Owl in the eaves

By Sam Macrory - 13th July 2010

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In the concluding part of our exclusive interview with the country’s longest-serving parliamentarian, Lord Carrington tells Sam Macrory about the Falklands, global affairs, the coalition, and the future of the House of Lords.

You can read the first part of the interview here: https://epolitix.com/latestnews/article-detail/newsarticle/lord-without-peer/

Lord Carrington remains the last peer to have held a great office of state, but following Argentina’s invasion of the Falkland Islands in 1982, he resigned as foreign secretary. The Argentine military operation contradicted the intelligence which Lord Carrington had received, and both press and Parliament sought someone to blame. Though the Franks Inquiry into the war later exonerated him, Lord Carrington, who describes the Falklands invasion as “a chapter of misfortune”, insists he has no regrets.

“In retrospect we won a war 8,000 miles away, but before we started the chiefs of staff were greatly divided over whether it was possible. Margaret Thatcher decided to do it – if she hadn’t, she would have been out on her ear – and if you’re going to do something like that, then you want the country behind you. The last thing you want are people squabbling over whose fault it is,” Lord Carrington recalls. “I thought that if I resigned then that would be the end of who was responsible and they would get on with how to win the war. I think that was right.”

I ask if the press applied excessive pressure in searching for a scapegoat.

Carrington’s tone is sanguine. “They always do. But who else are they going to blame? That’s the way it goes.”

He also refuses to blame the intelligence. “How can you possibly divine what people’s intentions are? The intelligence was that they wouldn’t do anything. They shouldn’t have tried. We got them back.” Nevertheless, Carrington’s resignation continues to be seen as one of the most principled and honourable of recent times.

He remains a keen follower of international affairs, so I ask whether he thinks a second Falklands conflict is a possibility. “I can’t bring myself to believe they will have another go, although it will be awkward if they find a lot of oil,” he suggests, before adding with a smile: “Drilling in the deep sea though… perhaps they won’t do it,” in reference to the disastrous BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

Less certain still is whether Britain has the capability to open a new military front. Carrington believes Britain’s global status has “gone down over the last few years”. The defence review, to be published before the end of the year, will determine whether this decline continues.

He accepts that there will have to be defence cuts. “There are some very difficult decisions. We ring-fence health and education budgets, but you never think of ringfencing defence. Simon Jenkins argued that we should get rid of all the defence services – only a very clever man could write such a silly article.”

He tentatively supports the arguments for renewing Britain’s nuclear deterrent. “I think so... just. I only hope we can do it without spending too much money. It enables us to be at the top table, and if we gave that up then the only European power with a nuclear deterrent would be the French. I think we would find that rather humiliating.”

However, Lord Carrington doesn’t “believe in the special relationship [with the US] – I’ve never thought of it like that”, nor is he sure what the purpose of Nato is in the 21st century.

“In my day [Lord Carrington was Nato secretary general from 1984 to 1988] you had a potential enemy in the Soviet Union; people were frightened. That has all changed, and I find it difficult to know what Nato is for. You see what they have done about Afghanistan? Most haven’t joined in at all. The whole point of Nato was that everyone did it. The whole ethos has changed. I suppose it’s a good thing that they all get together, but that’s about all it is.”

Instead he hopes the Foreign and Commonwealth Office’s own levels of influence will recover. “The problem has been that prime ministers start being worried about domestic affairs, but soon find world affairs more attractive and begin to take over the foreign office. It went too far with Thatcher, who disliked and distrusted the foreign office – compromises and conciliation were not in her vocabulary.”

But should David Cameron, the prime minister, discover a liking for the foreign stage, then Carrington believes William Hague, the current foreign secretary, will be a “much tougher proposition”.

Four years ago, Carrington suggested that of all the prime ministers he worked for, Harold Macmillan’s politics are closest to those of the current incumbent. His view hasn’t changed. “You see it through what David Cameron did with the Liberal Democrats. A right-wing Conservative would never have done that. He is much more in the Macmillan mode.”

He probably knows Nick Clegg, the Liberal Democrat leader, a little better. Carrington lives in the same village as, and is good friends with, Clegg’s parents, and recommended a fresh-faced Clegg for a job with Leon Brittan at the European Commission in the 1990s.

Carrington grins at the thought, saying: “He didn’t have any political affiliations then. He’s a nice chap, I like him.”

He is less fond of the Cameron-Clegg coalition, however. “It was inevitable, but on the whole I don’t like the idea. Margaret Thatcher would never have been able to do what she did with a coalition and, as a generality, if you have really difficult things to do then you need one party to do it. First-past-the-post is very unfair to the Lib Dems and, to a point, to the Conservatives, but it worked. I don’t think we want a perpetual coalition government.”

With electoral reform for the Commons dismissed, we turn to Lords reform and the various changes Carrington has witnessed in the upper House. He describes the House of Lords as he first saw it in 1945 as “very rum”.

Following that year’s Labour landslide, “there were about 600 Tory peers to about 15 Labour peers”. The imbalance prompted Lord Addison – “a very wise old bird” – and Lord Salisbury to devise the Salisbury convention, an agreement which ensured that peers would not vote down a bill if it had appeared in the government’s manifesto. “It was all rather ludicrous, but it worked,” Carrington recalls.

He says the Upper House became a “bit more effective” following Harold Macmillan’s Life Peerages Act in 1958, describing the lifers as “very, very high-class people; they pepped it up quite a lot”.

He accepts that New Labour’s decision to do away with all but 92 of the hereditary peers – Carrington was made a life peer – was “unavoidable: the situation was unjustifiable”. The outcome, however, was negligible. “This place lost a lot of the atmosphere, but people come here not knowing very much, get used to it, and then behave exactly the same way as the hereditary peers did.”

As for further reform proposed by the coalition, Carrington is “totally against” the push for an elected second chamber. “I can’t think who will come here – people who failed to get in the Commons? The trouble is that no-one ever agrees on what the elected House should look like. They always talk about composition, but no-one ever decides what they want it to do. It’s the wrong way round; I don’t think they understand what they’re doing.”

That said, Carrington does not seem unduly concerned, suggesting that the current plans “will, like everything else, go into the sand”.

He is also unmoved by the latest batch of appointed peers. “The House of Lords is a great tamer of people, because there is a body of people who have been here for a long time.” Lord Carrington pauses, before adding: “And I have been here the longest.”

And, if anything, he will become more of a presence in the coming months. Last June Iona, Lady Carrington, died after 67 years of marriage to Peter. Today, Lord Carrington describes his hobbies as “grumbling and gardening – in that order”, but after finding Parliament “pretty boring” under Labour, he thinks he’ll come to Westminster more often under the new government: “It’s a habit really, and I still have a few friends here.”

They’re friends in high places too. After showing me to the door, Lord Carrington collars the former transport secretary Lord Adonis, 44 years his junior, for some animated talks.

Before I leave, Carrington sums up his career with typical understatement. “I’ve been very lucky. I had a lot of thoroughly enjoyable jobs.” Over the last seven decades, Lord Carrington has also seen more of British politics, and met more of its main players, than anyone else in the Houses of Parliament today. His continues to be one of the most extraordinary of political lives.

This article first appeared in The House Magazine.