Extract from Peter Maxwell’s unpublished autobiography
After I had come up with that idea for the TV quiz show, I knew I had been granted an absolutely brilliant insight into how to win the war of hearts and minds in the Middle East. So I took it to the Cabinet. When I say the Cabinet, I mean the three or four of them who would come over and sit in the Terracotta Room at Number 10 on Friday nights unless they got stuck for some reason in the House.
They would sit around with Jay, crack a few bottles of Chardonnay and decide how to run the country. The usual ones were there: Reginald Brown, who was home secretary; Davidson, who ran defence at that time; and the foreign secretary, as he was then, before he became prime minister. Usually James Burden, the chancellor of the exchequer, would also be there.
I had told Jay earlier that I was developing quite an exciting idea which could get us back on the front foot. I wanted to run it past him, and them, and get some feedback before I worked it up into a detailed plan. Jay asked me to join the next Friday evening session. At eight o’clock I knew they would all have arrived and would have had at least one drink, but would still be capable of addressing any subject I brought to them, as I sometimes did. It was the best moment to capture their attention. I went upstairs and knocked on the door, and Jay called to come through.
The five of them were sprawled in armchairs and on sofas, a couple of bottles of white wine half empty on a low table between them. Jay offered me a glass, which I accepted but did not touch. I would have a drink afterwards, when they were patting me on the shoulder and congratulating me on my idea.
‘Gentlemen,’ I said, ‘I’m going to tell you how to win the hearts and minds of the everyday working people of the Middle East without firing another shot.’
I had not given Jay any advance warning of what I was going to say. He trusted me. He knew if I had something to tell them, it would be worth listening to. I often sat in on those sessions anyway, but Jay liked to make it clear I was there by his invitation. Anyway, there they sat around the table, coats off, ties loosened, faces a little flushed from the wine. As I came in they were talking about the Middle East anyway, so it seemed my timing was just about right.
Tell them what you’re going to tell them, tell them, and then tell them what you’ve told them. That’s what my system has always been, and it never fails. So I told them in outline what I was going to tell them, then I gave them a summary of my proposal for a new Voice of Britain channel and went into some of the ideas I had started to develop on programme content. I also told them about an idea for a new easy-to-use credit card for general issue in the Middle East—instant credit approval for anyone who could actually sign their name on a form, backed by all the major British clearing banks and underwritten by the Treasury using money no longer needed for defence. I saw the chancellor and the secretary of state for defence both look up at this, and I knew my message was getting through.
I told them about the low-cost TV sets that would be distributed in the countries we most wanted to extend our influence in, TV sets that would only tune into one channel, Voice of Britain, and the network of transmitters that would beam in the new programmes twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, not forgetting the sabbath. Then I told them about my quiz show, the flagship programme for the channel.
I did my presentation without a laptop or digital projector, without PowerPoint, without charts or notes. People have often said to me that I am at my very best when I speak unaided, straight from the heart. It was one of my better efforts. At the end I said, ‘The total funding requirement for a campaign of this type needs to be properly costed, and of course that has not been done yet. But I am convinced that it would cost just a fraction of what we are spending right now on military operations. And it would deliver ten times, a hundred times, more in terms of getting our messages and values across.’
There was quite a long silence when I had finished. Jay picked up a pencil and looked at its point, then put it down again. The foreign secretary stretched back in his chair and studied the ceiling. The chancellor fiddled with his Blackberry. Then Davidson said, ‘Peter, you need to get out more.’
I stared at him. I couldn’t believe anyone in his position could make such an infantile remark, although my knowledge of Davidson should perhaps have prepared me for such a possibility. It was as if the last fifteen minutes had counted for nothing all.
I was about to say something I might have regretted when Jay looked up and said kindly, ‘Peter, this is visionary stuff.
Just like you. But it needs thinking through a bit more carefully. There are some religious and political issues here that need sensitive handling. And you’ve got a lot on your plate just now. You’ve been working very hard. You need to ease up a bit. Maybe take a short break. And then we’ll come back to this, perhaps. Maybe kick it around a bit more. The secretary of state for culture, media and sport ought to be involved in the debate. Maybe education as well. I’ll ask them both to give it some thought. But for now, great as it is, I think we have to park your idea. We’re pretty much committed to going down a particular road in the Middle East and it would be difficult to change that very much without people beginning to ask why we’d started down it in the first place.’
For some reason, as Jay finished speaking my eyes filled with tears. I stood up and went to the alcove where the bottles were kept and poured myself a glass of water with my back to the table, then wiped my eyes with the back of my hand while nobody could see my face. I felt rejected. I felt my vision had been so clear, so perfect, so lateral. Why could nobody else see that this was the way to go? The foreign secretary was speaking.
‘Nevertheless, boss,’ he said, ‘Peter’s got a point. We may have an excellent set of policies in the Middle East, and as you well know I have always endorsed and supported them to the hilt. Moreover, we know that in the long run we will succeed. We know militant Islam is being rolled back and that democratic consumer societies are springing up to replace the old theocracies. House prices are rising again in Fallujah. And in Gaza. That is tremendously exciting stuff and endorses some of what Peter has been saying.’
I smiled gratefully at him. A tear ran down my cheek. Nobody seemed to notice.
‘But we must acknowledge that there is a perception amongst some of our voters that we are not succeeding quickly enough. Those images of the helicopter crash in Dhahran last week…The arson attacks in the Bull Ring in Birmingham. The recent explosion in Iran, which everyone seems to know was us—’
‘The leaks didn’t come from my department,’ said Davidson.
‘Nevertheless. There have been a lot of negative stories out there. Then those American Baptist missionaries in Basra, trying to convert the locals by offering them a hundred dollars a head. That didn’t play well back here, and if they hadn’t been kidnapped and executed I don’t know how much public relations damage they could have done. We do need a different angle. Not instead of what we are doing, but as well as what we are doing. We need to change the growing perception amongst our own public that we are treating the Muslim world with contempt and indifference.’
The boss looked thoughtful. There was silence while we all waited for him to speak. Then he looked at me and said, ‘Peter. What about that salmon project thing? In the Yemen?’
I nodded. I still didn’t trust myself to speak. Then I swallowed and said, ‘We stepped back a bit from that one, if you remember.’
‘Well,’ said the boss, ‘you need to reassess that decision. I’m not sure you made the right call there, Peter. I was keen on that project and I’d like to see it succeed.’
It was no use reminding him that only a few weeks previously, in this very room, he had ticked me off in front of more or less the same audience for having dinner with the sheikh and getting too close to the project. The boss was right then, and he was right now. That is why he was the boss.
‘Yes, boss,’ I told him. ‘I’ll get right on it. I’ll get us back in there.’