors and managers. The discussions were moving towards formally and legally separating the sector into first-class banks and lesser deposit-taking institutions. This mirrored the de facto situation we had in the UK, but it was clear that when we joined the EEC we would have to put it on a proper statutory basis in order to comply with the likely forthcoming directive. I welcomed this – it accorded with the conclusions I had already reached on prudential grounds – and in due course I pressed the case in the Treasury for moving towards this. It was not popular with the Bank of England, who believed it reflected adversely on their hitherto informal regime of supervision, but it struck a chord with Treasury ministers and eventually found legal form in the 1979 Banking Act, which led to the recognition by January 1981 of 278 banks and nearly 280 other deposittaking institutions. I was pleased at this outcome and, highly technical though the discussions were, I had enjoyed my first experience of EEC negotiations in Brussels – a foretaste of the many hours I was to spend there in later years. The pity is that in subsequent years there have been changes which have weakened the supervisory regime, notably in 1997 when Gordon Brown removed it from the Bank of England and transferred it to a new Financial Services Authority, which must bear some share of the responsibility for the fragility of our banks in face of the 2008–9 banking crisis.

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The building societies Another fallout from the turbulence in the financial sector and rising interest rates was the predicament of the building societies, who were also on my watch, although they were formally regulated by the Registry of Friendly Societies, another small Treasury agency. Since they were not then allowed to borrow other than from their depositors and savers, and so in order to remain in business had to pay whatever interest rate was required to make them competitive and attract savings, they had to match the rate they paid out with the mortgage rate they charged to homeowners. Ministers were terrified of seeing the mortgage rate move into double figures and cause a spate of repossessions, and together with the Treasury deputy chief economic adviser, Ian Byatt (later Sir Ian and the first head of the water-industry regulator, OFWAT), I attended many meetings with the building societies and the Department of Environment, who were responsible for housing policy, trying to devise economical subsidy schemes for bribing them to keep the mortgage rate down. One of the ruses was a system of ‘non-repayable’ loans, which mysteriously were treated differently for accounting purposes from straight grants. We had some temporary success, but you cannot continue to buck the market, and once the rate had finally exceeded the dreaded 10 per cent further increases seemed much less politically damaging. Our task was made easier by the fact that the building societies were then led by a cosy cartel of the bigger ones, usually under the leadership of the Halifax, and were much more amenable to government arm-twisting than in later years, when they were given wider investment and borrowing powers and allowed to turn themselves into banks – much to the eventual disaster of a number of them, not least Northern Rock.

National Savings As I have already mentioned, I was also responsible for National Savings, which provided an interesting diversion from the problems of the commercial banking sector. It had a direct bearing on the building societies, who were competing for investment by roughly the same population of small savers, and the building

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societies often protested against the returns that National Savings offered. The executive department was the Department for National Savings (DNS), with some 13,000 staff, which administered a wide range of savings instruments from simple savings stamps to an investment bank account, fixed-term certificates and bonds and premium bonds. But policy was effectively decided by the Treasury in consultation with them. As Head of HF2 Division, as well as advising on National Savings policy I was in a sense the public face of the Treasury to the National Savings Movement, and I regularly attended meetings of the English and Scottish National Savings committees in London and Edinburgh, and occasionally in exotic places like Scarborough, Bournemouth and Perth. At least it got me away from Whitehall for the odd day or two and brought me into contact with a completely new set of people. Among them was Ernie (later Sir Ernest) Harrison, the founder of Racal, the forerunner of Vodafone, who was a keen voluntary National Savings worker. I was both surprised and pleased that this important businessman was prepared to give quite a lot of his time to such a low-profile business. He even invited me to give a keynote speech on National Savings and its importance to the economy, which he organised at Basingstoke. The total sums invested in National Savings and the Trustee Savings banks, which were also under the control of the Registrar of Friendly Societies and classified as part of National Savings, were very important too as they made a significant contribution – over £2 billion at that time – to the financing of the public-sector borrowing requirement (PSBR). Any abrupt disinvestment would have been very damaging. A particularly challenging problem was whether to issue an index-linked savings certificate in order to attract savers at a time of high and rising inflation. Traditional Treasury lore was against it, on the grounds that to do so was equivalent to hoisting a signal – a white flag – that we had abandoned the fight against inflation. After much weighing of the pros and cons I recommended, with the full support of DNS, that we make a pilot index-linked certificate issue, making it clear that others would not necessarily follow. It was an instant success, stimulated investment and became the precursor of a succession of index-linked issues to the present day. There was no evidence that it had any influence on inflationary tendencies either way. We also around this time decided to raise the top Premium Bond prize to £100,000, which seemed an

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astronomical sum but has, of course, been dwarfed in recent years by monstrous lottery and other prizes. I am less happy in retrospect, however, with a decision to abolish the National Savings stamp, which had been introduced in the war to encourage people of all ages, particularly school children, to save regularly in small amounts. It was in many ways at the core of the voluntary-savings movement, with hundreds of volunteers, mainly female, taking round saving-stamp books from door to door on a weekly basis. My wife’s grandmother, a formidable county councillor, did so, as also our great local composer, Ralph Vaughan Williams, round the streets of Dorking during the war. It had almost become a social service. But the amount it collected was fairly small, the administration quite costly, and I took the view that if it could only be justified as a social service it should become the responsibility of local authorities or the Department of Health and Social Security (DHSS). My recommendation was accepted by Treasury ministers, the stamp abolished, and there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth in the voluntary-savings movement. I particularly regretted causing a breach in my personal relationship with the grande dame of the voluntary movement, Mrs Elsa Perkins, later the mother-in-law of the future Labour Cabinet minister Jack Straw, and whom I much admired and respected. I have often wondered since whether I should have taken a broader and softer line.

Another move The pressure on me during this period was intensified by the deeply sad news of my father’s death from a second heart attack shortly before Christmas in December 1974. He was only 67, and, although a regular smoker – as most people were in his day – had been a fine athlete, and in more recent times would, I am sure, have had his life prolonged by open-heart surgery, which was not available then. My mother was shattered by this, and really never recovered, becoming virtually a recluse in her later years. This made it all the more important for me to visit her in Chesterfield at weekends or during holidays as often as I could. The journey from Epsom of about 165 miles was quite a slow one, as we had to negotiate the awful North Circular Road before getting onto

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whatever of the M1 going north had been completed by then. The advent of the M25 in principle speeded up the journey in later years, but I am not sure that I would not sometimes now prefer to be back to the old North Circular. In the early years we would usually aim to go as a family, but later on, while Nick (born in 1974) was still a baby, I would take Mike or Chris (born in 1967) with me for company. Despite the fact that I was still only an assistant secretary (presumably not yet having learned to type properly), my mother was proud of my achievements and those of my brother, who was now a navigator in the RAF and had been awarded an MBE, particularly when one or other of her friends told her they had read in the local Derbyshire Times that ‘Brian was doing well’. I was reminded of all this much later on – and put suitably in my place – when I was president of the EIB, the biggest international-development bank in the world, and attending the funeral of my mother’s brother, Uncle Stanley, in Chesterfield. I was congratulated by one of my mother’s very old friends because she had heard that I had been made a bank manager. And so I had. But I have always deeply regretted that my father did not live longer to share some of the things I went on to do. My stint in Home Finance came to an end in 1975 when I was moved to become head of SS1 Division, which was responsible for controlling the socialsecurity budget, a huge block of largely demand-determined public expenditure. I was back in the trenches with a vengeance. After a year or so dealing only with social security I was promoted to the rank of under-secretary – more explaining to do to my mother – and had SS2 Division, which looked after the NHS, social services and the arts, also added to my charge. All this amounted to nearly half of total public spending. I had had an extraordinarily diverse time in the Treasury so far, gaining knowledge, experience and contacts in so many different fields. To quote him again, David Lipsey described the Treasury as ‘intellectual, austere and inhuman’.* It was certainly intellectual and austere, but not inhuman. Given its relatively small size it was easy to get to know most people fairly quickly, and on the whole it was pretty democratic – junior officials were encouraged to speak up and listened to, even at meetings with the chancellor, if they were thought to have a useful contribution to make. * Lipsey, Secret Treasury, p. 31.

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And although the Treasury canteen in Great George Street was pretty grotty, it was a great place to meet colleagues at lunchtime, swap gossip and catch up on prospects for the next public-expenditure round or a forthcoming concert by the Treasury Singers. I even recall one lunchtime trying to construct a map of Barchester with fellow Treasury Trollopeans. I now felt comfortable in my new departmental home and ready for the next challenge.

TE N

Controlling Spending and Managing the Budget HM Treasury (1975–81)

M

y stint in charge of the SS divisions dealing with social security, health, the arts and heritage was the least enjoyable of my Treasury jobs. There was no doubt about its importance, since it accounted for the largest single block of public spending, but it was hard grind and head down in Great George Street all the way. My main task was twofold. First, to try to constrain spending on the huge health and social-security budgets within the overall totals established by the Treasury and endorsed by the Cabinet; and second, and more constructively, to try within those limits to ensure that the departments maximised their efficiency and got the best out of the programmes they administered and the money they spent in the public interest. This was not easy. To deal with it as an under-secretary I had two small

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divisions, headed by assistant secretaries, each with a couple of principals and some executive staff. I suspected I had been put into this job as a ‘safe pair of hands’, but it many ways it was frustrating. Most of the expenditure on socialsecurity benefits was directly governed by statute and determined by either demographic factors such as the number of people reaching pensionable age or economic ones such as the level of unemployment, sickness and so on. Without legislative changes, there was not a great deal that we in the Treasury could do about it once the statutory rules had been set. Moreover, once a cash benefit had been introduced it was virtually impossible politically to take it away unless something better was put in its place. As for the NHS, it was almost as sacred a cow as it is now, with demand perpetually exceeding the cash and resources available and costs growing as medical knowledge and methods of prevention and cure advanced, the population got older and patients demanded the most up-to-date treatment. We tried hard to stem the pressures, but it was a case of Canute against the tide. Our attempt to impose cash controls on the family-practitioner services to match those on hospitals, and to integrate them more closely into the health service generally, foundered on the weakness of the DHSS and the fierce opposition of the militant medical unions, not least the doctors. Throughout its history the health department, in whatever guise, has had great difficulty in standing up to the British Medical Association (BMA), although some may think the tide has turned in the 2016 dispute with junior doctors over weekend working. We were faced with the usual warnings about patient safety being at risk and the horrors that would ensue if patients were turned away untreated because the cash limit had run out (we called them ‘bleeding stumps’ arguments). We also put a lot of effort into urging the DHSS itself to carry out its own rigorous reviews of manpower, capital spending, the drugs bill and prescribing practice, on which we were convinced substantial savings could be made, and the relationship between the NHS and personal social services, which were largely the responsibility of local authorities. Most of these issues are still under the spotlight in the ceaseless disputes about the funding of ‘our’ NHS today. It is difficult to credit that the inspirer of the NHS, Lord Beveridge, had forecast that annual expenditure would stabilise at about £200 million a year in real terms and even over time begin to reduce.

Controlling Spending and Managing the Budget 143

Pension uprating We did our best, however, to exercise some control on the rising cost of socialsecurity benefits. Indeed, in 1976 we pulled off a typical Treasury trick to reduce the ongoing retirement pensions bill, the largest benefits item. Pensions were increased, or ‘uprated’, once a year, usually in November, and in 1974 the incoming Labour government had provided in legislation that the uplift should be at least the higher of the increase in prices or earnings, as measured by the retail price index (RPI) or the average earnings increase, in the 12 months up to the previous September – a so-called ‘double lock’. On the figures at the time this would have given an increase of nearly £400 million in the publicexpenditure projections for the coming year. We proposed that in order better to reflect the actual movement in prices or earnings faced by benefit recipients at the time, the uprating factor should be switched to the forecast increase over the coming year. Surprise, surprise, that forecast was substantially lower than the historical rate for the previous 12 months, thus producing a large ‘saving’ in the public-expenditure totals. It was, however, a short-term gain, and by the end of my period in the SS divisions I began to believe that it had been a mistake – too clever by half – and that we should move back again to the ‘historical’ uprating method. The ‘forecasting’ method began to expose us to lengthy and profitless arguments about the validity of the forecasts and in the end risked proving more costly, as a result of pressures to build safety margins into the forecasts and provision in case they were wrong. I was surprised that we were able to carry the change through DHSS officials so easily, clearing the way for the CST, Joel Barnett, to get the agreement of the secretary of state, David Ennals. In Yes, Minister terms, it was a ‘courageous’ change for a Labour government to make. The complicity of DHSS officials exemplified a more general tendency for many officials in spending departments to defer to the Treasury too easily. Except where there was an exceptionally strong departmental minister, or the Treasury clearly had a very weak case, the Treasury usually got its way or secured a favourable compromise. Perhaps departments feared Treasury reprisals at a later date. This was obviously very convenient for the Treasury, but I often thought departments should have fought their corner a bit harder. Or perhaps I just liked a good fight? The

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same attitude in a sense applied to taxation matters where departments generally deferred without question and accepted that this was the chancellor’s prerogative and that they had no right to be consulted or informed. It was so easy to head them off by saying ‘I am sorry – this is a tax matter, which is for the chancellor’. Accordingly, apart from the prime minister, provided he or she had a good relationship with the occupant of No. 11 (which was not always the case – as with Thatcher and Lawson and Blair and Brown in later years), the first thing that most other Cabinet ministers knew about the contents of the Budget was the chancellor’s briefing at Cabinet on the morning of Budget day.

Child benefit The other big benefits issue that preoccupied me during this period was the introduction of child-benefit payments, which were designed to replace the existing combined system of child tax allowances, first introduced at the end of the seventeenth century, and family allowances, cash payments brought in under the Beveridge package in 1945. I chaired a working group at the Treasury with DHSS officials which considered the design, eligibility and amount of the new benefit. The rationale was that it would make administrative savings by combining the two previous handouts into one, and that it would be more likely to go straight to mothers, as opposed to the tax allowance which normally appeared in the man’s pay packet. All went smoothly until at a late stage the Trades Union Congress (TUC) cottoned on to the so-called ‘wallet to purse’ transfer effect. This was a very sensitive issue at a time when we were desperately seeking their cooperation on pay restraint. The unions made immediate representations and I recall accompanying the CST, Joel Barnett, at a meeting to discuss it with a TUC delegation led by Len Murray, with Jack Jones and the heavy mob in support. For some reason my former minister at the CRO, Judith Hart, with whom I had got on very well, was a member of the delegation (probably as a member of the Labour Party National Executive) and on seeing me with the CST told her colleagues not to worry because ‘Brian’ was involved on the Treasury side. I do not think that made the slightest difference to the outcome of the meeting, except to embarrass me a little with my

Controlling Spending and Managing the Budget 145 Treasury colleagues, but it went quite well and the only concession we made was to defer immediate introduction and phase in the new benefit over the period from 1977 to 1979. With some adjustments, such as restricting payment to certain higher-salary earners, the system has continued in broadly the same form ever since.

The 1976 IMF crisis The mid- to late 1970s were, of course, dominated by the continual fight to control inflation, which had been stoked up by the sharp OPEC oil-price increases, loose domestic monetary policy and the uncontrolled rise in average earnings. This in turn created intolerable pressure on sterling in 1976, resulting in an appeal to the IMF for a large loan. A number of preliminary soundings had been taken with the IMF, but the situation came to a dramatic crunch with the last-minute decision of the chancellor, Denis Healey, to pull out of the annual IMF/World Bank meetings in Manila in the week beginning 4 October 1976. He was actually in his car on his way to Heathrow airport to attend the meetings, but turned back in order to remain in London to deal with the critical situation that was developing. Since the governor of the Bank of England, Gordon Richardson, had also decided to stay in London for similar reasons, the UK delegation was led by the Treasury permanent secretary, Sir Douglas Wass, who has written the definitive account of the whole affair in his meticulously researched book Decline to Fall: The Making of British MacroEconomic Policy and the 1976 IMF Crisis, published in 2008. The primary task of Sir Douglas was to explain the British government’s position and discuss the technical aspects of an IMF loan with the IMF managing director, Dr Johannes Witteveen, and IMF officials, who were concerned about the way the government was handling the situation. I will not seek to repeat Sir Douglas’s detailed account here. It suffices to say that it had been clear for some time that a central condition of IMF support would be a substantial reduction in the PSBR, mainly secured by public-expenditure savings. This was confirmed in early November by an IMF team in London led by the head of the fund’s European department, Alan Whittome, a former Bank of England

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official, who indicated that the fiscal adjustment required by 1977–8 would be in the region of £3–4 billion. It was equally clear that there would be a fierce battle in Whitehall to identify the necessary savings to get anywhere near this target and to get Cabinet agreement to them. I took no part in the general discussions at the Treasury on macroeconomic strategy with the IMF team, but was called in for the more detailed discussions on public expenditure, given my responsibility for the social-security and health budgets.

The Healey–Barnett partnership At ministerial level the brunt of the battle was borne by the CST and chancellor, strongly supported by the prime minister, Jim Callaghan, who had replaced Harold Wilson following the latter’s surprise resignation on health grounds in March 1976. The main opposition in Cabinet came from Tony Benn, the secretary of state for energy, whose alternative strategy for a siege economy, with a tariff wall and import controls, and increased public expenditure, was supported by Cabinet colleagues Anthony Crosland, Michael Foot and Peter Shore. Benn, who by sheer persistence on the public scene and longevity, became in later years a ‘national treasure’, was a major thorn in the prime minister’s side and a very difficult minister for the Treasury to deal with. I recall in 1975 once accompanying Edmund Dell, who was a minister in the Treasury with the formal title of paymaster general, to a meeting with him when he was secretary of state for industry. The fact that Dell went to see him rather than summoning him to the Treasury, as was usual practice, showed how powerful he was. When we arrived at his office Mr Benn was sitting at his desk behind a large Durham Miners’ Gala banner and offered us a cup of coffee. We were served coffee in nice cups and saucers but the secretary of state was given a large mug of tea. I do not remember what the subject of the meeting was, but when Mr Dell simply failed to speak from his agreed Treasury brief I intervened and put the Treasury position on the record – it was most important that it should feature in the minutes of the meeting. I heard later from colleagues at the Department of Industry (DOI) that the secretary of state was not at all pleased at having been ‘cheeked’ by a Treasury official.

Controlling Spending and Managing the Budget 147 No fewer than 26 separate Cabinet meetings were needed to settle the government’s policy, but the prime minister shrewdly managed to isolate Benn and persuade Crosland to come into line. As a result, Denis Healey was able to announce to Parliament on 15 December that an agreement had been reached with the IMF involving public-expenditure savings of £1 billion in 1977–8 and £1.5 billion in 1978–9. We had scraped the barrel to get even this far, and the IMF remained sceptical – as we also did – both of our ability to deliver these savings and of the related Treasury forecasts, but the deal calmed the markets and sterling stabilised. As the Duke of Wellington commented after Waterloo, it had been a damn close-run thing. Denis Healey then went on bravely to the Labour Party conference in Blackpool to defend the decision to strike a deal with the IMF despite much booing and heckling. The Healey–Barnett team at the Treasury had worked well. In the campaign to succeed Wilson as prime minister, Barnett had supported Healey against Callaghan, but this did not seem to have queered his pitch with the latter and he retained his job as CST. Denis Healey was an immensely clever and stimulating chancellor, of wide and deep cultural interests. He had emerged from Oxford with a double first in Greats and, unlike many chancellors, was the intellectual equal of the top Treasury mandarins and superior to many. Meetings with him were lively, contentious and colourful, and he did not always hold back from often scatologically ripe language with officials. Indeed, Joel Barnett wrote that Denis ‘could behave abominably to officials’ and recalls him exclaiming after more than two hours of intense argument: ‘Have I insulted everyone round this table?’* But we soon got used to it and saw it as part of a game, albeit a very serious one. Our response was to maintain a calm and dignified formality – we always addressed ministers by their ministerial title and not by their name – and to continue presenting our views as if the fault lay in the chancellor’s comprehension rather than in our presentation. We enjoyed working for him and I was particularly happy to strike a personal link with him when I revealed that my Classics master at school had been Arnold Jennings, one of his best friends at Bradford Grammar School and at Oxford, and a Labour Party activist. When Denis left the Treasury to give way to Geoffrey Howe after the 1979 election, * Barnett, Inside the Treasury, p. 25.

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he came round the corridors and looked in at my office, among others, to say thank you and goodbye. Healey and Barnett were very different but complemented each other very well. Joel himself described them as like Dr No and Oddjob.* Denis was a solid figure, physically and intellectually, a bit of a bruiser, bristling with aggressively bushy-eyebrowed energy, whereas the bespectacled and diminutive Joel – the only minister I worked for whose head remained at the same height above the floor when he rose from his desk and walked towards you – was more of a cheeky-chappy kind of CST than the hard man. Apart from his sense of humour, which turned the flank of many a complaining colleague, his great skill in handling numbers and balance sheets, acquired from his professional experience as an accountant, served him well in the countless bilateral meetings he held with spending ministers. He was deservedly made a full member of the Cabinet in February 1977 following the IMF negotiations. He also went on to achieve near immortality as a result of the largely population-based formula named after him in 1978 – the ‘Barnett Formula’ – for allocating their share of qualifying public-services expenditure to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, which became such a central issue in the 2014 Scottish referendum. At the time it was introduced it was primarily a convenience to spare the Treasury the need to haggle with the territorial departments every year over each item within their spending allocations, and also, by favouring Scotland, hopefully to take some heat off growing devolutionary pressures. Joel Barnett never saw it as other than a short-term device. I generally got on with him very well, but was later a little sad to cross swords with him when I was president of the EIB and had to turn down a direct request from him for a loan for a small company in Lancashire with which he was involved. It was not that I had no sympathy with his proposal, but it was just not the kind of loan that the EIB went in for. Life in the SS divisions became a little easier after the conclusion of the IMF deal. We still had to sort out the annual benefit upratings and make what contribution we could on health and the arts to validating the spending projections sold to the IMF. But it was more by way of routine public-expenditure work, and in any case in November 1978 I moved to a new job. Given my * Barnett, Inside the Treasury, p. 45.

Controlling Spending and Managing the Budget 149 later involvement with English National Opera (ENO), on which more later, I am sorry to say that I spent almost no time on the arts-and-heritage budget – important but small in overall public-expenditure terms (about £100 million then, compared with over £25 billion on health and social security) – except, with the CST’s backing, to oppose the expenditure of £2 million on acquiring for the nation Mentmore Towers in Buckinghamshire, a nineteenth-century country mansion designed by Joseph Paxton as a revival of sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century styles. There was a well-publicised campaign to ‘save’ it for the nation, led by the director of the Victoria and Albert Museum, Roy Strong, but we stood firm in the taxpayer’s interest and the house and its contents were later sold by auction and the house occupied by the Maharishi Foundation. To avoid being a complete Treasury philistine, however, I did support a grant of £600,000 for the acquisition of a Braque by the Tate. Before I moved from the SS divisions I also had another one of those mighthave-beens which could have taken my career in a different path. I was sounded out on whether, in the event of a deal being reached with Ian Smith in Rhodesia, and an interim administration formed under Field Marshal Lord Carver, I would be prepared to go out to Rhodesia as finance minister for the period prior to independence. Someone had been doing their homework on my career background. After discussing terms, not least agreement that Diana would be able to come out to visit me at public expense, I said yes. With my previous Rhodesia background it would have been an amazingly exciting job, and with luck I would have returned to the Treasury without prejudice to future moves there. In the event, however, the ‘talks about talks’ with Smith failed again and Carver was stood down. I was disappointed, but my next job more than made up for it.

Treasury Central Unit In November 1978 I was appointed head of the Treasury Central Unit. This had been established by the permanent secretary a couple of years earlier to provide a central capacity, reporting directly to him, for coordinating macroeconomic policy and overall management of the Budget. In an article on the Treasury in Financial Weekly of 23 February 1979 Desmond Quigley described it as a

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‘small professional Secretariat […] which was the main filtering mechanism within the Treasury and the eyes and ears of the Permanent Secretary’. In true Treasury fashion it was certainly small. I was supported by two extremely able and high-flying principals, and a small separate division under a senior economic adviser whose task was to produce the massive briefing dossier that accompanied the Budget every year. The job also carried various other responsibilities, such as providing the secretariat for the permanent secretary’s Policy Coordinating Committee (PCC); chairing the Medium-Term Economic Group (MEG), comprising the key under-secretaries within the Treasury; liaising with the new parliamentary select-committee system and leading the Treasury team before the Treasury and Civil Service Committee; heading the Treasury team at the annual examination of the UK economy by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in Paris; and planning and producing the chancellor’s speeches. My eyes and ears therefore had to reach into nearly all aspects of Treasury business and brought me into more regular contact with the chancellor, then still Denis Healey.

Managing the Budget The Budget was by far and away our main preoccupation. Like painting the Forth bridge, it was an all-year task. Conventionally there was only one Budget a year, in late March or April – although in 1974 there had been three – but as soon as the Finance Bill had become law by the summer recess we were already planning for the next one. A date had first to be agreed well in advance, usually a Tuesday. I made one egregious error by recommending a date which turned out to be that of the new Archbishop of Canterbury’s enthronement, so that at a late stage we had to shift it to the following day. Once the date was agreed, we needed to map out a critical path for the necessary submissions to the chancellor by Treasury officials and the two revenue departments, and for the programme of Budget Committee meetings. It also later become the custom under the Conservative government to hold an informal weekend meeting of Treasury ministers and senior officials early in the year, including

Controlling Spending and Managing the Budget 151 the head of the Central Unit, at the foreign and Commonwealth secretary’s official country residence at Chevening, in Kent, in order to discuss the overall strategy for the forthcoming Budget. Despite the obvious displeasure of the Chevening household staff at seeing their beautiful house occupied by Treasury interlopers, these were very agreeable occasions. Relations between Treasury ministers and senior officials were close and informal – often in the evenings over a game of billiards or snooker – and the meetings usually ended with a fairly clear agreement reached on the broad strategy and contents of the following spring’s Budget. Spouses were also invited, and enjoyed a separate programme led by the chancellor’s wife. I recall Norma Major telling me at lunch one day, when her husband was CST, that despite suffering desperately from a very bad cold she had accompanied him to a lunch at No. 10 with Mrs Thatcher – their first such invitation – because she did not want the prime minister to think that John’s wife was a wimp! It was a graphic illustration of the fear that Margaret Thatcher could provoke in even senior ministerial colleagues and their spouses.

The 1979 Budget that never was I came into the job in December 1978, with initial planning for the 1979 Budget already set in hand by my predecessor, John Isaac. However, I stayed at home that Christmas rather than accompanying Diana and the boys on a visit to Cape Town, where her father was now British ambassador, as I needed time to brief myself and settle in. It should have been a reasonably straightforward exercise, but the background was becoming increasingly turbulent. At Cabinet on 7 September Jim Callaghan had announced that there would be no 1978 election. The TUC had rejected the government’s proposal for a 5 per cent pay norm, which after a further failed attempt to settle on 8.8 per cent and a £3.50 underpinning, eventually ended with a ‘Concordat’ of 14 per cent. As Joel Barnet commented, it was a case of ‘give and take’, with the government giving and the unions taking.* This led the country into the ‘winter of discontent’, * Barnett, Inside the Treasury, p. 49.

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with mounting strikes and shortages which effectively cost the government the ensuing election. We nevertheless pressed on hopefully with the full preparations for the April 1979 Budget. The watchwords were to be responsibility in economic management, control of inflation and maintenance of financial stability. The main fiscal changes in the Budget that were decided within the Treasury were an increase in the child-benefit rate from £4 to £4.50 a week, revalorisation of the main personal-tax allowances by double the statutory requirement (the so-called Rooker–Wise amendment, which required as a minimum increases in line with past inflation), and a small real-terms increase in retirement pensions. This would be financed by public-expenditure cuts that a Conservative government would have been proud of, unification of VAT standard and higher rates at 10 per cent (estimated to bring in an extra £850 million revenue), increases in excise duties in line with prices over the previous year, and a 20 per cent surcharge on advance corporation tax (ACT). The net effect was forecast to be a PSBR in 1979–80 of £8.5 billion, which it was believed would maintain the confidence of the City and the financial markets. I duly submitted a full draft Budget speech incorporating all the above measures to the chancellor on 22 March 1979, having sat up with a wet towel for two nights to complete it. The chancellor welcomed it as a ‘good start’, and made a few minor comments on the text. We were about to refine it when the exercise was aborted by the government’s defeat in the House of Commons in early April (ironically as a result of the Scottish National Party voting against it on a confidence motion about the details of devolution proposals) and the prime minister’s decision to call an immediate general election. We therefore consigned the Budget that never was to the archival dustbin and introduced a short ‘ways and means’ caretaker Budget which provided for little more than the continued collection of taxes until a new government was formed.

The arrival of Margaret Thatcher The rest is history, as they say. Margaret Thatcher, who had defeated Ted Heath for the leadership of the Conservative Party, won the election and Sir Geoffrey

Controlling Spending and Managing the Budget 153 Howe, who had shadowed the post – which according to Joel Barnett had given Denis Healey an easy ride in the House of Commons, as Howe performed poorly and Denis was able ‘to bludgeon his way out of trouble’* – was appointed chancellor of the exchequer, with John Biffen as CST and Nigel Lawson as financial secretary. Dramatic though the transition was, we were, as a matter of professional pride, well prepared for it. We had, as is routine before elections, studied the Conservative Party’s manifesto and economic-policy statements, and were able to present the incoming chancellor on day one in the Treasury with a comprehensive brief on the main issues facing him and on the early decisions required. The most urgent of these was on a Budget to replace the Healey one that never was, and after early meetings with him we began the preparation of a new Budget for presentation in June.

The June 1979 Budget To Geoffrey Howe’s surprise we quickly produced a new draft Budget which, after the usual discussion and iteration, he delivered on 12 June. Many of the detailed measures were in fact little different in form from those contained in the aborted Healey Budget. The public-expenditure savings remained largely the same, but the overall package represented a significantly bigger shift from direct to indirect taxation and a more pronounced emphasis on monetary policy as a means of controlling inflation. The income-tax thresholds were ‘double’ revalorised (as Healey had planned); the basic income-tax rate reduced from 33 to 30 per cent; and the top rate on earned income reduced from 83 to 60 per cent, closer to the European average and thus abolishing the previously punitive, and largely unproductive, top marginal rate of 98 per cent. VAT was increased from 12.5 per cent on luxury goods and the 8 per cent standard rate to a single 15 per cent, producing an estimated extra revenue of around £4 billion in a full year. This was again the same structural shift as Healey had planned, but obviously a very much larger overall increase. In addition, exchange controls were abolished – largely under the impetus of the financial secretary, Nigel * Barnett, Inside the Treasury, p. 68.

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Lawson, who lobbied me for support from the Central Unit – and the emphasis on monetary policy was signalled by an increase in interest rates from 12 to 15 per cent and the promise – or threat – of a medium-term financial strategy (MTFS), centred on a target rate for controlling the monetary aggregate, M3. The changes were forecast to produce a PSBR of £8.25 billion in 1979–80, a bit less than Healey’s putative £8.5 billion, and thus a reduction on the previous year. Although it is a small figure by current (2016) standards, it then seemed quite large and on the threshold of what was acceptable to the markets in the late 1970s. At the same time, in reality the PSBR figure was in fact neither here nor there. It was the difference between two very large, uncertain and difficultto-forecast aggregates – total spending and total tax receipts – and subject to a margin of error, which we stressed to the chancellor was not much smaller than the PSBR figure itself. It was always difficult to get this over to Treasury ministers, and I believe it was Denis Healey’s subsequent attribution of the 1976 recourse to the IMF to incorrect Treasury PSBR forecasting that moved Douglas Wass to write his definitive account of that period. The fact was that the economy, and in particular the balance of payments, was in such disarray, and sterling under such pressure, that recourse to the IMF was inevitable. I was also surprised, and irritated, to find myself in later years often being blamed by Geoffrey Howe, with whom I generally got on very well, for upsetting one of his Budgets at a late stage by revealing at a Budget Committee meeting that the PSBR forecast had been upwardly revised. I was all the more aggrieved as I was only the messenger and not the author of the news. If I had been quicker on my feet I would have let the forecasters themselves break it to him.

Cultural shift in the Treasury The cultural transition in the Treasury was a substantial one and we did not find it easy to persuade the incoming chancellor and prime minister that, although it was only a short time since we had been loyally serving a Labour government, we were now, as civil servants, ‘on their side’ also. By repute, as The Economist put it in an article of 6 September 2014, the Treasury in the postwar period was ‘a hub for Keynesian demand management’. Geoffrey Howe and No. 10,

Controlling Spending and Managing the Budget 155 tutored by Sir Keith Joseph, were now wedded to the economic liberalism and monetarism of the Chicago school of the American economist Milton Friedman, and were naturally suspicious of us. We did not, as The Economist also put it, become overnight ‘the engine room of a monetarist revolution’, and many of us were sceptical to say the least about the monetarist claims. It was by no means obvious that putting all the weight on monetary policy and trying to control different monetary aggregates from M1 to M4 and beyond would have much greater relevance to the immediate state of the economy and inflation than setting off on different motorways. We were also conscious of the celebrated law propounded by our distinguished economist colleague at the Bank of England, Charles Goodhart, which read: ‘Any observed statistical regularity will tend to collapse once pressure is placed upon it for control purposes.’ Nevertheless, we swam dutifully with the tide, some more enthusiastically than others, and quickly produced the medium-term financial strategy that the chancellor required. I was tasked with producing the first draft. We also had to adapt within the Treasury to a very different chancellorian style. Geoffrey Howe was slower, more discursive and methodical in his approach – he would no doubt say he was more thorough – than the rumbustious Healey. It was a great contrast. I often thought he must have taken in the advice given in The Last Chronicle of Barset by the old brickfield worker, Giles Hoggett, to the despairing Rev. Josiah Crawley: ‘It’s dogged as does it.’ At this stage, however, he was not yet ready to stand up to Margaret Thatcher as Mr Crawley finally did to the dreaded bishop’s wife, Mrs Proudie. Papers often had to be drafted, discussed, redrafted and discussed again before decisions could be reached. We were also a little surprised – and indeed slightly offended – to find him wondering why some of us were still working in the Treasury and not out there in the City earning much higher salaries. The simple answer in most cases was that we enjoyed our jobs and, strange though it might seem to Conservative ministers, still had a sense of commitment to public service. The permanent secretary, Douglas Wass, suffered from this mistrust, both by the chancellor and the prime minister. In the previous year he had delivered the annual public Mais economic lecture with a Keynesian flavour. This did not go down well with either Howe or Thatcher and he was clearly not regarded as ‘one of us’. It was therefore no surprise when, after a few months, Sir Fred

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Atkinson, the chief economic adviser to the Treasury, another Keynesian, was replaced by a well-known monetarist, Professor Terry Burns, from the London Business School. Terry (later Lord Burns of Pitshanger) became well liked and respected in the Treasury and eventually became permanent secretary himself from 1991 to 1998, the first chief economic adviser to do so. But many of us were concerned that Douglas Wass never gained the full confidence of the prime minister and the chancellor, and I thought it regrettable and almost spiteful that, unlike previous Treasury permanent secretaries, he was not on retirement elevated to the House of Lords, where his wisdom and experience would have made a great contribution. He was accorded a farewell dinner by Mrs Thatcher at No. 10, but it was no substitute for elevation to ‘the other place’. Ironically, Terry Burns, although assured of his peerage, suffered a similar problem of confidence with Gordon Brown when he became chancellor in 1997. I had a good working relationship with Geoffrey Howe. We were delighted and amused when we realised that we were both presidents of friendly rival Surrey cricket clubs – he of South Nutfield, where once the famous Gilbert Jessop, making a one-off appearance for his friend, the local vicar, had scored over 220 not out on a Saturday afternoon, and I of Kingswood. But I found it very difficult to produce draft speeches that suited him. It was a problem I never really solved – it is a difficult art for officials and the recipient is seldom satisfied, even though we left the overtly political elements to him and his special advisers. The March 1980 and March 1981 Budgets, however, with more time to plan and timetable, proved to be a less frenetic process than June 1979, despite the particularly severe contents of the 1981 Budget in which personal-tax allowances were frozen, a 20 per cent petroleum revenue tax was introduced, excise duties were more than revalorised, a 2.5 per cent one-off levy was brought in on non-interest-bearing bank deposits and the severe squeeze on public spending was maintained – and all this against the background of serious friction with the unions, and an increase in inflation again to more than 20 per cent in early 1980, in part due to the VAT increase in the previous year. One particular difficulty I met was in producing an acceptable draft of the traditional television and radio broadcast by the chancellor on the evening

Controlling Spending and Managing the Budget 157 of Budget day. On the first occasion I served up a draft on the usual lines to Geoffrey Howe he asked me to show it to his private television adviser, who had coached him when in opposition. I declined to do so, on the grounds that this would be a serious breach of Budget secrecy. I was nevertheless instructed to do as I was told, so I sent the draft to the adviser with key details redacted. He had the effrontery, as I saw it, to return it to me with a number of amendments. I ignored most of them and sent the draft back again to him in virtually its original form with a letter thanking him warmly for his help and saying that I had taken in his amendments as far as we possibly could. He was not having that, and after words on the telephone I invited him to the Treasury, where we finally had a perfectly amicable meeting and reached a reasonable compromise on the draft. He turned out to be Anthony Jay, the co-scriptwriter with Jonathan Lynn, of the Yes, Minister television series, and I suspect I gave him some ideas for it. Certainly some of the episodes I later saw had a familiar feel about them.

Budget secrecy My caution about revealing Budget secrets reflected the excessive confidentiality that still attached to the Budget at that time. We were not quite in the same position as Hugh Dalton, who had to resign from the Attlee government in 1947 for inadvertently letting slip some of the Budget contents to a journalist shortly before he made the Budget speech, but extreme secrecy was still preserved. My own view was that it would be much more sensible to trail many of the proposed Budget measures, especially tax changes, in advance so that proper consultation could take place on them and adjustments made if it seemed sensible to do so. The arguments about forestalling tax changes, especially on indirect and consumer taxes, seemed to me to be greatly exaggerated – there might be some forestalling but consumption and tax yield would even out in time. Within the Treasury, and in cooperation with a study by the Institute for Fiscal Studies led by the former junior Treasury minister and later renegade from the Labour Party Dick Taverne, I advocated a ‘Green Budget’ towards the end of the calendar year which would

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set out the proposed major tax changes to be announced in the following spring and relate them more closely to the public-expenditure projections. It did not find favour with the chancellor – chancellors like to have their great ritual day when they hold up the red Gladstone box outside No. 11, steal the limelight and spring surprises on an amazed House of Commons and British public – but I am glad that in recent years the process has moved in this direction with much more open trailing of Budget measures in advance. In other contexts than the Budget, however, security could be very patchy. I recall a few years later travelling by car to Northolt with the then chancellor, Nigel Lawson, to catch a VIP RAF flight to Brussels for a Finance Council meeting, and only being allowed to enter the airfield when I produced my membership card of the Treasury Picture Loan Club, of which I was chairman. Although the chancellor’s photograph was regularly in the newspapers and other media, the RAF policeman on duty was not satisfied with his self-identification. Apart from the Budget, life in the Central Unit was very brisk and varied. I was under constant pressure and worked long hours. I worked regularly on the train as I commuted in and out of London and was once collared by someone who was clearly an MI5 spook for improperly reading secret papers openly on the train. I had inadvertently turned the cover of my folder inside out so that all that the rest of the carriage could see were the words ‘BUDGET SECRET’ in large capital letters. My defence was that I could not possibly do my job without working on the train – but I was in the wrong and it would not have stood up, and the observant agent luckily did not take the matter further. To put two fingers up, as it were, to my largely sedentary desk life I took to running late at night after I had returned home to Epsom and, in a rather masochistic way, completed a marathon at Guildford in a respectable time (four hours, two minutes). I even, for the hell of it, and stopping at pubs on the way, walked home from the Treasury one Friday evening, about 16 miles through the fascinatingly bustling and lit-up streets of Vauxhall, Clapham, Balham, Tooting Bec and on past Cheam, Ewell and Nonsuch Park to Epsom. I phoned in occasionally from a pub to reassure Diana that I was still on my way. I also experienced my first of several unfortunate meetings with royalty when Prince Charles visited the Treasury for a morning as part of his wider education. His first engagement

Controlling Spending and Managing the Budget 159 was a meeting of the PCC which I was scheduled to open by introducing a Central Unit paper on some aspects of current macroeconomic management. As I droned on I noticed that the heir to the throne had fallen fast asleep. I did not blame him and felt truly sorry for him.

Treasury Select Committee One of my most stressful duties was to lead the Treasury team before the televised sessions of the (always called ‘influential’) parliamentary Treasury and Civil Service Committee to be interrogated on the latest Budget. I was accompanied by a small team of Treasury senior colleagues, but I had to lead and take the initial questioning. It was tough but not as formidable a committee as it has become more recently under the chairmanship of Andrew Tyrie (who was then merely a special adviser). They were still difficult occasions, especially since it was not for us to seek to justify the politics as opposed to the economics of the Budget, but very good practice for the gruelling sessions before the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) that I would have to face later when I was chairman and accounting officer of HM Customs and Excise. By contrast, I much enjoyed leading the team at the annual examination of the UK economy at the OECD in Paris. Apart from the pleasure of spending a couple of days in the French capital, the examination was pretty gentle – dog does not eat dog at the OECD – and the head of the division responsible for monitoring the UK economy was an old Australian economist friend, Richard Freeman, who had previously worked alongside me in the Treasury, and we were able to have a very helpful and constructive conversation before the hearing.

Moving on again A couple of years was about par for this strenuous but extremely exciting job. I had worked in the heart of the Treasury with regular and privileged access to the permanent secretary and two chancellors of the exchequer. I had had the thrill of sitting in the civil servants’ ‘box’ in the House of Commons listening

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to the chancellor deliver a Budget speech which I had largely drafted. But my family had suffered, and I look back with regret on how much responsibility I left at home to Diana and how little I saw of our boys, except at weekends and holidays – and even then during the summer I spent many of the Saturdays away playing cricket. I was ready for a change, therefore, when I was offered an unexpected secondment for two years to a new job in the Cabinet Office in May 1981.

ELEVEN

Information Technology Tsar in the Cabinet Office (1981–3)

M

y first secondment to the Cabinet Office in May 1981 was probably my most bizarre civil service experience. It was totally unexpected and another example of putting generalists into jobs for which they have no previous experience or professional qualification. It arose because the prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, seeing with admirable foresight the crucial role that information technology (IT) would play in Britain’s economic future, and concerned about our relative backwardness, wanted to get a grip on IT policy and show that government was now leading the way. The department primarily responsible for promoting IT was the DOI, where the energetic and enthusiastic minister of state, Kenneth Baker, was hyperactively in charge, but many other departments and agencies, such as the Home Office (in relation to

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the BBC and broadcasting), Defence, Education and Science, Transport, and departments with large computer systems such as the DHSS and the two revenue departments, had important specific interests. Procurement of computers and advice to departments on their use and installation was the responsibility of a central-government agency, the Central Computer and Telecommunications Agency (CCTA), which had once lodged in the old Civil Service Department but now came under the wing of the Treasury. The prime minister rightly saw IT not as a discrete subject only relevant to selected departments or functions but as an all-pervasive technology which all departments and agencies, and Britain in general, must embrace if we were not to fall further behind our competitors ( Japan being the outstanding model at the time). To promote and coordinate this needed in her view a capacity at the centre of government, with her authority behind it, and the Cabinet Office was the natural home for this.

Cabinet Office Information Technology Unit On 2 July 1981, therefore, in answer to an arranged written parliamentary question, the prime minister announced the creation of a new IT Unit in the Cabinet Office. Its main function was to ‘to help promote the use of IT within government and to seek to ensure the overall coherence of government policies towards it, particularly as they spanned the responsibilities of more than one department’. She also announced the establishment of a group of IT experts to provide an external source of advice to this unit. The group was called the Information Technology Advisory Panel (ITAP) and its members were Mike Aldrich (managing director, Rediffusion Computers Ltd), Ivor Cohen (managing director, Mullard Ltd), Tony Davies (managing director, Information Technology Ltd), David Hartley (director, Cambridge University Computing Service), Charles Read (director, Inter-Bank Research Organisation) and Colin Southgate (chief executive, Computer Services Division and British Oxygen Ltd, and later managing director of Thorn EMI). Their remit was to ‘ensure that government policies and action are securely based on a close appreciation of market needs and opportunities and be available to advise herself [Mrs Thatcher] and ministers on all aspects of IT’. The members reflected a wide

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range of experience and skills and were deliberately chosen for their handson experience from relatively small players in the IT world as government already had plenty of contact with, and lobbying from, the larger companies and organisations. The prime minister said that the new Cabinet Office IT Unit would be the principal link between ITAP and government departments. The next step was to find someone to lead the new IT Unit, and the prime minister asked Professor John Ashworth, the chief scientific adviser in the Cabinet Office (and later Sir John and director of the London School of Economics), to identify an energetic under-secretary who knew his way around Whitehall and could take that role on. John, whom I had known a little, approached me and asked me whether I would do so if the Treasury would release me. I was in two minds. Against it was the fact that I knew nothing at all about IT, and I was a little apprehensive about leaving the Treasury and missing out on any possible promotion opportunities, particularly since my name was not Douglas (the current permanent secretary was Sir Douglas Wass, who had replaced Sir Douglas Allen, and the second permanent secretary in charge of public expenditure Sir Douglas Henley, so some of us felt we had limited chance of advancement with other names). On the other hand, I was ready for a break after the tough Central Unit job, and it was a chance to learn something new – albeit at others’ expense – bring myself a little further into the late twentieth century, and have some direct contact with the prime minister. My family, of course, thought it utterly hilarious that someone who did not initially know what IT stood for and had not even been able to get to terms with one of the early Sinclair home computers should take over coordination of government IT policy. Nevertheless, I decided to give it a go and Douglas Wass agreed – slightly reluctantly, I thought – to release me for a couple of years. I thus moved to the Cabinet Office as head of the new IT Unit, reporting to the Cabinet secretary, Sir Robert Armstrong, and ultimately to the prime minister. My first task was to get some expert staff into the unit to support me, and I was lucky to secure Roger Courtney, a tough, clear-minded and experienced, if a little abrasive, senior scientific officer, who had worked at the National Physical Laboratory; and Adrian Norman, an IT polymath and creative thinker who had worked for the major American technology consultancy Arthur D. Little, and had widespread contacts in the industry. I was also able

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to take with me my PA and prop from the Treasury, Jean Henser, with whom I had worked in an excellent partnership for many years.

Information Technology Advisory Panel (ITAP) In order to immerse myself as quickly as possible I took the chair of ITAP (Kenneth Baker chaired it initially), and called an early meeting. If they felt concern about my Treasury background and my profound ignorance of their subject they were good enough to conceal it, and we quickly established a friendly and constructive relationship. Indeed, in a private monograph which he wrote about his time in ITAP (which he has kindly allowed me to quote), Ivor (now Sir Ivor) Cohen said that I ‘was clearly a very intelligent civil service generalist whose initial bemusement with the jargon and attitudes of the members of ITAP was courteously (almost) concealed […] He soon learnt, though, and was very much respected.’ It was an extremely generous comment, but I did no more than was expected of any Treasury official accustomed to switching between a variety of subjects and taking responsibility for them. After invaluable help and advice from Roger and Adrian I set out a list of strategic priorities for ITAP and the IT Unit for the coming year. The primary ones related to telecommunications infrastructure and regulation (particularly important in the light of the privatisation of British Telecom (BT)), data protection, use of the finite radio-frequency spectrum, cable systems and government procurement and use of IT, particularly throughout government departments. Many of these were issues on which departments squabbled and heads had to be banged together. I encouraged ITAP to work in smaller groups rather than bringing everything to the regular sessions of the whole group and they seemed to welcome this. In order further to educate myself and get the new units known both within government and in the industry, I also arranged visits for myself to a number of major IT players such as IBM, Phillips, ICL, Logica and the BBC, and government agencies such as the National Physical Laboratory and the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) at Cheltenham, where state-of-the-art work was being done on such things as artificial intelligence, voice recognition and liquid crystal display. I also paid

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a short visit to Washington to talk to leading IT specialists and users in the federal government and agencies. It was particularly useful to learn from their experience on telecommunications liberalisation and deregulation, although inwardly I felt a little smug that they seemed to be having as many problems as we did in getting their overall act together.

Relations with government departments It was very important to win the confidence and cooperation of departments in Whitehall, which required a good deal of perseverance and diplomacy, but the knowledge that we had the prime minister and the Cabinet secretary behind us gave us a good deal of leverage. I took over from the DOI the chair of the Cabinet Office official IT committee, which enabled me to bring disputed issues formally to the centre for collective discussion wherever it seemed necessary. I also had very strong ministerial support from Kenneth Baker at the DOI, who, rather than regarding the IT Unit as treading on his patch, welcomed its support, and I much enjoyed the close and friendly relationship that we developed – he was great fun to work with and never short of new ideas and enthusiasms. In his memoirs, entitled The Turbulent Years, he kindly said that without our support he ‘would have had a lonely and difficult time promoting technological change’.* Other departments were, however, very sensitive about their territories. The Home Office, with its responsibility for the BBC and broadcasting, was deeply suspicious of any DOI attempts to secure any more of the finite radio-frequency spectrum for commercial or industrial purposes, and the Ministry of Defence was equally touchy about defending its share of it too. For reasons I never fully understood the Home Office was also conservatively reluctant to become involved in data protection. The Department of Trade (DOT) stood by to repel boarders on matters relating to copyright, patent and company law, and the CCTA took any suggestions for improvement in computer procurement or service to departments as implicit criticism of their performance. All this needed to be sorted out and bridges built. *

Kenneth Baker, The Turbulent Years (London: Faber, 1993), p. 85.

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It would be tedious to itemise all the issues on which we sought to make progress with departments, and I will select just a few of them. In order to encourage departments to get computers on desks (virtually unknown at that time – even the Treasury computer which provided the crucial national-income forecasts still occupied a large separate room in several large standing cabinets) we installed in the IT Unit a leading-edge fibre-optic local-area network produced by a small and enterprising company called Xionics and became the first electronic office in Whitehall. As a sort of IT guinea pig I invited various ministers and senior officials, including permanent secretaries, to come and visit us in the hope that if they saw me working at ease with a computer on my desk they would believe that anyone could do so. I hope it had some effect. I have to confess that on occasions, when no one else was looking, and no visitors present, I found it easier to communicate with my PA, Jean, by popping my head round her door or calling loudly. A second subject was data protection, for which, with IT still in its infancy, there was no regulation, statutory or otherwise, in place. The Home Office should have taken the lead, but seemed curiously unwilling to do so and very protective of its own patch. I took the matter into the official IT committee and, with helpful support behind the scenes from Robert Armstrong, a former Home Office permanent secretary, we eventually emerged with recommendations to go forward to ministers and onwards to legislation. Leaning heavily on the Swedish model we were able to formulate proposals for a statutory regulatory regime and a data-protection ombudsman. I took great satisfaction from interviewing and recommending the first holder of the post.

Cable systems But the main issue which preoccupied us, and absorbed much of ITAP’s time, was the expansion of cable systems. Kenneth Baker must take the credit for inspiring this. He argued that the best way to create an information society – in the days, of course, before the digital revolution and the World Wide Web – was to deliver electronic messages into the home by developing and extending the embryo cable systems that already existed, and in due course linking

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them to direct broadcasting by satellite (DBS). So developed they would be capable of delivering a huge range of services into the home – information, education, sport, news, the arts, specialised audience channels, and interactive services such as banking, shopping and so on. Kenneth put great emphasis on the concept of interactivity. In order to attract the necessary private-sector investment (on the safe assumption that little if any public finance would be available), entertainment services would also need to be carried, and all this would require a new regulatory regime. It was an inspirational vision – for better or worse – and well ahead of its time. To set the ball rolling I asked ITAP to investigate the possibilities and make recommendations. They set up a small working group under Charles Read, with Roger Courtney as secretary and principal draftsman, and, after discussion with the whole group under my chairmanship, they produced the excellent Report on Cable Systems published as a Cabinet Office document in February 1982. It strongly recommended that government announce its early approval for a start on the development of new cable systems, and that they be authorised to distribute DBS. So far as the technology was concerned they stressed the need for a wide bandwidth capacity, using up-to-date fibre-optic cable technology rather than the standard coaxial cable, but envisaged that this could be achieved by a ‘trunk and branch’ system in which the trunk would carry the maximum capacity and the branches or links to subscribers could operate perfectly well from local switching points on a lower capacity, thus economising on cable specification and subscriber equipment. All this would, of course, require clarification of the wider implications for the financing and regulation of broadcasting and the establishment of an appropriate licensing and regulatory body (ITAP envisaged a new broadcasting authority for cable systems). The report estimated that the capital investment required to provide half the UK population with modern cable services would be around £2.5 billion – a huge sum then, but modest in retrospect – but expected this to stimulate activity in related services, such as office technology, the fibre-optics industry, consumer electronics, and so on, amounting to about £1 billion annually. They also emphasised, following Kenneth Baker’s lead, that the inclusion of entertainment services was absolutely vital to attract private-sector capital, and recommended design standards that would offer maximum potential to UK

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manufacturers and operators, particularly the fibre-optics industry. Speed was also of the essence in order to allow private industry to start planning. Needless to say, they argued that the privatised BT’s role should be circumscribed so that no monopoly would be created. It was an excellent report but had to be considered by the many departments concerned within government, and I therefore convened an official Cabinet Office committee (called MISC 73) to consider the issues relating to it and to prepare a report for ministers. In the meantime, anticipating possible developments, and anxious to keep a grip on them, the home secretary had also asked the former Cabinet secretary, Lord ( John) Hunt of Tanworth, to carry out a separate review of the broadcasting aspects of an expansion of cable systems. His comprehensive report, which recommended the establishment of a new cable authority responsible for awarding franchises and monitoring performance, was published in October 1982.* After several meetings and redrafts I secured the agreement of the official committee to the main substance of the cable proposals and submitted a report to the prime minister for consideration by the Ministerial Steering Committee on Economic Strategy (E(A)) on 18 November under her chairmanship. A few days before the meeting was due to take place, however, Robert Armstrong, without consulting me, had the bright idea of suggesting to the prime minister that, as chairman of the official MISC 73 committee, I should introduce the report to E(A) with a visual overhead presentation. She agreed. I was horrified, not so much at my ability, or lack of it, to present the content and recommendations of the long and complex report, but at the possibility of a technical hitch in the apparatus used for the visual presentation. If the technology failed, and instead of an image setting out the main contents and conclusions of the report the screen was filled with blurs and flashes, or even a holiday snap of the Unwin family on Woolacombe beach, my career and credibility with the prime minister were finished. I could not remember any ‘slide show’ I had seen (admittedly usually by local history societies in village halls) which had worked without a hitch first time. With deep trepidation, therefore, I sought urgent help from my colleagues and from officials from the *

Lord Hunt of Tanworth, Report of the Inquiry into Cable Expansion and Broadcasting Policy (Cmnd 8679) (London: HMSO, 1982).

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Central Office of Information (COI), who prepared excellent slides and put me through a rigorous rehearsal. As the supposed maestro of government IT policy I could hardly do anything less. On the day of the meeting I stood nervously outside the Cabinet room at No. 10 with the assembled ministers waiting to be called in by the prime minister. I happened to be standing next to the home secretary, Willie (later Viscount) Whitelaw, when one of his colleagues mentioned to him that the chairman of the official committee was going to make a 20-minute visual presentation. On hearing this Willie, who was known to be less than keen on cable systems and suspicious of any trespassing on his broadcasting responsibilities, absolutely exploded. In his booming voice he expostulated that this was an outrage; he had not been consulted; he did not want a slide show; he was being taken for granted; he had a good mind to boycott the meeting. This obviously did a great deal to boost my already-fragile confidence as I stood close by him, cowering and listening to all this. He eventually calmed down, however, and trooped with the rest of us into the Cabinet room for the meeting. The projector was set up on a small stand behind the prime minister with the screen facing her on the other side of the Cabinet table. Other ministers had to leave their usual places so that they could face or see the screen. The gods were with me. The projector worked perfectly, the slides were clear and good, there were no hitches and I was given time to present the report and answer a few initial questions. When I referred to optical-fibre technology the prime minister abruptly asked me to explain what it was and I was able to plonk down on the table before her a short length of optical-fibre cable that I had luckily stuffed into my jacket pocket. She was satisfied and the committee approved the report’s conclusions, which in due course led to the establishment of a cable authority which began to license the first franchises. I should add that on the morning after the meeting I received a handwritten note from the home secretary apologising for his outburst before the meeting and saying how helpful my presentation had been. As I discovered from my closer and more frequent contact with him in later years when he was Lord President of the Council, this was typical of his courtesy and generosity. It was at the time a considerable achievement to have got the report accepted by ministers, but I have often wondered since whether I am, or should be, proud

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of it. I must admit that I have never personally signed up to a cable network. In the event, the rapid development we had encouraged was brought, at least temporarily, to a fairly abrupt halt in 1984 when the chancellor, Nigel Lawson, removed the industry’s entitlement to 100 per cent capital allowances, which took away the investment prop it needed in view of the heavy upfront costs caused by the requirement to bury cable in this country rather than, as in the United States, hang it from poles. My hands were clean as I was then elsewhere engaged in the Treasury and had nothing to do with his decision. I hope my former ITAP colleagues realised that. The prime minister, ever active and full of ideas, also decided to hold a major conference on IT at the new Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre in Westminster – one of the first to be held there – and I was asked to help organise it. She decided to make the keynote speech and we contributed to the draft. She took it very seriously and, together with Kenneth Baker and her principal private secretary, Robin Butler (who was later to become Cabinet secretary and the Rt Hon. Lord Butler of Brockwell), I spent a long evening with her in her sitting room upstairs at No. 10 meticulously going through the draft line by line. After a break for a cottage-pie supper, which in stockinged feet and housewifely manner she heated in the kitchen and served up to us, and fortified by a glass or two of whisky and quotations from a volume of her favourite Kipling’s poems, we finally crept away in the small hours, with the speech completed, as she then turned to her red boxes to get on with the rest of her work. It was astonishing that she could spend so much time on this one subject and showed the importance she attached to IT when there were so many other pressing issues to face. The conference the next day went well, although I nearly missed her speech as I had a Lucky Jim moment when I misread the rather trendy new signs outside the lavatories in the brand-new conference centre and found that I had shut myself in a cubicle in the Ladies by mistake (I wondered why there were no urinals). Hearing female voices outside (it was empty when I went in), I did not dare to leave until the coast was clear in case I was apprehended and caused a scandal – ‘Cabinet Office mandarin caught in the ladies’ loo as PM prepares to speak!’ The speech went well, however, and we liked to think the occasion had given a further strong boost to the use of IT.

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Moving on again My role as the IT tsar came to an end in the spring of 1983 when I was called back to the Treasury on promotion to deputy secretary (more explaining to do to my mother). Although there were severe limitations on what we could achieve with such a small resource I recommended to Robert Armstrong continuation of both ITAP and the IT Unit, with the latter now coming under the new chief scientific adviser in the Cabinet Office, Robin Nicholson, and Roger Courtney continuing in support. ITAP continued its work and produced another interesting report on Making a Business of Information under the chairmanship of Colin Southgate,* but was eventually disbanded in 1986 and its work taken over by the Advisory Council for Applied Research and Development (ACARD). Some of the drive behind IT had in any case gone out when Kenneth Baker was moved from the DOI in 1984 to become secretary of state for education and science. It is difficult to judge how much we achieved. We certainly raised the profile of IT both within and outside government departments and ironed out some of the divisions between and within departments. We took a big step forward on cable, brought the Home Office and DOI to a better understanding and relationship on use of the radio-frequency spectrum, put data protection on a proper Whitehall basis as a necessary prelude to legislation, and stimulated departmental interest in view data and new technology for emergency purposes. In his retrospective monograph to which I have already referred, Ivor Cohen modestly concluded that much of what we achieved might have happened anyway, but we speeded it up a bit. I think that was perhaps a little bit too modest, but I would not want to go much beyond that. I learned a lot and made many new contacts and friends in a world that had been alien to me. But I was still a bit of a fish out of water and I was glad to be returning to a more familiar world in the Treasury.

* ITAP, Making a Business of Information: A Survey of New Opportunities (London: HMSO, 1983).

TW E LV E

Getting Our Money Back from Europe HM Treasury (1983–5)

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was called back from the Cabinet Office on promotion to deputy secretary to take up the Treasury post of economic minister in the British embassy in Washington and UK director at the World Bank and the IMF. In typical Treasury fashion – getting three jobs done for the price of one – we were unique among the major countries in combining these three posts. Most countries divided them among two or three officials. It was a terrific job, at the heart of the political and, pace the City of London, financial capital of the world. It had many eminent predecessors, including Eric Roll. The prospect excited me and it suited the family very well. Our eldest son, Mike, was about to start a gap year before going to the University of Manchester; our second, Chris, having done his GCSEs, could move from the excellent comprehensive school, Glyn,

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in Epsom to continue his sixth form as a boarder at Epsom College; and our youngest, Nick, would go to Washington with us. We started making preparations and I went on a reconnaissance visit to Washington to see the (official) house in Kalorama Circle where we would be living and to investigate a suitable school in Georgetown for Nick. Alas, to our huge disappointment, like Denis Healey’s aborted April 1979 Budget, it was not to be. I was informed that the chancellor, Geoffrey Howe, now wanted me to remain at the Treasury as deputy secretary responsible for Overseas Finance (OF), primarily to take charge of the continuing negotiations on the British contribution to the European Communities (EC) budget which remained unresolved and was the running sore in our relationship with Europe.

Overseas Finance and the European budget In addition to the EC budget my responsibilities covered international debt questions, export credits and the budgets of the FCO and overseas aid. Initially I spent a lot of time on debt issues, which from 1983 onwards, largely due to the wider effects of the world oil crisis, progressively affected a growing range of countries, such as Argentina, Mexico, Brazil, Poland, Yugoslavia and the Philippines, which were facing acute balance-of-payments, exchange-rate and inflation problems and were beginning to threaten world currency stability. Action at the international level was coordinated by the G5 group of rich countries and I became what was known as the UK G5 debt deputy and attended many meetings with my counterparts of this group in New York, Washington, London, Paris and other European capitals. Events moved very fast and I was constantly on the move – what a contrast with my previous, largely static Treasury jobs. I once flew to Washington for a meeting with the US Treasury, sent a telegram back to London asking for further instructions, and flew back immediately to London via New York by Concorde, arriving early enough in the morning in the Treasury to draft and send back to Washington the instructions I had sought! I also chaired the Whitehall committee of officials dealing with international debt issues. While the G5 was responsible, with the IMF, for coordinating the overall policy of the rich developed nations towards

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debtors, the key practical negotiating work on outstanding public debt was carried out by a group of creditor nations called the Paris Club, of which one of my under-secretaries, Peter Mountfield, was a member and dealt with it so efficiently that I was seldom troubled. The Paris Club was chaired by Philippe Jurgensen, my then opposite number in the French Treasury, who was married to the celebrated French novelist Françoise Chandernagor, the author of the best-selling L’allée du roi. Françoise, whom we came to know quite well later at EIB functions, was remarkable. She did not become a civil servant but was reputed to have taken the entry examinations for ENA (the elite École Nationale d’Administration in Paris) just to keep up with Philippe and to have come ahead of him on the national merit list. Sadly, the marriage later broke down, and she wrote a somewhat bitter and thinly disguised novel about it entitled La première épouse. By dint of my new Treasury job, I now also became the senior UK director on the board of the EIB, the long-term financing institution of the EC, located in Luxembourg. This was some compensation for not going to Washington and assumed much greater importance for me a decade later. Board meetings were held most months for a couple of days in Luxembourg and I was supported by a director nominated from the DOI, a private-sector banker (then Sir Malcolm Wilcox from the Midland Bank) and two alternates from the Treasury and Bank of England respectively. Only the four major shareholder countries (the UK, France, Germany and Italy) had such a large board representation – the smaller countries had one main director and shared alternates – but it was far too many and I did not take the whole team on each occasion. A bonus, however, was that many of my fellow directors were the same finance-ministry officials with whom I also found myself round the EC negotiating table on budget and other issues. Philippe Jurgensen was a French alternate and his boss at the start was Michel Camdessus, the director of the French Treasury in Paris, who went on to become the governor of the Banque de France and later managing director of the IMF. He was replaced by Jean-Claude Trichet, who similarly became governor of the Banque de France and later the president of the European Central Bank (ECB). So EIB board meetings were a great opportunity for valuable contacts and consultation in the margins with key colleagues.

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The UK budget contribution The debt issues were very important, but by far the greatest amount of my time was spent on the contentious issue of the EC budget and the UK contribution to it. To put it simply, the core of our grievance was that, with a GDP – a broad if still crude measure of relative prosperity – in the lower half of the EC league table, we were, apart from Germany, making the largest net contribution to the EC budget – that is, the difference between what we received by way of payments and subsidies and the amount we paid in from our VAT receipts (known as the EC’s ‘own resources’). The primary reason for this was that, with an efficient and intensive farming industry, which accounted for little more than 2 per cent of the UK labour force, we received much less support in the form of agricultural grants and subsidies from the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), which accounted for over three-quarters of the EC budget, than countries like France and Italy with larger and less intensive – we claimed less efficient – farming sectors. We protested that it was unfair that we should bear this disproportionate burden and that some permanent mechanism should be introduced to reduce it and, as Mrs Thatcher put it, ‘give us our money back’ – the famous ‘juste retour’. The French and Italians, particularly the olive farmers, were naturally unsympathetic to our case, arguing that it was our fault – if we had joined the Common Market earlier (conveniently forgetting de Gaulle’s veto in January 1963!) we would have been better placed to influence the original rules and could not now expect to come in late and rewrite them. I had some grudging sympathy with this argument, but my job was to negotiate to get our contribution down. Even the Germans, who had some sympathy with our case in view of their own large net contribution to the budget, were politically constrained on the CAP by their influential farming lobby, especially the many small farmers in Bavaria. They were in any case still reluctant to stick their necks out on any issue, especially if it brought them into conflict with France. Although we regarded the net contribution dispute as primarily a financial and Treasury issue, and a matter for the Economic and Financial Affairs Council (Ecofin), we worked very closely with our colleagues in the FCO and the Cabinet Office European Secretariat. The leading FCO officials were Sir Michael Butler, the head of our delegation to the EC in Brussels, and David

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Hannay (now Lord Hannay of Chiswick), a contemporary of mine at New College, who succeeded Butler in Brussels and went on to become ambassador at the UN in New York. Both were powerful intellects, vastly experienced in European affairs and formidable negotiators. Despite her general mistrust of the FCO – she thought it was more concerned with helping foreigners than pursuing British interests – they carried considerable clout with the prime minister. Together we laboured away at a succession of formulae for abating our budget contribution and reforming the CAP and, under the coordination of the Cabinet Office, we set up a small travelling circus of senior officials to tour key EC capitals and put our case. I carried the argument forward too at many bilateral meetings with my opposite numbers in the various finance ministries and at the EIB. It was crucial to gain some allies. I particularly cultivated the Dutch, our natural partners, and reached a constructive understanding with my opposite number from the Dutch finance ministry, Paul Arlman, who was also the Dutch director on the EIB board and became a lifelong friend. The Dutch were not so much swayed by our specific arguments on the budget (they were large net contributors too and would have welcomed some abatement themselves) but by their wish to keep the UK in the EC as a counterweight to France and Germany and their general preference as a small country for an agreement rather than a breakdown. I earned huge but rather spurious credit with the Italians by once fortuitously correcting their powerful director of the Treasury, Dr Mario Sarcinelli, who misquoted the beginning of a Catullus ode in an intervention at one of our meetings. Who said that Mods and Greats were not useful? I also took the fight to the heart of the opposition (that is, the French) by accepting an invitation to give a lecture on the budget issue to the assembled students at ENA in Paris. ENA turned out the ‘Enarchs’ and inspecteurs de finance, the heavenly ones of the French higher civil service, many of whom went on to become leading politicians, ministers, heads of state corporations and even presidents (Giscard d’Estaing being a prominent example). It was rather an intimidating occasion. They proposed to call my talk ‘The British Budget Problem’, but I insisted on retitling it simply ‘Le problème budgetaire’ on the grounds that it was not just a British problem but one for all member states to resolve. Although I made many more than the ‘trois points’ that Enarchs are

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traditionally taught to make in their presentations, I am not sure I persuaded anyone, but I was the first senior British official to penetrate ENA in this way. At official level we could do no more than prepare the ground and try to find a compromise solution that could form the basis of agreement between ministers and heads of government and was also defensible before the British Parliament. The crucial persuasion had to be achieved by the prime minister, the chancellor of the exchequer and the foreign and Commonwealth secretary at countless meetings of heads of government, finance and foreign ministers. The odds were strongly against us. At ministerial council meetings we were usually in a minority of nine to one. I normally accompanied the chancellor (Geoffrey Howe until June 1983 and then Nigel Lawson) to Ecofin and bilateral meetings with other finance ministers and travelled as the Treasury representative with the prime minister when she was involved. Travelling frequently with the chancellor provided a great opportunity to get to know him and discuss less formally than back in the Treasury the problems we were facing. I particularly enjoyed travelling with Nigel Lawson, who was very good company. He was always friendly, appreciative, extremely sharp and a good negotiator round the Ecofin table. As Ecofin meetings were often on a Monday and the compendious Treasury briefing for the chancellor often only reached me late on a Friday evening I developed a system, which he welcomed, of over the weekend reducing the briefing to a series of one-page summaries of the key points with a very short speaking note on each. I think the closest we ever got together was once when our return flight to Heathrow from Brussels on a foggy evening had to make three attempts to land before it finally got safely down. It was the only occasion on a flight when I have been really frightened.

The prime minister ‘gets her money back’ The term ‘passionate’ is overused in politics, but Margaret Thatcher showed real passion in pursuing the campaign to get her money back. I had had some contact with her in my previous role in the IT Unit in the Cabinet Office, but this was the first time I had seen her at close quarters in negotiating and fighting mode. Added to her aggression and handbag-swinging was her astonishing

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mastery of the complicated details of her brief, well beyond that of any of her opposite numbers. This gave her a huge advantage both in bilateral meetings and at the closed sessions of European Councils when heads of government met alone without officials. She usually had the facts and figures at her fingertips and I vividly recall her tearing apart the hapless Luxembourg president of the European Commission, Gaston Thorn, at a small informal dinner at No. 10 one evening at which I was present. I felt truly sorry for him. She had little time either for the German chancellor, Helmut Kohl, whom it was nevertheless important to try to get on our side. On one occasion, when she emerged from a session for heads of government only during the unsuccessful Brussels European Council in March 1984, my scribbled notes of the time record her as dismissing him as ‘a fat old fool who had not read his brief ’. It is hardly surprising that her behaviour did not exactly endear her to her European colleagues, but her iron determination was to secure a rebate and not just to make friends.

A nightingale sings?… Her relationship with President Mitterrand, who was famously said to have described her as ‘having the eyes of Caligula and the lips of Marilyn Monroe’, was a curious one. They were at opposite poles of the political spectrum but somehow seemed to get on quite well together. Travelling with her, however, to a bilateral summit with him in Paris nearly finished my own career. On the VIP RAF plane taking us there she called me over to sit with her and go through the briefing we had prepared on the budget-rebate question, which was the most important item on the agenda for discussion with Mitterrand. As we went through it she paused and told me that she had heard a nightingale singing outside No. 10 the previous evening. Since it was still early in the year I replied that I thought it was probably a robin, attracted by the street light, rather than a nightingale. When she insisted that it was a nightingale I respectfully pointed out that, since the nightingale was a spring migrant and did not normally arrive in England until April at the earliest, I was pretty sure that it was another bird. Undeterred, she stuck to the nightingale and I was just about to tell her more firmly, with the greatest respect, that it could not have been a nightingale, when

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I felt a tap on my shoulder from the Cabinet secretary, Sir Robert Armstrong, who was in the delegation and had been hovering in the aisle listening to our conversation. He interrupted and asked the prime minister if he could just have a quick word with me and taking me aside said: ‘A word of advice, Brian. If the prime minister says she heard a nightingale outside No. 10 last night, she heard a nightingale.’ I returned to the briefing, said nothing more about nightingales and felt relieved to have preserved my career. I also resolved not to let my birdwatching get mixed up with my official duties again, at any rate with the prime minister, although I was able to relax this later on when Norman Lamont and Kenneth Clarke, both keen birdwatchers, became chancellor. The talks with Mitterrand, who was due to chair the critical European Councils in 1984 when France held the six-monthly presidency, were reasonably constructive and the occasion when the prime minister first committed herself in public to joint construction with France of the Channel Tunnel. The moment of truth came very late at night. We were all sitting sipping whisky in the drawing room of the palatial British embassy in the Rue du Faubourg SaintHonoré in Paris, which the Duke of Wellington had acquired from Napoleon’s sister, Pauline (our ambassador host, Sir John Fretwell, was also coincidentally an old Chesterfield School boy), and waiting wearily for her to go to bed and to allow us to do so. Mitterrand had proposed that they make a joint declaration on going forward with construction of the tunnel at their press conference the following day, and Mrs Thatcher was obviously becoming keener and keener to do so and to leave this great project as part of her own physical legacy (Mitterrand already had his in the form of the Pyramid in the Louvre). My concern, as the only Treasury representative present, was to avoid any commitment to massive public expenditure on the project. After telephoning Nigel Lawson, who had remained in London, I managed with Bernard Ingham’s help to get into the communiqué sufficient weasel words to preclude a public-expenditure commitment. This stipulation was eventually carried through into the ensuing Channel Tunnel legislation, although it subsequently caused problems for me when, as president of the EIB, I was trying to get agreement to additional EIB financing for the tunnel in the board, and the directors of other member states took a dim view of allocating more European funding to a project to which the British government refused to contribute a penny.

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The 1984 Brussels and Fontainebleau summits After all the arguing at official and ministerial level the key negotiations were held at the European Council under Mitterand’s presidency in Brussels on 19 and 20 March 1984 and at the following one at Fontainebleau in June. Such councils were always long, tedious and often very confused occasions, with late nights, many bilateral meetings outside the plenary sessions, and for officials much hanging around in delegation rooms waiting for ministers to emerge and give a debriefing. The outcome of this council was disappointing. Although Chancellor Kohl was prepared to consider an annual fixed-sum rebate for the next few years, he was not willing to accept a permanent rebate formula, knowing that Germany would have to contribute the most towards it. The prime minister refused this, and Kohl’s attitude is why she became so angry with him, as I have already described. Worse than that, there were even threats to block the one-year deal that had already been agreed, and both the Italian and Greek prime ministers made sharp statements after the council blaming Mrs Thatcher for its failure. In turn the prime minister in her press conference made her deep anger and frustration very clear and for the first time in public hinted that if we did not get satisfaction the British government would be prepared to consider withholding its contribution to the EC budget entirely. This was the equivalent of the nuclear option and would have had profound consequences for the EC and our relationship with it. Nevertheless, we had already done contingency work on the legal and other implications of this option within the Treasury. It was a difficult and unpleasant summit, with much frantic and sometimes heated discussions in the corridors and delegation meeting rooms. But there was a glimmer of hope. In contrast to Kohl, Mitterand, despite (according to my notes) being described by the prime minister after one session as a ‘man of peacock-minded vanity’, seemed to want to find some way of ending the dispute and had indicated that France was prepared to consider some kind of recurring rebate formula. This was something it might be possible to build on for the next summit, which was to follow in three months’ time. I confess, however, that one of my abiding memories of the Brussels council is of sneaking off from the UK delegation room to a room with a television for an hour or so with the

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Irish prime minister, Garret FitzGerald, to see England beat Scotland to win the Calcutta Cup in the (then) Five Nations rugby tournament.

Fontainebleau The Château de Fontainebleau was the magnificent setting for the next European Council, chaired by President Mitterrand, on 25 and 26 June. It was the place where, on 20 April 1814, at the foot of the ornate double staircase overlooking the great courtyard, Napoleon had made his emotional farewell address to the weeping veterans of his Guard before going into exile on Elba. He reminded them of their past glories and his own sacrifice in abdicating in order to save France from further foreign invasion and civil war. It would be stretching it more than a bit to equate Britain’s diplomatic success at this conference with the victory of the Allied armies over Napoleon, or Mitterrand’s role in facilitating the outcome with that of Napoleon agreeing to abdicate. But it was a notable success for Britain in settling the rebate question which had dragged on for so long and poisoned our relationship with many of our EC partners. I think we all felt on arriving at Fontainebleau that this must be the place and occasion for finally reaching an acceptable settlement. The prime minister was in great fighting form from the start, and although discussion went on into the small hours on the first night there were signs of a possible breakthrough. At about half past midnight the prime minister emerged to tell us that, although it was still nine to one against us on a permanent rebate mechanism, she had now been offered a lump-sum payment for two more years provided we relaxed our veto on increasing the VAT own-resources ceiling and withdrew our blockage on the 1984 budget. She had rightly refused this and stuck to her demand for a permanent 70 per cent rebate formula, and held firm on the VAT ceiling. When negotiations resumed later that morning after breakfast and continued throughout that day an agreement finally began to take shape. In return for our agreement to increase the own-resources ceiling from 1 per cent to 1.4 per cent on 1 January 1986 and that steps should be taken at the next Budget Council to cover the needs of the 1984 budget, the council unanimously agreed on ‘compensation’ to the UK to reduce its contribution to the EC budget. The

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agreement stipulated that in 1984 we should receive a lump-sum compensation payment of 1 billion ecus (the accounting predecessor of the euro) and in subsequent years 66 per cent of the difference between what we paid into the budget and what we received from it (by deducting that amount from the UK’s normal share in the budget year following the one in respect of which the correction was granted). In order to carry along other member states the agreement also included a provision that ‘any member state sustaining a budgetary burden which is excessive in relation to its relative prosperity may benefit from a correction at the appropriate time’ – but that would, of course, require further individual negotiation and could be subject to our veto. There was also another provision to relieve Germany of a part of the cost to them of the compensation to the UK – a necessary concession to keep Chancellor Kohl on board. In my report to the chancellor of the exchequer I expressed some disappointment that we had not been able to secure a higher figure. We had constantly aimed at a minimum rebate of 70 per cent and settled on 66 per cent. But in the circumstances it was an outstanding triumph for the prime minister, which enshrined a mechanism over which we had a veto against change in perpetuity and which has benefited Britain ever since, apart from a relatively small concession on the formula by Tony Blair in 2005 dressed up as a contribution to the costs of the EU’s enlargement. The latest figures available at the time of writing show that the cumulative UK rebate from 1984 to 2013 (paid over the period 1985–2014) amounted to £81.7 billion, worth about €114.5 billion at December 2015 exchange rates; and that the UK’s post-rebate gross per capita contribution of £266 million in 2013 was the lowest among all the net contributor countries, only just a little higher than Norway, which is not even a member of the EU and has no say in setting its rules. So although President Mitterrand for domestic-audience purposes afterwards called it a humiliating defeat for Britain (because we had not secured our 70 per cent target), it was a very good deal indeed and, as chairman, he had in practice in the final stages of the negotiations been influential in urging the council to settle the matter. He clearly wanted to get Mrs Thatcher off his back. For us in the Treasury it was now a great relief not to have to harp on about our net contribution at practically every EC meeting we attended. There was

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still a lot to do to ensure the agreement was honoured in spirit and letter, and to watch that the European Commission did not try to anticipate in the 1986 budget the increase in the own-resources ceiling to 1.4 per cent before that increase had been fully ratified by all the member states, and that it still provided for our interim 1 billion-ecu compensation payment. But we were no longer perpetually on the defensive and in a minority of one. We could also devote more time and priority to other related issues such as tightening budgetary discipline, where we generally had the support of the Dutch and the Germans, and the next CAP price fixing, where we seemed to be in unaccustomed agreement with both the French and the president of the European Commission, Jacques Delors. I still accompanied Nigel Lawson to the monthly Ecofin meetings but did not become closely involved in the ongoing discussions on the proposed European Monetary System (EMS), from which we stood apart – partly for the usual political and sovereignty reasons, and partly on the more substantial argument that as a petrodollar currency sterling could destabilise the system – until we joined the system of fixed exchange-rate margins, the Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM), in October 1990. By the time that culminated in the drama of Black Wednesday in April 1992 I was away in another job. I had much enjoyed my life jet-setting on the international circuit and derived great satisfaction from the successful outcome to our battle over the budget. For many years I had envied the glamour boys and girls in OF as the rest of us bent our backs on public expenditure and other gritty issues within the confines of the Treasury in Great George Street. I had travelled extensively, accompanied two chancellors to innumerable European and other meetings, and seen the prime minister in full fighting flow and in the end securing a considerable negotiating victory. One of my compensations for many hours spent in the proverbial smoke-filled rooms in Brussels was also the occasional opportunity to slip away to Waterloo and roam the battlefield which I knew so well from my interest in my hero, the Duke of Wellington. My duties had taken me away from home and my family again a great deal, but Diana and I had sometimes been able to go together, especially on enjoyable EIB board tours d’information to visit projects the bank was financing in other countries, and we had both made many new friends. But my days of roving were brought to an end in June 1985 by another call to the Cabinet Office.

TH I RTE E N

At the Centre Cabinet Office and the Westland Affair (1985–7)

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No. 10 press release of 5 June 1985 announced that the prime minister had approved my appointment as a deputy secretary in the Cabinet Office. This time it was a job in the mainstream Cabinet Office as head of the Economic Secretariat. I was thus one of the three deputies to the Cabinet secretary, Sir Robert Armstrong, the other two, Christopher Mallaby from the FCO and David Williamson from the Ministry of Agriculture, heading the Overseas and Defence and the European secretariats respectively.

The Economic Secretariat The Cabinet Office is the hub of the government machine. It is not the prime minister’s department, but serves the prime minister and Cabinet collectively,

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organising the business of its many committees and subcommittees. When I moved to it the Economic Secretariat was directly responsible for those committees concerned with economic, industrial and energy policy. I also had oversight of the Home Affairs Secretariat, dealing with a range of social policies, under an experienced and unflappable under-secretary from the Home Office, Anthony Langdon. To support me directly in the Economic Secretariat I had an extremely able Treasury under-secretary, John Wiggins, a former principal private secretary to the chancellor of the exchequer, with whom I had previously worked, and two high-flyer principals from other departments, Denis Walker and John Roberts. We also had the logistical backing of the Cabinet Office Committee Section, which took care of all the practical arrangements for convening meetings and distributing the agenda, papers and minutes. In addition, I chaired the official Civil Contingencies Unit (CCU), which had been set up after the miners’ strike in 1972 to deal with emergencies and was run on a day-to-day basis by a retired soldier, Brigadier Tony Budd. My post had often been occupied by a Treasury official on loan. In his memoirs to which I have previously alluded, Joel Barnett, referring to the briefing provided to the prime minister by the Cabinet Office, remarked on how helpful it was particularly ‘if the Cabinet Office official was a former Treasury official on a two-year transfer’ – helpful, that is, if the briefing supported the Treasury.* Our bread-and-butter work consisted of setting up meetings, arranging circulation of the papers, briefing the prime minister or other chairman, and producing the minutes promptly for circulation to departments. In the case of Cabinet meetings I submitted the briefing through the Cabinet secretary, who would sit next to the prime minister at the Cabinet table. I would only attend Cabinet when my items were on the agenda, and I would then sit at the end of the table near the door scribbling the minutes in one of the large notebooks provided for that purpose, which had to be handed in when filled for retention in the official archives. In the case of Cabinet committees and subcommittees I would normally submit the briefing direct to the prime minister or other chairman, copying it to the Cabinet secretary. This applied even to the E(A), which took all the most important economic issues, and which the prime *

Joel Barnett, Inside the Treasury (London: André Deutsch, 1992), p. 41.

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minister invariably chaired. During the rest of 1985, following my arrival in the Cabinet Office, and during 1986, this committee met on no fewer than 45 occasions, covering a vast array of issues. At nearly half of them I sat next to the prime minister as the principal secretary in Robert Armstrong’s absence (he was heavily preoccupied with other matters, such as the preparation of summit meetings and the famous Spycatcher case). I also frequently attended informal, ad hoc meetings with the prime minister at No. 10, at which she might be seeking to settle an important disagreement before it came to full Cabinet or E(A). On these occasions one of the No. 10 private secretaries in attendance would take and circulate a note. Access to No. 10 was through a connecting door from the Cabinet Office, the key to which could only be obtained from the Cabinet secretary’s private secretary – rather like entering the TARDIS to meet Doctor Who, but, initially at least, a good deal more intimidating. Really contentious issues, except perhaps on public expenditure, were rarely fully discussed or allowed to come to blows at Cabinet itself. The prime minister, like others before and after her, always preferred to resolve them if she could in a smaller group beforehand, very often calling in Lord Whitelaw, the great mediator, to find a compromise. This made many formal Cabinet proceedings rather anodyne, and one of the standard early items on the Cabinet agenda, foreign affairs, was renowned for developing into little more than a travelogue by the foreign and Commonwealth secretary on his latest trips abroad. A notable exception was the Westland helicopter affair, which I will deal with later.

Briefing and minutes Briefing and minutes were central to our daily life. The briefs we prepared for the prime minister and other chairmen were essentially steering briefs, modelled on a format originally created by the great Norman Brook, who was Cabinet secretary from 1947 to 1961 under four prime ministers. Their standard form was to summarise the background and key issues for decision; suggest an order in which to discuss them; recommend the ministers who should be invited to speak; forecast the line those ministers and others, especially the

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Treasury, were likely to take; comment on the substance of the arguments for and against; and finally, and perhaps tentatively, suggest a possible summing up and set of conclusions. Their place in the speaking queue was most important to ministers. I remember John Major, then minister for social security, who was due to attend Cabinet for the first time in the absence of his secretary of state, seeking my advice on where he should sit and when he should speak. I told him which place to take and when I would brief the prime minister to invite him to intervene. His modest approach characterised his behaviour even when he later became prime minister. On an occasion at a Cabinet Office party to welcome him just after he entered No. 10 I asked him what it was like being prime minister. He said that it was early days and he did not know how long it would last – perhaps only a year or two – but it would be something to have done, wouldn’t it? I felt suitably humbled and just held back from remarking that it would look good on his CV and might get him a job in a bank. Producing briefs on a myriad of different subjects and often at very short notice (they all had to be with the prime minister or other chairman on the eve of the meeting) put huge pressure on the secretariat. Although between us we had a good knowledge of government business, we were not experts on everything and depended heavily on our contacts in other departments for information and briefing. They were usually cooperative as they also wished to gain our support, particularly if they sensed that our brief might be favourable to their case. Consultation with the Treasury was also vital, especially as it, like the Cabinet Office, spread its tentacles all round Whitehall and was involved in almost everything. It was impossible, however, always to cover everything under such pressure and we often had to be imaginative and chance our arm. Although I had now had a good deal of contact with the prime minister in my previous jobs, particularly on the European circuit, I still found it nerveracking, especially on the first occasion, to cross through to No. 10, form up in almost ritual fashion with ministers outside the Cabinet room, and then sit next to her at the Cabinet table. I could scarcely believe that I was actually there. I was not a member of her inner circle at No. 10, but I would normally see her several times a week, either at the Cabinet table or at ad hoc meetings at No. 10. It was sometimes even more nerve-racking to see her drawing confidently on a brief that I had submitted the previous evening at the last minute

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with a good deal of creative input. She read the briefs very thoroughly, as I had seen in her preparations for European Councils and other key meetings. The pages of the briefs in her folder were filled with highlighting, underlining and marginal comments and I sometimes prayed that she would not put too much emphasis on certain facts or assertions that had been hastily drafted and not necessarily 100 per cent copper-bottomed. She was generally dogmatic and decisive and knew her own mind, but was not averse, if she trusted you, to receiving a scribbled note passed discreetly to her towards the end of a meeting suggesting possible conclusions. This could happen when the discussion had been so discursive and muddled that no clear conclusions had emerged, and she had not yet attempted a summing up. In such circumstances, as I sensed that she began to trust me, I was prepared to suggest a reasonable conclusion that might or should have emerged if the discussion had gone more smoothly or clearly. But intervening with the prime minister, as I had previously found on the question of nightingales and birdsong, could be risky. An article about the public-expenditure Star Chamber in The Economist of 18 October 1985 referred to me as ‘much admired by the prime minister’ – an accolade that did not win me very high marks with my family. I am not sure that it was true, but I believe I did, unlike some officials, at least become accepted as part of the furniture and that gave me a little more latitude, with care, in briefing her, suggesting conclusions and even putting forward a contrary view. She was prone to reach very rapid judgements about officials who were brought in to brief her and who failed instantly to answer all her questions to her satisfaction. This could sometimes unfairly mark them for the future to the detriment of their careers. It was a very intimidating experience for someone who had not appeared before her previously to be whisked over to No. 10 and interrogated by that sharp tongue and piercing eyes. As Peter Hennessy observed in his 1986 book Cabinet: Senior civil servants called to policy sessions in No. 10 […] have their own four-minute warning-system. If asked by your secretary of state to speak on the departmental paper, you have four minutes to explain it, however complicated the subject matter […] Beyond that point, unless

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her interest is awakened, Mrs Thatcher’s eyes glaze over. To continue is to jeopardise future promotion.* By contrast some officials could register highly with her by a chance intervention that struck a chord with her or even quite inadvertently. On one occasion a senior colleague in the Treasury, Arnold Lovell, an under-secretary, was surprised to be called over to No. 10 to be congratulated by Mrs Thatcher on his outstanding dedication to duty by walking nine or ten miles into the office that day when there was industrial trouble on the Underground. His surprise was because he was a regular long-distance walker and had fortuitously chosen that morning for a training walk regardless of the state of the trains.

Minutes Minutes were a Cabinet Office speciality. As Peter Hennessy again put it, they are the ‘trigger for action down the length and breadth of Whitehall’.† It was crucial, therefore, that they expressed the conclusions clearly, succinctly and unambiguously. It was not uncommon for a minister or senior official following a meeting that he or she had attended to ring me up to ask what had been decided. My standard response was to say ‘read the minutes’. The time-hallowed formula for this, dating back to the creation of the modern Cabinet Office by Maurice Hankey at the end of World War I, was, as Peter Hennessy also put it, quoting Sir Burke Trend, the Cabinet secretary from 1963 to 1975: ‘They never do give verbatim what people say. We précis the sense and give the substance of what they say.’‡ Accordingly, the minutes of a Cabinet or Cabinet committee meeting would typically summarise the opening statement by the minister whose proposal was the subject of discussion; do the same for any counter-statement by a minister opposing the proposal (often the chancellor or CST); summarise without individual attribution the main points made on both sides of the argument; and finally record the summing up by the chairman * Peter Hennessy, Cabinet (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1986), p. 98. † Ibid., p. 3. ‡ Ibid., p. 71.

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and the conclusions of the meeting, indicating clearly the further action, if any, to be taken. This was where the secretariat’s ingenuity might be tested in producing conclusions that may or may not have been explicitly stated but in our view truthfully reflected the sense of the discussion. My staff in the Economic Secretariat were absolutely brilliant at producing cogent draft minutes at remarkable speed, and I never ceased to appreciate and admire their professional skill. We prided ourselves on getting the minutes out very quickly. Departments were desperate to know precisely what had been decided and what action they had to take. Once the minutes had been submitted to and approved by No. 10 (or by the chairman of the committee concerned, if other than the prime minister) they were very rarely open to amendment. If this had been allowed, except for any egregious factual errors, there would have been no limit to attempts to doctor the record. I was occasionally sounded out by a minister or senior official on the possibility of an amendment, but had little compunction in refusing, secure in the knowledge that the prime minister would have backed the Cabinet Office if the matter had been taken further.

Cabinet committees By the mid-1980s there were no fewer than an incredible 160 Cabinet committees and subcommittees, ranging from the major ones chaired by the prime minister, such as E(A), or by another senior minister such as the Lord President, Lord Whitelaw, to assorted subcommittees and ad hoc groups, convened to deal with a specific or even one-off subject. Many of the latter were prefixed with the title ‘MISC’, such as MISC 62, the so-called Star Chamber, set up in the autumn to resolve outstanding public-expenditure disputes, to which I will return later. Since the Economic Secretariat had to service a large number of these committees, few areas of government policy other than foreign affairs and defence failed to come our way. Even on defence we were involved in the industrial aspects of defence technology and procurement, such as shipbuilding. I accordingly found myself attending ministerial committees on education, teachers’ pay, science and technology, telecommunications, shipbuilding, environmental protection, urban and inner-cities policy, and housing and local-government finance.

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Many of them were shadowed by committees at official level, which either I or Anthony Langdon or John Wiggins chaired. Some of these produced reports for the prime minister or other ministerial consideration. A typical example is a committee I chaired in 1986 to review the Barnett Formula for allocating public expenditure to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. I submitted the report to the prime minister with recommendations for possible change. My understanding was that she was looking for respectable arguments to justify reducing the bias in the formula in favour of Scotland, but in the event no action was taken on it. Many years later, in 2012, I was surprised to be summoned by a House of Lords subcommittee to be questioned about this report, which had largely passed out of my memory. I did my best but was a little aggrieved to be taken to task by some members of the subcommittee for the fact that no follow-up action had been taken on the report. I was, however, pleased to find my former Treasury boss, Nigel, now Lord, Lawson coming to my aid and pointing out that follow-up action was a matter for ministers, not for officials.

The poll tax Local-government finance, and more specifically the community charge, or ‘poll tax’, as it popularly became to be known, was one of the most difficult and contentious issues that we had to handle. It was initially considered in the committee concerned with local government finance, E(LF), which was normally chaired by the prime minister. The concept of the charge had a long gestation in which William Waldegrave, then a junior minister at the Department of Environment, and a task force of civil servants and outsiders led by Lord Rothschild, played a major part – indeed, in his memoir, A Different Kind of Weather, Waldegrave modestly heads the chapter on it ‘All My Own Work’ – a surprising admission given the subsequent history of the tax. The detailed story of the handling of it is told elsewhere, not least in the second volume of Charles Moore’s official biography of Margaret Thatcher. I will confine myself briefly to our role in the saga. Although we had to provide the briefing for Cabinet and E(LF), it was not for us as officials to offer political judgements on the consequences of introducing the proposed new charge to replace the rates, but

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looking back it is fair to say that many of us felt considerable unease from the start. The earlier proposals to introduce it first on a trial basis in Scotland – much resented by the Scots – were processed in committee by the Lord President, Lord Whitelaw, and I was never confident that either he or the committee fully grasped the implications of what they were unleashing. My senior colleagues and I continued to feel anxious and I felt that we should discreetly express our concern to the prime minister. As Charles Moore quoted, in a brief to the prime minister of 8 November 1985 I accordingly wrote: There is a fundamental problem that if local accountability is to be effective the consequences of excessive spending must be painful for the electorate. Moreover, if the tax base is to be expanded, some people will have to pay who have not done so before. The local charge will therefore almost by definition have to be unpopular, at least in high-spending areas.* Perhaps I should have phrased the brief more strongly? This cautiously worded warning clearly fell on deaf ears. Although several senior ministers, including the chancellor, Nigel Lawson, Peter Walker and Messrs Heseltine and Hurd were opposed, a significant majority of the Cabinet, including Lord Whitelaw and the responsible minister, Kenneth Baker (secretary of state for the environment), together with political advisers such as Oliver Letwin, who later became a minister under David Cameron, were in favour. Accordingly, while accepting that ‘there would be a substantial educational job to do’ since ‘the new community charge was unlikely to have any friends’, at their meeting on 9 January 1986 the Cabinet approved the publication of a consultative Green Paper setting out the poll tax proposals. Summing up the Cabinet discussion, the prime minister said that the proposals in the Green Paper ‘despite all the acknowledged difficulties […] represented the only acceptable way forward that had been identified out of the present unsustainable situation’ – famous last words on the issue that played a major part in her subsequent downfall. This was one – perhaps the most important – occasion when Mrs Thatcher’s determination to press ahead unwisely overruled the prescience of those who could foresee disaster. * Quoted in Charles Moore, Margaret Thatcher: The Authorised Biography, vol. 2 (London: Allen Lane, 2015), p. 368.

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The Westland helicopter affair Of the other issues we dealt with in 1985 the one that involved the highest drama and also nearly brought down the government was the bizarre Westland helicopter crisis. What should have been a minor and resolvable industrial squabble between departments over a relatively small helicopter company in Somerset cost the jobs of two senior Cabinet ministers and nearly brought Margaret Thatcher down with them. The background can be stated briefly. Westland, Britain’s only helicopter manufacturer, was in deep financial difficulty and required a radical financial reconstruction. There were two possible solutions under consideration. The first was a tie-up with United Technologies and Fiat, involving the American helicopter company Sikorsky. The second was the formation, as recommended by the National Armaments Directors (NADs) of the UK, France, Germany and Italy, of a European consortium which, possibly with a contribution from British Aerospace, would take a minority shareholding in Westland. The sponsor department, the DTI, under its secretary of state, Leon Brittan, shared the view of the prime minister that Westland should be left entirely to make its own decision in the interests of its employees and shareholders. The secretary of state for defence, Michael Heseltine, more pro-European and eager to promote further cooperation with his European opposite numbers, and concerned that the Sikorsky bid was a cover for selling the American Black Hawk attack helicopter to Britain, favoured the second option. In reality, however, the industrial and other arguments were subordinate and largely irrelevant. The issue really turned on the deep animosity between the prime minister and Michael Heseltine. Each was determined to defeat the other. In his autobiography, Life in the Jungle, Heseltine described it as ‘the most powerful storm of my political life’.* The issue came to a head at the end of 1985. Westland were due to publish their accounts by 19 December and, as rumours spread – some doubtless instigated both by No. 10 and the two leading government departments – their share value was coming under severe pressure. A very early decision was needed. Several ad hoc meetings were held by the prime minister, mainly with *

Michael Heseltine, Life in the Jungle (London: Hodder, 2000), p. 293.

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small groups of ministers whom she thought favourable to her side of the argument, but the first full formal discussion was held at No. 10 at 4.30 p.m. on 9 December at a meeting of E(A), under the prime minister’s chairmanship. I attended the meeting with Robert Armstrong. It was an unusual meeting in that No. 10 had invited both Sir John Cuckney, the chairman of Westland, whom I had got to know over a decade previously in the Crown Agents crisis, and his deputy chairman, Sir John Treacher, to attend after the initial statements and discussion had taken place. It was also the most unpleasant and rancorous meeting of the committee I had ever attended, and I felt very uncomfortable. Both secretaries of state presented their cases on predictable lines. Leon Brittan favoured the Fiat/Sikorsky deal, arguing that the European consortium proposal could not possibly be ready before the deadline that Westland had to meet for publishing their accounts, and that in any case any British Aerospace involvement could cause unacceptable complications for the government. Moreover, Westland were themselves opposed to it. Michael Heseltine, who was not actually a member of E(A) but had been invited to attend because of his obvious departmental interest, rejected the Sikorsky deal, arguing that it would be a back-door way of selling the Black Hawk helicopter in Britain, which his ministry had already rejected, and that the right course was to go for the European consortium. When Cuckney joined the meeting he argued strongly for the Fiat/Sikorsky option as the only one on the table that could meet the increasingly urgent 19 December deadline. After Cuckney and Treacher had left, tempers began to get frayed and the discussion became quite fractious. It also became clear that Heseltine had some support. In summing up, the prime minister, somewhat frustrated and with obvious reluctance, had to accept that a number of ministers would prefer the European alternative provided it could be developed in a form and timescale that Westland would find acceptable. The secretaries of state for defence and trade and industry were therefore asked urgently to explore the possibility of developing a European option that Westland would prefer; but if that was not in place by 4 p.m. on Friday, 13 December the government would make it clear that they would not be bound by the NADs’ recommendation. The terms of the prime minister’s summing up were crucial to Heseltine’s subsequent behaviour. According to him in his autobiography, she concluded

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with the words: ‘Very well. We shall meet at three o’clock on Friday, after the stock exchange has closed, to consider the matter further.’* The fact that this commitment was not honoured and no such meeting was held, and furthermore that Westland was not on the agenda or discussed at the next Cabinet on 12 December, was according to Heseltine one of the fundamental grievances that led to his subsequent resignation. As he put it in a letter to the Observer soon after his resignation, there was ‘a breakdown of constitutional government I could not live with. There was, therefore, no option for me but to resign.’ My own recollection of the prime minister’s summing up is, however, different from Mr Heseltine’s. It is significant that there is no trace of the prime minister’s alleged commitment to another meeting at 3 p.m. on Friday in the minutes of the meeting. It is inconceivable that if the prime minister had given such a specific commitment it would not have appeared in the conclusions of the minutes. My firm recollection is that the prime minister said no more than that it might be necessary to hold another meeting at the end of the week. She did not give a commitment. However, on leaving the meeting, and as a prescient civil servant, when I returned to my office I instructed the Cabinet Office Committee Section to do a ‘ring-round’ to warn ministers’ private offices of the possibility of a meeting on Friday so as to ensure that their ministers could be available if required. This was purely a contingency measure on my own initiative, not a definite arrangement, and I did it because many ministers normally left London early for their constituencies on a Friday and without such contingency notice in advance it might prove difficult to convene a quorum if in the event a meeting was called. In his autobiography, Michael Heseltine asserts that the argument that officials were acting simply on a contingency basis ‘cannot stand close examination’ and questions the basis on which civil servants ‘would have begun such a round-robin of telephone calls’.† The distinction is a very fine one but I believe he is mistaken, and I note that Charles Moore also took my view, commenting that ‘Mrs Thatcher believed that a meeting had merely been provided for if the circumstances surrounding the European bid had changed sufficiently to warrant a further discussion’.‡ Her * Heseltine, Life in the Jungle, pp. 299–300. † Ibid., p. 300. ‡ Moore, Margaret Thatcher, vol. 2, p. 457.

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belief was correct. Although it was not at all unreasonable for Mr Heseltine to expect a follow-up meeting, especially as he had won a good deal of support at E(A) for a European solution if it proved feasible and acceptable to Westland, in my recollection the facts are as I have described them. Whatever else the prime minister may have done in the struggle with him, I do not believe she was guilty on this very specific charge. In the event I received a telephone call from the prime minister’s private secretary, David Norgrove, another former Treasury colleague, the next day to say that she had heard about the ring-round and wanted it called off (in effect cancelling a meeting that was never arranged). My initiative had clearly not been welcome at No. 10. I duly obeyed instructions but remained very concerned about the highly charged situation following the E(A) meeting. I therefore went to see the Lord President, Lord Whitelaw, who had unfortunately been absent from the meeting. I described to him how unpleasant it had been, what a difficult position the prime minister was getting into, and urged him to do anything he could to intervene and calm things down. I told him that I had much regretted his absence from the 9 December meeting. I believed that although he generally had little time for Heseltine – he is once said to have distrusted him as ‘the sort of man who combs his hair in public’ – if he had been there he would have found some way of mediating and moving towards a compromise solution. In his autobiography, The Whitelaw Memoirs, Lord Whitelaw, who believed, with the prime minister, that Westland should be left to take its own decision, wrote that ‘for once in my life I was in no way a conciliator’ and later that ‘Since then I have blamed myself for not helping the prime minister more by stressing the vital doctrine of Cabinet collective responsibility’.* I can only echo that sentiment. Despite the prime minister’s injunction to refrain from public comment, behind the scenes the lobbying on both sides continued apace, with the prime minister’s press secretary, Bernard Ingham, very active at No. 10. On 13 December the Westland board approved the Sikorsky deal and formally rejected the European consortium proposals. This effectively closed the book on the whole affair, putting an end to any hope of a European consortium. At *

William Whitelaw, The Whitelaw Memoirs (London: Aurum, 1989), p. 255.

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the last Cabinet before Christmas on 19 December there was little discussion of the substance of the alternative proposals but agreement that Westland should continue to be left to make its own decision in the best interests of the company, and that ministers should not lobby for either option – a decision unfortunately honoured only in the breach. The crunch came in the new year at the Cabinet meeting of 9 January 1986 for which I again supplied the prime minister’s briefing. The prime minister opened the discussion by inviting the Cabinet to endorse the 19 December conclusions and to refrain from any further public comment. The government’s credibility was under serious threat and collective responsibility must be maintained. Both Leon Brittan and Michael Heseltine accepted that the outcome was for Westland to decide, although Heseltine obviously still hoped that the European consortium would remain on the table, particularly if Westland did not get a 75 per cent majority in support of the Fiat/Sikorsky deal at a forthcoming shareholders’ meeting. As the discussion progressed I really began to think that some form of reasonably amicable agreement among ministers might be reached. Indeed, I even in anticipation began to draft tentative conclusions for the minutes to that effect. The prime minister then unexpectedly dropped a bombshell. In summing up, after repeating her injunction to colleagues to refrain from any further intervention or public comment, she insisted that, during this period of sensitive negotiations, all future answers by ministers to questions on Westland should be cleared through the Cabinet Office. I was dismayed. It meant more, and very sensitive, work for my already hard-pressed Economic Secretariat. The proposal had certainly not been in my brief. Papers from No. 10 that have subsequently been made available suggest that the proposal was put to her by Charles (later Lord) Powell, the influential foreign-affairs private secretary seconded from the FCO, who was also, going well beyond his proper role as a civil servant, said to be urging her to sack Michael Heseltine. The proposal seemed, however, to command general assent round the Cabinet table, but Mr Heseltine protested. He was ready to clear any new statements, but he was not prepared to seek clearance for statements he had already made. This could create a very difficult situation, particularly if he could not instantly confirm statements he had already made in relation to the European consortium. A further discussion ensued, in which the majority

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of the Cabinet again supported the prime minister’s proposal, at least until after the forthcoming Westland shareholders’ meeting. Fortified by this, the prime minister, summing up for a second time, repeated her proposal, which she insisted was essential for maintaining collective responsibility, and also asked the Cabinet Office to prepare a fact sheet which could be drawn on to answer questions. At this point Mr Heseltine protested that there had been no collective responsibility in the discussion of this matter; there had been a breakdown in the propriety of Cabinet discussions; and he could not accept the prime minister’s decision and ‘must therefore leave this Cabinet’. Whereupon he closed and gathered up his Cabinet folder, left the table and walked out of the Cabinet room. The Cabinet minutes record simply that ‘the Secretary of Defence withdrew from the meeting at that point’. The form of words I have quoted above as Heseltine’s valediction are those that appear in the Cabinet minutes. My recollection is that the actual words he used were ‘I can no longer remain in this Cabinet’. But there is little difference, and either version has a certain ambiguity. We were not sure whether it meant that he had actually resigned from the government, or simply left that meeting, although the former seemed more likely. After very quickly and coolly running through various other items on the agenda the prime minister adjourned the Cabinet, asking ministers to wait in the anteroom over a cup of coffee while she conferred with a few chosen colleagues. It was only then that we learned that he had resigned, when the policeman on duty outside No. 10 came in and told us that Mr Heseltine had informed waiting reporters in Downing Street that he had left the government. He had then walked back across Whitehall to the Ministry of Defence to arrange a proper press conference. The prime minister then summoned everyone back into the Cabinet room, and announced that she had asked George Younger, the secretary of state for Scotland, to take over as defence secretary, and Malcolm Rifkind to replace him as Scottish secretary. She had also not forgotten to put on record that the Cabinet ‘took note, with extreme regret, of the decision by the secretary of state for defence to leave the Cabinet’! It was an extraordinary morning, tragic in some ways, but with elements of comedy. Mr Heseltine’s walkout probably ended his chances of succeeding Mrs Thatcher as prime minister. As his autobiography again makes clear, he

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clearly thought that his resignation had been set up by the prime minister, and this is not implausible given the manoeuvring that had been taking place in the background, particularly at No. 10. I was, however, taken by surprise at his action in Cabinet, just when I was beginning to draft compromise minute conclusions. But the animosity between him and the prime minister was such that, whether on this or another issue, their paths were bound to part at some stage. Soon after Cabinet I also learned of an element of comedy in the proceedings. As I have previously described, heads of secretariat sat at the end of the Cabinet table nearest the door to take notes when their item on the agenda was being discussed. This meant a quick exit when their subject was over in order to allow the deputy secretary responsible for the next item to come in and take their place. The item after mine was European affairs, and David (later Lord) Williamson, the head of the European Secretariat, and a later secretary general of the European Commission, was waiting outside the double Cabinet-room doors to come in and replace me. As soon as he heard the doors begin to open, and assuming it was me on my way out, he rushed in and, being much shorter than Michael Heseltine, nearly butted him in the stomach. Mr Heseltine must have regarded this as the final insult on a very bad day at the office. The events that followed the Heseltine resignation are well documented elsewhere, not least in Charles Moore’s biography. We did not become as closely involved in them in the Economic Secretariat again. There were plenty of other issues to occupy us. The main activity took place between No. 10, Heseltine, Leon Brittan’s office and the Law Officers. In a sense Heseltine had his revenge in that the injudicious leaking, against every government convention, of the advice of the solicitor general, Patrick Mayhew, by Leon Brittan’s own press secretary, Colette Bowe, led to Leon’s resignation. Mayhew, although an old friend of Michael Heseltine, had been induced to write a letter to him advising him to correct a letter on the dispute which he had sent to David Horne of Lloyds Merchant Bank, who were advising the European consortium, because ‘it contained a material inaccuracy’. Leon, to whom the letter had been copied, somewhat unluckily took the rap for the leak, which had come from his own press secretary, and had to resign. But if he had not resigned, both the attorney and solicitor general, who were furious at the leak, might have felt obliged

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to do so. No. 10, notably Messrs Ingham and Powell, were obviously deeply implicated in all this and, although she attempted to divert pressure and kick the matter into the long grass by asking Sir Robert Armstrong to carry out a formal leak inquiry, which carefully avoided pinning direct blame on anyone, the prime minister herself came under huge pressure and at one stage feared for her own job. Indeed, if the full truth had come out about the circumstances of No. 10’s complicity in the leak she might have lost it. In the end, as so often, other events took over and she survived, partly helped by an ineffective performance in the House of Commons by the leader of the Opposition, Neil Kinnock, in the debate on the issue on 27 January. But she was severely shaken. Indeed, The Times of 22 March claimed that she said that she was concerned that she might not be prime minister at the end of that day. We did not have to cope with such a dramatic set of circumstances again, but two other particular preoccupations stick out in my memory. The first was the Chernobyl disaster in April 1986, and the second the organising and servicing of MISC 62, the so-called Star Chamber, to resolve outstanding public-expenditure disputes.

Chernobyl disaster My involvement stemmed from my chairmanship of the official-level Civil Contingencies Unit (CCU), a standing unit initially set up to deal with emergencies such as the disruption of supplies and services during industrial disputes like the miners’ and oil-tanker drivers’ strikes. The prime minister had relied heavily on it under my predecessor, Peter Gregson, in taking on Arthur Scargill and the miners. It was run by a retired soldier, Brigadier Tony Budd, who coped with the day-to-day business and only involved me when he needed my support or believed a meeting of the unit under my chairmanship with departments was necessary. Although the Whitehall Emergencies Book was kept in my cupboard I expected only to be involved personally in the case of serious industrial and related developments, particularly if there was any whiff of a threat to the build-up of coal stocks at power stations. In the event the only major call on me was occasioned by the Chernobyl disaster.

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On 26 April 1986 there was a fire and explosion at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in the Ukraine which released a large quantity of radioactive particles over much of the USSR and Europe. In terms of cost and casualties it is still regarded as the worst nuclear disaster ever to have taken place, even worse than the Fukushima Daiichi disaster in Japan in 2012. It is estimated that 400 times more radioactive material was released from Chernobyl than from the first atom bomb at Hiroshima. The first signs of radioactivity were picked up in Sweden on 28 April, where it was initially thought they were from a leak from the Swedish plant at Forsmark, nearly 700 miles from Chernobyl. No word of the disaster had so far been announced by the Soviet authorities. It soon became clear, however, that virtually the whole of Europe had been contaminated to varying degrees, depending on weather and atmospheric conditions. I fear we reacted very slowly. It was not clear whether or to what extent the UK would be affected. Moreover, departments were shy, to say the least, about accepting any responsibility or taking the lead. Should it be the Ministry of Agriculture, or Defence, or Energy or the FCO or the Home Office? None of the officials involved wished to land their own secretary of state with the task of standing up and answering difficult questions on the issue in the House of Commons. Evidence began to accumulate, however, that radioactive pollution was affecting hill-farming areas in parts of Scotland, Wales and northern England, and it was imperative that something should be done to prevent contaminated meat entering the human food chain. I chaired daily CCU meetings for a fortnight to review the situation, keep ministers informed and initiate any necessary precautionary action. In the event, restrictions were imposed on over 4 million sheep across nearly 1,000 farms, some of which were not finally removed until 2012. But it still proved difficult to pin responsibility on a lead department and I regretted not getting backing for a decision on this from No. 10 at a much earlier stage. On this occasion I believe that the Cabinet Office fell short of what its coordinating role required and with hindsight I regret that I did not grasp the situation more quickly. I do not regard this episode as my proudest moment in the Economic Secretariat.

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MISC 62: Star Chamber The annual public-expenditure round between the Treasury and spending departments reached its climax each autumn. The Treasury’s objective was to validate the overall spending total agreed by Cabinet for the next three or four years and to constrain individual departments’ allocations within it. From June onwards intensive discussions took place between Treasury and departmental officials, followed by bilateral negotiations on unresolved issues between the CST and the secretaries of state concerned. The outcome was reported to the Cabinet, but since some departmental bids still exceeded the Treasury targets many knotty disputes still remained to be settled. The Star Chamber, or more formally MISC 62, was established to try to force settlements on ministers who were still holding out against the Treasury. The Economic Secretariat was responsible for organising and servicing it. Among other things this entailed arranging meetings, briefing the chairman and issuing minutes almost before the meetings were over. During my time in the Cabinet Office the chairman of the committee was the Lord President, Lord Whitelaw. It normally comprised the CST and a small group of senior ministers who had either settled their programmes with the Treasury, and therefore had no immediate axe to grind (except to ensure that other colleagues who had not settled did not benefit at their expense), or no significant departmental responsibility, such as the Lord Privy Seal or the paymaster general. Meetings were held in the Cabinet Office and my first Star Chamber took place at the end of September and in early October 1985. There were still a number of very difficult unresolved issues, relating to such programmes as housing, student support and social security (plus ça change?), and the prime minister made it clear when Lord Whitelaw and I went to see her on 30 September that she wanted the Star Chamber to be as tough as possible, and certainly tougher than the Treasury had been in the preceding bilateral negotiations conducted by the CST, John MacGregor. Her hope was that everything would be resolved before public spending came back to Cabinet again. We also discussed the composition of the committee and, in addition to the CST, settled on Leon Brittan (secretary of state for trade and industry and a former CST), Norman Tebbit (chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster),

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Nicholas Edwards (secretary of state for Wales) and John Biffen (Lord Privy Seal and Leader of the House), with the chief whip, John Wakeham, on call (to apply a bit of discipline?) for difficult cases. The Star Chamber process was a nightmare. With our small team ( John Wiggins, the two principals and myself) we arranged over 20 meetings within a fortnight. For each meeting a chairman’s brief had to be produced and minutes prepared and circulated. Since we spent much of the day in the actual meetings this was not easy. In addition, I accompanied Lord Whitelaw to a number of meetings with the prime minister to report on progress, or lack of it, and seek her guidance where we needed it. She invariably took the toughest option and on one occasion despatched me to urge a recalcitrant secretary of state to settle and to indicate to him that if he persevered with his veiled threat to resign if he did not get his way she would be happy to let him go. I do not recollect all the details, but we were eventually able to report to Cabinet after the party conference an outcome that, with a bit of fiddling of the contingency reserve, and one or two other ‘magic mirror’ tricks with the numbers, was reasonably acceptable to the Treasury and did not leave the prime minister too much to resolve. My team had worked incredibly hard and done marvellously well. We set up another Star Chamber in the autumn of 1986. Although there were large initial bids over the Treasury’s target figures (something like £5 billion in 1987–8 and 1988–9, and £7 billion in 1989–90) and particular problems over defence, social-security and local-authority spending, it proved to be less fraught than the previous year and we, of course, were more experienced in handling it. The Treasury had prepared the way well and I went to several early briefing meetings with the second permanent secretary in charge of public spending, Robin Butler, who was a very experienced Treasury public-expenditure man and later became Cabinet secretary. This made me au fait with the Treasury’s likely tactics. But the man who carried the Star Chamber and ultimately got the results was the chairman, Lord Whitelaw, for whom we developed great respect and affection. I believe he would have been the first to admit that he did not grasp all the details – he scarcely in any case had time to read much of the briefing – but his genial authority, sometimes bluster, combined with a great sense of humour and a willingness to pile on the pressure when it was

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needed, usually led us to at least an acceptable compromise. He often engaged in a sort of double bluff at meetings, claiming at the start that he found the subject very difficult to understand, whereupon the assembled committee thought: ‘That’s Willie dissembling again; he is really on top of it. We’d better be careful,’ whereas the truth was that he really didn’t understand it! He was always enormously grateful for a few scribbled notes at the end of a meeting to help him with the conclusions. We much enjoyed working for him, and I remain convinced that his withdrawal from government after a stroke in December 1987 was a major contributory factor to Margaret Thatcher’s eventual fall. They were chalk and cheese – he the typical ex-Guards officer representative of the country landowner class, and she the high-achieving grocer’s daughter from Grantham who took over a male-dominated party that was not used to deferring to women – but they were a good combination and he had a restraining influence on her. On several occasions I heard him caution her against something, on the grounds that it would not be well received in the party or the country, and be instantly rebuffed, only for her to pull back at least to some extent the following day. It is a pity he was on the ‘wrong’ side on the poll tax issue. Once he had gone there was no one of equivalent authority to restrain her or to prevent growing ruptures in her relationships with powerful ministers who had once been among her most devoted supporters, such as Geoffrey Howe, Nigel Lawson and even Norman Tebbit. After she had removed him from the FCO, Geoffrey Howe became Lord President and deputy prime minister – in name but not in practice – but they remained fundamentally at odds on European issues and he could never have anything like the same influence on her as Lord Whitelaw. The complete collapse of that relationship, culminating in his famous resignation speech in November 1990 (still said unkindly by some to have been written by his wife, Elspeth), described by The Economist as ‘the most dramatic such occasion in postwar history’, finally sealed her end. The relationship between them was not as toxic as that which developed later between Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, but Geoffrey Howe was severely provoked, even humiliated at times, and the fact that a man of such normally mild and understated manner could turn on her as he did enormously added to the effectiveness of his final rebellion. His

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speech was the proximate cause of her downfall, although it had been progressively weakened by such issues as Westland, the poll tax, disagreements over Europe and the steady alienation of once-loyal colleagues. She should have stood down in a dignified and planned way after her last election victory.

An unpleasant surprise My family suffered again from my busy job. Commuting from Epsom, including walking to the station and between Waterloo station and Whitehall, took between one and a quarter and one and a half hours on a good day, and longer if there was industrial trouble or bad weather, like the wrong sort of snow on the line. I usually got home very late, and when the children were younger they were often already in bed and I missed them. In April 1986, however, I obtained a week’s leave and went with Diana to Italy for the week before Easter. We hired a car and drove from Pisa via San Gimignano to Florence. After such a hectic time I had vowed not to read any newspapers or other news bulletins while we were away. I wanted a complete break and of course we did not have mobile phones in those days, so that, as we had no prearranged itinerary, I was effectively out of contact for the week. After finding a small hotel, the Villa Bonelli, in Fiesole and parking the car there, we took a bus down into Florence and found a seat in an open-air cafe in the Piazza del Duomo. While we were sitting enjoying a drink my eye caught a headline on the front page of a copy of The Times of the previous day (16 April) protruding from a rack on a nearby newspaper vendor’s stall. The headline read ‘Letter bombs put Thatcher aides on alert’. I said to Diana that I must just break my news-embargo resolution to find out who the aides were – I would probably know them. When I went over and pulled the paper out of the rack I saw that one of the bombs had arrived at the home of Brian Unwin, head of the Economic Secretariat in the Cabinet Office. Other papers carried similar stories, and one had a picture of our Epsom house. It was quite a shock. I quickly found a telephone in a nearby bar and, buying and borrowing gettoni, managed to contact the British embassy in Rome, who had been trying to locate me. They said they would arrange for the Cabinet Office to telephone

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me later in the afternoon at our Fiesole hotel. We were particularly alarmed as The Times article contained no follow-up details and we had left our eldest son, Michael, who was revising for his finals, alone with his girlfriend in charge of our house in our absence (both our other sons were away, in Norway and Turkey respectively). We returned quickly to the hotel and were given the story by the call from London. It appeared that a parcel had been delivered to our house and was rubber-stamped in one corner with the inscription ‘University of Ulster Students Union’. To his everlasting credit Mike, whom with his brothers I had warned never to open anything with an Irish postmark, had decided – after some hesitation – to telephone the local police and on their advice had placed the package under a bucket at the end of the garden. The police constable who arrived picked it up and, with Mike looking over his shoulder, started gingerly to open one end of the package. Mike could just see that it contained a book on military uniforms, and assumed it was for his younger brother, Chris, who was keen on them. The constable, however, saw some wires and immediately put the package down and telephoned for backup. Events then moved very quickly. Scotland Yard and the anti-terrorist squad arrived, sealed off the house and were able to defuse the bomb without the need for a controlled explosion. It was a high-explosive one which would have severely injured and possibly killed anyone who withdrew the book from the package, as a result of the wires engaging and completing the detonator circuit. Mike was then subjected to an uncomfortably prolonged interrogation by the anti-terrorist experts, who, particularly in view of the fact that his girlfriend had an Irish background, presumably wanted to ‘eliminate him from their enquiries’. Three or four other similar bombs were also delivered, including one to my deputy, John Wiggins, and one to the prime minister’s press secretary, Bernard Ingham. The one to our house was, however, the first to be discovered, and Mike’s prompt and resourceful action in calling the police could well have averted a tragedy as the incident hit the lunchtime radio and television news, thus helping to alert the other recipients to what was happening. I shuddered to think what might have happened if Mike had not been at home and, on finding a large pile of post when we returned, Diana or I had opened the package quickly without proper inspection. In the event no harm was done, but Diana

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was affected by a late reaction while we were still in Italy and was quite unwell for the next couple of days. On return to London I was suitably debriefed by the security service and, shutting the stable door too late, I removed my home address from Who’s Who, from which the IRA, who admitted responsibility, had undoubtedly obtained it. Since I was, if only temporarily, on the IRA hit list, I subsequently took careful security precautions for any future official visits to Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic and we decided it would not be wise to go on holiday there for some years. As an amusing tailpiece a report about the incident appeared in our local newspaper in which a neighbour who had recently bought a house nearby complained that they would not have moved there if they had known it ‘was that sort of district.’

Another move After these two exciting and arduous years at the centre of government, working closely with the most interesting and world-renowned British prime minister since Churchill, I was asked in May 1987, to my great surprise, to take over later in the year as chairman of the board of HM Customs and Excise, on promotion to full permanent secretary. I would leave with many regrets – customs was a great job but it would take me out of the mainstream – but I began to prepare for my new role and to wind up in the Cabinet Office and brief my successor, Richard Wilson, who was himself later to succeed Robin Butler as Cabinet secretary. I left Richard a long memorandum about my job, of which I still have a copy. One of the most practical bits of advice was in the final paragraph. It read: It is worth becoming a member of the Cabinet Office Mess, if you are not already. There is a modest subscription but at times it is an invaluable place to pick brains or hand out debriefing on meetings. Sometimes you can forget what you are eating.

F OU RTE EN

Collecting Tax and Protecting Our Borders HM Customs and Excise (1987–93)

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he offer of the job of chairman of HM Customs and Excise was almost as unexpected as being invited in 1981 to take charge of government IT policy in the Cabinet Office. I had had a sneaking hope that if I did not disgrace myself as head of the Cabinet Office Economic Secretariat I might get an uplift either back to the Treasury as a second permanent secretary or become permanent secretary of another government department. The possibility of taking over at customs had never entered my head. However, I knew customs well from my Treasury days dealing with the Budget and fiscal policy and had seen several previous chairmen in action at Budget meetings with the chancellor of the exchequer. But it was a complete

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surprise to become head of an executive department of nearly 30,000 staff, collecting 40 per cent of government revenue and patrolling the nation’s borders. This was worlds away from the policy posts with a small supporting staff that I had previously held.

Taking up the job It did not take me long, however, to become enthusiastic about the post. The more I discovered about customs, the more eager I was to take it on. It was a department with a long and romantic past, probably the oldest in government, which appealed to my sense of history. There had been a customs post in London on the north bank of the Thames since Roman times; the first centralised English custom service had its origins in the Winchester Assize of Customs of 1203; and in the mid-fourteenth century Geoffrey Chaucer served as collector of customs in the port of London. In the eighteenth century Adam Smith was commissioner of customs in Edinburgh; Thomas Paine also served in the ranks until he was kicked out for his subversive views and went off to stoke up the American and French revolutions; and Robbie Burns had been a hard-working excise officer in Scotland (his annual report, still in the archives of the Greenock Customs House, described him as ‘The poet, does pretty well’!). Although I would be away from the centre of government and would miss many of my close friends there, I would have considerable autonomy. It had been exciting working with the prime minister and Cabinet ministers, but I was ready to be my own boss. I would still be responsible to the chancellor of the exchequer, but, like the chairman of Inland Revenue, the principal customs legislation was vested in the chairman and commissioners of the board of HM Customs and not in ministers. Indeed, during the next few years I had on several occasions to remind ministers not to interfere. My primary job would be managerial, but I would also be involved in taxation policy and in the new issues arising from our membership of the EC (later the EU). There would also be plenty of opportunity for travel, both within the UK and internationally. I would even have a small fleet of seagoing revenue cutters, which, when flying

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the chairman’s pennant, still took formal precedence over the Royal Navy in domestic territorial waters under an ordinance of Charles II (or so I was told). Attendance at the Cabinet secretary’s Wednesday-morning meetings of permanent secretaries would also keep me in touch with what was going on in Whitehall. In the interval before taking up my new job I threw myself into all this. I visited the new department, met future senior colleagues, sent an enthusiastic message to the staff through the excellent departmental newspaper, Portcullis, and prepared to make the move. Once again, however, a last-minute intervention created another ‘might have been’ situation. The chancellor, Nigel Lawson, called me over to No. 11, and asked me to forget about customs and return to the Treasury as deputy permanent secretary, responsible for public expenditure, in effect taking over from Robin Butler, who was to become Cabinet secretary. He wanted someone he could rely on to maintain control over public spending. This was normally a second permanent secretary post, but since I had been offered the chairmanship of HM Customs (a Grade 1 post) I would occupy it as a full permanent secretary. The offer was very flattering. I liked Nigel Lawson and had got on with him very well in the past. Returning to the Treasury might also present a slender chance, faute de mieux, of succeeding the present permanent secretary, Sir Peter Middleton, when he retired, although I did not regard myself as intellectually up to that job, which I had always considered the very summit of the civil service. Against that I had talked myself into the customs job and thought it would be insulting to the staff of the department to pull out when I had publicly committed myself so enthusiastically to them. Moreover, the prospect of independence from ministers, real management experience, regular travel both within and outside the UK, and frankly more fun than screwing down public expenditure from inside Great George Street really now appealed to me. I did not want to get on to the wrong footing with Nigel Lawson, who, as chancellor, would still be my boss, but I returned to No. 11 to tell him that I would prefer to stick to becoming a customs officer. He respected my decision and I believe we maintained a good relationship for the rest of his period as chancellor.

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The department My first task was to get to know the department thoroughly. For that purpose I not only visited every division and unit in our headquarters offices in London and in Southend, where the central VAT headquarters was located, but continued the tradition of monthly chairman’s visits to our regional organisations, known as ‘Collections’, throughout the country. This gave staff a chance to meet me, express their views and question me. I went to every part of the UK, including Northern Ireland (where I had to cancel a couple of visits at the last minute because suspected IRA sympathisers had got hold of my programme), and even had the particular pleasure of opening a new VAT office in my home town, Chesterfield. My tours were arranged by the local regional boss, the collector, and consisted of meetings from morning to night with staff in every variety of place and office – VAT offices, excise offices, breweries, distilleries, ports and airports. The collectors – exclusively male when I arrived, but I appointed the first female collector – were in rank equivalent to assistant secretaries in Whitehall, but in authority and stature much more important locally. They had very wide responsibilities – in some areas covering all aspects of the department’s taxation and border-control work – and I had great respect for their expertise and management skills. The task of controlling operations at Heathrow and Gatwick airports, for example, or at Dover port, or in the Belfast collection covering all Northern Ireland, demanded a very high degree of professional competence. The visits were physically exhausting and there was little let-up in the daily programme. However diligent and conscientious you are, there is a limit to the interest and concentration you can maintain in the late afternoon peering over another desk into yet another computer screen. There were, however, more relaxed moments, such as a trip on a customs cutter from Southampton or a demonstration of sniffer dogs at Heathrow searching for drugs, but most of my time was spent meeting staff at their workplace and trying to convince them that my fellow commissioners and I in remote London were intent on promoting their best interests consistent with the constraints imposed by government policy on customs just as much as on every other government department. For the first time, away from Whitehall, I became conscious of the vast gulf

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between the thousands of staff working in their offices throughout the country and the so-called mandarins advising ministers in London. The difference in experience and perception between, say, an excise officer in a distillery in the Highlands, or in a border post in Northern Ireland, or an executive officer in a VAT office in Birmingham, and an under-secretary drafting policy papers in Great George Street, was enormous. The crunch often came at meetings with local union representatives, which were a standard feature of every visit. The refrain was usually the same: complaints about low pay, inadequate staffing and poor morale, coupled with the accusation that, as chairman, I did not speak up on their behalf publicly. I often sympathised with the first two points – particularly when I saw, for example, relatively junior VAT officers moving to private consultancies and doubling their salaries – but I never believed that morale was quite as bad as they made out. But I fear ’twas ever thus. I certainly could not convince them that it was impossible for me, as a fellow civil servant, publicly to criticise government policy on pay or staffing – unless, of course, I resigned afterwards. Nor were they convinced when I assured them that I made strong representations on their behalf to the chancellor of the exchequer privately, including stressing the problems of recruitment and retention and arguing that with more and better remunerated staff in the right places we could collect additional tax revenue far exceeding the cost of those staff. Some meetings with the unions were very fractious and the only time I recall completely defusing the atmosphere was once in Nottingham when my birdwatching on this occasion came to the rescue. In the middle of a tense argument, I spotted a sparrowhawk soaring outside the windows (we were up on the fourth or fifth floor) and stopped the meeting to invite everyone to have a look at this then comparatively rare sight. As they did so a second sparrowhawk joined it and for a few moments we shelved our dispute and enjoyed looking at these two beautiful little raptors. I was told that thereafter in customs it became part of the folklore to spot a sparrowhawk if a meeting with the unions turned nasty. I also felt some kinship with my hero, the Duke of Wellington, who, when asked by Queen Victoria to advise on the problem of sparrows fouling the exhibits inside the great Crystal Palace exhibition dome, is reputed to have replied: ‘Try sparrowhawks, ma’am.’

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Civil service sport Soon after joining HM Customs I was invited to become chairman of the Civil Service Sports Council (CSSC), the national body responsible for promoting and coordinating sporting activities throughout the country. I took this on and remained chairman for five years until I left the department. It fitted in perfectly with my job as I was able to combine visits to local civil service sports clubs with my collection visits. For the most part I followed a well-trodden routine, but I took one important initiative in promoting the establishment of fitness centres in departments throughout the UK, thus enabling staff to take their exercise in the lunchtime or after work on the premises instead of having to join outside, often expensive, fitness clubs. I also initiated an annual cricket match between a customs chairman’s XI and an XI raised by the Cabinet secretary, Robin Butler. We both played in our respective teams and invited a few outside ‘ringers’ to take part. Robin co-opted several of the civil service representative XI and we also persuaded Peter Brooke (later Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville), then secretary of state for Northern Ireland, and Sir Michael Quinlan, permanent secretary at the Ministry of Defence and a national authority on nuclear warfare, to play. Peter and Michael were astonishing cricketing buffs – veritable walking Wisdens. I also co-opted the Pakistani high commissioner. The truth is that I originally approached him to ask him to umpire as a sort of apology for a notorious recent incident in which the England captain, Mike Gatting, had abused a Pakistani umpire, but before I could get this out he said he would be delighted to play. He turned out to be a Cambridge blue who scored 50 and took four wickets in his first match for me. We arranged for as many staff as possible to attend the matches and on the last occasion Robin persuaded the prime minister, John Major, a great cricket fan, to come and watch us. This caused me some embarrassment as, in crouching to take (to my great surprise) a very sharp catch in the slips in the early overs off a fast West Indian ‘guest’ bowler, I split the back of my trousers right down the middle and had to withdraw in front of the prime minister clutching my rear and looking for a replacement pair. I was glad it was John Major and not Margaret Thatcher looking on. She would no doubt have detected some weakness of character on my part.

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Management changes I sought, like all new CEOs, to apply a vigorous duster, if not a stiff new broom to the department. I strengthened the economic section to give greater analytical capacity to match the Treasury’s fiscal-policy division; introduced new corporate and information-systems strategies (with real live computers on desks); devolved greater authority to the regional collections, which became semi-autonomous agencies under the government’s so-called Next Steps initiative; established the first dedicated departmental training college; and promoted more women to senior posts in an attempt to break down the department’s strong male-chauvinist tradition. Valerie Strachan, a career customs official from the fast administrative stream, who had also served for a short time in the Treasury, had already happily been promoted to become one of the two deputy chairmen, but I subsequently appointed two female commissioners (one of them from the Treasury), the first female collectors, and the first senior woman to serve in the Investigation Division (ID) – a 1,000-strong unit of dedicated investigators with an outstanding track record, but a strongly macho reputation and a propensity for regarding themselves as a department of their own. These and other measures seemed fairly radical to me at the time, but whether the labour of the mountains brought forth more than a mouse of a change in the longer term in such a strongly traditional organisation is difficult to judge. The measure that probably most affected the lives of staff was the relocation of some 2,000 of them in 1992 to a grand new building at Queen’s Dock in Liverpool. But I cannot claim much credit (or blame) for this as it was dictated by the then fashionable policy of John Major’s government for shifting civil servants out of London to the provinces. We were all required to make a contribution. I suspect that many of the changes I made would probably have happened in one way or another in any case over time, but I liked to think that when I moved on in 1993 I left the department a little more ‘fit for purpose’ than when I joined it.

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The dreaded Public Accounts Committee (PAC) I was, of course, as accounting officer, frequently and rightly called to account for my stewardship before the Public Accounts Committee (PAC), to be questioned both on the annual departmental report and accounts, for which I was responsible and signed, and from time to time on other subjects such as tax avoidance and evasion. I believe that in some years I appeared before the PAC more often than any other permanent secretary – at least it felt like that. These were extremely stressful occasions and required hours and hours of prior briefing and preparation, especially as I made a point of not having my briefing folder or notes open on the table in front of me. Although any obscure or tiny point of detail could be raised by the committee, for me the main problem was not dealing with factual questions – you could always admit ignorance and undertake to send the committee the answer in writing afterwards – but in coping with politically directed questions, often designed to score a point, make a headline or show up the mandarin in front of the committee. I suppose, like other heads of department, I was fair game, but I felt as if I had one hand tied behind my back and sometimes longed to reply in kind. After one particularly tetchy exchange, during which I had unwisely suggested to the questioner that he might like to rephrase his question, he took me aside in the corridor afterwards and said that he would ‘get me’ next time. But I survived.

Relations with the police A long-standing problem was an intense rivalry between HM Customs, particularly ID, and the police, especially the Metropolitan force. It reminded me somewhat of the relationship between MI5 and MI6, who often seemed more intent on spying on each other than on the Russians. Good healthy competition is no bad thing, but between customs and the police it generated bad feelings which led to the withholding of information so that only one party could claim the headline credit for any spectacular drug seizures or gang busts. In many ways customs had the advantage in that their legislation gave them greater powers of investigation and arrest and it was customs officers who were mainly present

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and in control at vulnerable smuggling locations like ports and airports. This sometimes made them reluctant to let the police in on the act. It was difficult to change this, and I did not want to demotivate my own staff, whose enthusiasm and dedication were outstanding. I therefore sought to establish closer personal relations with the commissioner of the Met, then Peter (later Lord) Imbert, and his senior hierarchy, in the hope that this would send the right signals down the line on both sides. But whether this had much effect, beyond an invitation to me to play in the commissioner’s XI in the annual cricket match against the Hendon Police College, I am not sure. When it came to actual cases, the old rivalries no doubt reasserted themselves. I also tried to change the culture of the ID and bring it more into line with the mainstream of the department by appointing Douglas Tweddle, an excellent assistant secretary hitherto responsible for customs policy at headquarters, as division head (the ‘chief ’). Ironically, when the Scott inquiry came round (more later), Sir Richard Scott criticised this appointment on the grounds that Douglas had no previous investigation experience. But that missed the whole point. Douglas was a very able official in whom I had confidence, and I trusted him to bring a different approach to the division and the relationship with the police. With no experience of administration himself Scott seemed incapable of understanding this.

European affairs The advent of the Single Market in 1993, pushed through by the British European Commissioner, Lord Cockfield, a former Conservative Treasury minister, and enthusiastically endorsed by Margaret Thatcher, who signed the Single European Act, had profound implications for border controls and the role of customs in enforcing them. Although, like Ireland, we did not join the Schengen Agreement, extensive revamping of our control and computer systems were necessary, involving the relocation of over 1,000 staff away from the border. The emphasis shifted from physical controls at point of entry to greater reliance on intelligence-gathering, risk analysis and profiling. I was in favour of joining Schengen, the largest passport-free zone in the world, and

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when I worked later in Luxembourg, I revelled in the ability to travel freely within the European Economic Area (EEA) without undergoing passport formalities, and felt great irritation when I was subjected to them at Heathrow or Gatwick on return. I was also amazed to find that Schengen, although almost ranking in history alongside such great treaties as Paris, Vienna, London and Versailles, was no more than a tiny village on the banks of the River Moselle, containing a few houses and a small chateau where the agreement had been signed. But ministers would not look at joining the agreement and, in view of the current terrorist, asylum-seeker and migration crises, many may feel that their judgement was correct. We did, however, take part in the Schengen negotiations and agreed to participate in a new shared-information system and support the proposal for an external frontier border agency, which now needs to be beefed up substantially. In some respects, Schengen resembles the euro project. Just as monetary union will not work properly without much greater fiscal and political union, so Schengen will not survive unless the EU’s external borders are effectively controlled.

Harmonisation of VAT Particular issues arose on VAT, both on the contentious question of harmonisation of rates, and on the technical matter of how to handle intra-EU crossborder transactions. On the former, Treasury doctrine was strongly against any harmonisation of indirect taxes, partly because of the risk that it could lead us down the slippery slope of doing the same to direct taxes. There was, however, no such threat in the case of excise duties as the rates varied so widely among member states that no harmonisation in the foreseeable future was feasible. We eventually persuaded ministers to agree to a minimum standard VAT rate of 15 per cent and one or two reduced rates not lower than 5 per cent. I recall an uncomfortable moment trying to lobby the prime minister, John Major, on this during the tea interval at the last Butler–Unwin cricket match. It was not the right occasion and he was quite justified in preferring to concentrate on the cricket and enjoy his tea and sandwiches. The technical VAT issue turned on whether we should go along with the ‘origin-based’ VAT system envisaged in

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Brussels, in which goods would be taxed at the rate applying where they were bought, or the ‘destination-based’ system, where tax would be charged at the rate where goods were used. We preferred the latter, partly in order to prevent ‘tax shopping’ – buying in the country with the lowest VAT rate – and partly because we did not trust the ‘clearing’ arrangements proposed for reallocating revenue collected at the point of purchase. We won the day and also led a vigorous campaign for keeping the system as simple as possible and preparing British business for making it work. My main personal contribution was probably getting on side my French opposite number, the director general of customs, Jean Weber, with whom we developed a lasting friendship, but the hard negotiating work was done successfully by Valerie Strachan. It was also not a hindrance that the head of the Directorate General in Brussels dealing with indirect taxation was Peter Wilmott, a former customs commissioner whom I had proposed and sponsored for that job.

International affairs HM Customs had a high reputation for its professionalism and integrity internationally and our services were in constant demand. We seconded many staff as advisers to foreign governments and many too, in former British dependent territories, as interim directors of customs. This was not for old times’ sake but because in most developing countries customs revenue formed a preponderant proportion of total government tax receipts and it was crucial that their systems should be efficient and as immune to corruption as possible. Most IMF support programmes demanded it. This resulted in great camaraderie among customs administrations throughout the world, even in the Soviet bloc, and in a short time I found myself elected president of the Customs Cooperation Council (later renamed the World Customs Council – WCC), the international organisation, based in Brussels, for coordinating customs policies and administrations. I chaired many WCC conferences and in consequence made a great number of new friends and contacts and travelled extensively. This helped to further our policy of negotiating formal memoranda of understanding (MOUs) with other governments on cooperation against drug smuggling.

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English National Opera (ENO) One particular MOU gave me a marvellous opportunity to combine my customs hat with a new unpaid post I had taken on shortly before leaving the Cabinet Office. Largely due to Diana’s influence I had become a regular attender at ENO at the London Coliseum. Following a management review by Price Waterhouse (carried out by a former Treasury colleague and friend, Ian Beesley), I was asked if I would take on the post of honorary board secretary, the job specification for which surprisingly seemed to be defined to suit my qualifications. I jumped at the chance and sought the permission of my then boss, the Cabinet secretary, Robert Armstrong, to do so. Robert could hardly refuse – he was himself Hon. Secretary to the Covent Garden board – and thus began my close involvement with ENO as Hon. Secretary, board member and loyal supporter which has continued until the present day. I doubt if any Manchester United fan has been as partisan in support of that club as I have of ENO. It was particularly exciting in the early years working with the so-called ‘Power House Trio’, of Peter Jonas, Mark Elder and David Pountney. Peter, the managing director, was absolutely dominant and, despite purporting to encourage senior staff to appear at board meetings and talk to their briefs, he generally took over at the start and hardly let them get a word in. The exception was probably the artistic director, David Pountney, a formidable intellectual and innovator, fiercely opposed to surtitles at ENO and committed to singing in English, who was responsible for some of the most successful, if controversial, ENO productions in the 1980s and early 1990s. My strength was that I was not on Peter’s payroll and could speak up freely, particularly when I thought he was going over the top on financial matters. My repeated watchword was that every artistic decision was also a financial one. But we got on very well and Peter was an exceptional leader, and after leaving the ENO went on to many successful years as intendant – the first non-German – of the great Bavarian State Opera in Munich. The board was benignly chaired in a rather broad-brush way by the Queen’s cousin, Lord Harewood, a former director of ENO himself, when Peter would let him get a word in. His vast musical knowledge, experience and contacts were invaluable to ENO, but I always felt

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that, in a somewhat royal way, he found the subject of money and fundraising rather distasteful. Sitting with him at board meetings often reminded me of my experience with Willie Whitelaw – they were both very grateful for a quick note at the end of the discussion suggesting conclusions. A highlight of the board’s year was the annual weekend ‘awaydays’ which we spent very grandly at Harewood House near Leeds.

Visit to the Kremlin In 1990 we negotiated an MOU with the Soviet Union and I was scheduled to sign it with my opposite number (a former KGB general) in Moscow. I knew that ENO were also planning a tour to the Soviet Union, so it seemed sensible to coincide my visit with that if I could. My official visit in June 1990, which took me on to Kiev and Leningrad, was truly memorable. The Soviet Union was, under Gorbachev, in the throes of perestroika and glasnost, and there were visible signs of a relaxation of discipline and tension, although Moscow was darker, grimmer and more bereft of any sign of consumer goods in the dismal shop windows than I had imagined. Nevertheless, I signed the agreement before television cameras and the assembled media in a grand hall in the Kremlin, on the walls of which I had arranged to have displayed a consignment of valuable religious ikons which we had seized at Heathrow in foiling an attempt to smuggle them into the UK. I had had them crated and flown to Moscow and I formally handed them back to the Soviet Union. This ensured a reception and VIP treatment well beyond my status. I had an hour in the Kremlin with the deputy prime minister in charge of trade; was presented with a huge ornamental china samovar (which I took back to my hotel room but which then mysteriously disappeared – I assumed that it was recycled for the next VIP visitor); and was greeted in the street in Moscow by a comrade who embraced me and said he had seen me on television and regarded me as a friend of the Soviet people. My accompanying adviser from customs, Ian Savins, the head of our international division, and I were also given a ceremonial visit to the tomb of Lenin on Red Square. This caused great consternation as Ian was the spitting image of Lenin, and as we emerged from

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viewing the embalmed figure, passers-by drew back in alarm as they thought they had another Lazarus on their hands. To revert to ENO, my onward visit to Kiev was timed to coincide with a performance of Nicholas Hytner’s brilliant 1985 production for the Handel tercentenary of Xerxes, which is still in the ENO repertoire. It was a terrific success. The imaginative staging, the marvellously versatile and decorative singing (Lesley Garrett was in tremendous form) and the presence of a countertenor (Christopher Robson), a voice almost unknown to Soviet opera audiences, brought the house down. Sitting in a place of honour among the apparatchiks, I felt immensely proud of ‘my’ company. The only unfortunate thing was that in the flight from Moscow to Kiev Lord and Lady Harewood’s luggage had been left behind, so that as I sat in state near the front in my Sunday best the Queen’s cousin and his countess lurked at the back in their travelling clothes. I was, however, able to get my hosts to lay on a special flight to retrieve their luggage the next day and bring it to Kiev. There were many other enjoyable visits in my role as WCC president or to sign bilateral MOUs: to Morocco, the United States, Finland, Bulgaria, Gibraltar, Malta, Greece and other European countries – even to Jersey and Guernsey, which had their own customs services and legislation, modelled on ours. It was an added bonus that Diana was sometimes able to travel with me. None of this persuaded me that I had taken the wrong option in electing to stick to customs and not go back to the Treasury. One of the most memorable was an annual meeting of the WCC in Washington, where we were given a terrifying demonstration of a raid by the paramilitary Drugs Enforcement Agency (DEA), which worked alongside US Customs, using a Black Hawk attack helicopter – the very aircraft that had featured in the Westland affair. It was almost as scary as dealing with the US Customs commissioner himself, Willie von Raab, a rich and volatile lawyer who had had no previous publicservice experience but had been appointed customs commissioner after raising substantial funds for the Republican Party. We nevertheless worked closely and productively with the US enforcement agencies, and I believe the links we established with them and other governments contributed positively to the global battle against drug trafficking. I was once even invited to be present at a wedding in Tampa, Florida, where the bridegroom was an undercover DEA

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agent and the bride the daughter of a notorious Mafia boss and drug trafficker. The plan was that when troths were being plighted the boys would swoop and the arrests be made. I prudently declined the invitation but subsequently received a cheque for several million dollars from US customs for the part that HM Customs had played in exposing the gang. I sent the cheque to the permanent secretary at the Treasury!

The Supergun I had already been closely involved in one political crisis, the Westland affair, which threatened the Thatcher government. My role had, however, been that of a spectator and scribe. I was now a prime mover in another crisis which threatened the survival of the Major government. The crisis was a doubleheader, consisting of the so-called ‘Supergun’ case, and the prosecution of the Midlands machine-tools company Matrix Churchill. As I was working in the garden in Epsom one weekend in April 1990 I received a telephone call from Douglas Tweddle, now well established as chief of ID, to say that customs officers at Teesside had seized several large crates of metal pipes destined for Iraq which were described as components for transporting petrochemicals (that is, oil pipes). They believed, however, that they were essential parts for constructing an enormous long-range gun – probably the biggest that had ever been built. I asked Douglas to pursue the case and report developments to me first thing on Monday morning. We had already been exhorted by No. 10 to give high priority to preventing any illicit arms exports to Iraq, and I had relayed this message to the whole department. In the following week we duly arrested and charged two directors, Peter Mitchell and Chris Colley, of the two companies concerned, Sheffield Forgemasters and Walter Somers. Our belief was that this was a flagrant breach of the restrictions on exports to Iraq. Instead of rejoicing, however, the reaction was concern at No. 10 and the DTI and the Ministry of Defence (MOD). The story is a tangled one but, in summary, it appeared that the companies had in the summer of 1988 approached the DTI and asked if licences were required for the export of tubes

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to Iraq and, without further investigation, were told that they were not needed. The companies’ claim was backed up by the Conservative MP Sir Hal Miller, who confirmed that Walter Somers had indeed sought advice and that he had himself spoken to officials at both the DTI and MOD and had even offered to cancel the contract if requested to do so. In a statement in the House of Commons on 18 April the DTI secretary of state, Nicholas Ridley, admitted the approach by the companies but claimed that at the time the department was approached it had no knowledge of the true nature of the pipes, but that if it had licences would not have been granted. He then went on, rather ironically, to congratulate customs officers on their investigations! But the case was fatally undermined, both by Hal Miller’s revelations and by the increasingly confusing picture that emerged of the government’s exports licencing policy. Different stories about the export guidelines came out from the DTI, the MOD and the FCO. Initially, Julian Bevan, the Treasury counsel nominated to prosecute the customs case, seemed confident that the prosecution could be sustained. As the doubts and public concern grew, however, he concluded that there was no longer a more than 50 per cent chance of securing a conviction, and advised that the prosecution be withdrawn. This was a huge disappointment. After meeting Bevan at the Old Bailey and hearing – and disputing – his opinion, and conferring with Sandy Russell, my director of customs, a formidable and tenacious intellect with whom I had worked in the past, and with the customs solicitor Michael Saunders, an outstanding and much respected lawyer who had previously been legal secretary to the attorney general and later became Treasury solicitor, I decided to challenge Bevan’s advice with the attorney general. I duly wrote to the attorney, setting out our reasons for believing the case was still a sound one, and together with Sandy and Michael went to his chambers to discuss it. I argued our case strongly and urged him at least to agree to seek a second opinion to Bevan. As I had suspected, however, he stood by Bevan and we had no option but to drop the case. Constitutionally, I believe I could still have gone ahead, since the legislation under which we were proceeding was vested in the commissioners of HM Customs, but I knew that if I had chosen to do so the attorney could have issued a nolle prosequi which would have stopped the case. When the Scott inquiry reported later, Scott

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clearly disapproved of my direct intervention with the attorney, describing it as ‘unusual’. So it was, but I was entitled to exercise the option and believe it was fully justified. Despite the confusion in other government departments, we were still convinced we had a strong and valid case. The experienced Michael Saunders remained solidly behind me, and I wanted in any case to demonstrate to the department that, after the brilliant work they had done in intercepting the gun and investigating the case, I had done all in my power to back them up and sustain it. All our work had, however, been undermined by the confusion among other government departments. In a note I sent round the department I urged them to keep up the good work but to be absolutely meticulous in investigating the background to any future similar prosecutions. This was not because I believed they had been negligent in this case in any way, but I did not want any further prosecutions to fail because we did not have complete knowledge of what other departments were doing.

Matrix Churchill We did not have long to wait for another case, which, alas, suffered from similar problems and became even more notorious and politically controversial than the Supergun affair. This was the prosecution we brought against a Midlands machine-tools company, Matrix Churchill, which had been acquired by the Iraqi government in the 1980s and was, we believed, being used to build up the Iraqi military machine. They were, in our view, knowingly trying to export to Iraq state-of-the-art computer-controlled dual-use machine tools which could be used to produce armaments and therefore were subject to export-licensing restrictions. After preliminary enquiries we informed the DTI that we proposed to investigate the company and on 16 October 1990 we arrested three directors, including the managing director, Paul Henderson, and prepared to take the case forward. As the investigation proceeded I informed the Cabinet secretary, Robin Butler, that it would be necessary to interview two ministers: Alan Clark, who was now minister for defence procurement and had previously been minister of state for trade; and Lord Trefgarne, who had preceded Clark at the MOD and succeeded him as minister for trade.

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Again, rather than celebrating the fact that HM Customs had once more foiled an apparent plot to put weaponry in Saddam Hussein’s hands, No. 10 was clearly concerned at the news I had conveyed. I was invited to a meeting at the Cabinet Office with Robin Butler and with the permanent secretary of the DTI, Sir Peter Gregson. They expressed concern about the public-interest element in the case, and in particular about what might emerge from the unpredictable Alan Clark if he was required to give evidence on oath in the witness box. It was clear to me, however, that the real message was that they hoped I would drop the case, or at least, if possible, keep ministers out of it. I fully understood their concern about Clark and had no illusions about him. As I shall explain, it was Clark’s eventual volte-face in the witness box that finally brought the case down. But at this stage he was a key witness and prepared to give a sworn affidavit that, contrary to emerging allegations, he had not at a meeting with the Machine Tools Technologies Association (MTTA) in 1988 given a ‘nod and a wink’ that in applying for export permits for Iraq companies should do so in such a way as to emphasise their peaceful purposes. In other words, that they could fabricate their applications. He was in any case a minister of the Crown, and it was not for customs to draw distinctions or make judgements about the reliability of ministers appointed by the prime minister, as long as we believed our case in law was a valid one. Accordingly I responded that if they had any specific new evidence relevant to the case to put before me they should let customs have it and it would be properly considered, but that I could not take account of what I regarded as unspecific ‘background noise’. When the Scott inquiry later considered this exchange I was singled out in the press for having ignored warnings from the Cabinet secretary. The Independent of 9 May 1994, for example, carried the headline ‘Customs head dismissed warnings on minister’s evidence as background noise’. In a sense I did, but I believe I was justified in doing so. We formally charged the three accused in February 1991 and the investigation proceeded, albeit very slowly. But as with the Supergun affair a whole series of worms crawled out of the woodwork which progressively undermined our case. By the time it eventually came to trial at the Old Bailey in October 1992 the confusion over the guidelines on export licencing policy had grown even worse. Departmental witnesses told different stories, and the government

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came under fierce criticism from the Opposition and in the press for issuing a number of Public Interest Immunity certificates (PIIs), which denied the defence team, led by the formidable Geoffrey Robertson QC, access to a range of government documents. Not only was the government pilloried for issuing such ‘gagging orders’, as the press called them, but on appeal by Robinson Mr Justice Smedley ruled that most of the PIIs should be overturned. The govern­ment thus got the worst of both worlds. Previously secret and confidential documents were released that showed that a steady stream of arms-related equipment had been exported to Iraq with the government’s apparent agreement since 1988; and the defence were now able to summon a number of other ministers and officials, including from the security services, to come to the Old Bailey to testify. Two very specific developments, however, really destroyed the case. First, it was revealed in court that the managing director of Matrix Churchill, Paul Henderson, had in fact been supplying information to MI6 from Iraq for some years – indeed, he was given an excellent testimonial in the witness box by an MI6 representative. The customs prosecuting counsel, Alan Moses (later a Lord Justice of Appeal, and now the chairman of the Independent Press Standards Organisation), immediately complained to me that he had not been forewarned of this and that it had seriously weakened our case, which otherwise had been proceeding well. I in turn remonstrated with ‘C’, the head of MI6, with whom at a meeting a few months before in his office I had reached an understanding (or thought I had) that customs would be informed if ever one of their agents was involved in a case we were investigating. I got no joy from ‘C’ and later Scott criticised me for the letter of complaint I sent to ‘C’, claiming that it showed that I was more intent on securing a conviction than in seeing full evidence brought out in court. This was nonsense and I strongly rejected it when given the opportunity during the so-called ‘Maxwellisation’ process to comment on the criticism Scott proposed to make of me in his report. But I got no joy from Scott either and despite my protest, his criticism survived in the final report. The development, however, that really brought the case down – and justified Robin Butler’s ‘background noise’ – was Alan Clark’s admission under cross-examination in court in early November 1992 that, contrary to the sworn

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statement he had previously given us, he might indeed at the 1988 MTTA meeting have given a ‘nod and a wink’ to arms exports to Iraq. He admitted, using Robert Armstrong’s immortal phrase in the Spycatcher case, that he had been ‘economical with the truth’. Alan Moses immediately reported to me that the game was up and he could no longer sustain the prosecution. Even apart from Henderson’s work for MI6, it was unthinkable that customs should continue to seek to send to prison a man who had only been engaged in export business which another part of government had, if not actively encouraged, at least turned a blind eye to. This development occurred on a Friday and I convened a meeting of the customs commissioners for early Monday morning, giving myself the weekend to reflect further on it, although I realised that the case was now dead. At the Monday-morning meeting on 9 December the commissioners decided under my chairmanship formally to drop the prosecution and I sent a note to the prime minister and the chancellor of the exchequer to inform them that we would be issuing an important announcement about the case that afternoon which (an understatement) I believed would attract considerable parliamentary and public attention. I did not give details, which would have been improper before the formal announcement was made, but they must have read between the lines. The case at the Old Bailey was duly withdrawn and the three defendants released, Alan Moses telling the judge that the Crown could no longer continue with it because Alan Clark’s evidence under oath was ‘inconsistent’ with what he had originally told customs investigators in a witness statement. I subsequently asked the director of public prosecutions to investigate whether Clark could be prosecuted for committing perjury, but to my regret he concluded against doing so. The parliamentary and press storm, with Robin Cook in devastating form for the Opposition, was as predicted and in the view of many political commentators posed a serious threat to the survival of the government. The afternoon’s splash front page in the London Evening Standard read ‘IRAQI ARMS DEAL TRIAL COLLAPSES. Three cleared as ex-minister’s evidence is called inconsistent’. Some commentators even claimed that if all this had come out before the general election of April 1992 John Major, the victor of the Gulf War against Iraq, would have been defeated.

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The Scott inquiry I was immediately summoned to a meeting at No. 10 with the prime minister, Lord Chancellor, home secretary and other senior ministers. After a short discussion the prime minister decided to appoint a senior judge to lead an inquiry into the whole affair. This was a familiar ploy. Apart from kicking the issue into the long grass, when hopefully the storm might have abated, it would enable the prime minister at the next PM’s Questions to refuse to be drawn on the grounds that it would be improper to comment on an issue now the subject of a formal inquiry. The Lord Chancellor was asked to come up with the name of a suitable judge, and Sir Richard Scott was quickly proposed. Thus began the saga of the Scott inquiry. It became a massive exercise, not quite on the Chilcot scale or of the same duration, but lasting until July 1994. It was not a judicial inquiry as such, but had almost unprecedented powers to summon witnesses and documents. More than 50 witnesses were called, including John Major and his predecessor, Margaret Thatcher, together with ministers and senior civil servants from many government departments. Scott was assisted by Presiley Baxendale QC, an extremely persistent barrister, who captured the attention of the press for her tenacity and aggressive manner of interrogation. Two ministers, William Waldegrave, at the FCO, and the solicitor general, Nicholas Lyell, were particularly severely mauled. Waldegrave, who was accused of lying about export-licencing policy in letters he sent to members of the public, was extremely distressed and saw this as the end of his career and was ready to resign over it. In his memoir he ruefully quotes Matthew Parris as describing the atmosphere of the inquiry as ‘like a lynch mob’, and the distinguished High Court judge, Lennie Hoffmann, whom I had known well as a fellow member of the ENO board, calling it a ‘kangaroo court’.* I was summoned back from Luxembourg, where I was now at the EIB, to be questioned and spent virtually a whole day before the inquiry. Being now totally immersed in my busy Luxembourg job I had little time for briefing – in fact the only proper briefing session I had was with Sandy Russell in the back *

William Waldegrave, A Different Kind of Weather (London: Constable, 2015), pp. 214, 244.

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of my official car during a three-hour high-speed journey back from Paris to Luxembourg. I had been giving a press conference there, and had a hectic schedule, and Sandy kindly joined me so that we could spend time travelling to Luxembourg together. I had expected a severe grilling, but apart from the disagreement over my protest to ‘C’ and a few other minor issues (such as the Butler warning), I did not feel discomfited at all. This was because, rightly or wrongly, I did not believe that customs had anything to apologise for. We had done our duty honourably, as we saw it in the national interest, and the collapse of the case was due to confusion among other departments over the export-licencing regime and the reversal of testimony by our key witness, Alan Clark (described by Waldegrave as the ‘real villain’*). At times I fear I became irritated with Scott, who showed no understanding at all of how large organisations work or of the principles of delegation, and as the day drew on and I began to tire I rashly started quoting Aristotle’s Ars Poetica on peripeteia and katharsis to him (neither he nor Ms Baxendale showed any knowledge of it). This was a foolish mistake and Diana, who was present throughout the day’s hearing, rightly chastised me for it afterwards. It did, however, secure a photograph of me spouting Greek in the subsequent Private Eye special, Not the Scott Report. The report, published in July 1996, was massive (1,086 pages) and suffered badly from having no executive summary – an elementary defect. It was scathing about almost everyone and everything – the muddle within government on export-licencing policy; the scandal of PIIs and the cover-ups; alleged failures of accountability on the part of both ministers and officials; and the unrestrained nature of customs prosecuting powers, which it recommended should be curtailed and brought more directly under the control of the attorney general. The press and Opposition welcomed it and the supporters of open government hailed it for ‘slicing open the underbelly of government and revealing corruption within’. When the report was debated in the House of Commons Robin Cook again led the Opposition attack on the government brilliantly, accusing it of trying to send innocent men to jail, and the government, with the Ulster Unionists voting against it, just scraped home by a single vote. It was a * Waldegrave, A Different Kind of Weather, p. 198.

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close-run thing for the Major government, and some commentators believed that it contributed to the Labour landslide in the 1997 election. By the time of publication I felt very remote from it. I had so many other things to preoccupy me in Luxembourg and had largely forgotten the strain the affair had put on many of us at the time. I felt sad, however, that customs had suffered for, in my view, diligently pursuing its enforcement duty in the national interest and being sabotaged by muddle and the caprice of one man. But I would see it that way, wouldn’t I?

Next steps The Supergun and Matrix Churchill affairs obviously dominate my memory of my time at HM Customs, at least in the later years. But they do not blot out the many happy and fun memories – Diana launching a French customs cutter at Menton and Princess Diana doing the same for one of ours so professionally and conscientiously at Southampton; taking Benazir Bhutto for a trip down the Thames in a new seagoing cutter we were trying to sell to Pakistan (she didn’t buy one but sent me a lovely case of mangoes afterwards); hovering over the Channel in a French customs helicopter watching our crew, with two women in it, beat a French all-male crew in a cross-Channel rowing challenge; kicking off a football match against the French at the Parc des Princes (we lost this one); making a speech in French about blood, sweat and tears when signing an MOU in Churchill’s old suite at the Mamounia hotel in Marrakesh and alarming both the British ambassador and the Moroccan government representatives; and attending the annual services at All Hallows by the Tower, where we maintained the Test Act tradition of reaffirming our loyalty as public servants to the Church of England and tendered offerings at the altar (on one occasion a sniffer dog and a set of VAT forms). As the head of Her Majesty’s Board of Customs and Excise, formally appointed by the Queen, I had my royal moments too, although my audience at the Palace with Her Majesty after my appointment was pretty disastrous. She had been well briefed and quizzed me on VAT on racehorses, about which I knew nothing. I was desperate to get her to change the subject, but knew no means of doing so without lèse-majesté.

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I made dozens of speeches – at conferences inside and outside the department, trade associations in London and other major cities, international meetings and signing ceremonies, and innumerable farewell parties for loyal and long-serving customs officers. I blessed the early experience of speaking that my Rotary year in America had given me. On one occasion I got it entirely wrong. The Derbyshire Chambers of Commerce did me the honour of inviting me to be the guest speaker at their annual dinner in my home town, Chesterfield. It was a grand black-tie affair, with the Lord Lieutenant, the chief of police and other local dignitaries present. Determined to show the greatest respect for the occasion – the last thing I wanted to do was to give any impression of a local boy made good coming down from London to lecture the locals – I had a substantial speech drafted on the implications for British commerce of the forthcoming European Single Market. The evening came. After a long dinner the president made an exceptionally long speech. Expecting to follow him, I was disconcerted to have to sit through an entr’acte, in which a Yorkshire comedian warmed up the increasingly restive audience. I finally got to my feet at about 11 p.m., having slashed the main section of my speech to barely half a page, and rushed through it in between a few jokes and other pleasantries at each end. I sat down to mild applause and in the bar afterwards an old Chesterfield acquaintance came up to me and said: ‘Not a bad speech, Brian, but I didn’t like the bit in the middle.’ I have since taken care in after-dinner speeches to minimise ‘the bit in the middle’. Another event that stands out in my memory occurred on 1 November 1990, at the annual dinner that the customs board used to give in London for the government and business community. It was a sort of thank you for help and cooperation throughout the year. It was the tradition to invite a distinguished guest of honour and speaker and, on this occasion, with the other guests assembled and rapidly exhausting their ration of pre-dinner drinks, my VIP guest had still not arrived and I was beginning to get very anxious. Just as I gave the go-ahead to move everyone to the dining room, I was called to the telephone. A rather faltering voice at the other end said: ‘Brian, I am terribly sorry, I cannot come to your dinner as I have just resigned from the government.’ It was Geoffrey Howe, then Lord President of the Council and deputy prime minister, who two weeks later made the speech that spelled Margaret

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Thatcher’s downfall. I returned to the dining room and gave probably the most dramatic announcement to the assembled company ever made on that occasion. But after over five years, the longest I had served in any civil service job, I was itching to move on again. I had in a sense ‘done’ customs and did not want to go to another department as permanent secretary and be under the thumb of ministers again. I therefore began to look around outside Whitehall, even though I was still, at 57, below retirement age and not yet able to draw my pension. One or two possibilities came up, including a university vice chancellorship and the chairmanship of a large manufacturing group, but I had set my eyes very ambitiously on the presidency of the EIB, on whose board I had served in the mid-1980s.

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nowing that it had been informally understood that when ErnstGünther Bröder, a German banker, stepped down from the presidency of the EIB his successor would be British (Italy, France and Germany having already held the post), I let Robin Butler, who was head of the civil service as well as Cabinet secretary, know that I would like to be considered as the British candidate for the post when the time came. I also kept in close touch with the British vice president at the EIB, Roger Lavelle, a close friend from Treasury days, and with the current Treasury

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member of the EIB board, Hugh Evans. I wanted as much notice of Bröder’s departure as possible. This was the first time in my civil service career that I had actively sought a job. Otherwise, as a dutiful civil servant, I had normally taken what was proposed, except for turning down a couple of late-offered alternatives. My experience had been that the British were much less effective in lobbying for senior European posts than the French and Italians, but in this case, once the decision had been taken in Whitehall to nominate me, the wheels turned quite smartly. The prime minister, John Major, and the chancellor of the exchequer, Norman Lamont, both backed my candidature; the FCO mobilised our ambassadors in posts within the EU (as it was by then) to lobby for me; and both Roger Lavelle and Hugh Evans did their stuff at the EIB in Luxembourg. It was particularly hard on Roger, who knew that he would have to stand down as vice president if I got the president’s job, but I was able later to appoint him as the EIB’s resident director on the board of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) in London, of which I ex officio became a governor. Roger repaid me by subsequently sending back brilliantly succinct and witty accounts of their board meetings, which became prized reading within the EIB. Reactions from posts in the reporting telegrams copied to me suggested that most member states could agree to my appointment. The only specific reservation came from the president of the European Commission, Jacques Delors, who described me as trop dynamique – the greatest compliment I have ever had paid to me in my official career. I had met him on several occasions at Council meetings in Brussels and elsewhere and at tetchy exchanges with Mrs Thatcher in London, and he obviously either doubted my commitment to the European cause, or feared that I would not be as compliant a president as the Commission would like at the EIB – or both. He was wrong on the former, but right on the latter. I was determined to be my own man at the EIB. There was also some delay until a formula was found to reassure, though not guarantee, the Benelux countries that when I departed consideration would be given to appointing a president from one of the smaller member states, rather than keeping it as a preserve of the big four.

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Taking up office in Luxembourg My appointment was announced in January 1993 and I took up office in April. I was happy to leave HM Customs in the experienced hands of Valerie Strachan, who became the first female chairman (as she chose to style herself) of that historic department. I was less happy, however, at the subsequent merger of HM Customs and Excise and Inland Revenue in 2005 on the basis of an unconvincing Treasury report which relied excessively on implausible assumptions about savings from integrating computer systems and other economies of scale. I had successfully resisted this while I was chairman. The cultures and operating practices of the two revenue departments were completely different, and the subsequent track record of the merged department, HMRC, which has been severely criticised by the PAC and the Treasury Select Committee on several occasions, has not convinced me that I was wrong to oppose a merger. My initiation to the EIB was curious. For reasons I never fully understood, Dr Bröder, who was a much more experienced banker than I ever would be, was reluctant that I should visit the bank and be seen with him in Luxembourg before I formally took over. This meant that, at his request, I travelled privately to both Athens and Lisbon to meet him on neutral ground for some furtive preliminary discussions. When I eventually arrived at the bank in April we had only about an hour together for briefing before the formal passation des pouvoirs (transfer of powers) ceremony in which he literally handed the keys over to me in front of the assembled staff. He then disappeared and I found my office almost bare of any papers. I had always got on well with him (he had been a fellow director in the 1980s), but this seemed to be taking banking secrecy and discretion a bit too far. I suspect it had something to do both with security and with the postwar taboos that affected so many Germans of his generation and induced them to maintain a very low profile. However, with an excellent personal secretariat, led by Fiona Turner and Helga Hoffmann, who remained with me throughout my presidency, we soon got the office into shape and I began my job. I had in any case the advantage from my director days in the 1980s of already knowing many of the senior officials in the bank, a number of whom, ignoring Bröder’s example, came privately to London to brief me and bend my ear before I took up office.

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The EIB A brief word first about the EIB. As the ‘house bank of the European Union’ it was and remains the largest multilateral lending institution in the world, lending and borrowing about twice as much as the World Bank with fewer than half the staff. It was created under the Treaty of Rome in March 1957 as both a European institution and a bank to promote the balanced economic development of the EC. In the words of Article 130 of the treaty: The task of the European Investment Bank shall be to contribute, by having recourse to the capital market and utilising its own resources, to the balanced and steady development of the common market in the interest of the Community. For this purpose the Bank shall, operating on a non-profit basis, grant loans and give guarantees which facilitate the financing of the following projects in all sectors of the economy. (Then follows a list of the areas in which the bank should operate, including ‘projects of common interest to several Member States which are of such a size or nature that they cannot be entirely financed by the various means available in the individual Member States.’) As the treaty stipulated, the bank sought to achieve these objectives by raising funds on the capital markets at low interest rates, based on its top-class triple-A rating, and on-lending the proceeds long-term on a non-profit basis (sans but lucratif) for financially and technically viable projects. The interest rate charged would be the cost of borrowing plus a modest margin to meet the bank’s operating costs and maintain adequate reserves. There would be no subsidy to borrowers and no claim on taxpayers’ funds other than the fact that the share capital (largely subscribed rather than paid up) was contributed by the member governments. The bank originally started work under an Italian president in Brussels, but transferred in 1968 to Luxembourg, where in 1980 it moved into a handsome building on the Kirchberg designed by Sir Denys Lasdun, the British architect of the National Theatre in London (there are resemblances between the two, except that the bank was much better maintained and in its own attractive

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woodland surroundings – Denys, for whom we organised a celebratory exhibition about his work at the bank, always said it was the best building he had designed). When I arrived the total volume of annual lending had reached some 18 billion ecus, and it rose to over €30 billion when I left at the end of 1999. Borrowing in order to finance this was of a similar magnitude. By 2014 it had grown to a staggering €80 billion. The great majority of the lending – up to 90 per cent – was within Europe, and about two-thirds of that on (mainly very large) infrastructure projects. Indeed, it is difficult to think of any major European infrastructure project – roads, railways (high-speed and conventional), airports, ports, bridges, power stations, gas and electricity interconnectors, irrigation projects, urban reconstruction, and so on – during the last few decades in which the EIB has not in some way been financially involved. One of the great assets of the EIB, which I tried to build on, is that EIB lending often acts as a catalyst to induce other banks to come in as co-financers, thus achieving genuine additionality. With its unique appraisal capacity, based on experienced teams of bankers, technical experts and engineers not generally available to commercial banks, an EIB decision to finance a project is often taken as a good-housekeeping seal which encourages others to join in the financing. During my time we also moved away from accepting only government and public-sector guarantees, so that when I left the majority of our co-financings were guaranteed by first-class banks or other highly rated institutions in the private sector. In the early days a large share of loan financing went to projects in Italy, especially the Mezzogiorno – so much so that for some time it was spoken of as the Italian Investment Bank. The bank set up a regional office in Rome which supervised the lending and did wonders in keeping its operations, especially in Sicily, free of Mafia contagion. The remaining 10 per cent or so of EIB lending is distributed in smaller loan amounts under various aid agreements among over 100 countries in Africa, the Mediterranean, the Caribbean, Latin America and the Pacific, many of them former French and British dependent territories. Such lending, which generally carried greater risks, has usually been guaranteed by the Commission or by the member states, since the bank would not have undertaken it as an acceptable risk under its normal banking criteria. When, for example, the bank was asked by the council of finance ministers, Ecofin,

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to start lending in South Africa after the collapse of apartheid I had to argue strongly at Ecofin for the guarantee. All these operations were and are carried out by a relatively small but highly professional multinational staff, well up to the standards I had enjoyed in the Treasury and Cabinet Office. There were about 1,000 when I joined and this has subsequently increased, although not proportionately by as much as the increase in lending. In terms of governance, the day-to-day business of the bank was conducted by a resident management committee comprising seven resident vice presidents and myself, subject to the authority of a board of directors containing representatives from each member state and the European Commission, meeting most months in Luxembourg. I chaired both these bodies and was thus in practice both chairman and CEO. The decisions of the board and the management committee were subject to the overall authority of the board of governors, comprising the finance ministers of the shareholders, but they only normally met once a year at the bank’s annual meeting and in practice took little interest in its day-to-day affairs.

Running the bank In principle I thought it should be relatively easy to run an establishment of about 1,000 staff after coping with the much larger numbers of HM Customs and Excise. In practice it was much harder as I had to adjust to a range of bureaucratic cultures and practices, from the extreme formality of the French (who would never address me as other than ‘Monsieur le Président’ and insisted on shaking hands no matter how many times we met during the day) to the more relaxed and informal northern habits of the Brits, Danes and (later) Fins and Swedes. What was normal to one tradition could appear abnormal and even ill-mannered to another. It was some time before I even had the courage to take my jacket off at a management committee meeting. Language too was a bit of a problem at the start. The two working languages of the bank were English and French (lucky for those for whom either was the mother tongue), but French predominated in some of the more technical areas, such as the Treasury department, in which the French had occupied most of the senior positions

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over the years. My French was passable but I rapidly had to improve it. Even so, there were sensitivities. Soon after my arrival I decided to assemble all the staff at headquarters in Luxembourg in order to introduce myself and set out personally the management committee’s priorities for the future (a practice I repeated at regular intervals). I carefully made half my speech in French and half in English, but heard later that there were complaints from some that the first half was in English. You can’t win! I also, as at customs, visited staff at their desks in every branch and division in headquarters, seeing many people who said they had never met the president in person before. The bank was in good working order when I joined. It had recently been asked by heads of government at the December 1992 Edinburgh council to increase its infrastructure lending to stimulate employment and to start operations in Poland and Hungary and other Central and Eastern European countries which were aspiring to EU membership. But based on my experience as a director and my talks with senior officials, especially the British director, Hugh Evans, I set a number of new priorities. The most important were to raise the profile and visibility of the bank; to modernise the corporate and management ethos and structure; to harness even further the bank’s huge potential for supporting the EU’s economic objectives, and to become more directly involved in the process of determining them; and to contribute positively through the bank’s operations on the bond markets to the path towards monetary union and the single currency.

Visibility and profile Although well known in France and the southern member states, the EIB was virtually unknown in the UK and internationally, except to those in government and the banking and construction sectors dealing directly with it. Addressing a meeting of the Bretton Woods Institutions (that is, the IMF and the World Bank) in Washington, I was once introduced as the president of the best-kept secret on the international financial circuit. Visibility was not, of course, an objective for its own sake, and certainly not notoriety, which could easily be achieved by a scandal or, as Jacques Attali, a very brilliant man in other respects,

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found as president of the EBRD in London, by extravagant spending on the bank’s headquarters. But given the widespread misrepresentation of and hostility to the EU in the British media, I believed that there ought to be greater knowledge and appreciation of at least the one politically uncontroversial EU institution whose operations were wholly beneficial to the British economy. It particularly infuriated me that when the EIB was mentioned in Britain it was so often confused with the EBRD, whose operations, confined to Eastern Europe, were on a small scale and could easily have been undertaken by the EIB at a fraction of the cost. Attali in any case provoked me when, at our first meeting, he said rather grudgingly that ‘nous sommes condamnés de travailler avec la BEI’ (‘we are condemned to work with the EIB’). I was not surprised or displeased when he was removed by his board and I was able to establish a more constructive relationship with his successor, the distinguished former managing director of the IMF and governor of the Banque de France, Jacques de Larosière. Jacques is one of those people who speaks English so beautifully and articulately that you instantly know he is not English. But we got on together very well and mended some of the fences that had been erected during the Attali era. Despite many speeches, interviews and press releases on the projects in the UK which the bank financed – such as the Second Severn Crossing, the Skye Bridge, the link from Paddington to Heathrow, improvements to Heathrow and other airports, the Channel Tunnel and fast link to Dover, the Sheffield and Manchester tramway systems, almost all the post-privatisation investment by the water industry, and countless other road, rail, power, urban development and ‘human capital’ projects (schools, hospitals and other educational establishments) – I failed to get the work of the EIB much better known in the UK. Good European news was not news; and it was given little publicity or credit. Unlike the practice in most other member states, notices acknowledging EU financing were seldom displayed, certainly in England. The greatest of all the EIB projects was, of course, the Channel Tunnel, whose birth as a joint Anglo-French project I had witnessed one evening in Paris as a gleam in Margaret Thatcher’s eye a decade or so earlier. The EIB was the principal single financer, both of the tunnel and the subsequent fast link from St Pancras to Dover, and led the consortium of some 200 international banks involved in the financing. It gave me more headaches and sleepless nights than any other

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large project we financed, but if ever there was a truly trans-European project that merited collective European support, this was it. I have blessed our role in helping to realise it on the many occasions since that I have used it to travel to Brussels and Paris, and now further afield, but often wondered how many of my fellow passengers are aware that it largely owed its completion to the EIB. I also, of course, sought to publicise the EIB in other member states and frequently appeared before committees of the European parliament and at the Council of Europe in Strasbourg. It was the custom for the president to make an annual ‘top hat’ visit to each shareholder country and to make a public speech as well as meeting leading members of the government, the central bank and the banking community. Rome in December was a particularly grand occasion, with extensive publicity, and it was here I developed a good relationship with prime minister Romano Prodi, who later succeeded Jacques Santer as president of the European Commission. We always hosted a lunch attended by the finance minister and governor of the central bank, Antonio Fazio, who invariably presented me with a valuable classical text in view of my spurious reputation as a great classical scholar. Except in Paris, where I made it a point of honour to speak in French (I even once spent a ridiculous half-hour with prime minister Lionel Jospin during which he spoke English and I resolutely stuck to my French), I normally used English, which was widely understood. A partial exception was once in Athens when, addressing a combined dinner meeting of chambers of commerce, I stumbled through part of my speech in modern Greek and was congratulated on this afterwards but asked why I had a Thessalonian accent. I was rather proud of this, but the credit was due to my tutor in the bank, who came from Thessaloníki. My greatest failure was in late 1994 in Oslo, where I made a rousing highly pro-EU speech to the local industry confederation on the eve of their referendum on EU membership, which then returned the answer No – though only just!

Management ethos and structures As at customs, partly on my own initiative, and partly at the prompting of the experienced German secretary general of the bank, Dieter Hartwich, whom

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I had known well when I was on the EIB board, I introduced various reforms designed to open up and democratise the conservative bank structure, to increase personal accountability, to streamline the functioning of the board and management committee, to give vice presidents specific areas of supervisory responsibility, to promote gender equality, and to get better value out of the hitherto separate divisions of economists and engineers, who, like MI5 and MI6, sometimes seemed to prefer rivalry to cooperation. None of this was very dramatic, but it threw up some tough battles and a few casualties on the way. My impeccably polite and wise French vice president, Alain Prate, whose credentials went back to being an economic counsellor to General de Gaulle, appeared to feel obliged, in the most courteous way, to oppose in principle every change that I proposed. I sometimes thought he believed that the idea of a British president working in the interests of a European institution was a contradiction in terms. I believe the bank was a more open and transparent institution when I left, with junior staff better informed, involved and able to contribute. As well as encouraging their attendance at the weekly management committee meetings (after all, they did most of the basic work), I expanded everyone’s horizons by arranging a series of lunchtime lectures by distinguished European visitors such as Peter Sutherland, Jacques Santer, Jacques de Larosière, Alexandre Lamfalussy, Wim Duisenberg and others to which all staff were invited. I streamlined the board procedures and insisted that board meetings, which in the past had often gone on late into the evening, should finish by lunchtime, even if it was sometimes the threat of a very late lunch and pangs of hunger that concentrated minds. I confess that this was partly in my own self-interest as I found chairing long, complex board meetings with interminable interventions extremely exhausting. I also initiated informal management committee and board awaydays, where we could in a more relaxed atmosphere discuss strategic and general policy issues without being tied to a huge list of specific projects and other items. Even so, it took a couple of meetings to persuade French board members, who could all speak and understand English well, to accept the majority view that these informal occasions should be conducted in English without interpreters present. After setting up an equal-opportunities committee and appointing the first female director general, I also felt spectacularly

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vindicated when the first woman I appointed, against objections, to head one of the legal divisions, Pauliine Koskelo, went on after leaving the bank to become the president of the Supreme Court of Finland. As with the changes I made at HM Customs, many of these developments might have happened anyway, but I hope I accelerated the process.

The political process Policy decisions were for the Council of Ministers to take, on the basis of proposals put forward by the Commission. It was the bank’s job to contribute to the implementation of these policies, while making its own banking decisions in accordance with its statute. But I thought the bank had been undesirably passive in the past and should be more involved in the political process. I therefore made sure through my contacts in the Council Secretariat that I was invited to attend the monthly meetings of finance ministers, who were mostly my governors, at the Ecofin, and also the informal lunches following them where discussion was often franker and less constrained. This gave me an opportunity not only to see many of my governors regularly, but to intervene on any issue affecting the bank. This in fact brought me into an early collision with Jacques Delors and the Commission over the financing of strategic ‘Trans-European Networks’, or TENs, as they became known. The Commission, whose borrowing powers were limited, sought a new borrowing facility to finance them. I opposed this as it seemed to me absurd to set up a new facility when the EIB already had the experience, personnel, technical know-how and financial resources to do it – indeed it was just what the bank was set up for. The argument went my way and with the authority of the Essen 1994 European Council the bank set up a new ‘TENs’ window which was the precursor of EIB financing of nearly all the major communications infrastructure projects across Europe. The Commission was not pleased and Delors must have thought that his reservations on my appointment had been justified. But we worked closely with the Commission, who had two directors general (for economic and monetary affairs, and regional policy) on the EIB board. I also became a member of the

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high-level TENs Committee, chaired by the Danish commissioner and former foreign and finance Minister Henning Christophersen, and later enjoyed cooperating closely with Neil Kinnock when he became transport commissioner. Indeed, his enthusiasm was so great that we rechristened TENs ‘Twenties’. By making regular, almost weekly, visits to Brussels (two to three hours in the car on the motorway on a good day) to meet commissioners and attend Ecofin meetings I embedded myself in the political process. Through my friendship with Jacques Santer, now president of the Commission in succession to Delors, I was able to arrange periodic meetings between the management committee and the assembled commissioners. It was thus possible to have a say at the crucial time on such matters as the authorisation of EIB lending in South Africa after the collapse of apartheid, to which I have already referred, and the primary role of the bank in financing reconstruction under the ‘Stability Pact for SE Europe’ in 1999 following the devastation caused by the bombing in the Balkan wars. This took me to war-ravaged Priština in Kosovo and to the heads-of-government conference in Sarajevo in July 1999, attended by Bill Clinton, Jacques Chirac, Tony Blair and other heavyweight figures, where I was a political minnow but commanded the financial resources that the others coveted. My most vivid memory of Clinton is not his formal intervention but the sight of him embracing very warmly, and for some time, the strikingly attractive Romanian female foreign minister. Perhaps the most successful bank initiative was at the Amsterdam European Council in June 1997 when, by plotting in advance with Jean-Claude Juncker, by now the prime minister of Luxembourg, the Dutch prime minister, Wim Kok, who would chair the Council, and the Council Secretariat, we induced heads of government to request the EIB to develop a new programme of venture-capital lending for high-tech small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and investment in projects in the ‘human capital’ field, such as health, education and urban development, including social housing. The bank had not been precluded by its statute from such lending, but for reasons I never understood it had not previously engaged in it and I thought it a gap that ought to be filled. I called the initiative the ‘Amsterdam Special Action Programme’, or ASAP, which gave it the right flavour of urgency. Sadly, the French ‘Aussitôt que possible’ would not have fitted.

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It would be tedious to list the other bank initiatives and projects which resulted from our greater involvement in the political process. The purpose was not to usurp the Commission’s prerogative (in any case, the two directors general on the EIB board would keep a close eye on that) but to ensure that we maximised our lending potential in the interests of European economic development and were not, in the absence of a bank voice, ‘volunteered’ for projects or programmes that it was inappropriate for the bank to undertake. For example, I resisted suggestions that we should start lending in Russia. It seemed to me that although this might well be justified in the longer term, especially in the oil and gas sectors, in Russia’s parlous financial state at that time lending would be not just a risk but an immediate liability. This was not popular with the Russian government, and Vladimir Putin, then prime minister, even telephoned the bank to lobby my Italian vice president, who had once employed him in a junior role for the EBRD in St Petersburg.

Monetary union and the single currency One of the main objectives in the first comprehensive EIB Corporate Strategy Plan for which I secured the board’s approval was to use the bank’s presence on the capital markets, as the world’s largest non-sovereign borrower, to promote the transition to the single currency. We issued the world’s first euro bond, for 1.7 billion, in 1997, well before the euro was launched in January 1999. The initiative was conceived by my outstanding French Treasury director general, René Karsenti, whom I had poached from the EBRD, but it needed my strong backing to get it through the management committee and the board. We then decided in the months leading up to the euro launch to issue more than 20 billion of what we called ‘euro-tributary’ bonds. These were bond issues denominated in national currencies, but with a provision for conversion into the new currency from day one of its launch. By carefully choosing appropriate benchmarks, and also by converting a substantial proportion of the bank’s existing debt stock, we helped to establish a yield curve for the euro in advance and create a large and liquid pool of euros from the very start of the new currency. There was much scepticism about the euro – whether the

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launch would take place at all, never mind on time – and I even went over to New York to try to convince a dinner meeting of Wall Street bankers, chaired by Hank Paulson, the CEO of Goldman Sachs, and later US Treasury secretary, that the launch would happen as planned and that the euro would take its place alongside the dollar as a leading global currency. I am not sure that the role of the bank’s Treasury Directorate in this context has ever received the acknowledgement it deserved.

The lighter side My official duties were excitingly privileged and varied and I travelled extensively – somewhere practically every week. The penalty for this was that business at the bank often had to be crammed into only two or three days in Luxembourg, so that air, train and car journeys were usually desperate occasions for catching up on work. But despite the pressures it was enormously enjoyable. I visited all the EU capitals in turn, and occasionally went further afield – to Washington and Hong Kong for IMF and World Bank meetings, to Switzerland and Japan to meet bankers, and to places like Morocco, Egypt, Zimbabwe, Swaziland, South Africa and the many countries of Central and Eastern Europe where we had started lending programmes. I planned a visit to several countries in South America, but had to cancel it in view of a hernia operation. We also took the board (plus spouses of board members and, at my initiative, those of senior accompanying EIB staff) once a year on a visit for a few days to a country in which we were involved in particularly interesting projects, such as the great Øresund Bridge connecting Sweden and Denmark, which has since become famous as a result of the television crime thriller The Bridge. These were enormously enjoyable, and educational, and, in addition to project-visiting and sight­seeing, were the occasion for high-level meetings and always a dinner to which we invited as guest of honour the local prime minister or equivalent. When the turn came for a full board visit to the UK in October 1994 I took them for a change to Wales, where the Prince of Wales was our principal guest at dinner at the National Museum in Cardiff. On this occasion, unlike on

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his visit to the Treasury many years earlier, he did not fall asleep during my introductory speech. Perhaps the most memorable of all my personal visits was to the all-male peninsula of Mount Athos in September 1998. The EIB had taken responsibility for supervising the reconstruction work, financed by the European Free Trade Association (EFTA) and EEA countries, at several Greek Orthodox monasteries which were precipitously perched on the edge of sheer sea cliffs and damaged by earthquakes. I stayed three nights at different monasteries as the guest of the abbots. It was an otherworldly experience. I ate with the monks (vegetarian but excellent fish on the Friday), slept in a little cell and got up at different hours during the night to attend religious offices in the monastery katholikon, and even spent one whole night listening to the monotonous unison chanting of relays of black-robed, -hatted and -bearded monks at a special festival of the Virgin’s girdle at the Vatopedi monastery (and for my pains was reproved by the abbot for sitting with crossed legs). I was only brought back to the EIB and the secular world when a monk, who had heard me talking to his abbot in French, sidled up to me when the coast was clear and asked me how Eurotunnel shares were doing (he had apparently worked in the Eurotunnel finance department and supposedly abandoned all for the monastic life). This really was globalisation at work. I also entertained many fascinating visitors at the bank in Luxembourg. I was not always sure whether it was the excellence of our cuisine (the bank’s executive dining room was often said to be the best restaurant in Luxembourg) or the prospect of EIB finance that attracted them most. As well as our regular European visitors we were remarkably popular with African autocrats and several heads of state or government, including presidents Moi of Kenya and Museveni of Uganda, honoured us with their presence at the lunch table. King Mswati III of Swaziland also paid us a formal visit with such a large retinue of ministers and other acolytes that I had to relegate most of them to a separate dining room. I was, nevertheless, won over by his current favourite, and extremely elegant, wife who, sitting next to me, touched me by asking solicitously how my livestock were doing. The son of King Juan Carlos I of Spain, now King Felipe VI, and the son of Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands, now King Willem-Alexander, were on separate occasions also despatched to spend

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an instructional day and have lunch with us at the bank. A guest from a more spiritual sphere was the Archbishop of Canterbury, George Carey, for whom I arranged a teach-in on the bank’s operations in developing countries, and who made a change from the usual run of ministers, politicians and bankers. He and Mrs Carey stayed with the Cardinal Archbishop of Luxembourg, who sought Diana’s advice on whether they would prefer a cup of tea or a glass of champagne on their arrival in the afternoon (Diana plumped for the tea) and was excited at the fact that, unlike most visiting archbishops, this one had a wife with him. I made my usual share of Lucky Jim nonsenses. At an EIB-sponsored conference in Vienna I escorted the chancellor of Austria to what I thought was a comfortable sitting room to relax before his speech, only to discover after frantic telephone calls that I had locked him in my somewhat scruffy bedroom, complete with unmade bed. In Cairo, after a meeting with President Mubarak, I found that I had handed out at the press conference afterwards business cards indicating that I was ‘Chris Unwin, Language Teacher, Oslo’, the job of my middle son. In the Royal Palace in Stockholm, where I was due to have an audience with the king, I made obeisance to and started reverential conversation with an imposing figure who turned out to be His Majesty’s aide-de-camp. I embarrassed my colleagues at a meeting with senior industrialists in Brussels by fiddling with the keys in my jacket pocket and jamming it so far down the side of the plush leather boardroom chair that I became irretrievably trapped and could only be released by the chairman of the company (a baron no less) taking off his jacket and crawling under my chair and somehow wrenching me free. And in a potentially more serious situation, having insisted to the alarm of his minders that I should escort the prime minister of the Côte d’Ivoire personally to his car from the tenthfloor EIB suite in our hotel in Washington where we had met, I got the lift buttons mixed up and ended with him in the sub-basement boiler rooms. It took me some time to master the technology and get him back to the hotel’s ground floor, where his frantic aides were beginning to suspect an abduction plot. I am sure that some of my French colleagues felt that all their forebodings about my ability to uphold the dignity of the presidency were justified.

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Life in Luxembourg Unlike many of my senior colleagues, who spent the week (or some of it) in Luxembourg and returned to Paris, The Hague, Rome or wherever at weekends, we decided to live in Luxembourg and rented a house conveniently near the city centre. Diana had started teaching nineteenth-century English literature at the Roehampton Institute, having returned to university as a mature student and triumphantly gone through the hoops of a first degree, a masters and a PhD at King’s College, thus becoming the most academically decorated member of the family. She decided, however, to come with me to Luxembourg and take advantage of all that our new career adventure offered. Although we would be away travelling much of the time, we wanted to be part of the cosmopolitan Luxembourg community, learn new languages (Diana actually got a diploma in Luxemburgish) and enjoy the easy access to the rest of Europe that Luxembourg’s situation and Schengen presented. We had a wonderful time. The Grand Duchy, the most forested country in Europe, is small but perfectly formed, and whenever we had a few free hours at a weekend we completed one of the well-signed circular walks (auto-pédestres) that covered the length and breadth of this beautiful country. We finished all 171 of them, and probably, as visitors tend to do, saw more of the country than any of the natives. We climbed in the Ardennes; tramped along the vine-covered slopes of the Moselle; visited most of the spectacular and romantic medieval castles dotted all around the country; and enjoyed too the walks in the former industrial areas in the south, where nature was being regenerated. And wherever we ended up there was a hotel or restaurant with great food – French quality and German quantity, as they said. Indeed, for our final walk we invited a number of our friends from Luxembourg and from home to join us and ended it with dinner at a local village hostelry. These walks also added to our bird lists, with black, grey-headed and middle spotted woodpeckers, crested tits, hawfinches, serins, red-backed shrikes, black storks and purple herons, species that even the lovely Surrey Hills could not provide. The avian jewels in the crown were the stragglingly V-shaped, melodiously warbling squadrons of cranes flying high over Luxembourg on their way from and back to their breeding grounds in Scandinavia and the north in the spring and in the autumn.

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We made many Luxembourg friends and were invited to join in many local activities. We had our share of formal royal engagements at the Grand Ducal Palace and in full morning-dress rig at the Te Deum in the cathedral on the grand duke’s birthday. Our diaries were full to bursting. Diana sang with the Chorale St Michel, the leading Luxembourg amateur choir, of which I became a groupie, and we both became members of the Luxembourg Opera Lovers Society (Société Luxembourgeoise des Amis de L’Opéra) and travelled with them to performances in several European capitals, and to Salzburg most years for the summer festival. I was especially pleased to be able to persuade ENO to come to Luxembourg to give a performance, starring Sarah Connolly, of a much-praised production of Britten’s Rape of Lucretia. Perhaps the friendship I most cherished was that of Pierre Werner, the then octogenarian former prime minister of Luxembourg and, as chairman of the crucial EC committee in 1973, rightly styled the father of the euro. In November 1993 I chaired an economic conference to mark his eightieth birthday and got Ted Heath, who as prime minister had worked with him, to come and give by far the best speech of the conference. We met quite often; I much valued Pierre’s company and advice, and I felt greatly honoured in 2013 to be invited back to Luxembourg to speak at a special conference to celebrate the centenary of his birth. I always told him, however, that of all the honours and high positions conferred on him, I regarded the presidency of the Luxembourg cricket club as the greatest. We kept open house for family and friends who visited us and often came back for more. Our youngest son, Nick, in fact lived with us for over a year while working for a local overseas-aid charity. The penalty that visitors had to pay was to join us on an auto-pédestre, for which they got their names inscribed in the blue book recording those walks. In the late summers, work commitments allowing, we spent several long weekends at Tournus in Burgundy, where I represented my old customs colleague Sandy Russell’s Scotland XI, in a cricket match against the best of Burgundy. It became quite a celebrated occasion, with expatriate spectators coming from far and wide to see it. The game was played on a rough terrain de cricket carved out by Sandy’s vigneron friend Michel among the vineyards. The rules were flexible and totally discretionary – no LBWs and a second chance if you were out first ball (conversely, if you looked like scoring too many runs for Scotland you were required by Sandy

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to retire). The Burgundians’ numeracy was unreliable, as in the first match in which I took part they declared at tea (beer actually) at 130 for 18. After the match we had a mini Highland Games, which the Burgundians generally won, even if sometimes with the help of hitching their end of the tug-of-war rope to a tractor. They in any case always beat us at tossing the caber, which Michel’s strapping son seemed to have been practising all year. This was followed by a banquet in the barn, feasting on Michel and his wife Martine’s spitted roast sheep and unlimited best Burgundian vintage, and then on to wild Scottish dancing, led by the kilted Sandy, into the reaches of the night. It was a wonderful festive occasion, light years away from the EIB and its problems. We were so glad that we chose to live in Luxembourg, where we could both identify more fully with the bank and the local community and also take advantage of such easy access to France, Belgium and Germany whenever we had a few hours or days to spare.

Moving on again It was not always an easy job, but I enormously enjoyed my time at the EIB. In contrast to the familiar portrayal in the UK of excessive regulation, interference and bureaucracy on the part of the European Commission and other EU institutions, the EIB unambiguously played a constructive role in promoting the economic welfare of all the member states. And it did so by harnessing their collective financial muscle in a manner that exceeded the sum of the individual parts. As head of the bank I felt that I had the privilege of presiding over a genuinely collective force for European good. My appointment as president, however, was for six years; I was ready to move on in early 1999 and told the governors so. The chairman of the EIB governors was then Gordon Brown, but he showed little interest in the bank or indeed, at Ecofin, in European affairs generally. He often seemed preoccupied with his own affairs at the council table and I recall one embarrassing post-Ecofin joint lunch with the EFTA and EEA finance ministers when, during a discussion on unemployment, the Icelandic finance minister stopped suddenly and reproved him sharply for not paying any attention to what he had been saying. It promised to be a very awkward

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moment until the Icelander defused it by adding that he assumed Gordon was doing his football pools. Initially, the former Spanish finance minister, Pedro Solbes, was earmarked to take over from me and I even had him to the bank for a briefing session. But after Javier Solana was appointed as the first permanent high representative of the Common Foreign and Security Policy, heads of government at the European Council decided that Spain could not have two senior European posts at once and Pedro was stood down. This meant that the search had to start again and several new candidates appeared. I therefore said I would be willing to continue for a further year and no more while the selection process continued. In a sense that made me a lame duck for the rest of 1999 but it did not feel like that. In the end the excellent choice was made in favour of Philippe Maystadt, who as Belgian finance minister had been one of the most senior and respected members of the Ecofin. This satisfied the Benelux plea when I was appointed that they should have a chance of providing my successor. I invited him to the bank before I left and gave him a full briefing, both orally and in writing, which he could use or disregard as he saw fit. Like me, he clearly intended to be his own man and the bank flourished under his leadership. It weathered the 2008–9 storm and with the strong support of the current president of the Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, and now under another new German president, it has played an increasing part in financing investment on a massive scale to help the EU’s economic recovery. In my view it provides a model for a similar investment bank in the UK, which will be particularly important if, as a result of Brexit, the UK ceases to be a shareholder and loses its automatic access to EIB investment and funding. But governments have been slow to pursue this idea. As for me, after the usual round of farewells, we left Luxembourg and, although in customary Continental fashion I was given the title of honorary EIB president, I have had little official contact with the bank since we left, although we have kept up many personal contacts and friendships.

E P I L OGU E

2000–

I

spent nearly 40 years in the public service, 33 of them as a British civil servant and seven as a Eurocrat. Leaving it was not a wrench. I was not retiring in any normal sense and had a very smooth transition. I left a seven-day-a-week commitment for a variety of voluntary and paid jobs that kept me happily busy. At an early date I was invited to join the board of the Franco-Belgian bank Dexia as a non-executive director and travelled regularly by Eurostar to Brussels and Paris for meetings. I left the board in 2010 following its collapse as one of the many casualties of the 2008–9 global banking crisis and bailing out by the French, Belgian and Luxembourg governments. Dexia was a bold first experiment to form a truly European bank, under the inspiration of Pierre Richard of Crédit Local de France and François Narmon of Crédit Communal de Belgique. It was sad that it failed, but with a small retail sector

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in the Benelux countries, high dependency on the wholesale markets for its funding and heavy exposure in Greece it could not survive alone when access to those markets dried up. I have always been a keen birdwatcher and nature lover, and now had more time for it. At the EIB I had had a little garden and fountain outside my office windows and kept a regular bird list, which was used to illustrate the bank’s annual calendar in 1998. On return to the UK we moved to a new house in Dorking near Box Hill and the beautiful Surrey countryside, with a large garden that remains a haven for wildlife. By accepting an invitation to attend a board meeting as an observer I found myself elected president of the European Centre for Nature Conservation (ECNC), a pan-European centre of environmental expertise based in Tilburg in the Netherlands. Having recovered from heart surgery in October 2001 I remained president for 13 years, chairing and speaking at conferences in many European countries, and trying to use what influence and contacts I still had to support the work of the dynamic Dutch executive director, Rob Wolters, and his enthusiastic and highly professional team. The ECNC staff, dedicated to conserving Europe’s natural beauty, were drawn from many European countries and all enormously enthusiastic. They mostly seemed to me to be about 19 years old and to have as many degrees in biology, zoology, entomology, geology, forestry and the like as I had won Boy Scout badges. The ECNC’s work spanned the whole of wider Europe, particularly the newly liberated and environmentally backward countries of Central and Eastern Europe, and Diana and I accompanied many ECNC missions to those places. It was a joy to be in the company of committed conservation experts, equipped with binoculars rather than calculators and spreadsheets. Moreover, I did not have to wear a suit. Having spent many years working on European affairs, from helping Margaret Thatcher to get our money back to financing many of Europe’s great infrastructure projects, I quickly became involved in European affairs in London and lent my support to those trying to counter the anti-European bias of so much of the British media. I did much of this through the Federal Trust, a London think tank originally founded by Lord Beveridge, chairing conferences, speaking at meetings and helping to produce pamphlets and

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briefs on EU subjects. I was also for a few years president of a Greek think tank, Euronem, attending their conferences in Athens, but I blush now at some of the over-optimistic remarks I made about the Greek economy in the run-up to their ill-fated accession to the euro. My experiences have utterly convinced me that Britain’s future must rest in continued membership of the EU. The outcome of the advisory referendum on 23 June 2016, which resulted in a small majority in favour of leaving the EU, therefore came as a great shock and disappointment to me. This is not the place to rehearse all the Brexit arguments again, but I strongly believe that in this big bad world, with the Middle East in flames, the biggest refugee crisis since World War II, the future path of the massive Chinese polity and economy unpredictable, Russia seeking to resurrect the lawless autocracy of the tsars, and the United States shifting its emphasis away from Europe, it is more important than ever for the countries of Europe, including Britain, to stick closely together. Despite the many political and economic problems that still need to be addressed within the EU, we still broadly share the same values of democracy, the rule of law and respect for human rights, and it is vital that we remain united in upholding and projecting these values to the rest of the world. I hope, therefore, that as the outcome of the negotiations on the terms of Britain’s exit from the EU and its trading relationships with the EU and the wider world begins to emerge, the British Parliament and people will be given a second opportunity to decide whether they really wish to leave. It would be perfectly democratic for such an opportunity to be given. I also took up authorship, publishing two historical books. The first was about Napoleon (Terrible Exile: The Last Days of Napoleon on St Helena, 2010) and the second about England and France in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries seen through the eyes of two notable women, an English novelist and a remarkable French aristocrat (A Tale in Two Cities: Fanny Burney and Adèle, Comtesse de Boigne, 2014), both published by I.B.Tauris. I even gave a lecture on Napoleon at Les Invalides in Paris, barely a shout away from the grandiose tomb of the great dictator himself. In recent years there has been more time for family, friends, travel, opera, walking, birdwatching, and enjoying Dorking and the Surrey Hills. A ritual highlight, which we have kept up since the Queen’s Silver Jubilee in 1977, is

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the annual Jubilee Picnic. This takes place on the banks of the River Wey near Ripley, where we gather in July with our dearest friends from Epsom, like the Bells, the Leas and the Whittens, for swimming, boating, rounders, French cricket, strolling down the towpath, chasing the cows away (my speciality) and consuming the same lavish picnic, centred on Jubilee turkey, that we have enjoyed every summer since the first one. Once we were youngish marrieds with small children; now we are grandparents watching the antics of our children’s children and wishing we still had the energy and agility to join in them in the old way. When Diana and I were in Luxembourg I always found some pretext for coming to London for the Jubilee Picnic weekend. On returning from Luxembourg I was invited to resume my place on the ENO board and became probably the longest-serving director, helping to steer them through many managerial and financial crises. Opera is the most expensive of art forms and I do not remember a time at ENO when it did not look as if we might face insolvency at the year end. ENO is faced with further financial problems as I write, but it is crucial for opera in Britain that it should continue to mount accessible and innovative world-class productions at the Coliseum in the heart of the West End. I never, however, realised my own operatic ambitions. The nearest I came to it was at a midnight performance of Boris Godunov in June 2002 by the Mariinsky opera under maestro Valery Gergiev at Vyborg Castle on the Russia–Finland border. We arrived late and I followed a crowd of what I took to be scruffily dressed opera lovers processing into the castle courtyard, only to discover that I was part of the opening peasant chorus. I slipped stealthily offstage, found my seat already occupied, and stood for the rest of the performance. With one son, Chris, now the English-language consultant at the Norwegian parliament in Oslo, and the other two sons, Mike and Nick, professional wildlife and nature experts – Mike now a distinguished travel and wildlife writer – we have also been with them and our three grandchildren, Fabian, Oliver and Florence, on exciting family safaris to old haunts in Africa and to new ones in Brazil and Costa Rica. Together Diana and I have also explored Finland, Oslo, the Danube Delta and the Norwegian coast up to the Arctic Circle. The contacts we made in Luxembourg and on the European circuit have produced lasting friendships in practically every European capital city. It is a joy to visit

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and entertain such friends as Thomas and Brigitte Oursin from Munich, Francis and Sylvie Carpenter from Luxembourg, Luis and Pilar Marti from Madrid, Kari and Marianne Nars from Helsinki, Paul and Kieke Arlman from The Hague, and many others with whom I worked – such a rich European legacy, which few of our British friends have the good fortune to match. I have referred to my lack of qualification and training for many of the jobs I did. I was a generalist in the tradition established as long ago as the remarkable report published in 1854 by Stafford H. Northcote (later to become chancellor of the exchequer) and C. E. Trevelyan (then permanent secretary of the Treasury) on The Organisation of the Permanent Civil Service. Seeking to change a system in which many of the posts in the higher entry class still depended on patronage, they recommended that a centralised entry examination be established; that it be set at first-class university level but cover many subjects so that no one would be disadvantaged; and that subsequent promotion be based on merit and not favouritism. They believed that such a system ‘would elicit young men of general ability, which is a matter of more moment than their being possessed of any special acquirements’. This is precisely the situation we inherited when we entered the administrative grade of the civil service in the 1950s. When I moved to the Treasury in 1968 as a man ‘of general ability’ I found it stuffed with men and women like me, many from Oxbridge and many of them classicists. There were, of course, a number of professional economists under the chief economic adviser, but they were in a sense a separate corps, to be called on for advice and specialist tasks (such as forecasting) and not integrated, as they are now, into the front-line divisions. We generalists were under the illusion – or delusion? – that with the intellectual training we had received we could, with a bit of luck and a great deal of hard work, tackle almost anything. Moreover, we did so with a genuine sense of public service, and a pride in working dispassionately, impartially and loyally in the service of whatever government, Labour or Conservative, was elected to rule over us. Although at times we might be tempted to try to nudge policy a little in one direction rather than another, we saw it as fundamentally our duty to subordinate our personal views and to the best of our ability advise on, and point out the consequences of, ministers’ policies, but for them to decide. This again was entirely in the tradition of the Northcote–Trevelyan report, which sought to produce

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an efficient body of permanent officers, occupying a position duly subordinate to that of the ministers who are directly responsible to the Crown and to Parliament, yet possessing sufficient independence, character, ability, and experience to be able to advise, assist, and to some extent, influence those who are from time to time set over them. What brilliantly prescient words these were, just as applicable to today as when they were drafted over 170 years ago. I am rather out of touch with Whitehall now and our successors inhabit a radically different world. With the rapid increase in the number of universities and the decline of Classics there are fewer Oxbridge classicists and more new entrants with degrees and qualifications in Science, Economics, Politics, International Relations, Law, Business, and so on. Joining the public service as a career for life, though still attracting many applicants, is also no longer the ambition it once was. Many high-level posts are also now subject to open competition from both inside and outside the service. As a consequence, turn­ over – not least in the Treasury, whose staff are in high demand elsewhere – and mobility are greater than they used to be. There are also many more special and political advisers, some of whom seem to have a role and influence indistinguishable from that of civil servants, without the same accountability. It is a far cry from the 1970s, when, as a private secretary, I had difficulty in persuading my minister even to see the single special adviser assigned to him in the first wave of such advisers in Whitehall. Whether the net result of all this contributes to better policy making and government I cannot say. With 24-hour media and demand for comment, instant scrutiny through social media, and sudden single-issue pressures, the faster pace of decision-making required must make government much more difficult and complex than when I inhabited the corridors of power. But amid all the computers, apps, messaging, tweeting and open-plan offices even for the highest officials, where every whisper and move is now far more open to public scrutiny as a result of the freedom-of-information laws, I do hope the same sense of public service and impartiality still prevails and that they remain very civil servants.

SOURCES • For much of this book, particularly the early years, I have relied on my own memory and consultation with family members, friends and former colleagues. I never kept a detailed daily diary, but have a large collection of annual diaries recording appointments and events together with boxes of letters, papers, reports, old school and college magazines, notebooks, press releases and cuttings, photographs and other documents spanning much of my life and career. In some cases I kept separate notebooks relating to particular private or official trips, such as Washington on IT business in 1981, various European Councils and other European meetings, including Brussels and Fontainebleau in 1984, and the Soviet Union in June 1990. It was also my custom when leaving senior posts after the mid-1970s to prepare a personal written brief for my successor, and I have kept copies of most of these. I have also retained copies of the annual reports of HM Customs and Excise and of the EIB from the years when I was in charge. For the chapter on my role as IT tsar in the Cabinet Office I am indebted to Sir Ivor Cohen, who not only lent me copies of the ITAP Report on Cable Systems of February 1982 and Lord Hunt’s Report of the Inquiry into Cable Expansion and Broadcasting Policy (Cmnd 8679) of October 1982, but also made available and allowed me to quote from the relevant section of his private monograph on ITAP. On the Westland affair I have consulted the relevant 1985 and 1986 Cabinet and Cabinet committee papers, and on the Supergun and arms-to-Iraq affairs and the Scott Report, in addition to talking to former colleagues involved, I have used the abundant material and transcripts available on the internet. But the best and most succinct account of this affair, prior

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to the publication of the Scott Report itself, is that produced by Private Eye referred to in the list below. I found it particularly helpful also to consult the following books or reports: Alport, Lord, Sudden Assignment: Central Africa 1961–63 (London: Hodder, 1965) Baker, Kenneth, The Turbulent Years (London: Faber, 1993) Barnett, Joel, Inside the Treasury (London: André Deutsch, 1992) Bussière, Éric (ed.), The Bank of the European Union: The EIB 1958–2008 (Luxembourg: EIB, 2008) Foot, Paul, and Tim Laxton, Not the Scott Report: A Private Eye Arms to Iraq Special [special edition of Private Eye magazine, November 1994] Garnett, Mark, Alport: A Study in Loyalty (Teddington: Acumen, 1999) Garnett, Mark, and Ian Aitken, Splendid! Splendid! The Authorised Biography of Willie Whitelaw (London: Jonathan Cape, 2002) Hammarskjöld Commission, Report of the Commission of Inquiry (The Hague, 9 September 2013). Available at http://www.hammarskjoldcommission.org/ wp-content/uploads/2012/03/REPORT.pdf (accessed 7 September 2016) Hennessy, Peter, Cabinet (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1986) Heseltine, Michael, Life in the Jungle (London: Hodder, 2000) Lipsey, David, The Secret Treasury: How Britain’s Economy Is Really Run (London: Viking, 2000) Moore, Charles, Margaret Thatcher: The Authorised Biography, vol. 2 (London: Allen Lane, 2015) Northcote, Stafford H., and C. E. Trevelyan, Report on the Organisation of the Permanent Civil Service (1854) [known as the ‘Northcote–Trevelyan report’] Reid, Margaret, The Secondary Banking Crisis, 1973–75: Its Causes and Course (London: Macmillan, 1982) Roskill, Stephen, Hankey: Man of Secrets, vol. 1 (London: Collins, 1970) Sardanis, Andrew, Africa, Another Side of the Coin: Northern Rhodesia’s Final Years and Zambia’s Nationhood (London: I.B.Tauris, 2003) Scott, David, Ambassador in Black and White: Thirty Years of Changing Africa (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1981)

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Vinen, Richard, National Service: Conscription in Britain 1945–1963 (London: Allen Lane, 2014) Waldegrave, William, A Different Kind of Weather (London: Constable, 2015) Wass, Douglas, Decline to Fall: The Making of British Macro-Economic Policy and the 1976 IMF Crisis (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008) West, Margaret, Catching the Bag: Who’d Be a Woman Diplomat? (Edinburgh: Pentland Press, 2000) Whitelaw, William, The Whitelaw Memoirs (London: Aurum, 1989) Williams, Susan, Who Killed Hammarskjöld? The UN, the Cold War and White Supremacy in Africa (London: Hurst, 2011)

IMAGE SECTION •

1  My paternal grandfather, Company Sergeant Major Matthew J. Unwin, DCM, MM.

2  Mother and Father on holiday at Bridlington.

3  PC Reg Unwin, on Merryweather fire engine, late 1920s.

4  With my father, grandmother and greatgrandmother, c.1936.

5  My first innings.

6  Chesterfield’s crooked spire in the snow.

7  Holy Trinity Church Chesterfield choir, 1944 (author extreme left, back row).

8  My father in the army, 1944.

9  Chesterfield School first XI cricket, 1951 (author first on the left, front row).

10  Sergeant in the Chesterfield School CCF, 1953.

11  Eaton Hall Officer Cadet School, November 1954 (author fourth from the left, middle row).

12  Second lieutenant, First Battalion Suffolk Regiment, Sennelager, Germany, May 1955.

13  Rt Hon Lord Alport, British high commissioner to the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, 1961–3.

14  New College rugby first XV, 1956–7 (author centre middle row, captain).

15  Wreckage of Dag Hammarskjöld’s plane, near Ndola, Northern Rhodesia, 18 September 1961.

16  Picnic at Lake McIlwaine near Salisbury, Southern Rhodesia, with Vera, Andrew, Diana and Robert Scott, and myself, 1962.

17  With Margaret Thatcher at the Fontainebleau European Council, night of 25 June 1984.

18  Leaving the Scott inquiry, 1994. (From the Private Eye special Not the Scott Report, published November 1994.)

1  With Winston Field, prime minister of Southern Rhodesia, at his farm, 1964.

2  Our wedding at Guildford, 5 May 1964. Left to right: Vera Scott, David Scott, Diana, author, Reg Unwin, Winifred Unwin, Roger Unwin (best man).

3  Going away – author and Diana, 5 May 1964.

4  With my mother and brother, Roger, playing for RAF Officers XI against Sussex Police, 1973.

5  Princess Diana launching new Customs Cutter at Cowes, December 1988.

6  My wife Diana launching a French Customs Cutter at Menton, December 1988.

7  Benazir Bhutto, prime minister of Pakistan, visiting HM Customs and Excise headquarters at New Kings Beam House, London, 1989.

8  With prime minister John Major at the annual customs chairman’s and Cabinet secretary’s XI cricket match, 1992.

9  Author and Robin Butler, the two captains in the annual customs chairman’s and Cabinet secretary’s XI cricket match, 1991.

10  EIB, Luxembourg, 1993.

11  Greeting HRH Prince Charles, EIB dinner at National Museum of Wales, Cardiff, October 1994.

12  Meeting with Felipe González, prime minister of Spain, Madrid, 1996.

13  At the EIB with two former Luxembourg prime ministers, Jacques Santer and Pierre Werner, father of the euro, 1997.

14  With King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden, Stockholm, October 1997.

15  Visiting Stavronikita monastery, Mount Athos, September 1998.

16  Meeting with French prime minister Lionel Jospin at the Matignon, Paris, May 1998.

17  ‘With respect, Mr Brown…’ at the EIB London conference, October 1998.

18  With the president of Portugal, Jorge Sampaio, and his wife at the EIB, 1998.

19  With French finance minister Dominique Strauss-Kahn at the EIB London conference, October 1998.

20  At the EIB with Jean-Claude Juncker, prime minister of Luxembourg, 1999.

21  Our three grandchildren, Fabian, Florence and Oliver.

22  With Diana in Brazil, 2009.

23  Our sons: Nick, Chris and Mike.

24  Family on holiday in Tanzania, Christmas 2012.

25  The Cabinet room, No. 10.

INDEX •

Abraham, Willy  100 Adoula, Cyrille  86 Aldrich, Mike  162 Allen, Sir Douglas  163 Allwood, Ray  121–2 Alport, Rt Hon. Lord appointed British high commissioner Central Africa Federation  65 cease-fire talks at Ndola  86–98 departure from Salisbury  75–7 emissary of Wilson government to Ian Smith 82 meetings with governors of Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland  76–7 Minister of State, CRO  63–4 preliminary reconnaissance visit to Federation 66–70 Sedley Commission criticisms  94–5 tour in Salisbury as high commissioner 71–5 Andrewes, Professor A.  43 Arlman, Paul and Kieke  177, 259 Armitage, Sir Robert  69 Armstrong, Sir Robert  163, 166, 168, 170–1, 180, 185, 187, 195, 201, 220 Ashworth, Professor Sir John  163 Atkinson, Sir Fred  155–6 Attali, Jacques  241–2 Attlee, Lord  57 Auden, W. H.  39–40 Aylen, Leo  37

Bachelor, Tony  126 Badajoz platoon  20 Baker, Kenneth  141, 164–7, 170–1 Balogh, Tommy  111 Banda, Dr Hastings Kamuzu  69–70 Bank of England  128, 130–4, 145 Barber, Anthony  127, 129–30 Barnett, Joel  124, 143, 147–8 Barnett formula  148, 192 Barotseland 77 Baxendale, Presiley  229 Bayley, John  39 Beeby, Mr  49 Beira patrol  113 Bells 258 Benn, Tony  146 Bevan, Julian  224 Beveridge, Lord  142, 256 Bhutto, Benazir  231 Biffen, John  153, 204 Blair, Tony  205, 246 Blunden, George  130 Bowe, Colette  200 Bradman, Don  8 Bridlington  6, 11 British Medical Association  142 Brittan, Leon  194–5, 198, 200, 203 Bröder, Ernst Günther  235–7 Brooke, Henry  124 Brooke, Peter  214 Brown, George  110, 123 Brown, Gordon  134, 205, 253 Budd, Brigadier Tony  186

284

index

building societies  135–6 Bulawayo  70, 79, 109 Bulganin 39 Burney, Fanny  257 Burns, Terry  156 Butler, Sir Michael  176 Butler, Rab  64, 74–6 Butler, Sir Robin  170, 204, 214, 218, 225–7, 230, 235 Byatt, Sir Ian  135 Cabinet Office Economic Secretariat briefing and minutes  187–91 Chernobyl disaster  201–2 committees 191–2 organisation 185–7 poll tax  192–3 Star Chamber  203–5 Westland helicopter affair  194–201 Callaghan, Jim  147, 151 Camdessus, Michel  175 Cameron, David  193 Carey, George  250 Carpenter, Francis and Sylvie  259 Carver, Field Marshall Lord  149 Castle, Barbara  109 Cecil, Lord David  36 Central Africa Office  74 Central African Classical Association  79 Chandernagor, Françoise  175 Channel Tunnel  180, 242–3 Charles, Prince  158, 248–9 Chatsworth  2, 7 Chaucer, Geoffrey  210 Chernobyl 201–2 Chesterfield  1–3, 5–6, 9–11, 13–14, 26–7, 32, 44, 47–8, 55–6, 107, 137–8 Chesterfield (Grammar) School  5–6, 14–16, 180 Chesterfield Rugby Club  20, 48 Chevening 151 Chirac, Jacques  246 Christophersen, Henning  246 church choir  12–13 Civil Contingencies Unit  186, 201–2 Civil Service Selection Board  45–6 Civil Service Sports Council  122, 214 Clark, Alan  225, 227–8, 230 Clay Cross  6–7

Clinton, Bill  246 Clutterbuck, Sir Alexander  57 Cockfield, Lord  217 Cohen, Sir Ivor  162, 164 Colville, Viscount, of Kinross  40 Combined Cadet Force  15, 22, 29 Commonwealth Relations Office amalgamation with Colonial and Foreign Offices 113–14 Constitutional department  57–60 entry and initiation  55–7 private secretary to Minister of State  63–5 resident clerk  60–3 Zambia department  108–9 Commonwealth Schools Club  79 Cook, Robin  228, 230 Copson, Bill  7 Cox, Sir Christopher  83 Crassweller, Tony and Mary  100 cricket  7–8, 15, 54, 214, 218, 252–3 Cripps, Judith  101 Croix, Geoffrey de Ste Croix  42–3 Crown Agents  111, 132–4 Cuckney, Sir John  133, 195 Customs Cooperation Council  219, 222 Customs and Excise appointment as Chairman and initiation 209–13 European affairs (frontier controls and VAT) 217–19 management changes  215–16 mission to Soviet union  221–2 relations with police  216–17 supergun, Matrix Churchill and Scott Inquiry 223–31 Cyprus  57–8, 94 Dalton, Hugh  157 Darwin, Erasmus  14 Davies, Robin  41 Davies, Tony  162 Dell, Edmund  146 Delors, Jacques  184, 236, 245–6 Department for Economic Affairs  111, 122–3 Department of Health and Social Security  137 Department of Trade and Industry  146 Derbyshire Chamber of Commerce  232 Dexia bank  255 Diamond, Jack  124

index Diana, Princess  231 Dixon, Sir Charles  59 Dorking  255, 257 Dunnett, Denzil  88, 92 Dunnett, Roderick  88 Eaton Hall officer cadet school  24–6 Edwards, Nicholas  204 Elder Dempster  99 Elder, Mark  220 Elizabeth II, Queen  231 ENA 177–8 English National Opera  149, 220–2, 252, 258 European Bank for Reconstruction and Development  236, 242, 247 European Centre for Nature Conservation 256 European Investment Bank appointment as president and initiation 235–7 contribution to monetary union and single currency 247–8 involvement in political process  245–7 life in Luxembourg  251–2 management ethos and structure  243–5 member of board of directors  175 statute and organisation  238–40 visibility and profile  241–3 visitors to the bank  249–50 Fazio, Antonio  243 Federal Trust  256 Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland dissolution 74–5 establishment and constitution  71–2 pressures for secession  72–4 Field, Winston  82 Financial Services Authority  134 Fisher, ‘Clacker’  14, 36 Foljambe, Godfrey  14 Fontainebleau European Council  183 Foot, Michael  146 Freeman, Richard  159 Fretwell, Sir John  180 Garner, Sir Saville  115 Garrick, David  8 Ghana National Gliding School  103–4 Gilchrist, Sir Andrew  122

285

Gilmore, Brian  61 Glister, W. E.  48 Goodhart, Charles  155 Grace, W. G.  54 Graham, Billy  40 Grand Canyon  52 Gregson, Sir Peter  201, 226 Greim, Robert Ritter von  104 Gwinnett, ‘Sparks’  11 Halle Orchestra  15 Hammarskjöld, Dag  72, 85, 89, 89, 91–2, 112 causes of plane crash  96–7 death in plane crash  93 local inquiries into crash  93 non-arrival at Ndola  92–3 reopening of inquiry by UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon  95–6 Sedley Commission  93–4 Swedish involvement  95–6 Hampshire, Stuart  42 Hankey, Maurice  32 Hannay, David  176–7 Harare 80 Harcourt-Webster, Simon  44 Harewood, Lord  220 Harrison, Sir Ernest  136 Hart, Judith  112, 116–17, 144 Hartley, David  162 Hartwich, Dieter  243 Hayes, Sir Claude  132–3 Hazare, Vijay  7 Healey, Denis  15, 129, 133, 145, 147–8, 150, 153–4 Heath, Edward  124–5, 129 Henderson, Paul  225, 227 Henley, Sir Douglas  163 Hennessy, Peter  189–90 Henry, Sir James  57 Henser, Jean  163, 166 Heseltine, Michael  193–200 Highfield Hall school  13–14 Highlands and Islands Development Board 122 Hoffmann, Helga  237 Hoffmann, Lennie  229 Hollom, Sir Jasper  130, 132 Holy Trinity Church, Chesterfield  10, 12–13, 36, 48

286 Home, Lord  89 Hone, Sir Evelyn  69, 98 Hospital for Tropical; Diseases, St Pancras  83, 107 Housman, A. E.  43 Howe, Geoffrey  147, 153–7, 205, 232 Hunt, Lord John  168 Hurd, Douglas  193 Hutton, Len  8 Imbert, Peter  216 Information Technology Advisory Panel 162–4 report on cable systems  167–8 Information Technology Unit (Cabinet Office)  162–3, 165–6, 178 Ingham, Bernard  180, 197, 201, 207 International Monetary Fund  145–6, 174, 242 IRA parcel bomb  206–8 Isaac, John  151 Jardine, D. R.  40 Jay, Anthony  157 Jenkin, Patrick  127–8 Jennings, Arnold  14–16, 147 Johnston, Brian  40 Johnston, Jack  82 Jonas, Peter  220 Jones, Sir Glyn  72 Joseph, Keith  155 Jospin, Lionel  243 Jubilee picnic  258 Juncker, Jean-Claude  246, 254 Jurgensen, Philippe  175 Kariba Dam  70, 109 Karsenti, René, 247 Kaunda, Kenneth  69, 72, 110 Keynes, John Maynard  116 Khrushchev 39 Kinnock, Neil  201, 246 Kohl, Helmut  179, 181, 183 Kok, Wim  246 Korea  26–7, 32, 112 Koskelo, Pauliine  245 Laker, Freddy  112 Lamont, Norman  236

index Langdon, Anthony  186, 192 Lansdowne, Lord  91, 93 Larosière, Jacques de  242, 244 Lasdun, Sir Denys  238 Lavelle, Roger  235 Lawrence, A. W.  105 Lawson, Nigel  153–4, 158, 170, 178, 180, 184, 192–3 Leas 258 Lehman Brothers  131 le Marchant, Spencer  127 Letwin, Oliver  193 Lewis, C. S.  39 Lipsey, David  120, 138 Lourenço Marques  79 Lovell, Arnold  190 Lyell, Nicholas  229 Lynmouth 11 MacDonald, Rt Hon. Malcolm  113 MacGregor, John  203 Macleod, Ian  64, 74 Macmillan, Harold  65, 73–5, 76, 82–3, 126–7 Macmillan, Maurice  123–7 Major, John  151, 188, 214–15, 218, 228–9, 231, 236 Major, Norma  151 Malawi Congress Party  69 Mallaby, Christopher  185 Mariinsky opera  258 Marti, Luis and Pilar  259 Mary, Queen of Scots  2 Matopo hills  70 Matrix Churchill  225, 227 Maudling, Reginald  74 Maxwell Stamp  112 Mayhew, Patrick  200 Maystadt, Philippe  254 Mehta, Suman  81 Meikles hotel  68, 80 Mentmore Towers  149 Miller, Keith and Geoff  7 Miller, Sir Hal  224 Mirimba House  68, 78, 123 Mitchell, Sir Derek  132 Mitterand, François  179–82 Moi, President (of Kenya)  249 Monckton Commission  73–5 Moore, Charles  193, 196, 200

index Moral Rearmament  40 Moses, Alan  227 Mothers Pride  48 Mount Athos  249 Mountfield, Peter  175 Mubarak, President  250 Mugabe, Robert  81 Mugabe, Sally  81 Muggeridge, Malcolm  59 Murdoch, Iris  39–40 Murray, Len  144 Museveni, President (of Uganda)  249 Napoleon 257 Narmon, François  255 Nars, Kari and Marianne  259 National Economic Development Council 122 National Savings  135–7 national service basic training  19–24 demob 31–2 Eaton Hall officer cadet school  24–6 Northamptonshire regiment  26–9 Suffolk regiment and Germany  29–31 Neild, Sir William  113 New College, Oxford  16, 30 classical honour moderations  37–41 entry 35–7 Greats 41–3 vacation grand tour  44–5 vacation jobs  47–8 New Haven  48–50 New Haven Rotary Club  50 NHS 142 Nkomo, Joshua  64–5, 69, 72 Nkrumah, Kwame  100–1, 103 Norgrove, David  197 Norman, Adrian  163 Normanton Barracks  19, 35 Northcote, Stafford H.  259 Northern Rhodesia  68–9, 71, 74–5, 77, 85, 87 Nyasaland  68–70, 71, 74–6 O’Brien, Conor Cruise  86–8, 92 OECD  150, 159 Old Cestrefeldians Society  16 Ooms, Van Doorn  48–9

287

OPEC  129, 145 Øresund bridge  248 Orwell, George  4 Oursin, Thomas and Brigitte  259 Overseas Development Ministry  111 Oxbridge entrance  16 Paris Club  175 Parker, Benj  44 Paulson, Hank  248 Payne, Mrs  41–2 Peg-Leg Pete  11 pensions uprating  143 Piper, John  41 Pliatzky, Sir Leo  119, 123 poll tax  192–3 Porritt, Sir Arthur  83 Potter, Dennis  39 Pountney, David  220 Powell, Charles  198, 201 Prate, Alain  244 Prodi, Romano  243 Public Accounts Committee  159, 216 Public Expenditure Survey Committee  121 Quinlan, Sir Michael  214 Quinton, Anthony  42 Raab, Willie von  222 Radio Luxembourg  21 Ranger, Terence  81 Rawlings, Jerry  101 Rayner, Sir Derek  125 Read, Charles  162, 167 Reform Club  68 Reitsch, Hanna  104 Repton 6 Rhodes Cecil  70, 80 Rhodesia Railways  87, 109 Richard, Pierre  255 Richardson, Gordon  145 Ridley, Nicholas  224 Rifkind, Malcolm  199 Ritchie, Neil  89–90 Roberts, John  186 Robertson, Geoffrey, QC  227 Robinson’s works (Chesterfield)  10 Roll, Eric  111, 113, 173 Rotberg, Bob  112

288 Rothschild, Lord  192 Royal Rhodesian Air Force  87, 92 Russell, Bertrand  62 Russell, Sandy  224, 229–30, 252–3 Sadler, ‘Pop’  13 Salisbury  67–9, 76, 78–80, 82 Sampson, Nicos  58 Sandys, Rt Hon. Duncan  62–4, 73–4, 89 Santer, Jacques  246 Saunders, Michael  224–5 Savins, Ian  221 Schengen agreement  217–18 school certificate  5, 14, 19 Scott, David  71, 75, 78, 83, 90, 93, 115, 151–2 Scott, Diana (see Unwin) Scott Inquiry establishment 229 Report 231 taking evidence  229–30 Scott, Sir Richard  229–31 scouts 10–13 Sear, Bertie  108 Sedley, Sir Stephen  94 Shamuyarira, Nathan  81 Sheffield  9–10, 15 Sheffield Forgemasters  223 Sheffield University teaching hospital  107 Sheppey, Isle of  122 Sherwood Foresters  17, 27, 32 Shore, Peter  123, 146 Skinner, Denis  6 Smedley, Harold  105 Smith, Alec Halford  38–9 Smith, Ian  69, 75, 109, 149 Société Luxembourgoise des Amis de L’Opéra 252 Solbes, Pedro  254 Southgate, Colin  162, 171 Stanley, Uncle  6, 138 Star Chamber  189, 191, 203–5 Stephenson, George  10 Stevens, C. E.  42 Stevens, Sir Roger  75 Stevenson, Adlai  51 Stewart, Michael  123 Strachan, Valerie  215, 237 Strong, Roy  149

index Taverne, Dick  157 Tebbitt, Norman  203, 205 Tennant, Mark  74 Territorial Army  31–2, 47 Thatcher, Margaret  2, 47, 133, 151–2, 156, 161–2, 169–70, 178, 205, 217, 236, 242, 256 Brussels and Fontainebleau European Councils 181–3 conduct of Cabinet business  188–9 negotiations on European budget rebate 178–83 talks with President Mitterand  179–80 Westland helicopter affair  194–201 Thomson, Ewan  90, 93 Thorn, Gaston  179 Thorpe, Jeremy  110, 130 trainspotting 3 Trans European Networks  245 Treasury AT (agriculture and trade) division  121–3 banking supervision and European harmonisation 134 budget secrecy  157–8 building societies policy  135 Central Unit, and managing the budget 149–59 cultural shift in 1979, 154–7 European budget negotiations and international debt problems  174–84 functions and organisation  119–20 HF (home finance) division and 1972–3 secondary banking crisis  128–31 IMF crisis, 1976  145–8 National Savings policy  135–7 private secretary to Chief Secretary  123–8 SS (social security and health) divisions 140–5 transfer from FCO  116–17 Treasury Select Committee  158 Treasury Singers  139 Trefgarne, Lord  225 Trend, Sir Burke  190 Trevelyan, C. E.  259 Trichet, Jean-Claude  175 TUC  144, 151 Turner, Fiona  237 Tweddle, Douglas  217, 223

index unilateral declaration of independence (UDI) 69 United National Independence Party  69 University College of Rhodesia and Nyasaland  81, 83, 105 Unwin, Chris  138, 173, 207, 250, 258 Unwin, Diana  78, 81–3, 103, 105–6, 114, 127, 149, 151, 160, 206–7, 222, 231, 251–2, 256, 258 Unwin, Fabian  33, 258 Unwin, Florence  258 Unwin, Matthew James  17 Unwin, Mike  114, 138, 173, 178, 207, 258 Unwin, Nick  138, 173–4, 258 Unwin, Oliver  33, 258 Unwin, Reg  4–9, 14, 17, 55, 137 Unwin, Roger  6–9, 16, 138 Unwin, Winifred  5, 8–10, 12, 14, 17, 55, 127, 137 Urquart, Brian  97 VAT harmonisation  218–19 Victoria Falls conference  75 Viola  50, 54 Wakeham, John  204 Wakely, John  57 Waldegrave, William  192, 229–30 Walker, Denis  186 Walker, Peter  193 War Office Selection Board  23–4 Warnock, Mary  43 wartime 9–10 Wass, Sir Douglas  132, 145, 154–6, 163 Waugh, Evelyn  31 Welensky, Sir Roy  62, 68, 73–5, 77, 80, 87–9 Werner, Pierre  252 Westland helicopters  187, 194–9 Whitehead, Sir Edgar  68, 82 Whitelaw, Willie  169, 187, 191, 197, 203–5, 221 Whittens 258 Whittome, Alan  145 Wicks, Sir Nigel  129 Wiggins, John  186, 192, 204, 207 Wilcox, Sir Malcolm  175 Williams, Bernard  42 Williams, John  90 Williams, Ralph Vaughan  137

289

Williams, ‘Soapy’  111 Williams, Susan  94, 97 Williamson, David  185, 200 Wilmott, Peter  219 Wilson, Harold  82, 109–10, 123–4, 129, 146 Wilson, Richard  208 Winchester 37 Witteveen, Dr Johannes  145 Wolters, Rob  256 World Customs Council (see Customs Cooperation Council) Wright, Joseph, of Derby  10 Wright, Stanley  116 Wuppertal 29 Yale University arrival 49–50 crossing the continent  52 farewell and return to Britain  52–3 graduate school  50–2 racial prejudice  51, 53 rugby club  51–2 Yates, Keith  17, 39, 44 Yorke, Eric  37 Younger, George  199 Zambia  75, 109–10 Zimbabwe 81–2