by Jerry Hayes
But back to Annie’s. It was steeped in history. The one which operated in my day had changed its location several times over the years; it used to be the office of Charles Parnell, who used to smuggle in his mistress, Kitty O’Shea, through the stone-mullioned windows. She was the go-between over Home Rule with Gladstone. It all ended in tears.
Annie’s was the preserve of the press and MPs. A place of relative safety (whips were eyed with suspicion) where gossip and stories could be exchanged on lobby terms, which meant that the source would never be disclosed. So when you read a story beginning ‘Friends close to…’ it very often meant that the guy had planted the story himself.
In the days when he drank, the legendary Chris Moncrieff would down half a dozen pints of Guinness in about twenty minutes before filing another brilliant scoop for the Press Association. Chris is the finest reporter that I have ever come across because he is meticulous and fair. But, more importantly, he is totally honest. People trust him. And in Westminster that’s a valuable commodity. A good example of this was when Denzil Davies was shadow Secretary of State for Defence. He was always at odds with Neil Kinnock’s policy of unilateral nuclear disarmament. It came to a head one night when he rang up Chris and told him that he was going to resign. Being a true gent, Moncrieff, realising that Denzil was rather worse for wear in drink, said he would ring him back when he had sobered up and if he wanted to change his mind the first conversation would be forgotten. Eventually the call was made and a sober Denzil stuck to his guns. And Chris, through old-fashioned journalism, had secured the story of the year.
Denzil, in the days of Harold Wilson, used to be a Treasury minister under Denis Healey’s chancellorship. Denis was a bit of an old bruiser and didn’t like Davies’s rather mild Welsh manner. Denzil once told me that he could not bear being told that he was a twat or a wanker or a bastard by Healey, so they agreed not to have face-to-faces, just written memos. But it made no difference, as Healey just used to scrawl twat, wanker or bastard in the margins.
The interesting thing about the lobby is that its patrons forge close personal relationships with politicians. It is symbiotic in that the journalist needs a story and the politician needs publicity. Every dog needs a lamp-post; it’s just a bit difficult working out which one is which. Some criticise the lobby system as being too cosy. But you are more likely to get to the truth of a story if all parties realise at the outset that everything that is said is unattributable and off the record. Ministers are far more likely to go off-message in private than in public. There is nothing more off-putting to voters than seeing robotic politicians failing to answer questions and sticking rigidly to dull scripts prepared by spin doctors. Rachel Reeves and Chloe Smith, take note. Well, at least Chloe has. She saw the writing on the wall after her Newsnight car crash and resigned a few months later.
Chris Moncrieff formed close relationships with everyone who mattered and an awful lot who didn’t. He became close to Margaret Thatcher.
I would love to have been a fly on the wall at No. 10 on the very first Red Nose Day, when Moncrieff asked Thatcher to put on a red nose. And despite their friendship, the room became very chilly. She did not oblige. At the time of writing, Chris, who is well into his eighties, is still filing brilliant copy. And the new press bar bears his name. Deservedly so. Although sadly not a lot of serious drinking goes on in there any more. Many of the baby journos don’t understand the importance of lunch or a few reviving drinks with MPs. They prefer to be rooted in front of their screens.
The great thing about Annie’s Bar is that we had a fantastic camaraderie. No matter what allegiance we had to party or paper, we always helped each other out. One Christmas our delightful barmaid, May, was in floods of tears. She had spent a lot of time putting up the decorations only to witness a foul-mouthed and drunken Ron Davies (he of the last shoot-out at Gobbler’s Gulch on Clapham Common) ripping them all down. Harold Walker, the Deputy Speaker, was so enraged that he made the ghastly Davies apologise and redecorate the place.
And you could always tell where certain journalists were by the placing of their drinks. You knew that Peter Dobbie of the Mail on Sunday couldn’t be all that far away if there was a half of lager by the telephone.
It is worth remembering that in the early 1980s newspaper articles were actually typed on a typewriter. There were neither computer terminals nor laptops. And if you were away from the office (as all political journalists were), you just dictated your copy down the phone to a copy-taker, usually a middle-aged woman in Manchester. The capacity for totally inebriated journos to sober up just enough to be able to dictate a front-page splash from off the top of their heads never ceased to amaze me. I look back in wonderment on how I used to hold up some of the old boys with one hand while pressing the phone to their ear with the other while they dictated staggeringly good copy. One such gifted old friend was Adrian Lithgow of the Mail on Sunday. We became really good mates. A great journo and a delightful man. But sometimes a menace after a drink. One night he staggered into Annie’s in a terrible rage.
‘Which one of you wankers has nicked my contacts book?’ he screamed at nobody in particular. At that, a rather starry-eyed kid from the BBC, who had never met a real Fleet Street hack before, nervously smiled. Not a good move. Lithgow grabbed him by the lapels, raised him from his bar stool and threw him against the wall, with the parting words ‘you smug bastard’ before heading off to the committee room corridor.
One of the most unpleasant experiences both MPs and journalists have to endure is the sheer drudgery and mind-numbing boredom of party conferences. But there was an upside. For three weeks of the party conference season, Annie’s Bar goes on the road, in those days to dreary seaside resorts. Ever tried to have a good time in Blackpool that doesn’t involve slot machines and vomit? No, neither have I.
Once, I was sent by The Big Breakfast to find some youngsters, put them in fancy dress and take part in a daft competition. The trouble is that in the early hours the only people I could find were drunks and those just released from prison. I then had to dress as Elvis Presley and interview a Blackpool landlady with a singing dog. Needless to say the dog wouldn’t even bark, let alone sing. Not my finest hour.
The tradition is that at party conferences, newspaper editors book a swish suite at the headquarters hotel, dine with the Prime Minister and then swan back to London, leaving the suite in the safe hands of whoever is covering politics. On one occasion it was Lithgow, then at the Mail on Sunday. It goes without saying that a whole crowd of us had rather a lot to drink that night. So I staggered into the twin bed next to Adrian and snored the night away until we were woken by the telephone. It was Lithgow’s then girlfriend.
‘Where are you?’
‘In bed.’
‘You’ve got a woman with you.’
‘No, I haven’t.’
‘But I can hear someone in the background.’
‘Oh yeah, but it’s a guy.’
‘Arrrrrrrrgh!’ Followed by much shouting, swearing and tears.
‘Err, I think she’s got the wrong end of the stick here, mate,’ says Lithgow, ‘and she’s on her way up…’
So, with the presence of mind that only three bottles of Merlot can produce, I threw on some clothes and jumped out of the window. To land in a heap in front of his girlfriend.
‘Hi there,’ I spluttered, ‘Adrian’s waiting for you. We had a great night together.’
Well, you know what I meant, but it was rather misunderstood.
Betty Boothroyd, before she became one of the finest Speakers the Commons has ever had, used to be a regular at Annie’s and could be found swirled in cigarette smoke with a very large gin and tonic on hand. We would always be greeted with a cheery ‘’allo luveee’. I was one of the Tories who voted for her. And very proud of that, too. Mind you, it was either her or Peter Brooke, to whom humour is not a joke.
Annie’s was not without its political dramas. Ken Clarke, even when in Cabinet, would pop in for
a few pints and a cigar. One night, when things were particularly fraught with Thatcher (in those days, most of the time), one young journo rushed in and announced that he’d just heard that Michael Heseltine had resigned. Actually he hadn’t (yet), but for the first time I saw the normally ebullient Ken turn as white as sheet, mutter ‘oh fuck’, and leave the room. The telltale sign of just how serious Ken thought the situation was that he had left his pint on the bar.
Unthinkable.
The Annie’s Bar crowd were fantastic. We often said that we were the very first coalition in modern times as we pretty well agreed how the country should be run. Remember, this included two journo legends, Nigel Nelson and Ian Hernon, who were firmly of the left, as were Norman Hogg (who lost out as Labour Chief Whip by one vote) and deputy shadow Leader of the House John McWilliam. Now put them together with Tony Beaumont-Dark (the only man who could fall asleep standing up with a glass in his hand and not spill a drop) and Barry Porter, both of the right, and you had a very interesting mix.
Barry’s memorial service was a very grand affair at the MPs’ church, St Margaret’s. John Major, Michael Heseltine and most of the Cabinet were there. It was a glittering occasion. I think Hezza rolled up because Barry was the first Thatcherite to publicly support him for the leadership. But at the service a beyond-the-grave note was read out. ‘Sorry, Michael, but in the end I still voted for the old girl.’ I miss the old devil. Barry, that is.
Annie’s was also a great link with the past. Lord Bruce of Donington was another regular. An interesting old boy with a dry sense of humour, he was elected in 1945 and was Nye Bevan’s parliamentary private secretary. He knew Churchill, Lloyd George and all the greats of the time. He was a fund of stories. I once asked him how they compared with our modern politicians. He just smiled, took a pull of his pint and uttered words which any politician with pretensions should never forget: ‘All politicians have feet of clay. Most are wankers.’
Yet, despite his left-wing pedigree, Donald was to the right of Genghis Khan.
But we did have one silly game we played just to wind up the whips. In those days, when the division bell rang you had eight minutes to get to the lobbies before the doors were locked. Behind Annie’s there was a little-known staircase which was an amazing shortcut. So, when the whips were beginning to panic we would saunter in with twenty seconds to go. And wave to each other as we voted in different ways. And then pop back down for another drink.
Another great character was Sir Fergus Montgomery, a former PPS to the Lady. His nickname was Dame Fergus because he was rather gay. I once asked him over a glass of wine how he managed to bring some of the biggest stars in show business, like Shirley Bassey, in for dinner.
‘Easy, dear. When I was a young and pretty teacher I once fucked Noël Coward.’
He was a lovely man.
Annie’s Bar summed up to me what politics should really be about. That people of goodwill will disagree but can compromise and be pragmatic. That problems are best solved by not looking at them through the prism of party dogma, but with a genuine desire to solve them. And that those who will be seen as your enemies on election day and in the chamber are really some of the finest and most reliable friends you will ever have.
CHAPTER 5
REBELLION
The Conservative Party in Parliament is no different from any other: they all have their factions. In Thatcher’s days it was between ‘wet’ and ‘dry’. This was because she would have the habit of writing ‘wet’ in the margins of papers or memos from ministers that she thoroughly disagreed with. So those of us on the One Nation side of the party were branded the wets. She is alleged to have said that I was so wet that you could shoot snipe off me.
It wasn’t long before I was approached to join a group called the Lollards. We were called this because we met in Bill van Straubenzee’s Church Commissioners’ flat at Lambeth Palace. The idea was that we would do battle for the party committees with the dries, whose grouping in those days was called the 92. This was founded by Sir Patrick Wall at his home in 92 Cheyne Walk. We both had slates. For us it was a bit of a waste of time as there were more of them, they were better organised and we were a delightful shambles. I remember trying to persuade some of our wealthier and more patrician members to vote for these committees which in reality had very little influence. The excuses were wonderfully laid-back. ‘So sorry, old boy, country house party … My dear chap, got a bit of fishing laid on.’ And that was the problem: we wets coasted by knowing that the Thatcher machine, like Amazon forest loggers, moved on relentlessly, slashing and burning as we indigenous peoples had our way of life gradually destroyed.
But we Lollards weren’t into plotting. Well, not very effectively. We moaned and groaned to each other that the wets were gradually being driven out of Cabinet: Sir Ian Gilmour, Mark Carlisle and Norman St John-Stevas for starters.
Norman was a lovely man. Very bright, very arch, delightfully camp, with a razor-sharp wit. No pretty waiter was safe. What did for him was his waspish humour. The Lady began to tire of his little nicknames for her – ‘the immaculate misconception’ … ‘Attila the Hen’ … ‘She who must be obeyed’. Once, at a meeting, she suggested that they finish early as she and Norman were going to the opera and he needed more time to get ready than she did. He had a wonderful collection of Queen Victoria’s stockings, which he kept in his bathroom.
To be honest, the only committee that really mattered was the 1922, the Tory backbench trade union. They would have regular meetings with the Lady and were so stuffed with her supporters that it was no more than a love-in. Sir Edward du Cann (whom I rather liked) was the chairman. He was a serious operator, but unfortunately got rather tied up with Tiny Rowland’s business, Lonrho, which Ted Heath described as the ‘unacceptable face of capitalism’. I once had lunch with Rowland’s biographer Tom Bower, who wrote biographies of the likes of Maxwell and Al Fayed.
‘Who did you like least?’ I asked.
‘Oh, Tiny. He used to have people killed in Africa.’
I am not suggesting for one moment that Edward knew or condoned any of this. If he had had the slightest suspicion he would have been out of that company faster than a flasher’s mac.
Du Cann was beautifully smooth. Listening to one of his speeches was like wiping your arse with silk. He was also very obliging. The joke was that if you asked him the time he would coo, ‘And what time would you want it to be, dear boy?’ Once, I shocked the grandees by rushing back for an unexpected vote straight from the gym, still in Lycra. Some of the old boys were apoplectic with indignation. Edward just sidled up and said, ‘How delightful you look, dear boy.’
He once told me how Harold Macmillan had invited him in to discuss the possibility of his joining the government. Edward expressed concern about needing to earn some money (like me, he was always fairly broke). In times of difficulty, Mac always poured a large sherry. Du Cann joined the government.
Over the years he attracted rather a bad press, somewhat unfairly. But he was always kind and courteous to me and my friends. He was a gentleman rather than a shit. But a serious player, whom I hope history will not overlook. He skilfully papered over the serious cracks within the party. He was the consummate chairman of the ’22.
It wasn’t long before I made a very serious error of judgement. Sadly, one of many. I was approached by an emissary of Francis Pym, by now a sacked Foreign Secretary and more bitter than the lemon in his gin, asking if I wanted to join a new policy group to discuss ways in which Thatcherism could be given a more human face. It was to be called Centre Forward. I really should have seen what was going to happen next. The members were the usual suspects: Alan Haselhurst, David Knox, Hugh Dykes, Peter Temple-Morris. The decent, caring wing of the Conservative Party. And those who were rumoured to have considered defecting to the SDP in 1981.
When I look back it was a rather tame affair, but when news leaked out the Downing Street rubbish machine went into overdrive. You have to understand that
Downing Street is designed for one purpose only – to protect the Prime Minister. We were not plotting her downfall, just putting together policies that would put the government more in touch with what people really wanted. Yet at that time she didn’t need too much protection.
It was all leaked to the Sunday Times, where I was pictured as a ‘leader’ of this dissident group. Half a dozen of our photographs straddled the front page, making us look like the FBI’s most wanted. Next Monday, Norman St John-Stevas spotted me in the lobby, doffed his cloth cap (yes, he really wore one, but it was probably from Lockes), grinned ‘hail to my leader’ and wiggled into the distance.
What really screwed things up was a speech about to be given by Francis Pym. He told us that it would be mildly critical. I wish it had been. It turned into a personal attack on Thatcher as the sort of woman who hoards tinned goods in the larder. It was actually a reference to a photo shoot by the Saatchis showing her as a prudent housewife when Leader of the Opposition. My constituency association were not at all amused. And the press were after my blood. I panicked and resigned from the committee (as did Tony Baldry). That night, in the division lobby, a very angry David Knox pulled me to one side and testily called me a ‘silly, silly boy’. He was right. My error of judgement was not joining the group, but failing to have the courage to publicly argue our corner and not run away at the first whiff of cordite. What a pathetic, cowardly little fool I was. I would never make the same mistake again.
On the night of my fall into ignominy I was invited to drinks with Transport Secretary and arch-Thatcherite Nick Ridley. He gave me some very wise advice. ‘In politics, always shoot to kill, never to wound. A wounded animal is a dangerous and unpredictable beast.’ How right he was.