Amery to our Defence
Sir: I should like to support your editorial's call to Mrs Thatcher to appoint a successor to Mr Nott as Defence Minister, who can not only run the Department well, but also give a new depth and resonance to the whole debate about defence. For this pur- pose, as you rightly say, Mr Heseltine would be quite wrong. Nor does the other name mentioned, that of Peter Walker, sound any more suitable. My own choice, eccentric as it may seem to some but not, I hope, Sir, to you is Julian Amery, whose first-hand involvement in defence policy at the highest level goes back to the second world war, when, as a very young man, he was appointed Churchill's personal emissary to China s Generalissimo Chiang
ce his political career
K aAi-nshdeakl.m(oBsetaet vtehra st i) n
has repeatedly kept him in touch with
defence matters, first in the Wa Office, then as Secretary of State for Airrind also Minister for Aviation (not just civ). But a mere list of offices held gives name in- dication of the breadth and depth)f an in- tellect and imagination dedicate to the study of statesmanship and the ctrcise of power, by comparison with whic all the other possible aspirants for us high responsibility seem like mere apientices. Like Churchill, Amery has an istinctive feel for defence which includes xpertise but also transcends it. Unlike mosof us, he really can see the wood of grandstrategy through the missile trees.
Yes, he does have a plummy vice, and an old-fashioned manner. But g what? Mrs Thatcher has triumphed ow worse handicaps on television, the donnion of which in any case, is rapidly cclining. CND might try to mock Amerydut they would get as good as they gave, sice even at 63, his oratorical punch can b pretty deadly.
Finally, unlike every other Minter who has ever been responsible for the Elklands in recent years, he refused absolute' to toe the Foreign Office line. In this, s in so much else, he is a man after Mrs Ditcher's heart. All this is obvious. But all to often it is the obvious which gets overloked.
Peregrine Worsthorne
6 Kempson Road, London SW6
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