By this time, friends of Mrs Thatcher were getting seriously worried that her political position might be threatened. They knew that if, after all this, the European bid for Westland were to succeed, she would be badly wounded. Rupert Murdoch, the media mogul, who was also a director of United Technologies, the owner of Sikorsky, rang Woodrow Wyatt. He was thinking of trying to get Sikorsky to ‘do a deal’ over Westland. Sikorsky would go in with BAe and GEC, exclude the Europeans and thus save Mrs Thatcher’s bacon. He wanted Wyatt’s help in persuading Lord Weinstock, GEC’s managing director.131 In fact, Weinstock, ‘furious with Heseltine’ for resigning and leaving him and other supporters of the European bid to face Mrs Thatcher’s wrath,132 had been trying to work out his own solution. His idea, following a conversation with Gianni Agnelli, the boss of Fiat, was that Sikorsky–Fiat be allowed to join the European consortium ‘and all would be a great united family.’133 Weinstock agreed that Wyatt should convey his idea to Mrs Thatcher. He did so that night. ‘A glow of light’, Mrs Thatcher exclaimed, and promised to tell no one, not even Leon Brittan.134
In the previous week, a mystery buyer had bought nearly 15 per cent of Westland shares. This was quickly revealed to be Lord Hanson. Part of his motive in doing so was to help Mrs Thatcher get the vote from Westland shareholders that she wanted. It seems that this was understood and supported in Downing Street before it became public.135 This was probably part of a wider move. John Nott, the former Defence Secretary, having left Parliament at the 1983 election, was chairman and chief executive of the merchant bank Lazards at this time. Westland was Lazards’ client. In his memoirs, Nott wrote, ‘To this day [2002], Michael Heseltine, a good friend of mine, … clearly feels that the City conducted a series of manoeuvres to deny the victory to the European consortium. My recollections do not coincide with Michael’s but nothing is to be gained from re-engaging in a contest which almost everyone but Michael has forgotten long ago.’136 On the face of it, these bland words amount to very little. However, an inspection of the index for this page of Nott’s book (here) reveals three names – Agnelli, Hanson and Sir James Goldsmith – that do not appear in the text. The explanation is that Nott had given an account of these men’s role in the Westland saga but then removed it, at the last minute, fearing that he had libelled them. No one, however, remembered to prune the index. Nott had indeed implied that the three men in question had planned to form a ‘concert party’* or something like it.137† So Heseltine’s suspicions were not without foundation.‡
In fact, neither the Agnelli–Weinstock nor the Murdoch scheme came to fruition, but there is no doubt that Mrs Thatcher’s supporters in business got involved in Westland primarily to help her rather than because they were interested in a small helicopter company.* Another buyer of Westland shares was Murdoch. Through his company TNT, he bought just under the 5 per cent limit which required disclosure of the buyer. Apart from his firm belief that Mrs Thatcher was good for his business and for Britain, Murdoch had a particular reason for not wanting to see her fall at this moment. He was about to make the dramatic move to produce all his papers on new technology at his plant in Wapping, taking on the might of print unions. He was counting on her support in the battles to come. Murdoch and Woodrow Wyatt were among the guests at a lunch party given by the Thatchers on Sunday 19 January at Chequers. After it, Murdoch took Wyatt on a guided tour of the Wapping plant.138 Westland and Wapping were intertwined.
On Wednesday 15 January, Mrs Thatcher had to speak in the parliamentary debate which, after the Heseltine resignation, she had hoped to avoid. Although she made no catastrophic individual error, she was weak. John Whittingdale,† Brittan’s special adviser, read the draft of her speech in the morning. ‘Total cop out,’ he confided to his diary. ‘Did not attempt to demolish Heseltine or even suggest that he had behaved badly before his resignation.’139 There were reasons for her chosen tack. The first, as she told Wyatt that morning, was that ‘I can’t attack Heseltine without making everything worse. I don’t want to look as though I am attacking a colleague and giving him an excuse to do even more harm.’140 The second reason was related to the first, and could not be said. Wyatt advised her to clear the air about the charge that Brittan had leaked the Solicitor-General’s letter, but of course she could not. ‘ “There’ll be the usual leaks procedure but there have been a lot of leaks all round in this affair,” she said, sounding rather dismal.’141 Because of her own role, she was feeling vulnerable, not wishing to say more or get into a fight, worried where it would all lead.
The effect of Mrs Thatcher’s reticence was to direct unwelcome attention on Brittan, and thus to weaken him. He made the wind-up speech for the government in that day’s debate, but ran out of time* before he could launch his planned denunciation of Heseltine. Mrs Thatcher congratulated him warmly afterwards, but his reviews in the press the following morning were unenthusiastic. Two days later, Westland shareholders voted in favour of the Sikorsky bid, but not by the 75 per cent required to settle the matter at once. So the battle continued.
On Sunday, John Whittingdale had an alarming conversation with Colette Bowe, the DTI chief information officer, who had leaked the key words from the Solicitor-General’s letter to the Press Association. So far, she had not been publicly identified. She was already worried that she would be named in the House as the leaker. She informed Whittingdale that she had told Armstrong about the true circumstances of the leak and ‘would tell Select Cttee if asked’.142 ‘That was when’, Whittingdale recalled, ‘I realised we were going to have big trouble.’143 Until this point, those involved had assumed that the facts could be covered up, but now it seemed that this might not be possible, particularly if officials could not be protected from having to appear before a select committee. Then they would have to be frank about what had happened. Bowe’s account to Armstrong was bound to implicate at least some of her superiors and political masters. In his diary Whittingdale wrote, ‘May finish us all.’144 Three days later, news spread that Armstrong’s leak inquiry had identified the DTI as the source of the leak. Tam Dalyell named Colette Bowe in the House.
Rumours began to circulate that Brittan would have to resign. In the afternoon, Brittan saw Armstrong, with Mrs Thatcher, to be told the inquiry’s findings. It was agreed that Mrs Thatcher would make a statement about the report of the inquiry in the Commons the next day, 23 January, although the week before she had said she would not do this. There then ensued what Geoffrey Howe called a ‘brief overnight tussle’.145 Howe, who was a friend of Brittan, argued for a form of words which made his position more publicly defensible. The point was to convey the sense that Brittan had been acting with her authority. In Mrs Thatcher’s memory, possibly exaggerated over time, this became an attempt by Howe and, through him, by Brittan to alter the wording of evidence already given to Robert Armstrong. ‘I said [to Howe] you are a silk [that is, a QC], a former Solicitor-General, coming to ask me to alter the evidence being given to Robert Armstrong and you come at the instigation of another silk [Brittan].’ It would also have seemed to her, though she did not say this, like a veiled threat to drag her down from someone who sought her job. Howe presented her with a piece of paper with his suggested changes on it, she recalled, and ‘I tore it up … I tore it up.’146 Whether any doctoring was really being suggested is doubtful (how could anyone, at that stage, have altered Armstrong’s already completed report?), but she did, in fact, concede some of the points that Howe and Brittan wanted in her statement to the House. She felt close to being trapped.
Mrs Thatcher came to the House in the afternoon of 23 January. As she had indicated the previous week, she confirmed that Armstrong’s report itself would not be published. This she defended in terms of precedent, but it obviously added to the outcry and charge of cover-up. The Prime Minister set out its main findings. She told the House that it had been ‘a matter of duty’ that Heseltine’s ‘material inaccuracies’ be corrected and become public knowledge by 4 p.m. on 6 January before Cuckn
ey’s press conference that afternoon to announce the board’s recommendation of the Sikorsky bid. Brittan, she said, had been told the contents of the Mayhew letter at 1.30 that day.* He wanted it leaked (she stuck with the word ‘disclosure’) and told his office that he would prefer this to be done by No. 10. ‘Subject to the agreement of my office’, however, she continued, Brittan was making it clear that ‘he was giving authority for the disclosure to be made from the Department of Trade and Industry, if it was not made from 10 Downing Street.’147 On how it should be disclosed, she said, Brittan ‘expressed no view’.
Mrs Thatcher moved on to her own role, or lack of it. Her office, she said, had been duly approached and had given ‘cover’ (a key word that Brittan had demanded): ‘They did not seek my agreement: they considered – and they were right – that I should agree with [Brittan]’ that the material should be disclosed quickly. Her office ‘accepted’ that the DTI would disclose the letter by ringing the Press Association. ‘Had I been consulted,’ she went on, ‘I should have said that a different way must be found of making the relevant facts known.’ The Attorney-General, she added, having read Armstrong’s report, saw no need for prosecutions under the Official Secrets Act. She named none of the officials involved. She was in the awkward position of half admitting that something bad had happened but not admitting that anyone (apart, of course, from Heseltine) had been at fault.
Alan Clark, who had been shown a copy of Mrs Thatcher’s statement shortly before she made it, ‘started a faux-rire … How can she say these things without faltering? But she did. Kept her nerve beautifully … It was almost as if the House, half horrified, half dumb with admiration, was cowed.’148 Actually, the House was more sullen than cowed. The Conservative benches were uneasy, and one Tory, Alex Fletcher,* asked her pointedly if she was ‘satisfied that the statement she has made this afternoon has enhanced the integrity of her Government’. On the other side, both Neil Kinnock and, more effectively, David Owen asked about what she herself had known and when. Owen wondered how she could ‘continue to hold the high office that she does’ when she had set up a leak inquiry ‘in the full knowledge that her office, and by implication she herself, was fully involved in this whole sordid affair’.149 As even her ardent admirer Woodrow Wyatt admitted, ‘She is not free from her pursuers yet.’150
Given this failure to clear the air, the mood within the parliamentary Conservative Party became restive. Someone had to be blamed for the leak, many felt, although others felt that blaming Brittan, the only available ministerial victim apart from Mrs Thatcher, would make it more likely that she would be next. Her statement had opened up a gap between herself and Brittan, because it said that he definitely had ordered the leak and that she definitely had not. Her statement made Brittan vulnerable. Even before it, Clark reported bumping into the backbencher Marcus Kimball† in the Members’ Lobby: he ‘was standing about – always a sign that something is afoot. He told of dining with Willie the previous evening, and that there had been much talk of “too many jewboys in the Cabinet”.’151 At the 1922 Committee meeting that night, the current went strongly against Brittan and under it flowed some anti-Semitism. According to Gerry Malone,‡ Brittan’s PPS, who was there, one backbencher§ ‘disgracefully’ complained that the Home Office – Brittan’s earlier post – should only have been occupied by ‘a proper Englishman’.152 The feeling was that, if Brittan did not go, backbenchers would not support Mrs Thatcher in the next Westland debate which had now been called for Monday. The whips did not exert themselves to save Brittan. ‘The mood was wholly supportive of her,’ Clark recorded, ‘and the Scapegoat was duly tarred.’153
This was unwelcome to Mrs Thatcher, partly because she felt Brittan deserved to be backed, but chiefly because she feared for her own political life. She ever afterwards maintained the position that she had wanted Brittan to stay while the 1922 Committee forced him to go. She greatly feared that Brittan, feeling ill treated, would try to lay the blame on her and bring her down. She knew he knew things which could do this. Brittan himself was conscious of this possibility and seems to have toyed with it. After the Solicitor-General’s letter had been disclosed, he quickly told Gerry Malone that ‘Mrs Thatcher personally authorised the leak.’154 Speaking to the present author, he put it a bit differently – that the leak was ‘in effect authorized by her’.155 Of this, ‘there was no doubt at all,’ Brittan continued; the letter was ‘definitely intended and procured to be made public’.156 Both he and Charles Powell, from their different perspectives, agreed that the first plan had been to get the Solicitor-General’s letter sent straight to Mrs Thatcher. Then, when they realized that confidentiality rested, by law, with the recipient, they thought this unwise, and devised the ruse of getting the letter sent to Heseltine.157 This indicates that leaking the document may have been an idea they shared. Brittan, by his later account, received a telephone call on the night of Sunday 5 January, the night before the leak, from ‘those acting for her’.158 Although he was naturally inhibited from turning against Mrs Thatcher by past loyalty, by hope of future advancement and by fear of being inextricably involved in the ensuing ruin, he was also angry. After the 1922 Committee meeting, Mrs Thatcher had to tread carefully.
The next morning, 24 January, Brittan gathered together the conflicting signals from media, civil servants and colleagues about whether he should resign. The advice of much of the press was unambiguous, with headlines such as ‘Kick him out’ (Daily Star), ‘Brittan must go’ (Sun and Mirror) and ‘Maggie on the rack – Brittan must resign says majority of MPs’ (Express).159
Brittan believed that Bernard Ingham was briefing against him. He saw John Wakeham, the Chief Whip, who indicated to him that he had lost the support of the party.160* In the afternoon, he saw Mrs Thatcher and told her he must go. She begged him to stay, with a strong show of sincerity. He was adamant, however, dreading a long-drawn-out process of refusing to resign and then having to do so later. In his letter of resignation, which he wrote at once, he said, ‘Since your statement in the House yesterday it has become clear to me that I no longer command the full confidence of colleagues …’ By linking her statement with his resignation, he was implying a criticism of what she had said, perhaps even a threat of revenge. Wishing to show her goodwill, Mrs Thatcher, in her letter of reply, began by saying, ‘I am very sorry that despite all the arguments I could use I was unable to dissuade you this afternoon from resigning,’ and she added, ‘I hope that it will not be long before you return to high office to continue your Ministerial career.’161 This was an unusual thing to say to a resigning minister. It had the force, in Brittan’s mind, of ‘an informal understanding’.162
There was a sense in which Brittan’s resignation was worse for Mrs Thatcher than Heseltine’s. It was clear to most that Heseltine had himself violated the collective Cabinet responsibility which he claimed to hold so dear, and had been absolutely determined to break with Mrs Thatcher on an issue of no great importance. She could be criticized severely for how she had handled his behaviour, but it was understood that things had got to a point where it was a case of ‘him or her’ – so naturally it had to be him. With Brittan, the case was different. He had tried to do what the Cabinet, and particularly Mrs Thatcher herself, had wanted. He had also conspired with her about how best to do Heseltine down. So his departure suggested both that her somewhat shady schemes had gone awry and that she had not stuck by a friend in trouble. Brittan’s judgment nearly thirty years later was, ‘If she’d really defended me, I think it would have blown over. I wouldn’t criticize her, though – I was resigning as part of a balancing act.’163 Contemporary judgments by many colleagues were less generous. The thought that she had been as weak in protecting an ally as she had in fighting an opponent was damaging. She now faced the Westland debate called by Labour in the Commons for the coming Monday without a praetorian guard of colleagues to protect her.
Mrs Thatcher’s team made huge efforts to prepare her for the showdown. So many p
eople became involved in the drafts of her speech that Stephen Sherbourne complained to Nigel Wicks that the work was becoming impossible. There were such crowds that they had to operate in the Cabinet Room, where Mrs Thatcher, preferring her study, did not like working. Sherbourne begged Wicks and Charles Powell to go through the whole thing with Mrs Thatcher ‘very precisely … “Brian Walden style”* … Because the PM has got to be pinned down to be as precise as possible.’164 ‘I was worried’, he recalled, ‘that Kinnock would kill her with two or three questions.’165 For example: what did her office tell her about the leak before the publication of the inquiry report, and, indeed, before she set up the inquiry? Did her office know that the DTI intended to disclose the letter by partial leak to the Press Association? If so, why didn’t they seek her agreement, or counsel against? If neither, wasn’t it ‘tacit approval of something which the Prime Minister has since said was wrong?’166 Had Brittan told her of his role in the disclosure? If so, when?
Mrs Thatcher, exhausted and perplexed, allowed herself to be more or less a passenger in this process. As she set off that Saturday evening for a constituency function in Finchley, she was told that a local party dignitary who had been expected to greet her would not be doing so because he was having a nervous breakdown. ‘HE’s having a nervous breakdown!’ she exclaimed. ‘What about me?’167 When Wyatt rang her privately to ask how she could explain the various things that had happened she wearily took the line which was to be her public soundbite: ‘ “Truth is stranger than fiction,” she said several times.’168 As a lawyer, and one with a keen sense of the proprieties, she felt particularly awkward to be caught up in a scandal involving the Law Officers. She had a well-founded fear of being subjected to legal-style interrogation. She must also have had an uneasy conscience. For a brief time at least, she seems to have felt like a rabbit in the headlights, incapable of action.
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