POLITICS
The naive and sentimental judge: still, Alan Clark should never have been made a minister
BRUCE ANDERSON
Aconspiracy is afoot to ensure that the truth about the Scott report is concealed from the public. The Government is involved in this cover-up, but so is the Oppo- sition, as are most of — the handful of those who have read the five volumes. All of them have their own reasons for suppressing the truth. Ministers cannot be seen to rub- bish a report which they commissioned; Labour and the Liberals will hardly want to discredit that which they hope to exploit; and most of the other readers are judicious characters given to gentle understatement.
So no one is prepared to make the basic point: that the report is a sloppy, third-rate piece of work, muddled in its arguments and cloudy in its conclusions. Sir Richard Scott is no Radcliffe, Denning or Franks; he lacks the clarity or the rigour. This helps to explain why next Monday's Commons debate will be another ya-boo stand-off. Everyone will cite quotations to buttress their position; no one will fmd a deadly thrust to destroy the other side's argument. Lethal weapons in Scott are like lethal weapons exported to Iraq: they do not exist. At one point, when Sir Richard was trying to press Lady Thatcher over a trivial detail, she told him that she had concentrated on the big issues. If only he had done the same.
The voters' principal response to all the conflicting claims will be boredom, bewil- derment and distaste. But they are also likely to draw two conclusions, both unfair, one damaging. The lesser unfairness con- cerns ministers. Most voters will have formed the impression that even if Nicholas Lyell and William Waldegrave did not com- mit a hanging offence, they behaved badly. That is untrue. Sir Richard did not under- stand Mr Waldegrave's actions and he dis- agrees with Sir Nicholas's interpretation of the law, but this does not justify a guilty ver- dict. A careful reading of Scott leads to only one conclusion: that both men behaved scrupulously and honourably.
In June 1989, William Waldegrave wrote apropos Iraq to the then Foreign Secretary, Geoffrey Howe: 'It is a horrible situation. Iraq's regime is one of the most vicious in the world. They are aggressive; use torture and repression; have used chemical warfare wide- ly against Iran and the Kurds; and their diplomats have behaved intolerably in the UK. The judgment is, are we strong enough as a trading nation to spurn their market on the grounds of morality? If we were, we should. On balance, I judge that we are not, but we should recognise that our decision . . . will do us damage in the UK with sincere and honest commentators.' That combina- tion of high-mindedness and tough-minded- ness is typical of Scott's depiction of Walde- grave at work.
Nor did Mr Waldegrave mislead Parlia- ment; he merely curtailed the supply of infor- mation. Most diplomatic, intelligence and commercial dealings with Iraq were con- cealed, as they would have been under any administration. At one stage, Sir Richard Scott asked Geoffrey Howe if he was claim- ing that there was an area in which Govern- ment knew best. 'Yes,' replied Sir Geoffrey: the same answer that any honest Foreign Sec- retary would have given in similar circum- stances. Robin Cook may find that shocking, but he is only a shadow Foreign Secretary; it is hard to imagine him as a real one. During their opposition years, Labour have fielded some implausible candidates for that office, but Mr Cook breaks all records. He makes Gerald Kaufman look like Ernie Bevin.
Sir Nicholas Lyell's department — though not he personally — was guilty of an appalling political embarrassment. In trans- mitting to the judge the PII certificate which Michael Heseltine had signed, they omitted his reservations. That was a foolish action, as anyone in the rest of Whitehall could have told them; if you mess around with Hezza, he will hit back. So folly — but also constitu- tional propriety. The officials in question took a strict view of the separation of pow- ers; they believed that ministers should not trespass on the administration of justice. Mr Heseltine was entitled to claim that the doc- uments in question fell within a certain cate- gory, but he had no right to express views relating to the conduct of the trial. If he did so, then however eminent a minister he might be, he was no more than an unquali- fied layman: these were matters for the judge alone. Sir Nicholas's staff are likely to be crit- icised for naivety; they should also be praised for their integrity.
In that, they were typical of the officials mentioned in the Scott report — which brings us to the second erroneous conclusion which the public are likely to draw. Anyone interested in the working of government ought to browse through the Scott volumes and to read the whole of Section D, on the Howe guidelines. It contains the evidence to rebut all the facile denigration of the British way of doing things which is currently so fashionable. It reveals a system of govern- ment and a calibre of officialdom in which we should all take pride.
The sheer weight of work, deliberation and conscientiousness which went into the process of briefing and decision-making is so impressive. Of course, there were mistakes, but even judges occasionally make errors, or why would we need a Court of Appeal? But most cases that go to appeal are far less complex than the Scott material. The won- der is not that misjudgments were made; it is that there were not more of them.
The greatest misjudgment was, of course, the prosecution of the Matrix Churchill directors. On that there can be no doubt: the British system did break down under the strain. It was able to deal with Saddam Hus- sein; it could not cope with Alan Clark.
Mr Clark would have made an ideal arms exports minister in any French government throughout the Scott years. He had one objective: to replace the Howe guidelines with the Clark guidelines, which would have read as follows. 'We should sell everything except nuclear/chemical/biological to the towel-heads. Not only are they too spastic to use it properly; if we do have to fight them, it's better that they should be using British kit, because we'll know exactly how it works. And if we don't sell to them, they'll buy from the Frogs or the Krauts. As for arms dealers, they're mostly crooks anyway. They play roulette at the big table; if they lose, they must pay their debts.' Mr Clark fell upon the conscientiousness of the rest of government like a pirate on a boating lake.
When Alan was first made a minister, the serious men of government— Howe, Hurd, Whitelaw — shook their heads and better- notted. In one respect, we should be glad that they were overruled. His time in office adds spice to the Clark diaries. In 400 years' time, when every other contemporary politician except Margaret Thatcher will be forgotten, Alan Clark will not only be immortal, he will bestow immortality on the great ones of our age who figure in his footnotes.
Even so, from the perspective of politics rather than literature, his critics were right and his defenders wrong. There is only one worthwhile conclusion to be drawn from the Scott report: that Alan Clark should never have been a minister. But Sir Richard Scott is too naïve and sentimental to understand that point, let alone to make it.
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