‘I have never had great faith in authority’
Famous in New Zealand for that interview with Rob Muldoon, former TV journalist Simon Walker is an avid reader of books about UK politics and international affairs.
Former TV journalist Simon Walker is an avid reader of books about politics.
Simon Walker will forever be remembered by New Zealanders of a certain age as the baby-faced Englishman who took on Rob Muldoon. Walker held his own during a tense and testy exchange in 1976 with then Prime Minister Muldoon, who labelled him a nitpicker and smart alec.
South African-born Walker has lived in the UK with his New Zealand wife, journalist Mary Strang, for the past 25 years. The couple, who have two adult children, make regular visits to New Zealand and also have a holiday home in France for more frequent escapes from London. Since leaving New Zealand, Walker has worked for the Queen and Prime Minister John Major in Downing Street. His political background spans almost all leanings bar communism and fascism. These days, the director general of the Institute of Directors (IOD) in the UK describes himself as a free-market liberal.
What underpins your political philosophy?
There have been some consistent themes running through all my political thinking, a broad liberalism. I have never believed governments should tell people what to do, and growing up in South Africa did that for me. You had a very illiberal government, and even when my politics were quite left wing, I never believed you should force people to behave in a particular way. I still believe that. There is a marriage between capitalism and democracy and both involve not pushing people around and letting them make their own choices as far as they possibly can.
Is there any inconsistency between that view and your strongly pro-European position?
You recognise a kind of collective pooling of autonomy in any situation that you are in. If you’re part of any community, you give away part of your right to act with complete impunity. Forty years ago, it was much easier to feel positive about the Common Market as it was then and about the European cause than it is now. Forty years ago, when I was a student in Britain, it wasn’t that long since World War II for a start and most of our fathers had fought in the war, so that was real. I remember the first time I visited Germany in the 60s and seeing a cash register that had Reichsmark blacked out in favour of the nicer Deutschmark. When I was growing up and visiting Britain, there were still bomb sites in and around London. War and hostility were that much closer then, and there was a powerful rationale for Europe.
When you came to New Zealand in the early 70s, it was still forging an identity separate from its colonial past. What appealed about life here?
There was, and is, an informality and an ease that I had also known in South Africa, which was absent in Britain. It is a very colonial feature – losing the formality of old Britain and having a much more “can do” attitude, convivial, friendly and open. That was very obvious in New Zealand when I first came in 1974. I had just finished university and I came here with the Oxford University Debating Team. I had six weeks and loved it. I was footloose and eager for adventure and I was asked to come back 10 months later for the Auckland Festival to do another session of debates. That was when I was offered a job by television and stayed on.
Whenever you’re introduced, that interview is inevitably mentioned, isn’t it?
I am perfectly relaxed about people remembering that. It was a very formative time for me. That whole period working in television in New Zealand – it was the early days of TV1 and TV2. When I first came over, Norman Kirk was Prime Minister, and when I came back it was the Rowling premiership, then Muldoon took over in 1975. I remember feeling very bleak about that because of what he stood for. He always had great faith in the state, in authority, and the thing I have always
“Napoleon said if you want to know how a person thinks, think of the world when they were 20 and that will be what shaped them.”
felt consistently is I have never had great faith in authority.
In your IOD role, you have criticised the huge remuneration for some company chief executives, often regardless of poor performance. Why is that issue so important?
If you believe in the free market and private enterprise, you have a special responsibility to call it out when things go badly wrong, because you want the system preserved and it requires a degree of public consent. I first started talking about excessive pay for bosses four years ago when it seemed to me the levels of public outrage were starting to pose a real threat to support for free enterprise in Britain. That was what really concerned me – rewards for failure – and it was most manifest in the way bankers were paid after the financial crisis in which an awful lot of people lost a lot of money and the taxpayers had bailed out some very high-risk enterprises. The public were rightfully outraged to see, a year or two later, bankers paying themselves yet more as if nothing had happened.
Books are a big part of your life.
Our house in France, an old stone farmhouse near the Loire Valley, has a library we have had to build on because we must have upwards of 10,000 books. We had a lot to start with, and when my father died 19 years ago, I inherited all his books. A lot of them are South African writing, some of it in Afrikaans, which I am too sentimental to give away, and even in high Dutch, which I struggle with. But a lot are books I have collected over 50-plus years of being an avid reader and I can generally remember where I bought any book I have. There are a lot of associations for me. Economics texts, for example, from university; some books that meant a lot to me as a child, such as the Bible given to me as a nineyear-old for attendance at Sunday School.
What’s your favourite genre?
I have read many political biographies, but most of them are awful, terribly self-serving and rewriting history around themselves. The exceptions are a wonderful book by Denis Healey, who died only last year and who is talked about as the best prime minister Britain never had. He wrote a book called The Time of My Life, about his growing up, what brought him into politics. He had a deep hinterland. He knew a lot about music, photography, art and culture, and that shines through.
Another exception is by Lord Hailsham, who wrote A Sparrow’s Flight about his life in politics. It was the bits beyond politics that were so interesting. I read with enthusiasm Charles Moore’s biography of Margaret Thatcher. Volume 1 speculates about what made her what she was, the formative influences. Napoleon said if you want to know how a person thinks, think of the world when they were 20 and that will be what shaped them. He believed your views crystallised at 20.
Is that true for you?
I was 20 in 1973, the year before I first came to New Zealand. It was the first year Britain joined the EU, Norman Kirk was Prime Minister, the first signs of South Africa’s apartheid regime having an end were starting to become apparent, Richard Nixon was President, Ted Heath was a failing British Prime Minister – I would certainly say it is broadly true of me.
Is there any time to read fiction? Not a lot, but I like Julian Barnes among the current modern fiction writers – Before She Met Me and The Sense of an Ending, which won the Booker Prize. I also like William Boyd – Any Human Heart is my favourite. Some of the old fiction I turn back to is often political – for example, Trollope; but also someone who has gone out of fashion is CP Snow, whose Strangers and Brothers series of 12 books runs through British politics and the Establishment from WWI to the late 60s.
I read a lot when I am back here in New Zealand. Several people have remarked about our bach at Awaroa, that in 300 years’ time people will be bewildered to unearth this hut, long overgrown by that stage, and find all these books about British politics and international affairs – there are quite a lot of them; for example, John Major and Thatcher’s biographies.
Is there an all-time favourite?
I have a poetry collection next to my bed that my father used to read to me when I was small. It is called Other Men’s Flowers by Lord Wavell, who was the second-tolast Viceroy of India and a great general. He had a fantastic memory, and in his career as a soldier he memorised all the poems that are in Other Men’s Flowers. It is a well-known anthology and it has always been by my bed. I often read it late at night.
“If you believe in the free market and private enterprise, you have a responsibility to call it out when things go badly wrong.”