by James Philip
Oddly, it was only then that it occurred to Kershaw that the real reason his esteemed chief might have ducked out of the Prime Minister’s tour, was that he wanted to be at home, in Oxford, able to communicate – freely, without Prime Ministerial input – with the Americans…
If Ian Gow had noticed his colleague’s suddenly glazed look, he was far too polite to indicate as much.
“I’m sure the Prime Minister will take all considerations into account when she speaks to President Nixon, Tony.”
Kershaw gave up.
The other man was the Prime Minister’s faultlessly courteous, utterly implacable gatekeeper. He owned her diary, and the list of senior ministers who could circumvent Ian Gow and live to tell the tale, was perishingly short.
Tony Kershaw’s chief was on that list, as was Lady Patricia Harding-Grayson, as was First Secretary of State Peter Carington, the Prime Minister’s de facto deputy, and Philip De L’Isle, the Queen – despite everything England was still England – Airey Neave, the nation’s security czar, the three Chiefs of Staff, all of whom were her men with the possibly, very qualified exception of the Chief of the Defence Staff, Michael Carver, who was nobody’s man, Nicholas Ridley, the MP for Tewksbury, her speechwriter, Education Secretary and would be biographer and amanuensis, Miriam Prior-Bramall, the Prime Minister’s friend charged with the London Garden Project, otherwise since the death of Frank Waters, the trusted circle around the Lady had severely constricted. Once upon a time she would never have bypassed a minister, these days she often spoke directly to an ambassador abroad; the FCO only learning of the conversation and the specifics of the discussion later when the diplomat concerned submitted a conflicted or confused note to Kershaw’s Private Office.
Granted, Nicko Henderson in Washington had become a firm personal friend during Peter and Marija Christopher’s time in America, and likewise, there were officers and senior civil servants with whom Margaret Thatcher had always got on well, and given how badly poor old Frank’s death had hit her, nobody begrudged her the comfort they had been able to give her last year, and going forward.
However, when it got to the stage where people in the FCO were openly taking bets on, and investing an untoward deal of hope, upon whether Her Majesty’s Governor General of Australia and his Maltese wife could – possibly – ‘snap’ the Lady out of the funk she had been in the last year, and hopefully ‘take the edge’ off her more extreme ‘overseas misconceptions’ then any fool could tell, things were getting a little out of hand. And now that ‘hope’ looked like it had evaporated completely.
Problematically, the long-anticipated Antipodean leg of the Prime Minister’s participation in this mission – to which she had been looking forward to - had been cancelled two weeks ago, presciently it seemed, given the turn of recent world events. Now she was flying on, via Singapore, Manila, Hawaii and San Francisco, to Washington to ‘consult’ with President Nixon. Which was why, given the recent events in the Tsushima Strait, Tony Kershaw badly wanted to get to DC before her.
‘Tom, it’s like Suez all over again,’ he had protested to his chief on a very crackly long-distance connection.
Tom Harding-Grayson had not been at all well lately. If the Prime Minister had Ian Gow at her gate; Tom had his dear wife, Pat, who could be equally – charmingly - obstructive when necessary.
‘Yes,’ his friend had conceded, ‘I can see why people might think that way but no, this isn’t like that. And besides, I was drinking very heavily in those days and Pat had just left me for the second or third time. We won’t let our Prime Minister put her foot in it this time. At least, not in the ham-fisted way Anthony Eden did it back in 1956.’
Why do I not find that overly reassuring?
Tony Kershaw blinked back to the here and the now.
“Look,” Ian Gow was saying, smiling sympathetically, his tone emollient. “I’d have thought the PM’s reaction to President Nixon’s adventurism in the Sea of Japan and the China Seas should serve as an object lesson to you denizens of the FCO. The SAPG is exactly what it purports to do, it is a ‘planning group’ which we all hope will placate the hotheads in the Senior Service, send our Argentine ‘friends’ a jolly unsettling message and speed everybody’s progress towards the nearest appropriate bilateral or multi-national negotiating table. We will be suggesting Malta, again, as a venue, but if the South Americans propose somewhere else, we’ll obfuscate for a decent period and then oblige them. One must show willing, don’t you think? You Foreign Office wallahs worry far too much about these things, Tony.”
Everybody regarded Ian Gow as such a fine, solid, loyal fellow that it was almost impossible to lose one’s rag with him. The other thing everybody agreed about him was that he must have the patience of a saint, and the constitution of an ox to keep up with the Lady!
Indira Gandhi had arranged for the Prime Minister, the twins and most of her travelling entourage to tour the old capital of the Raj that day. Meanwhile, Sir Varyl Begg, the First Sea Lord and his party was meeting the Indian Defence Minister and the heads of the Armed Services, talking co-operation, inter-operability and weapon and technology transfers.
Meanwhile, Anthony Kershaw was resigned to having to spend the rest of his day ‘cleaning up’ the Prime Minister’s diplomatic mess in India, and soothing bruised sensibilities.
The Prime Minister had waited far too long to visit India. Had she been among the first world leaders to fly into Delhi to congratulate Indira Gandhi on her accession to the premiership of the world’s most populous democracy, every conversation with her counterpart, and by her staffers with their counterparts would have been so much easier, and likely, hugely productive, not simply spent repairing the damage, or in wasting time having to clarify so much which had been lost in translation between two ancient and proud countries that by rights, ought to be natural global allies.
In the circumstances it was small comfort to look forward to his accompanying the First Sea Lord to Australia, there to finalise the transitional arrangements for the stepping down of the last non-native Governor General, and the installation by her Majesty – probably in the second week of September now – of the first truly native ‘Australian’ incumbent in Government House at Yarralumla.
However, even in this mission, Kershaw was a little vexed by the First Sea Lord’s vagueness in the important matter of Sir Peter Christopher’s future employment. The man clearly had the Prime Minister’s ear, and he was an obvious ambassadorial candidate for the first high profile vacancy which arose.
Personally, Tony Kershaw thought the man would be a perfect replacement for a certain Sir Edward Dillon Lott du Cann, the FCO’s seemingly immovable man in Pretoria. Unfortunately, notwithstanding du Cann got on famously with all those dreadful Boers down there, there were also a lot of complaints that he got on even better with the local magnets and seemed, unashamedly, to be a not so secret supporter, of the campaign of US and Anglo-African diamond and gold mining consortia to strong-arm the Botswanan Government of Sir Seretse Khama, into ceding a large part of his impoverished country’s mineral rights to the South African regime. HMG need its own man in Pretoria, not De Beers’ man! It really was, not good enough! Complicating the issue, du Cann, for reasons nobody at the FCO could ever divine, was extraordinarily well thought of by a certain sectarian faction within the National Conservative Party; and he and his wife were invariably treated like prodigals returning whenever they spent a week or two on leave in England.
The High Commissionership in Ottawa was another possible posting for Sir Peter; admittedly, a potentially less challenging post than that in South Africa but nonetheless, it was a very important embassy.
Maddeningly, all the First Sea Lord would say on the subject was that ‘undertakings were given to Sir Peter when he accepted the Governor Generalship, and his future employment has already been a matter of discussion at the highest level by the Navy Board.’
Chapter 43
Wednesday 19th June, 1968
&n
bsp; The West Wing, Washington DC
All the networks were playing the same soundbites – the second tortuously elongated for all those gathered now in the Oval Office - captured on the steps of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue that morning when Prime Minister Thatcher had paused before disappearing into her car, after her acrimonious meeting with the President.
And gone disastrously off script!
If only she had visited the White House yesterday: the taint of tear gas blowing down Pennsylvania Avenue would have made her think twice about lingering overlong on the steps before she got into her car.
With Richard Nixon and his wife smiling, waving farewell, the Angry Widow had responded to the barrage of questions shouted at her from behind the lines of cops and Secret Servicemen thus: ‘No, of course we do not agree about everything!’
This had merely intensified the catcalling questions.
The Lady had hesitated, then stood tall.
‘No, Her Majesty’s Government will have nothing to do with the war in the Western Pacific. My view continues to be that there is everything to be gained and nothing to be lost talking to Chairman Lin Biao and the legitimated government of the People’s Republic of China, which is why,” and this was the real kick in the guts, “we have invited Special High Plenipotentiary Ambassador Zhou Enlai to Hong Kong for urgent discussions. Secretary of State Anthony Kershaw and his team have arrived in Hong Kong to lay the ground work for such a meeting and Lord Harding-Grayson is, as I speak, in the air en route to the Far East. I am disappointed that President Nixon feels unable, at this time, to avail himself of this opportunity to declare a general ceasefire and to give peace a chance!’
The President was back at his desk in the Oval Office, his head in his hands.
It was as if the sum of all his woes had fallen on him from a very great height, all at once.
One after another, the punches had rained down in the last few days.
In no particular order: for starters it was clear that that goddam B movie cowboy Ronald Reagan was going to be a thorn in his side all the way to the National Convention.
Then, US Supreme Justice Earl Warren had confirmed over the weekend that his court would hear Presidential Counsel’s plea against the lower court ruling, that executive privilege did not extend to White House Chief of Staff Bob Haldeman, and by implication, to any other sub-cabinet member of the Administration, or to any of the tapes recorded by the voice-activated system installed in the Oval Office around or shortly after inauguration day 1965. It was possible that this, by itself, would see not just Haldeman but a score of other loyal ‘insiders’ facing felony indictments, and serious jail time in the run up to election day in November.
Further, new subpoenas had been issued demanding that either the tapes produced by the recording equipment, or the typed transcripts made contemporaneously right up until the decommissioning of the system at the end of the war in the Midwest, be released to Congress or directly to the Office of the Special Counsel, His Honour Judge Earl Burger, appointed by the House, to investigate the bugging of Doctor King and his white mistress, Miranda Sullivan at the Warwick Hotel in late 1964.
It was ridiculous, that had all been the work of that old faggot J. Edgar Hoover and his fucking cheapskate FBI contractors!
At the time nobody had any idea any of those ‘plumbers’ were old frat buddies of Nixon’s campaign press spokesman, Ronald Ziegler, later the White House Press Secretary and more recently, one of the first Presidential Staffers to be surrendered to the wolves.
Hoover had warned that if the truth about the Warwick Hotel operation ever came out it would open a can of worms the new Administration did not want opened up. Like for example, the true extent of Operation Chaos, and the co-operation of the FBI and its proxies in bugging Nixon’s GOP opponents in the latter stages of the race for the Republican nomination in 1964. Nobody had wanted any of that to ever leak into the public domain, Hoover had suggested and at the time, and it had seemed easier to go along with the old monster than to make waves. And besides, Hoover had assured the then president-elect that he had things under control and that the Warwick Hotel thing would go away of its own accord, sooner rather than later…
And if it did not, then he and the FBI – and when the incoming Administration replaced John McCone as Director of Central Intelligence at Langley with its own man – the CIA too, would row in behind the Administration and protect it from all evil.
Anyway, the thinking went, when he was President, Nixon could pardon anybody who fell through the net into the prosecutors’ hands.
Unfortunately, like a lot of other things, very little of that had gone to plan in the last three-and-a-half years!
Pardoning any of his people who got convicted had only been an option until Ronald Reagan, as well as McGovern, Walter Brenckmann and the self-appointed chief bigot-mouthpiece of the old South, George Wallace had all said they would set the dogs on anybody involved in the Warwick House Scandal and the other cover-ups, the unconstitutional aberrations of Operation Chaos and the innumerable subsequent related miscellaneous associated malfeasances committed during the cover up, and the Administration’s choreography of the obstruction of the simultaneous Department of Justice and Congressional investigations. Heck, it had got so twisted that even Nixon’s previously staunchest allies in Congress were looking into the affairs of the President’s brother Donald’s property dealings, his connections with the Hughes Corporation, the West Coast mob, the undeclared personal loans that had been paid into the failed Nixon for Governor campaign in 1962, and his string of failed businesses in California.
It just got worse; there were actually some members of the GOP on the Hill, mostly those who suddenly, and very unexpectedly, found themselves looking at close fights with the Democrats in November, who were starting to talk about co-operating across the floors of both Houses in a spirit of ‘renewed bipartisanship’ on the question of putting forward a motion for impeachment!
The President had never thought that would come to anything, not on the Hill. The traitors did not have the votes on the floor of either Congress or the Senate but the media, having caught the scent of blood in the political waters, was going to have a field day when that talk inevitably turned to something that looked like action that autumn.
Yesterday, the chanting crowds and the violence stirred up by a hard core of agitators had surged up and down Pennsylvania Avenue long into the dusk, and virtually imprisoned the President and the First Lady in the White House, with every window shut to keep the tang of gas out of the building.
Prime Minister Thatcher’s entourage had had to be driven around streets still littered with debris and detritus, past the burned out shells of overturned trucks and Washington PD cruisers.
Shortly before the Angry Widow had arrived at the White House that morning the Chief of Naval Operations, representing the Joint Chiefs in the absence of ‘Westy’ Westmoreland in Japan - trying to keep the lid on the backsliding of the governments in Tokyo and Manila - had briefed him on the progress of Operation Flaming Dart, the second escalatory phase of the Rolling Thunder operations Nixon had ordered his military to execute, a little less than forty-eight hours after the Battle of the Tsushima Strait had kicked over the Far Eastern geopolitical chess board.
It seemed the Navy had been unable to get the USS Ranger into dry dock; they had beached her in a sheltered cove within sight of the Sasebo Naval Base to stop her capsizing in the main channel. Naval surveyors had boarded the wreck and first impressions were that the great ship was going to be a constructive total loss. The Roanoke, having stayed afloat after the crew were ordered off, had now been sunk by torpedoes fired by the USS Tinosa (SSN-606), some miles south of Tsushima.
The casualty lists just kept growing: two-thousand-eight-hundred and ninety-seven dead and missing, or presumed killed in action; six-hundred and forty-four seriously wounded and presently hospitalised in Japan, or being cared for in the sick bays of less damaged, or undamaged ships, many
of the latter men too badly injured to be safely moved ashore at this time. Additionally, there were over five hundred ‘walking wounded’ on board the surviving ships of the Ranger task force.
‘Independence and Shangri La have been tasked to operate in Japanese waters east of the Home Islands to guarantee the security of our Japanese allies,” Admiral Thomas Hinman had reported stoically. ‘This leaves a significant capability gap until such time as the USS Coral Sea, which will leave Pearl Harbour this day, and the USS Constellation which is readying for departure at San Diego can reinforce CINCPAC’s carrier strike forces in the Western Pacific. The Saratoga will now not be available for deployment in theatre for at least another sixty days…’
The President had lost his temper and asked Hinman: ‘What the fuck went wrong?’
‘I don’t know, sir,’ Hinman had replied neutrally. ‘That is under investigation at this time. I have lodged my letter of resignation with the Secretary of the Navy, I serve at your pleasure, sir.’
This had left Richard Nixon brooding: why the fuck did I let those arseholes talk me out of bringing back Jack ‘Sea Power’ McCain?
That morning, McCain would have stood on the steps of the Pentagon, chewing a cigar spitting jovial defiance like a slightly friendlier, gruffly approachable reincarnation of that archetypal fighter old Bill ‘Bull’ Halsey!
That was a bad thought…
It reminded him of the fate of the modern USS Halsey (DLG-23), obliterated by a salvo of STYX missiles, her broken carcass now sitting on the bottom of the Tsushima Strait.
How the fuck had that happened?
What was the point of having the most powerful, technologically-enhanced navy on the planet if a few over-sized motor launches equipped with cheap and cheerful 1950s-type first generation ship-killers could so easily cause mayhem against a supposedly untouchable carrier strike group?
What was to stop the Chinese doing exactly the same thing to the Enterprise, the Independence and the Shangri-La?