Throughout the Thatcher years the office had been used as a training ground for those whom it was thought had the qualities to become departmental ministers, and most of those I have named soon got promotion. We had some strange customers to deal with on the back benches and strange customers often need strange treatment. Nick Budgen, who in the 1983–7 parliament had for a short time been a whip, was invited to attend a whips’ dinner. Before it took place he voted against the government. An outraged Lightbown told him he was no longer welcome at the dinner, and that, although he had already paid, late cancellation meant there would be no refund. We never quite got the measure of Elizabeth Peacock, another one who caused us trouble. Tristan suggested that we might get her vote one night if we used a bit of flattery. We all contributed to the purchase of a dozen roses. It did not do a ha’porth of good. Clasping them to her bosom she sailed off – into the wrong lobby.
At about the same time a little cartoon appeared in one of the dailies which neatly illustrated the public’s idea of Whips Office tactics. Three MPs are entering the ARGHHH lobby with their arms behind their back plaited like rope.
One of our more unusual backbenchers was Anthony Beaumont-Dark. One of his constituents asked me how he was getting on as an MP. With a note of admiration, almost veneration in her voice she added: ‘I knew him years ago you know, when he was plain Mr Dark.’ She obviously thought he had been awarded the ‘Beaumont’, probably by the Queen personally. One night shortly afterwards I went to look at the tape before going into dinner, and there I read the ominous announcement: ‘The pound has fallen against the Dark.’
The government Chief Whip has extraordinary influence with ministers, even Cabinet ministers. Shortly after I got the job my agent rang up and said that she had organised a big event in the constituency in July and badly needed a Cabinet minister to come and speak. I said that it was impossibly short notice but I would do my best. I sat down at my desk and extended an invitation to four Cabinet ministers, realising I had no time to wait for each to refuse in turn before writing to the next one. It was a long shot but perhaps one of the four might feel sorry for me and accept. By return of post I received acceptances from all four and had to think of good excuses for not wanting three of them.
Most troublesome from a whipping point of view was the Local Government (Finance) Bill which paved the way for the abolition of domestic rates and the introduction of the community charge. It seemed so right at the time to get rid of rates and introduce a system which would make virtually everyone who benefited from local government services pay something towards their cost. With only 20 million of the 35 million people who voted in local elections paying a penny towards its cost, it was not surprising that councils that spent like sailors were triumphantly re-elected. The poll tax (as the community charge came to be called) undoubtedly contributed to the downfall of Margaret Thatcher, but in my belief it was not the introduction of a flat rate charge which sunk us. It was a combination of Treasury-driven cuts in the rate support grant and gross overspending by local authorities. At the time of the 1987 election the level of community charge forecast for Ribble Valley was £178. That I had no difficulty in defending; but by 1989 the estimated charge had already risen to £300 and further increases were forecast. What at first had been marketable no longer was.
But these problems were still in the future. What we had to cope with in the 1987–8 session was not the fear that the Treasury would reduce its contribution to local government just when local expenditure was rocketing out of control. Our fear was that rebellious Tory MPs who felt that a flat rate charge was unfair and that there should be a charge that went up in bands according to the value of a person’s property would derail the legislation. In April 1988 the so-called Mates amendment was debated at the report stage of the Bill and it was only with a lot of work that we managed to contain the revolt and see the amendment defeated. Even so, I was not exactly happy that twenty-three Conservatives voted against the government and our majority sank from 101 to 25.
After the shooting at Hungerford in August 1987, Douglas Hurd introduced a very controversial Firearms Bill. The committee stage was taken on the floor of the House under a guillotine (or timetable) motion. At about midnight the guillotine came down with literally hundreds of amendments undebated. Michael Colvin rose and asked the Deputy Speaker whether the House was entitled to have a separate vote on each one of them. The reply from the Chair was in the affirmative and Dennis Skinner, who was as usual sitting in the chamber in the corner seat below the gangway looking for an opportunity to make a nuisance of himself, could not believe his luck. He proceeded to call for a division on amendment after amendment. Michael was a very nice man and his death was a great loss to Parliament, but on this occasion he had made himself far from popular and I told him that if he was wise he would go home. He made his getaway, but there was no getaway for us. For hours we were in the chamber voting on amendment after amendment and would have been there much longer had not the Deputy Speaker agreed after the first few divisions to implement the rule which enables an amendment to be declared lost on sufficient members rising to their feet to indicate beyond doubt their opposition to it. Chief Whips are not popular if they require the Parliamentary Party to spend the night bobbing up and down like this, and I was almost as unpopular as Michael Colvin as a result of this incident.
The most anxious exercise in my first year was the handling of Richard Shepherd’s Private Members’ Bill to reform the law on official secrets. He had come high up in the ballot so if his Bill got a second reading, it would go straight into committee. That meant that there would be the opportunity for prolonged and detailed debate on every aspect of the work of the security service. It was not being fanciful to fear that members might wittingly or unwittingly disclose details of the service’s activities. But MPs are very jealous of their right to introduce legislation and nothing was likely to annoy our backbenchers more than the government setting out to destroy Richard Shepherd’s Bill before it had hardly got started. I decided that I had no choice but to whip the Party to vote against the Bill on second reading and there was no point in half measures. We had to make absolutely certain that the Bill would be defeated in spite of the sympathy a large part of the Party had for Richard, if not for the Bill. So we did something which was almost without precedent. We imposed a three line whip which put the outcome beyond doubt. Of course, I had to take a fair amount of stick in the debate. At one point David Owen, who as an ex-Foreign Secretary should have known better, said in his elegant way: ‘It is the day for the Patronage Secretary to get stuffed.’ But stuffed I was not; and the Party soon forgave me. In due course the government introduced its own measure to put the security service on a statutory footing.
In the summer of 1988 a reshuffle took place which infuriated the press and members of the lobby in particular. After we in the office had spread the story that there was to be no reshuffle until September we sprung one on them in July. Arrangements were made in complete secrecy and with the minimum of discussion with Cabinet ministers, and the announcement was made without a single leak. Martin Fletcher wrote in The Times that:
David Waddington, the Chief Whip, kept it all so secret that even Lord Young, the Trade Secretary, was initially unaware that he was losing Clarke, his deputy (to become Secretary of State for Health). Indeed, some ministers first learned of the reshuffle through Whitehall’s most reliable grapevine, their chauffeurs.
Also in that summer some crackpot decided that a government motion should be tabled incorporating a loyal address to the Queen drawing attention to the tercentenary of the Glorious Revolution of 1688. No one consulted me, the motion appeared on the order paper on a day on which the Party was not whipped – and the motion was debatable. Tony Benn seized what was an obvious opportunity to cause us maximum embarrassment and rose to speak on the motion, and after an hour or so it was clear that there was going to be a vote which could easily lead to a government defeat. Such a result would
be construed as an insult to the Queen but would be even clearer evidence of the Chief Whip’s incompetence.
But where were the Conservatives needed to support the motion? Everywhere it seemed, except in the Palace of Westminster. A lot had, I knew, gone to the Carlton Club for the One Nation Group summer cocktail party. I could not leave the House but ready at hand were Gilly and Paddy Hunt, my deputy’s wife. Off to the Carlton Club they went and descended on the party goers. ‘Back to the House,’ they said, ‘quick, sharp,’ and back they came. One Tory MP was reported as saying: ‘The wives were brilliant. They sorted out the problem and were more competent at it than their husbands.’ Prudently he asked that his name should not be disclosed.
Leading up to the reshuffle Peter Brooke as Party Chairman and I had had three or four meetings with the Prime Minister over supper on a Sunday night. On one such occasion, we sat down to eat, but after a few minutes the Prime Minister said: ‘It does seem unfair; here are we enjoying ourselves and poor Denis is having supper all alone upstairs in the flat.’ Peter Brooke and I, taking what we thought was a pretty broad hint, told her to invite him down. The PM thanked us and said she could guarantee that Denis would not say a word when we were talking about the reshuffle. Denis then came down and on the whole was pretty good but at one stage he could not contain himself. ‘Oh surely not so-and-so. You were only saying the other day, Margaret, what a complete wimp he was.’
When it came to discussing ministerial appointments one thing was quite apparent and that was that the Prime Minister liked a pretty face; once or twice she had to be discouraged when she wished to see some good-looking fellow promoted who was known throughout the Parliamentary Party to be pretty useless. Indeed, there was a time when her eyes lighted on a minister who for a time she talked of as a possible successor. He was a fine-looking chap but no one else thought that he was anything like up to the job. I am talking of an interesting foible; I am not suggesting, for one moment, that she was not perfectly capable in the ordinary course of events of picking competent people to fill posts.
One of the things I remember about the 1988–9 session was the great egg fiasco. Edwina Currie started a rumpus when she told the press that all eggs contained salmonella or something to that effect. Backbenchers were told by their chicken farmers that she was going to bankrupt the lot of them and there were many demands that she should be removed from the government without delay. Kenneth Clarke, her Secretary of State, argued strongly that she had said no more than the truth but eventually he recognised, like everyone else, that she had to go. I rarely made a note of anything that went on in Cabinet, but I did scribble down this exchange. Kenneth Clarke presented to Cabinet a report which comprised a very lengthy list of types of food which his department considered carried a health risk. Top of the list in terms of risk came precooked chicken, soft cheese and raw eggs. Nick Ridley, anxious as always to ridicule the experts, said this was very strange as he only ate precooked chicken, soft cheese and raw eggs. For once the Prime Minister, who was extremely fond of Nick, did not come to his support. ‘You are not a pregnant woman,’ she said sternly and we moved swiftly to the next item on the agenda.
In February 1989 I sat on the front bench as John Major in his capacity as Chief Secretary replied to a debate on economic policy. He reminded the House of the state of the country ten years earlier in February 1979 and read slowly from a newspaper, holding it up carefully so that the Opposition could see what it was. ‘Hospitals blockaded, docks closed by pickets,’ he intoned, and then went on, ‘food stocks running low, NUPE to select patients for treatment.’ All the while he was barracked by the Opposition. ‘The Daily Telegraph, ho! ho! Was that the best you could find?’ ‘Yes,’ replied John. ‘It was the only paper published that day. The rest were shut down by strike action.’ I thought then that he was learning and one day might make it.
Meanwhile Gilly had established herself in the affections of the staff at No. 12 and was doing a great job ‘supplying’ in the words of one press article ‘the laughter while her husband twists the arms.’ She was also busy helping to found SANE (Schizophrenia a National Emergency).
On a Sunday at about the end of June 1989 Gilly and I went off to lunch at Chequers. It was quite a big party and when we went into lunch I found that I was sitting on the Prime Minister’s left and a prominent businessman, who had donated a great deal of money to the Conservative Party, was on her right. On his right was Gilly. As soon as lunch started the PM leaned over the man’s back and, tapping Gilly on the shoulder, signalled that she wanted her to keep the fellow entertained. She then turned to me and told me what was on her mind.
In his memoirs, Nigel Lawson says that Geoffrey was not expecting to be moved from the Foreign Office because right up to the last moment I was consulting him about the reshuffle, asking him whom he wished to have as his junior Foreign Office minister responsible for Europe. This is simply not correct. What happened was that Geoffrey rang me at my home to say that he knew a reshuffle was in the offing and was most anxious that Lynda Chalker should not be moved from looking after the European side of things in the Foreign Office. I, having been asked by the Prime Minister to say nothing of her intentions, could hardly have told him that there was no point in his worrying about Lynda because he would not be in the Foreign Office with her; so, having made one or two non-committal remarks, I got him off the line. Geoffrey later said that, in his view, I should have told him what was going on, but my first loyalty was to the Prime Minister and I was not free to do so. I do, however, understand what a shock it must have been when at nine o’ clock on Monday morning (24 July) he was called to No. 10 and told he was no longer to be Foreign Secretary. I gather from what the Prime Minister later said that she offered him the post of Lord President of the Council and Leader of the House of Commons, but Geoffrey wanted time to consider and asked if he could have till mid-morning to give his reply. Eventually he returned to Downing Street and was offered and accepted the posts of Deputy Prime Minister and Leader of the House of Commons. The Prime Minister also agreed to his having the use of Dorneywood which was apparently not being much used by Nigel Lawson.
That evening, Norman Tebbit said the ministerial changes were disastrous – not because of the removal of Geoffrey from the Foreign Office, but because of the weakness of the DTI team, the inability of one minister to make up his mind about anything and the disloyalty of another. ‘Otherwise,’ he said ‘the Party is pleased.’ If he was right, he did not stay right for long.
The next day the storm broke. The talk in the lobby was all of Geoffrey agreeing to stay only when the Prime Minister had promised to take away Dorneywood from Nigel Lawson. That was a part of the story which I did not want to see come out. It made Geoffrey look petty, and it made the Prime Minister look mean in refusing to allow Geoffrey to remain at Chevening which she knew he loved. And it gave the impression to the world at large that there was too much interest in who was to have the grace and favour houses at the Prime Minister’s disposal and not enough in the jobs to be done. Then Bernard Ingham did not help matters by telling the lobby, in response to questions, that the title of Deputy Prime Minister did not really mean anything at all. Geoffrey would have no powers as such and certainly would not be responsible for British government policy when Margaret was out of the country. Everyone knew from experience that Bernard’s blunt answers echoed his boss’s views. She was far too honest to pretend that the title of Deputy Prime Minister, which she had offered at my suggestion but against her better judgement, meant anything very much when it clearly did not.
In September 1989 Gilly and I went to Amalfi for a week’s holiday. I soon learned that nowhere in the world can a Chief Whip escape his Prime Minister. The very first night I was called to the phone. Tony (Lord) Trafford, who in July had been appointed Minister of State in the Department of Health to pilot the NHS reforms through the Upper House, had died. The Prime Minister wanted to know who should replace him. We had a series of calls from her th
roughout the week and my reputation with those running the hotel was greatly enhanced. But Tony’s death was a very sad event. He was the unflappable consultant physician at Brighton Infirmary who had looked after John Wakeham and Margaret Tebbit after the Brighton bombing.
I had an unnerving experience when I arrived in Blackpool for the Party Conference. I walked in to the Imperial Hotel and someone, shoving a microphone under my nose, said: ‘Well, Chief Whip, what are your views on the collapse of the pound?’ Having spent the earlier part of the day hard at work and having listened to a brand new tape of military marches on the journey from Sabden to Blackpool, I did not know what the girl was talking about but did not wish to admit my ignorance of the world-shattering events which had apparently taken place behind my back and without my permission. For a moment I wondered whether the best course might not be to fall to the ground in a simulated faint. Instead, I rambled on a bit and hoped for the best. The following week I got two rude letters accusing me of talking nonsense. I replied, agreeing with the writers.
When the House came back after the recess it was to face the television cameras. I had been against televising the House. It seemed to me that it was likely to encourage hooligan behaviour, not necessarily by members. After all, some lesbians had recently publicised their cause by abseiling from the public gallery in the House of Lords where cameras were already installed. I also doubted whether the Prime Minister would come over well on television. On the last point I was proved entirely wrong. On radio she sounded strident and unattractive, but for some reason, perhaps because one was seeing as well as hearing and not concentrating on the voice alone, she came over on television as a very much more sympathetic person.
Immediately after Cabinet on 26 October Norman Lamont came to see me and said a crisis was brewing. Nigel Lawson was in a state about Alan Walters’s role as adviser to the Prime Minister. Would I go and see Nigel and try and dissuade him from doing anything rash? I said I would and when I got to Nigel’s room, which was just through the door from No. 12, he said he was fed up and had made up his mind to go because of Alan Walters. The policies he was trying to pursue were constantly being undermined by Walters’s gossiping. I told him that it would be very damaging to the government if he were to go and, having deployed all the usual arguments about loyalty, I flattered him by saying he was the best Chancellor for many years. But I made little headway and eventually fell back on begging him to stay his hand for a while so that we could all sit down and talk about his grievances. He said that he would think about it, and when I left I thought he was going to ponder before acting.
David Waddington Memoirs Page 17