A Very British Coup Read online

  Chris Mullin was the Labour MP for Sunderland South from 1987 until 2010. He was for four years chairman of the Home Affairs Select Committee and served as a minister in three departments. He is the author of three widely praised volumes of diaries, A View From the Foothills, Decline and Fall and A Walk-On Part, the memoir Hinterland and three novels, including A Very British Coup, which was turned into a BAFTA-winning television series.

  Praise for A Very British Coup

  ‘Preposterous’ Daily Telegraph

  ‘Rattling good’ London Review of Books

  ‘A curious Molotov cocktail’ Financial Times

  ‘A spiffing read’ People

  Praise for A Walk-On Part 1994–1999

  ‘Perceptive, witty, humane, indignant and self-lacerating by turn, Mullin has the qualities of all enduring diarists’ Guardian

  ‘His acerbic wit, independence of mind and self-deprecating honesty have proved a refreshing antidote to the spin that marked life under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown’ Financial Times

  ‘He will join Alan Clark in the pantheon of truly great diarists’ Matthew d’Ancona, Evening Standard

  ‘A treat to be savoured. What’s more they are written by a creature that the public does not believe exists: an honest politician at Westminster’ Oona King, The Times

  Praise for A View From the Foothills 1999–2005

  ‘By far the most revealing and entertaining [diary] to have emerged from the now-dying era of New Labour… a diary that tells us as much about British politics as that great television series Yes Minister’ Economist

  ‘Every once in a while, political diaries emerge that are so irreverent and insightful that they are destined to be handed out as leaving presents in offices in Whitehall for years to come. A View from the Foothills is one such book’ David Cameron, Observer Books of the Year

  ‘A political diary that stands with the best, alongside Alan Clark, and Chips Channon’ Joan Bakewell

  Praise for Decline & Fall 2005–2010

  ‘The most enjoyable and insightful of all the political diaries I have read’ Jonathan Dimbleby

  ‘Mullin’s supreme virtues are an eye for the absurd and an incorruptible independence of outlook… an indispensible hangover cure for anyone who has ever been drunk on the idea of power’ Guardian

  ‘Mullin’s name will live in these diaries when the great host of New Labour careerists has been cast into oblivion’ Andrew Gimson, Daily Telegraph

  AVERY BRITISH COUP

  by Chris Mullin

  First published by Hodder & Stoughton 1982

  Coronet edition 1983

  Corgi edition 1988

  Arrow edition 1991

  Politicos edition 2001

  Politicos (Methuen) edition 2006

  A complete catalogue record for this book can be obtained from the British Library on request

  The right of Chris Mullin to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

  Copyright © 1982 Chris Mullin

  Introduction copyright © 2017 Chris Mullin

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

  First published in this edition in 2012 by Serpent’s Tail,

  an imprint of Profile Books Ltd

  3 Holford Yard

  Bevin Way

  London wc1x 9HD

  www.serpentstail.com

  ISBN 978 1 84668 740 2

  elSBN 978 1 84765 227 0

  In memory of Joan Maynard

  ‘I could easily imagine myself being tempted into a treasonable disposition under a Labour Government dominated by the Marxist Left … Suppose, in these circumstances, one were approached by an official of the C.I.A. who sought to enlist one’s help in a project designed to ‘destabilise’ this far left government. Would it necessarily be right to refuse co-operation? … Coming from the representative of any other foreign power such a request would not be entertained by me for a moment. But the United States is not just any other foreign power. I am and always have been passionately pro-American, in all sense of believing that the United States has long been the protector of all the values which I hold most dear. To that extent my attitude to the United States has long been that of a potential fellow traveller.’

  When Treason Can Be Right

  by Peregrine Worsthorne,

  Sunday Telegraph, November 4, 1979

  Introduction to the 2017 edition

  On the very day of the recent general election, 8 June 2017, an article appeared on the front page of the Daily Telegraph warning that the election of Jeremy Corbyn would be ‘profoundly dangerous for the nation’. The article went on, ‘… in the past MI5 would actively have investigated him. He cannot be trusted with the fate of Britain.’

  The author was Sir Richard Dearlove, a former head of MI6 and one of the men who got us into the Iraq catastrophe, an issue upon which Corbyn’s judgement proved superior to his. Until I read this I had thought that the days when the intelligence and security services interfered in domestic politics were long over. Now I am not so sure.

  A Very British Coup was conceived nearly forty years ago in a political climate which, until recently at least, was very different to that which prevails today. In October 1980 I was on a train returning from the Labour party conference in Blackpool with Stuart Holland, who had recently been elected MP for Lambeth Vauxhall, and Tony Banks and Peter Hain who later became MPs. We were discussing how the Establishment would react to the election of a left-wing Labour government. In those far-off days Mrs Thatcher was in office, but had yet to consolidate her grip on power. Labour was high in the opinion polls and there was a real possibility that, come the election, the Labour Party would be led by Tony Benn. The right-wing press was working itself into a frenzy at the prospect. ‘No longer if, but when’ screamed a headline in one of the Harmsworth newspapers over a full-page picture of Mr Benn. To cap it all, the announcement that the Americans were planning to install cruise missiles in their British bases had given new life to the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.

  ‘A good subject for a novel’, remarked one of my companions, prompting Peter Hain to reveal that he and a friend were in the process of circulating to publishers an outline for exactly such a novel. Stuart Holland went one better. He revealed that, by the swimming pool in Greece that summer, he had tapped out the opening chapters of a novel on the same subject. In the event it was I who got there first, but it was a close shave. Years later Peter Hardiman Scott, a former chief political correspondent of the BBC, told me that when A Very British Coup was published he was two-thirds of the way through writing a novel based on a similar premise. His was so uncannily similar that, after consulting his publisher, he decided to abandon his effort. How lucky I was. It could have so easily been I who was pipped at the post.

  A Very British Coup was published in the autumn of 1982 and attracted a mild flurry of interest. At the time I was working at the left-wing weekly, Tribune, and we sold the book through an advertisement in the back of the paper. The first order came from the American embassy and this was followed in due course with an invitation to lunch with the Minister, the most important official after the ambassador. The novel was helpfully denounced in the correspondence columns of The Times and as a result sales at the top people’s bookshop, Hatchards in Piccadilly, briefly exceeded those at the left-wing bookshop, Collets (since that time I have realised that, when it comes to selling books, a good, high-profile denunciation is worth half a dozen friendly reviews). The first hardback prin
t sold quickly and a modest paperback print followed. Thereafter it might have died but for events conspiring to make it topical.

  In August 1985 the Observer revealed that an MI5 official, Brigadier Ronnie Stoneham, was to be found in room 105 at Broadcasting House, stamping upturned Christmas trees on the personnel files of BBC employees he deemed ideologically unsound. Students of A Very British Coup will know that my head of MI5, Sir Peregrine Craddock, was also vetting BBC employees. What’s more, he had a spy on the general council of CND and in due course an MI5 defector revealed that there had indeed been such a spy. His name was Harry Newton. Finally in 1987 Peter Wright, a retired MI5 officer, caused a sensation with his claim that a group of MI5 officers, of whom he was one, had plotted to undermine the government of Harold Wilson. Suddenly the possibility that the British Establishment might conspire with its friends across the Atlantic could no longer be dismissed as left-wing paranoia.

  In 1988 Channel Four broadcast a television series based on the novel in which my prime minister was wonderfully brought to life by that great actor, Ray McAnally, and went on to win several BAFTAs and an Emmy. Thereafter interest waned. Following the scandals of the eighties, MI5 was cleaned up (‘we’ve cleared out a lot of deadwood’, a Tory Home Secretary once whispered to me) and ceased messing about in British politics. Under Tony Blair Labour returned resolutely to the centre ground of British politics and was warmly embraced by the Establishment, or most of it.

  With the rise of Jeremy Corbyn A Very British Coup is suddenly topical again. At first the prospect of a Corbyn premiership seemed so remote that the idea that he might be the victim of an establishment coup seemed no more than a delicious fantasy. With the recent general election result, however, what was once unimaginable is now a distinct possibility. He could well be prime minister by the turn of the decade. Even so, my instinct remains that, despite a lot of huffing and puffing, the-powers-that-be will let events take their course. But you never know. With Trump in the White House, much of our allegedly free press controlled by demented ideologues and idiots like Richard Dearlove stirring the pot, we can never say never. Enjoy.

  Chris Mullin

  August 2017

  1

  The news that Harry Perkins was to become Prime Minister went down very badly in the Athenaeum.

  “Man’s a Communist,” exploded Sir Arthur Furnival, a retired banker.

  “Might as well all emigrate,” said George Fison, who owned a chain of newspapers.

  “My God,” ventured the Bishop of Bath and Wells, raising his eyes heavenward.

  As the Press Association tape machine in the lobby began to punch out the first results of the March 1989 general election it became clear that something had gone horribly wrong with the almost unanimous prediction of the pundits that the Tory-Social Democrat Government of National Unity would be re-elected.

  Kingston-on-Thames was the first to declare. The sharp young merchant banker who had represented the seat saw his majority evaporate.

  “A mistake,” said Furnival when he had recovered his composure.

  “Bloody better be,” grunted Fison. No one could remember the last time a seat in the Surrey stockbroker belt had returned a Labour Member of Parliament.

  The machine was now giving details of a computer forecast to the effect that if the Kingston swing was reproduced across the country Labour would have a majority of around 200 seats.

  “To hell with computers,” muttered Furnival. Fison took a sip of whisky. The Bishop dabbed his forehead with a purple handkerchief.

  There were those who had argued that computers had rendered elections obsolete. That very morning a professor from Imperial College had been on the radio describing how he had fed the entire electoral register into a computer which had then selected a perfect cross-section of the population. He had polled the sample and confidently predicted that his results would be accurate to within one quarter of one per cent. Harry Perkins was about to put the learned professor and his computer out of business.

  “Freak result. Means nothing.” The party around the tape machine had been joined by a man in a double-breasted Savile Row suit. Sir Peregrine Craddock’s Who’s Who entry said simply that he was ‘attached to the Ministry of Defence’, but those who know about these things said he was the Director General of DI5.

  For the next few minutes Sir Peregrine’s optimism seemed justified. The National Unity candidate held Oxford with a majority only slightly reduced. Braintree stayed Tory. So did Colchester and Finchley. Then at about quarter to midnight came the first results from the North. Salford, Grimsby, York and Leeds East were all held by Labour with doubled, even trebled, majorities. It was at this point that Arthur Furnival disappeared to ring his stockbroker.

  At a few minutes to midnight Worcester went Labour, bringing down the first of six Cabinet ministers who would lose their seats that evening. Sir Peregrine took a sip of his orange juice. George Fison rushed back to Fleet Street to dictate an editorial for the late edition of his newspaper. He was last heard shouting that the British people had taken leave of their senses.

  By 12.30 it was clear that the National Unity bubble had burst. South of the Wash the Social Democrats were being annihilated. Richmond, Putney, Hemel Hempstead and Cambridge all fell to Labour in quick succession. North of the Wash only the seaside resorts and the hunting country remained in Tory hands.

  Like so much else associated with the twentieth century, television sets were banished from the Athenaeum. But in view of the impending national disaster a delegation from the crowd of elderly gentlemen now gathered around the tape machine had been despatched in search of the club secretary, Captain Giles Fairfax. The captain said he would see what he could do and within ten minutes reappeared carrying a small portable set borrowed from the caretaker’s flat. It was now installed beside the tape machine on a table taken from the morning room. “All very irregular,” said the captain with an apologetic glance at the portrait of Charles Darwin which overlooked the scene. Nevertheless, he stayed to watch.

  There was a groan as the television screen immediately focused upon the beaming face of Harry Perkins who was awaiting the declaration of his own result in Sheffield town hall. Perkins, a former steel worker, was a stocky, robust man with a twinkle in his eye and dark, bushy brows. His greying hair was long at the sides and combed over his head to hide his balding crown. His face was deeply lined and rugged, burnished by the great heat of a Sheffield steel mill in the days when Britain had been a steel-producing nation. He was smartly dressed, but nothing flashy. A tweed sports jacket, a silk tie, and on this occasion a red carnation in his buttonhole. Harry Perkins was going to be quite different from any Prime Minister Britain had ever seen. The programme on which he was in the process of being swept to power was quite different from any ever presented to the British electorate.

  On the television screen a commentator was now reciting the highlights. Withdrawal from the Common Market. Import controls. Public control of finance, including the pension and insurance funds. Abolition of the House of Lords, the honours list and the public schools.

  The manifesto also called for ‘consideration to be given’ to withdrawal from NATO as a first step towards Britain becoming a neutral country. An end to Britain’s ‘so-called nuclear deterrent’ and the withdrawal of all foreign bases from British soil. There was even a paragraph about ‘dismantling the newspaper monopolies’.

  For weeks all opinion polls and all responsible commentators had been predicting that there was no hope of the Labour Party being elected on a programme like this. Ever since Harry Perkins had been chosen to lead Labour at a tumultuous party conference two years earlier, the popular press had been saying that this proved what they had always argued – namely that the Labour Party was in the grip of a Marxist conspiracy. Privately the rulers of the great corporations had been gleeful, for they had convinced themselves that the British people were basically moderate and that, however rough the going got, they would never ele
ct a Labour government headed by the likes of Harry Perkins.

  Picture, therefore, the dismay that swept the lobby of the Athenaeum as the television showed Perkins coming to the rostrum in Sheffield town hall to acknowledge not only his own re-election with a record majority, but to claim victory on behalf of his party.

  “Comrades,” intoned brother Perkins.

  “Comrades, my foot.” Sir Arthur Furnival was apoplectic. “Told you the man’s a Communist.”

  “Comrades,” repeated Perkins, as though he could hear the heckling coming from the Athenaeum. He then delivered himself of a dignified little speech thanking the returning officer, those who counted the ballot papers, party workers and all the other people it is customary for a victorious candidate to thank. Then he got down to business.

  “Comrades, it is now clear that by tomorrow morning we shall form the government of this country.”

  He paused to let the cheering subside. “We should not be under any illusion about the task ahead of us. We inherit an industrial desert. We inherit a country which for ten years has been systematically pillaged and looted by every species of pirate, spiv and con man known to civilisation.”

  “Scandalous,” muttered Furnival.

  “Disgraceful carry-on,” said the Bishop of Bath and Wells.

  “All we have won tonight is political power,” continued Perkins. “By itself that is not enough. Real power in this country resides not in Parliament, but in the boardrooms of the City of London; in the darkest recesses of the Whitehall bureaucracy and in the editorial offices of our national newspapers. To win real power we have first to break the stranglehold exerted by the ruling class on all the important institutions of our country.”

  “Treason,” whispered Furnival, “that’s what I call it, downright treason.”

  Perkins paused and then, speaking slowly and looking directly into a television camera, straight into the eyes of Sir Arthur Furnival, he said, “Our ruling class have never been up for re-election before, but I hereby serve notice on behalf of the people of Great Britain that their time has come.”