Books

Kitchen confidences

Alan Watkins

The Politics of Power Joe Haines (Cape £4.95) The late Richard Crossman always had a healthy respect for the character and abilities of Lady Falkender (hereinafter referred 10 as 'Marcia' for the sake of brevity rather than from familiarity); though he never, I susPect, took her entirely seriously. But then, Dick did not take anyone entirely seriously, least of all himself. I remember his telling me, before 1970, of a visit he had Paid to No 10, There they all were, he said— Harold and Marcia, Tommy Balogh and Gerald Kaufman—sitting in front of the television set, eating fish and chips which Marcia had been dispatched to procure. 'That's what they do every night,of course said Dick, displaying that dazzling gift of his for moving effortlessly from the Particular to the general: 'Eat fish and chips and complain about the programme on the Crossman's own word in his Diaries for this mode of life is petit-bourgeois. It was surely more raffish than that. One of those hom Sir Harold eventually honoured, for instance, would attempt to seduce girls by claiming that he was in a position to secure them an invitation to 'tea in No W.' And this Ploy—with which, I hasten to make clear, neither Marcia nor Mr Joe Haines had anything whatever to do—provides us with the key, not so much to Mr Haines's ..,"°°k, as to the controversy it has aroused. i hat key is not power but the pornography °r Power.

▪ To illustrate this I return to Crossman. He 'kitchen nothing against the members of the Kitchen cabinet' (this was a year or so before the advent of Mr Haines). For Marcia, as I h ave said, he had a certain respect. He was Personally fond of Mr Kaufman, who had, akft,er all, been his research assistant when he "aU been writing a column for the Daily If irr°r; though he did not consider Gerald ;PI' great shakes with the old words. ` C. ousin Swift,' as Dryden observed, 'you never make a poet.') He was also fond of Lord Balogh but treated him roughly. or example, at a New Statesman ccinfervnce during Crossman's editorship Lord Balogh once suggested that trade unions Shouldbe made legally responsible for dishing out full pay during strikes. ,Why ?' the then editor inquired. It. vill break zee trade union movement.' rep,lied the Hungarian savant. 0 43,11 for God's sake stop wasting every„rie s time, Thomas,' said Crossman; and there the matter rested. 8 Nevertheless Crossman thought them °2d eggs on the whole. His complaints Were first, that the standard of hospitality on those occasions when he managed to penetrate No 10 was not more generous and, second, that he was not able to penetrate it more frequently. In short he wanted to be a member of the kitchen cabinet too.. If there is a theme to his Diaries it is that there was no central direction to government policy. The so-called kitchen cabinet was concerned with peripheral issues merely; moreover it was composed of people who, however agreeable they might be, were betas. Now, it may be that Sir Harold, the British constitution, Marcia—whoeverwas wise to exclude Crossman. Who knows what mischief might have occurred, what disasters might have ensued, if he had played a more prominent part ? Still, the message both of Mr Haines's book and of Marcia's previous production is that 'advisers' are rendered virtually impotent when confronted by established civil servants. We shall be talking about power rather than about the pornography of power only when an outsider displaces, or is made the equivalent in rank of, the Secretary of the Cabinet or the Prime Minister's principal private secretary.

After all, Marcia was specifically employed for party rather than governmental purposes. Mr Haines, on the other hand, was a civil servant of sorts: he succeeded Sir (as he now is) Trevor Lloyd-Hughes as press secretary at No 10. Subsequently he seems to have lived well beyond his intellectual means, submitting memoranda about subjects on which his qualifications to pronounce were by no means self-evident. In

any case he was paid to do something else: that is, to be a press officer. He did not do it

particularly well. This, however, was not entirely Mr Haines's fault. Lobby correspondents are uneasy when dealing with former journalists such as Sir Trevor, Mr Haines or Mr Kaufman. They much prefer proper civil servants such as Sir Harold Evans, Mr Henry James or Mr Tom McCaffrey.

Mr Kaufman, it should be made clear, was running in parallel, so to speak, with Sir Trevor. He was supposed to Orovide the 'liaison,' whatever that might mean exactly, between Westminster and No 10. Though we chatted amicably enough, as we still do, he never told me anything of much interest or importance. Like Marcia, he.was a party employee, not a civil servant.iThe arrangement came to an end with -Mr Haines's arrival in 1969 and Mr Kaufman's election to the House in 1970. Mr Kaufman was never replaced. In last Sunday's Observer Marcia makes a bit of a meal of all this; though I am not wholly clear whether she wanted Mr Haines to be a Kaufman-figure, with a civil servant running governmental information, or a Lloyd-Hughes figure, with another party person brought in to provide that famous 'liaison.' I am even less clear what real difference this is supposed to. make to anyone. Two press officers or one: what does it matter ?

And, just as Marcia spent most of her time on party political work, so her most influential view concerned election tactics rather than government policy. In 1970 she pressed for a summer election. More important, she successfully urged that it was to be Sir Harold's election, not the Labour Party's. He went on those walkabouts which were, it appears, invented by Marcia rather than by Mr Will Camp. 'Whom,' Sir Harold inquired, 'do you want ? Me, or that other chap ?"We'd rather have the other chap, thank you very much,' the voters replied. However, Mr Haines should be able to produce more than one erroneous decision, in which many others shared, if he wishes to sustain his case that Marcia is, or was, the most powerful political woman of the century.

But to say this is not to assert that the book ought never to have been written. It was worth doing, Mr Haines was right to do it and he has done it well. There has been a lot of humbug about this. The Conservative press has used the book as a bludgeon with which to assault both Sir Harold (who in fact emerges as a kind of comic, muchtried saint) and also the Labour Party. See what they get up to! And what treacherous, disloyal people they are! But all Prime Ministers tend to have strange people around them. The late John Wyndham, Lord Egremont, was Mr Harold Macmillan's (unpaid) private secretary. He was a nice man who used to get very drunk. Again, for myself I did not find the mutual caressing that went on between Mr Andre Previn and Mr Edward Heath at all edifying.

Of course this Conservative response was predictable enough. What I find more canting is the attitude one finds on the Left, which may be summarised as 'all good men must come to the aid of gallant little Marcia.' 11 is particularly hypocritical when displayed by journalists who claim to be in the business of exposure and who are, on

some moral principal which I am unable to isolate, prepared to applaud in Crossman

what they denounce in Mr Haines. It has even been suggested that the Mirror was somehow 'disloyal' to publish extracts, both

because of the IPC Lords created by Sir

Harold and because of Marcia's friendship with the paper's political editor, Mr Terry

Lancaster (not to be confused with Mr Walter Terry). Marcia, we may be sure, is well able to look after herself, few better.

Admittedly she has not always had an easy

life, partly because she is a woman, partly because she trained as a secretary. People will still say 'only a secretary' when they ' would not contemplate saying 'only a miner.' The moral of the story is clearly that no girl should become a secretary if she

really wants to do something else.