Television
Shadowy eminence
Clive Gammon
Frissons a-plenty were promised us in the Man Alive Profile (BBC2) last week. No less a shadowy eminence than Sir William Armstrong. KC13. MVO, the Head of the Home Civil Service and Permanent Secretary to the Civil Service Department was to confess all to Desmond Wilcox. Assiduously trailed had been direful appraisals of his role in the power structure: "A fraud on the public," announced Anthony Sampson tautly. Power in the last days of the Heath Government, he accused, resided ill men like Sir William, and notably Sir William himself, flitting between the Athenaeum and Westminster. Other questions were implied. In the name of continuity of government, what sins against democracy were being cornmitted? Who ruled Britain, hey? Who dictated its economic policy, decided the fate of millions of workers? Its elected parliaments or Armstrong's maim?
The urbane, grey-suited Sir Williaffi certainly threw away a few lines early on in this marathon interview of fifty minutes that brought a breath of chillY air into the telly room. Of politicians: "You live in Vanity Fair. I have the power.'' (That's what I have down in my notes, anyway. If he qualified that statement I must have missed it.) There were metaphors of Generals and Company Commanders. Sir Williarn admitted being embarrassed at being forced into the public eye in the confrontation with the miners, "It
verged on the edge of . . . er uM • .." he said. (And you can make of that what you will and also his sinister statement that it is very easy for people to be run by their servants.)
But Sir William, at any rate in mY eyes, quite effortlessly cleared himself of the charge of being a potential Mayor of the Palace when Wilcox asked him whether there was any Issue, or any governmental decision on which he Would feel compelled to resign if it went against his own principles. Theoretically there was, he said. Suspension of Habeus Corpus, for in' stance. But it was highly unlikely. And then he told us what had hal?: pened to him during the Suez crisis. 'I was a young man then of course," he told us, "and I became very angry.'' A5 well he might have done. At the One of the armed intervention he had been delegated to talk to the US State; Department, in complete ignorance what was going on: the Americans must have regarded him in about the same light as they did the Japanese diplomats who were still talking, in Washington at the start of Pea.l.' Harbour. "I felt duped," said William. So what did he do? Resign? Awit a the opportunity to beat Sir AnthonY Eden severely about the head and,, shoulders? Not at all. He wore a blao tie to work. "One or two of the chat): might have noticed." Now I supPos that could be just a diabolical plot V' lull the public into thinking what.9 harmless fellow Sir William really ls' But somehow I doubt it. If there s .at threat to democracy in this countrY I isn't likely to be plotted in the Athenaeum.
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