For the Record

by David Cameron

  One of them was eighty-year-old Maurice Reeves, who had watched the furniture business his family had built up over generations, House of Reeves, completely destroyed by fire. It had survived the Blitz, but not this. His ethic of work and duty, family and community, and his deep compassion for those who had suffered even more than him, made him a symbol of the personal cost of the riots.

  That night there weren’t 6,000 police officers on the streets of London, as there had been the night before – there were 16,000. Suddenly the rioting in the capital died down.

  The following morning it was back to COBR. As well as receiving situation updates, I was driving the justice system to increase the capacity of our courts by introducing emergency night-time sittings. (I’ve always wanted faster justice, and was determined that our courts wouldn’t be found wanting. Historically the British justice system has taken a very dim view of rioting – that such disorder is totally unacceptable – and it certainly demonstrated that tradition in the following weeks.)

  But where was Boris? He’d rushed all the way back from a camping holiday in a remote part of Canada for this, and now he was fifteen minutes late – and missed the whole bit about London.

  That evening the riots were effectively over. On Thursday I would have COBR, cabinet, then questions in the Commons from MPs recalled from their holidays.

  First, though, I had to deal with Boris.

  He had come out and tried to blame police cuts for the riots. I was furious, and called him straight away. ‘Why the hell did you do that?’ He said it was revenge for No. 10 saying this was his ‘Hurricane Katrina moment’, alluding to the fact that he had been away on holiday, and it had taken him several days to return to London. This had not come from my team, but from a Guardian article. He was being paranoid, and frankly at this stage of the proceedings a massive irritation.

  And he was late again to the next key meeting.

  While the mayor of London was veering all over the place, cabinet was pulling together as one. George Osborne and Theresa May had sought me out separately to check that I wasn’t going to do a U-turn on police cuts. Even the Lib Dems were on board, and Nick Clegg appealed to me not to back down.

  The speaker let every single MP who wanted to ask me a question do so. I was on my feet for two hours forty-five minutes, answering 160 questions – breaking my own record, set during the phone-hacking questioning three weeks earlier. It was hard work, but it showed that every question was answered and that I had a grip on the whole thing.

  My statement was followed by a debate – and while that continued, I popped off to the tea room for a shepherd’s pie and a glass of wine. Then I went back to the flat, switched on the cricket, and fell asleep on the sofa.

  I returned to the Chamber for the wind-up speeches, during which Michael Gove delivered one of the best parliamentary orations I’d ever heard. I marvelled at how he had crafted such beauty from such an ugly episode – praising MPs from across the House, restating our shared British values, and championing those who stood up to the rioters.

  And that for me is the most powerful image. I don’t just look back at that summer and think of balaclavas and burning buildings. I think of the Londoners armed with brooms who came to clear up their streets. The Sikhs of Southall who didn’t just defend their gurdwaras but local mosques too. Of Maurice Reeves, determined to see his store reopen. And the police, fire and ambulance crews who faced danger night after night.

  Charlie Taylor, the government’s school discipline adviser who had previously been head teacher for a school with many very damaged and disturbed children, came round that evening and we talked about what had happened. Yes, it was criminality. And no, the cuts weren’t to blame. But there was a background to the behaviour – in terms of parenting and schooling and values – that we shouldn’t ignore.

  The following morning Hugh Orde came out and said that the police’s tactics changed because of operational decisions, not the decisions of politicians. While this was irritating, I was clear that we needed to pour oil on troubled waters. Some politicians didn’t agree. David Davis wanted to throw fuel on the fire – ringing me to say how important it was we won this argument with the police. Instead, Theresa May and I made emollient statements, saying that of course the police made the right decisions, but they had had the political backing of COBR.

  That was the truth of it: the intervention of COBR gave the police the support to do what needed to be done. Whether or not they’d already decided to increase numbers on the streets, we had made damn sure the numbers were going to go right up, and would stay that way.

  That evening I drove down to have dinner with my mother in her cottage in Peasemore. She was all on her own since my dad died, and I stayed the night. There was something very comforting about sitting with Mum and talking about what had happened over the past tumultuous few days. As a magistrate she was full of common sense about dealing with each crime on its own merits, and not overreacting. And, as ever, she was a patient listener as I sounded off about all the frustrations and difficulties of getting these things right. There was a small single bed in the spare room upstairs, no wi-fi and not much mobile phone signal. I slept like a baby.

  On Saturday morning I got to Gatwick early to meet Sam and the children, and sat in Costa Coffee with my red box doing some work as I waited. More than usual, people were coming up to me and saying things like ‘You’ve got to keep going.’ That was the national mood: bleak, but firm.

  I had garnered some very practical lessons for a prime minister.

  I learned that if it’s all kicking off at home, come home.

  I learned that a comprehensive response to a crisis – chairing COBR, recalling Parliament, making visits, delivering speeches – does work. It stamps your authority on the issue.

  I learned that a hard-line response is often right: despite Tottenham being intertwined with policing issues, Greater Manchester with organised crime and the Midlands with inter-ethnic tensions, the riots were, by and large, simple criminality.

  And I learned that if a national emergency is being lazily blamed on cuts, you can win the argument that the problem is not financial, it is social.

  23

  Better Together

  I passionately believe in the Union between England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. It’s in my make-up. I was born and raised in England. My mother’s mother was a Llewellyn from Wales. My father’s father was a Cameron from Scotland. Indeed, the motto of Clan Cameron is ‘Unite’.

  And I felt a special pride when I first saw those words, ‘Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland’, during my early days in office, because I knew I would be leading a great and strong Union.

  That’s not to say it’s a simple arrangement. Economically, culturally, even religiously very varied, our countries’ differences have helped shape British politics for centuries.

  The forty years before we took office had seen a steady rise of nationalism, and the main parties had struggled to keep up. In Scotland in particular, Labour sought to assuage nationalist feeling by becoming its champion. It had countered the idea of independence with the offer of devolved government, and after the election in 1997 it had put that plan in place.

  Yet by the time I was in politics, I could see cracks emerging along our national borders. Each of the devolved administrations was controlled by a different party – the Scottish National Party (SNP) in Holyrood, Welsh Labour and Plaid Cymru in coalition in the Senedd, and the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) and Sinn Féin in a power-sharing alliance in Stormont.

  More profoundly, the appetite for self-government had been whetted, but not satisfied. The arrangements were incomplete and unstable. The devolution settlements seemed to have created a never-ending grievance culture, where no matter what the issue, Westminster took the blame. Instead of politics in the devolved nations being about su
bjects such as housing, education or health – for which they were all now responsible – they were predominantly about the need for further devolution, more money and the shortcomings of the constitution.

  This was taken even further by Labour, who embraced the argument that there were so few Tory MPs in Scotland that any Tory government wasn’t legitimate. A narrative that was intended to damage the Tories north of the border ended up delegitimising the Westminster government, whoever was in power.

  Those who pursued this course endangered the Union. The more that Scottish and Welsh people felt that they were still effectively ruled from afar, or not getting a fair deal – or, at least, the more their first ministers made them believe this was the case – the more the calls for full independence would gather pace.

  An important part of my task in government, therefore, was to strengthen every part of the UK, democratically, socially and econom­ically. The Conservative position has always been pro-Union. Our full name is the Conservative and Unionist Party, reflecting our alliance with Joseph Chamberlain’s Liberal Unionists, who split from Gladstone in 1886 over the latter’s plan for Irish Home Rule. The parties merged in 1912, and officially adopted the name.

  We had – wrongly, in my view – opposed the devolution settlements in Scotland and Wales in the late 1990s, and had struggled ever since to find a constructive stance. Too many Tories thought that implacable opposition to devolution was the only way of protecting the Union. I totally disagreed. In every other area of policy we were the ‘devolvers’ – wanting to give people greater control of their lives. Only by giving people a real stake in their nation’s affairs could we continue to justify the Union and retain support for it.

  I also needed to bring the Tories up to date, paving the way for electoral breakthroughs. If an important part of modern, compassionate conservatism was about making the Conservative Party love modern Britain (and modern Britain love the Conservative Party), part of that meant making sure the party loved our reformed and devolved Union too.

  My motivation throughout was my staunch commitment to the Union. My first foray into Northern Irish politics after I became leader was a demonstration of that – albeit ultimately an unsuccessful one.

  My earliest experience of the issue had come many years earlier. In July 1991, when I was working in the Conservative Research Department, I had been keen to get my head around what was one of the most complex issues in British politics. I called up a journalist friend, the BBC’s George Eykyn, who covered the Troubles at the time. ‘I work for the Conservative and Unionist Party,’ I told him, ‘but I don’t know much about Unionists.’

  George invited me to Belfast to watch the Orangemen marching on 12 July. I lumbered around after him carrying the tripod as he filmed his package. It was fascinating: the bowler hats and bright orange sashes, the brass bands and the banners. It was also strange. These people were pledging deep allegiance to a country we shared, yet their traditions and their fervour seemed alien to me and to the UK I knew.

  While the Conservatives’ partnership with the Ulster Unionists had effectively dissolved in the 1970s, Conservative candidates were still able to stand in elections in Northern Ireland. But they were held back by lack of local organisation, a sense that they were somehow English imports, and by a fear among Unionist voters that a Conservative vote would split the pro-Union vote.

  That left the Northern Irish political system cut off from the UK mainstream. People in Northern Ireland could get to the top of business, the armed forces or public services in the United Kingdom, but not national politics.

  For many years during the Troubles and the subsequent peace process, changing that by re-establishing the old relationship with the Unionists hadn’t really been possible or appropriate. But now, with the Good Friday Agreement in place, I saw a chance to merge the Conservatives with the old Ulster Unionist Party to form a new centre-right, non-sectarian political movement.

  I announced my plan at the 2008 UUP conference to reunite under the rather Star Wars-sounding banner ‘Ulster Conservatives and Unionists – New Force’. When I said that ‘I will never be neutral when it comes to expressing my support for the Union’, the room erupted in loud applause.

  It would be good for them, as they had been eclipsed by the DUP and left with just one Member of Parliament. It would be good for us, as we would be the only party fielding candidates in every part of the UK, and if we could win seats, it could take us that vital extra step towards a majority.

  But above all, it would be good for Northern Ireland, bringing it into the heart of decision-making at Westminster. And by attracting a diverse range of non-sectarian candidates it could break new and healthy ground in Northern Irish politics.

  There was some initial success in the 2009 European Parliament election, when Jim Nicholson – a big, burly guy, as happy being labelled Conservative as Unionist – stood and was elected.

  But alas, the force was not with us. The UUP was fixated on getting more money from CCHQ coffers, and its only MP, left-leaning Sylvia Hermon, quit the party entirely. In the 2010 general election we won just over 15 per cent of the vote in Northern Ireland. But no New Force MPs were elected.

  While I had failed in my attempt to create party political unity in opposition, in government I had the chance to help heal one of the worst running sores in our modern history.

  On 30 January 1972, twenty-eight people were shot and thirteen killed by British soldiers during a civil rights protest in Londonderry. After what became known as ‘Bloody Sunday’ a report by Lord Widgery said that the responsibility lay with those who had organised the march. This conclusion had not been accepted by the nationalist community. The famous image of Father Edward Daly holding a bloody white handkerchief as he tended to the dying had become a part of history, but the feeling of injustice was raw as ever. So Labour commissioned a fresh review in 1998 by Lord Saville.

  The report was due to be published, finally, in 2010. I was clear, even before seeing it, about two things: I, the prime minister, should be the one to respond publicly; and if the findings were as bad as I expected, I, on behalf of the British government and the country, should be ready to give an unqualified apology.

  At a No. 10 drinks party for the staff who had worked on the election, I went to one side with Jonathan Caine, special adviser in the Northern Ireland Office, who I had worked with many years earlier in the Conservative Research Department and who became the party’s authority on everything to do with Northern Ireland and relations with the Republic. Anyone who disputes the controversial system of political advisers only needs to look at Jonathan. He is the best of spad-dom: a political brain, an authority in his field and a tireless behind-the-scenes presence. He was – and remains – passionate about securing peace and progress in Northern Ireland, and maintaining our United Kingdom. And on the Saville Inquiry, his instinct was the same as mine.

  The 5,000-page, ten-volume Saville Report arrived at Downing Street on the afternoon of 14 June 2010. I had just returned from Afghanistan that day, and had to make one of the sudden subject-matter switches that you get used to when you’re essentially the Minister for Everything. I was less than one month into my premiership, and about to handle something truly historic.

  I sat at my desk in silence for an hour and a half, starting with the sixty-page report summary. None of the casualties shot had been armed with a firearm … Soldiers lost their self-control … One person was shot while crawling away from soldiers, another while tending to his injured son, another while lying mortally wounded … Nothing could justify any of the shooting …

  The following day, as I took my place at the despatch box, I was conscious that my statement would simultaneously be appearing on a big screen in Derry, just half a mile from where the shootings had taken place. I thought of the victims’ families, many now elderly, who had waited thirty-eight years for the truth. Of the reaction in the pubs that
fly the Irish tricolour and the homes covered in murals of the fallen.

  I thought, too, of the wider reaction – on the streets in Unionist areas where the kerbs are painted red, white and blue; on the roads where the Orangemen march; in the homes of the police officers, soldiers and Protestants who were murdered by the IRA and whose families would never see justice.

  I explained how I approached an issue like this: ‘I am deeply patriotic. I never want to believe anything bad about our country. I never want to call into question the behaviour of our soldiers and our army, which I believe to be the finest in the world.’

  And that made my conclusion, set out shortly after the start of the statement, even more stark: ‘There is no doubt, there is nothing equivocal, there are no ambiguities,’ I said. ‘What happened on Bloody Sunday was both unjustified and unjustifiable. It was wrong …’ After detailing some of the most shocking findings, I concluded: ‘On behalf of the government – indeed, on behalf of our country – I am deeply sorry.’

  I heard later that David Davis had tried to whip up the ex-soldiers on our benches to complain about my statement, but he failed because everyone realised that it was not a reflection on the brave people who served in Northern Ireland. Indeed, Bob Stewart, the MP for Beckenham, who had led UK troops in Bosnia having previously served in Northern Ireland, was particularly blunt about it when I bumped into him in the tea room afterwards: ‘I told Davis to fuck off.’ I was absolutely clear in everything I said that the actions of that unit on that day in January 1972 did not define the British Army and the long years of Operation Banner in Northern Ireland.

  In the days that followed, the press at home and abroad hailed my statement as a great act of reconciliation. But it was one piece that touched me most. It said: ‘I am convinced that Saville’s report, Cameron’s speech and the welcome they received here will be forces for good in future relations between Ireland and Britain – a springboard for greater things and an increased generosity of spirit on all sides. It has been a blessing to live to see this day.’ It was by a Catholic priest who later became the Bishop of Derry – Edward Daly.