A Very Courageous Decision

by Graham McCann

  2 Antony Jay, interview with the author, 1 February 2014.

  3 Jay, speaking in Comedy Connections.

  4 Alec Douglas-Home, The Way the Wind Blows (London: Collins, 1976), p. 203.

  5 Lynn, speaking in Comedy Connections.

  6 The lines come from Yes Minister, series three, episode one: ‘Equal Opportunities’.

  7 Following the formation of a Coalition Government in December 1916, it was decided to establish a Cabinet Secretariat to record Cabinet decisions. Sir Maurice Hankey, the man appointed, established the precepts for a coordinating and record-keeping organisation, which led in 1920 to the creation of the Cabinet Office. (See John F. Naylor, A Man and an Institution: Sir Maurice Hankey, the Cabinet Secretariat and the Custody of Cabinet Secrecy [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009].)

  8 Lynn, speaking in Comedy Connections.

  9 The Conservative Party won the General Election of 1983 with a majority of 144 seats to retain power; with the Opposition vote split almost evenly between the recently merged SDP/Liberal Alliance and the Labour Party, and the Conservatives achieving their best results since 1959, the Government was returned with an increase in seats of 100.

  10 Francis Pym quoted in John Cole, The Thatcher Years: a decade of revolution in British politics (London, BBC Books, 1987), p. 102.

  11 Lord Stockton, quoted in the Observer, 17 November 1985, p. 11.

  12 Lynn, Comedy Rules, p. 117.

  13 Lynn, quoted by Kandiah, p. 523.

  14 Lynn, quoted by Kandiah, p. 521.

  15 Nicholas Ridley, Industry and the Civil Service (London: Aims of Industry, 1973), p. 3 and Leslie Chapman, Your Disobedient Servant, p. 122.

  16 Antony Jay, quoted in the Guardian, 6 January 1986, p. 11.

  17 Benjamin Disraeli, Contarini Fleming, Part VII, Chapter II (London: Frederick Warne and Co., 1832), p. 373. A related point was made by Edmund Burke: ‘When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall, one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle,’ which can be found in his ‘The Present Discontents’, 1770, in Ian Harris (ed.) Edmund Burke: Pre-Revolutionary Writings (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), p. 184.

  18 Valerie Warrender, correspondence with the author, 29 November 2013.

  19 Ibid.

  20 Eddington, So Far, So Good, p. 148.

  21 Ibid.

  22 Down Your Way, featuring Nigel Hawthorne, first broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on 11 September 1988.

  23 Sir Robin Butler, speaking on Yes Minister: The View from Whitehall, Part 1, first broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on 26 February 2005.

  24 In 1985, for example, the imminent departure from the Cabinet of John Biffen, who was Leader of the House of Commons at the time, was touted in advance by Ingham, who referred to him off the record as ‘a semi-detached member of the Government’. Ingham would later acknowledge that this and certain other quotes originated from him, when he answered questions from a Select Committee of Public Administration on 2 June 1998:

  RHODRI MORGAN (CHAIR): In the history books of the 1980s, in some ways your two most famous contributions will be seen as negative briefing contributions. They were against Ministers of the Cabinet, not against the Opposition of course, but they were the references that you made unattributably to John Biffen and to Francis Pym and what I find fascinating about those in reading some of the things that you have written about that period is that you also said that you would rather commit hari-kiri – I am not quite sure of the correct Japanese pronunciation of it – than to have complied with the request from Colette Bowe, if I remember correctly, who was Leon Brittan’s Head of Press and Information to leak the Solicitor General’s letter in relation to Michael Heseltine at the height of the Westland controversy. You said it was not your job to do dirty work; you were a civil servant. Now why was it your job to do dirty work as regards negative briefing against John Biffen and Francis Pym?

  INGHAM: I did not think I was doing dirty work. What I thought I was doing was trying to bring some rationality to the argument and that is frequently difficult, if I may say so, in Lobbies. What was happening here was that Francis Pym had made an extremely gloomy speech in the same week that the Chancellor had said we were coming out of a deep recession. It turned out the Chancellor was right and the Lobby, not unnaturally, since Francis Pym was in charge of the presentation of policy, wondered how such a man could remain in the Cabinet.

  MORGAN: He was not in the Cabinet?

  INGHAM: Hang on a minute. He was certainly in the Government. What I sought to do at the end of a long and difficult passage, because neither Mrs Thatcher showed any signs of sacking him and he certainly did not show any sign of going, what I tried to do was to bring some rationality to the argument and explain it in terms of personality.

  MORGAN: You were a civil servant and you were knocking a Minister of the Government?

  INGHAM: I now wish I had not done it because that and John Biffen, which is exactly the same circumstance where I was trying to explain by relation to his position in the Government why he would do such a thing. I wish I had done neither, because it got me a reputation – in my view utterly undeserved, but nonetheless I got it – for rubbishing Ministers. Now rubbishing Ministers seems to be routine, several of them.

  25 Simon Hoggart, Guardian (Media Guardian section), 1 November 2010, p. 2.

  26 Derek Fowlds, interview with the author, 3 February 2014.

  27 Yes Minister, series two, episode two: ‘Doing the Honours’.

  28 Sources: BBC WAC and The Times, 24 December 1985, p. 8.

  10 Series One

  Header quotation: Michael Oakeshott, ‘Political Education’, 1951, in Peter Laslett (ed.), Philosophy, Politics and Society, First Series (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1975), p. 15.

  1 See, for example, ‘Dumb … and it’s getting dumber’, Observer, (News section), 16 April 2000, p. 5. See also Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1985) for a broader contemporary consideration of the phenomenon.

  2 Michael Heseltine, the Defence Secretary, resigned from the Cabinet on the morning of 9 January 1986. He had clashed with the Prime Minister over a rescue bid to save Britain’s last helicopter manufacturer, the struggling Augusta-Westland. Heseltine had wanted to integrate Westland with Italian and French companies, while Thatcher wanted it to merge with the American firm Sikorsky. Heseltine – with the backing of the Defence Committee – claimed that the European deal, which was initially worth more financially, could form the basis of a strong arms industry to rival the Americans. His opponents claimed that the orders were based on aircraft still in the design stage. The debate, which had been rumbling on since April 1985, had been causing tensions within the Cabinet for many months before Heseltine finally decided to resign in protest. Upon leaving Number Ten, he said that the final straw had come when the Prime Minister insisted that all his public comments on Westland would have to be vetted by Civil Service officials before being released. In a statement to reporters later in the afternoon, Heseltine said: ‘If the basis of trust between the Prime Minister and her Defence Secretary no longer exists, there is no place for me with honour in such a Cabinet.’ Just fifteen days after his departure, the Westland affair provoked a second senior Cabinet resignation. Leon Brittan was forced to quit as Trade and Industry Secretary after admitting that he had authorised the leaking of a Government law officer’s letter that had been highly critical of Heseltine (see the Guardian, 10 January 1986, p. 1).

  3 Lord Donoughue, interview with the author, 25 March 2014.

  4 Bernard Donoughue, Downing Street Diary: With Harold Wilson in No. 10, p. 34.

  5 Ibid. pp. 22, 23, 97 and 206.

  6 Ibid. pp. 31, 61, 63, 76, 179 and 283.

  7 Ibid. p. 35. (Donoughue’s depiction of Falkender very closely echoes that of his colleague Joe Haines in The Politics of Power where, at great length, Haines notes both her good qualities – such as the e
xceptionally sharp mind that produced ideas ‘fired off like rockets into the night’ [p. 175] – and her bad ones, such as her many tantrums and sulks, her paranoia, her neuroticism and the shrill calls that she began by wielding the telephone ‘like a slave driver his whip’ [pp. 177, 187].)

  8 Lord Donoughue would later remark (interview with the author, 25 March 2014): ‘The character of Dorothy Wainwright obviously had some similarity with Marcia. That wasn’t accidental. But Dorothy Wainwright seemed rather sensible to me, bringing some common sense to policies. And I’d heard that in the early days Marcia was a bit like that. But in my time she was just malicious, and when she interfered it was only about something that concerned herself, it was never about policy. So Dorothy Wainwright, although she grew from the same source, so to speak, struck me as a much more desirable character.’

  9 Machiavelli, The Prince, Chapter XXI: ‘How a ruler should act in order to gain reputation’, p. 76.

  10 In October 1983, the United States invaded the Caribbean island of Grenada, a former British colony that was now part of the Commonwealth. The action was ordered by President Ronald Reagan following a coup by a Cuban-trained military who executed Prime Minister Maurice Bishop and at least thirteen of his associates. The invasion angered the British Prime Minister of the time, Margaret Thatcher, whose attempts to stop it had been dismissed by the White House, with the Pentagon retaliating by expressing a ‘sense of outrage’ that she had refused to participate despite America’s support during the Falklands conflict the previous year. Most other world leaders were angered by Reagan’s action, and on 28 October the United Nations failed to get a motion passed deploring the invasion – because it was vetoed by the United States.

  11 Bernard Ingham, quoted in the Daily Mail, 27 June 2009, p. 12.

  12 In Spycatcher, Peter Wright claimed that he was assigned to unmask a Soviet mole in MI5, and he became convinced (although he never proved it) that the culprit was one of its former Directors General, Roger Hollis. Wright also told, among other things, of the MI6 plot to assassinate President Nasser during the Suez Crisis; of coordinated MI5–CIA plotting against the Labour Party Prime Minister Harold Wilson, and of MI5’s covert surveillance of high-level Commonwealth conferences. Written by Wright in Tasmania, after his retirement from MI5, the first attempt at publication was in 1985, when the British Government acted immediately to ban the book in the UK. The ruling was obtained in an English court, however, which meant that the book continued to be available legally in Scotland, as well as other jurisdictions, and copies were put into circulation within Britain through personal imports.

  13 On 13 October 1988, the British Government lost its long-running battle to stop the publication of Spycatcher. Law Lords ruled that the media could publish extracts from Peter Wright’s memoirs, because any damage to national security had already been done by its publication abroad. They did agree, however, that Wright’s book had indeed constituted a serious breach of confidentiality, which was the principle at the heart of the Government’s case against him.

  14 Bernard Ingham, quoted in the Daily Mail, 27 June 2009, p. 12.

  15 Sources: BBC WAC and BARB.

  16 Secrets (the newspaper of the Campaign for Freedom of Information), no. 11, January 1987, p. 1.

  Case Study 4

  17 This was confirmed by Kenneth Clarke when interviewed for Yes Minister: The View from Whitehall, Part 1, first broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on 26 February 2005.

  18 Kenneth Clarke, interviewed for Yes Minister: The View from Whitehall, Part 1, Radio 4, 26 February 2005.

  19 Joe Ashton, Hansard, HC Deb. 29 October 1986, vol. 103 cc. 335–8.

  20 ‘No-Smoking Areas in Public Houses’, Hansard, HC Deb. 29 October 1986, vol. 103 cc. 335–8.

  21 Choosing Health: Making healthy choices easier – Executive Summary, Department of Health, 16 November 2004.

  22 Information on the introduction and subsequent changes to the tobacco duty escalator is taken from the Institute for Fiscal Studies’ Green Budget January 2001, ‘Appendix C: Budgets Since 1979’.

  11 Series Two

  Header quotation: Stanley Baldwin, Observer, 20 May 1925, p. 10.

  1 Robert Key, Hansard, HC Deb. 30 January 1986, vol. 90 c. 1171.

  2 Lord Morton of Shuna, Hansard, HL Deb. 8 December 1986, vol. 482 c. 1045.

  3 Lord Cledwyn of Penrhos, Hansard, HL Deb. 26 February 1986, vol. 471 c. 1113.

  4 Denis Healey, Hansard, HC Deb. 16 April 1986, vol. 95 c. 951.

  5 Sir Nicholas Fairbairn, Hansard, HC Deb. 21 May 1986, vol. 98 c. 394.

  6 John Home Robertson, Hansard, HC Deb. 5 November 1986, vol. 103 c. 1011.

  7 The Earl of Perth, Hansard, HL Deb. 18 November 1986, vol. 482 c. 195.

  8 Dennis Skinner, Hansard, HC Deb. 16 December 1986, vol. 107 c. 1062.

  9 James Naughtie, Guardian, 26 May 1986, p. 22.

  10 See the Canberra Times, 26 November 1986, p. 1 and 5 April 1987, p. 1.

  11 Derek Fowlds, interview with the author, 3 February 2014.

  12 New Straits Times, 15 February 1986, p. 13.

  13 Paul Eddington, The Times, 28 December 1985–3 January 1986, p. 34.

  14 Nigel Hawthorne, Straight Face, p. 253.

  15 Derek Fowlds, interview with the author, 3 February 2014.

  16 Hawthorne, Straight Face, p. 253.

  17 Derek Fowlds, interview with the author, 3 February 2014.

  18 See, for example, the Guardian, 3 December 1987, p. 1.

  19 Harold Macmillan, cited by Harold Wilson, apropos of the informal role of a Prime Minister, in A Prime Minister on Prime Ministers.

  20 Yes, Prime Minister, series two, episode eight: ‘The Tangled Web’.

  21 Yes, Prime Minister, series two, episode seven: ‘The National Education Service’.

  22 Yes, Prime Minister, series two, episode seven: ‘The National Education Service’.

  23 Yes, Prime Minister, series two, episode seven: ‘The National Education Service’.

  24 Yes, Prime Minister, series two, episode one: ‘Man Overboard’.

  25 Yes, Prime Minister, series two, episode two: ‘Official Secrets’.

  26 Yes, Prime Minister, series two, episode two: ‘Official Secrets’.

  27 Yes, Prime Minister, series two, episode seven: ‘The National Education Service’.

  28 Yes, Prime Minister, series two, episode two: ‘Official Secrets’.

  29 See Bernard Donoughue, Downing Street Diary: With Harold Wilson in No. 10, p. 135.

  30 This summary was by no means new. There is some debate as to who first wrote it. A version was certainly used by Dave Allen during the mid-1970s both onstage and in an edition of Dave Allen at Large, but authorship has also been attributed (without any specific date or place) to the former TUC President Cyril Plant, who is reported to have come up with the basic list and descriptions in 1976. See Denis MacShane, Using the Media (London: Pluto Press, 1979), p. 13.

  31 Yes, Prime Minister, series two, episode four: ‘A Conflict of Interest’.

  32 Yes, Prime Minister, series two, episode four: ‘A Conflict of Interest’.

  33 Yes, Prime Minister, series two, episode eight: ‘The Tangled Web’.

  34 Yes, Prime Minister, series two, episode three: ‘A Diplomatic Incident’.

  35 Yes, Prime Minister, series two, episode one: ‘Man Overboard’.

  36 Yes, Prime Minister, series two, episode two: ‘Official Secrets’.

  37 Yes, Prime Minister, series two, episode two: ‘Official Secrets’.

  38 See The Times, ‘Diary’, 10 October 1986, p. 14.

  39 Lynn, quoted in Kandiah, p. 522.

  40 See the Guardian, 3 December 1987, p. 1. Heath was repeating his earlier attack on Thatcher’s education policy now that her Government was returning to some of the old proposals in a new education reform bill.

  41 See The Times, 24 July 1982, p. 3 and 22 June 1983, p. 20.

  42 Lynn, quoted in Kandiah, pp. 521–2.

&nbs
p; 43 Ibid.

  44 Jay, quoted in Kandiah, p. 514.

  12 The End

  Header quotation: Woodrow Wilson, ‘A Wit and a Seer’, The Atlantic Monthly, vol. 82, issue 492 (October 1898), p. 540.

  1 John Naughton, Observer, 6 December 1987, p. 30.

  2 Antony Jay, interview with the author, 1 February 2014.

  3 Jonathan Lynn, interview with the author, 1 February 2014.

  4 Derek Fowlds, interview with the author, 3 February 2014.

  5 Jonathan Lynn, speaking in Comedy Connections.

  6 Antony Jay, interview with the author, 1 February 2014.

  7 Jonathan Lynn, interview with the author, 1 February 2014.

  8 Jonathan Lynn, speaking in Comedy Connections.

  9 Guardian, 29 September 1989, p. 6.

  10 Peter Hall, quoted by Eddington, So Far, So Good, p. 221.

  11 Eddington, So Far, So Good, pp. 230–1.

  12 Eddington’s performance as Justice Shallow in Henry IV was first broadcast on BBC2 on 28 October 1995.

  13 Tricia Eddington, interviewed by the Independent on Sunday, 8 December 1996, p. 18.

  14 The Times, 2 July 1994, p. 23.

  15 Mail on Sunday, 26 June 1994, p. 30.

  16 Michael Billington, Guardian, 22 June 1994, p. A4.

  17 Paul Eddington, speaking in Paul Eddington: A Life Well Lived, first broadcast on BBC1, 15 July 2001.

  18 John Howard Davies, speaking in Paul Eddington: A Life Well Lived, first broadcast on BBC1, 15 July 2001.