Charles Snow - Corridors of Power

No. Was he, as a high bureaucrat, troubled when open politics, in particular extremist open politics, looked like breaking out? He was both far-sighted and ambitious. He knew, as well as anyone in Whitehall, that in any dog-fight, all the dogs lose: you could be an innocent victim, or even a looker-on: but some of the mud stuck. If there were any sort of political convulsion, his Treasury friends and bosses would be watching him. His name would get a tag on it. It would be unjust, but he would be the last man to complain of injustice. It was his job to see that the fuss didn’t happen. If it did, he might find himself cut off from the topmost jobs for life, a second Hector Rose.

There was another reason why he was disturbed. Though he was ambitious, he had high standards of behaviour. He could no more have made Brodzinski’s speech than he could have knifed an old woman behind her counter. Although he was himself Conservative, more so even than his colleagues, he felt that the PQ could only have been asked — and he would have used simple, moral terms — by a fool and a cad. In a heart which was sterner than anyone imagined, Douglas did not make special allowances for fools, cads, or paranoids like Brodzinski. For him, they were moral outlaws.

‘The Minister mustn’t answer the questions himself,’ he announced.

‘Won’t it be worse if he doesn’t?’

But Douglas was not consulting me. Roger was himself ‘under fire a bit’. He had to be guarded. We didn’t want too many whispers about whether he was ‘sound.’ It was at just this point in politics where he was most vulnerable. No, the man to answer the question was the Parliamentary Secretary, Leverett-Smith.

What Douglas meant was that Leverett-Smith hadn’t an idea in his head, was remarkably pompous, and trusted by his party both in the House and at conferences. He would, in due course, make, Monty Cave had said with his fat man’s malice, a quintessential Law Officer of the Crown.

Within a few minutes, Douglas had been inside Roger’s office and had returned.

‘He agrees,’ he said. Since Douglas must have spoken with the wrappings off, just as he had spoken to me, it would have been difficult for Roger not to agree. ‘Come on. You may have to speak for some of the scientists.’

In Roger’s room, Douglas had already written on the file the terms of a reply. When we called on Leverett-Smith, two doors down the passage, the pace of business became more stately.

‘Parliamentary Secretary, we’ve got a job for you,’ Douglas had begun. But it took longer. Leverett-Smith, bulky, glossy-haired, spectacled, owlish, stood up to welcome us. Very slowly, he read the civil servants’ comments as the question had made its way up. Douglas’ draft, the newspaper clipping. Again very slowly, in his reverberating voice, he began to ask questions. What was the definition of ‘bad security risk’ in British terms? What were the exact levels of security clearance? Had all members of the scientific committee been cleared for Top Secret, and for the information none of us mentioned ?

Leverett-Smith went inexorably on. The method of slow talk, I thought, as Keynes used to say. Had all the civil servants been cleared? What were the dates of these clearances?

Like his colleagues, Douglas kept his relations with the Security organs obscure. He did not refer to documents, but answered out of his head — as accurately as a computer, but more impatiently. This was not the kind of examination a Permanent Secretary expected from a junior Minister — or, so far as that went, from a senior Minister either. The truth was, Leverett-Smith was not only cumbrous and self-important: he disliked Roger: he had no use for rough and ready scientists like Walter Luke, while men like Francis Getliffe or me made him uncomfortable. He did not like his job, except that it might be a jumping-off board. This mixture of technology, politics, ideology, moral conscience, military foresight, he felt odious and not quite respectable, full of company he did not choose to live his life among.

Actually, he lived his life in one of the odder English enclaves. He wasn’t in the least an aristocrat, as Sammikins and his sister were: he wasn’t a country gentleman, like Collingwood: to Diana’s smart friends, he was stodgy middle-class. But the kind of middle-class in which he seemed never to have heard an unorthodox opinion — from his small boys’ school in Kensington, to his preparatory school, to his house at Winchester, to the Conservative Club at Oxford, he had moved with a bizarre absence of dissent.

‘I don’t completely understand, Secretary, why the Minister wishes me to take this question?’

After an hour’s steady interrogation, he made this inquiry. Douglas, who did not often permit himself an expression of God-give-me-patience, almost did so now.

‘He doesn’t want to make an issue of it,’ he said. Then, with his sweet and youthful smile, he added: ‘He thinks you would carry confidence with everybody. And that would kill this bit of nonsense stone-dead.’

Leverett-Smith tilted his massive, cubical head. For the first time, he was slightly placated. He was interested to know if that was the Minister’s considered judgement. He would, of course, have to consult him to make sure.

Douglas, still smiling sweetly, as though determined to prove that pique did not exist in public business, reminded him that they had only a few hours to play with.

‘If the Minister really wishes me to undertake this duty, then naturally I should be unable to refuse,’ said Leverett-Smith, with something of the air of a peeress pressed to open a church bazaar. He had a parting shot.

‘If I do undertake this duty, Secretary, I think I can accept your draft in principle. But I shall have to ask you to call on me after lunch, so that we can go over it together.’

As Douglas left the room with me, he was silent. Pique might not exist in public business; but, I was thinking, if Leverett-Smith remained in political office at the time when Douglas became Head of the Treasury, he might conceivably remember this interview.

Yet although time might have been spent in Leverett-Smith’s ceremonies, there had been no compromise. It was Douglas who had got his own way.

The question was down for Thursday. That morning, Roger asked me to go to the House, to see how Leverett-Smith performed. He also asked me, as though it were an absent-minded thought, to drop in afterwards at Ellen’s flat for half an hour.

It was a raw afternoon, fog in the streets, ghostly residues of fog in the Chamber. About fifty members were settled on the benches, like an ill-attended matinee. As soon as prayers were finished, I had gone to the box behind the Speaker’s chair. There were several questions before ours, a lot of backchat about the reprieve of a murderer whom a Welsh Member kept referring to, with an air of passionate affection, as ‘Ernie’ Wilson.

Then, from the back bench on the Government side, on my right hand, rose the man we were waiting for — young, smart, blond, avid. He announced that he begged to ask Question 22, in a manner self-assured and minatory, his head back, his chin raised, as if he were trying to get the maximum bark from the microphones.

Leverett-Smith got up deliberately, as though his muscles were heavy and slow. He did not turn to the back-bencher in his rear: he stood gazing at a point far down on the opposite side below the gangway.

‘Yes, sir,’ he said, as though announcing satisfaction, not only with security arrangements but with the universe.

The avid young man was on his feet.

‘Has the Minister seen the statement made by Professor Brodzinski on November 3rd, which has been widely published in the United States?’

Leverett-Smith’s uninflected, confident voice came rolling out: ‘My Right Honourable friend has seen this statement, which is erroneous in all respects. Her Majesty’s Government has a defence policy which is the responsibility of Her Majesty’s Government, and which is constantly being debated in this House. My Right Honourable friend acknowledges with gratitude the services of his advisers on the scientific committees and elsewhere. It does not need to be said that these men are one and all of the highest integrity and devoted to the national interest. As a matter of standard procedure, all persons including Her Majesty’s Ministers having access to secret information, are subjected to rigorous security procedure. And this is the case with each person consulted, on any matter connected with Defence whatsoever, by my Right Honourable friend.’