David Waddington Memoirs (22 page)

A week after the World Summit on Drugs I was once again at Buckingham Palace administering the oath for the swearing-in of a bishop. The oath which the bishop has to repeat line by line is not for the fainthearted, with tongue twisters such as ‘all the
spiritualities
and all the temporalities thereof’. When it is all over the new bishop repairs to a downstairs lavatory to disrobe and is there given a glass of sherry. He badly needs it.

At about the same time I had to attend an investiture at the Palace, summoning forward those to be knighted. The day before I had told Alan Glyn, the Alan Glyn who spent a night during the 1987 election under a cupboard, that as he was in a state of
decrepitude
Her Majesty had let it be known that there was no need for him to kneel, but when I called his name he ignored my advice. There was much dithering and shaking and ungainly manoeuvres as he tried, vainly at first, to make contact with the stool; and watching him try to regain his feet was even more nerve-wracking for the onlooker. The Queen’s face was a picture.

A week later there was a state banquet at Buckingham Palace in honour of the President of India, and the week after that an event which was far more difficult to endure. I refer to the BAFTA awards ceremony at which stars of cinema and television indulge in a prolonged orgy of self-congratulation. The event started at 6 p.m. and when, at about ten, the whole ghastly business seemed to be grinding to a halt I said goodnight to the Princess Royal.
She looked at me strangely and said “Oh dear, aren’t you going to stay for my speech?’ At which a well-wisher took me to one side to explain that we had only reached half-time.

In May I attended the Police Federation conference in Scarborough. It was going to be a difficult occasion. The police were up in arms about their rent allowances which were going to be cut, and we had learned that by way of protest the delegates were going to listen to my address in stony silence – not a cough, not a clap. My secretary had a stroke of genius. Immediately before I went in to the hall he said, ‘What a colossal joke it would be if, at the beginning of your speech, you made some reference to their planned silence and treated it as an act of politeness.’ So I opened my remarks by saying,

The police had not a leg to stand on. Never once since 1979 had the government failed to honour the Edmund Davies formula and as a result police pay had gone up much faster than average earnings. On top of that the system of rent allowances had got completely out of control and we could not be expected to continue with a system which had led in the previous year to a 69 per cent increase in the allowances in Warwickshire and a 59 per cent increase in London.

At about this time, Gilly and I had an interesting and relaxing visit to the Channel Islands. When I addressed the States in Jersey I said that the UK government had no intention of interfering in the domestic affairs of the Islands, words which, had I remained
Home Secretary, I would shortly have had to eat. Within a year or so Kenneth Baker had to take action because of the shortcomings of the deputy bailiff who was not keeping up with his court work. I visited the new prison which seemed very short of customers.

During my time in government Gilly and I attended all sorts of formal dinners and sometimes they seemed a very mixed blessing. There is always work to be done and time at a banquet means less sleep that night as boxes still have to be gone through in
preparation
for the next day. But there were some glorious occasions, and Geoffrey Howe should be thanked for persuading the powers that be to allow the British Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum to allow big diplomatic events, like the dinner on the Queen’s official birthday, to take place on the premises. On one such occasion Gilly and I were in a V&A festooned with ‘No Smoking’ notices when from behind a statue emerged Princess Margaret with an inch of ash at the end of her cigarette. ‘There you are,’ she said, as she approached. I bowed, put out my hand to receive the ash and popped it in my pocket.

On 13 February 1990 a journalist and a photographer gained access to the intensive care ward of Charing Cross Hospital where Gordon Kaye, star of the popular television series ’
Allo ’Allo!
, was lying in very bad shape after an accident. Although he was in no fit state to talk about anything, and quarter of an hour later had no recollection of the occurrence, the journalists purported to interview him and their paper later proposed to publish a report of that ‘interview’.

The behaviour of the journalists was monstrous but when the matter came before the Court of Appeal the court ruled that Gordon Kaye had no right of redress. What had happened was an appalling abuse of press freedom but it was up to Parliament to create a legal right to privacy.

On 21 June the Calcutt Committee, appointed the previous year
to review invasions of privacy by the press, produced its report. Its recommendations included the creation of a new criminal offence of invasion of privacy by the press and better self-regulation. This was to be achieved through a press complaints commission which would adjudicate on breaches of its code of practice and
recommend
how its findings should be published and how, in suitable cases, a correction, reply or apology should be made.

In the House I said that the government welcomed the committee’s general approach and accepted the recommendation with regard to a press complaints commission. If the industry did not set up the commission within twelve months or if, after the commission had been set up, it did not prove itself, we would take steps to set up a statutory commission or even a tribunal. I also accepted in principle the recommendation that journalists or others
entering
or using surveillance on private property without invitation, in order to get hold of personal details for publication, should be guilty of a criminal offence. We would, however, have to consider the detail of the proposed offence of physical intrusion and the scope of the proposed defence of lawful authority and would announce our conclusions later in the year. In the event it fell to my successor to decide what, if any, further steps should be taken.

At about this time I had a protracted battle with Cecil Parkinson who wanted to introduce random breath tests for motorists. I pointed out that the police already had the power to stop any vehicle at any time without any reason and if, having stopped a vehicle, an officer formed a reasonable suspicion that alcohol had been taken, the breathalyser could be used. What more did the Department of Transport want? It seemed they had set their hearts on the police being able to set up road blocks at four o’clock in the afternoon in order to breathalyse every granny coming back with her shopping, and I was delighted to put a stop to what, at best,
was mere window dressing and, at worst, would do great damage to relations between the police and law-abiding members of the public. I have to say that in a long life in the law and politics I have learned that there is one temptation to which the police find it easy to succumb – they would rather book for minor offences polite members of the middle classes not addicted to giving them lip than deal with crime among less salubrious members of society. We should help them to resist this temptation not give way to it.

In that summer my private secretary announced that the Prime Minister wanted what was called a ‘bilateral’ – a meeting with a minister on his own to sort out something worrying her. My officials seemed to be in a highly anxious state about the request, with one saying, ‘You don’t think she wishes to discuss the BBC licence fee? You will do your best, Secretary of State, to keep her off that.’ Arriving at No. 10 I was surprised at the perspicacity of the official who had last spoken to me because the Prime Minister’s opening shot was: ‘I want to talk about getting rid of the licence fee.’ I said that there should be plenty of time to talk about that but first I had to have her consent to a number of official
appointments
, and I made sure that took a fair amount of time. ‘Now,’ she said with relish, ‘let’s get to the licence fee. I am sure we discussed abolition in one of the committee meetings last session on the Broadcasting Bill.’ I said I had no recollection of that but the Prime Minister’s response was to call for the production of the minutes of the various meetings so that she could prove how faulty was my memory. After a little while a man staggered in with an enormous pile of paper in his arms. Margaret grabbed a fair amount of it and then, having flicked through a number of pages while sitting in her chair, flung herself on the floor to complete her search, bidding me to follow her. Her search proved, as I knew it would, fruitless, and when we had got to our feet someone came to the door and said: ‘Prime Minister, the Israeli Ambassador has already been waiting
for twenty minutes.’ ‘Infuriating,’ said the Prime Minister, ‘the licence fee will have to wait for another meeting.’ Back I went to the Home Office and when I got there my private secretary said: ‘Did she get to discussing the licence fee?’ ‘No,’ I said. ‘Well done,’ said my private secretary.

Whenever there is a dearth of news, the press find a child which has been bitten by a dog. As all the dog biting stories occur in June and July I think you can take it that there is less news in June and July than in other months of the year. When the press start
reporting
that children are being bitten, the wise Home Secretary tries not to think about it. The dogs will stop biting in August, or rather the press will be on holiday in August and will stop writing about it. The unwise Home Secretary will introduce legislation when the press say dogs have started biting. The wise Home Secretary will do precisely nothing.

It does become slightly more complicated when it is the Home Secretary’s dog which is doing some of the biting, and Basil let us down badly. On 23 July, Gilly tied Basil up outside a shop in Pimlico Road and then a little later, as she was paying her bill, she saw through the shop window a little boy about to put his nose close to Basil’s teeth in a gesture of affection. Basil was a bit
standoffish
with young people to whom he had not been properly
introduced
and before you could say teeth he snapped at and narrowly missed the little lad’s nose. A brutish type who might have been the boy’s father then commenced to beat Basil about the head with a bag loaded, Gilly suspected, with burglary tools, and then, having meted out a great deal of punishment, picked the boy up, saying he was going to take him to hospital.

Gilly reported all this to me when I returned home in the evening and I was not confident that we had heard the last of the matter. We had not. On 30 July we got a letter from the police saying that what had happened had been reported but because it
was an isolated matter they were taking no action. We thanked our lucky stars but our luck did not last long. In the middle of August the
Mail on Sunday
rang and the next day a banner headline
covering
the two centre pages read: ‘basil’s day of shame’. Happily the story underneath was in fact not too shaming. The writer appeared to have accepted Gilly’s side of the story and treated the man with the bag which may or may not have contained burglary tools as the villain of the piece, but it was not the sort of publicity my press office would have sought.

On 23 July came reshuffle day. The Prime Minister rang at nine in the morning and asked me if I would let John Patten go to be Minister for the Civil Service and the Arts. Reluctantly I said ‘Yes’ – reluctantly because John had done much work on the Criminal Justice Bill and I had been assuming that he would pilot it through the House after its introduction at the very beginning of the next session in October.

When I told John Patten what was afoot he protested that he knew little about the arts and hated what he did know. If given the job he would soon be found out to be the philistine he was. For instance, if asked when he had last been to the opera his reply would be: ‘Never’. I rang Charles Powell at No. 10 and told him the difficulty. His reply was not unreasonable: ‘If Patten won’t do, who do you suggest?’ I said that I wanted to keep my present team, but if I had to lose one or other of my ministers of state it was far better that David Mellor should go because he rather liked the arts. Charles said he would ask the Prime Minister and a little while later he phoned back and said she agreed.

I then had the unenviable task of telling David Mellor, who became quite apoplectic. It was an insult to offer him such a
dead-end
job. I went into a meeting and half way through I was passed a message that David Mellor wanted to speak to me urgently. I went outside and he was still waxing indignant and saying he was not
prepared to take the job. I got cross and went back in to my
meeting
. Half an hour later when it ended I turned on the television and there was David before the cameras saying what a great honour had been bestowed on him – that Minister for the Arts was the job he had always wanted and he was the happiest man alive. I thought it very sporting of him in the circumstances and proved what a grand trooper he was.

That was not the end of my reshuffle difficulties. A moment or two later the Prime Minister was on the line saying she was glad I had been prepared to spare David but that she had now decided that I would have to part with John Patten as well. She wanted him as Paymaster General and offered me Douglas Hogg instead. I certainly had nothing against Douglas who was immensely able but I felt it was unfair to ask me to see my team completely broken up. Eventually she agreed to leave John Patten with me.

A week later on the morning of 30 July I had just got in to my office when I was told that a bomb had gone off outside Ian Gow’s home near Eastbourne. In a further call a minute or two later I learned that he was dead. I had an appointment with the Prime Minister, and when I got to No. 10 she already knew about Ian and was very upset. She had always been very fond of Ian as he had been of her. ‘Give me work,’ she said to her private secretary, ‘and I don’t want any engagements cancelled. I have got to keep myself busy.’ I went out into Downing Street and was caught by the press. I said that there were times when it was difficult not to hate. Ian was a good man and he had been blown to bits by the scum of the earth.