Chris Mullin Was the Labour MP for Sunderland South from 1987 Until 2010
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Chris Mullin was the Labour MP for Sunderland South from 1987 until 2010. He was for four years chairman of the Home Affairs Select Committee and served as a minister in three departments. He is the author of three widely praised volumes of diaries, A View From the Foothills, Decline and Fall and A Walk-On Part, the memoir Hinterland and three novels, including A Very British Coup, which was turned into a BAFTA-winning television series. Praise for A Very British Coup ‘Preposterous’ Daily Telegraph ‘Rattling good’ London Review of Books ‘A curious Molotov cocktail’ Financial Times ‘A spiffing read’ People Praise for A Walk-On Part 1994–1999 ‘Perceptive, witty, humane, indignant and self-lacerating by turn, Mullin has the qualities of all enduring diarists’ Guardian ‘His acerbic wit, independence of mind and self-deprecating honesty have proved a refreshing antidote to the spin that marked life under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown’ Financial Times ‘He will join Alan Clark in the pantheon of truly great diarists’ Matthew d’Ancona, Evening Standard ‘A treat to be savoured. What’s more they are written by a creature that the public does not believe exists: an honest politician at Westminster’ Oona King, The Times Very British Coup.indd 1 02/11/2017 17:46 Praise for A View From the Foothills 1999–2005 ‘By far the most revealing and entertaining [diary] to have emerged from the now-dying era of New Labour… a diary that tells us as much about British politics as that great television series Yes Minister’ Economist ‘Every once in a while, political diaries emerge that are so irrever ent and insightful that they are destined to be handed out as leaving presents in offices in Whitehall for years to come. A View from the Foothills is one such book’ David Cameron, Observer Books of the Year ‘A political diary that stands with the best, alongside Alan Clark, and Chips Channon’ Joan Bakewell Praise for Decline & Fall 2005–2010 ‘The most enjoyable and insightful of all the political diaries I have read’ Jonathan Dimbleby ‘Mullin’s supreme virtues are an eye for the absurd and an incor- ruptible independence of outlook… an indispensible hangover cure for anyone who has ever been drunk on the idea of power’ Guardian ‘Mullin’s name will live in these diaries when the great host of New Labour careerists has been cast into oblivion’ Andrew Gimson, Daily Telegraph Very British Coup.indd 2 02/11/2017 17:46 Very British Coup.indd 3 02/11/2017 17:46 First published by Hodder & Stoughton 1982 Coronet edition 1983 Corgi edition 1988 Arrow edition 1991 Politicos edition 2001 Politicos (Methuen) edition 2006 A complete catalogue record for this book can be obtained from the British Library on request The right of Chris Mullin to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 Copyright © 1982 Chris Mullin Introduction copyright © 2017 Chris Mullin All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. First published in this edition in 2012 by Serpent’s Tail, an imprint of Profile Books Ltd 3 Holford Yard Bevin Way London wc1x 9hd www.serpentstail.com ISBN 978 1 84668 740 2 elSBN 978 1 84765 227 0 Typeset in Garamond by MacGuru Ltd Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon cr0 4yy 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Cert no. TT-COC-002227 Very British Coup.indd 4 02/11/2017 17:46 Introduction to the 2017 edition On the very day of the recent general election, 8 June 2017, an article appeared on the front page of the Daily Telegraph warning that the election of Jeremy Corbyn would be ‘profoundly dangerous for the nation’. The article went on, ‘… in the past MI5 would actively have investigated him. He cannot be trusted with the fate of Britain.’ The author was Sir Richard Dearlove, a former head of MI6 and one of the men who got us into the Iraq catastrophe, an issue upon which Corbyn’s judgement proved superior to his. Until I read this I had thought that the days when the intelligence and security ser- vices interfered in domestic politics were long over. Now I am not so sure. A Very British Coup was conceived nearly forty years ago in a political climate which, until recently at least, was very different to that which prevails today. In October 1980 I was on a train returning from the Labour party conference in Blackpool with Stuart Holland, who had recently been elected MP for Lambeth Vauxhall, and Tony Banks and Peter Hain who later became MPs. We were discussing how the Establishment would react to the election of a left-wing Labour government. In those far-off days Mrs Thatcher was in office, but had yet to consolidate her grip on power. Labour was high in the opinion polls and there was a real possibility that, come the election, the Labour Party would be led by Tony Benn. The right-wing press was working itself into a frenzy at the prospect. ‘No longer if, but when’ screamed a headline in one of the Harmsworth newspapers over a full-page picture of Mr Benn. To cap it all, the announce- ment that the Americans were planning to install cruise missiles in v Very British Coup.indd 5 02/11/2017 17:46 their British bases had given new life to the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. ‘A good subject for a novel’, remarked one of my companions, prompting Peter Hain to reveal that he and a friend were in the process of circulating to publishers an outline for exactly such a novel. Stuart Holland went one better. He revealed that, by the swim- ming pool in Greece that summer, he had tapped out the opening chapters of a novel on the same subject. In the event it was I who got there first, but it was a close shave. Years later Peter Hardiman Scott, a former chief political correspondent of the BBC, told me that when A Very British Coup was published he was two-thirds of the way through writing a novel based on a similar premise. His was so uncannily similar that, after consulting his publisher, he decided to abandon his effort. How lucky I was. It could have so easily been I who was pipped at the post. A Very British Coup was published in the autumn of 1982 and attracted a mild flurry of interest. At the time I was working at the left-wing weekly, Tribune, and we sold the book through an adver- tisement in the back of the paper. The first order came from the American embassy and this was followed in due course with an invitation to lunch with the Minister, the most important official after the ambassador. The novel was helpfully denounced in the cor- respondence columns of The Times and as a result sales at the top people’s bookshop, Hatchards in Piccadilly, briefly exceeded those at the left-wing bookshop, Collets (since that time I have realised that, when it comes to selling books, a good, high-profile denunciation is worth half a dozen friendly reviews). The first hardback print sold quickly and a modest paperback print followed. Thereafter it might have died but for events conspiring to make it topical. In August 1985 the Observer revealed that an MI5 official, Briga- dier Ronnie Stoneham, was to be found in room 105 at Broadcasting House, stamping upturned Christmas trees on the personnel files of BBC employees he deemed ideologically unsound. Students of A Very British Coup will know that my head of MI5, Sir Peregrine vi Very British Coup.indd 6 02/11/2017 17:46 Craddock, was also vetting BBC employees. What’s more, he had a spy on the general council of CND and in due course an MI5 defec- tor revealed that there had indeed been such a spy. His name was Harry Newton. Finally in 1987 Peter Wright, a retired MI5 officer, caused a sensation with his claim that a group of MI5 officers, of whom he was one, had plotted to undermine the government of Harold Wilson. Suddenly the possibility that the British Establish- ment might conspire with its friends across the Atlantic could no longer be dismissed as left-wing paranoia. In 1988 Channel Four broadcast a television series based on the novel in which my prime minister was wonderfully brought to life by that great actor, Ray McAnally, and went on to win several BAFTAs and an Emmy. Thereafter interest waned. Following the scandals of the eighties, MI5 was cleaned up (‘we’ve cleared out a lot of deadwood’, a Tory Home Secretary once whispered to me) and ceased messing about in British politics. Under Tony Blair Labour returned resolutely to the centre ground of British politics and was warmly embraced by the Establishment, or most of it. With the rise of Jeremy Corbyn A Very British Coup is suddenly topical again. At first the prospect of a Corbyn premiership seemed so remote that the idea that he might be the victim of an estab- lishment coup seemed no more than a delicious fantasy. With the recent general election result, however, what was once unimaginable is now a distinct possibility. He could well be prime minister by the turn of the decade.