A trip by John Major to the Indian subcontinent that was to involve a stop-off at the Khyber Pass was always going to be a Carry On – and so it proved.
Major’s foreign travels were always productive for the Lobby. With an election only four months away, and the Conservatives facing what looked like certain defeat against Tony Blair, this one was no exception. So we set off for India with high hopes, and they were to be realized if column inches were our guide to success – which they were.
I admired Major. He had endured four years of hell at the hands of his back-benchers, his Cabinet and the press; he knew even then that he was heading for certain defeat at the election. Yet he maintained his good nature and discipline in the face of a travelling Lobby party who were waiting for him to trip up, as he knew. The forever-toxic issue of Europe was soon to cast his party out of power for more than thirteen years. The nation had taken to Tony Blair, who had convinced voters that he had thrown aside the worst of Old Labour and replaced it with something new and fresh.
Arriving in Calcutta (now Kolkata) on 9 January 1997, we were able to write pieces saying that Major was blazing the election trail 5,000 miles from home with a speech that was a barely veiled pitch for the million-plus Asian votes in Britain. We went to a splendid diplomatic open-air party in Major’s honour that night, and were looking forward to sampling the local culinary delights. However, one of our number, the excellent Henry Macrory of the Star, had told us he was deeply suspicious of Indian food, and had brought with him his own supply of pork pies. These he kept in his small case despite warnings from many of us that the chances of them surviving for long in the heat were not great. That evening he was seen to sneak off to the edge of the party and consume one of his pies.
Two days later I was able to write from Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh, that Major and the people around him had given the clearest possible hint on the back of a briefing that day that the general election would be on 1 May. A by-election was imminent in Merseyside and there had been speculation that he might call the general election in March to avoid having to hold it. But Major was sticking to his preference for 1 May, which eventually became Election Day.
By this stage of his premiership, Major was cutting a pretty forlorn figure. Battered by the rows with his uncontrollable Eurosceptics, he must have been quietly looking forward to the time when he could spend more of his days at the Oval and Lord’s. Yet he had to carry on with the pretence that the forthcoming election was winnable and to deal with the latest problems to emerge from Brussels. For the journalists travelling, this trip felt like his swansong, and when we got to talk to him – which was more than on some foreign trips – he maintained his geniality, patience and good humour.
Before leaving for Dhaka there was a mini-incident in Bangalore, to where we had flown from Calcutta. After filing our stories for the night, we were relaxing by the hotel pool – a rare chance for us! – waiting for the PM’s convoy to arrive. The plan was for our press bus to fit into the convoy and race to the airport for the flight to Dhaka.
Sadly, our rather dozy driver lost the convoy within seconds, leaving Major heading off with the police escort and the press stranded in impossible Indian traffic. We arrived much later, severely delaying the flight, and were told in due course that Norma Major, after several years of suffering the antics of the travelling press, had suggested that the aircraft leave without us. We could understand her point, but perhaps wiser counsels prevailed.
Saturday was quiet enough for most of us to head off to a rather nice golf course in Dhaka, although I did by my bit for The Sunday Times. Then on Sunday we were flying to Islamabad, Pakistan, when Nick Wood, my former deputy who now worked as political editor of the Express, and I grabbed a quick interview with the PM. It resulted in a big story for our Monday papers.
I wrote that a compromise aimed at breaking the deadlock over Europe’s direction and binding Tory party wounds was to be proposed by Major to his European Union partners. I said that the Prime Minister was tabling ideas for a multi-speed Europe that would allow Britain and other countries greater flexibility to opt out of EU activities and policies that they were happy to see the rest pursuing. All countries would retain the veto to stop small or elite groups pressing ahead with policies that they regarded as dangerous or unsuitable for the EU. Strange how the Europe debate has not changed that much over the years.
He claimed to have found a way of resolving the serious dispute over the speed at which the EU should develop and integrate. Although he declined to show his negotiating hand by giving full details, Major clearly indicated that he believed there could be agreement over a formula by which countries could choose their pace of development, I reported.
In Islamabad the press party was asked to pool and divide its forces. Most were to be driven north to Peshawar to prepare for the Khyber visit the next day, while David Hughes, of the Mail, and I stayed in Islamabad to cover Major’s meeting with Benazir Bhutto, the former Pakistani prime minister. The plan was for us then to be dropped by helicopter at the pass the next morning to meet up with the rest. The downside of this arrangement was that the rest would come back by helicopter but David and I would be driven back by taxi.
The Bhutto meeting gave us a decent story, which we sent to our colleagues when they got to Peshawar. I wrote that Major was drawn into the turmoil of Pakistani politics as Bhutto seized the opportunity of his visit to launch an outspoken attack on President Leghari, who had dismissed her two months previously. It was quite a moment, and one I remembered when I happened to sit on the table next to her in a London restaurant several years later. And, of course, when she was assassinated in Rawalpindi in 2007.
David Hughes and I and were taken to a military airport the next morning to be flown by helicopter to join up with the rest of our party and the Downing Street crowd. It was to be the opportunity for me to secure my favourite dateline in the hundreds of thousands of miles I flew with prime ministers.
Under the byline ‘From Philip Webster, Political Editor, at the Khyber Pass’, I was able to write about Major’s visit, which was intended to show him how Pakistan was fighting the battle against the drug barons who use the pass and others like it to bring in their lethal stocks of opium from the Afghan poppy fields. The task faced by the anti-narcotics forces, to which Britain contributes training and other assistance including Customs and Excise officers, was massive. I indulged myself, and the paper indulged me, by allowing me to attempt the learned and the lyrical with a piece about Britain’s retreat from Kabul in 1842.
There was a good story for us when Major had to call off a planned walkabout at the Khyber Pass’s high point of Landi Khotal, where the Khyber Rifles are also based. The tribesmen had been asked to hand in the guns they all carry for the day. Thousands of them had come in from the hills and lined the village as Major drove through. But he was not to stop there; it was a security man’s nightmare. No one could be sure who had guns. His staff were told how the tribesmen gave their sons Kalashnikov rifles as a present when they reached the age of thirteen.
It was an unforgettable experience, and not for the first or last time I reflected on how fortunate I was. The journey back to Islamabad was not so much fun. Our driver travelled at ridiculously high speeds. He was – we learnt – fasting and seemed to think that the quicker he went the quicker nightfall, and food, would come. He overtook with cars coming straight at us in the opposite direction and it was a merciful release when he stopped at a garage to stock up on oranges and other goodies.
Back in Islamabad we filed the rest of our copy and went for an evening out, a reception at the high commissioner’s residence. It was nearly the end of a wonderful trip and morale was high. The drinks and the talk were flowing when the moment came to leave at around 10 p.m. The drinks table was still groaning and Messrs Macrory and Wood looked longingly at an unopened bottle of whisky, thinking that the night could not possibly end there. There was a debate as to whether it could be taken, as it was probably paid for with taxpayers’ money. But Macrory considered that to be a dishonourable course. Instead he asked our man in Islamabad whether he knew of an off-licence in the area! He was told to help himself.
So it was back to the hotel, with Macrory armed with his whisky. Most of us wimpishly went to bed, thinking of the early morning flight. Sitting outside the hotel the next morning in the bus as we were about to leave for the airport with the convoy, I noticed that we were one short. Nick Wood was not with us. A call to his room by the hotel reception woke him. Within about three minutes, an utterly discombobulated Wood appeared, to be greeted in silence by irritated colleagues. He was in a smart pin-striped suit as usual, but he was wearing it over his pyjamas, a condition in which he met the Prime Minister later when we saw him on the plane.
It should be added here that on the flight out of Dhaka, there was a bang in the locker over Macrory’s head. It was not enough to cause alarm but it was a definite ‘phut’. His last pork pie had exploded in his case, succumbing to cabin air pressure.