No Such Thing As Society

by Andy McSmith

  31. Financial Times, 16 April 1983.

  32. Peter York and Charles Jennings, Peter York’s Eighties, p. 98.

  33. Guardian, 13 November 1986.

  34. ‘The Social Reportage of Dafydd Jones’, Professional Photographer, 26 June 2009.

  35. Toby Young, ‘Let me tell you the secret behind the Bullingdon posturing of David and Boris: Oxford contemporary looks behind that decadent image’, Daily Mail, 23 July 2009. See also Toby Young, ‘Class’, in Rachel Johnson (ed.), The Oxford Myth, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, 1998.

  36. Financial Times, 31 July 1986.

  37. The photograph first appeared in Francis Elliott and James Hanning, Cameron, The Rise of the New Conservative, Harper Perennial, London, 2009. The writers say that Cameron’s invitation to join the Bullingdon Club came at the end of his first year in university, i.e. around July 1986. The photograph, which is not dated, must have been taken between then and when Johnson lef Oxford a year later.

  38. Andrew Gimson, Boris, The Rise of Boris Johnson, Simon & Schuster, London, 2006, p. 63.

  39. Francis Elliott and James Hanning, Cameron, pp. 59–60.

  CHAPTER 11

  1. Hansard, House of Lords, 30 November 1982, col. 1198.

  2. Chris Dunkley, ‘The Morning After Channel Four’, Financial Times, 3 November 1982.

  3. New York Times, 19 October 1984.

  4. Financial Times, 29 December 1982.

  5. Anna Ford was neither the first nor the last woman to take exception to Aitken, who had wealth, charm, connections, good looks and a dubious character. He had dated Carol Thatcher, whom he allegedly treated so badly that her mother resolutely refused to give him a job in government. She showed better judgement than John Major, who made him a cabinet minister, putting him on the road to becoming the only ex-cabinet minister in the post-war years to go to jail.

  6. Joe Haines, Maxwell, Guild Publishing, London, 1988, p. 310.

  7. Joe Haines, ‘Richard Stott: the Man Who Loved the Mirror’, Daily Mirror, 31 July 2007. In this version, Haines quoted Stott as saying ‘effing’, which is not likely to have been what he actually said.

  8. Tom Bower, Maxwell, The Outsider, Mandarin, London, 1988, p. 400.

  9. Daily Mirror, 6 November 1991.

  10. Daily Mirror, 5 December 1991.

  11. Max Hastings, Editor, An Inside Story of Newspapers, Pan, London, 2003, p. 78.

  12. Ibid., p. 85.

  13. David Jones, Julian Petley, Mike Power, Lesley Wood, Media Hits the Pits – the Media and the Coal Dispute, Campaign for Press and Broadcasting Freedom, London, undated, p. 9.

  14. NA Prem 16/2213.

  15. Harold Evans, Good Times, Bad Times, Atheneum, London, 1984, p. 304.

  16. Andrew Neil, Full Disclosure, Macmillan, London, 1996, p. 160.

  17. Hansard, 6 March 1984, col. 732.

  18. Stephen Glover, Paper Dreams, Jonathan Cape, 1993, p. 8.

  19. William Shawcross, Rupert Murdoch, Ringmaster of the Information Circus, Pan, London, 1993, p. 335.

  20. Andrew Neil, Full Disclosure, p. 154.

  21. Piers Morgan, ‘You Ask the Questions’, Independent, 10 March 2005.

  22. Peter Chippindale and Chris Horrie, Stick it up Your Punter – The rise and fall of the Sun, Mandarin, London, 1992, p. 207.

  23. Peter Chippindale and Chris Horrie, Stick It Up Your Punter!, p. 170.

  24. Sun, 1 November 1990.

  25. Financial Times, 22 September 1987.

  26. Daily Telegraph, 30 November 1987.

  27. Financial Times, 28 November 1987.

  28. Independent, 18 October 1991.

  29. Daily Telegraph, 27 October 1986.

  30. Max Hastings, Editor, p. 200.

  31. Woodrow Wyatt, The Journals of Woodrow Wyatt, Volume One, edited by Sarah Curtis, Pan, London, 1998, p. 395.

  32. The Times, 24 July 1987; Guardian, 24 July 1987. One person who knew for a fact that Archer was lying was his friend Ted Francis, whom he had bribed to give him an alibi for the night he was with Coghlan. In 1999, when Lord Archer of Weston-super-Mare, as he had since become, was Conservative candidate for the post of mayor of London, Francis told all. Archer was sentenced to four years in prison for perjury.

  33. This account of the Sonia Sutcliffe libel case is drawn from Paul Foot, Ripping Yarns – Sonia Sutcliffe, The Press and the Law, Private Eye, London, 1991.

  34. The Times, 7 May 1981.

  35. BBC News, 24 May 1989.

  36. Peter Chippindale and Chris Horrie, Stick It Up Your Punter!, p. 271.

  CHAPTER 12

  1. Patrick Bishop and Eamonn Mallie, The Provisional IRA, Corgi, London, 1994, p. 313.

  2. Margaret Thatcher, ‘Remarks After Leaving Airey Neave’s widow’ 30 March 1979, see the website of the Margaret Thatcher Foundation www. margaretthatcher.org/speeches/displaydocument.asp?docid=103991.

  3. BBC Radio News, 30 March 1979.

  4. Margaret Thatcher, Margaret Thatcher, The Downing Street Years, HarperCollins, London, 1993, pp. 385–8.

  5. Ibid., p. 391.

  6. Hansard, 5 May 1981, col. 17.

  7. Letter to Cardinal Tomás Ó Fiaich, 15 May 1981. Full text on the website of the Margaret Thatcher Foundation at www.margaretthatcher.org/speeches/ displaydocument.asp?docid=104650.

  8. Ed Blanche, ‘IRA Claims It Is Stronger Because of Hunger Striker’, Associated Press, 4 December 1981.

  9. Associated Press, 28 July 1982.

  10. Jim Prior, A Balance of Power, Hamish Hamilton, London, 1986, p. 182.

  11. Carol Thatcher, A Swim-on Part in the Goldfish Bowl – A Memoir, Headline, London, 2008, pp. 172–3.

  12. Daily Express, 15 January 1982.

  13. Hansard, 8 November 1982, written questions, col. 32.

  14. All the details about Mark Thatcher’s protection are in unpublished Cabinet Office documents made available after a Freedom of Information request. The references to the IRA threat and resulting police protection are contained in an unsigned Background Note drawn up as Home Office officials considered how to answer a written question tabled in the House of Commons in November 1982 by the Labour MP Willie Hamilton on the cost of protecting Mark Thatcher.

  15. Letter from David Hollamby, British Consul in Dallas, to Sarah Gillett, British Embassy, Washington, 10 January 1985.

  16. Letter from John Kerr, head of chancellery, British Embassy in Washington, to Frederick Butler, principal private secretary to the prime minister, 13 May 1985.

  17. Letter from Nigel Wicks, principal private secretary to the prime minister, 15 October 1986. The addressee is not identified but can be assumed to have been John Kerr.

  18. Letter from John Kerr to Nigel Wicks, 6 December 1985.

  19. Letter from John Kerr to Nigel Wicks, 6 June 1986.

  20. Letter from Nigel Wicks to John Kerr, 16 June 1986.

  21. Letter from Mark Pellew, British Embassy, Washington, to Nigel Wicks, 18 July 1986.

  22. Press conference, 19 November 1984. Full text on the website of the Margaret Thatcher Foundation www.margaretthatcher.org/speeches/displaydocument. asp?docid=105790.

  23. Margaret Thatcher, The Downing Street Years, p. 403.

  24. BBC interview, 9 November 1987.

  25. Max Hastings, Editor, An Inside Story of Newspapers, Pan, London, 2003, p. 135.

  26. John Stalker, Stalker, Harrap, London, 1988, p. 49.

  27. Hansard, 17 January 1989.

  28. On the Finucane murder, see Kevin Toolis, Rebel Hearts, Journeys within the IRA’s Soul, St Martin’s Press, New York, 1996.

  CHAPTER 13

  1. The Times, 28 February 1981.

  2. Boy George with Spencer Bright, Take It Like a Man: the Autobiography of Boy George, Pan, 1995, p. 129, p. 127.

  3. Ibid., p. 208.

  4. Hansard, 3 December 1981, cols 388–9.

  5. Peter Chippindale and Chris Horrie, Stick it up Your Punter – The rise and fall of the Sun, Mandarin, London, 1992, pp. 136–7.<
br />
  6. Quoted in Peter Tatchell, The Battle for Bermondsey, Heretic Books, London, 1983, p. 72.

  7. Peter Tatchell, email to the author, 28 February 2009.

  8. Peter Tatchell, The Battle for Bermondsey, p. 132.

  9. Mail on Sunday, 1 May 1983.

  10. ‘“Gay Plague” May Lead to Blood Ban on Homosexuals’, Daily Telegraph, 2 May 1983; ‘Alert over “Gay Plague”’, Daily Mirror, 2 May 1983; ‘Watchdogs in “Gay Plague” Probe’, Sun, 2 May 1983.

  11. The Times, 21 November 1984.

  12. Dr Roger Watson, letter in The Times, 28 February 1985.

  13. Guardian, 31 August 1984.

  14. The Times, 6 March 1985.

  15. Sun, 23 February 1985.

  16. The Times, 17 July 1985.

  17. Sun, 3 October 1985.

  18. The Times, 7 February 1985.

  19. The Times, 10 January 1985.

  20. The Times, 6 February 1985.

  21. Letter from Michael Saward, The Times, 21 February 1985.

  22. ‘Gays Put Mrs Mopps in Panic on Aids’, Sun, 19 February 1985; ‘Mrs Mopps rebel over a gay play’, Daily Mirror, 19 February 1985; ‘Mrs Mopps in a Fury’, Daily Express, 19 February 1985.

  23. Guardian, 20 September 1985.

  24. The Times, 28 September 1985.

  25. The Times, 9 November 1985.

  26. Andrew Collins, Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now: My Difficult 80s, Ebury Press, London, 2004, p. 254.

  27. Andy McSmith, ‘Crikey! How Aids f ustered the Tories’, Observer, 3 January 1999.

  28. Guardian, 18 December 1986. Bill Brownhill was interviewed by LBC on 18 December 1986 about his comments and refused to retract them. A recording of the interview is retained by the British Universities Film & Video Council, Bournemouth University.

  29. Guardian, 12 December 1986; The 1980s Aids Campaign, BBC, 16 October 2005.

  30. Margaret Thatcher, ‘Speech to Conservative Party conference’, 9 October 1987. Full text on the website of the Margaret Thatcher Foundation at www. margaretthatcher.org/speeches/displaydocument.asp?docid=106941.

  31. Andrew Roth, Parliamentary Profiles L–R, Parliamentary Profiles Services, London, 1984, p. 650.

  32. Daily Telegraph, 21 May 1987.

  33. Guardian, 3 February 1988; The Times, 3 February 1988.

  34. Guardian, 24 May 1988.

  35. Sunday Times, 29 May 1988.

  CHAPTER 14

  1. Robert Elms, The Way We Wore: A Life in Threads, Picador, London, 2005, p. 189.

  2. Remark to Tyne Tees TV, 11 September 1985. Transcript can be accessed on the website of the Margaret Thatcher Foundation at www.margaretthatcher.org/ speeches.

  3. Faith in the City, A Call to Action by Church and Nation – The Report of the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Commission on Urban Priority Areas, Church House Publishing, London, 1985, pp. 361–2.

  4. Sunday Times, 1 December 1985.

  5. Associated Press, 3 December 1985.

  6. Woodrow Wyatt, The Journals of Woodrow Wyatt, Volume One, edited by Sarah Curtis, Pan, London, 1998, p. 22.

  7. Guardian, 3 December 1987; The Times, 3 December 1987.

  8. Guardian, 4 December 1987.

  9. The Times, 14 December 1987.

  10. David Blunkett and Keith Jackson, Democracy in Crisis: The Town Halls Respond, Hogarth Press, London, 1987, p. 153.

  11. The Times, 11 November 1981.

  12. Hansard, 23 July 1981, col. 492.

  13. Sun, 19 August 1981, quoted in John Carvel, Citizen Ken, Chatto and Windus, London, 1984, pp. 91–2.

  14. The Times, 13 October 1981.

  15. Economist, 24 March 1984.

  16. Simon Jenkins, Thatcher & Sons, A Revolution in Three Acts, Penguin, London, 2007, p. 131.

  17. Derek Hatton, Inside Left: The Story So Far . . ., Bloomsbury, London, 1988, p. 68.

  18. The Times, 30 October 1985.

  19. Independent, 21 December 1989.

  20. Prunella Kaur, Go Fourth & Multiply: The Political Anatomy of the British Left Groups, Dialogue of the Deaf, Bristol, no date, p. 1.

  21. Derek Hatton, Inside Left , p. 71.

  22. David Blunkett and Keith Jackson, Democracy in Crisis, p. 156.

  23. Ibid., p. 183.

  24. Patrick Seyd, ‘Bennism without Benn: realignment on the Labour left’, New Socialist, no. 27, May 1985.

  25. Report of the Annual Conference of the Labour Party 1985, p. 128.

  26. The existence of Ricky Tomlinson’s file was revealed by Peter Taylor in the BBC documentary True Spies in August 2002; see Guardian, 22 August 2002.

  27. Ricky Tomlinson, Ricky, Time Warner, London, 2004, p. 105.

  28. Woodrow Wyatt, The Journals of Woodrow Wyatt, Volume One, p. 382.

  29. Margaret Thatcher, The Downing Street Years, HarperCollins, London, 1993, p. 645.

  30. Hansard, 30 July 1984.

  31. Kenneth Baker, The Turbulent Years: My Life in Politics, Faber and Faber, London, 1993, p. 116.

  32. Nicholas Ridley, My Style of Government, Hutchinson, London, 1991, p. 125.

  33. Nigel Lawson, The View from No. 11: Memoirs of a Tory Radical, Bantam, London, 1992, p. 900.

  34. Simon Jenkins, Thatcher & Sons, p. 174.

  35. Guardian, 6 March 1990.

  36. Independent, 6 March 1990.

  37. Financial Times, 7 March 1990.

  38. Independent on Sunday, 1 April 1990.

  39. Margaret Thatcher, The Downing Street Years, p. 661.

  40. Alan Clark, Diaries – Into Politics, edited by Ion Trewin, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, 2000, p. 290.

  CHAPTER 15

  1. BBC News, 15 October 1987.

  2. Annalena Lobb, ‘Looking Back at Black Monday: A Discussion With Richard Sylla’, Wall Street Journal, 15 October 2007.

  3. Richard Eyre, National Service – Diary of a Decade, Bloomsbury, London, 2003, p. 21.

  4. Michael Lewis, Liar’s Poker, Hodder & Stoughton, London, 1989, p. 288.

  5. Hansard, 15 March 1988, col. 1008.

  6. The Times, 23 June 1990.

  7. Jane Ellison, Guardian, 15 June 1989.

  8. Sun, 23 March 1992.

  9. Margaret Thatcher, The Downing Street Years, HarperCollins, London, 1993, p. 599.

  10. Margaret Thatcher, ‘Speech to Conservative Party Conference’, 9 October 1987. Full text at www.margaretthatcher.org/speeches/displaydocument.asp?docid= 106941.

  11. Kenneth Baker, The Turbulent Years, My Life in Politics, Faber and Faber, London, 1993, p. 168.

  12. Nicholas Ridley, My Style of Government, Hutchinson, London, 1991, p. 40.

  13. Alan Clark, Diaries – Into Politics, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, 2000, p. 197.

  14. Hansard, House of Lords, 25 November 1993, col. 345.

  15. Hansard, 29 November 1989, col. 727.

  16. Guardian, 18 December 1989; John Rentoul, Tony Blair, Prime Minister, Warner, London, 2001, pp. 155–6.

  17. Alan Clark, Diaries, p. 54.

  18. Sunday Times, 28 October 1990.

  19. When I first went to meet Gordon Brown in 1986, when I was working as Labour Party press officer, I mentioned this to Peter Mandelson, who said to me: ‘You are going to meet a future Labour prime minister.’

  20. Ken Livingstone, Livingstone’s Labour: a Programme for the Nineties, Unwin Hyman, London, 1989.

  21. Independent on Sunday, 10 February 1991.

  22. Alastair Campbell, ‘You Guys are the Pits’, New Statesman, 3 April 1987.

  23. Bryan Gould, Goodbye to All That, Macmillan, London, 1995, pp. 225–6.

  24. Guardian, 20 May 1988.

  25. Edwina Currie, Diaries 1987–1992, Little, Brown, London, 2002, p. 49. John Major is the person referred to as ‘B’ in the entry for 20 March 1988.

  26. John Rentoul, The Rich Get Richer, The Growth of Inequality in Britain in the 1980s, Unwin, London, 1987, pp. 34–5.

  27. ‘We Are the Managers Now’, Director magazine, September 199
1.

  CHAPTER 16

  1. The World At One, BBC Radio Four, 22 May 1986.

  2. Financial Times, 7 July 1984.

  3. The Times, 14 November 1988.

  4. Minutes of the meeting between the prime minister and the Central Council for Physical Recreation, held at 10 Downing Street, 4 February 1980. The minute is in the Cabinet Office archives and was released after a Freedom of Information request in March 2006. Mrs Thatcher’s words are reported in indirect speech in the original.

  5. Statement by Angus Maude, Paymaster General, 24 January 1980, held in the Cabinet Office archives.

  6. The petition and the appended note, dated 3 March 1980, are in the Cabinet Office archives.

  7. Minutes of Evidence taken before the Foreign Affairs Committee, 5 March 1980, questions 537, 539 and 601.

  8. Hansard, 17 March 1980, cols 66 and 110.

  9. The Times, 12 March 1980.

  10. The Times, 18 March 1980.

  11. BBC, 24 March 1980.

  12. Brian Viner, ‘Eddie “the Eagle” Edwards: “It was while I was in a mental hospital I heard I was in the Olympic team”’, Independent, 8 December 2008.

  13. The Times, 27 February 1988.

  14. Daily Telegraph, 12 June 1981. Quoted in Michael Melford, Botham Rekindles the Ashes, The Daily Telegraph Story of the ’81 Test Series, Daily Telegraph, London, 1981, p. 32.

  15. Michael Melford, Botham Rekindles the Ashes, p. 131.

  16. Economist, 25 July 1981.

  17. Guardian, 23 August 1981.

  18. Jimmy Burns, Hand of God, The Life of Diego Maradona, Bloomsbury, London, 1996. p. 156.

  19. Associated Press, 23 June 1986.

  20. The Times, 23 June 1986.

  21. United Press International, 23 June 1986.

  22. Diego Maradona, with Daniel Arcucci and Ernesto Cherquis Bialo, El Diego, the autobiography of the world’s greatest footballer, translated by Marcela Mora Y Araujo, Yellow Jersey Press, London, 2005, pp. 127–8.

  23. Associated Press, 14 May 1985.

  24. Hansard, House of Lords, 24 July 1985, col. 1221.

  25. Guardian, 14 May 1985.

  26. Quoted in The Hillsborough Stadium Disaster 15 April 1989, Inquiry by the Rt Hon Lord Justice Taylor, Final Report, Home Office, London, 1990.

  27. Quoted in Patrick Murphy, John Williams and Eric Dunning, Football on Trial, Spectator Violence and Development in the Football World, Routledge, London, 1990, p. 87.