The death of the Establishment
Simon Heifer says that Lord Hutton does not understand the twisters and fixers who now run this country 1 f we have managed to carry this far into the 21st century an idea of what we think the Establishment ought to look like, we might well have settled on someone who looked remarkably like Lord Hutton. Grey-haired, grey-suited, precise and correct, he suggests to us a traditional education at one of our older universities, his conservative outlook and presumptions embodying the leather-upholstered, book-lined, port-soaked world from which we feel he should come. Although he was born on Belfast's North Circular Road, this is indeed a Balliol man. His reputation for integrity and honour are well deserved, and typical of one from that strict Presbyterian Ulster background. They also typify the values of probity and disinterestedness that we feel describe the Establishment at its best. And, as anyone with the slightest idea of what it has taken to be a judge in Northern Ireland in these past 35 years will know, he will also be a man of physical courage.
After a lifetime in the Province. Sir Brian Hutton came to London at the age of 66 and became a law lord: and those of us who know Ulster understand that little will have prepared him in his life there for what he found here. An insightful Irishman, looking ahead a few months ago with remarkable accuracy to the outcome of the Hutton inquiry, made the following observations about Lord Hutton: he had, in his long career at the Bar, shown a profound respect for procedure and hierarchy. He was not a man to be swayed by popular sentiment, On 30 March 1994, when he was Lord Chief Justice of Northern Ireland, he dismissed the appeal of Private Lee Clegg against his conviction for murder, when Clegg shot at what he thought were IRA terrorists. Private Clegg's conviction was later overturned, to no detriment to the career of the judge who had kept him in jail. Clegg returned to the army and was promoted. His release in the spring of 1994 would not have been opportune for the Major government, which was trying at the time to win the trust of the Republicans. We can be sure that Lord Hutton had no knowledge of such low politics when delivering his judgment, which will have been based on the evidence — just like his judgment last week, in fact.
Nor, indeed, should we necessarily think it was relevant that in his last incarnation as a law lord he was one of four judges who, in March 2002, rejected David Shayler's application to offer a 'public interest' defence as defined in section one of the Official Secrets Act. It may or may not be right to presume that this was taken into account by those who chose Lord Hutton for his most recent task, and that they concluded he would have little sympathy for someone like David Kelly, and every sympathy for someone like Tony Blair.
What Lord Hutton's findings should make us consider, however, is the man's judgment in the wider sense of the word. Even distinguished judges cannot entirely rid themselves of certain prejudices, however hard they try, and however firmly they set their face against being influenced by anything except the facts. Lord Hutton's prejudices have long been clear to those who have watched him: the 'respect for hierarchy' and the adherence to 'procedure'. And it was clear from the tone of his report that these were foremost in his mind when he set about examining the Kelly affair. We must not impute motives to him, but a caricature of the thinking of someone like him could easily be drawn.
It would go something like this: a civil servant, party to certain official secrets, breaches his contract for apparently political reasons by talking to the media. One media operative to whom he speaks misinterprets or embellishes something he hears and makes it the basis of a report in which he impugns the integrity of the Queen's First Minister. He eventually admits his mistake, though claims it was an error merely of degree. In the ensuing competition between the journalist, working for an organisation that appears to be slapdash in its procedures, and the Queen's First Minister — a man who, like Lord Hutton, has sworn the Privy Councillor's oath, for heaven's sake — there can be only one outcome. And, indeed, there was. And the more one thinks of why this was so, the more one realises that had Lord Hutton not harboured a view of the English Establishment formed during his time at Oxford in the early 1950s, and frozen during more than 40 years in the socially more moribund society of Northern Ireland, the report he issued would have been very different. We cannot dispute that he was right to find errors in the conduct of Mr Andrew Gilligan and his masters; but we must dispute his utter failure to alert himself to the real nature of those who govern us. How, otherwise, can it be explained that this man with his regard for 'procedure' should have regarded it as entirely acceptable for the government to tear up the procedures for disciplining a civil servant, and to name him publicly? And let us not forget, too, that this is the same man who castigated the BBC for its own failure to have proper procedures for controlling Mr Gilligan and then for cleaning up the mess afterwards.
The assumptions that Lord Hutton appears to have concerning Mr Blair and his colleagues are reminiscent of that world John Betjeman saw passing with the death of King George V: 'Men who never cheated, never doubted'. As has been pointed out continually since the publication of his report, judicial inquiries have always had an unfortunate habit of reporting in favour of the government that appointed them — and long before the modern venal world of politicians, too. How else did Lloyd George avoid having his political career ended in 1912, after he engaged in insider dealing in Marconi shares, or after the Maundy Gregory 'honours for sale' scandal of a decade later? The thing is, however, that until recently the likes of Lloyd George were extremely rare, and their keen acceptance by the old Establishment quickly put them beyond fatal criticism.
When the Establishment closed ranks in decades past, it might not have been right and it might not have been defensible, but it was understandable. Judges by and large knew, or believed that they knew, the men whose actions they scrutinised. They had been at school with them, at university with them, in the army with them, and met them at luncheon in their clubs and in the evening at smart salons. They would take a view — and it would not be an entirely inaccurate one — that these were men who were not in it for themselves. Most had come to politics late in life after a successful career elsewhere. They had independent means. Many had been decorated in battle and shown coolness under fire. We know from the accounts of Churchill down that they got a kick from the recognition that they received for what they did, and they ended up laden with honours. The Establishment's members knew each other well enough to appreciate that there was a genuine ethic of public service, and a reasonable level of honesty. And, if the rules were broken, the penalty was severe, immediate and without parole — as just about the most honourable Englishman alive, Jack Proftimo, would tell you. That is fairly close to what Lord Hutton seems to understand by the Establishment. It is nothing like what those of us who write about politics for a living now perceive in those circles. Much of what the new Establishment does — so much of its code of behaviour, so many of its members — is as divorced from the traditional idea and the traditional values as it is possible to be. For a start, this Establishment lies without a second thought, in order to preserve its hold on power. It doesn't always get away with it, such as when Mrs Blair used the No. 10 press machine to deny her commercial involvement with an Australian con man, or when Peter Mandelson had to resign twice for forgetting to tell certain important truths. It got away with it through Lord Hutton, who believed, contrary to the blatant evidence, that there had been no underhand strategy to name poor Dr Kelly.
This new Establishment is packed with people who have willingly surrendered their principles in order to hold ministerial office. Serving the public seems very much a secondary consideration to having an interesting, well-paid job with a chauffeurdriven car. Just count the number of ministers — Mr Blair among them — who happily fought the 1983 general election on Labour's manifesto, which included unilateral nuclear disarmament, leaving the EC and nationalising large swaths of British business. Look at the ones who used to be student revolutionaries, anarchists and syndicalists. Just look at those who have never had a job in the private sector, and who therefore have no room for independence. More to the point, just examine the innumerable acts of prestidigitation, sleight-of-hand and downright lying that the government has engaged in with the public. And just ask the BBC and, indeed, any newspaper about the relentless and shameless bullying that Alastair Campbell, Peter Mandelson and others engaged in to ensure that the best possible gloss was at all times put on the actions of a government that felt it should be portrayed as wise and infallible.
Nor, like its predecessors, is this a group of people who play by the rules or accept responsibility. Ministers avoid Parliament at all costs. Matters that ought to have been subject to a full inquiry, in the public interest — such as the Kosovo expedition, the Iraq war or the foot-and-mouth outbreak — are swept under the carpet. And when something goes wrong, the old maxim that civil servants advise but ministers decide is discounted. If a civil servant can be found to take the blame, he is blamed. So bullied and so careerist are the higher ranks of the Civil Service that they make little or no protest at this. The prime purpose of our rulers is to smother dissent, stifle criticism, intimidate the media and dismantle any part of the British constitution that impedes them in that activity. This is about power for the sake of power. This Establishment is no longer at the apex of a social order and a nation, but entirely apart from it except when, parasitically, it feeds off it. That, Lord Hutton, is what the Establishment you have just whitewashed is really like.
It is always provocative to make such comparisons, but there is a parallel here with how Hitler hoodwinked President Hindenburg from January 1933 until the old soldier's death a year later. The stiff, correct Prussian simply could not begin to imagine the sort of tricks that the Nazis were getting up to, nor would he have comprehended their wholesale refusal to play by the rules. Hitler well knew this, and Hindenburg's unknowing service to him as head of state was that he allowed the Austrian corporal to get away with murder through ignorance rather than complicity. Now, in a government run by lawyers, the new Establishment understands all too well how recourse to the judicial inquiry can help them appear whiter than white to the public, and to maintain their hold on power (though the public, to its credit, does seem to have seen through this, with Hutton being by way of the last straw).
Of course, the Major government did something similar with the Scott inquiry into arms to Iraq. Despite taking infinitely longer than Lord Hutton to ponder his conclusions, and despite having a reputation as something of a progressive, Sir Richard Scott nonetheless produced a similar industrialsized vat of whitewash. But then the Major government was in prototype what this administration is in a de luxe version: composed of careerists, unattached to principle and not above deceit and duplicity when it came to staying in office. The new Establishment cuts across party politics. It is about a conspiracy of those in power to stay in power and uphold the impregnability of their high offices. It is as well they can rely on the unwitting help of some of the older members, who do not realise how the rules have changed. The electorate, we must hope, are a little more up to date.
Simon Heifer is a columnist on the Daily Mail.
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