Worth at least a bust

John Vincent

DOUGLAS HURD, THE PUBLIC SERVANT: AN AUTHORISED BIOGRAPHY by Mark Stuart Mainstream, £20, pp. 472 Authorised' is one way of putting it: for one thing, Lord Hurd still intends to write his own memoirs, which will presum- ably be even more authorised. For another, the book was Dr Stuart's idea; it was Lord Hurd who then fell into line and provided a generous series of tutorials, briefings and glimpses of his diaries.

Let us consider the diaries first. The Hurd diaries go back to childhood. From 1979 they are continuous, in one-page-per- day volumes. Are they the Crossman diaries of Conservatism? They are wry, laconic, idiosyncratic, deeply unofficial: more the work of a writer than of a politician. Though observant and alert, they are never salacious, do not pass on much gossip, and are usually respectful and light on enmities. But the real answer is that we just do not know, for, though they are Stuart's main written source, he was not allowed unrestricted access to the diaries; and, when all is finally known, Hurd's dance of the seven veils here is a bit of a tease, and may turn out to be but the well contrived lifting of an outer mantle.

This note of scholarly caution should not detract from Dr Stuart's strength. He com- bines distinctly superior political analysis, sheer laboriousness and diligence, and grasp of a huge range of bygone issues. His independence of mind where Hurd is con- cerned rather deserts him when European integration looms, and Euro-sceptics may not gain much pleasure from his solemn disapproval of their activities. The econom- ic dimension of modern life is conspicuous by its absence. This leaves the odd and per- haps unjust impression that Hurd rose to giddy heights without having any economic views, whereas surely the Treasury put much food for thought in his red boxes. At all events, Stuart's modus operandi, for let us hope it is only that, probably overdoes the pure departmentalism of Hurd's out- look. Otherwise, level-headed judgment dominates the book.

Who is Douglas Hurd? The question is easier to answer in terms of background than of foreground, where multiple identi- ties perplex. Is the notably unstuffy Hurd, one of the best political novelists since Dis- raeli, the proud holder of the Alan Clark seal of approval as 'delightful: clever, funny, observant, dryly cynical', the same being as the authoritarian personality whom Stuart compares to a village head- master? And what has the Christian, churchgoing Hurd, with a strongly Chris- tian wife, in common with either? Do any of these connect with a public career based on sustained competitiveness and equally sustained lack of originality? Here Belloc's lines might provide a fitting epitaph:

. . . he resides in Affluence still, To show what Everybody might Become by SIMPLY DOING RIGHT.

Not that Hurd had much alternative other than to excel. His family were not out of the top drawer. They had neither land, nor money nor connections. They differed from other middle-class families only in that the father and grandfather had been MPs. For such folk, Eton was the only hope, and the Eton Hurd went to was the one that enables talent to overtake broad acres and blue blood, the Eton of the middle-class careerist. Leaving school with- out enthusiasms or commitments, but with a habit of authority, he passed from a mis- erable National Service to a glittering Cam- bridge career, A first in History, President of the Union, chairman of the Conservative Association, passing top into the Foreign Office — nothing seemed beyond him. Not least, he read history at Trinity under Jack Gallagher, the best political mind in the university.

Such unfailing success was poor prepara- tion for the longueurs of adult life. It was not till his mid-fifties that he eventually entered the Cabinet. His 14 years in diplo- macy were about to lead to a posting to Chile when he bolted and became Mr Heath's political secretary, seeing him through his government of 1970-74. Where others sharply distinguish between Heath and Thatcher, Hurd's line has been to stress the common features of their governments, with Mr Heath as Lady Thatcher's John the Baptist; which is fair enough history in the circumstances. Hurd spent the 1970s moving from a rather distant loyalty to Mr Heath to distant but correct loyalty to Lady Thatcher.

After numerous failures, at last in 1974 he secured election for a safe seat, Mid- Oxfordshire. There are two morals here: one is that no c.v., however golden, can be relied on to secure a safe seat without decades passing, and the other is that, with a rural seat, a rural home, and a rural upbringing, his knowledge of urban and suburban Britain in all its horror could hardly have been less. He might not have had it otherwise, but nevertheless he seemed hopelessly typecast as a post- imperial handyman and born junior minis- ter, with certain well established traits: no appetite for detail (yet a cleaner desk than some more glamorous figures), no visible following, no experience of the economy, lifelong support for established authority and (on a salaried basis for a time) for Europe, and virtually no enemies or enmities.

None of this looked particularly promis- ing. Nobody picked out this once golden youth as the coming middle-aged man. Yet the cards began to fall his way. Lady Thatcher, a brute but a just brute, let him return to the FO as a junior minister. Once there, he had a good Falklands, for all the other FO ministers resigned. Such things can only help. A Northern Ireland posting came up: presumably nobody much wanted it. Lady Thatcher knew what she wanted: `Peter [Carrington] always says you're very tough. You've got a smooth manner, but you're very tough inside.' So, via Belfast, came entry to the Cabinet. Once in Belfast, Hurd did nothing in particular and did it rather well: there were no disasters, and he eased the ruling orthodoxy of the Anglo- Irish Agreement on its way.

The next stop was the home secretary- ship, a big step up which much surprised him; allegedly he was Whitelaw's choice for the job. In the background were murkier factors, including the one we do not like to mention: that, palpably, Hurd was not Jew- ish, which was an issue in the bowels of the party at the time. Hurd had a good West- land, showing just the right kind of critical loyalty: the party began to take notice. He had some good inner city riots, just what a home secretary needs: the media began to profile him. Finally, he squared the most difficult of political circles. A lifelong opponent of capital punishment, he yet became a Tory conference darling. He began to be seen as a possible future lead- er.

That is, if he wanted it — for which there is no direct evidence at all. But when a minister starts talking about social cohe- sion to the Guardian heavy mob, when he proclaims, 'I am not afraid to be called a liberal', when he gives interviews about family life to woman journalists, then one begins to wonder. But the initial media glow of the mid-1980s did not last. Hurd had a bad Shops Bill, some scary prison riots, a messy row with the firearms lobby after the Hungerford massacre, and a running quarrel with the media over whistle-blowing and reporting restrictions on the IRA: the usual Home Office story, in fact. Luck smiled once again, in the form of his old friend Howe's political demise, and Lady Thatcher rang to offer him the Foreign Office: 'You won't let those Europeans get on top of you, will you now, Douglas?'

Up to a point, Lady Thatcher was the answer. There was British opposition to German reunification — a story was slowly seeping out, and needing a book to itself. There was the ERM, wanted by Hurd as a step to political integration, not as an economic matter: but what if it was unworkable as an economic matter? Alas, the Stuart-Hurd pantomime horse takes the conventional view of Black Wednesday as a national disaster, which makes little sense in today's world of competitive devaluations. We must grow up a bit about this.

It was a relief to escape from such quagmires to the Gulf war: traditional, unproblematical, uncerebral. Likewise, the 1990 leadership contest was in many ways an escape from history. The account of Hurd's candidature is excellently done: he came top among the peers, bottom among the constituency associations. He was clear- ly disliked by the Tory Right and the pop- ulists but did all right among neo-liberals and extremely well among those who had worked alongside him. The same was true of Peel. His camp failed to recognise the way the nature of the Tory party had changed: Hurd was thought, like Aristides, not to pass the saloon-bar test. Yet Alan Clark had told him, after that fishy Rome summit (October 1990): I must be prepared to lead the party at once. It couldn't go on any longer. I was the only person who could take over. Disabuse him.

It is almost a relief to emerge from the Tory snake-pit to the calmer waters of Bosnia. It would be wise to note at once that Hurd commissioned an official history of the Bosnian imbroglio, to remain confidential for 30 years, to act perhaps as a corrective to the passions of instant history. Certainly, he did not provide the instant successes that television and moral imperialism demanded. Certainly, he react- ed, perhaps even over-reacted, against attempts at on-the-spot policy-making by television reporters. He feared a large loss of British troops. He thought he was steer- ing a middle course 'between Gladstone and the saloon bar'. Others thought his middle course almost tender towards Serbia. Was it that he had read his Anna Karenina and knew the emotions Serbia could generate in an unstable Russia? If so, he was wiser than most western opinion, which is saying little. Was it that he knew how close the Balkans were to full regional war? It is not easy to give full credit for avoiding wars that in the end never occur. Was it that he misread Milosevic as a man one could do business with? Or was he taking each highly localised impossible situation as it came, in the belief that general remedies were just not available? We had better wait for the official history.

If Bosnia was Hurd acting in character, Hong Kong was him acting out of charac- ter. It saw him going against FO orthodoxy, against established policy, against Howe, against the ancestral wisdom, suddenly behaving like a fresh-faced lad in a debating society. It should not be the duty of British statesmen to make paranoid governments more paranoid, and in the early 1990s communist China had good reason for anxiety about the apparently uncontrollable contagion of democracy. Why Hurd chose to dance a liberal jig over China policy remains a mystery.

Hurd was foreign secretary at a bad time, a time in between. In the Cold War, his team spirit would have done great things. Had there been a Concert of Europe, his real gift for bringing about agreement would have drawn applause. As it was, in foreign policy as throughout life he origi- nated very little, remaining a strong upholder of established authority, with a liberal streak in all inessentials, and a reluctance to play to the gallery.

He performed one great service to the nation. It was in his foreign secretaryship that British opinion woke up to the dangers of European political integration. Pro- European that he is, how did he achieve this feat of national salvation? He took us into the Maastricht Treaty negotiations determined to enshrine intergovernmental- ism. He and John Major thereupon sold the EU a whole litter of pups, enshrining various principles intended to soothe domestic opinion. They returned home, congratulating themselves on their negoti- ating talents, and decided to put all before parliament. Whereupon it emerged that, clever though their opt-outs had been, they had not in the least impeded the ratchet effect which pushed the core of Europe towards economic and political union 'and the red glow on Skiddaw roused the burghers of Carlisle'. For these services to patriotism, for inadvertently awakening a sleep-walking nation into full querulous- ness, Lord Hurd deserves a statue.