Lord Carrington dies aged 99
Lord Carrington of Upton, the former foreign secretary and the last surviving member of Sir Winston Churchill’s post-war government, has died aged 99. George Walden, his former principal private secretary, writes in The Daily Telegraph today that the peer was “neither courtier nor careerist, but his own man”, giving valuable service to Margaret Thatcher before his resignation following the Argentinian invasion of the Falklands.
In 1979, when Peter Carrington inherited me as his principal private secretary at the Foreign Office, we went across to see Margaret Thatcher at No10. Rhodesia was the burning issue, and when he told her we would have to negotiate with Nkomo and Mugabe, she banged the table: “You do not talk to terrorists, Peter!” “You will, Margaret,” he came back calmly, “you will.”
Her tribute to his role in the Lancaster House Agreement in a speech at a dinner to celebrate its signing was both warm and sincere.
Why do I recall this today? Because Peter was neither courtier nor careerist, but his own man. It was why Thatcher respected him and trusted his judgment, despite inevitable tensions. His outspokenness and independence of mind were to prove a part of my own political education; later, as a minister, I was to enjoy some confrontations with her too. When she fell it was because too many of her Cabinet had stopped arguing, in the way Peter could and did. And she was grateful, writing later that “he could express himself in pungent terms. We had disagreements, but there were never any hard feelings”.
On foreign trips, especially to America, where the adulation could make her overexuberant, she needed him all the more. Once, when she was catechising a glazed-looking President Reagan in the White House, earnestly and at length, suddenly she stopped. When I raised a brow Peter slid me a note he had passed to her. “Margaret,” it said, “you’re talking too much.”
Later that night, when she was giving vent to her exasperation with Reagan over late night whiskies and sodas at Blair House, again it was Peter who calmed her.
“The trouble with that man is that...” Seeing him jabbing a finger at the ceiling she stopped and, tapping a temple, mimed the words “there’s nothing up here”.
A self-disciplined man, he kept himself in trim – no drinks before seven – but the travel could be exhausting and I had trouble getting him to take a break. As an aristocrat he knew his place – duty came first – and had a horror of being thought to be swanning.
With Peter’s humour, easy manner and readiness to delegate, work could be enjoyable. Respect and consideration for his staff came naturally. The most critical thing I heard him say was about a meticulously well-groomed and excessively deferential senior diplomat: “If only that man would have a hole in his sock.” To say he
‘Peter was neither courtier nor careerist, but his own man. It was why Thatcher trusted his judgment’
inspired popularity as well as respect sounds maudlin, but the affection for him was real.
Conscious of the anomaly of being a foreign secretary in the Lords he was punctilious about sticking to his last, resisting my encouragement to speak on domestic matters when we went through Cabinet briefs.
I recall his unaffected horror when, in Bonn for a call on Chancellor Schmidt, we got a dawn phone call saying there was chatter in the British press about him taking over from Margaret at the time she was in trouble. For God’s sake scotch it, I was told, and we did.
There could be hairy moments at No 10, after which we would share our exasperation at the leaderene’s stridency and obstinacy, but he was not alone in that, and not once do I recall a note of class contempt. I think I would have noticed.
They remained in touch after his resignation over the Falklands conflict. Towards the end, when she was feeling down, Peter and his wife Iona had her and Denis to a small dinner one Sunday at Bledlow, his farm near Chequers, with just me and my wife, Sarah. When Margaret began sounding uncharacteristically plaintive a well-oiled Denis exploded: “Well go then, just go! Not tomorrow – it’s Monday and there’s no time to set things up – but Tuesday. Good. So that’s fixed then! We’re resigning this Tuesday Margaret, right?”
We laughed, too heartily, because Denis was half serious. I suspected that Peter too thought her time was up, though for all his political courage, that evening even the former tank commander awarded the Military Cross thought it unwise to say so. ♦george Walden is a former Conservative MP for Buckingham and education minister