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 irreverent 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

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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

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

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 establishment 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. Even so, my instinct remains that, despite a lot of huffing and puffing, the-powers-that-be will let events take their course. But you never know. With Trump in the White House, much of our allegedly free press controlled by demented ideologues and idiots like Richard Dearlove stirring the pot, we can never say never. Enjoy. Chris Mullin August 2017

vii

Very British Coup.indd 7 02/11/2017 17:46 ‘I could easily imagine myself being tempted into a treasonable dis- position under a Labour Government dominated by the Marxist Left … Suppose, in these circumstances, one were approached by an official of the C.I.A. who sought to enlist one’s help in a project designed to ‘destabilise’ this far left government. Would it necessarily be right to refuse co-operation? … Coming from the representative of any other foreign power such a request would not be entertained by me for a moment. But the United States is not just any other foreign power. I am and always have been passionately pro-Ameri- can, in all sense of believing that the United States has long been the protector of all the values which I hold most dear. To that extent my attitude to the United States has long been that of a potential fellow traveller.’ When Treason Can Be Right by Peregrine Worsthorne, Sunday Telegraph, November 4, 1979

Very British Coup.indd 11 02/11/2017 17:46 Chapter 1

The news that Harry Perkins was to become Prime Minister went down very badly in the Athenaeum. “Man’s a Communist,” exploded Sir Arthur Furnival, a retired banker. “Might as well all emigrate,” said George Fison, who owned a chain of newspapers. “My God,” ventured the Bishop of Bath and Wells, raising his eyes heavenward. As the Press Association tape machine in the lobby began to punch out the first results of the March 1989 general election it became clear that something had gone horribly wrong with the almost unanimous prediction of the pundits that the Tory-Social Democrat Government of National Unity would be re-elected. Kingston-on-Thames was the first to declare. The sharp young merchant banker who had represented the seat saw his majority evaporate. “A mistake,” said Furnival when he had recovered his composure. “Bloody better be,” grunted Fison. No one could remember the last time a seat in the Surrey stockbroker belt had returned a Labour Member of Parliament. The machine was now giving details of a computer forecast to the effect that if the Kingston swing was reproduced across the country Labour would have a majority of around 200 seats. “To hell with computers,” muttered Furnival. Fison took a sip of whisky. The Bishop dabbed his forehead with a purple handkerchief. There were those who had argued that computers had rendered

Very British Coup.indd 1 02/11/2017 17:46 elections obsolete. That very morning a professor from Imperial College had been on the radio describing how he had fed the entire electoral register into a computer which had then selected a perfect cross-section of the population. He had polled the sample and con- fidently predicted that his results would be accurate to within one quarter of one per cent. Harry Perkins was about to put the learned professor and his computer out of business. “Freak result. Means nothing.” The party around the tape machine had been joined by a man in a double-breasted Savile Row suit. Sir Peregrine Craddock’s Who’s Who entry said simply that he was ‘attached to the Ministry of Defence’, but those who know about these things said he was the Director General of DI5. For the next few minutes Sir Peregrine’s optimism seemed jus- tified. The National Unity candidate held Oxford with a majority only slightly reduced. Braintree stayed Tory. So did Colchester and Finchley. Then at about quarter to midnight came the first results from the North. Salford, Grimsby, York and Leeds East were all held by Labour with doubled, even trebled, majorities. It was at this point that Arthur Furnival disappeared to ring his stockbroker. At a few minutes to midnight Worcester went Labour, bringing down the first of six Cabinet ministers who would lose their seats that evening. Sir Peregrine took a sip of his orange juice. George Fison rushed back to Fleet Street to dictate an editorial for the late edition of his newspaper. He was last heard shouting that the British people had taken leave of their senses. By 12.30 it was clear that the National Unity bubble had burst. South of the Wash the Social Democrats were being annihilated. Richmond, Putney, Hemel Hempstead and Cambridge all fell to Labour in quick succession. North of the Wash only the seaside resorts and the hunting country remained in Tory hands. Like so much else associated with the twentieth century, television sets were banished from the Athenaeum. But in view of the impend- ing national disaster a delegation from the crowd of elderly gentlemen now gathered around the tape machine had been despatched in

Very British Coup.indd 2 02/11/2017 17:46 search of the club secretary, Captain Giles Fairfax. The captain said he would see what he could do and within ten minutes reappeared carrying a small portable set borrowed from the caretaker’s flat. It was now installed beside the tape machine on a table taken from the morning room. “AH very irregular,” said the captain with an apolo- getic glance at the portrait of Charles Darwin which overlooked the scene. Nevertheless, he stayed to watch. There was a groan as the television screen immediately focused upon the beaming face of Harry Perkins who was awaiting the decla- ration of his own result in Sheffield town hall. Perkins, a former steel worker, was a stocky, robust man with a twinkle in his eye and dark, bushy brows. His greying hair was long at the sides and combed over his head to hide his balding crown. His face was deeply lined and rugged, burnished by the great heat of a Sheffield steel mill in the days when Britain had been a steel-producing nation. He was smartly dressed, but nothing flashy. A tweed sports jacket, a silk tie, and on this occasion a red carnation in his buttonhole. Harry Perkins was going to be quite different from any Prime Minister Britain had ever seen. The programme on which he was in the process of being swept to power was quite different from any ever presented to the British electorate. On the television screen a commentator was now reciting the highlights. Withdrawal from the Common Market. Import con- trols. Public control of finance, including the pension and insurance funds. Abolition of the House of Lords, the honours list and the public schools. The manifesto also called for ‘consideration to be given’ to withdrawal from NATO as a first step towards Britain becoming a neutral country. An end to Britain’s ‘so-called nuclear deterrent’ and the withdrawal of all foreign bases from British soil. There was even a paragraph about ‘dismantling the newspaper monopolies’. For weeks all opinion polls and all responsible commentators had been predicting that there was no hope of the Labour Party being elected on a programme like this. Ever since Harry Perkins had been

Very British Coup.indd 3 02/11/2017 17:46 chosen to lead Labour at a tumultuous party conference two years earlier, the popular press had been saying that this proved what they had always argued – namely that the Labour Party was in the grip of a Marxist conspiracy. Privately the rulers of the great corporations had been gleeful, for they had convinced themselves that the British people were basically moderate and that, however rough the going got, they would never elect a Labour government headed by the likes of Harry Perkins. Picture, therefore, the dismay that swept the lobby of the Ath- enaeum as the television showed Perkins coming to the rostrum in Sheffield town hall to acknowledge not only his own re-election with a record majority, but to claim victory on behalf of his party. “Comrades,” intoned brother Perkins. “Comrades, my foot.” Sir Arthur Furnival was apoplectic. “Told you the man’s a Communist.” “Comrades,” repeated Perkins, as though he could hear the heck- ling coming from the Athenaeum. He then delivered himself of a dignified little speech thanking the returning officer, those who counted the ballot papers, party workers and all the other people it is customary for a victorious candidate to thank. Then he got down to business. “Comrades, it is now clear that by tomorrow morning we shall form the government of this country.” He paused to let the cheering subside. “We should not be under any illusion about the task ahead of us. We inherit an industrial desert. We inherit a country which for ten years has been systemati- cally pillaged and looted by every species of pirate, spiv and con man known to civilisation.” “Scandalous,” muttered Furnival. “Disgraceful carry-on,” said the Bishop of Bath and Wells. “All we have won tonight is political power,” continued Perkins. “By itself that is not enough. Real power in this country resides not in Parliament, but in the boardrooms of the City of London; in the darkest recesses of the Whitehall bureaucracy and in the editorial

Very British Coup.indd 4 02/11/2017 17:46 offices of our national newspapers. To win real power we have first to break the stranglehold exerted by the ruling class on all the important institutions of our country.” “Treason,” whispered Furnival, “that’s what I call it, downright treason.” Perkins paused and then, speaking slowly and looking directly into a television camera, straight into the eyes of Sir Arthur Furnival, he said, “Our ruling class have never been up for re-election before, but I hereby serve notice on behalf of the people of Great Britain that their time has come.” Such language had never been heard from a British Prime Min- ister before. Although received with rapture in Sheffield town hall, Harry Perkins’ words burst upon the Athenaeum as though the end of the world was at hand. Which, in a manner of speaking, it was. “South of France for me, old boy,” said Furnival. “Certainly looks like the game’s up, Arthur,” murmured the Bishop, whose faith in divine providence had temporarily deserted him. From nearby Trafalgar Square came a burst of firecrackers as crowds of young people celebrated the election result.

By 1.15 the scale of the disaster was apparent to everyone. The television commentators were now citing a computer prediction that Perkins would have an overall majority of around ninety seats. Grad- ually the cluster of eminent gentlemen around the television dwin- dled. Some donned overcoats and slipped miserably out into the night. One ancient member dozed on a Chesterfield in the lobby, his head resting on the marble wall, pince-nez dangling from a cord around his neck. Not everyone went home. Some drifted upstairs to the huge drawing room and sat in urgent little groups discussing what life in Harry Perkins’ Britain held in store for them. “Early days yet.” The speaker was Sir Lucas Lawrence, former

Very British Coup.indd 5 02/11/2017 17:46 permanent secretary at the Department of Industry. He was standing at the end of the drawing room overlooking Carlton House Terrace. On the mantelpiece behind him were white marble busts of Alexander Pope and Edmund Burke. Below in the grate a pinewood fire crackled. “These Labour chappies are all the same,” Sir Lucas went on. “Always shooting their mouths off in opposition, but once they’ve got their backsides in the limousines they’re as meek as lambs.” After retiring from the Department of Industry Sir Lucas had joined the board of an arms company. There had been one or two raised eye- brows at the time. The odd parliamentary question drawing atten- tion to his dealings with the same company in his capacity as a public servant, but it had all blown over and now Sir Lucas was chairman of the board, his civil service pension intact. “Pretty damn serious if you ask me,” boomed Lord Kildare, a portly landowner with a castle and 30,000 acres in Scotland and a town house in Chelsea. He was standing facing the huge mirror above the fireplace. His considerable bulk rested on the back of one of the green leather armchairs. The mirror afforded a panoramic view of the vast room behind him. In the distance he could see stew- ards in red jackets and black bow ties silently commuting between the bar and the little groups of elderly gentlemen scattered around the room. He shook his head sadly. A way of life was coming to an end. “Pretty damn serious,” repeated Kildare gazing absently into the fire. Sir Lucas was not convinced. He drew deeply on his Havana and exhaled vigorously. “Mark my words,” he said firmly, “once the boys in the private office get to work, these Labour chappies won’t know what’s hit them.” Kildare side-stepped to avoid being engulfed by an oncoming cloud of cigar smoke. “All very well,” he said miserably, “but I’ve never heard any Prime Minister talk like that fellow Perkins tonight.” Sir Lucas was unruffled. “You forget,” he said. “I’ve seen all this at close quarters. Mind you, I am not saying it was plain sailing. One

Very British Coup.indd 6 02/11/2017 17:46 or two Labour ministers always prove difficult, but in the end we sorted them out.” “How?” asked Kildare, who already had visions of a life in exile. He pictured himself in a white suit and a straw hat sitting alone on the verandah of the Bermuda Cricket Club, a daiquiri in one hand and an out of date airmail edition of the Daily Telegraph spread on the table before him. No, thought Kildare, give me the grouse moors any day. Sir Lucas adopted a confidential tone, “I’ll tell you how.” He lowered his voice and touched Kildare reassuringly on the forearm. “We turned the whole damn machine loose on them. More than any man can stand. Whenever my minister insisted on giving money away to co-operatives or any of his other harebrained schemes, I would give old Handley in the Cabinet Office a ring and put him in the picture. He’d get his people to produce a brief opposing ours which would be distributed to all other departments. If necessary he’d follow up with telephone calls to sympathetic ministers and when the matter came up at Cabinet my minister would find himself totally outgunned. After a while he got the message and resigned. Just as well, otherwise we’d have had him reshuffled.” “All very well, Lucas, when you’ve only got one or two extremists in the government, but what if you’ve got a whole Cabinet full of them?” Kildare ran a finger round the rim of his whisky glass. Sir Lucas smiled wanly. “In that case something bigger’s called for.” He glanced over his shoulder as though afraid of eavesdroppers. “One or two runs on sterling. A whopping balance of payments crisis. Only takes a few telephone calls to lay this sort of thing on. If you’d seen, as I have, the Prime Minister’s face at 2.30 in the morning when sterling’s going down the drain at a million pounds a minute, you’d soon realise how right I am.” “If you ask me, we’ve got a job of work on our hands preserv- ing civilised values.” The newcomer to the conversation was Sir Per- egrine Craddock, who had been quietly sipping his orange juice on the fringe of the gathering. Speaking as though he was dictating a top secret memorandum, Sir Peregrine continued, “Very serious

Very British Coup.indd 7 02/11/2017 17:46 situation. Whole country crawling with extremists. Everything we stand for threatened. Fight back essential.” With that he placed his glass, still half full of orange juice, on the mantelpiece, turned on his heel and strode out of the drawing room. The lobby was empty now except for the member with the pince-nez who was still dozing. It was silent too, apart from the sporadic patter of the tape machine. Sir Peregrine put on his hat and coat, paused to peer at the latest offerings from the Press Association and walked out into the night. It was exactly 2 am on Harry Perkins’ first day as Prime Minister.

Broadcasting House, the headquarters of the BBC, lies just north of Oxford Circus and about a mile from the Athenaeum. On general election nights it is the custom for the Director General to give a small drinks party for the governors, their spouses and a handful of senior executives. The party takes place in a sterile suite adjacent to the Director General’s office on the third floor of Broadcasting House, down the corridor from the special radio election unit. BBC governors are a small body of impartial men and women, whose job is to uphold the commitment to fairness and balance enshrined in the Corporation’s charter. Although BBC governors are supposed to reflect a wide cross-section of society, it is fair to say that the political views of Harry Perkins were not within the spectrum of opinion which they embraced. As the alcohol flowed and the scale of Perkins’ election victory was becoming clear, the wafer-thin veneer of impartiality which normally shrouds BBC pronouncements began to give way to something less dignified. “CAT-AST-ROPHIC.” The Belfast brogue of Sir Harry Boyd, who twenty years earlier had been the last Unionist Prime Minister of Northern Ireland, broke the gloomy silence around a television set which was delivering a computer prediction of a Labour majority of at least 100 seats. “Catastrophic,” repeated Sir Harry quietly, col- lapsing into an armchair.

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