Must You Go_ - Antonia Fraser [85]
Pinochet judgment in the House of Lords due at 2 p.m. We settled ourselves in front of TV, focused on BBC 24. View of the House of Lords totally empty, then a few peers saunter in, followed by the five Law Lords, who all seem to be very tall. Perhaps becoming a Law Lord makes you grow. We watchers have been coached in what will happen beforehand by Joshua Rozenberg, BBC legal correspondent. If the appeal is ‘Allowed’, then Pinochet is in trouble. So when the first Lord gives a ‘Disallowed’ to the Appeal, I put my thumb down to Harold beside me. Lord Lloyd also indicates ‘Disallowed’. It seems all is lost (as we had expected). Then: Lord Nicholls: ‘Allowed’. Then Lord Steyn: ‘ALLOWED’. Lastly Lord Hoffman, a grim-looking man, but how we loved him! Because he indicated: ALLOWED. It was, so Rozenberg told us from the box, the first time such a judgment had been televised. We drink to the ruin of dictators starting with Pinochet.
Later the sight of the relatives of the Disappeared weeping on TV is immensely moving. Others scream and leap for joy. Pro-Pinochet women in Chile, mainly blue-rinsed, are seen to lunge at reporters.
Harold agreed to go on Newsnight. He was quite nervous, he admitted later. He looked calmly vengeful on screen and saw off Norman Lamont, who said that the Chilean people had given Pinochet immunity. Harold: ‘No, Pinochet gave Pinochet immunity.’
All the time the shadow of the coming (First) Iraq War was falling athwart the British political scene. There was, for example, an Emergency Committee meeting about Iraq at the House of Commons early in 1988.
12 February
There were extraordinary scenes outside St Stephen’s entrance, big crowds, flaring TV lights, policemen pretty stroppy. As ‘speakers’ we got in with some difficulty. (We learnt later that neither Valerie Grove of The Times nor Adrian Mitchell, poet and protester, got in at all, being sent to ‘the back of the queue’.) Packed meeting in a large committee room in the far corner of Westminster Hall. As we crossed the Hall, I found myself treading on the plaque to Sir Thomas More – another man of conscience. Tony Benn batted off and was excellent, clear, firm. Stated that he was not in favour of Saddam Hussein, but in his meeting with Iraqi dissidents he’d found that none of them were in favour of any kind of invasion since it would merely strengthen Saddam. Harold was good, short and to the point. He, too, although he had demonstrated against Saddam and his treatment of the Kurds, did not think that bombing civilians was the answer. Diane Abbott, an impressive figure, large, beautiful, high rounded forehead, spoke with authority and verve.
As an example of a situation developing in a different, more encouraging direction, we visited Belfast (first time for both of us) in the same year.
2/3 December
Nothing prepared us for the Terror Tour – local black phrase of taxi drivers. The sheer narrowness of the districts we have heard about on the news. Little Protestant streets, so close to famous Catholic streets. Huge graffiti, but that is not the right word for these awesome artworks on walls: the Red Hand of Ulster or Cuchulainn. We were driven by the distinguished poet Michael Longley. The first police car we saw was like something out of Dr Who: heavy, dark grey all over, an armoured pill box on wheels, narrow slits instead of windows.
But Michael is actually reporting progress. ‘A year ago there would have been policemen everywhere in the streets, grilles, bricks fortifying every shop, practically no windows. The building of the new centre by the docks is a sign of hope because it has glass. Mind you, the strongest glass they could find, but still glass.’ We liked both the two young writers that escorted us: Colin Teevan, writer-in-residence at Queen’s University and Glen Patterson. Michael Longley is a big, fine-looking man, huge brown eyes, white hair and beard, tweed jacket, rough scarf. I was ignorant of his poetry but Harold has always admired it and read me several poems. Michael Longley told us that he had been offered