More Home
Office Tribulations

Shortly after arriving home I received a notice that as a Minister of State I was entitled to a quarter of buck from the Royal Parks. The buck could be delivered anywhere in the London area but not to Lancashire, so I asked for it to be left at the Home Office so that I could take it home with me on the train at the weekend. On the Friday I gave it to my driver Pearl to put in the car and we set off for Euston. We had not gone far when Pearl began to complain about the smell. She could not see why she should be expected to transport rotting carcasses as well as ministers.

By this time we were travelling under the bridge at Embankment tube station and, having had enough of the complaints, I told Pearl to stop. I jumped out of the car and, hoping no one was watching, stuffed the haunch of venison into a litter bin attached to a lamp post. We then drove away at top speed. No doubt the parcel was later spotted by a patrolling policeman and its contents reported as a dismembered human corpse.

In October 1983 came the Party Conference at Blackpool. A motion had been tabled by the Billericay Conservative Association urging the government to ‘end all further permanent immigration from the new commonwealth and Pakistan, to increase financial and material provision for voluntary repatriation and resettlement, and to repeal all race relations legislation so that all United Kingdom citizens are equal before the law’. It was what was called a balloted motion, chosen for debate by the constituency representatives. I was the minister who had to answer on behalf of the government, and clearly it was not going to be an easy occasion with most of those present wanting tougher immigration control.

Venison Entitlement

The debate was opened by Harvey Proctor, MP for Billericay, and there were loud cheers when he said: ‘Enough is enough. The provisions of the Immigration Act enabling people to return home should be publicised and improved and generous resettlement grants should be provided. Race relations could be improved at a stroke by the abolition of the Commission for Racial Equality.’ Paul Nischal, the only Asian to speak in the debate, was shouted down and the mood in the hall was unpleasant. After the first few moments, however, my speech was well received. ‘We are indeed all equal before the law,’ I said. ‘We don’t need a motion from Billericay to tell us so. The government is not in the business of telling people who have their homes here, who even have become British Citizens, “You are unwelcome here. Here’s some money. Clear off.”’ I claimed credit for the government’s tightening of immigration control, saying that net immigration from the West Indies had ceased, but an end to all immigration had never been the policy of the Conservative Party and could never be the policy of any government in a free society. I finished by saying that if the conference decided that all legislation underpinning the principle of non-discrimination on grounds of race should be wiped off the statute book it would be sending a message that we no longer believed in a fair and just society.

The Daily Telegraph reported on 14 October: ‘Far Right routed in heated race debate. The far right had been confident that it would embarrass the government. But by the time Mr David Waddington wound up the debate to a standing ovation, the mood was firmly against Mr Proctor and his supporters.’

Whatever the mood of the conference I had obviously annoyed some people because for weeks afterwards Gilly, who had stayed up in Lancashire while I went back to work in London, had to put up with threatening phone calls. One night a man called and demanded that I should support the compulsory repatriation of immigrants. ‘If your husband won’t agree,’ he said ‘we’ll send the boys round to break his legs.’ Gilly replied with spirit, ‘I hope you do send the boys round. I’ll enjoy breaking their legs.’ The calls ceased.

One interesting incident that autumn proved that when it came to scheming, the Home Office had much to learn from the Foreign Office. In train was a large programme to move civil servants out of London to the provinces. At about the same time the Foreign Office, supported by some committee looking into the efficiency of government, suggested that the Home Office should take away from the Foreign Office responsibility for the Passport Office. Not much wrong with that except that when, after the handover, most of the Passport Office was moved out of London, the Foreign Office, by some sleight of hand, treated the movement as fulfilling their obligation to disperse.

Difficult cases still came across my desk with monotonous regularity. If I had been determined on a quiet life, I could have given way every time an MP had argued that somebody or other should be allowed to stay in Britain. I would have been the darling of The Guardian newspaper. But I never had that ambition, so I struggled on, trying to deal with cases on their merits, with the press always making a fuss if someone was turned down and always remaining entirely silent if someone’s claim was allowed.

One troublesome case was that of a lady called Afia Begum who, while living in Bangladesh, had agreed to marry a fellow Bangladeshi living in England. Unfortunately, a short time later the man she was to marry died in a fire in London, and Afia was told the sad truth that the visa she had obtained to enter Britain as a fiancée was no longer valid. It seemed rather a harsh ruling until one was brought face to face with the fact that this had been an arranged marriage between total strangers and while she still had a mother, father, brothers and sisters in Bangladesh she had no friends or relatives in Britain to come to. But she thought that, by getting the visa, she had won the prize of a better life in Britain and, determined to try and hang on to the prize, she boarded a plane to London. On her arrival the Immigration Service refused her entry but granted her temporary admission so that she could sort out her affairs with the relatives of the deceased fiancé. That was the signal for the launch of a vociferous campaign on Afia Begum’s behalf, demanding that, although she was neither a bride nor a fiancée, she be given permanent settlement.

Some of the tactics used by the campaigners were embarrassing and disruptive. Sometimes they were quite amusing. One night I went to a public meeting in Bradford to explain government policy but after each sentence of my speech a line of pretty girls in the middle of a block of seats half way down the hall shot to their feet, each with a placard bearing a letter of Afia Begum’s name. Before anyone could do anything about them they sat down again only to rise once more at my next utterance.

Afia Begum then disappeared and a body which said it was fighting on her behalf announced that they were protecting her. She was somewhere in London and they would not surrender her until the Home Office announced she could stay the country. After a great deal of time and effort had been expended she was eventually found and returned to her own family in Bangladesh.

Another Bangladeshi called Mohammed Idrish came to England sponsored by the British Council and began to study for a technical qualification much needed in his own country. After a few months he abandoned his studies and thereby lost his right to stay in Britain. But he then quickly married a girl in the hope that he could stay as a husband. There could be no doubt that that was his motive because he left the girl within three weeks of the ceremony and disappeared. When found a year or so later he said he was doing important voluntary work for the immigrant community and in spite of having cheated the British Council and his own country, not to mention the lady whom he had married, the immigration appeal tribunal gave him leave to remain. I dread to think what sort of message that sent out to others minded to cheat and lie their way into Britain.

At about this time we took Victoria to Buckingham Palace where she was presented to the Queen. The Queen asked her what she would like to do for a career. Victoria replied that she would like to be a journalist. The Queen commented, ‘I hope you won’t be one of the grumpy ones.’

When I first arrived in the Home Office I was told I was to be in charge of a Data Protection Bill which was in the legislative programme for that year. There had to be a Bill to bring us in compliance with a 1981 Council of Europe convention on data protection, but the whole concept was still in its infancy and many thought that all we needed to do was follow other European countries and have a short Bill which did no more than put a statutory duty on those holding data to look after it properly. The Home Office, however, had other thoughts. Every company processing or storing personal data would have to register with a new ‘registrar for data protection’, and specific duties placed on the shoulders of those who held data. When the Bill became law I was packed off to Canada with my secretary, Liz Johnstone, to explain to the Canadians what we had been up to and address a conference on data protection in Toronto. I did not think much of Toronto or the conference but enjoyed a visit to the Niagara Falls.

Very much more important than the Data Protection Act was the Interception of Communications Bill which I helped Leon Brittan to take through the House at about the same time. It put telephone tapping authorised by the Secretary of State on a statutory basis and outlawed telephone interceptions not so authorised; and it was to be the model for later legislation putting the security service on a similar statutory basis. Gerald Kaufman was the shadow Home Secretary and I will long remember the skilful way in which Leon handled him and disarmed Labour opposition to the Bill. ‘One day, Gerald,’ said Leon, ‘you will be occupying the chair in which I am now sitting and bearing the heavy responsibilities I am now bearing; responsibility for the very safety of the nation.’ As Leon spoke you could see Gerald settling back more comfortably into his seat and dreaming he was across the way in Leon’s.

In October 1984 Gilly and I set off for the Party Conference at Brighton and installed ourselves in the Grand Hotel. Our room was at the back of the second floor. On the Thursday night we went to bed as usual and just after 2.40 a.m. I was awoken by a loud bang. Gilly sat up in bed and said ‘They’ve done it. They’ve bombed the conference centre.’ ‘Nonsense,’ I said, but I went into the bathroom and stood on a chair to look through the window on to the stair well separating the back of the hotel from the front. At that moment there was an enormous crash which I took to be a second explosion but which was in fact part of the building collapsing, and we then hurried out of the room and, along with many others, made for the fire escape. Down in the street and walking along the side of the hotel we could see nothing amiss but when we turned the corner onto the promenade we saw the gaping hole in the front of the building.

We knew roughly where our friends John and Roberta Wakeham’s bedroom was (or rather where it had been) and feared the worst. There were a number of very shaken people on the promenade including Walter Clegg (the MP for North Fylde) who had suffered minor injuries. Graham Bright, who was then my PPS, came along and said he had a room in a hotel down the road and we could spend the rest of the night there. So to his hotel we went and at about eight o’clock we set about ringing the children.

Meanwhile, the Prime Minister, having got out of the hotel, had had about an hour-and-a-half’s rest at Lewes Police College before going on the radio to say that the conference was continuing with its business. When it met, John Gummer, Party Chairman, was told that someone had phoned saying there was a bomb in the hall. It was probably a hoax and if it wasn’t there was no hope of clearing the building before the bomb went off, so John sat tight and kept the news to himself.

When the morning session ended Gilly and I were asked to go behind the platform to see the Prime Minister. I am not sure why but I suppose it was because we were friends of John and Roberta Wakeham and it was thought we might be able to help in some way. The Prime Minister turned to me and said: ‘Three bishops came to see me this morning wanting to pray for me, and they had me down on my knees.’ She then added crossly: ‘As if I had nothing better to do!’ She said that the thought of having to go on to the stage and make her speech was just more than she could bear, but Gordon Reece *, sitting on the arm of her chair, said ‘You know you can do it. When you go onto that platform the whole world will be cheering you on and willing you to make the greatest speech of your life.’ Willie Whitelaw was there with Celia his wife. There was much talk about who was going to identify Roberta’s body. Celia said ‘Willie is absolutely hopeless at that sort of thing. He can’t possibly go.’ So I drew the short straw and it was agreed that I should go with Bob Boscawen. But that was after Margaret’s speech which was, as we all expected, a tour de force.

I then went up to the hospital and into intensive care. Margaret Tebbit was lying on her back, looking in terrible shape, but she was conscious and said ‘What about the parrot?’ obviously recalling Norman’s and my private joke at Mr Jasper Parrott’s expense. John Wakeham was further across the room. He was in terrible pain. I did not know whether to tell him about Roberta but he seemed to know she was dead. I went up to see Norman Tebbit who was in another ward upstairs. We had earlier seen him lifted out of the debris left by the blast and you could see then the pain he was enduring. In hospital he told me there was a gap in his side with room for a small suitcase, but he was determined to get down to see Margaret in intensive care as soon as he could persuade the doctors to let him out of bed, and he was down with her the next morning. I then stayed up at the hospital in case John Wakeham wanted anything, but it was not long before the Whips Office moved in in strength, and my services were no longer required.

I then soon learned that Tony Berry (MP for Enfield Southgate), who I had known from Oxford days and had then been a colleague in the Whips Office, was among the dead. He had been a good friend. Also among those murdered was the Chairman of the North West Area, Eric Taylor, with whom Gilly and I had been having a drink the night before. His funeral was a glorious celebration of patriotism with a brass band belting out ‘Land of Hope and Glory’. Eric would have loved it.

In 1985 the Zola Budd case hit the headlines. Leon Brittan was still Home Secretary and he asked me to see whether there were any difficulties in the way of Zola Budd obtaining British Citizenship so that she could run for Britain in the Olympic Games. Her father, having applied for and obtained a British passport in South Africa on the basis of his father’s birth in Britain, travelled here with Zola. She was then still under the age of eighteen; and as the daughter of a British citizen could expect to be registered as such herself. But an almighty row broke out when she got her British citizenship, it being alleged among other things that she, a white South African, had been put to the top of the queue while millions of black people were waiting patiently for their own applications to enter Britain to be dealt with. The argument was completely fallacious, those advancing it deliberately confusing the right to British citizenship with the right of a foreigner to come to Britain for settlement. To the best of my knowledge, there was at that time no queue of people waiting abroad for their applications for British citizenship to be processed. What the critics were really arguing was that the Home Office should have sat on Zola Budd’s papers long enough to make sure that she missed the Olympics and then, when she had missed the games, should have produced the passport she was entitled to all along.

What happened thereafter was really quite appalling. Racial bigots set about making Zola Budd’s life a misery and eventually destroyed her running career. I wrote at the time: ‘Perhaps the churches will take a little time off from encouraging illegal immigrants to defy the law and will instead preach the simple message that being born white in South Africa is not a mortal sin. Still less should being white disqualify a person from international athletics.’

Nobody would have thought from the ill-informed criticism and press attention focused on cases like Zola Budd that most of my time was spent going round the country speaking to and getting on well with ethnic minority groups. But in November 1985 I was invited to speak at Manchester University and there I did not receive the polite and friendly reception I was used to. The Union was packed with people out to make trouble and as I tried to speak above the uproar I was jeered and spat at by a foul-looking young man who placed himself immediately in front of me. Eventually a rush of people invaded the platform, and the police moved in and carried me away to safety. The case had an amusing sequel. The Council of Manchester University appointed a disciplinary committee to look into the incident, but the committee got nowhere. A young black man volunteered that he was the fellow who came on to the platform and hit me, but I knew one thing beyond a shadow of doubt. There was not a black man in sight. So his attempt at martyrdom failed miserably and the inquiry ground to a halt.

Bill Molloy, Labour MP for Ealing North and later a member of the Lords, wrote me a note which I treasure. It read, ‘David, I hope the hand of the thug that aimed a punch at you rots and drops off.’ But the best letter I got was from a Mr Angus Macnaughton (of Ascot) who wrote:

While deploring the behaviour of the students of Manchester University … I was surprised to see you quoted in the press as saying that ‘they acted like pigs’. Pigs are peaceable, orderly creatures, much abused by men. They do not deserve this pejorative description. In fact, in all the animal creation, only man is capable of the excesses with which we are so familiar today.

In a leader entitled ‘Blind Eye?’ the London Evening Standard was very censorious:

Television viewers could see it plainly enough. Spit was running down his face. His jacket was soaked with beer. At least one of the punches thrown at him, and a hefty one, appeared to land on its target. This was not some war criminal being paraded in front of his victims. It was the Minister of State at the Home Office, Mr David Waddington, attempting to deliver a speech on immigration at Manchester University. Mr Waddington was neither foolish nor optimistic in expecting his opinions to be heard in what is supposed to be a forum for opinions. Manchester University is not a lunatic asylum for the criminally insane. But what happened there last week was far uglier and more violent than a normal student demonstration.

People who witnessed this vicious hooliganism on their television would have every reason to suppose that the university authorities would by now have taken firm measures, hauled the most repulsive troublemakers up and expelled them. However, the authorities would appear to have been somewhere else that night and seen nothing, to judge by their response. This has been to give the students’ union executive sixteen days to prepare a report on the incident, which will be scrutinised by the University council on 26 November. If this report is ‘not satisfactory’ the question of with-holding some part of the Union’s £573,000 grant ‘is bound to arise’.

This reaction is timid and inadequate; it is also off-target. To fine the Union some £30,000, as happened at Warwick University in 1983, won’t worry the thugs. It will simply penalise the great majority of student union members who took no part in the viciousness. To put the onus on the union to identify the troublemakers is a pathetic evasion of responsibility.

It is the reputation of Manchester University itself which has been sullied; it is up to the university authorities to punish the minister’s assailants.

So absorbed was I with my own ministerial responsibilities, I did not feel deeply involved in the events surrounding the miners’ strike. But I do know that the successful outcome was largely due to Margaret Thatcher. The traditional Home Office line was that we did not have a national police force and while one force could ask for help from a neighbouring force, there could be no question of the government directing another force, or forces, to help one which was under pressure. When, therefore, in 1972 the West Midlands police could not prevent the mob blockading the Saltley Coke Works, no reinforcements were sent to Birmingham to relieve the situation. That led to the chief constable giving up the struggle and the coke works having to shut down.

In 1984, however, Margaret Thatcher was Prime Minister and she was not going to allow a shameful outcome like that. Day after day newspapers had had on their front pages pictures of miners fighting with police as the police tried to make it possible for other miners to get to work, and the Prime Minister made it plain that a way had to be found for other forces to help the police in Yorkshire. A few days later I came back to London from Lancashire by the A1, and as I travelled south streams of police vehicles were travelling north to the Yorkshire coalfield to do their duty on the Monday morning. A political strike doing great damage to the country was on the way to being defeated.

A little later Leon Brittan was removed from the Home Office and Douglas Hurd was brought back from Northern Ireland to take his place. Douglas Hurd had to deal with some riots, but for a time my end of the shop was relatively quiet. Then, with the whole system of immigration control bogged down because MPs were showering my office with repeated representations whenever we made a move to remove from the country a person who had no possible right to be here, I exploded at Question Time and said it was about time ‘abuse’ of the system stopped. Later in the afternoon I was summoned to Douglas’s office and Douglas, with a rather pained expression on his face, said that he did not mind my stirring things up as long as I had some idea what I wanted to get out of it all. I said I wanted a set of rules governing representations by MPs in immigration cases and he sent me off to work them up.

In the House of Commons Douglas was not as robust as I would have wished, being careful not to use the indelicate word ‘abuse’ to describe what had been going on. He said that all I had been trying to do was call attention to some ‘misuse’ of the system; but I had no real reason to complain. I had got my way and in an astonishingly short period of time produced a booklet setting out ‘guidance for MPs in immigration cases’. This guidance has, with various amendments and refinements, stood the test of time and it has greatly improved the efficiency of the system without taking away from MPs their right to make representations.

But we had to take further steps if our immigration staff in Britain were not to be overwhelmed. Everyone knew that it was people from just a few particular countries who were putting most of the pressure on the immigration system. Many from these countries came for settlement, having obtained entry clearance at a British post abroad to do so. Many more came pretending to be visitors but intending to stay permanently if they possibly could. Surely those saying they wanted to visit should obtain visas abroad just like those saying they wanted to come for settlement. That way their credentials would be checked before they set out on their journey and they would not suffer long delays waiting to be examined at Heathrow. It would be better for the bona fide traveller and take an enormous weight of work off the Immigration Service. It was all common sense, but the fact that something is plain common sense does not mean that it will not cause a row in Parliament; and the introduction of visas for the Indian subcontinent, Nigeria and Ghana caused another great fuss. The most spurious arguments were mounted against the policy. It had to be racist: otherwise why weren’t Americans being required to obtain visas? As if tens of thousands of Americans had the same economic motive for wishing to come to Britain as people in countries with pitifully low living standards.

Bill Deedes put the matter well in the Daily Telegraph on 3 September 1986:

Labour spokesmen who berate this (the introduction of visas) as discriminatory and racist really must clear their minds. Do they favour unrestricted immigration? If not, they have to accept that, amid this enormous traffic (5,550,000 people coming on visits each year), sifting the lawful from the unlawful entries to this country can no longer be satisfactorily done off desks at Heathrow. Opposition spokesmen crying ‘racist’ have two questions to answer. Do you accept restricted immigration? If so, where is cheating most effectively checked – there, or here?

Gradually the storm subsided and the policy helped enormously to lessen the pressures on immigration control.

The other measure that helped enormously, but again was very controversial, was the Carriers’ Liability Bill which provided that if an airline, for example, brought someone to Britain without the proper documents the airline suffered a penalty. No one seriously imagined that many of those arriving in Britain and claiming refugee status were in fact refugees and our system of control was being overwhelmed as a result of people arriving without any valid claim. The Act worked wonders, but Lord King (then chairman of British Airways) and others complained bitterly, saying that it was a diabolical liberty to require BA employees to look at passports and see that people had the proper documentation before setting out on their journey. We were, however, surely right to assume that BA employees could read and it was hardly surprising that, with the help of the Immigration Service, they soon got used to the new requirements.

Sometimes my duties in the field of immigration control brought me close to despair. I see that on 18 September 1985 I wrote in the Clitheroe Advertiser: ‘My immigration job is impossible. Everyone demands firm immigration control, but a sizeable slice of the population screams blue murder whenever an attempt is made to enforce it.’ At that particular time I was in trouble over a two-year-old Pakistani boy who had been refused entry to the country. The child’s mother and father were fit and well, living in Pakistan with the little boy’s sister, but had, so it was alleged, agreed to hand over the boy to the father’s brother in England. Britain at that time did not (and for all I know may still not) recognise adoptions in Pakistan because proceedings in that country were not considered to provide sufficient safeguards for the interests of the children concerned. That did not stop a group of churchmen writing to The Guardian complaining about my ‘separating’ the child from its ‘parents’ by refusing the child entry into Britain. The Home Office had the last laugh because at the eleventh hour the true parents refused to hand over the child to the brother, but I cannot remember the Church of England Board of Responsibility conceding that it might have been in error.

On one occasion a delegation from the Church of England Board came to the Home Office to talk of their concerns and their leader claimed that he knew of a case of a lady from the Caribbean who, having had a child in Britain, was not being allowed to stay here. The child, however, could not go back with her to the Caribbean because, being born British, he had no right to live there. Hayden Phillips said: ‘Which country in the Caribbean does she come from?’ Back came the reply ‘Jamaica’. ‘That’s funny,’ said Hayden Phillips, still batting away as under-secretary responsible for immigration, ‘The last time I heard that story the woman came from Barbados. Have you ever met the woman?’ ‘No.’ ‘Do you know her name?’ ‘No.’ And, of course, we never did discover any such woman.

In 1986 I became a bencher of Gray’s Inn and on being called paid ‘caution money’ of £1,000. To this day I do not know what the money is for. To pay for broken glass or bent silverwear in the event of the bencher running amok? Also in 1986 rumours began to circulate that I was to be deputy chairman of the Conservative Party. I do not know where they started and so far as I know they never had any foundation.

In the autumn of 1986 Gilly and I went to Hong Kong to see the Vietnamese refugee camps. I also had to meet a number of people, particularly leaders of the Indian community in Hong Kong, about the Hong Kong Nationality Order which I had recently helped take through the House of Commons. This provided that those who ceased to be British Dependent Territories citizens on the Chinese takeover in 1997 would have the right to acquire British National (overseas) status; but there was genuine concern among those who were not ethnically Chinese and had, therefore, no expectation of acquiring Chinese citizenship, that they might be left stateless. Members of the Indian community pointed to the fact that when the East African Asians were expelled from Kenya and Uganda the Indian government made clear that those expelled were Britain’s responsibility not India’s, and these Indians in Hong Kong wanted to know what would happen to them if at some time in the future they were forced to leave what had become their homeland. I pointed out that there was no question of their finding themselves stateless, that they were being offered a form of British nationality and under the Joint Declaration they were guaranteed the right of abode in Hong Kong. I was, however, authorised to give an undertaking that we would look sympathetically at the case of any British national who, in spite of the Joint Declaration, came under pressure to leave.

On our arrival at one of the refugee camps a guard of honour of scouts and guides was formed to greet us. The movement had been introduced by one of the refugee organisations and had proved immensely popular among the Vietnamese. The scout and guide movements had every reason to be proud of what was being done in their name.

At the end of 1986 I got a letter from the Prime Minister in these terms:

I have it in mind on the occasion of the forthcoming list of New Year honours to submit your name to the Queen with a recommendation that she may be graciously pleased to approve that you be sworn of Her Majesty’s most honourable Privy Council. I should be glad to know if this would be agreeable to you. I shall take no steps until I have your reply.

I replied without delay and on 1 January 1987 became a ‘Rt Hon.’ I received a very nice letter from Willie Whitelaw, appreciated because he knew better than most the difficulties of the job I had been trying to do. On 10 February I reported at the Privy Council Office to be rehearsed by Mr (later Sir Geoffrey) de Deney, Clerk of the Privy Council, in the art of kneeling and kissing the Queen’s hand and was then whisked off to Buckingham Palace for the ceremony. In the words of the official announcement: ‘This day David Charles Waddington Esquire, was, by Her Majesty’s Command, sworn of Her Majesty’s Most Honourable Privy Council, and took his place at the Board accordingly.’ The oath of a privy councillor as administered by the clerk may seem archaic but it is modern and crystal clear compared with the oath, now abandoned, which I took when I became a QC.*

A nice cartoon appeared in The Times on Friday 6 February 1987 arising out of demands in Parliament for a relaxation of the licensing laws. I was portrayed as Nelson putting a bottle of brown ale to my blind eye. I had forgotten about my involvement in all this until I went through my papers, so I don’t think it can have loomed large in my workload. We were not, however, ducking the issue as the cartoon tended to suggest. Indeed, not very long afterwards a reform measure went through the House.

What greatly increased my workload at this time was the decision to introduce legislation to deregulate Sunday trading on the lines of the Auld Report. Eventually, the Bill was lost on second reading, but that was not my fault. It was decided that Douglas Hurd should open the debate because it was a Home Office measure and the winding-up should be left to Kenneth Clarke, then the DTI minister in the Commons, because of the provisions in the Bill concerning the rights of employees. Douglas’s opening was a disaster. When answering an intervention he gave the impression that there would be no Party whip during the committee stage. I whispered to the Chief Whip (John Wakeham): ‘did you know anything about that?’ ‘Certainly not,’ he said. The measure was done for before we had hardly got started because the backbenchers could see what we could see – that if the Bill ever got into committee, without a whip it would never get out. As a result, our side decided that there was no point in prolonging the agony and threw out the Bill there and then.

My role prior to the debacle had been to keep in touch with all the interest groups, speak in the country and on television in favour of deregulation and try and keep the Party on side. I, like most Conservative MPs, had to put up with a lot of aggravation. I found the opponents of reform incredibly sanctimonious. One woman in Clitheroe told me at great length that she was able to organise her life in a way which avoided the need to go shopping on Sundays and she was surprised I could not organise mine. She looked at me pityingly when I said I often arrived back in London at nine o’clock or later on a Sunday evening and I did not think I was doing anything very wrong when I called at a shop in Tottenham Court Road and bought myself a loaf of bread and a sausage roll. The churches organised a meeting in Clitheroe and the vicar in charge told me that I was there to hear the views of ordinary people on the issue. The audience did not seem to me to be particularly ordinary. For a start it did not seem to include all those ordinary people in Clitheroe who bought a Sunday paper, who went to the car wash or to fill up with petrol on a Sunday, who took the family out for a ride in the car on a Sunday and stopped at a café or pub for lunch. But I listened patiently, comforted by the fact that the vicar had said that there would be no vote at the end. Unfortunately for me, in the closing minutes he suffered a rush of blood to the head, forgot his promise and decided to have a vote after all. The result was astonishing, beating all political records. Against Sunday trading 492: for Sunday trading 4: with four abstentions. Another Waddington record!

Towards the end of my time as Minister of State there was a great fuss over our attempts to remove sixty-four Tamils who arrived with bogus credentials and then claimed asylum. There was also the notorious case of Viraj Mendis who, having come to England as a student and then abandoned his studies, had married in an attempt to stay in the country. The marriage only lasted a couple of months but when steps were taken to return him to Sri Lanka he claimed he was a communist and Tamil supporter. He would therefore be persecuted if sent home. Eventually he was given ‘sanctuary’ in a church in Manchester and a campaign started on his behalf.

One day a crowd of demonstrators descended on Clitheroe and started baying outside the Conservative offices where I was holding my surgery. Gilly went out into the street and, without saying who she was, advised them to march round the town to rally support. She then tacked herself on to the back of the procession, singing lustily with the rest: ‘Viraj Mendis is a warrior. David Waddington is a bastard’. The people of Clitheroe had a really good day.

At New Year 1987 we were kept awake by a series of phone calls about Viraj Mendis – some threatening, some obscene. When the phone rang for the umpteenth time, Gilly leaned across the bed, grabbed the receiver out of my hand and shouted: ‘We know where you are. My job is to keep you talking until the police come and get you.’ A rather pained voice replied: ‘Madam, I am the police. The Daily Mirror has just rung the police in Manchester to say that they have received a message from an anonymous caller saying that a bomb has been placed in your house and that you have three minutes to get out of the place. Well, you had three minutes but this call has taken so long, there’s probably now only thirty seconds.’ Gilly jumped out of bed. I said ‘What’s going on?’ She said ‘I’ll tell you in the garden.’

One night in the middle of January we were in Denny Street when a mob assembled outside the front door and started bawling abuse about the Mendis case. I rang the police and a very senior officer with a lot of braid on his shoulders read out a long statement saying they had to disperse. One of the mob stepped forward and without a flicker of a smile said: ‘But our train for Manchester does not leave for another hour. Can’t we carry on shouting for just a few more minutes?’ ‘Certainly not,’ said the officer, at which the mob muttered and grumbled off down the road, and we went to bed in peace.

After I had moved on to be Chief Whip, Viraj Mendis was eventually removed to Sri Lanka where our embassy monitored his progress. He went back to live with his well-to-do parents, showed no interest in the Tamils and was himself of no interest to the Sri Lankan authorities. Mr Stewart, who was British High Commissioner in Sri Lanka from 1984–7, wrote to the Daily Telegraph:

I was intimately involved in the affair from the time that Mr Mendis first claimed that he would be in danger if he returned to his own country. Having now retired from the diplomatic service I have no particular axe to grind, but I would like to set the record straight. Mr Mendis first claimed that he would be arrested on return because he was a well-known supporter of the Tamil cause. In 1985 and 1986 none of the Tamil activists with whom I spoke had ever heard of him. Nor, although I and my staff monitored the British papers to gauge the extent of support in Britain for the Tamil separatist cause, had we encountered any mention of his name.

When Mr Mendis made his claim, I made discreet inquiries with the Sri Lankan authorities to see whether he was wanted by them for any offence. I did this before there had been any publicity about him in the country. Neither the police nor the security authorities had any record of him. In fact, when publicity about his case became widespread, it took the authorities some weeks to identify Mr Mendis as there was no record of him in any of their files.

When David Waddington, then a Home Office minister, visited Sri Lanka in 1987 he obtained from the President and from the Secretary of Internal Security, in my presence, categorical assurances that Mr Mendis was not wanted for any offences in Sri Lanka and that no action of any sort would be taken against him if he returned.

He now claims that if he returns he will be in danger from one of the chauvinist Sinhalese groups. He has no stature in any of the political or terrorist groups either of the left or of the right; of the Tamil or of the Sinhalese sides. Neither the government nor the various terrorist groups have any interest in Mr Mendis or in his continued existence in or out of Sri Lanka.

The truth is that Mr Mendis and his supporters have erected a cause célèbre here in Britain about nothing at all. He has succeeded in over-staying his leave to be here for some ten or more years. Mr Mendis is a young man who has managed to enlist sympathy here about his importance in his native country where no one seems to have any malign, or indeed any, interest at all in him.