John Major: The Autobiography

As the protesters began to establish a permanent ‘peace camp’ on the perimeter of Molesworth, local villagers and their neighbours in Brington and Bythorn set up their own ‘Ratepayers Against Molesworth Settlement’ organisation. Local feelings grew heated, and I spoke at public meetings called by parish councillors at nearby Brington School, at which resentment of the intruders was expressed in lively fashion. Ratepayers’ groups even hired a light aircraft to fly over the base pulling a banner saying ‘CND Go Home’.

Some of the protesters were on Church land, and Bill Westwood, the Bishop of Peterborough, came to see me in the Commons. When he left, nearly three hours later, I tossed an empty bottle of Glenfiddich in the wastepaper basket and knew I had found an ally. He became a firm friend, was one of the best pastoral bishops I’ve ever come across, was revered in Peterborough, and later became a familiar voice through his regular contributions to ‘Thought for the Day’ on Radio 4’s Today programme.

Molesworth brought me into contact with Michael Heseltine for the first time. Already a big beast of the Commons, in the government when I was still a councillor, he was defence secretary, and was taking the battle to the anti-nuclear protesters. He willingly met me, alone and with delegations, to discuss how to deal with the problem of the ‘peace camp’ and the three hundred or so campers who were, by 1983, causing real bitterness in Huntingdonshire. Betty Steel, a local farmer’s wife, spoke for many: ‘We value our village, houses, our way of life, and do not look forward to having them devalued, destroyed or disrupted by invasions.’

Nor did I. Nor did Michael Heseltine, who wanted the Cruise missiles safely installed. On 6 February 1984, in a massive overnight operation, police and Ministry of Defence officers evicted the protesters as 1,500 Royal Engineers from seven squadrons built a seven-mile perimeter fence around the base. It was a huge operation and brilliantly executed. The next morning, Michael visited Molesworth to inspect the work. It began to rain and a concerned officer handed him a flak jacket to protect him: the pictures of a flak-jacketed Heseltine greatly multiplied the already large press coverage.

My own constituency Member’s role in all this called for no great courage. I was very lucky that my first big issue concerned something in which I personally believed, on which I could support the government, which was popular locally and which brought me into contact with Cabinet ministers, and in a positive way.

During my first two years in the Commons I prepared many speeches but delivered only a few. One of the frustrations of being a new backbencher of the majority party is that competition to speak is very heavy, and the Speaker will call you only rarely. The government whips too, anxious to expedite the business and being more interested in your vote than your views, encourage short speeches or, better, no speeches at all.

In 1981 I was invited to become Parliamentary Private Secretary to Patrick Mayhew and Timothy Raison, the two Ministers of State at the Home Office. Paddy approached me early one evening after a vote and offered me the job. He seemed somewhat embarrassed: ‘I hope it’s not too much of a bore,’ he said, ‘but we’d like to have you. It’s lots of work and no pay. What do you think?’

I thought, ‘Yes, please,’ and nearly bit his hand off. I was lucky in this first job. Paddy Mayhew was later to become one of my closest parliamentary colleagues, particularly during his time at the Northern Ireland Office. Tim Raison was a reserved intellectual who had strayed into politics and loved it. They both had the solid, common-sense instincts of traditional Tories, with a fine distaste for ideology.

The role of the parliamentary private secretary can be boring – acting as an unpaid Commons caddie, arranging drinks with the minister, being his eyes and ears in the House – but it is often the first step on the ladder. And it does give the opportunity to see government from the inside, albeit peripherally, and to attend ministerial meetings. When the chemistry works, the PPS can often influence the decisions of his minister. At that time neither Paddy nor I could have guessed how closely we would work together years later on the problem of Northern Ireland.

Being a parliamentary private secretary opened up new avenues to me. I attended regular ‘Prayer Meetings’ at the Home Office chaired by Willie Whitelaw, then Home Secretary and the acknowledged deputy to Margaret Thatcher. The first morning I attended such a meeting I joined the little throng of Home Office ministers and PPSs outside the Home Secretary’s office as we waited to be summoned. Finally, in we went, and at the far end of a large room there was Willie, a huge man, rising from his seat as we trooped in. He singled me out although we had barely exchanged a word before that morning.

‘Welcome,’ he boomed. ‘Come in. Come and sit down. So pleased you’ve joined us. Very good news. Yes, very good news indeed. Yes, very!’

If I was good enough for Paddy Mayhew and Tim Raison, I was good enough for him. Willie’s welcome made it seem that my arrival as the most junior (unpaid) member of the government was vital to its future well-being. He had a gift for inclusion and for inspiring loyalty. And for being loyal himself, for, despite having been defeated by Margaret Thatcher in the battle to succeed Ted Heath, he had been her most loyal lieutenant and remained so whenever she was in difficulty.

Willie was unique. One morning in July 1982 the Prayer Meeting gathered in sombre mood. An intruder, Michael Fagan, had somehow forced his way into the Queen’s bedroom at Buckingham Palace, which was an appalling breach of security. The Queen had handled the matter with aplomb, but that did not ease Willie’s position as Home Secretary.

‘I shall have to resign,’ he announced. ‘I should like to know what my colleagues think.’

We demurred: ‘No, no, no, Home Secretary, you mustn’t’. Paddy Mayhew led the charge and, in due seniority, we all told Willie that on no account should he go. He listened gravely. We finished. There was a long silence.

‘I’m very grateful,’ said Willie. ‘I will accept the views of colleagues.’

It was a professional performance. Willie Whitelaw had the great gift of leaving you uncertain as to his motives. Had he really been considering resignation? Or was he testing the ground to see if it was secure enough for him to remain in office? I never knew – and that was part of his skill. In any event, to our great relief, Willie did not resign.

However, he didn’t always ‘accept the views of colleagues’. The Conservative Backbench Committee on Home Affairs was often a bugbear to him. He met them regularly, groaning resignedly, ‘Let them in, are the drinks ready?’ Once they were in he listened to them, encouraged them, flattered them, but rarely changed his intended course of action. The following morning the Prayer Meeting would discuss their demands.

‘My colleagues,’ Willie would say of the committee, ‘think I should …’

He would pause. Sometimes he would ask for views. When he did not, we waited to hear how he would deal with such and such a tricky demand.

‘Well,’ Willie would say. ‘If that’s what my colleagues think …’ Pause again. ‘Then,’ he would conclude triumphantly, ‘then that’s what they think.’ That was it. We moved on.

Behind this bluff act was a sharp and shrewd political calculator of a brain. Willie was never a detail man, but his instinct was superb. He sniffed the political wind and knew which way it was blowing.

In early 1982 Tony Marlow, the MP for Northampton North, asked me if I wished to join a tour of the Middle East to learn more about the Arab – Israeli conflict. Tony had already made a reputation as a parliamentary-thug-in-waiting, and was a fierce Palestinian partisan. He had ‘reckless’ and ‘trouble’ stamped through him like ‘Brighton’ through a stick of rock, but I accepted his invitation when he explained it was a large, all-party delegation. The trip was packed with incident.

I was fast asleep in our hotel in Beirut one night when we were suddenly told that Yasser Arafat, the leader of the PLO, would see us. We piled into cars and were driven to meet him. He was a small man, unshaven and soft-spoken, dressed in combat uniform and poised over a large map on a table. Coffee was served and Arafat spoke and invited questions. The meeting was memorable, not least because, for the first time, I was meeting someone generally considered in the UK to be a terrorist.

A hunchbacked secretary brought in a tray of tea in glass cups. He stumbled, and the tea spilled forward, spreading across the unfurled map Arafat was using to illustrate Palestinian land claims. Gently and systematically he began to mop up the tea as he was peppered with questions. Two Labour members of our group, Peter Snape and Dale Campbell-Savours, were pointed, even aggressive: when would the Palestinians recognise Israel? Arafat was unperturbed, and replied coolly to the effect that even if he knew, which he did not, he would hardly announce this to a random group of British backbench MPs. Richard Needham, a Tory, intervened, and said that he understood that Arafat was cross, but that meetings such as this did make an impact – even on him, a half-Jewish, half-Irish Earl.

Arafat blinked and looked at him: ‘How do I address a half-Jewish, half-Irish Earl?’ he enquired.

The irrepressible Snape could not resist it: ‘Kneeling,’ he said. ‘Kneeling.’

The room froze, but Arafat chortled and the rest of the meeting passed harmoniously.

A day or so later, we were driving towards Bethlehem when for some reason our convoy stopped. As it did so an Arab youth appeared on the brow of a hill just behind us and hurled a large rock through the air. I was talking to Ken Weetch, the Labour Member for Ipswich, when it hurtled between us at head height and crashed into the car. Not knowing what was happening we turned around, and as we did so gunshots rang out. An Israeli patrol was heading towards us and firing at the rock-thrower. We were caught in the crossfire. I threw myself to the ground beneath the car. Richard Needham and Dale Campbell-Savours crouched down on the back seat while Peter Snape also threw himself underneath the car and (entirely by chance, he claimed) found himself beside one of our attractive guides. It was a scary few moments, and only by good fortune were by-elections avoided.

The consensus was that the Palestinian boy was a clot, and the Israelis had overreacted. Richard Needham, a brilliant mimic, and Snape, ever ready for a joke, exacted their revenge. As we passed through Israeli customs they became Oberleutnant Needham and his faithful batman, Corporal Snape, in heavy German accents. It took ages to get through customs, and we were lucky not to end up in jail.

On 2 April 1982, Argentine armed forces invaded the Falkland Islands and established military control. The Commons met the next day, a Saturday, in an angry mood, incensed at this national humiliation. We forget now that immediately after the invasion Margaret Thatcher had her back to the wall. As she left Number 10 for the emergency session of Parliament she received a hostile reception from the crowd gathered in Downing Street. Other ministers, too, were booed and hissed as they drove into the Commons.

It was the first time I had seen the power of this assembly when it was aroused. The atmosphere was electric. I had not foreseen this. The government was clearly in trouble, and my assumption had been that Conservative ranks would close firmly behind a still relatively new prime minister. I was surprised at the extent to which they did not. The collective mood was one of real anger that the Falklands had been invaded and that the government had been too ill-informed or impotent to prevent it. These backbenchers, I saw, had a mind of their own. It was a vivid illustration of how the collective will of Parliament can shape policy-making. No one seeing or feeling that mood at close quarters could have been in any doubt that if the government was to survive, it would have to act forcefully and speedily.

The Prime Minister announced the despatch of a Task Force to recover the islands – and it was as well that she did. Amid rumours that the Foreign Office had received the plans of the invasion days earlier, the Commons that morning resembled mob rule. Michael Foot, the leader of the opposition, demanded the government prove that it was not responsible for the betrayal of the Falkland Islands. Sir Edward du Cann, the Chairman of the 1922 Committee, was astounded that we were so woefully ill-prepared. Nigel Fisher, a senior Conservative, said ministers had much to answer for to the country. John Silkin, Labour’s defence spokesman, told the Prime Minister, the Foreign Secretary and the Defence Secretary: ‘The sooner you get out the better.’

After the debate, in private meetings, Conservative backbenchers savaged senior ministers. Some criticism, albeit Delphically-phrased, had been aired in the Chamber, but it paled into insignificance beside the strength of the comments in the Tea Room and in the backbench committees.

As I sat in the train returning to Huntingdon, I was not sure the government would survive. We were, in any event, very unpopular at the time, and I was certain there would be ministerial blood shed. The Foreign Office team of Peter Carrington, Humphrey Atkins and Richard Luce did resign, although John Nott, the Defence Secretary, had his offer of resignation refused by Mrs Thatcher. Peter Carrington and his team were not, of course, solely to blame, but they judged – correctly, I think – that ministerial heads were needed, and they offered their own.

If the Cabinet had not sent the Task Force, Margaret Thatcher would not have survived as prime minister. She took a great risk, requiring huge nerve, but the alternative was certain catastrophe. I overheard a washroom conversation in which two Cabinet ministers denounced the expedition as ‘ludicrous’ and ‘a folly’ due to the lack of air cover for the fleet. It gave me a glimpse of the tension that existed at the heart of government.

Out of the bleak scenario of early April Margaret Thatcher fashioned her greatest triumph, and the political terrain was bulldozed into a new landscape. During those few weeks the martial nature of the British nation made itself clear: huge crowds waved off the Navy from Portsmouth, and even larger numbers welcomed it back. Every development of the conflict was pored over, the final success brought forth a tremendous feeling of national pride, and the iconic stature of ‘the Iron Lady’ was assured.

In January 1983, announcing that he did not wish to contest the forthcoming election, John Nott resigned as defence secretary, and there was a small reshuffle in which I was appointed an assistant whip. It was almost the last job announced in the changes, and one of the most junior. But I was thankful. A number of the 1979 intake had already joined the government, John Patten, Donald Thompson, David Mellor, Tristan Garel-Jones, Ian Lang and William Waldegrave among them, and I was relieved not to be overlooked again. I accepted the invitation from a public phone booth at King’s Cross station, en route to Huntingdon, responding to a message to phone Michael Jopling, the Chief Whip.

It was a modest promotion, and at first sight less exciting than being a departmental minister. I learned very quickly that this was an outsider’s judgement; once in the Whips’ Office I realised that it was one of the main engine-rooms of government. Norma was delighted – not least, I suspect, because I was so pleased. I told her all I knew about the Whips’ Office. ‘It sounds wonderful,’ was her comment. ‘But what exactly do whips do?’

The Whips’ Office is unique, and joining it has a special cachet, as the appointment to it is not made by the prime minister but by the popular acclaim of fellow whips. One blackball excludes: the rationale for this is that the Office works so closely together that compatibility between the members is essential (whips watch one another’s backs, while other politicians often go for each other’s throats). The chief whip may, and often does, propose a shortlist of potential new whips, but the Office makes the final choice. In doing so it tries to balance political opinion across the party as well as ensuring that all parts of the country are represented.

The Whips’ Office is singular in other respects as well. It exists to deliver the government’s business, and will do so even if the collective view of the Office is that the legislation is unwise. But that collective view will be delivered forcibly to the prime minister by the chief whip, and to relevant ministers, who ignore it at their peril. The Whips’ Office view is private and, to my certain knowledge, the most leak-free office in government. Ministers, even prime ministers, might be shocked by the robust opinions expressed in private about their policies, performance or personalities by the whips. The Office is nobody’s patsy, as politicians with an arrogant streak have often learned. This is invaluable, because the whips know the collective view of the parliamentary party better by far than any minister, and are able to make that view known as policy is brought forward. The Office too, and the chief whip particularly, are crucial in advising the prime minister about the performance of ministers and backbenchers, which is vital in determining whether Members climb the parliamentary ladder to senior positions, slip from high office, or remain for ever on the backbenches waiting in hope.

I knew little of this when I joined Michael Jopling’s team. Michael was crisp, rather soldierly, blunt and straightforward, and believed the Office owed the Prime Minister the unvarnished truth and a majority in the Lobby. He delivered both. In many ways he was a traditional chief whip, understanding of occasional principled rebellion but wholly intolerant of rent-a-quote, persistent rebels. In private he was jovial and fun and (most unexpectedly) a motorcycle enthusiast, to be seen hurtling around the country in full black leathers with his red-haired wife, Gail, on the pillion. When he was displeased with the Office he did not hold back. ‘I’m absolutely disgusted,’ he’d say. In the background, my alert ear would catch Tristan Garel-Jones’s comment on any disaster: ‘Thank God it’s only a game.’

Michael had old-fashioned virtues. A tale current among his colleagues was that when Matthew Parris made a speech at the Oxford Union which barely hid the fact that he was gay, Michael called him in. He wasn’t sure how to deal with the problem of this contrary backbencher.

‘Look, Matthew,’ he began, ‘there are some things one just doesn’t say. I don’t believe in God. But I’ve never felt a need to tell anyone about it. Even my wife doesn’t know.’

A puzzled Matthew left, to have Michael’s true meaning spelled out to him later.

The Whips’ Office was a talented team. Michael Jopling’s deputy was Tony Berry, who would be tragically murdered by the IRA’s Brighton bomb in October 1984. The backbone of the Office was two old soldiers, Carol Mather and Bob Boscawen, both holders of the Military Cross with very distinguished war records. Both had been wounded in the war. Bob had been terribly burned facially and had been one of the ‘guinea pigs’ treated by the pioneering plastic surgeon Archibald McIndoe. With great courage he had entered public life and, with Carol, now held sway in the Whips’ Office.

The Office included the occasional exotic. Spencer le Marchant conducted life and politics only over the finest champagne. His goal in life was to spread bubbling bonhomie to whomsoever he met: this pushed up the collective mess bill for the whips to alarming proportions. ‘I’m entertaining for England,’ an unabashed Spencer would say in answer to the occasional complaint about the bills. ‘Your health. Can I pour you one?’ The hospitality began at 10 a.m., the champagne being offered in splendid silver half-pint tankards. We signed the cheques as he sipped on, and ignored the overdraft.

Sometimes Spencer’s high spirits took him too far. Once he devised a plan to stage a ‘horse race’ round the Members’ Smoking Room, for which the ‘horses’ would be the younger Tory MPs (Spencer adopted Matthew Parris, and intended to dress him in the yellow-and-green le Marchant racing colours). The ‘course’ would be once around the perimeter of the Smoking Room on the tables, chairs and sofas, without touching the floor. The race had to be called off when the Evening Standard got wind of it – this was a time when unemployment was high and climbing, and swathes of British manufacturing industry were facing ruin.

It was a team with exacting standards. One day Tristan Garel-Jones, then a junior whip, walked in wearing a Loden overcoat. He was already, in embryo, the irreverent Tristan who, to some members, was later to become the Machiavelli of the Office, rumoured to be in touch with every cabal. The Loden was a garment so favoured by Foreign Office mandarins that it had been christened ‘the Single European Overcoat’: Tristan’s was a far from fetching olive green, the standard colour, and its appearance was not enhanced by his having neglected to put on any socks that morning. Carol looked him up and down in horror, gazed at Bob, then back at Tristan. He then announced: ‘The last time I saw someone wearing a coat like that – I shot him.’

Tristan, outgunned by the old soldier, fled.