Norman Harrison, a great Sabdener and the husband of our daily help Mary, decided that it was about time we took up fishing and on the afternoon of Saturday 31 March 1990 Gilly and I went with Norman to Churn Clough reservoir above Sabden to try and catch some trout. We had a lovely afternoon although it must have been pretty boring for our detective and our police driver who had to sit on the bank twiddling their thumbs.

When we got back home at quarter to five the telephone was ringing and moments later I learned that that afternoon there had been a riot in Whitehall and Trafalgar Square which had been instigated by demonstrators against the poll tax. I set off at once for London and the next morning saw many of the police officers who had been on duty. I also saw the considerable damage caused by the rioters in Trafalgar Square and the surrounding streets. There were a number of unpleasant characters still loitering about the place and at one point we got into difficulty when a gang of young men rushed at me, spitting and screaming and then attacked the car. The police moved with enormous speed and almost before I knew what was happening I had been bundled into the car and we were on our way. It was in the midst of all this excitement that I was told that a riot had broken out at Strangeways Prison.

The riot, I was told, had started during the Sunday morning service in the chapel and the number of men actively involved or caught up in the disturbances – in the region of 1,500 – had meant that all prison officers had been able to do so far was contain the men in the gaol and prevent a mass breakout. Rioters had at first taken almost complete control of the place but the staff were now being moderately successful in extricating prisoners who did not want to be involved and plans were already being made to move these prisoners to other gaols in the north-west.

The next morning I had a series of briefings to prepare myself for the two separate statements I would have to make to the House that afternoon – one about Trafalgar Square and the other about Strangeways. There was no detailed discussion of the tactics to be employed at Strangeways. So far as I was concerned the deputy director-general of the prison service, Brian Emes, had as his chief responsibility the handling of a situation like this and his first priority was to ensure that none of the 133 prisoners still on the loose escaped; his second was to transfer to other accommodation the rest of the inmates. They could hardly stay where they were because the rioters had already done enormous damage to every wing.

At that time I had no idea of tension, let alone disagreement, between the deputy director-general of the prison service and the governor of Strangeways. I assumed that Emes and the governor were in agreement that it was not practical to regain control of the prison at that time, that it would be too hazardous a venture and that the chances were that in the next day or so the number of rioters would be drastically reduced, making retaking the prison not too difficult.

The statements, before a sympathetic House, went quite well. On the Trafalgar Square riot I told the House that a team of a hundred officers had been set up to take charge of a major criminal investigation into the incident. There was plenty of evidence available in the form of photographs and film to identify those responsible. What had happened had nothing whatsoever to do with the right of peaceful demonstration. A large number of people had set out bent on violence and there could be no justification whatsoever for the savage and barbaric acts which millions had seen on their television screens. I infuriated the Labour Party by saying in answer to questions:

The statement on Strangeways was a calmer affair, but unwittingly I made one mistake. I said in reply to a question that there was nothing to suggest that there was a connection between the poll tax riot and the happenings at Strangeways. In fact, some weeks, not days, later I was told that on the Sunday when the riot broke out the ringleaders on the roof unfurled a makeshift banner which referred to poll tax. Why I was not told this on the Monday I really do not know.

In the next few days I was told over and over again by Brian Emes that the view of those on the spot was that it was far too dangerous to retake the prison. Landings had been made unsafe, booby traps laid and barricades built. The remaining rioters were in the rafters armed with scaffold poles and anyone who approached them from below would be horribly exposed. And surely, with the number of rioters falling each day as the lesser fry thought it politic to surrender, it was better to sit tight. On the Wednesday after the trouble started the rioters were still sixty-four strong, but the next day the number had fallen to forty-seven. On Wednesday 11 April there remained only sixteen. In these circumstances it was not just Emes who thought that the remaining rioters would not hold out very much longer and as all the Rule 43 inmates (segregated for their own protection) had been rescued we were not justified in risking the lives of prison officers retaking the place. The fact that nobody inside was in danger, that nobody had been taken hostage, also meant that there was no justification for asking the police to sort things out, let alone for bringing in the SAS.

The unsung hero of those early days was David Mellor, then the Minister of State in the Home Office responsible for prisons. Copycat disturbances were breaking out in other prisons, but he wasted not a moment in getting over to the governors the simple message that enough was enough and that he and I would back them up to the hilt if they took whatever measures were necessary to snuff out the disturbances and would be on them like a ton of bricks if they didn’t. David’s political career came to a premature end when John Major was Prime Minister and I had left the government for Bermuda, but I was immensely lucky to have him as a colleague, particularly during the prison riots.

For the first few days after the start of the trouble at Strangeways the press gave me a very easy time. A Daily Mail leader read:

While the Mail applauded our restraint the Guardian brigade, sharpening their pencils for the day, which they could not believe could be long delayed, when they could accuse me of being a murderous fascist, had for the time being nothing at all to say. The same was not true of the Prime Minister. She had plenty to say across the table in the Cabinet Room and said it. In this instance, as in so many others, she showed an uncanny understanding of what the British people were prepared to put up with and what they would not stomach. She had seen on television the film of the rioters capering around on the prison roof. She had seen, as the public had seen, the millions of pounds of damage done. She could see that the rioters were making fools of us all and she knew that the British people did not like to be treated as fools. At the same time we in the Home Office could see that the mood of the press was changing. Some of the papers were beginning to murmur ‘enough is enough’ and were no longer prepared to give us credit for the fact that the copycat riots at Dartmoor, Bristol and Pucklechurch had been dealt with robustly.

From day one I had been anxious to go up to Manchester, but others argued strongly that I should stay away. The chief constable of Manchester did not want me to go because he felt he had enough on his plate and could ill-afford to take men off the jobs they were doing in order to guard me. He felt that my arrival could spark off trouble on the streets and Manchester could finish up with its own poll tax riot. My office did not want me to go because they feared that they and I would be accused of acting improperly by trying to take control of the situation, as Churchill was before the First World War when he went to see the Sydney Street siege. The deputy director-general of the prison service, Emes, was the man with operational responsibility, they said, and he should be left to get on with it.

Eventually I had had enough. I had been fobbed off with story after story as to why matters could not be brought to a conclusion. I was determined to see for myself what was going on. I got up early on Sunday 22 April and told my detective and driver that we were off to Manchester.

Brendan O’Friel, the governor, welcomed me warmly and was obviously delighted to see me. But he looked at me strangely when I congratulated him on the way he had handled things and eventually he told me that right at the start he had had a serious disagreement with Emes on the tactics to be employed. He said that he had wanted to go in and retake the prison on the first day and had assembled the necessary people to do this, but over the telephone Emes had vetoed the plan. Once that opportunity had been thrown away and the rioters had had time to fortify themselves in the rafters they had had little option but to sit it out. There were now only seven rioters left in the prison but they had built formidable defences and would be difficult to remove.

Back in the Home Office on the Monday I told the Permanent Secretary what I had discovered and that I was not at all happy at the way things had been handled. I think I convinced Clive Whitmore that he had got to get a grip on the situation himself and before long a plan was devised to retake the prison. A few days later a hundred prison officers in riot gear stormed in and nine hours later the last five prisoners surrendered. I flew up to Manchester by army helicopter to thank those who had carried out the good work.

From the outset, the matter was not handled well and I had to take responsibility for that. If I had known of the disagreement between Emes and O’Friel I would have stepped in and resolved the matter in favour of the man on the spot who was far better able to assess the situation than Emes sitting in London, and I am pretty sure that O’Friel would have snuffed out the riot. But I could take comfort from the fact that only one person had died (a remand prisoner) and he only indirectly as a result of the incident. Lives are more important than bricks and mortar and it would have been far worse if an early storming of the prison had resulted in a blood bath.

There is no doubt that the affair did great damage to my own reputation within the Parliamentary Party, and after it was all over Woodrow Wyatt was the only person to write in the press in supportive terms. Without, of course, knowing the whole story he said this in his News of the World column:

John Carvel in The Guardian took a very different and damaging line:

A minister in the Home Office and the Home Secretary in particular often has to perform like a juggler. A number of balls are always up in the air at the same time and he can afford to drop none of them. While trying to cope with Strangeways I was also responsible for the World Summit on Drugs which had opened at the exhibition centre in Parliament Square; but it was very difficult to concentrate on this secondary task. The conference was useful but like so many of these international meetings it was somewhat spoiled by the determination of virtually all the delegates to read out lengthy statements completely unrelated to earlier contributions. At the beginning of one session I divided the time available by the number of those wishing to speak and told the assembled company that speeches had to be limited to seven minutes. The first person I called spoke for fourteen minutes and the second for eleven. I called for cooperation and self-control and the next person to rise spoke for seventeen minutes. I was fast losing my patience and when a Japanese delegate was still going strong after eleven minutes I rose and asked him to stop. His fury knew no bounds. He strode towards the podium and made as if to climb the two steps in order to upbraid or assault me. He tripped on the second step and fell on his neck. There was loud applause.

A week after the World Summit on Drugs I was once again at Buckingham Palace administering the oath for the swearing-in of a bishop. The oath which the bishop has to repeat line by line is not for the fainthearted, with tongue twisters such as ‘all the spiritualities and all the temporalities thereof’. When it is all over the new bishop repairs to a downstairs lavatory to disrobe and is there given a glass of sherry. He badly needs it.

At about the same time I had to attend an investiture at the Palace, summoning forward those to be knighted. The day before I had told Alan Glyn, the Alan Glyn who spent a night during the 1987 election under a cupboard, that as he was in a state of decrepitude Her Majesty had let it be known that there was no need for him to kneel, but when I called his name he ignored my advice. There was much dithering and shaking and ungainly manoeuvres as he tried, vainly at first, to make contact with the stool; and watching him try to regain his feet was even more nerve-wracking for the onlooker. The Queen’s face was a picture.

A week later there was a state banquet at Buckingham Palace in honour of the President of India, and the week after that an event which was far more difficult to endure. I refer to the BAFTA awards ceremony at which stars of cinema and television indulge in a prolonged orgy of self-congratulation. The event started at 6 p.m. and when, at about ten, the whole ghastly business seemed to be grinding to a halt I said goodnight to the Princess Royal. She looked at me strangely and said “Oh dear, aren’t you going to stay for my speech?’ At which a well-wisher took me to one side to explain that we had only reached half-time.

In May I attended the Police Federation conference in Scarborough. It was going to be a difficult occasion. The police were up in arms about their rent allowances which were going to be cut, and we had learned that by way of protest the delegates were going to listen to my address in stony silence – not a cough, not a clap. My secretary had a stroke of genius. Immediately before I went in to the hall he said, ‘What a colossal joke it would be if, at the beginning of your speech, you made some reference to their planned silence and treated it as an act of politeness.’ So I opened my remarks by saying,

The police had not a leg to stand on. Never once since 1979 had the government failed to honour the Edmund Davies formula and as a result police pay had gone up much faster than average earnings. On top of that the system of rent allowances had got completely out of control and we could not be expected to continue with a system which had led in the previous year to a 69 per cent increase in the allowances in Warwickshire and a 59 per cent increase in London.

At about this time, Gilly and I had an interesting and relaxing visit to the Channel Islands. When I addressed the States in Jersey I said that the UK government had no intention of interfering in the domestic affairs of the Islands, words which, had I remained Home Secretary, I would shortly have had to eat. Within a year or so Kenneth Baker had to take action because of the shortcomings of the deputy bailiff who was not keeping up with his court work. I visited the new prison which seemed very short of customers.

During my time in government Gilly and I attended all sorts of formal dinners and sometimes they seemed a very mixed blessing. There is always work to be done and time at a banquet means less sleep that night as boxes still have to be gone through in preparation for the next day. But there were some glorious occasions, and Geoffrey Howe should be thanked for persuading the powers that be to allow the British Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum to allow big diplomatic events, like the dinner on the Queen’s official birthday, to take place on the premises. On one such occasion Gilly and I were in a V&A festooned with ‘No Smoking’ notices when from behind a statue emerged Princess Margaret with an inch of ash at the end of her cigarette. ‘There you are,’ she said, as she approached. I bowed, put out my hand to receive the ash and popped it in my pocket.

On 13 February 1990 a journalist and a photographer gained access to the intensive care ward of Charing Cross Hospital where Gordon Kaye, star of the popular television series ’Allo ’Allo!, was lying in very bad shape after an accident. Although he was in no fit state to talk about anything, and quarter of an hour later had no recollection of the occurrence, the journalists purported to interview him and their paper later proposed to publish a report of that ‘interview’.

The behaviour of the journalists was monstrous but when the matter came before the Court of Appeal the court ruled that Gordon Kaye had no right of redress. What had happened was an appalling abuse of press freedom but it was up to Parliament to create a legal right to privacy.

On 21 June the Calcutt Committee, appointed the previous year to review invasions of privacy by the press, produced its report. Its recommendations included the creation of a new criminal offence of invasion of privacy by the press and better self-regulation. This was to be achieved through a press complaints commission which would adjudicate on breaches of its code of practice and recommend how its findings should be published and how, in suitable cases, a correction, reply or apology should be made.

In the House I said that the government welcomed the committee’s general approach and accepted the recommendation with regard to a press complaints commission. If the industry did not set up the commission within twelve months or if, after the commission had been set up, it did not prove itself, we would take steps to set up a statutory commission or even a tribunal. I also accepted in principle the recommendation that journalists or others entering or using surveillance on private property without invitation, in order to get hold of personal details for publication, should be guilty of a criminal offence. We would, however, have to consider the detail of the proposed offence of physical intrusion and the scope of the proposed defence of lawful authority and would announce our conclusions later in the year. In the event it fell to my successor to decide what, if any, further steps should be taken.

At about this time I had a protracted battle with Cecil Parkinson who wanted to introduce random breath tests for motorists. I pointed out that the police already had the power to stop any vehicle at any time without any reason and if, having stopped a vehicle, an officer formed a reasonable suspicion that alcohol had been taken, the breathalyser could be used. What more did the Department of Transport want? It seemed they had set their hearts on the police being able to set up road blocks at four o’clock in the afternoon in order to breathalyse every granny coming back with her shopping, and I was delighted to put a stop to what, at best, was mere window dressing and, at worst, would do great damage to relations between the police and law-abiding members of the public. I have to say that in a long life in the law and politics I have learned that there is one temptation to which the police find it easy to succumb – they would rather book for minor offences polite members of the middle classes not addicted to giving them lip than deal with crime among less salubrious members of society. We should help them to resist this temptation not give way to it.

In that summer my private secretary announced that the Prime Minister wanted what was called a ‘bilateral’ – a meeting with a minister on his own to sort out something worrying her. My officials seemed to be in a highly anxious state about the request, with one saying, ‘You don’t think she wishes to discuss the BBC licence fee? You will do your best, Secretary of State, to keep her off that.’ Arriving at No. 10 I was surprised at the perspicacity of the official who had last spoken to me because the Prime Minister’s opening shot was: ‘I want to talk about getting rid of the licence fee.’ I said that there should be plenty of time to talk about that but first I had to have her consent to a number of official appointments, and I made sure that took a fair amount of time. ‘Now,’ she said with relish, ‘let’s get to the licence fee. I am sure we discussed abolition in one of the committee meetings last session on the Broadcasting Bill.’ I said I had no recollection of that but the Prime Minister’s response was to call for the production of the minutes of the various meetings so that she could prove how faulty was my memory. After a little while a man staggered in with an enormous pile of paper in his arms. Margaret grabbed a fair amount of it and then, having flicked through a number of pages while sitting in her chair, flung herself on the floor to complete her search, bidding me to follow her. Her search proved, as I knew it would, fruitless, and when we had got to our feet someone came to the door and said: ‘Prime Minister, the Israeli Ambassador has already been waiting for twenty minutes.’ ‘Infuriating,’ said the Prime Minister, ‘the licence fee will have to wait for another meeting.’ Back I went to the Home Office and when I got there my private secretary said: ‘Did she get to discussing the licence fee?’ ‘No,’ I said. ‘Well done,’ said my private secretary.

Whenever there is a dearth of news, the press find a child which has been bitten by a dog. As all the dog biting stories occur in June and July I think you can take it that there is less news in June and July than in other months of the year. When the press start reporting that children are being bitten, the wise Home Secretary tries not to think about it. The dogs will stop biting in August, or rather the press will be on holiday in August and will stop writing about it. The unwise Home Secretary will introduce legislation when the press say dogs have started biting. The wise Home Secretary will do precisely nothing.

It does become slightly more complicated when it is the Home Secretary’s dog which is doing some of the biting, and Basil let us down badly. On 23 July, Gilly tied Basil up outside a shop in Pimlico Road and then a little later, as she was paying her bill, she saw through the shop window a little boy about to put his nose close to Basil’s teeth in a gesture of affection. Basil was a bit standoffish with young people to whom he had not been properly introduced and before you could say teeth he snapped at and narrowly missed the little lad’s nose. A brutish type who might have been the boy’s father then commenced to beat Basil about the head with a bag loaded, Gilly suspected, with burglary tools, and then, having meted out a great deal of punishment, picked the boy up, saying he was going to take him to hospital.

Gilly reported all this to me when I returned home in the evening and I was not confident that we had heard the last of the matter. We had not. On 30 July we got a letter from the police saying that what had happened had been reported but because it was an isolated matter they were taking no action. We thanked our lucky stars but our luck did not last long. In the middle of August the Mail on Sunday rang and the next day a banner headline covering the two centre pages read: ‘basil’s day of shame’. Happily the story underneath was in fact not too shaming. The writer appeared to have accepted Gilly’s side of the story and treated the man with the bag which may or may not have contained burglary tools as the villain of the piece, but it was not the sort of publicity my press office would have sought.

On 23 July came reshuffle day. The Prime Minister rang at nine in the morning and asked me if I would let John Patten go to be Minister for the Civil Service and the Arts. Reluctantly I said ‘Yes’ – reluctantly because John had done much work on the Criminal Justice Bill and I had been assuming that he would pilot it through the House after its introduction at the very beginning of the next session in October.

When I told John Patten what was afoot he protested that he knew little about the arts and hated what he did know. If given the job he would soon be found out to be the philistine he was. For instance, if asked when he had last been to the opera his reply would be: ‘Never’. I rang Charles Powell at No. 10 and told him the difficulty. His reply was not unreasonable: ‘If Patten won’t do, who do you suggest?’ I said that I wanted to keep my present team, but if I had to lose one or other of my ministers of state it was far better that David Mellor should go because he rather liked the arts. Charles said he would ask the Prime Minister and a little while later he phoned back and said she agreed.

I then had the unenviable task of telling David Mellor, who became quite apoplectic. It was an insult to offer him such a dead-end job. I went into a meeting and half way through I was passed a message that David Mellor wanted to speak to me urgently. I went outside and he was still waxing indignant and saying he was not prepared to take the job. I got cross and went back in to my meeting. Half an hour later when it ended I turned on the television and there was David before the cameras saying what a great honour had been bestowed on him – that Minister for the Arts was the job he had always wanted and he was the happiest man alive. I thought it very sporting of him in the circumstances and proved what a grand trooper he was.

That was not the end of my reshuffle difficulties. A moment or two later the Prime Minister was on the line saying she was glad I had been prepared to spare David but that she had now decided that I would have to part with John Patten as well. She wanted him as Paymaster General and offered me Douglas Hogg instead. I certainly had nothing against Douglas who was immensely able but I felt it was unfair to ask me to see my team completely broken up. Eventually she agreed to leave John Patten with me.

A week later on the morning of 30 July I had just got in to my office when I was told that a bomb had gone off outside Ian Gow’s home near Eastbourne. In a further call a minute or two later I learned that he was dead. I had an appointment with the Prime Minister, and when I got to No. 10 she already knew about Ian and was very upset. She had always been very fond of Ian as he had been of her. ‘Give me work,’ she said to her private secretary, ‘and I don’t want any engagements cancelled. I have got to keep myself busy.’ I went out into Downing Street and was caught by the press. I said that there were times when it was difficult not to hate. Ian was a good man and he had been blown to bits by the scum of the earth.

Gilly and I had planned a week’s holiday in St Mawes and we travelled down to Cornwall with our policemen to find that the Devon and Cornwall Police were determined not to be left out of the show and had more or less taken over the hotel. They had also found someone with a boat who was detailed to guard us on the water. We went sailing on a yacht chartered by Gerry Neale, then MP for North Cornwall, and helped by a strong wind we zipped along in fine style with five policemen in a tiny motor boat bouncing along on the top of the waves beside us. Our chaps from the Met looked decidedly queasy.

After three days we came back to London and travelled down to Eastbourne for Ian’s funeral. It was a very high church affair ending with a superb address by the Bishop of Lewes. We then had tea at the Dog House (Ian and Jane’s home) before flying back to Cornwall.

Jenny, my elder daughter, was in Australia on a so-called working holiday and she had left a message at the hotel asking us to ring her the following Monday. When I got in touch she sounded rather quiet and pensive and the best I hoped for was that she wanted a thousand pounds to restore her finances. I asked her if anything was wrong and she said, ‘You had better speak to Robbie.’ Daughters really should not do that sort of thing to fathers, and I expected the worst. When, therefore, I heard what this Robbie had to say I was amazed but relieved. ‘You will think this very odd, sir,’ said a very Australian voice, ‘but Jenny insists on my doing things properly. May I have your daughter’s hand in marriage?’ ‘What a damn silly question,’ said I. ‘I haven’t even clapped eyes on you.’ Robbie’s reaction was, however, so mournful that I immediately took pity on him. ‘There there,’ said I, ‘if Jenny thinks you a nice lad I suppose it will be all right.’ Thus was parental consent sought and sort of given.

It happened that in September we were due to go to Australia on a ministerial visit and these extraordinary family happenings proved to be of great interest to the Australian police and secret service, and to our own High Commissioner, Sir John Coles. The police and secret service wanted to check out Robbie to make sure he did not make bombs. Sir John said he thought it would be nice for Robbie and Jenny to be with him at Sydney Airport when we flew in and he would make arrangements accordingly. When we landed, however, only Sir John, looking rather bleak, was waiting at the bottom of the steps. I asked him where the lovebirds were and he explained that his driver had been sent to Jenny’s address but as no one had answered the door, he had returned empty-handed. We went to our hotel harbouring murderous thoughts. An hour later there was a knock on our bedroom door and there they were; and pretty cocky too, in the circumstances. ‘Oh, what a fuss, Dad. We went to a party in the mess last night and I overslept.’ I told them in no uncertain terms that they had got themselves in deep trouble, and that as we were going on a trip round Sydney Harbour that afternoon with the top brass including the Premier and Chief of Police of New South Wales they had better use it as an opportunity to redeem themselves. They did. As soon as Robbie got on the boat, John Coles asked him what he did for a living. Robbie replied that he was in the army but had spent most of his life playing cricket. John Coles declared his addiction to the game and Robbie and Jenny were both forgiven.

After that near-disastrous start the Australian visit went very well. There were one or two scrummages in hotel lifts when the Australian police battled for ascendancy over our own detectives; but apart from that it was all sweetness and light. I visited various police forces, two police training establishments, at one of which I had to deliver a lecture, and a privatised prison run by a bluff Yorkshireman with an army background. The place seemed to be very well run but the key to its success might have been its size. Although there were a lot serving life sentences there were only 250 prisoners in all; the place looked manageable.

We stayed with John Coles in Canberra before going on to Melbourne and there we dined at the Melbourne Club as guests of Sir John Young, Chief Justice of Victoria. In those days I was still smoking small cigars and when I lit up over cocktails my host cried, ‘Waiter, bring an ashtray.’ Nothing happened for a few minutes and then the waiter returned and in a stage whisper said: ‘Sir, there are no ashtrays in the club.’ ‘Don’t be a fool,’ said Sir John, ‘bring a saucer.’

At the dinner table the Chief Justice let loose on Gilly a woman called Lady Derham. I could see from the other side that a furious altercation was in progress and when we rose Gilly told me that the woman had said: ‘Every Britisher in Northern Ireland should be thrown out.’ I thought that Gilly must have misunderstood and that what was being advocated was the usual ‘troops out’; and I went up to Lady Derham and told her politely that our troops had gone to Northern Ireland in the first place to defend the Catholics and there would be mayhem in Northern Ireland if our troops were just to quit the scene. She said that she was not only advocating that our troops should leave but that every Protestant in Northern Ireland should be expelled and sent back to Scotland. At that stage Gilly intervened and told her that by that logic everyone in Australia who was not an Aboriginal should clear off and she should set a good example by booking her own passage the next day. All in all it was quite a lively evening.

Before going off to Australia I had decided to refer back to the Court of Appeal the case of the Birmingham Six. This was after receiving advice from the unit in the Home Office which then dealt with allegations of miscarriages of justice. Subsequently the Court concluded that the verdicts were unsafe and the convictions were overturned.

In October came the Party Conference. On the eve of the home affairs debate Robin Oakley wrote in The Times that I should survive the ordeal. ‘Facing a conference audience Mr Waddington becomes generally heated. The Lancastrian growl and the “nowt for owt” style will come through.’ He was kind enough to add: ‘His short record as Home Secretary is in fact a respectable one for a man blinking in the light after a spell in the engine room murk of the Whips Office.’ I was pleased with the way things went and afterwards the Prime Minister was embarrassingly kind about it.

I got a good write-up in the Daily Telegraph and could not complain about John Carvel’s piece in The Guardian which read:

Robin Oakley wrote: ‘Mr Waddington brought the conference to life with a well-judged performance in which he pressed all the right buttons to please the representatives, winning the most enthusiastic standing ovation so far.’

Simon Heffer in the Daily Telegraph said:

As for Matthew Parris, I did not know whether to be pleased or sorry about his effort:

Later in October there was a Council of Ministers meeting in Naples. My main task was to make it plain that although in favour of a convention to reinforce and harmonise entry and visa procedures at the Community’s external frontiers, we intended to maintain checks at our national frontiers for the purpose of controlling immigration from third countries. We knew that some governments, prepared as usual to sign anything, had not the slightest intention of taking any steps to make the external frontier of the community secure, although the whole idea of the convention was that better immigration control at the Community’s external borders made safe the scrapping of controls between member states. Our partners told us that we had to abolish our controls on entry into Britain from the Continent. It was, they said, an obligation we had undertaken when we had signed the Single European Act. We, however, continued to argue that the free movement provisions of the Single European Act did not apply to nationals of third countries and we were entitled to have controls at, for instance, the Channel ports to prevent entry by such people. This was the advice the Prime Minister had been given by the Foreign Office before she agreed to go along with the Single European Act, and she was not best pleased when, subsequently, the law officers advised that in advancing this argument we were on extremely shaky ground. But on that ground, shaky though it was, we were determined to stand for as long as possible.

When we came out of our hotel the first night, the Naples Police decided to take the cavalcade of ministers’ cars up a one-way street in the wrong direction. That meant forcing approaching cars into the ditch or onto the pavement. One car was slow to move and a policeman leapt out into the road and began to hammer on the windscreen with the butt of his revolver. The driver opened his window and got the pistol shoved in his face which so demoralised him that he was then quite incapable of moving his car at all and the police had to do the job for him.

A magnificent fireworks display was laid on for us after dinner. The frumpish Dutch Minister for the Interior said she did not like firework displays, particularly when they were as noisy as the one that night, and she told me why. As a girl she had lived in Arnhem and one day paratroopers began to drop out of the sky. The teachers at her school told her that Arnhem was about to be liberated and the war was soon to end, but first she and her classmates had to put on their coats and go off into the woods to wait until the fighting had stopped and it was safe to go home. They set off into the woods and for days, while the noise of battle rolled about them, they waited to be told they could return. Eventually, someone came to tell them what had happened and they walked back to their hometown to find it in ruins and the ruins still occupied by the Germans. That is why the minister hated fireworks.

I then had to go to a one-day conference in Rome. This was to celebrate the fortieth anniversary of the signing of the European Convention on Human Rights. In his opening speech the President of the commission said that there would be no cases brought to the commission or the court if all member countries of the Council of Europe observed the convention. He did not seem to realise that it was somewhat difficult to guarantee observance of the convention when its vague terms and generalities were constantly being reinterpreted by the court and it was difficult to know one day what was going to be the law the next. My comments to this effect were not well received. The proceedings groaned on and eventually I had had enough and set off down the grand staircase towards my waiting car. But my exit had been spotted and five delegates had set off in hot pursuit. When they caught me up they assured me that I was not going to be forced to listen to any more speeches. I was wanted for the group photograph.

Our Ambassador’s wife, who was a Catholic, asked us whether we would like to go with her to mass in the Pope’s private chapel at six the following morning, and there we went and met the Pope. I found him very much more spiritual and concerned with the saving of souls than any Church of England archbishop or bishop I had met, with the exception of the then Bishop of London, Dr Ellison. Dr Ellison left the Church of England a few years later.

Then came Geoffrey Howe’s resignation from the government. In the statement he made to the Commons explaining why he had done what he had, he invited others to come forward prepared lead the Party in Margaret Thatcher’s stead. It did not take long after that for Michael Heseltine to throw his cap into the ring, saying that he had a better prospect than the Prime Minister of leading the Conservatives to victory at the next general election. Sixty Conservative members had refused to support the Prime Minister in 1989 when Sir Anthony Meyer had stood against her, and now with a serious and very formidable opponent already campaigning hard to displace her, one might have thought it was time for supporters of the Prime Minister to get to work and launch a vigorous campaign on her behalf; but nothing of the sort happened. There was a feeling in No. 10 that the unthinkable could not happen, that the Party really would have gone mad if it sacked a leader just off to Paris to celebrate something she had done so much to achieve – an end to the Cold War. And Peter Morrison, the Prime Minister’s Parliamentary Private Secretary, sat in his little den close to the Cabinet Room ready to offer visitors a hefty drink and tell them that all would be well on the night. He was going to busy himself flushing out of the clubs in St James’s the very many members of the Parliamentary Party who, according to Peter, spent their time in such establishments.

It was not unreasonable to expect members of the Cabinet to vote for the Prime Minister and on the day I think they did. But earlier there had been rumours that there were senior Whips asserting the right to vote against her, which I thought was quite extraordinary. A firmer hand there and elsewhere in the Party, appealing for the loyalty which members of the Whips Office owed her, might have garnered the few votes necessary for her to win in the first round. But she failed to do so – by just four votes.

That night John MacGregor, Leader of the House, told me that he doubted whether the Prime Minister could win the second ballot. There were already stories of people who had so far kept their heads down now being prepared to come out for Heseltine. The next day, when I was away from London at a conference in Oxford, it was determined, I know not by whom, that every member of the Cabinet should have the opportunity to see the Prime Minister on his own and tell her his views. It was a barmy way of trying to determine whether a Prime Minister should stay in office and it would have been far more appropriate for the Cabinet to have met as one body. But the upshot was that when I got back to London and went round to the Prime Minister’s room I found a queue at the door. At that moment Tom King was putting forward a weird idea that the Prime Minister should fight on but announce that if she was re-elected she would bow out in about March. Then out of the room came Chris Patten nursing his bottom like a naughty schoolboy who had been flogged by his headteacher. That did not endear him to some present.

In with the Prime Minister were Ken Baker, Party Chairman, and John Wakeham, who was going to be Margaret’s campaign manager for the second round, if a second round there was going to be. Sitting on a sofa, Margaret looked thoroughly miserable. I had never seen her look like that before. I told her that she knew she could rely on my support if she fought on, but I had my own doubts as to whether she would win – or win convincingly enough to make it possible for her to continue in office. It was plain from her reply that she had already made up her mind to go. ‘Isn’t it unfair?’ she said. ‘I’ll be sitting up all night preparing my speech for the censure debate when it will all be completely pointless.’

I sat for a while but, feeling so sad and distressed at the state to which she had been brought by people who, in my view, owed her loyalty and thanks for the great service she had done for the country, I felt I was doing no good there and left.

Early on the Thursday morning John Patten phoned. Douglas Hurd wanted me to propose him for the leadership. I told him I could not. I thought it had been a privilege to serve under Douglas in the Home Office and knew him to be a man of great integrity and intellect, but I knew that John Major was Margaret’s choice to succeed her and I was not in a mood, after all that had happened, to deny her what little consolation she might get from seeing the man she preferred become leader in her stead. I know that a number of other colleagues voted for John Major for the same reason.

When I got to No. 10 for the Thursday Cabinet meeting Norman Lamont asked me to nominate John Major. I told him that just then I could not bring myself to nominate anybody, but he could take it that in due course I would come out for John. In the Cabinet Room the Prime Minister began to read out the statement that was going to be released to the press, but she could not continue. James Mackay asked her if she would like him to read it for her, and at that she pulled herself together and said she could manage. By that time I was not the only one round the table close to tears, but eventually she got it all out. It read:

The Lord Chancellor then read a statement expressing the regret of the whole Cabinet and paying tribute to her enormous achievements. Douglas Hurd added a few words, as did Kenneth Baker. The normal business of Cabinet followed, and after reading out the business in the Commons for the following week, the Chief Whip finished by saying that the Prime Minister would have great sympathy at Question Time that day. At that Margaret recovered her old spirit and said with a snort: ‘I prefer the business to the sympathy.’

That afternoon the Prime Minister delivered a speech in the censure debate which made her opponents look like novices. She enjoyed herself hugely as she tore the Opposition motion to pieces. Many who had so recently voted against her must have wondered how on earth they could have come to do it and what hope there could possibly be of the Conservative Party throwing up another leader with the same mastery of the House of Commons. Shortly afterwards, Norman Lamont rang to say that Norman Tebbit was thinking of standing. I rang Norman Tebbit and told him that in my view it would be a great mistake for him to do so. He would find it far more difficult than Douglas or John to unite the Party and, by standing, would harm John’s chances. Norman replied that if he stood John would come last. He would think about what I had said but he did not like John Major’s views on Europe and abhorred Douglas’s.

On the Friday evening I went up to Manchester and spoke to the Withington Conservative Association. The chairman decided to conduct a leadership poll there and then, and John Major came out way in front. On the Saturday I was asked by the Major camp if I would declare my support for him on the following day. They had been keeping up the momentum of the campaign by each day getting a prominent member of the Party to say they were for Major, and I agreed to be next in line. I wrote to Margaret thanking her for everything and saying that I was sorry that ambition had led me to accept her invitation to leave the Whips Office and become Home Secretary. I could not help wondering whether, if I had remained in the job, she would have lost hers. I would have made pretty sure that the whips knew they had an obligation of loyalty to her and would have spread the same message among the backbenchers. She wrote back a very touching and generous letter in which she said I had nothing to reproach myself for. But I have never ceased to do so.

A review of her book The Downing Street Years contained this passage:

I am not sure that I can solve the mystery, but it is worth remembering that it was not always very comfortable to be a declared Thatcherite. In public it was far easier to portray oneself as part of the moderate centre, ever questioning the Prime Minister’s decisions, always guarding the party’s conscience, ever showing the compassion which it could be hinted ‘the leader’, for all her virtues, lacked.

Margaret Thatcher was not an easy woman to work with. On most matters she was convinced she was right, and that could be very irritating. But who can blame her for thinking herself right? She usually was. Three hundred and sixty-four economists said her economic policies could not work, but no sooner was the ink dry on their opinions than the policies were seen to be working. The Ministry of Defence doubted whether the Falklands could be retaken. She said they had to be, and they were. Everyone said that the government could not beat the miners. They were far too powerful. Margaret Thatcher knew better. She took them on and she won. The Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Treasury told her that Britain had to enter the exchange-rate mechanism. She felt in her bones it would end in tears and it did.

It is said that over the poll tax her political antennae failed her and she was over-committed before she realised that retreat was essential for her survival. I do not believe that the idea of a flat-rate charge for local services with rebates for those on low incomes sank her. I do think she failed to realise how grievously Treasury policy was affecting the level of the charge and, therefore, its acceptability. It was, however, her disagreements with the Foreign Office and the Treasury over European policy which provoked Geoffrey Howe’s resignation and it was Geoffrey Howe’s resignation which led to the leadership contest; and I have not the slightest doubt that over Europe she was right and the others wrong. In her refusal to go along with the pretence that Britain could continue to cede more and more power to the European Union – even to the extent of joining a European currency union and losing control of our own economic policy – and yet still remain an independent nation state, she was certainly more honest than her critics.

Margaret Thatcher was tough and did not suffer fools gladly. Diplomacy was not her strong point and the word ‘compromise’ did not feature large in her vocabulary. She knew what she wanted and she expected her ministers to deliver. Convincing her of a case was hard work. She tried to test your arguments to destruction, but when eventually convinced that what you wanted was right she supported you all the way. Indeed, so keen was she to show that support that she often attracted to herself the odium for unpopular policies when lesser Prime Ministers would have made sure it stuck firmly to their subordinates. So it was with the poll tax. Margaret Thatcher had great qualities of leadership which stood the country in good stead at times of crisis, and she was a giant on the world stage. It was sometimes difficult to describe her without using adjectives more familiar to the reader of Jane’s Fighting Ships than the student of political biography – indefatigable, indomitable, intrepid and courageous.

Her determination to resist every threat to peace from the Soviet bloc, her willingness to face any amount of unpopularity at home in order to see her own country properly defended and the West secure, led to the deployment of the Cruise missile in Britain as a response to the Soviet deployment of the SS20 and to the massive build-up of forces behind the iron curtain. That in turn gave her the moral authority to speak for the west and made the Soviets realise that they had no hope with their own far more limited resources of forever preventing democracy in Eastern Europe, let alone extending their particular brand of tyranny further west.

When she was first Prime Minister Britain had lost her empire and was no longer a great power, but when she met George Bush Snr at the time of Kuwait there was no doubt who was the boss. ‘All right, George, all right,’ she is reputed to have said; ‘but this is no time to go wobbly.’ I doubt somewhat whether Tony Blair ever felt in a position to address an American President in such terms; and I fear it is inconceivable that David Cameron will ever speak in such terms to Obama or whoever succeeds him.

The trouble with high political office is that it is very difficult to leave it with dignity. Against the odds, Margaret Thatcher did just that. The British people owe her an immense debt and history will be kind to her.

It has no need to be kind to me. I felt that by leaving the Whips Office I had helped to bring about her downfall.