A Fortunate Life

by Paddy Ashdown

  I spent three days in Sarajevo, visiting my old friends, including Larry Hollingworth (who told me of his worries about the city running out of food), calling on President Izetbegović and spending some time with new UN commander in Bosnia, General (now Sir) Rupert Smith, who emanated a new energy and determination to break the Serb siege once and for all. I was shocked to see how much Sarajevo had deteriorated. The people seemed to have lost hope and appeared as scarred and dejected as their shell-shattered homes. We were now entering the fourth year of the siege, in which it has been estimated 10,000 people, including 2,500 children, died from starvation, cold, shells and snipers’ bullets. Conditions in the city were now deteriorating sharply again. As I departed over the Igman logging tracks, this time under cover of darkness and fog and in a British Army Land Rover, I wondered how this great city could possibly survive another winter. We had to act soon.

  On my arrival back in London I put in my regular report on conditions in Sarajevo and Bosnia to the Foreign Secretary, appealing once again for action soon. Afterwards I caught the train north for two days’ campaigning in the Littleborough and Saddleworth by-election, where the Tories, who had held the seat, were plainly going to come third, leaving us and Labour in a head-to-head struggle. Despite my previous agreement with Blair, Labour’s campaign was a very dirty and personalised one against our candidate, Chris Davies. Furious about this, I rang Blair on my way back home to Yeovil and said, ‘We really cannot pretend that we are creating a new kind of politics based on respect for each other’s parties and then spend three weeks character-assassinating the other’s candidates like this.’ Blair, in his usual disarming way, said he was unaware that things were this bad (this was not to be the last time he either couldn’t, or didn’t want to, restrain his attack dogs at a crucial moment) and anyway we were going to win. Which we did, though Labour came within a hair’s breadth of causing us to lose.*

  Shortly after I returned from this trip, I started to run a very high fever and relapsed into delirium. Jane called the doctor, who diagnosed a severe lung infection (contracted, she said, during my time in Sarajevo) compounded by physical and nervous exhaustion. I was forced to take a week off work, the only period of absence through sickness I had to take during the eleven years of my Leadership.

  This was my last trip to Sarajevo under the siege. Shortly afterwards the international community finally decided it had had enough and, in the kind of swift action that could have been taken years and tens of thousands of deaths earlier, broke the Serb siege and, with it, the Serb army – so paving the way for the Dayton Peace Agreement and the end of the war.

  One way and another, 1995 was turning out to be a very busy political year. But neither politics, high and low, at home, nor wars and other dramas abroad interrupted the rhythm of ceremonial state events, which also had to be fitted into the programme.

  On 20 August John Major, Tony Blair and I had to interrupt our summer break to attend the celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of Victory over Japan Day (VJ Day) and the end of World War Two, which took place on Horse Guards Parade in London. The three of us were in position a little early and found ourselves free of our advisers in a corner of the spectators’ stand, as we waited to be shown to our seats. It had been a wonderful summer, so we were all quite tanned. I remarked on this to Major and asked him whether he had had a good holiday. He said he had been at the family home in Huntingdon and had a great time, except that the sun had been so strong that his goldfish had got sunburn. He had taken them out, one by one, and put sun cream on them. But to no avail; the very next day the local heron raided the pool and ate them all. ‘Most distressing,’ said Major, in his typical, clipped way. Blair and I obviously had the same mental image of our gentle, Pooterish Prime Minister anointing his goldfish, only to find that his sun cream had simply helped a heron’s breakfast to slip down more easily, and burst into peals of laughter (joined, it must be said, by Major himself). The next day’s papers were full of the pictures of the three of us roaring with laughter – though it was only much later, when I made an injudicious comment to a journalist, that anyone discovered what had caused the outbreak of hilarity.

  In early November Yitzhak Rabin, the charismatic Israeli Prime Minister, was assassinated, and Blair and I joined Major, the Chief Rabbi and the Prince of Wales in the Prince’s private jet for the flight out to Jerusalem and the funeral. This was my first experience of a ‘working funeral’, as it is known in the diplomatic trade. The primary purpose of these events is, of course, to bury the unfortunate great man or woman. But the other great men and women who attend do not miss the opportunity for doing business over their departed colleague’s grave. So the solemn processes of funeral, service and burial are interspersed with the lively business of bilateral contacts and negotiations of international business. Blair and I watched fascinated as Major was wheeled from ‘bilateral’ to ‘bilateral’ with other key heads of government, one after the other. As we were waiting in the cemetery, I noticed that Major’s officials seemed to have fixed a meeting with John Bruton, the Irish Taoiseach, as the two were waiting in the long queue to go to the graveside. I watched with admiration as the two sets of Prime Ministerial officials deftly manoeuvred their charges into the same place in the long queue and then hovered around them taking notes as the discussions began. But then the unexpected happened. Both Prime Ministers obviously came to the same conclusion. They could not last another long ceremony without first having a pee, and so, with the officials scurrying along behind them, they headed off together and at some speed for a nearby Portaloo, where they continued their animated conversation in an almost equally long queue, while their harassed-looking officials tried to elbow their way close enough to make notes of their masters’ conversations. Finally, John Major’s turn came and he went in, leaving poor John Bruton hopping from one foot to another, though whether from embarrassment or as an aid to bladder control, I can’t say.

  Later that month, Jane and I were invited to a Downing Street lunch for, I think, the Spanish Prime Minister. After the formalities were over, and the guest of honour and his party had left, a little informal circle remained, consisting of the Prime Minister, Norma Major, Kenneth Baker, his wife Mary, Jane and I. There had been some Press comment recently about a remark Norma had let slip that her husband was feeling very tired. I, however, thought he looked rather well and said so. He turned to me and said, ‘I am well. I wish Norma hadn’t said that to the Press. You know what they are like. Jane would never say a thing like that about you, would she?’ To which my wife, who has a barrack-room turn of phrase, not uncommon in an ex-soldier’s wife but not usual in a politician’s, retorted, ‘No, I wouldn’t say Paddy was tired. I would say he was bloody knackered!’

  There were other events happening ‘off stage’, too. Back in Yeovil I had become aware of a bunch of white racists who were trying to drive a local Indian restaurant out of town. I visited the restaurant and met its dynamic and courageous young Bangladeshi owner, Luthfur Rahman. I asked him why he hadn’t been to see me, his local MP, about his problem – after all his restaurant was only fifty yards from my office? He replied that he didn’t think that, as an Asian, he was entitled to ask a British MP to help him. I launched a campaign against the racists and on 29 November paid a late-night visit to the area with the local vicar, Mark Ellis. As we were standing across the road from the restaurant we were approached by several of the local gang, shouting abuse. One, a man called Chris Mason who was notorious in the area, looked to be the chief trouble-maker, so I engaged him in conversation, drew him away from the group and persuaded him to walk with me round the block, hoping to calm him down, while Mark Ellis spoke to the others. By the time we came back, things seemed to be calmer. But suddenly, Mason came up behind me and, stretching his arm over my shoulder, placed the blade of his flick knife against my throat, threatening to cut it if I didn’t ‘F**ck off’. I knocked the knife to one side and the police, who had two undercover officers in the area
and had been watching the incident, moved in to arrest my attacker. After three hours in the police station I returned home to find the Sun newspaper, which had clearly been alerted by someone local, camped outside my door asking for a comment. The story caught the imagination of the national Press for a full three days. But Mason would now have to face the court on a charge of attempting grievous bodily harm – so the matter, though closed for the moment, was by no means over and done with.

  None of these diversions and amusements, however, could hide the uncomfortable fact that both the Lib Dem vote and our ability to get any attention from the Press were now being seriously squeezed by the national love affair with Blair and New Labour. Our poll ratings were dropping again, and the Press was once more asking what the purpose of the Lib Dems was, now that Blair was occupying our ground. Meanwhile, many of the old SDP were expressing support for New Labour, and one or two of the more ambitious ones, with an eye to the main chance, were quietly redefecting to them.

  They say that God tempers the wind to the shorn lamb. So it was on this occasion. For just as I was beginning to despair about how we could get ourselves back into the game, we got what a third party struggling for attention hopes for most after a by-election victory – a defector. Or, to be precise, two of them.

  In late September we started getting messages from Peter Thurnham, the Tory MP for Bolton North East, that he was fed up with the Tories and was thinking of joining us. Andrew Phillips entered into secret negotiations with him, in the middle of which, to great fanfares, another Tory MP, Alan Howarth defected to New Labour. Thurnham, a most decent man, was wracked with guilt, not at the thought of leaving the Tories, but at the prospect of letting his constituency party and its workers down. Jane and I invited him to a secret dinner at our flat in late November. Warming to the spirit of the occasion, he turned up dressed in a trench coat with the collar turned up and wearing a most sinister looking hat. Over dinner he confirmed that he wanted to come over to us, but he needed to take his time – perhaps first resigning the Tory whip and then joining us some time later, much nearer the elections. He also expressed an interest in standing for us at the next election for the nearby and winnable seat of Westmoreland. But he insisted that, if this were done, it could only be with the agreement of the current Lib Dem candidate, who had to be treated properly. There could be no question of his being imposed against the will of the local Lib Dems.

  The black arts I had learned from my time in the shadows had given me a good insight into defectors. They usually fall into one of three basic categories. The first are the ‘mid-life crisis’ defectors, who, realising their current careers are not going to end in the triumph they had hoped for, are seduced by the prospect of five minutes of fame, perhaps combined with a chance to start afresh and see if they can do better the second time around. Some defect to a new life and a fresh start, others make their change by remarrying, and a few do both. This category is the most difficult to handle, for they need patience and care and constant reassurance that they are doing the right thing.

  Then there are the venal. They can be bought – and their price is usually money, position or other pleasures of a more illicit kind. In politics the currency is not cash, but usually the promise of positional goods, such as a ministerial post or a place in the House of Lords. These are initially the easiest defectors to handle. You simply have to find out what their price is and then decide if you are prepared to pay it. But when they have pocketed their reward, downloaded their information, and there is nothing left in the kitty, then they can get bitter and disgruntled and often redefect, if the option is still open to them.

  And finally there are the ‘true believers’. They are the ones you always hope for, because they defect for ideological reasons. And since there is no one more committed than a convert, these are the defectors who will be most bitter about their erstwhile friends, because that provides them with a form of self-justification. They tend to be what we used to call ‘walk-ins’, who knock on your door, rather than hoping you will knock on theirs. They want nothing except to serve the cause and so, provided their self-respect is protected, are the easiest to handle. Peter Thurnham believed passionately in what he was doing and sought nothing in return, beyond the possible chance of standing as a Lib Dem in future elections. For this reason – although I badly wanted him to defect as soon as possible, because we needed the publicity – I told my colleagues that we had to respect his needs and do things at a pace that suited him not us, which meant later rather than sooner. Forcing the pace could mean losing the fish. In the event Peter Thurnham resigned the Conservative Whip shortly afterwards but did not formally join us until a year later, in October 1996.

  Very soon after Peter Thurnham’s approach, I started to hear about a much bigger fish. On 5 December our Chief Whip in the Lords, John Harris, reported a rumour that Emma Nicholson, the Tory MP for Torridge and West Devon and previously a vice-chair of the Conservative Party, was fed up and wanted to come across to us. I was at first very suspicious. It seemed to be too good to be true. And anyway, if she really wanted to come over, there were much more secure ways of passing a message to us than through the rumour mill in the House of Lords. I suspected a trap that was designed to make us look foolish. So I primed her Lib Dem next-door neighbour Nick Harvey with a carefully prepared script and asked him to breeze up to Emma at an appropriately discreet moment and say, ‘Emma, last year there were rumours about me joining the Tories. It was nonsense of course. Now I hear that you want to join us. Is it true?’ To which he received the somewhat startling reply, ‘I might if you asked me.’ I was now even more suspicious, because this put the onus on us to make the approach and could be the prelude to a very public rebuttal. So I looked for what I would have called, in earlier days, a ‘cut out’: someone who knew her personally but was unconnected with us, although of course sympathetic. This would enable us to have complete ‘deniability’ if accused of making the approach. Richard Holme found just such a person, a business acquaintance of his called Jonathan Taylor, who also had business contacts with Emma’s husband, Sir Michael Caine, and could easily probe her intentions under cover of a purely social conversation. Taylor duly made contact and reported back that Emma was indeed very unhappy and wanted to join us.

  There was almost no technique I had learned in my ‘Foreign Office’ days which Emma and I did not use over the following three weeks to clinch the deal, except secret writing and the use of dead-letter boxes. It all culminated in a meeting at a ‘safe house’ just before Christmas at which we agreed that we would announce her defection on 29 December in order to dominate the news over the New Year period, when the three Party Leaders traditionally publish a political New Year’s message. The actual day of the defection was planned down to the last detail and went like clockwork, giving us complete domination of the news agenda for nearly a week, putting the Party back in the news and getting 1996 off to a flying start.

  Emma stood aside for a Liberal Democrat, John Burnett, who was elected in Torridge and West Devon at the next general election. She then went on to fight and win a seat in the European Parliament and subsequently joined the Lib Dem team in the House of Lords, where she has been a doughty and courageous voice for liberal and internationalist causes, especially on the suffering of Iraq’s Marsh Arabs and on matters of human rights and international justice. In due course she was followed by other Tory defectors, chiefly on the issue of Europe, including Hugh Dykes (whom I persuaded to join us in the course of a very bibulous evening drinking Burgundy at our house in Irancy) and John Lee, both also now playing very active roles in the House of Lords as respected members of the Lib Dem team there. Others also followed.*

  Though we entered 1996 on a higher note politically, ominous clouds were beginning to gather as a result of the police action prompted by the knife attack in Yeovil in November. The police informed me that Mason, my attacker, was claiming to the local Press (which, of course, duly passed it on to the nationals) tha
t I had been a ‘customer’ of a local ‘massage parlour’ with which he and his associates were connected, and suggesting that this would come out if the trial went ahead. I suppose Mason thought I could be frightened into dropping the charges. Just before Christmas, the Mail on Sunday correspondent in the Commons approached me saying that he had heard that I was withdrawing my charges against Mason, was this true? I said it was certainly not true, adding that I was utterly determined to see this man, whose associates had held our friends in the Indian restaurant (and so many others in the town) to ransom using violence and threats, was brought to justice.

  I thought that was where the attempts at intimidation would end, although the police said they thought there was more to come. On 2 February, just before 4 a.m., the phone rang by my bed. It was my next door neighbour Steph Bailey, saying that our car, which, on police advice, had been parked in one of her outside sheds, was on fire. The local fire brigade arrived swiftly, followed by the police equally swiftly, followed by the national Press, which published blaring headlines on the incident the following day. The Times article was accompanied by a hilarious Nick Newman cartoon showing two Somerset yokels chewing straw, one of them was saying to the other, ‘Red sky at night, Paddy’s Vauxhall’s alight.’

  Over the following weekend Yeovil was flooded with national journalists, which gave Mason’s associates an even greater opportunity to spread their lies. Once again, some elements of the national Press seemed all too eager to believe their words and published a number of articles full of innuendo. In the end this proved more painful to Jane and me than the fire-bombing of our car. We were both deeply upset that the Press would allow itself to be used by people who they must have known were trying to intimidate me into withdrawing charges. But we decided that, whatever happened, we were going to see this thing through. So we sat tight, believing that the worst was over.