Читать книгу John Major: The Autobiography - John Major, John Major - Страница 9

WHEN I WALKED INTO the Commons as an MP for the first time on 9 May 1979 it was still the magical place I remembered from my first visit as a thirteen-year-old. I had promised myself then that I would go again when I could enter as a matter of right. Now, one hundred years after my father’s birth, I could, and I knew how my parents would have felt had they been with me as I arrived.

I have never lost my awe for the institution of Parliament or the majesty of the building. It has history in every nook and cranny, and the shades of the past can easily be conjured up even though its purpose is to prepare the future. The place half glances over its shoulder at what has been. I believe the aura of the Commons, of itself, can influence policy, tugging at the imagination of Members. Would a glass-and-steel legislature have summoned the same emotions, for instance, over ‘sovereignty’?

As I walked through the Members’ Entrance for the first day of the new Parliament the policeman on duty greeted me with a cheery ‘Good morning, Mr Major. Congratulations.’ Since I was but one of many anonymous new Members, I was astonished that he had done his homework so speedily. I soon learned that this was a matter of pride among the police, staff and attendants at the Commons.

The new Conservative intake in 1979 was large in number and, we were assured flatteringly, one of the most talented for many elections. Many of its members would find their way to high office. Chris Patten, John Patten, William Waldegrave, David Mellor, Ian Lang, Robert Cranborne, Stephen Dorrell, Douglas Hogg and Brian Mawhinney would all reach the Cabinet. Nick Lyell, Tristan Garel-Jones, Robert Atkins, Richard Needham and many others served in senior posts. Graham Bright and John Ward both served as my Parliamentary Private Secretary during my time at Number 10. Others like Matthew Parris and John Watson had great talent but would leave the House for careers in journalism and business.

The new Members soon formed their own alliances. Within weeks, like-minded Conservative colleagues set up dining clubs. The Blue Chips included those new MPs with most experience of the inner ring of government, often gained through working at Central Office or as a front-bench aide – Waldegrave, Patten and Patten, Cranborne and Garel-Jones foremost among them. It was the praetorian guard of the 1979 intake, with a healthy hint of one-nation scepticism about the instincts of Britain’s new Prime Minister. Most of us, of course, hardly knew Margaret Thatcher. I had met her for the first time at the Berwick and East Lothian by-election in 1978, when I visited the constituency to help the Conservative candidate Margaret Marshall, an old friend from Lambeth days. We thought we would win the seat, but Mrs Thatcher arrived for a day, sniffed the political air, and privately doubted we would make it. She was spot on. It seemed that our new prime minister had an acute political nose.

I was to join the Blue Chips after the 1983 election, but at first I gravitated to the Guy Fawkes Club. Perhaps more workaday than the Blue Chips, it had its share of future stars, among them Stephen Dorrell, David Mellor, Graham Bright and Brian Mawhinney. We had asked each other what we hoped to achieve in Parliament, and I had answered without hesitation: ‘Chancellor.’ ‘PPS to the prime minister,’ said another member, Graham Bright, just as wet behind the ears as I was. In October 1990 Graham, the loyal and down-to-earth MP for Luton South, became my PPS at the Treasury, and he moved with me to Number 10 when I became prime minister a few weeks later.

A number of my new colleagues had built reputations for themselves before entering the Commons, and were widely expected to gain early promotion. Others chose the tortoise’s strategy, and set out painstakingly to learn the way Parliament worked. The Chamber of the Commons is the display cabinet for talent for the world at large, but committees and backbench groups are where worth is often recognised by the cognoscenti within Parliament, and especially by the all-seeing Whips’ Office, who hold Members’ fates in their hand as surely as any prime minister.

Some colleagues found their feet in Parliament before others had found the washroom. I had been in the House for only a few days when I walked across the Central Lobby to turn into the corridor that leads to the Members’ Lobby and the Chamber. As I did so a figure emerged from the shadows. It was Tristan Garel-Jones.

He clasped my arm: ‘I’m worried about the government,’ he said.

Tristan was the first rebel of our intake. He voted and spoke against the government over its handling of independence for the Banaban Islands, situated in the South Pacific and soon to be part of the minuscule state of Kiribati. This minor rebellion was led by Sir Bernard Braine, a senior Member who was anti-abortion, anti-drink and pro-island. He impressed us new boys by his fiery sense of injustice, and a passion that was easily aroused and easily stilled. His indignation could be Vesuvial, and to witness an eruption for the first time was awesome, even if the frequency of subsequent eruptions diminished their excitement. Bernard’s constituency of Essex South-East (subsequently renamed Castle Point) included Canvey Island, but he had a bee in his bonnet about all islands – he loved them like a father. In 1979 his affections had settled on the distant and unfortunate Banabans, and he drew new Members to his cause. He was persuasive – ‘Don Quixote de la Essex’, someone called him – and Tristan signed up as his Sancho Panza, though I doubt he could have found the Banabans on a map.

Tristan was not the only Blue Chip to share Bernard’s passion for islands. Jocelyn Cadbury, the newly-elected MP for Birmingham Northfield and a specialist in the cultural history of Polynesia, also threw himself into the battle. A shy, sensitive, painfully principled man, a few years later he took refuge in a better world by his own hand. I cannot remember what happened to the Banabans, but I will not forget Jocelyn’s fate. I heard of his death with dismay early one evening at a garden party in Huntingdon. Later, when the Blue Chips had their portrait painted by Rose Cecil, Robert Cranborne’s sister, we asked her to include Jocelyn. He is there in a portrait on the wall, poised ethereally on the fringes of the picture, remembered fondly by his parliamentary friends.

A new Parliament meant elections for the 1922 Committee, the representative body of all Conservative backbenchers. I knew few of the candidates. Nor did many of the other new Members. But we quickly began to learn parliamentary ways. We received notes from every candidate inviting support. Cabals were formed for and against – the political instinct to be part of a tribe was very strong. The Smoking Room was full of partisans. The bars abounded with rumour and gossip. Sir Edward du Cann’s Rolls-Royce was reported in action, drawing up in Westminster side-streets beside new Members and offering them a lift to the Commons. One more carload. A few more votes. It was good-humoured and clubbable, and we all loved being part of it. I voted for Sir Edward (without the incentive of a lift in his Rolls), and found him to be one of the best chairmen of a meeting I ever saw. He did attract stories, though.

‘What time is it, Ted?’ he was once asked. ‘Dear boy –’ peering at his watch ‘– what time would you like it to be?’

Another colleague told me how, crying into his brandy in the Smoking Room because his local newspaper had attacked him, he had sighed to Sir Edward, ‘I suppose after years in this place you get used to being attacked.’

Sir Edward patted his arm: ‘Nice people never do.’

These were jolly elections, with a drink in the Smoking Room often making the bargain between candidate and elector. Mr Pickwick, with his experience at Eatanswill, would have felt very much at home.

I settled down, decided to listen and learn before committing myself to a maiden speech, and was elected Joint Secretary to the Conservative Backbench Environment Group, with John Heddle, the new Member for Lichfield, as my partner. I shared a large office with other Members including John Carlisle, who was to become a persistent and outspoken opponent in later years, and who took pleasure in offending every politically-correct code that existed. John Butcher, an opponent also on some issues, but more thoughtfully and less vociferously, was another companion of those early days.

Huntingdonshire was a huge constituency that generated a large postbag which increased every year as I became established there. My secretarial problems were soon solved. One day a small figure with fiery red hair bounded up to me outside the Commons post office.

‘I always said I’d come and work for you if you got elected. So here I am!’ she declared. It was Barbara Wallis, my former colleague from Lambeth days.

‘I thought you worked for Chris Patten at the Conservative Research Department,’ I said.

‘I did,’ said Barbara, ‘but that’s then, and now’s now. I’ve come to work for you. I know you’ve got no one. These are my terms.’

So began a happy working relationship that was to last until Barbara retired, thirteen years later, having spent two years with me at Number 10. And even then she only left after identifying her successor, Gina Hearn, who remains with me still, offering the same high-quality service.

Barbara was indomitable. No MP was a hero to her, and she was something of a legend among the members of the Secretaries’ Council, the Westminster secretaries’ ‘trade union’. She was astute politically, having served on Lambeth Council with me and twice contested the parliamentary constituency of Feltham, and had forceful political views that veered from very liberal to intensely crusty Conservative. She was loyal and fearsomely efficient; the constituency purred at the ultra-smooth service she provided, and I basked in the credit that was largely due to her own efficiency. Yet later, when everyone else urged me to run for the leadership of the party after Margaret Thatcher resigned, Barbara dissented. ‘It’s too early,’ was her view. I entered the contest anyway, and Barbara joined the team, worked day and night, and was ever-present in those dramatic few days.

Not every new MP takes cheerfully to the place. Some never do. With my unusual background (for a Conservative MP) and lack of practised gentlemen’s-club ways, you might suppose that at first I felt ill at ease. Not so. As a new backbencher I was as happy as Bunter in a bakery. In the early days I was not among those who dined eagerly with members of the Cabinet and other senior figures in the party. I attended a drinks and question session one evening with the Chancellor of the Exchequer Geoffrey Howe, and saw the danger of such occasions. Some new colleagues had views, and brought them forward. ‘Why are the government …?’ ‘Should not the government …?’ ‘It is surely clear that we should …’ They sounded to me like talking press releases culled from the Campaign Guide to the Election. Geoffrey gently explained the political realities of life, and left some of the more assertive questioners looking rather callow. Others, saying nothing, gave the impression of being tongue-tied or (depending upon their demeanour) wise. I decided that short, pithy questions were the best option and stuck to those. Having now spent many years on the other side of the desk at such meetings, I’m sure that early judgement was right. As Kenneth Baker once put it, in a slightly different context, the line between sycophancy and rebellion is difficult to tread. I watched others carefully, and noted what worked and what did not; I saw the mistakes some made by self-promotion and an eagerness to lend a glib line to every passing newspaper hack.

I made my maiden speech in mid-June in a debate on Geoffrey Howe’s first budget. The Chamber had barely sixty Members in it when I rose to speak, but that did not diminish my nervousness. I was well-prepared, but even so, looking up, I was pleased to see the familiar face of Canon Ronald Jennings, a constituent from St Ives, sitting in the Public Gallery for the debate. He smiled down with a clerical benevolence that I took as a very good sign.

It was an unremarkable first speech: the traditional tour of the constituency, a mention of Oliver Cromwell, Huntingdon’s most famous son, a complaint about the government grant to Cambridgeshire, broad support for the budget. Soon it was over and, if I had not distinguished myself especially, I had not disgraced myself either. It is a tradition in the Commons that maiden speeches are greeted with acclaim provided the first-time orator manages to string together a few sentences. I received, therefore, ludicrously complimentary hand-written congratulatory notes from colleagues (as did most others, I later found to my dismay), and went home content that a hurdle had been overcome and that I could now widen my horizons as a new Member. The induction was over – now the real work could begin.

The Commons is not easily impressed with new Members, but it remembers foolishness for a long time. And so I was cautious and well-prepared whenever I spoke. New Members need issues to make their mark, and I was soon to have one. In 1980 it was announced that the United States was to station sixty-four Cruise missiles at RAF Molesworth, in my constituency, and this began to attract anti-nuclear protesters in large numbers. My constituents, familiar with RAF bases at Brampton and Wyton and American servicemen at Alconbury, were unperturbed by the imminent arrival of the missiles, but they became very anxious as the peace protesters grew in number and their level of activity increased. As one robust Molesworth resident, Stephen Hill, put it: ‘The peace movement will cause more disturbance to our peaceful environment than the missiles will.’ In August 1983 2,500 CND protesters occupied part of the base to protest against the plans, and in October they planted wheat, destined for famine relief in Eritrea, on four acres of the base.

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.

I had joined the Whips’ Office in the run-up to the general election which Margaret Thatcher called for 9 June 1983. The result never seemed in doubt. Margaret’s success in regaining the Falklands made her as unbeatable as the Labour Party were unelectable, with their preposterously left-wing manifesto. Gerald Kaufman, the cynical spirit of Labour’s front bench, called it the longest suicide note in history, but it was worse than that. Moreover, the defection of a number of senior Labour figures to the Social Democratic Party produced an organic split in the left of politics that almost guaranteed an overwhelming Conservative victory. In the event the election was a walkover and Margaret increased her parliamentary majority from forty-four to 144. In Huntingdon (as the constituency was now called) I had no difficulty and was comfortably re-elected by 20,348 votes – over 62 per cent of those cast.

After the election my vague hopes that I might be appointed a parliamentary under-secretary (a junior, junior minister) came to naught. I remained an assistant whip in a Whips’ Office changed by the appointment of John Wakeham as Chief Whip and John Cope as his deputy. The Office took on a different style. John Wakeham was subtle, reflective, a persuader, a fixer, fascinated by why something happened rather than simply what had happened. He was laid back, adept at delegation, and he played Mrs Thatcher like a master fisherman landing a prized salmon. He began, as a matter of policy, to bring some of the brightest young talents of the parliamentary party into the Office. He was ideal for the role.

The next two years as a whip taught me so much about how Parliament really worked, as I saw its dramas from the inside track. I learned about our colleagues and our opponents: their strengths, their weaknesses, their interests and sometimes their secrets. I came to know the team players and the loners; the able and the dotty.

The whips met daily in the House of Commons at 2.30 p.m., except on Wednesdays, when we gathered at 12 Downing Street, the Chief Whip’s domain, for a longer meeting that usually began at 10.30 a.m. and ended at lunchtime. We planned parliamentary business, bullied and cajoled where necessary, and shared every piece of intelligence that came our way. We discussed the opportunities and pitfalls of the week ahead and made our dispositions. John Wakeham received all the Cabinet papers and made them available to any whip who wished to read them: I devoured everything of interest.

An awful incident occurred in the House one snowy night when I was sitting on the bench beside Michael Roberts, a junior Welsh minister, in a late-night debate. The Chamber was almost deserted. Suddenly, Michael stumbled over a phrase, repeated it haltingly, groaned, then collapsed to the floor beside me. I was with him in moments, but he was beyond all help. He had suffered a massive coronary and must have died before he hit the floor. The sitting was suspended, and Michael Jopling, the Chief Whip, pleaded with the Press and the Public Galleries for privacy ‘at this difficult moment’. They left quietly and unprotesting, as shocked as we were. Gently, in an air of disbelief, Michael was taken out of the Chamber.

I remember driving home in the snow in the early hours of the morning and thinking of the tragedy of his death. Above all, it brought home to me the transitory nature of life and politics. Michael Roberts was not an old man – he was in his mid-fifties – but I knew that soon people would be talking about who would stand for his Cardiff seat in the by-election.

As I was given responsibility for managing the parliamentary business of first the Department of the Environment then the Northern Ireland Office, I became familiar with their policies and with the task of steering debates on the floor of the Chamber. I sat for weeks upon end, many hours at a time, on committees at which by tradition I was unable to speak, but was responsible for ensuring that the legislation progressed. I did deals with the opposition about when the committee sat, for how long, and when votes would be taken, and I sanctioned absence from the government side if the numbers present assured me that our majority was secure.

As an Environment whip I became involved in the abolition of the GLC, and in the annual fights over central government support for local authorities. These were often very bloody, as Members fought for cash for their political backyards. It was good preparation for the future. I also had a general responsibility for delivering the votes – and seeking the views – of Conservative MPs from East Anglia. They were a mixed bunch who were generally biddable and responsive to persuasion, but rarely to threats. Many of us coalesced into a group dubbed the ‘East Anglian Mafia’; it would come to my aid in the very different circumstances of November 1990.

With our huge parliamentary majority it was easier to send a colleague home early than to persuade him to change his mind over an issue about which he felt strongly. One evening a Conservative backbencher, the maverick right-winger Peter Bruinvels, droned on for far too long in an almost empty Chamber. He ignored my pointed expressions to sit down. Fed up, I sent him a note: ‘Do you have any children?’ Puzzled, Bruinvels shook his head and carried on speaking. I sent a second note: ‘Then why don’t you go home and do something useful?’

He sat down.

In Huntingdon, Norma and I were looking for a larger house. For months it had been a fruitless search, but one Saturday she came home and told me she had seen a house that might be possible, although it was too big and too expensive. We decided to look at it together. It was called Finings. We drove through the gate and up a gravelled drive fringed with mature lime trees which ended in a turning circle, in the centre of which was a fifty-foot cedar. Built in 1938, the house, with wisteria climbing up its back wall, stood in two and a half acres of garden with a large lawn and a wide variety of trees and shrubs. Much of it was heavily overgrown, with an old orchard of trees long past fruiting. The garden was open to farmland on two sides and undeveloped land on the third. Although it was ringed with trees there was no fence and it was a haven for whole families of rabbits, which we thought picturesque until we saw the damage they could do. In the winter, when they were hungry, they would literally tear the bark off the trees. As we made our presence felt they retreated, but our battle to expel them was to be a long one.

The house had potential. It felt right. It had charm and grace and gave an impression of being much older than it was. We couldn’t afford it, but we bought it. Selling the house in Hemingford Grey proved difficult, and for six months we took out a bridging loan which nearly crippled us financially. I’ve never regretted it.

On 3 October 1984, our fourteenth wedding anniversary, I became a senior whip with the grand title of ‘Lord Commissioner of the Treasury’. This simply arose through Buggins’s turn as whips left the Office and their juniors were automatically promoted, but I was delighted. I learned of my promotion as I returned from Latin America where, in the absence of a Foreign Office minister, I had been sent on a tour of Peru, Venezuela and Colombia. This was a fascinating visit with two highlights. The first was a visit to Machu Picchu, the lost city of the Incas, which had been stumbled on by an American professor in 1911. I was riveted by it. The second was one morning when I was asked to have coffee with a Roman Catholic priest in a shanty town outside Lima. As the clock struck eight, out of the miserable hovels, young children emerged clean and scrubbed and carrying satchels or bags. I stopped one and talked to him, with the priest as interpreter. The boy told me he wanted to be a brain surgeon. That, I thought, is ambition: I only wanted to be Chancellor of the Exchequer.

On the evening of 11 October 1984 I left the Grand Hotel in Brighton, where I had been staying for the Conservative Party Conference, to return early to Huntingdon. Five hours later, at 2.45 a.m., an IRA bomb ripped through the hotel. It was a calculated plan to murder the Prime Minister and her Cabinet, and five people were killed, including Tony Berry, and John Wakeham’s wife Roberta. John Wakeham and Norman Tebbit and his wife Margaret were severely injured. It was a miracle that the carnage was not far worse.

The first I heard of the tragedy was at 5 a.m., when my brother Terry telephoned me to see if I was at Finings or still in Brighton. I turned on the television and, like most of the country, saw the awful pictures of Norman Tebbit, in agony, being lifted out of the rubble. John Wakeham’s legs had been badly crushed, and during his long absence from Parliament his deputy John Cope took temporary charge of the Whips’ Office. I offered, as a fellow East Anglian MP, to care for John Wakeham’s Maldon constituency, which I did for many months until he was recovered.

As Treasury Whip, I was that bit closer to the chancellorship. The appointment turned out to be crucial to my future career – and, for reasons I will set out later, to Margaret Thatcher’s. I began to see at close quarters the immense influence of the Treasury on every aspect of government. I enjoyed working for Nigel Lawson, a radical chancellor, confident in his intellect and one of the main architects of the government’s policy.

Nigel’s morning meetings, known as ‘Prayer Meetings’, generally held in his study at Number 11, were a mixture of monologue and philosophical debate, but as a former whip he retained a fascination for Commons gossip. I was happy to keep him up to date. I rarely commented on his policies unless invited, although I had my views. Nigel would have listened, but done nothing. He knew what he wished to do, and his mind could not be changed.

My role as Treasury Whip led me into a serious row with the Prime Minister. Each summer, by tradition, the Whips’ Office entertained her to dinner, and in June 1985 we met at Number 10. Unusually, House of Lords whips were invited too. Margaret Thatcher was never noted for her small-talk with colleagues, and the first two courses passed with only desultory exchanges. It was evident that she wished to turn to some serious political discussion, and John Wakeham said, ‘The Treasury is at the heart of policy. I’ll ask the Treasury Whip to begin.’

I regarded it as my role to tell the Prime Minister what the backbenchers were saying, and I did so. ‘They don’t like some of our policies,’ I told her. ‘They’re worried that capital expenditure is being sacrificed to current spending.’ I set out in detail the grumbles that every whip present knew were the views of the vast majority of our backbench colleagues.

Margaret did not like the message at all, and began to chew up the messenger. I thought her behaviour was utterly unreasonable, and repeated the message. She became more shrill in her criticisms. ‘I’m astonished at what you’re saying,’ she snapped. I made it clear again that I was merely reporting the views of many Members, but she continued to attack me. I became increasingly annoyed, and said: ‘That’s what colleagues are saying, whether you like it or not – it’s my job to tell you, and that’s what I’m doing.’ Her tirade continued. By now I was past caring about tact, shaking with anger, and nearly walked out. I repeated the message once more. It made no impression at all, and as she raged on the whips around me became very uncomfortable. I was almost beside myself with fury, and made no attempt to hide it. Even as I spoke, I thought I might be wrecking my career, but I was too angry to backtrack – which, in any event, would have been craven. I may not be promoted, I thought, but I’m not going to be humiliated.

Carol Mather intervened to support me. Margaret turned on him with an angry word. Bob Boscawen hastened to support Carol. He was met with a glare. I had no intention of backing down, and pitched in again. The meeting was dangerously close to collapsing in mutual recrimination. Jean Trumpington, one of the Lords whips, attempted to lower the temperature and had her head bitten off for her pains. It was an extraordinary performance by the Prime Minister, and I have never forgotten it. As we rose from the table for post-dinner drinks her husband Denis came up to me. ‘She’ll have enjoyed that,’ he remarked, and drifted off happily, clutching a gin and tonic. John Cope sidled up and suggested I might make my peace with Margaret. ‘I think,’ I told him, ‘that it’s up to her. You’d better tell her that.’

The next day, to my astonishment, this extraordinary woman did just that. Since phrases like ‘wets’ and ‘dries’, ‘one of them’ or ‘one of us’, were already part of the Thatcher folklore, I assumed that after our argument I would be cast into outer darkness at the first opportunity. My career, I was sure, would be on hold if not on stop. But I was wrong.

In the late afternoon I was sitting as the Whip on Duty on the Treasury Bench in the Commons. Margaret swept in from behind the Speaker’s Chair and sat beside me. She could not have been more charming. She mentioned some ideas I had previously put to her, so inconsequential I cannot now remember them, and said she wished to discuss them. Another whip was summoned to the bench, and an ad hoc discussion commenced in the Whips’ Office, with the Prime Minister and me seated in armchairs. Without the fracas of the previous night being mentioned, peace was declared.

A few weeks later, in the autumn reshuffle, I was promoted to my first ministerial post in a department. Not for the first or the last time, Margaret Thatcher had surprised me.