Ten Minutes to Turn the Devil

by Douglas Hurd

  ‘The Cabinet took note with approval of the Prime Minister’s summing-up and authorised the Secretary of State for Defence to announce to the Conservative Party Conference the decision to send an additional battalion to Caucasia as part of the planned reinforcement of the European Safe Haven Force, together with a contribution of European Fighter Aircraft (EFAs) of which the details would be negotiated with our partners.’

  His face was covered with shaving soap when the telephone rang in the bedroom. He wrapped himself in a bath towel and sat dripping on the bed. It was the Prime Minister.

  ‘Don’t wish me luck, Prime Minister. Everyone in the hotel has, and I feel terrible.’

  ‘I wouldn’t dream of it, young sir. It’s a fearsome business. You will find the courage flow into you if you let it. I remember the hanging debates that Home Secretaries had to cope with in the old days, with Margaret Thatcher fidgeting beside them on the platform. Two bits of advice. One, don’t hold back when the time comes. Two, forget the speech tonight, and have a good dinner.’

  ‘Thank you, Prime Minister.’ He meant it.

  Richard gave himself a whisky as he dressed. He disobeyed the Prime Minister’s advice and looked at the draft speech, propping it on the table alongside his hairbrushes. It really read quite well. He would have time to memorise some sentences tomorrow. He decided to leave the passage on Caucasia till the end. If the Conference were really worked up by then they might not allow this.

  Outside, by the bus stop, beneath his window, someone was playing ‘Land of Hope and Glory’ on a saxophone, very slowly and out of tune.

  By the time he returned at midnight it all looked different again. The Times had been hospitable and their political team had gossiped lightheartedly. There had been no attempt to badger or depress him. But as the lobster bisque was replaced by sole and then crème brûlée, as the Chablis was followed by brandy and then more brandy, his heart slowly turned to lead within him. Unsteady now in his bedroom, he thought of telephoning Hugh or his wife, but was ashamed. He glanced at the speech again and it, too, seemed leaden, hopeless. He swallowed an Alka-Seltzer, lay on his bed, and tried the thriller which he had brought with him.

  The pages swam queasily before him and he gave up. Damn, how could he have been so stupid. Raucous dance music drifted up from festive Conservatives below. If he shut the window, he would feel stifled. If he left it open, the music would keep him awake. He left it open. Eleven hours to pass before he was on his feet, before the mob began to bay. He was sure it would be a disaster. He dozed, then woke again, thinking it was near morning. But it was only one o’clock by the luminous dial of his watch. Ten hours to go. He thought of the old tag from Dr Faustus:

  ‘O lente lente currite noctis equi.’

  ‘Ride slowly, slowly, horses of the night.’

  Nothing in politics, not the pleasures of hard work in office, the excitement of good conversation, the small vanities of fame, the sense of occasional service, could make up for these moments of lonely fear. It was not as if, in these small hours, he was sure that the policy was right.

  ‘Ride slowly, slowly …’

  He went to the window, pushed aside the skimpy curtain. A full moon shone on the sea. The man with the saxophone was no longer by the bus stop. The wind had risen since the afternoon and the surface was ruffled instead of metal-smooth. The buildings at the end of the West Pier, cut off by a stretch of water from the rest of the pier and the shore, seemed to float like a dark island alien to both man and nature. There must be a parable there. He remembered the next lines:

  ‘The stars move still, time runs, the clock will strike, the Devil will come …’

  Would a second Alka-Seltzer keep the Devil and damnation at bay? Richard stumbled back to bed and slept uneasily.

  When he woke, Hugh stood beside him in green vest and running shorts. It was his habit to run from Fulham to the Ministry of Defence each morning, and typical of him to keep to this discipline in Brighton. He carried a cup of tea and the summary of the morning press prepared by the Central Office of Information.

  ‘Nothing new from Caucasia. A poor opinion poll. I’ll call for you just before eight.’

  Sixty-eight per cent in favour of the immediate withdrawal of British troops. In January, 63 per cent had favoured sending them in. The whirligig of time was bringing its revenges even faster than usual. Richard threw the paper aside, told himself that he had no headaches and went to the window. It was grey and blowing hard, with occasional rain in the wind. The West Pier was no longer sinister, just a monument to financial foolishness. Richard was glad that he had two radio and three television interviews before breakfast. They would fill the time, force him back into the argument, keep fear at bay.

  ‘Those were not good,’ said Hugh over his kippers when the interviews were over. The Secretary of State had taken no kippers. He rarely asked his advisers what they thought of his performances because that would be unfair. But they knew that they were free to comment. Richard found that their impressions, and indeed his wife’s, were often different from his own.

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘Too defensive. Particularly on the Today programme. After all, what we are doing is right.’

  ‘Of course.’ Richard thought of his brother-in-law, the fairhaired straightforward soldier, now no longer in Ascot rig but hauling convoys of food and medicine through Caucasian mud.

  ‘Then you must aim for more than a verdict of Not Proven. You must come out of your trench, and charge.’

  Richard instead retreated into his shell, and the breakfast soon ended. They had done their best, his friends. His wife on parting, the Prime Minister, now Hugh, had all in different ways told him to be himself, as if this was reassuring advice. Now, he had once again to find himself and get that self into action, whatever it was. As he took the lift alone to the hotel bedroom, he envied those of his colleagues who appeared to have no worries. The Foreign Secretary, for example, seemed to enjoy every minute of the Conference, breezing bonhomously from group to group, with never a care for his own speech, yet always speaking adequately.

  In his last hour, Hugh’s role was simply to keep the world at bay from Room 206 – no maids to make the bed, no colleagues to pay friendly calls, no boxes from the Ministry of Defence, above all no telephone calls. Richard was left alone to wrestle with his draft speech, to break it in until he could ride it easily. Gone were the fears and introspection of the night. The man with the saxophone was back outside, playing the tune to ‘Jerusalem’. Richard thought it was by Parry, but was not sure. The man wore a pale mackintosh, and was stooped and bald. He made mistakes, and at each mistake began the melody again from the beginning. Richard wondered how he had penetrated the cordon. He must be either a melancholy delegate or a man from Special Branch in disguise.

  Richard walked up and down the room, speaking from the text in his hand, altering it as he went. It was amazing how the rhythms of the spoken sentence differed from the written. This was why officials rarely wrote good speeches. A phrase which looked well on paper could sound absurd in speech. He sharpened up the passage attacking Labour’s lack of defence policy. He discarded a joke produced by Hugh, having heard it flop twice in front of the bathroom mirror. He moved Caucasia to the end of the speech. He timed himself. Twenty minutes was too long, since he would certainly want to pick up points from the debate to which he was replying. He cut out a passage on cost efficiency in the Ministry, which the Treasury had been particularly anxious to retain.

  This prosaic work of the professional politician kept him calm until Hugh’s firm knock on the door. His wife had given him a new and dashing tie for the Conference, white stripes of all sizes dancing on a dark blue sea. He straightened it carefully in the mirror.

  ‘Walk.’ The Conference Centre was only two minutes from the hotel. Hugh grimaced.

  ‘’Fraid not. TON are in strength at the barricade. The police will have to push you in at the back. By car to the underground car park.’<
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  As they slid in by the side street, Richard could hear the shouting. He knew its rhythm.

  ‘TON! TON! TON for ever!’ and then fortissimo, ‘Troops Out Now!’

  There was a waiting room behind the platform, with coffee and an array of bigwigs from the National Union. The Area Chairman who was to preside over the defence debate was already ashen. He came over to Richard when he saw him enter, and they were joined by David Halifax, the Party Chairman.

  ‘Difficulty’s blown up, they usually do,’ said the Area Chairman. He had already lit a small cigar, but it was giving him no pleasure. ‘Old Southwood’s asked to speak. He’s got an amendment.’ He produced it from his top breast pocket.

  ‘Delete all after “this Conference” and substitute “urges Her Majesty’s Government to enter at once into negotiations with a view to withdrawing British Armed Forces from Caucasia within three months”.’

  ‘Clever,’ said Richard. ‘A generous time limit and vague reference to negotiation.’

  ‘A wrecking amendment,’ said the Chairman of the Party, who was tough.

  ‘We said we wouldn’t call any MPs or Peers,’ said the Area Chairman. ‘But Southwood …’

  No one had expected old Southwood to be rebel standard-bearer. He had resigned from the Cabinet six years before, after five years as Lord Privy Seal. In earlier, almost forgotten, times he had been Foreign Secretary for 18 months. White-haired, rustic, old fashioned, stout, he had no enemies, no fixed opinions, and thus a reputation for sound judgment. It would be impossible not to call him.

  ‘We’ll have to call him,’ said the Area Chairman.

  ‘But not his amendment,’ said the Party Chairman.

  Five minutes later they filed on to the platform.

  The previous debate, on housing, had been lackadaisical and the hall was only half full. Richard sat in the centre of the platform, the Area Chairman on his left, the Prime Minister on his right. He was no longer afraid. He felt the spirit of combat trickle into him as the hall steadily filled.

  The beginning was an anticlimax. The Area Chairman announced that he was not going to call any amendments but that, in selecting speakers, he would have due regard for the strong feelings in the Party about the British intervention in Caucasia. This produced an intake of breath but not quite an outburst of protest. The mover of the pro-Government motion on defence policy in general was bespectacled and competent. He had stood for a seat in Leeds at the last election and now held high office in the Bow Group. He had overdone the research, and the speech, being overweight but worthy, received only respectable applause. He hardly mentioned Caucasia.

  Then came a series of routine speeches, gradually homing in on the Caucasian question but, in the manner of academic debate, no blood was drawn and little emotion stirred. Richard could see that the Area Chairman was calling speakers for and against the motion in proportion to the speakers slips handed in, roughly three in favour to two against.

  He called a lady from Witney, and Richard saw that on the slip she had simply described herself as ‘mother of serviceman’. She wanted to speak in favour of the motion. He at once sensed a turning point. She was dumpy, her hair was over-elaborate for the occasion, and she had never spoken in public before. She spoke for only two minutes. She supported the Government, she supported strong defence, she supported Richard, she wanted to support the motion but could Richard just explain why her son was risking his life far far away in Caucasia, a country neither of them had heard of a year ago.

  As she left the rostrum the Prime Minister handed Richard a note: ‘Put-up job.’ Richard shook his head. He felt she was artless, genuinely questioning. She drew huge applause in all parts of the hall.

  The Area Chairman, beginning to fluster, called Lord Southwood earlier than he had planned to speak against the motion. As the old man lumbered to the rostrum in front of Richard, the applause redoubled. He spoke without notes, from a technical point of view poorly, losing the end of each sentence as his voice dropped. But the gist was clear. The French and Germans were all very well, he had often dealt with them in his time, but they were not our natural allies. He had never thought to see British troops back next door to the Crimea, fighting a war almost as incompetently as that one had been fought. No American or Canadian or Australian troops alongside us – just French and Germans and, he believed, a few Italians. And with what aim? No one had explained. We had just drifted into it because of what people had seen on television and read in the newspapers. It was a war conducted by politicians at the urging of journalists but it wasn’t the politicians or the journalists who got blown up, it was the young men like Mrs Whitlock’s son, though he hoped not, certainly young men like those from his own regiment blown up some days ago.

  The red light glowed in front of him as Lord Southwood reached his time limit. He seemed to take it as a personal affront.

  ‘Very well, shut me up. I’ve said my piece. It’s simple,’ and then suddenly he shouted:

  ‘End this stupid adventure now! Get our troops out, get our boys home.’

  The hall erupted. About a third of the audience rose to give him a standing ovation. Most of the cameras swivelled to follow him back to his seat, but others stayed to catch the expressions of Richard and the Prime Minister. Both were experienced enough to stay impassive, the Prime Minister smiling slightly, Richard scribbling.

  Richard hardly listened to the last 10 minutes of the debate. He was conscious that the Area Chairman had let it run away with itself, that the speakers for the motion were heckled, and those against applauded however feeble their performance. The PM sent him another note: ‘Watch the hall carefully. Most are waiting. You have it in your hands. Whatever happens, don’t hold back.’

  It was the longest letter he had ever had from the laconic old man. He hardly needed it for by now he was angry. Angry with Southwood for speaking out of prejudice rather than experience. Angry with the Party for the crude anti-foreign mood in the hall. Angry with his colleagues and himself for letting TON get out of hand.

  The debate ended. As the Area Chairman, with a flow of compliments, introduced Richard to reply, six TON banners were unfurled in different parts of the hall. All carried the device of the heavy black weight descending on the cringing figures of Richard and the Prime Minister, and the slogan ‘Troops Out Now!’ The cameras swivelled again and there were fresh cheers. The desk in front of Richard rose as he rose so that his text was at the right level for his height. The two glass panels of the autocue were bare. He knew how he must start.

  ‘We can hardly proceed, Mr Chairman, until those banners are removed.’

  And so they were, after a minute or two of fluster and booing. He had momentarily gained the initiative.

  As was the custom, he introduced by name each of the junior Defence Ministers sitting on his right beyond the Prime Minister. This was received without applause, but without interruption, though he caught one shout of ‘Get on with it!’ Then he told them that he was putting aside two-thirds of his speech. He was not going to attack the Labour Party, because the argument within the Conservative Party was far more significant. He was not going to talk about expenditure and cost effectiveness, because all the money, all the efficiency, in the world could not make up for a lack of will. And lack of will was what he sensed in the hall that morning, at the heart of the Party which through the years had shown that will at its strongest.

  It was too easy to sneer at critics. The French had more troops in Caucasia than we had and had suffered more casualties. The Germans had changed their constitution so that they could contribute. Were we losing our will just as they were regaining theirs? He did not believe it. He believed that the heart of the Party and the heart of the country were sound. We had not lost our courage, we were still prepared to work for a more decent world.

  He gambled by pausing for applause, having sensed that the audience was listening intensely and without hostility. It came slowly, led from the platform, but gained strength un
til most were clapping.

  ‘Troops out,’ came a counter-cry, from the right, and a final TON banner was unfurled for an instant. But Richard was sufficiently encouraged. He took them calmly through the argument, answering Mrs Whitlock. She was quite right to ask her question. Her son was not directly defending the soil of England, or our empire overseas, or our trade routes, as his forefathers had done through the centuries. He was doing something new, something in a way more daring and ambitious. He was joining with others in an attempt to deal with wickedness and cruelty, to establish decency and order, not just where the Union Jack flew but throughout the world.

  He gathered his voice for a climax, his mind at the same time mining and marshalling the words, not from the text, but from his own emotion and experience. The question was whether Britain should join in the attempt or leave it to others. Were we interested in the new chapter, or simply in thumbing endlessly through the old chapters, constantly recalling the past while others shaped the future? He had not become the Secretary of State for Defence in order to serve as curator of a military museum.

  A big crash of applause. Then one sentence leaped forward from another. The audience was changing in front of him, some now actively whooping him on, the hostile element silenced. He wondered whether to criticise Lord Southwood personally, but decided this would not work, and was not necessary. Instead he changed gear, slipped back into the persuasions already in his text, as practised that morning before the mirror. The grand moment was over. Rather than re-create excitement, he coasted on to the end in conversational tone, recalling recent visits to the Falkland Islands and to Northern Iraq, calling on the Conference to show its support for our Armed Forces, not just in an annual vote but throughout the year.

  So he ended quietly, but had kept alive the memory of the flashpoint of the debate 10 minutes before. The Prime Minister did not immediately rise to his feet, but let the hall take the lead. At least three-quarters rose to applaud, including a good segment who had earlier applauded Lord Southwood. The vote was four to one in favour of the motion and declared carried by an overwhelming majority