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Part IX:


★ Azucena Ozols, My Alan Clark Diary, (Bantam Press, 1987):

"As much as I loved Al (Alan Clark) at the time, I thought there was something strange about his request to leak the Mayhew Letter regarding Heseltine to the Murdoch papers. He had been drinking, but no more than usual, and when I asked him to confirm I should leak the letter, he repeated himself and left the office. I thought it better to ring up the press officer of the Welsh office, but he had left for the day. I did not want to run this by any other politician in the ministry, for I was not sure how much they were privy to the goings on in the Cabinet. I therefore called Mrs. Thatcher's Press Officer."


♤ Bernard Ingham, Kill the Messenger, (HarperCollins, 1994):

"On Saturday, 9 November, 1985 I received a call from a very young woman who was then the press secretary to Mr. Alan Clark, the then Secretary of State for Wales. She told me Mr. Clark had told her to leak the Mayhew Letter on the Heseltine Letter to the press and suggested it would be more effective if it'd be leaked by the Press Secretary to the Prime Minister, that is me. After my eyebrows returned to my normal place, I told the young woman, 'No, absolutely not. I must keep The Prime Minister above this sort of sordid thing.' She then hung up on me. The letter was then leaked. I will regret to my dying days I had not tried to call Mr. Clark before the letter was leaked to try to talk him out of his destructive course of action. What followed was, however, all on his head."

♠ William Powell, My Party - Wet or Dry, (Hamish Hamilton, 1990):

"Let us clear up the black propaganda, yet again. The unfortunate young woman is told by her minister to leak a document to the press. She has been given a direct order. New to the job as she is, she still has the presence of mind to realize something irregular is being asked, and places a call to the highest ranking official in the Government Information Service - Bernie Ingham - who, washes his hands of the whole thing by not telling her not to do it, but goes out of his way to also say he must keep the Prime Minister out of it. The young woman proceeds to leak the letter, acting on behalf of a Cabinet minister of Mrs. Thatcher's government with the direct knowledge of Mrs. Thatcher's Press Secretary, if not his outright instructions. Given the sequence of the events, foreknowledge and all the authorizations and direct orders involved, how on Earth are we to be led to believe the leaking was an act of some rogue agent acting out of pique or temporary infirmity of mind?"


★ Hansard, House of Commmons, Deb 21 November 1985 vol 89 cc870-4:

§ The Secretary of State for Wales (Mr. Alan Clark):

I am most grateful to you, Mr. Speaker, for allowing me to make this statement as I should like to clarify what I said earlier today, and to apologise to the House if what I said gave a misleading impression.

This afternoon in making my statement to the House I was asked whether the Government had received a letter from Agusta concerning the meeting which took place between Mr. Claudio, uh, something-something rhymes with Ola. Anyway, the dago, uh, that is, uh, Claudio was not strictly an agent or a representative of Agusta regarding Westland, though he might have spoken regarding them. And earlier today I had replied that I was unaware of any letter from, uh, Claudio or anyone else involved with Agusta. There... There had since been an announcement by 10 Downing street that a letter was received there which the Prime Minister saw just before coming over to the House.


§ Mr. Speaker:

Order, order!


§ The Secretary of State for Wales (Mr. Alan Clark):

It was not from the dago, uh, Claudio, but from his London based solicitor, uh, something Yid, uh, Berg or is it Silver or Gold? He, uh...


§ Mr. Speaker:

Order, order! Mr. Secretary of State, the House rules prevent me from asking a different sort of question, so I must satisfy myself to the following one, are you currently... incapable?


§ The Secretary of State for Wales (Mr. Alan Clark):

Uh, what?


§ Unknown:

He's asking you if you're drunk, you bleeding daft sod.


♤ Bernard Ingram, Kill the Messenger, (Politico's, 2002):

"Sir Robert Armstrong, the Cabinet Secretary, held an inquiry into the leaking of the Mayhew Letter. Sir Robert rightly concluded Mr. Alan Clark told his press secretary to leak the letter and presented his finding to Mrs. Thatcher. She was not shocked, given Mr. Clark's previous actions, but went pale and demanded we hunt down Mr. Clark to find out why he had done what he did. None of us could reach him. He had fled the country to South Africa. Mrs. Thatcher sacked him and prepared for her appearance before the House of Commons for the so-called Westland debate."


☆ John Bercow, Thatcher, Thatcherism, and Thatcherites, (Faber, 1998).

"Parliamentary Private Secretary (PPS) is an unsalaried position in our Parliament and Mrs. Thatcher has always felt it unfair to have a PPS work long hours for no money other than their income as an MP. After replacing Ian Gow after the '83 Election, she therefore always strived to find a PPS with means of sufficient private income who she felt could afford to keep up with her brutal hours and not make her feel guilty about it. While no doubt an ethically sound choice in theory, in practice it meant her PPSes were a succession of aristocratic Tories not entirely in touch with the concerns of their fellow MPs. Given the PPS of a Prime Minister is supposed to be her eyes and ears in the House, their aloofness left her with an incomplete understanding of the mood of the House when crafting her speech. Additionally, badly shaken by Mr. Lawson's ability to turn Lord Whitelaw, Mr. Tebbit, Mr. Howe and Mr. Wakeham to 'his side' during the debate on ERM, she chose to ignore them and their offers of help. She prepared the speech without the assistance of the Deputy Prime Minister and the Leader of the House of Lords of incalculable political experience, the Chairman of the Conservative Party, her (at the time) most loyal follower, and her Chief Whip. She instead relied on the so-called 'bright young things' in the Conservative Research Department and those MPs who were elected in '79 and '83 from the arch-dry wing of the Party. The Westland debate was set to start at 3:30 PM on 27 November. At 2:30 PM, Mrs. Thatcher's speech was still being rewritten."


♥ Bryan Gould, Hard Labour, (Penguin Books, 1989):

"There is absolutely no truth to the rumours anyone in the Labour leadership attempted to suggest to Neil (Kinnock) to refrain from responding to Mrs. Thatcher's speech in favour of Giles Radice."


♥ Philip Gould, Confessions of an Adman, (HarperCollins, 1996):

"There may have been some very early discussions regarding how to formulate our response to Mrs. Thatcher's speech, and of course many people assisted Mr. Kinnock, but to the best of my knowledge I know of no individual who at any time suggested to Mr. Kinnock in person that he should step aside in favour of anyone else in making the official response of The Opposition."


❥ Peter Shore, Leading the Left, (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1993):

"The black spot was cut out, but nobody in the inner circle had the heart to play Blind Pew."


★ Meic Birtwistle, Welshmen Never Yield, (University of Wales Press, 1986):

"He did not yield."


♣ David Ian Marquand, Nomad, (HarperCollins, 1990):

"I will never forget that day. The House was alive. The air shimmered with electricity."


♥ Joe Ashton, My Labour, My Party, (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1993):

"The House was packed. I had to fight someone I had never seen before for a seat."


♣ Bill Rodgers, Call Me What You Will, (Politico's, 2000):

"I was so excited I very nearly became ill in the water closet beforehand and I had nothing to do with it, except watch."


♥ Roy Hattersley, Roy from Yorkshire, (Penguin Books, 1992):

"I made sure to arrive early, though I was not sure what exactly would happen."


♣ Chris Patten, Roamer, (HarperCollins, 1995):

"I knew I was witnessing history, whichever way it would end."


♦ David Steel, Against Goliath: The David Steel Story, (Penguin Books, 1989):

"I was on pins and needles and seized with a great premonition it would all turn to nothing."


♣ Roy Jenkins, Centre Ground, (Harper Collins, 1991):

"I expected Mr. Kinnock to open in his usual fiery fashion, but he was much subdued in his attack on Mrs. Thatcher. An uncharitable man would be tempted to say he reined in his windbag instincts and was guided by better laid plans of smarter men. Mrs. Thatcher clearly had not expected this tack and her responses were too sharp where softness was called. And yet while Mr. Kinnock made some deep cuts indeed and there was blood, he could not quite deliver the deathblow. Time and time again, the sweat soaked handle of his dagger slipped out of his increasingly nerveless fingers. More than a few Tory MPs could sense it as well and began to jeer in earnest. It was here that I expected Mr. Kinnock to give into temptation and revert to form, but he instead, sensing he had done all he could, wound down his arguments, and did so quite early. I know not what compelled such a behavior in him, but saw out of the corner of my eye (and heard) Giles Radice repeatedly cough in a quite unnatural manner. Whether it was a signal or not I will not speculate, but Mr. Kinnock wound down much earlier than we dared hope, for Dr. Owen was up next for the Alliance, and although some Tory MPs made a great show of leaving to signal it had all turned to nothing, more stayed than left, for Mr. Kinnock's attacks were profoundly wounding, if not fatal, and they wanted to see what if anything Dr. Owen could achieve."


♧ David Owen, Into the Maelstrom, (Macmillan, 1991):

"I was prepared for Mr. Kinnock and Labour to do what they do best - fail, and planned ahead with my own line of questioning, but Mr. Kinnock surprised me by being almost clinical in his approach and some of his queries too closely matched mine, though were delivered with the typical lack of deftness. I found myself crossing out with a pencil various questions on my meticulous notes as he spoke. It was touch and go, as I sensed he was winding down, if I could remove all the arguments already used by him and weave the remaining ones into a cohesive thought. When I rose to question, I was pleased to see all SDP MPs were still in place, though more than a few Liberal MPs had filtered out, much to my disgust."


♥ Bryan Gould, Hard Labour, (Penguin Books, 1989):

"Owen's scattershot attacks were not delivered as well as Neil's, but they did wound Mrs. Thatcher."


♧ Mike Thomas, Separate Ways, (Duckworth, 2000):

"Dr. Owen was magnificent in his masterful dissection of Mrs. Thatcher."


❥ Peter Shore, Leading the Left, (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1993):

"For all of Neil's strengths and weaknesses as a speaker, he had an abiding understanding of the extent he could push a subject matter in a speech. Yes, he could go on at length about utter nonsense, but deep down he understood when he was peddling utter nonsense and would not commit himself to heights of passion over it. David Owen had no such valve. He could wind himself up into a fury over a decision to raise a tax on ice cream by one pence as readily as when discussing Labour's unilateralism. All that which mattered to him was the attack itself and so he attacked Mrs. Thatcher with more vitriol than Neil could find within him because Neil understood that in end, despite the constitutional and legal issues, you could not explain to a bus queue of normal people why the sitting Prime Minister of the United Kingdom had to go over the Westland affair. Neil therefore could not rouse himself to explain it to a House full of MPs. David Owen on the other hand..."


♣ Bill Rodgers, Call Me What You Will, (Politico's, 2000):

"David (Owen) meandered. He explored half dozen avenues of attack, each blunted by a wounded but still fighting Mrs. Thatcher, when he stumbled into a simple question which none had asked before: how had Alan Clark gotten the Mayhew Letter in the first place? The question had not been asked because the answer was assumed to be as simple as the Letter was circulated over the weekend of 9 November to Cabinet ministers in advance of the Cabinet meeting to take place the following Tuesday. It was a simple question with a quite simple answer. Yet here Mrs. Thatcher stumbled and said she wasn't sure. A third of the remaining MPs in the House sat up straight at that. David held his pause for the buzz to build and asked the most natural follow up question in the world, did the Prime Minister know to whom the Mayhew Letter was sent upon her request? Here Mrs. Thatcher had her second stumble in a row and said she was unable to recall. The Leader of Her Majesty's Government had commissioned an opinion from a Law Officer regarding a confidential matter involving a Minister of her Cabinet and could not recall with whom she shared the said opinion? And one of those whom she could not recall in giving the letter had their secretary then leak it to the press? You could make a three course meal out of such a statement and sequences of events, and David did just that, at leisure."


♤ David Mellor, My Moment, (Fourth Estate, 2000):

"Mrs. Thatcher's eyes began to dart side to side as she searched for a place to hide. There was none. There, under the lights and before a half empty House, Dr. Owen hounded and badgered her to the delight of the Labour, Liberal and SDP MPs, and I daresay some Tories. It was awful and draining, for all involved. By the end of it, with Mrs. Thatcher's leadership and government in tatters, even her most bitter critics in the House were too exhausted to congratulate themselves. That came the next day."


★ Rebekah Mary Wade, Hezza, (Politico's, 2000):

"On 28 November, 1985, Michael Heseltine, flanked by his family and Parliamentary colleagues William Powell and Michael Mates, announced in light of the extraordinary events of this year, he would challenge Mrs. Thatcher for the Leadership of the Conservative and Unionist Party."


♠ William Powell, My Party - Wet or Dry, (Hamish Hamilton, 1990):

"The Murdoch rags tore into us from the start, due to Wapping."


☆ John Bercow, Thatcher, Thatcherism, and Thatcherites, (Faber, 1998).

"Towards the end of 1985, the Wapping dispute flared between Rupert Murdoch and the principal newspaper print unions: the National Graphical Association (NGA), the Society of Graphical and Allied Trades (SOGAT 82) and the Amalgamated Union of Engineering Workers (AUEW), with the National Union of Journalists (NUJ) caught in the crossfire. The dispute arose from the desire of Mr. Murdoch to introduce technological innovations to Fleet Street that would place 90% of the typesetters out of work (though the workers made redundant would be compensated). The labour-intensive hot-metal linotype printing method was no longer used in most technologically developed countries. The obsolete practice, coupled with the so-called 'Spanish practices' of allowing workers to go home with pay before the end of their shift if they completed the paper and paying overtime to those who choose to stay increased the cost of production of papers. To bypass Fleet Street, Mr. Murdoch clandestinely built and equipped a printing plant in Wapping. Mr. Murdoch reasoned he would need 670 printers to produce the same number of newspapers as 6,800 men. The issue was finding 670 to go against the other unions."


♥ Eric Hammond, Union Man, (Penguin Books, 1987):

"As General Secretary of the Electrical, Electronic, Telecommunications and Plumbing Union, I had no intention of leading the 365,000 men and women who entrusted their lives into my hands off a cliff just to stop the march of progress. I am no Scargill. I allowed my union to negotiate with Mr. Murdoch."


♥ Denis Healey, Silly Billies, (Penguin Books, 1990):

"I regard Mr. Hammond's vile actions as a great betrayal of the trade union movement."


♥ Bryan Gould, Hard Labour, (Penguin Books, 1989):

"I will not comment on the actions of Mr. Hammond or that of his union during the Wapping dispute."


❥ Peter Shore, Leading the Left, (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1993):

"I am told when the DeLorean car plant in Belfast closed with the loss of millions of pounds of taxpayers' money sunk into it, Alan Clark told the then Secretary of State for Northern Ireland Humphrey Atkins: 'Do you realise that you are the laughing stock not only of the international motor industry but as far as I know of the criminal fraternity as well?' Eric Hammond thought he could deal with Rupert Murdoch and not only gain respite for his union workers but also gain Murdoch's support for Labour. Someone should read the above Clark-Atkins quote to Eric, replacing 'motor' with 'newspaper'."


★ Alastair John Campbell, The Claret Revolution, (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1993):

"The Murdoch owned 'The Times,' 'The Sunday Times,' 'The Sun' and the 'News of the World' went out of their way to denigrate Mr. Heseltine's candidacy and accused him in most vituperative terms of attempting to destroy the Conservative Party."


♠ Michael Mates, Where There’s a Will, (Hamish Hamilton, 1995):

"The Tories had no Leadership election rules until 1965. Prior to it, a group of grandees would just gather and in between shooting pheasants and peasants sound out one another and promote someone. Then it occurred to someone it was not very democratic and so an election rule was hastily contrived for vacancies, requiring sitting Tory MPs to vote in their leader after the previous one resigns or dies. There existed no mechanism for a challenge to an incumbent Leader until 1975, when Ted Heath proved to be reluctant to step down and many Tory MPs were fed up with him. Former Prime Minister Alec Douglas-Home stepped in and with the consultation of the 1922 Committee proposed a rule requiring annual elections (to be initiated within four weeks of the start of a parliamentary session). That rule allowed Mrs. Thatcher to challenge Mr. Heath and become Leader of the Party and indeed Prime Minister (for anyone who ran against Labour in 1979 would have won). William Powell and I submitted a formal written petition to the Chairman of the 1922 Committee Winston Churchill MP (grandson of Prime Minister Winston Churchill) requesting an election for the leadership."


♣ Peter Walker, A United Kingdom, (Hamish Hamilton, 1987):

"Conservative Private Members' Committee, informally known as the 1922 Committee (though it was formed in 1923), started life as a ginger group for backbench Tory MPs to speak their minds. Successive Tory governments brought it into the fold and made it an official body of the Conservative Party, responsible for the overseeing of Leadership elections. Depending on its Chairman and Executive Committee, it oscillated between fawning on the Tory leadership and being its harshest critic. Had Eduard Du Cann still been Chairman in '86, I have no doubt he would have supported Mrs. Thatcher, unless the other side offered a better bribe. Cranley Onslow would have been an intriguing choice, but he was lured away from the backbenches and the Committee into Mrs. Thatcher's frontbench by the constant reshuffles of her Cabinet. Thus it fell to Winston Churchill MP to oversee the challenge."


♤ David Mellor, My Moment, (Fourth Estate, 2000):

"After delivering his ruling to allow the challenge to proceed per the rules in palce, Mr. Churchill MP followed it up with a bombshell. The Whips were to stay 'neutral' during the challenge!"


☆ John Bercow, Thatcher, Thatcherism, and Thatcherites, (Faber, 1998):

"Mr. Churchill argued the Whips were agents of the Party, not the Leader of the Party, and as such in an intra-Party leadership challenge had to refrain from taking sides. While there is some merit in his statement from a philosophical point of view, given the realities of British political system, Mr. Churchill removed the most effective form of coercion in the House of Commons from the hands of Mrs. Thatcher. It was not an entirely unbiased decision."


♧ David Owen, Into the Maelstrom, (Macmillan, 1991):

"In '78, when I was Foreign Secretary and pushing for sanctions against the racist regime in Rhodesia, Mr. Churchill MP, then spokesman for Tory Defence and as much an imperialist as his grandfather, denounced my actions as 'treasonous' in the House. He was censured for his choice of language by the Speaker and the Leader of his Party, Mrs. Thatcher, felt his actions were too embarrassing to the frontbench and demoted him to the backbenches. He may have nursed a grudge."


♠ William Powell, My Party - Wet or Dry, (Hamish Hamilton, 1990):

"Under the rules then in effect, the first ballot required a winner to get at least 50% of the vote and be 15% clear of the nearest challenger. The magic number to reach was 205 MPs. We knew we could not hope to reach it on the first ballot, our job was to ensure Mrs. Thatcher could not reach it and force a second ballot, where only a simple majority was required and more importantly more MPs would join the cause seeing Mrs. Thatcher's vulnerability. But before the first ballot, things took a turn."