Downing Street Years - Margaret Thatcher [268]
I had no illusion about the storm which would now break. And yet it remained a storm in a teacup, a crisis created from a small issue by a giant ego. Whether Michael Heseltine had come to the Cabinet having decided to resign I do not know. But the speed with which he was able to prepare the twenty-two-minute statement he delivered that afternoon, detailing my alleged misdemeanours, at least suggests that he was well prepared. I knew that, whatever disagreements there might be between me and other members of the Cabinet, they had witnessed for themselves that Michael was in the wrong.
As it happened, the main task of replying to Michael Heseltine fell to Leon Brittan. When the House reassembled on Monday 13 January, at a meeting that morning Willie, Leon, George, the Chief Whip and others discussed with me what should be done. It was decided that Leon, rather than I, would make a statement on Westland in the House that afternoon. It went disastrously wrong. Michael Heseltine trapped Leon with a question about whether any letters from British Aerospace had been received bearing on a meeting which Leon had had with Sir Raymond Lygo, the Chief Executive of British Aerospace. It was suggested (as it transpired quite falsely) that at his meeting with Sir Raymond Lygo Leon had said that British Aerospace’s involvement in the European consortium was against the national interest and that they should withdraw. The letter in question which had arrived at No. 10 and which I saw just before coming over to the House to listen to Leon’s statement had been marked ‘Private and Strictly Confidential’. Leon felt that he had to respect that confidence, but in doing so he used a lawyer’s formulation which opened him to the charge of misleading the House of Commons. He had to return to the House later that night to make an apology. In itself it was a small matter; but in the atmosphere of suspicion and conspiracy fostered by Michael Heseltine — who mysteriously knew all about this confidential missive — it did great harm to Leon’s credibility. I defended his action on the grounds that he had a duty to respect the confidentiality of the letter. The letter itself was subsequently published with the permission of its author, Sir Austin Pearce, but it contributed little to the debate since the day after that Sir Raymond withdrew his allegations as having been based on a misunderstanding. By then, however, Leon’s political position was all but irrecoverable.
But none of this made my life any easier when I had to reply to Neil Kinnock in the debate on Westland on Wednesday 15 January.
My speech was low-key and strictly factual. It demonstrated that we had reached our decisions on Westland in a proper and responsible way. Indeed, as I listed all the meetings of ministers, including Cabinet Committees and Cabinets which had discussed Westland, I half felt that I had been guilty of wasting too much of ministers’ time on an issue of relative unimportance. Although it set out all the facts, my speech was not well received. The press were expecting something more fiery.
Michael Heseltine spoke, criticizing the way in which collective responsibility had been discharged over Westland and quite ignoring the fact that he had walked out of a Cabinet meeting on Westland because he was the only minister unwilling to abide by a Cabinet decision.
Leon summed up for the Government in a speech which I hoped would restore his standing in the House and which seemed a modest success. The press, however, still kept up the pressure on him and there was plenty of criticism of me as well. It seemed, though, that given time we were over the worst. It was not to be. On Thursday 23 January I had to make a difficult statement to the House. It outlined the results of the leak enquiry into the disclosure of the Solicitor-General’s letter of 6 January. The tension was great, speculation at fever pitch. The enquiry concluded that civil servants at the Department of