by Cherie Blair
People often wonder how politicians on one side of the political spectrum deal with politicians on the other side — something that happens all the time at the head-of-government level. The answer is, pretty well. Foreign policy is largely concerned with mutual interests. With America, for example, whether the administration is right or left, chances are that the mutual interests with outside powers remain the same. Obviously there can be areas of dissent, and in the case of Spain, Gibraltar comes to mind.
That Easter Euan had just turned fourteen, and although the Today program was no longer required listening in the Blair household, he was comparatively well-informed politically. With the insouciance of youth, he decided to bring up the issue of Gibraltar with José María. After the first shocked gulp on both sides — the hosts and an embarrassed mum — there was much laughter, and we went on to have an interesting discussion, something that would never have happened in ordinary diplomatic circumstances.
When Alastair heard the story, he decided it was too good to waste, but as we had long since agreed that our kids would stay beneath the parapet and out of the newspapers, my mum agreed to take the “blame” on this occasion.
Immediately after our return from Spain, Tony and I set off for the Middle East, first Egypt and then Israel. The embassy there had asked if there was anything I particularly wanted to do. As a result of the various special education cases I’d been involved in, I’d heard of a diagnostic process called the Feuerstein method, named after a psychologist practicing in Jerusalem. I asked if I could meet him. It was a fascinating encounter. He ran a center that helped both Israeli and Arab children with disabilities, particularly Down syndrome. Expectations for these children, he believed, were too low and they could do far more than people imagined. They also had a particular empathy with the elderly. The center had developed a program in which these young people would visit older people in their homes. He told me how one old man had collapsed when he was being visited by a boy with quite severe Down syndrome, and this young man had been able to ring the emergency services and get him aid. Through my charity work I had met a lot of Down’s children, and it was a joy to see how happy they appeared.
The contrast with what I saw the following day couldn’t have been starker. Gaza is essentially just one big refugee camp, and I was taken by Yasir Arafat’s wife to a school for special-needs children in Ramallah which she herself had set up. The children were provided with loving care but little else, and they were desperately in need of equipment and toys. As a result of the constant shelling, she explained, the proportion of premature babies in Gaza is high, and many babies are damaged at birth. It was all very upsetting, particularly when I thought of the facilities I had just seen only a few miles away.
The entire visit kept switching from one extreme to the other. That evening we landed in Saudi Arabia. As a special sign of respect for Tony, not only was I allowed to walk by his side but the Foreign Minister also shook my hand. That night, however, it was Saudi business as usual. While Tony went off to a men-only dinner, I attended a women-only dinner, where even the servers were women.
When in the male world, these women were completely covered up, but underneath, I discovered, they were far better dressed than I was. One woman recounted how her small son would pay great attention to what shoes she was wearing before they went out, as he was terrified that he would lose her. Once she was covered up, the shoes were the only way he had of identifying her. We were talking in English, and it was clear that many of these women were well educated and were familiar with London and Paris.
“Don’t you find it restricting not being able to drive or go out?” I asked.
Not at all, they answered, with a laugh. “We live such easy lives, it’s fine.”
Yet over the following years, when I met these same educated women again — and others like them — it was clear it was increasingly not so fine. They were in a gilded cage, and once they had seen a broader horizon, it was hard to put up with the cage. This is why I think change will come as people realize there are other things they can do.
The next day, back in London, when I was donning my own black robe before going into court, I couldn’t help but think of both the similarities and the differences between these women and me.
Chapter 23
Changing Gears
Involvement with a particular charity often stems from personal tragedy, and in this I am no exception. My auntie Audrey was only the first of many wonderful women whose lives, having touched mine in one way or another, were cut short by breast cancer. I can’t remember now the first time I talked about her in public, but in 1997, shortly after we moved into Downing Street, I became a patron of Breast Cancer Care. I am also a patron of the Restoration of Appearance and Function Trust (RAFT), an organization devoted to helping patients in need of reconstructive plastic surgery. RAFT is based at the hospital where my dad had such fantastic treatment following his horrific accident.
Money is only part of what enables a charity to achieve its objectives. Equally important — sometimes more so — is raising public consciousness and, eventually, changing perceptions. In my early years, spare cash was never much in evidence, but I was able to help various charities in other ways: as a schoolgirl through practical help, working with Down syndrome children, and later through my legal expertise. Now the man I had married opened up another avenue. Well-known names, from royals to media personalities to someone like me who is less easily pigeonholed, can focus press attention in a way that, sadly, individual case histories cannot.
Even in the 1990s, breast cancer was not really talked about beyond the medical pages of serious newspapers. As I saw it, my job was to get women to talk openly about it. Only by removing the taboo, by making the vocabulary of self-examination and mammograms, of lumpectomies and prosthetics, part of the language of every woman, whatever her age, nationality, or background, could progress in early detection be made. Thanks to Alastair’s decision that where Cherie was concerned, less was more, I had become a bit of an enigma. As a result, when I did speak or write, it was published and noticed.
The death of David Attwood’s brother Michael at such a young age had never left me, and in the spring of 1998, I heard from Fiona that her friend Lindsay Nicholson’s daughter, Ellie, whom I’d got to know when I’d “edited” Prima, was suffering from the same kind of leukemia that her father, John Merritt, had died of. When I went to visit her in Great Ormond Street, London’s children’s hospital, I was incredibly impressed by the work of Sargent Cancer Care, a foundation focused on children with cancer, and asked if I could be of help. I have been involved with that organization ever since. Sadly, Ellie died on June 9, 1998.
That summer of 1998, I was able to extend my charitable networking in an unexpected quarter. One day, when Prince Charles and I were walking round the grounds at Highgrove, the Prince’s country home, he told me that he would sometimes allow groups in to look at the gardens. My cousin Paul Thompson, one of the family priests, had been working for many years for the Supportive Help and Development Organisation (SHADO), a drug prevention charity based at Liverpool Cathedral. He had recently died, still only in his forties, from an embolism following an injury to his knee, and I’d been asked if I would like to get involved in the charity. Each year, one of SHADO’s main fund-raising events was a sponsored walk ending up at a stately home. In 1997 I’d welcomed the walkers for tea at Chequers. Plucking up courage, I asked the Prince whether he would consider allowing SHADO to look round his garden. Drug-related charities find it extremely difficult to attract funds, and I was quite prepared for him to say no. He didn’t, and in 1999 SHADO’s sponsored walk ended with tea and cakes at Highgrove.
It was now time, I decided, to unlock the potential of Downing Street itself. Although Margaret Thatcher and Norma Major had used Number 10 to host charitable receptions, I felt we could do a good deal more. The great state rooms on the first floor were empty for so much of the time. Why not put them to greater u
se?
In particular, both Tony and I were keen to extend the range of people who saw behind the famous facade. Gradually a system evolved whereby on Monday nights, Tony and I would host a large reception for more than two hundred people who came from a particular work sector — such as the police or social workers. Then every Tuesday I would host a reception for a charity. Initially they were “mine” — that is, charities of which I was a patron or was otherwise officially involved with. But that was purely practical: I offered and they accepted. As word spread of these Tuesday evenings, however, requests from other charities began to come in, and between 1998 and 2007, I hosted one every week, apart from August and the holiday periods. Regulations governing the use of public buildings prevented these evenings from being direct fund-raising events, but a charity could use the event to raise its profile or as a thank-you to major donors. The charity paid for whatever food or drink was involved. The number of guests was limited to a maximum of forty, so that I could talk to each of them personally. I would also address the guests about the charity, its aims, its successes, and how they could help, and I would offer to have my photograph taken with each one. These events were never advertised, never mentioned in the press, but somehow word of them got around, and over the following years I was able to learn much about the fantastic unsung work that goes on up and down our country and overseas.
Furthermore, from the contacts I was making during Tony’s official visits abroad, I became increasingly aware of the potential of what is loosely — and often disparagingly — called networking. On my return to England following my trip to Gaza, for example, I was able to arrange for equipment and supplies to be sent out to a girls’ school run by Mrs. Arafat and the center for special-needs children I’d visited.
I was also aware of how the average constituent had no chance of visiting Downing Street, so every month I invited ten MPs from across the parties each to bring three children, each accompanied by a parent, to tea. It was a way of ensuring that kids from all over the country had the opportunity. I always told the children that I hoped that at least one of them would return here one day as Prime Minister and asked them to promise me that if they did, they would invite me back.
That summer we did our usual lurch across Europe, made less spontaneous by the constant presence of our security detail — nice though they were — and garden girls. By mid-August our increasingly unwieldy cavalcade was back in France. We were there when news came through of the Omagh car bombing.
Omagh continues to appall. Twenty-nine people died, and more than two hundred were injured in the blast. Responsibility was later claimed by a nationalist splinter group calling itself the Real IRA, as opposed to the Provisional IRA, whose political arm, Sinn Féin, had been party to the Good Friday Agreement. Tony borrowed a suit and black tie for the immediate television response, then flew straight to Belfast from Toulouse airport.
Though not physically present at Hillsborough during the talks, Bill Clinton had played a key part in the negotiations, and two weeks after the atrocity, on September 3, Bill, Hillary, Tony, and I flew into Omagh to see for ourselves the devastation that had been achieved by just one bomb attached to an old car parked in the main shopping street on a Saturday afternoon. Hillary is not as spontaneously charming as her husband, and this was the first time I saw her compassionate side. She was moved beyond words by what we heard and saw. It brought tears to our eyes to talk to the people who had lost loved ones.
But this was not tragedy tourism: Tony knew that it was imperative to get Sinn Féin to condemn the bombers and at the same time persuade the Protestants not to react. He also knew that Bill’s physical presence, his unequivocal condemnation of the atrocity, and his renewed commitment to the peace talks would be crucial if the terrorists were not to achieve their aim.
Until we arrived at Number 10, I had considered chambers as archaic a setup as was possible to imagine at the end of the twentieth century. I was wrong. Downing Street was positively feudal. On the technical side, computers featured hardly at all. That obviously had to change, as by 1997 everyone in Tony’s office was using a computer. Then there were the garden girls. They were the crème de la crème of the Civil Service secretarial elite, and until we moved in, they were obliged to wear skirts; trousers were even forbidden at Chequers.
“This is just nonsense,” I told the Cabinet secretary. “There are Tony and I in our jeans. It’s ridiculous to expect the garden girls to be wearing twinsets and pearls.” Grudgingly that was allowed.
Then there was the question of rooms. The best and largest in Number 10 was the domain of the two principal private secretaries: one from the Foreign Office and one from the Treasury. John Major had worked in the Cabinet room itself, so this had a certain logic, as there were big double doors connecting the two rooms. Tony, however, preferred something less grandiose. All that was available was a former waiting room to the left of the Cabinet room, so that was where he was put. When I found out where he was spending his workday, I couldn’t believe it. “Why are those two civil servants having the big room while the Prime Minister is in this little cubbyhole?” I asked.
The problem was simply lack of space. Downing Street was cracking at the seams, and no amount of shuffling people around would change that.
It was around this time that I had a brain wave. What about the Number 10 flat? That was completely vacant. Though officially Gordon’s, he didn’t use it. I had also noticed that a room opposite the entrance to our own flat, Number 11, seemed to be used by the Treasury simply for storing chairs. Meanwhile, personnel had a room the size of a large cupboard off a corridor next to the main entrance of Number 10, and visitors were having to hang round the entrance hall because there was no waiting room. I thought, This is completely ludicrous. So I put all these ideas to Tony and said he should talk to Gordon about it. “You’ve got to do something,” I said. “It’s simply not fair to your staff.”
“Cherie, please listen to me. I’m sure you mean well, but don’t get involved. At some point we’ll get round to it, but frankly there are more important things on the agenda.”
I wasn’t surprised. I’d had plenty of experience of my ideas being discounted. This time, however, I decided to take the law into my own hands. So I picked up the phone and spoke to Sue Nye, Gordon’s longtime aide. “I want to come and see Gordon,” I said.
Consternation in the Treasury! They immediately rang Tony to find out what was going on. He then called me and asked me to explain myself.
“I simply want to make the case that it’s in everyone’s interest, including his as Chancellor, to husband public resources. You won’t go and see him, so I will.”
By now I had my appointment, so it was too late to do anything to stop me. Off I trotted to the Treasury and was duly ushered in.
“Look, Gordon,” I said, “we’ve got a real problem at Number Ten. It’s overcrowded. The personnel department has nowhere they can talk to people alone. Yet there’s a perfectly good room outside our flat which is currently unused.” And if that wasn’t acceptable, then what about the Number 10 flat? Surely part of that could be used, I suggested, if only as meeting rooms.
“I’ve got no objections personally,” he explained, “but I owe it to future Chancellors of the Exchequer to preserve the integrity of the Chancellor of the Exchequer’s rooms.”
“Are you telling me you can’t ease this terrible overcrowding because of some hypothetical situation in the future? Come on, Gordon. If only as a personal favor to me . . .”
No doubt he had a thousand more pressing matters to worry about than an empty room at Number 11. No doubt it wasn’t my place to push. But the pressure on the staff at Number 10 was becoming unbearable. Even so, as I sat there getting nowhere, I began to think I had overstepped the mark. He said that he would think about it and left.
Later I was informed that he’d decided we could have the room opposite the flat entrance. Unbelievably, Number 10 then spent £10,000 redecorating it, bu
t at least it released more space downstairs, so it was worth the embarrassment.
As for Tony, he did eventually move to the principal private secretaries’ room, after which it became known as “the den.”
By chance Tony’s first visit to mainland China, in October 1998, coincided with an initiative organized by the Bar Council’s international committee, relating to a conference in Beijing concerning the rights of the accused. My job was simply to introduce the session and generally explain what the delegates were going to see, which was a mock trial demonstrating how the British system worked. I then went off to see a group of women lawyers for a roundtable discussion about discrimination law in China. China was then still a country of bicycles and blue-Mao-suited workers — male and female, everyone looked the same. Just six years later, on my next visit, the consumer revolution was in full swing. Men and women could be clearly identified, and cars had transformed the look of the streets, though they were being driven as if they were bicycles. Color was everywhere, except in the sky, which remained an opaque gray whatever the weather — the result of the appalling pollution.
Before that first visit, Hillary Clinton had warned me about bugging. When she and Bill had been to Beijing, she told me, their security team had rigged up a soundproof tent in their bedroom, the only place, they were told, where they could talk safely. After a good night’s sleep at the official guesthouse attached to the Forbidden City, Tony and I awoke to find André in a state of near hysteria. He’d woken in the small hours to find somebody in his room going through his things. Most of our delegation, we later heard, had had the same experience. If that wasn’t enough, André said, he’d been having a shower when he noticed that instead of the mirror misting up, a large rectangle remained unnervingly clear. Apparently we were all under surveillance as well.