In the late morning of Monday 6 January, the Solicitor-General sent his letter to Michael Heseltine, very late in the day if it was to fulfil its declared purpose of informing the Westland board in time for their meeting that afternoon. The previous day, Mayhew had telephoned Heseltine to warn him of this approach: in his dealings throughout the affair, he was friendlier to Heseltine than to Mrs Thatcher, so much so that he did little more than go through the motions in rebuking the Defence Secretary. Although it was cautious and friendly in tone, however, his letter did make the point which Powell had wanted about ‘material inaccuracies’ in the letter to Horne. Heseltine had been mistaken in saying, said Mayhew, that all the companies in the European bid had stated that a Westland link with Sikorsky would rule out Westland participation in a European battlefield helicopter. Two had; one (the Italians) hadn’t – hardly an earth-shattering point. Since the letter to Horne might be relied upon by the Westland board and shareholders in arriving at their decision, ‘I therefore advise you that you should write again to Mr Horne correcting these inaccuracies.’100 Passing this on to Mrs Thatcher, Charles Powell wrote on it: ‘Very satisfactory’. No one pretended that this letter offered a finely tuned piece of legal advice. Like the first, this second Mayhew letter had been transparently inspired by ministers in their war with one another. This time the conflict intensified further. As Leon Brittan recalled, ‘She and her entourage were extremely keen it be in the public domain.’101 In a breach of accepted practice, the Law Officer’s letter was leaked to the press. Colette Bowe, Brittan’s press officer,* did this by reading part of its contents over the telephone just after 2 p.m. that day to Chris Moncrieff of the Press Association.
Writing as fast as he could that afternoon to Patrick Mayhew (to whom he had already spoken on the telephone), Heseltine complained about the leak, which he felt greatly exaggerated the criticism in Mayhew’s letter. The fact of the leak made him feel free to make public his version of the full background. Even Cuckney, though pleased by the content of the Solicitor-General’s letter, thought there was ‘no business reason’ which made the leak necessary – it was ‘just anti-Heseltine’.102
Not only was the leak improper in itself: it was also partial – only the bit which was damaging to Heseltine, rather than the whole letter, had been read to Chris Moncrieff. ‘It was’, recalled Moncrieff, ‘a major act of deception.’103 It also – not surprisingly – enraged Mayhew. ‘I was furious,’ he remembered. ‘I had no interest in the outcome of the row, but substantial interest in Law Officers not being perceived to be used for tendentious purposes.’104 Since he had, in fact, allowed himself to be used twice in a week for tendentious purposes – first by Heseltine and then by Thatcher/Brittan – Mayhew must have been particularly irritated that his part in this had become visible. He immediately wrote sympathetically to Heseltine, to express his ‘dismay’ at the leak.* Mayhew directed his anger at those he presumed to be the culprits: ‘I asked straightaway for an explanation from No. 10’ since he knew that the DTI request for him to send the letter in the first place had come from Powell.105 He threatened resignation. Mayhew was supported the next morning by the Attorney-General, Michael Havers, who was so annoyed by the leak that he came steaming back from sick leave and threatened privately to put the police into No. 10 to investigate it. Havers also wrote to Robert Armstrong demanding a formal leak inquiry.† This was a very dangerous development for Mrs Thatcher. The Law Officers were not normally front-rank figures, but if it could be proved that 10 Downing Street had been abusing their advice for political purposes, the Prime Minister’s integrity would be at risk.
On Tuesday morning, the pro-Thatcher Sun ran the splash headline ‘You Liar!’ (‘Tarzan gets rocket from top law man’) in reference to Heseltine.106‡ Heseltine immediately sought – and was granted – leave from Michael Havers to sue the paper.§ He was moving inexorably to what he saw as higher moral ground.
Mrs Thatcher knew that she had to find a way to rein Heseltine in at the Cabinet meeting that Thursday. She studied her proposed speaking note on the subject of Westland, prepared by Brittan. In one of his characteristic glosses of material from ministers, Charles Powell described it in his covering note to her as ‘a bit turgid and long-winded’.107 Robert Armstrong worried about a ‘needlessly provocative’ passage telling Heseltine that he should not criticize John Cuckney: ‘Heseltine is particularly enraged by Cuckney, and will rise to this sentence.’108 But there was no disagreement about the purpose of the Cabinet meeting. It was to make it clear to Heseltine that he must stop. Press cuttings were deployed: ‘There’s probably no paper which has been a more loyal supporter of this government than the Sunday Telegraph and it spoke last Sunday of a “National scandal … British Government … so pitifully divided”. The affair “has brought ridicule on the government at home and abroad”.’ One simple sentence read: ‘We cannot go on like this.’109 This was no more than the truth. On one draft, Nigel Wicks wrote a list of which Cabinet ministers were to be lobbied by ‘Willy’ and which by ‘Wakeham’. The preparation for the Cabinet meeting was intense. Bernard Ingham wrote to Mrs Thatcher: ‘It will be important to move quickly on Westland. On the last occasion, the Lord President [Whitelaw] came out of Cabinet to brief me.’110
Even Ingham did not know just how quickly movement would be needed.
The Cabinet met as usual on Thursday 9 January, at 10 a.m. The Prime Minister set out the Westland situation and Brittan briefed colleagues on the coming Extraordinary General Meeting of the Westland shareholders. Robert Armstrong, as usual, scribbled, in his own version of shorthand, who said what in his Cabinet Secretary’s notebook. Mrs Thatcher warned of ‘great damage … just as things were getting better’.111 ‘We must restore standing of Govt,’ she said, and asked everyone to observe collective responsibility and the conclusions of the previous Cabinet meeting before Christmas. At first, Heseltine was moderate in tone. He said that he had ‘very little to add’ and, in briefings on the Westland bids, would adopt ‘an absolutely neutral stance’.
Disagreement did not seem inevitable. But Mrs Thatcher was keen to ensure no ambiguity about how questions on Westland should be now be handled by the government. She produced what Heseltine called ‘a tatty piece of paper from her handbag’.112 Given the sensitivity of the issue and the fact that it crossed departmental boundaries, she insisted that ‘Answers to qu must be cleared through the Cabinet Office, so that they can be cleared with depts. concerned. That is what collective responsibility means.’ Heseltine objected. He agreed he would not make any new statements, but he had to be able to answer questions himself about the European bid, since the answers depended on government defence policy. What, for example, if someone asked whether there was an MOD requirement for Black Hawk helicopters? If he were not allowed to answer, this would have the effect of favouring the Sikorsky bid. ‘There are critical qus about procurement wh. have to be answered’;113 if answers had to be cleared, this could take twelve hours and would create uncertainty.
Norman Tebbit acted the role of candid friend to Heseltine. He had ‘a great deal of personal sympathy’ for the European bid, he said, but ‘with reasonable good will’ all ministers could stick to the same line. He warned Heseltine of ‘pushing his luck too far … we have to be tolerant of each other.’ Lawson, Geoffrey Howe and others also urged Heseltine to accept what Howe called the ‘need for unity’, but Heseltine would not let go. He persisted with variants on the theme of ‘I don’t intend to make further statements, but I must be able to reaffirm existing statements.’114 Mrs Thatcher kept repeating her version of collective responsibility. At last she tried to end the debate, which was going nowhere: ‘We reaffirm 19 Dec. Answers to be cleared through Cabinet Office.’* Heseltine said: ‘There has been no coll. responsibility in the disc [discussion] of these matters. There has been a breakdown in the propriety of Cabinet discussions. I cannot accept the decision. I must therefore leave this Cabinet.’115 With these words, at 11.05 a.m., he swept
up his papers, rose from the table and walked out.
Watched by Charles Powell, who was sitting at the back of the Cabinet meeting, Heseltine turned sharp right out of the Cabinet Room and into the lavatory to ‘comb his hair’.116† When he emerged, he walked out of the front door of No. 10 and was approached by a solitary waiting cameraman, who asked him what was happening. Heseltine said, ‘I’ve resigned from the Cabinet, and I shall be making a full statement later on.’‡ Then he walked off, across the road to the Ministry of Defence. As he entered the office, his private secretary, Richard Mottram, who had naturally been expecting him much later in the morning, said: ‘That’s a bit quick.’ ‘I’ve resigned,’ said Heseltine. Wondering, ‘in my typical, civil servant way’, whether this was really, formally, irretrievably so, Mottram said, ‘Does anyone know?’ ‘Yes,’ said Heseltine, ‘I told the cameraman on the door.’117 Mottram had worried that Heseltine was gearing up for resignation, and had warned Charles Powell, with whom he had good relations, but it had never occurred to him that this would happen in the middle of a Cabinet meeting. He did not believe that it had occurred to Heseltine either. Heseltine privately agreed with this judgment. He resigned on the spur of the moment, he recalled, ‘because of what the No. 10 machine would have done to me if I had accepted this humiliation’. Resignation was not in his best interests: ‘It is very likely that I would have been Prime Minister if I hadn’t resigned: but I’d never have faced myself.’118 He also thought that Mrs Thatcher ‘had not planned for or expected me to walk out of the Cabinet. Nor had I! I don’t believe she wanted me to go.’119
Meanwhile, back in Downing Street, there was that mixture of consternation and suppressed merriment which politicians feel when something damaging and dramatic suddenly happens. Some thought that Heseltine had not resigned, but had merely staged an angry walk-out. Some even thought he might walk back in. Robert Armstrong was despatched to find out if he was still in the building, and returned to report privily to Mrs Thatcher that he had left and spoken to the media outside. Mrs Thatcher adjourned the Cabinet meeting for half an hour. By her own account, she was one of the few people not surprised by what had happened: ‘I knew he was going to resign.’120 She did not mean by this that she had known for a fact that he would resign at the meeting. She meant rather that resignation was the logical outcome of Heseltine’s dramatically uncompromising stance. She had not expected it at that moment, but she had prepared for it, even hoped for it. The meeting had, as Charles Powell recalled, ‘been intended to be decisive’.121 She did not much mind that it had been so excitingly so. As soon as she understood what had happened, she had a private word with George Younger, and offered him the Defence portfolio, which he accepted,* and she replaced him at the Scottish Office with Malcolm Rifkind. She then returned to the Cabinet Room to introduce Younger in his new role. The remaining business of the Cabinet meeting then continued.
That afternoon, Heseltine made a resignation statement so long that some accused him of having prepared it before he walked out. He irritated MPs and former ministerial colleagues by speaking from the department from which he had just resigned rather than waiting, as is customary, to explain his departure to the House of Commons. At the same time, he used the MOD’s own telegraphic network to tell European defence ministers that he would continue to work for the European consortium.
In his statement, Heseltine gave a narrative which was very damaging to Mrs Thatcher. He complained of ‘ad hoc’ meetings organized by the Prime Minister to get round colleagues and ‘close off the European option’. He said that minutes of the Cabinet on 12 December had been circulated without containing any reference to the protest he said he had made about a lack of a chance to meet to discuss the European option. He protested at the leak of the Solicitor-General’s letter, and about its content (‘My answer needed no correction’). He complained that Leon Brittan, meeting Sir Raymond Lygo, the managing director of BAe, had tried to interfere with the bid process by warning Lygo to sever his company’s link with the European consortium. Finally, he explained how, at that morning’s Cabinet, he had not felt able to abandon assurances he had already given in relation to the European bid. He could not accept the constraint of the silence demanded of him. Hence his action: ‘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.’ Heseltine successfully wrung the occasion for every drop of drama it possessed and the airwaves contained nothing else.*
Mrs Thatcher was not displeased with the resignation itself. ‘At last we shall get some decisions taken,’ she said to Ingham.122 But she was wilfully blind to the effects of what had happened. When Woodrow Wyatt rang her later in the day to discuss the debacle, she told him that Brittan, not she, would deal with its public presentation: ‘I’m not going to speak about it on Monday in the House. Why should I? Just because a Minister resigns.’123 This was an understandable expression of exasperation. She was probably right that most Conservative opinion thought Heseltine had gone too far over such a minor issue. He had badly overplayed his hand. What she failed to see, however, was that, in the process, he had damaged her, and she had damaged herself. In her memoirs, her treatment of the whole Westland affair is particularly unilluminating, since she barely engages with the issues raised about her actions or discloses much of what she did. Her assessment of Heseltine is accurate: she described Westland as ‘a crisis created from a small issue by a giant ego’,124 but she never examined what she – also the possessor of a giant ego – had done or failed to do.
Stephen Sherbourne, the head of her political office, sent her an acute analysis of how the political landscape looked after Heseltine had walked out. ‘I am not worried about the attack on your so-called “style of Government”,’ he wrote. ‘People want Prime Ministers to be in charge and they expect that of you.’125 The problem lay almost the other way: ‘The most damaging effect of the Heseltine affair has been to show the Government in serious disarray and you looking, uncharacteristically, as though you are not in control.’ So ‘what matters is doing everything we can to show an image of unity and decisiveness.’ This was true. Mrs Thatcher’s characteristic combination of aggression with bursts of caution, often so effective, had, in this case, made the conduct of business very difficult. In relation to Heseltine, she had been willing to wound, but afraid to strike.
On the day of Heseltine’s resignation, Bernard Ingham sent her a note explaining the media’s objective in its wake. It was, he said, ‘to set Conservative politician against politician; and to crawl over all allegations made against you and your style of government’.126* He called for a co-ordinated response, spreading the load with Douglas Hurd and Kenneth Baker as ‘the most useful and soothing spokesmen’. Mrs Thatcher would have done better to enter into this spirit and lead the co-ordination. Instead, she laid the unpleasant parliamentary duty on to Brittan. His shoulders were not big enough to bear it.
Charles Powell relieved her feelings and perhaps his own by attacking the Cabinet Office draft of her reply to the letter of resignation Heseltine had sent her. The draft praised Heseltine’s role in increasing ‘the standing of the United Kingdom and its Armed Forces’, planning to modernize the nuclear deterrent and stationing INF in Europe. ‘None were his contributions,’ Powell wrote to Nigel Wicks.127 The letter finally sent thanked him only for less important achievements like improving procurement and reorganizing the ministry. Powell also prepared sixteen points of what he called ‘Knocking copy’ against Heseltine128 for Bernard Ingham to use when briefing the Sunday lobby.
On the following Monday, 13 January, Brittan made a statement to the House about the whole affair, only to be ambushed by Heseltine. Brittan denied Heseltine’s accusation that he had put any pressure on Ray Lygo to withdraw BAe from the European bid. At this, Michael Heseltine rose and asked an apparently artless question. He wanted to know ‘whether the Government have received any letters from British Aerospace giving its v
iews of the [Brittan–Lygo] meeting’.129 Heseltine asked because he knew that, shortly before Brittan came to the Commons, a letter had arrived at Downing Street from Sir Austin Pearce, the chairman of BAe, supporting Lygo’s interpretation and complaining about Brittan’s behaviour. Downing Street had informed Brittan’s office of the letter and its contents but indicated that he should not refer to it in Parliament because it was labelled ‘private and confidential’. Brittan’s reply to Heseltine was ‘I have not received any such letter.’130 This was a lawyer’s answer – literally true, since Downing Street, not he, had received it, but wholly misleading. Sitting beside Brittan on the front bench, Mrs Thatcher looked uncomfortable and offered Brittan no visible support. Rumours began to spread that a letter had been received, and that Brittan had therefore lied to the House. Late that night, he was forced to return to Parliament. He explained that he now had Pearce’s agreement to mention the letter, and apologized for not having done so before. There were numerous calls for his resignation. John Smith,* the shadow DTI spokesman, pointed out that Mrs Thatcher could have lent over to correct him in the House that afternoon but had not chosen to do so.
The following day, Mrs Thatcher responded to growing pressure by announcing an inquiry into the leak of the Solicitor-General’s letter, headed by Robert Armstrong, to be conducted in private. She had little choice, given the anger of the Law Officers, but her decision greatly increased the danger to her. The leak was rumoured to have come from Brittan’s office (as indeed it had), which obviously made him vulnerable. It was widely understood that Brittan had worked closely with Mrs Thatcher against Heseltine in the Westland affair. Where might the inquiry lead? Setting up an inquiry meant that the leak was considered a grave transgression: any discovery that the Prime Minister had a hand in it could, in the febrile circumstances, prove fatal.
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