Could it be that Mr Campbell's memory is playing tricks on him to his own benefit?
STEPHEN GLOVER My colleague Matthew Parris is in trouble with Alastair Campbell, the Prime Minister's director of communications. Mr Campbell accuses him of invention — a serious charge. But it appears that if any invention has taken place, it is on Mr Campbell's part. The question we will have to address is whether Mr Campbell has deliberately told a lie, or whether he is simply mistaken.
Mr Parris has written a book called Chance Witness. In it he recalls how during the 1994 Labour leadership campaign he and Mr Campbell were among a panel of journalists who interviewed the candidates — Tony Blair, John Prescott and Margaret Beckett — for the BBC. Mr Parris then worked for the Times, and Mr Campbell for Today, which is now defunct. The two of them shared a car en route to the interview. Mr Campbell asked Mr Parris in an innocent sort of way what he was going to ask Tony Blair. According to his account. Mr Parris replied that he was interested in Mr Blair's plan to send his son Euan to the London Oratory, a selective school of the sort which many in the Labour party had condemned. Mr Parris claims that Mr Campbell then tried to dissuade him from asking such a question. It would be below the belt. It would not go down well with colleagues. The London Oratory in any case was not a private school, so there was no very great issue of principle involved.
The interview went ahead. Mr Parris cannot recall whether or not he asked the question. If he did, he toned it down. But he was surprised several months later to learn that Alastair Campbell had been appointed Mr Blair's press secretary. It made him think about the earlier incident when Mr Campbell had represented himself as a normal working journalist, albeit one who was known to have links with the Labour party. All this is in Mr Parris's book.
When Mr Campbell read the offending excerpt, serialised in the Times a couple of weeks ago, he fired off two angry letters to Penguin, Mr Parris's publisher, requesting that Chance Witness should not be published in its present form, and hinting at some sort of legal action. Penguin was unmoved by these threats. Then Mr Campbell sent off a fiery missive to the Times. His letter finally appeared on Tuesday, considerably toned down. Mr Campbell denied that the exchange described by Mr Parris had taken place. Euan was at that time aged ten, and 'with more than a whole academic year of his primary education to complete'. Mr Campbell asserted that 'the issue of his secondary education had not been addressed. The first I knew anything about the Oratory being considered as their choice of school was some months after Mr Blair became Labour leader.'
Pretty emphatic, I would say. As Mr Campbell tells it, he could not have asked Mr Parris to withhold a question about the London Oratory because no decision to send Euan there had yet been made. But he is wrong about that. On 21 June 1994— 11 days into the leadership campaign — Jon Craig of the Daily Express ran a story on which the headline was 'Blair wants to send son to flagship opt-out school'. Mr Craig revealed that Tony Blair had visited the London Oratory with his wife Cherie, and 'was poised to send his eldest son to [the] model Tory school'.
Now it is virtually inconceivable that Mr Campbell did not read this story. He was the senior political writer on a rival paper, and it would have been part of his job to know everything that was reported in the middle of a leadership campaign. There is also a further piece of circumstantial evidence which is almost too good to be true. The next day, my cherished colleague, the media pundit Roy Greenslade — then writing for the Times — published a piece which (plus ca change) defended Mr Blair against some of the media probing into his background. He cited the Daily Express piece as an egregious example. 'In fact,' Roy informed us, '[the London Oratory] is just one of several schools Tony Blair is considering for his son.' Readers of this column will know that Mr Campbell and Mr Greenslade are old friends who sometimes put their heads together to ensure that New Labour is presented in the best possible light.
It is practically certain that by 21 June 1994 — if not before — Mr Campbell knew about Euan and the London Oratory. His contention in the Times that he did not learn about the matter until some months later can be discounted. Mr Parris has not yet established when the BBC interview took place, but it is a good bet that it was after Jon Craig's piece appeared in the Daily Express. Otherwise how could Mr Parris have known about it in order to ask his question? The announcement of Tony Blair's victory was made on 21 July after a ballot which took place during the previous week.
When he spoke to Mr Parris about the Oratory, Mr Campbell knew that this would be a hot issue in the Labour party, many of whose members disapprove of selective schools. There was an obvious interest in keeping the matter quiet. We may speculate that Mr Campbell was, in fact, secretly working for Mr Blair at the time, while his official day job was as a political journalist. Even if this was not the case, he was evidently serving Mr Blair's cause. Some may think that this is not a very grave thing to have done. But it is a charge which has evidently stung Mr Campbell into threatening Penguin and writing an angry letter to the Times.
The best complexion that can be put on Mr Campbell's behaviour is that he had forgotten about his conversation with Mr Parris and convinced himself that he could not have known at the time that Euan was destined for the London Oratory. If this is so, it is his memory, not Mr Parris's, that is at fault, and he owes Mr Parris an apology for suggesting that he invented the episode. But others, taking into account Mr Campbell's record in this field, may conclude that he has told an untruth. If he has, it is very foolish of him since Mr Parris's allegation was not really so damaging. But that is sometimes the way. He would not be the first public figure who has told a lie for what may seem a trivial reason.
In the circumstances I believe Mr Campbell owes the world an explanation. Not for the first time, he has sought to intimidate a journalist who has merely been telling an inconvenient truth. It so happens that I am hoping to attend a small lunch next Monday at which Mr Campbell will be the guest speaker. My cherished colleague Roy Greenslade is also expected to be there. It should be an interesting occasion, and I am looking forward to hearing from both of them what really happened.
Previous page
