From telegraph.co.uk
Norman Fowler’s account of 17 years in office tends to the polite and generous, but evidently he prefers John Major to the Iron Lady
I love political diaries: their indiscretions, their spiteful asides, their salacious admissions, their confirmation that honourable friends were, in fact, at daggers drawn most of the time. Alan Clark’s come to mind, as do Tony Benn’s or, going back further, Chips Channon’s. In 1975, the posthumous publication of Richard Crossman’s caused a furore, since Labour were back in government with many of those featured still in the highest offices. Barbara Castle followed, then Benn, all using their impressions and recollections to exact revenge on their political opponents, ie. their Cabinet colleagues.
From that time on, political diaries have poured out of publishing houses. As one former minister advised a Cabinet newbie: “The first thing to do is look round the table and think, ‘Which of these bastards is keeping a diary?’” Where they find the time to do so, while running a big Whitehall ministry and attending meetings, conferences and lunches with the great, good (and journalists), is a mystery. Moreover, does anyone keep one now? Is the diary still of interest in an era of Twitter, emails and instant news? After all, the inner machinations of Cabinet meetings are often made public within an hour of their conclusion, with who said what the stuff of tomorrow’s headlines, not diaries to be published on retirement or death.
Lord (Norman) Fowler has waited a long time to publish his Diaries, which end in 1997 as Labour come to office. He has already used them as a basis for his political memoirs, Ministers Decide (1991), which he would probably be the first to acknowledge did not set the literary world afire.
Sad to say, however, that none of the unseemly hallmarks of more notorious diaries intrude here. Fowler is pretty much unfailingly polite and nice to everyone except the claque that gathered around Margaret Thatcher and gave her successor John Major such a hard time throughout his period in office. These include Cabinet colleagues and a few editors of this newspaper.
The diaries are more a record of those two premierships and less about Fowler himself, though his happy and stable personal life clearly served as an anchor throughout his career. While he acknowledges the impact of Thatcher on the country, his preference is evidently for Major – who made him Tory party chairman – though he was often frustrated by the latter’s thin-skinned reaction to media criticism.
Fowler served as Lord Speaker from 2016 to 2021 CREDIT: AFP
His only real venom is reserved for Thatcher in the aftermath of the crushing 1997 election defeat:
"She backed Major as the only man who could beat Heseltine and then withdrew her support once that purpose had been served. She should be thoroughly ashamed of her role but of course it will not even cross her mind that she bears any responsibility. As for John himself he never received the credit for his achievements – the victory in 1992, the opt-outs at Maastricht and above all, the strongest economy since the war."
As someone who covered this period as a political journalist, I can say that there’s much truth in those observations, but the real problem was the removal of Thatcher to begin with. As the beneficiary of the assassination, if not its perpetrator, Major was never going to find life easy, especially with the members who revered her.
Even if the diaries feel a bit Pooterish at times, Fowler was far from being a nobody. He is one of the most experienced politicians of his generation, joining the Thatcher government in 1979 as Transport Minister and serving throughout her term. She clearly trusted and relied upon him to deliver and not come with complaints and problems. His most difficult time with her was when, as Health Secretary, he had to convince her to back a graphic campaign to contain Aids and sought to persuade her to make a television broadcast about the risks, which she vetoed.
Fowler put a great deal of time, effort and emotion into tackling Aids, and we forget how at the time, in the mid-1980s, we thought it was a plague that would overwhelm us all. He left the Health Department having pioneered a campaign that contained Aids without leading to a backlash against the gay population.
It was one of the unsung achievements that this patently decent and capable politician can justifiably point to in his 85th year. His popularity in parliament was evident when he was elected Speaker of the Lords in 2016. His virtues of propriety, competence, self-effacement and loyalty are too easily scorned in an era of braggadocio and faux celebrity. A bit more mud-slinging wouldn’t have gone amiss, mind you.
The Best of Enemies: Diaries 1980-1997 is published by Biteback at £25
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/books/non-fiction/review-best-enemies-norman-fowler-diaries/
