‘Hinterland reveals Mullin to be as shrewd a political operator as they come, but fiercely principled and blessed with a rare insight, too. Parliament … must miss him.’ Observer ‘Another canny, deceptively casual Mullin performance … With luck, Labour’s current left-wing phase will produce a new Mullin or two before it is snuffed out.’ Guardian ‘Fluent, accessible, candid, likeable, literate and unpretentious … [Mullin has] decency, humanity and generosity in abundance.’ Irish Times ‘Chris Mullin has been, at different times in his life, a successful novelist, a fine investigative reporter and a hugely successful diarist. So it is hardly surprising that now he has come to write a memoir he would make a fine job of it … [He] can’t be categorised. He fits no predetermined political mould. His writing style is that of the wry observer, almost detached, even in observations of himself, with humour never far below the surface.’ House Magazine ‘Mullin takes us through a career rich in incident and experience … As this entertaining and revealing book shows, it was outside government that [he] pulled off his finest achievements.’Daily Express ‘He attractively underplays his heroism while being comically candid about his many failings … You can’t keep a good politician down, especially not one who writes as well as this.’ New Statesman ‘Moving … he never quite conforms to what people expect a left- leaning, middle-class journalist-politician to be.’ The Tablet Hinterland.indd 1 30/05/2017 17:23 praise for chris mullin’s DIARIES ‘Mullin will join Alan Clark in the pantheon of truly great diarists’ Matthew d’Ancona, Evening Standard ‘Mullin’s supreme virtues are an eye for the absurd, and an incorruptible independence of outlook … an indispensable hangover cure for anyone who has ever been drunk on the idea of power.’ Guardian ‘A treat to be savoured. What’s more, they are written by a creature the public does not believe exists: an honest politician.’ The Times ‘Destined to be handed out as leaving presents in offices across Whitehall for years to come.’ David Cameron 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 volumes of diaries, A View from the Foothills, Decline & Fall and A Walk-On Part, and the bestselling novel A Very British Coup, re-published by Serpent’s Tail, which was turned into an award- winning television series. Hinterland.indd 2 30/05/2017 17:23 HINTERLAND A Memoir Chris Mullin PROFILE BOOKS Hinterland.indd 3 30/05/2017 15:20 This paperback edition published in 2017 First published in Great Britain in 2016 by PROFILE BOOKS LTD 3 Holford Yard Bevin Way London WC1X 9HD www.profilebooks.com Copyright © Chris Mullin, 2016, 2017 1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2 Text design by Sue Lamble Typeset in Stone Serif by MacGuru Ltd Printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon CR0 4YY The moral right of the author has been asserted. All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the publisher of this book. A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN 978 1 78125 606 0 eISBN 978 1 78283 232 4 Cert no. TT-COC-002227 Hinterland.indd 4 30/05/2017 15:20 Hinterland.indd 6 30/05/2017 15:20 CONTENTS Preface // page ix Acknowledgements // page xiii CHAPTER ONE: Poor Sunderland // page 1 CHAPTER TWO: The Deep North // page 9 CHAPTER THREE: ‘Your mummy has gone to the angels’ // page 19 CHAPTER FOUR: ‘We will either make you or break you’ // page 27 CHAPTER FIVE: Something to Write Home About // page 39 CHAPTER SIX: Friends and Lovers // page 62 CHAPTER SEVEN: Good Morning, Vietnam // page 68 CHAPTER EIGHT: Seven Days in Tibet // page 90 CHAPTER NINE: My Brief Career as a Novelist // page 100 CHAPTER TEN: Moderates and Extremists // page 111 CHAPTER ELEVEN: A Little Local Difficulty // page 125 CHAPTER TWELVE: Deep North Two // page 138 CHAPTER THIRTEEN: Loony MP Backs Bomb Gang // page 153 Hinterland.indd 7 30/05/2017 15:20 CHAPTER FOURTEEN: The Path to Respectability // page 172 CHAPTER FIFTEEN: A Little Light Governing // page 196 EPILOGUE // page 221 Picture Credits // page 233 Index // page 235 Hinterland.indd 8 30/05/2017 15:20 Preface Every so often I am approached by a young person seeking advice about how to embark on a political career. My advice has always been the same: Go away and do something else first and then you will be more use if and when you are elected to Parliament. On reflection this may be wrong. The careers of many of today’s brightest and most suc- cessful politicians have followed an entirely different trajectory: uni- versity (usually Oxford), a job in the office of an MP or as a policy wonk in a think tank, leading perhaps to work in the private office of a min- ister or a member of the Shadow Cabinet, before being shoehorned into a safe seat (often with the help of powerful allies acquired en route). This trend was especially apparent during the New Labour era. Rightly or wrongly, Tony Blair had a low opinion of the parlia- mentary Labour party and was determined to lever into Parliament bright young people in his own image and likeness with a view to making them ministers at the earliest opportunity. As a result, a sort of first- and second-class carriage developed in the House of Commons tea room. Once elected, the former special advisers were a race apart from those of us who had laboured in the salt mines of Opposition for decades. To be sure, they were usually highly intelligent and person- able, but many of them had never knocked on a door on behalf of anyone but themselves at election time. Most had never asked a ques- tion even mildly sceptical of the official point of view. Nor had they done much else in life, apart from politics. They did not linger long on the back benches. Usually they were wafted into government within months of election and the brightest of them were soon in the Hinterland.indd 9 30/05/2017 15:20 HINTERLAND // x Cabinet. By their early forties some had burned out and moved on. This cult of youth was not confined to the Labour Party. Remarkably, by the 2010 general election all three main party leaders had been elected to that post within five years of entering Parliament. I must not exaggerate. Not all Blair’s protégés were young. And not all of them lacked hinterland. Alan Johnson, a most capable poli- tician who would have made an excellent Labour leader, had hinter- land in spades. Likewise, no one could argue that Charlie Falconer was not up to the job. Nor is the cult of youth an entirely new phe- nomenon – Harold Wilson was in the Cabinet by the age of thirty- one. There is, however, such a thing as political nous, which cannot be learned from textbooks or policy papers and tends to be acquired gradually as a result of experience. One can’t, for example, help won- dering whether, had he spent more time at ground level, Liam Byrne would have left that notorious note for his successor at the Treasury, to the consternation of both Byrne himself and his party.* Anyway, for the time being at least, the astonishing rise of Jeremy Corbyn has (if only temporarily) brought the cult of youth in politics to a shud- dering halt. Perhaps there is no right answer. Maybe what is required for a healthy democracy is a mix of politicians of all ages and professions, male and female. Our political system requires not only MPs who are capable of governing, but also individuals capable of holding the executive to account for the power they wield. On balance, however, it remains my view that hinterland is a useful attribute for any budding politician, whichever path they follow. For better or worse, I was a politician with hinterland. By the time I was elected, aged thirty-nine, I had lived and campaigned for many years in one of the toughest parts of inner London. I had been active in politics for the best part of twenty years. As a journalist I had travelled widely, report- ing from, among other places, the wars in Vietnam, Laos and Cambo- dia. I had seen the sun rise over the Himalayas and go down over the Gobi desert. I was the author of three novels (one of which is still in * On leaving office in 2010, Byrne wrote, ‘Dear Chief Secretary, I am afraid there is no money. Kind regards, Liam – and good luck.’ It was meant as a joke, of course, but the Tories exploited it mercilessly. Hinterland.indd 10 30/05/2017 15:20 PREFACE // xi print thirty-five years after publication) and I had travelled down some very dark alleyways in search of the perpetrators of the Birming- ham bombings. This is the story of my life. Chris Mullin Hinterland.indd 11 30/05/2017 15:20 Acknowledgements My thanks to the following: Judy Burg, former university archivist at the Hull History Centre, where my papers are stored; also to her suc- cessor Simon Wilson and his most helpful colleague, Claire Weather- all; my friend Jean Corston, a colleague on the Home Affairs Select Committee and who later chaired the parliamentary Labour party; my late uncles Brian, Peter and Terence Foley for their account of family history; Alastair Logan, for running his expert eye over my account of the Guildford Four case; Kevin