Transcript
Speaker: OK, so today I'm joined by Chris Mullin, a former Labour MP, former minister and author of A Very British Coup. Chris, welcome. Thank you. um Harry Perkins, not your traditional Labour leader.
Speaker: Why did you give him a landslide election victory? Oh, well, um perhaps we need to go back to where the idea came from in the first place. Please do. A Very British Coup was published in 1982, which was... And the idea ah was generated...
Speaker: when Tony Benn was in the ascendant and the establishment were getting a bit nervous about the possibility, ah remote though I think it probably was in retrospect, that he might one day become prime minister.
Speaker: So it was the prospect of a Benn government, really. But I made my prime minister look as different as possible from Tony Benn. He's a Sheffield steel worker.
Speaker: ah And I'll tell you where the idea came from. app And it wasn't just me it occurred to. i was on a train coming back from the Labour Party conference in October 1980.
Speaker: And in the company of Stuart Holland, who was then a Labour MP, Tony Banks, who became a Labour MP, ah and
Speaker: Peter Hayne, who also ah became a Labour MP Labour tremendous stuff And we were discussing how the establishment would react in the event of a Benn government.
Speaker: And one of our numbers said, oh, that would make an excellent novel, to which ah Peter Hayne said, well, he actually just circulated idea for a novel along those lines to to publishers.
Speaker: ah And Stuart Holland said, well, actually, he'd tapped out, but by the swimming pool in Greece the previous ah summer, he'd tapped out four chapters of exactly such a novel.
Speaker: So I thought, blimey, I'd better get on with this. And I did.
Speaker: So back to my question, why give him a massive majority? Because obviously our podcast all about elections. As Sheffield Steelworkers described, why give him this enormous majority?
Speaker: Well, it needed, i mean, this is fiction, an enormous majority didn't very likely 1983, although there was a large majority, but it was the other lot who got it. ah um But it had to be a decisive victory, and it had to be a shock to the establishment. So it begins in the Athenaeum, which is the the top people's club in Pall Mall.
Speaker: And I think the opening line from memory is, ah the news that Harry Perkins had become prime minister went down very badly in the Athenaeum and so on.
Speaker: Hardly a surprise. um Sheffield also important, as you say, the steel-making ah crucible, literally, of ah our country in those days, a traditional labour area.
Speaker: Obviously, labour leaders tend to get elected in traditional labour areas but aren't necessarily from them. Is there a message there as well? No. I mean, I needed a working class hero. And as I say, I had to make him as different as possible from Tony Benn.
Speaker: Viscount. butba People of us don't know these days he was a Viscount. I mean, it wasn't by then. His father had a marriage. His father had also been a Labour MP.
Speaker: And his grandfather, both his grandfathers had been MPs, though liberals, I think. and So... Yeah, that's the origin of it. I should just say it wasn't just us the idea had occurred to.
Speaker: Some years after ah the book was published, probably around the time of the film, I gave a talk to a book club in Ipswich. And at the back, there was a man who had been a household name, but he but wasn't by this time, and he certainly wouldn't be now.
Speaker: ah Peter Hardiman Scott, his name was, and he was the chief political correspondent at the BBC, or he had been. And in retirement, he'd been writing thrillers. And he came up to me at the end and he said, when your book was published, I was...
Speaker: three quarters of the way through a thriller exactly along these lines. And I showed it to my publisher and he said, well, you're too late. yeah Now, ah had he got there, I was very lucky.
Speaker: Had he got there first, ah nobody would ever have heard of me.
Speaker: Because he was a household name and in the early 80s. He was the Nick Robinson of his day. Sure. And... Did you like Harry Perkins when you wrote him? was he Do you have to write like somebody when you write about them?
Speaker: Well, and not necessarily, no. I mean, I've got one or two villains. I think my favourite character in the whole thing is Sir Peregrine Craddock, who was the head of who... m i five who ah um who who basically undermined him.
Speaker: And Sir Peregrine features again in the sequel, which I published many years later, ah which is called The Friends of Harry Perkins. And he's a much more benign character by this time. So yes, I think he's my favourite character.
Speaker: I have to say that when i so when the film was made in 19... Well, it was broadcast in 1988, where Harry Perkins was played by that wonderful Irish ah actor, Ray McAnally,
Speaker: i was um I really did like him. I mean, Ray made him into a really likeable, charismatic character. I thought he did a brilliant job. um So, yes, after the film, I certainly liked Harry Perkins. And Harry Perkins has been very kind to me. probably why been in my wall garden in Northumberland.
Speaker: I think it's fair to say he a very northern dry sense of humour, didn't he? When he when he presented Harry Perkins in the in the film, he was very funny. He had to have someone from Sheffield coaching him in the Sheffield accent because, of course, he's Irish.
Speaker: Yeah, that's interesting. One of the reasons I, when I was discussing with my colleagues, I was just explaining to Chris before we started, it that when I was talking to a friend of mine Manchester recently about who should we should get on this programme, I was talking about Blackadder and the Danny on the Wall by-election and Bob Servant's election in Broughty Ferry with Brian Cox.
Speaker: He said, because he's from Sheffield, and he said you should definitely do very much acute, Obviously, it still has some resonance with people in Sheffield, the fact that they had a fictional prime minister from Sheffield. Do you get invited to speak in Sheffield about Harry Perkins ever?
Speaker: ah No, funnily enough, I don't think i have. I have done literary festivals in Sheffield, but in relation to other ah to other books. um But, yes, Harry Perkins became briefly, I think, something of a cult figure. I've still got badges that said ah harry Harry Perkins for prime minister.
Speaker: ah And Neil Kinnock said to me once that during, I think, the second ah leadership election in which he participated, um there was a small write-in vote for Harry Perkins. LAUGHTER And the headline, of course, that a very British coup, has become a kind of phrase and that is now used.
Speaker: ah um if Sometimes it's adapted to fit whatever the needs of the hour are. But I've got whole front pages of the Sunday Times, for example, not long ago, but were headed a very British coup. They related to some other story that they were peddling. But the the phrase, I think, has kind of entered ah popular culture.
Speaker: Yeah, I think you you're completely right. um
Speaker: You said, I think, in your speech to when Tony Blair got elected in 1997 as Prime Minister, that he was no Harry Perkins. Is there a reason for you not see the two as being the same sort of character?
Speaker: ah Well, he was different from Harry Perkins, which you could possibly get. He was relatively posh, not very posh. ah and pretty moderate by comparison.
Speaker: He was elected on a programme, if you recall, that ah suggested we should stick to Tory tax plan tax and spending plans for the first two years.
Speaker: ah One can agree or disagree ah with that, but certainly Harry Perkins wouldn't have done that.
Speaker: And bearing in mind our present Prime Minister often refers to himself as being the son of a toolmaker, you see this sort of working class credentials being something that Labour leaders do try and ah bring to their support when trying to run for Prime Minister?
Speaker: ah Yes, well certainly in internal Labour Party elections it always helps if you can dig up a minor among your ancestry. But...
Speaker: So yes, it's a card they they do like to play, but of course Keir Starmer is as middle class as I am.
Speaker: Yeah, i'm I'm knighted as well, which is, having you you can't get less, more establishment really these days, can you, than privy counter in the light of the role. um When you wrote it,
Speaker: Did you have it Because obviously now, I mean, I don't know if you've watched The Crown. i mean, certainly when I was younger, people sort of whispered about Mountbatten's potential coup in the 70s against Harold Wilson.
Speaker: And in The Crown, i think it's but basically drawn out very clearly that there was talk of a coup between media barons, ah the the secrets you know security services and so on.
Speaker: Was that something that you were aware of when you were writing? Yes, it is. Yes. ah we We know in the past under Labour governments, even one as moderate as Harold Wilson's and governments, there was talk in certain quarters ah ah ah of of some sort of destabilisation.
Speaker: I wanted to show, I think, because it had always been a tenet of British... ah um culture that the real threat to our civilization came from the Russians.
Speaker: And I always thought it came from the Americans, actually. And so ah you'll see that the coup is organized by the Americans, who have quite a good record, no, quite a long record of destabilizing regimes they don't like.
Speaker: Chile, 1973, is the most, is one that comes to mind. Iran, of course, 1953, and on. fifty three and so on and So, as I say, that's where wanted to suggest that the real threat came from.
Speaker: And I kind of stand by that. Yeah, in fact, we've done a podcast ah episode about ah the election of I.N. in the 1970s. Another one which um I wondered if it inspired you was um the American film Seven Days in May, ah where...
Speaker: the establishment in the States tries to overthrow an incumbent president. Is that something you were also aware of when you were writing? no No, it isn't. I have seen it since, and it's an extremely interesting film.
Speaker: But no, I wasn't. I was i was aware of the various ah coup attempts at Mountbatten's, well, Mountbatten actually left the room eventually when Sir Solly Zuckerman, who was the government's chief scientific advisor, said this is this is treason,
Speaker: ah um ah Louis. and So he wasn't really involved. But Cecil King, the head of the what was then, he was the Murdoch of his day and in in many bex the head of the ipc the international publishing corporation and a man of great influence, he did he did attempt to install a businessman's government and and that he wanted Mountbatten to be the head of it.
Speaker: So that got nowhere. In fact, it led to the downfall of Cecil King, which was ah fairly spectacular, I remember, in 1968. And then in the mid-'70s, various military officers started...
Speaker: um and Well, in in one case, that of General Sir Walter Walker trying to assemble some sort of private army to deal with the chaos that he confidently expected and I think probably was going to organise.
Speaker: ah um ah from the election of, again, a pretty moderate Labour government in the mid-1970s, but this was the time of various miners' strikes and so forth.
Speaker: Now, latterly, I think General Sir Walter Walker was tended to be written off as some sort of nutter or eccentric, but he had been the commander-in-chief of NATO Northern Europe.
Speaker: ah um So there were and there was another more sinister figure, Colonel David Stirling, who is is the founder of the Special Air Services. And he he, too, was setting up some sort of private security organization.
Speaker: and So there was a certain amount of that about, and even I recall ah an article in The Times by an anonymous army officer ah um recounting that, you know, talk of maybe having to intervene to correct the result of the election was the talk of the officer's mess in which he ah in which he frequented.
Speaker: and So it's always been around and in the background. and Again, we saw a bit of it ah when Corbyn was in the ascendancy. ah Sir Richard Dearlove, who had been the head, I think the head of the especially of the Secret Intelligence Service, wrote an article.
Speaker: He was retired by this time, wrote an article the day before the 217 general election, saying that Corbyn was a threat to established order and... the established order and and and would need to be dealt with, or hinting that he would need to be dealt with.
Speaker: Adilav, of course, is the man who gave us the Iraq, um the weapons of mass destruction and in in Iraq, for which he yeah has never received sufficient credit, in my view.
Speaker: um But... Is credit the right word? I don't see why not. ah but that The... yeah One of the interesting things was how the establishment reacted to the publication of the book.
Speaker: ah The first thing that happened was, well, it was very was helped because somebody wrote an op-ed in the in the Times about it. And that led to my being denounced ah in the correspondence columns of the Times.
Speaker: by in particular by Sir Ian Gilmore, um who enough ah Tory gent of the old school, actually, who I can know and respect later on. But we had this spat in the Times editorial columns with the result and that ah in the early stages it was selling more copies in Hatchards of Piccadilly, which is the top people's book club, than in Collets in Charing Cross Road, ah um which was the left-wing ah bookshop and then one or two interesting things happened well firstly one of the reasons a very british coups endured is because several of the things that in the novel there only speculation came to pass so for example i had uh i had a
Speaker: an MI5 agent on the Council of CND, the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. And that turned out, after the novel was published, to be a man called, I think, Harry Newton his name was.
Speaker: ah ah And then i I had the top brass of the BBC vetting ah and vetting some of their senior journalists.
Speaker: And, of course, in 1986,
Speaker: Brigadier Stonham was rumbled, who occupied, I think it was room 101 in Broadcasting House and was stamping up turned Christmas trees on the personnel files of journalists he thought ought not to, were unsound.
Speaker: And that went up that had gone on for years. And even after Brigadier Stonham was rumbled, the BBC carried on for several years. ah at doing that.
Speaker: ah But the most interesting thing that happened was i was so working on Tribune at the time, in fact, I was the editor of Tribune, a small left-wing newspaper.
Speaker: And we started selling the hardback um through the through an advert in the back of the paper. And the first check for £6.95 that came in, which was then the going rate for a hardback book, ah um came from the American Embassy.
Speaker: ah And we duly packed it up and sent it off and waited to see what would happen. And the next thing that happened was an invitation ah for me to dine with the minister at the American embassy, who after the ambassador is the most senior person in the embassy.
Speaker: And so there came a day when he sent his bulletproof Cadillac to Tribune's multi-story headquarters in Grayson Road to convey me to his mansion in Kensington.
Speaker: And I assumed there'd be a lot of us at this lunch. But when I got there, it was just him and me and I think ah one of his colleagues. And I said to him, why are you bothering with a minnow like me?
Speaker: And he said, well, I reckon you're among the top 1,000 opinion formers in this country. I said, I must be number 999. He said, other 999 have been here too. he said the other nine hundred and ninety nine have been here too
Speaker: and Do you think you gave them some ideas about how to overthrow a British government by writing a book? No, what they were interested in... Well, he was interested me, really, in telling me his point of view, which he did at some length.
Speaker: and They were a bit afraid the election of Michael Foot as leader of the Labour Party. I was able to set their minds on at rest on that. I said he didn't pose the slightest threat to the established order, and ah dear old Michael, and so it...
Speaker: and so and so improved So it proved. But the other thing that had happened, i think, when I worked on, it was after the novel, I think it was, is that once, maybe twice, I was invited out to lunch by ah um diplomats in the American embassy who ah wanted to sound me out ah ah on the on, basically, on weatherfoot and um
Speaker: as i say posed any kind of threat, particularly to the presence of nuclear weapons. You must remember this was the time yeah when cruise missiles were being introduced into bases in the UK, which many people thought would make us a target rather than protect us.
Speaker: And there was a lot of big demonstrations. so And they asked me various questions about that. And a year or two later, I received an anonymous letter posted in Brussels,
Speaker: which was in and in which contained an internal a US government memorandum, CIA, I guess, um that listed the questions that American diplomats were to put to their, I quote, their authorised contacts.
Speaker: ah um And those were the very questions that I'd been asked. And indeed, I found that several of my friends had also received ah invitations to lunch ah ah with the same diplomat from the embassy. So they must have been a bit worried in 1983, I think, that that somehow their bases were threatened. Because, of course, harry that was one thing Harry Perkins was going to do, invite the Americans to take their bases away.
Speaker: I remember vividly the ah televised dismantling of a nuclear weapon in the programme, which would make great TV, wouldn't it? Yes, but it did. yes I'm fascinated by this conversation, this old-going conversation had with the American Embassy. presume gently suggesting this guy was the CIA's man in London.
Speaker: ah Did you feel that was an interesting thing? No, was. i don't think he was the CIA's man in London. American embassies then, and it may still be the case now, ah had...
Speaker: at e had someone attached to each of our main political parties. I don't know about the Lib Dems, but certainly Labour and the Conservatives. ah And their job really was to, and they were usually, i mean, in the case of Labour Party, they were usually sort of a of a Democrat persuasion, vaguely left by American standards, so quite sympathetic.
Speaker: ah um And they became good friends in some cases. Neil Kinnock had one. It wasn't especially sinister, but ah ah Neil Kinnock had one who who was very friendly with for years, ah um who later became their ambassador in El Salvador.
Speaker: I think I thought at once, oh, this is the CIA, but I did check him out and he he He wasn't, as far as I could see. So they'd be... And then, you know, the Conservative Party would have somebody of vaguely Republican persuasion attached to them, and they and and they'd attend the Labour Party conference and so forth.
Speaker: I think the Russians tried the same sort of thing. There were always ah Russian journalists at Labour Party conference, and I expect they went to the Conservative one too. that...
Speaker: ah that um a So there was a kind of connection, yes. It wasn't entirely surprising. Did the Russians come for a chat as well?
Speaker: Yeah. um After I wrote an editorial, ah ah these were journalists. I mean, of course, to be a Russian journalist based in London, ah you had to have... ah approval yeah you had to have approval they were young guys they were quite nice quite and and they were very intelligent quite liberal um you could talk to them normally they didn't chant slogans or sell propaganda uh um and uh
Speaker: I wrote an editorial in Tribune, when I was the editor, this was, so it's 1883 again, when Chonyenko, there was a series of geriatric Soviet leaders. yeah Andropov, yeah. Andropov, Chonyenko.
Speaker: And I wrote a scathing editorial saying, you know, it wass about time they they they found somebody um ah more appropriate. I've forgotten what I said, but it was very scathing.
Speaker: Not waxwork, I think the phrase was. Now, that was Prince Charles's account of the time in his leadership. ah And appalling old waxworks, he said. Well, that was kind of the situation in the Soviet Union, too. You had all these a succession of geriatric ah leaders.
Speaker: And so I assumed when this guy rang up and invited me to dinner ah in a flat in Bayswater, there were two of them, I I assumed that he wanted to tell me off and give me the correct line, but wasn't that at all. He said, um he said well,
Speaker: you're absolutely right, but that there's a better leader in in the pipeline. We think Gorbachev will be the next leader. I'd never heard of Gorbachev at that time, um but so it came to pass.
Speaker: So um I looked this guy up. Oh, then years later, when I was selected as the Labour candidate for Sunderland South. it So this will be about 1986, I think.
Speaker: I could have been 87, but I think it was 86. I was lodging in Sunderland at the time and I went out ah to get a newspaper up to the corner shop and there was a car with two men watching me it. I realised they were watching I could see when I came back that they were looking at me in the mirror.
Speaker: um And, and, uh, i I thought to myself, of these are special branch. ah um And then I yeah ah took my laundry to the Launderette in Villette Road, a walk of about half a mile, and there was a car following me.
Speaker: And when I got home, I opened my newspaper and I realised at once what it was all about. 102, think that's the right number, Soviet diplomats had been expelled and there were my two...
Speaker: ah journalist friends, Russian journalist friends on the list. and And what had happened was this. I had a letter from ah one of them whose wife worked for a publishing house in Moscow, and he said they'd like to publish a Russian version of of a very British coup, and would I give them permission to do so?
Speaker: And so I'd sent back a letter saying yes. And that letter had obviously by this time fallen into the hands of MI5 or somebody. So I'm guessing they rang up the local special branch, who probably didn't realise that I was the Labour candidate for Sunderland South and about to be elected a member of Parliament. I'm not sure their intelligence stretched that far.
Speaker: it require That would require reading of the local newspapers and things. um And I'm guessing that's what happened. I never saw sight or sound of them ah again, but I'm guessing that's what happened. Years later, not so long ago, i looked up to see what ah um what had become of this chap who was a journalist didn't in my time, Russian,
Speaker: And it he is or was a Russian banker now. He's obviously become very rich. I'm guessing he got rich and and yel in the Yeltsin ah era, and he switched from journalism to banking.
Speaker: But he was a very liberal views by Russian standards. I don't know what his views are now. but good so then we the the The book generated these interesting little episodes. it it It generated one more, which I ought to tell you about.
Speaker: Go on, Nick. after I was elected, but not long after I was elected, and so probably 1988, I was invited, along with four or five colleagues, Labour colleagues, to lunch with Marmaduke Hussey, the rather grand Tory who was the chairman of the BBC.
Speaker: And the purpose of the lunch was to bend our ear on on the Broadcasting Act, which was then just a gleam in Mrs Thatcher's eye, ah which he was very opposed to, whatever they were planning to do.
Speaker: um And we had and the lunch took place at Broadcasting House in a sort of boardroom. And we had the top class of the BBC around the table. And halfway through the lunch, I said, of course, Brigadier Stonham had been rumbled by this time and the Observer two years before.
Speaker: I said, ah who now works in room 101 now that Brigadier Stonham has retired? And Marmaduke choking on his smoke salmon said, I think this is one for you, Patricia. There was a lady called Patricia down the end of the table.
Speaker: and she was the yeah And she was the secretary of the BBC, I think. And she hummed and she hard and she said, well, she thought it was a special assistant to the director general. I said, yes, what's his name and what does he do?
Speaker: And although we had the top bars of the BBC around that table, nobody could answer that question. So I said, I'll tell you what, I said, we're only two floors up. Why don't I just nip down and knock on the wall?
Speaker: Oh, no, no, no, I wouldn't do that, they said. and but we'll We'll write to you. And after a bit of prompting, they did. And sure enough, it was a Mr Hodder whose previous employment had been in the Ministry Defence.
Speaker: um They were still at it, even though they'd been rumbled. ah So you've probably asked my other question about the establishments. We've spoken about the Soviet Union. We've spoken about the Americans.
Speaker: Did the British establishment respond to your book?
Speaker: Well, I remember Cathy Masseter, who was a MI5 person who resigned ah in protest against their spying on ah ah on um things that people they shouldn't have been spying on.
Speaker: That's how we knew about Harry Newton, who was on the Council of CMD. um she yeah i She actually came from Sunderland and I dropped her a note and I sent her a copy of the book, yes, and she said, oh, she'd read it when she was at um So i don't know. i mean, bits and pieces. I mean, Mama Ducasse was the British establishment. Yeah.
Speaker: ah um So, yeah, most of them knew about it. Most of them knew about it. I went the other day ah to Stella Remington's funeral. I got on very well with Stella Remington. She had been the head of MI5. I never thought the day would come when I'd find myself sitting down to lunch the head lunch with head of MI5, but the day did come in the early 1990s when I was on the Home Affairs Select Committee.
Speaker: And subsequently, we were both judges of the Booker Prize, and we got on very well. She but she was a very decent woman. um but I went yeah other the other day to her funeral, ah and ah several of her successors, at least three of them as heads of the MI5 were there, including the current incumbent, and the head of the ah Secret Intelligence Service.
Speaker: And they were all familiar with my diary anyway, the first volume, but very a walk on part. ah um So I was quite flattered by that.
Speaker: So you basically gave them the playbook on what to deal with if if a socialist came to power, was just how to respond to it. No, I think they cleaned up their act years ago. i really do. I think they're much more careful now. There is ah um there is ah line that has to be drawn, and I'm not sure they always do it. They certainly didn't during the miners' strike.
Speaker: ah um But they would have said, oh well, that was a threat to the elected government. that That would have been their response to that. They would have justified it. ah umm but But no, they they all the ones I've met anyway, most of them, seem to be normal people, whereas they were all toffs up to the mid-1980s or later.
Speaker: um I want to ask you one more question about and the Ray McAnally version compared to the book. And also we're going to carry on and talk a bit about... ah your sequel, Friends of Harry Perkins, the film TV programme, Call It We Will, bumped him off at the end of the programme.
Speaker: ah But the book didn't bump him off. Why? Well, that's why it's called A Very British Coup. The whole point about a British coup, as opposed to a Chilean type, was they don't didn't go around murdering people. There weren't tanks in the streets.
Speaker: It was all done in gentlemen's clubs in Pall Mall and um and Whitehall. ah ah so um so Alan Plater wrote the screenplay, and he wrote a brilliant screenplay, and I'm very grateful to him, and he was a very good a writer.
Speaker: um But he it was he that changed the end, and I would have ended it personally if I'd known about it at the time. I would have suggested they end it when Harry Perkins goes into that BBC studio ostensibly to announce his resignation and then gives a quite different and very defiant speech. Because that left open then what would happen next?
Speaker: You didn't need to, after that the camera drifted to away to people with epaulettes and, you know, army army officers and so forth. There was a hint that this was going to be some sort of military coup.
Speaker: But that's not what I intended at all. And I don't think it would happen like that. It would be newspaper proprietors ah in in in collusion with some senior Tories and maybe some senior civil servants, maybe the security services. That's that's what I ah meant. But it certainly wouldn't have been blood on the streets.
Speaker: Yeah, I just think it's quite... Obviously, it's only inferred because you hear the screech of tyres and a car crash. I don't suppose you know he's been killed. But, of course, the sequel, it starts with his funeral.
Speaker: um And what comes from that? Yes. Well, um the sequel is called ah The Friends of Harry Perkins, and it was published in 2017.
Speaker: ah People have been asking me for years if I was going to do the sequel, and I even had inquiries from filmmakers, so I thought, well, I'd better get on with it. and i never quite worked out what it was going to do, so I did write it, and in the...
Speaker: in the In the sequel, it, as you say, starts with um with the ah with the funeral of Harry Perkins in Sheffield.
Speaker: um And the opening line, which I'll give you for free, though please don't broadcast the ending of it, ah um the opening line is, Harry Perkins was buried on the day that America declared war on China.
Speaker: ah I think that's quite a good... a pointer to where we might be headed. ah um Take your pick, really, though. These days, who are we going to go to war with, isn't it? And the... Yes, politics are certainly unpredictable now, international relations unpredictable, God knows.
Speaker: ah um But... and And the principal character in the book is now Fred Thompson, who was Harry Perkins' sidekick in the original book. He a vice officer, wasn't it yeah it's Sort of, yes. He was the sort of Alastair Campbell of the Harry Perkins yeah ah government, no not as sophisticated as Alastair.
Speaker: and And so, yes, i he he stands for Parliament. He's adopted by the Labour Party in Harry Perkins' old seat ah um and and rises quite quickly.
Speaker: up up the ah bu ladder. And then the rest of the book is about what happens. so And it's got some much more modern themes. I mean, this is post-Thatcher.
Speaker: So, yeah, that hasn't caught the zeitgeist in the same way a very British coup. ah did. it it It sold a modest quantity. It earned back the advance, but I didn't... it I was hoping someone would make a film out of it, and the the author, the the filmmaker, the great filmmaker Stephen Frears sent me a a very friendly letter saying, which and he described it as this terrific, measured, heart-stopping, moving.
Speaker: i thought, wow, now we're now we're getting somewhere. And I had hoped he would make the film, ah but he didn't. ah and There's lots of, in the film world, there's lots of
Speaker: Bright ideas that don't come to post. Bright ideas are my disappointments. I did ask the people who made The Very British Coup, but he's in California now and doing other things, so so he wasn't interested either, which is a pity because ah in the past I did have people getting in touch with me saying they wanted to make a sequel, um but it's not come to pass yet. I mean, there's plenty of time. ah it But interestingly, there is a sort of sequel, The Secret State. I know it's just it's a remake essentially, but...
Speaker: did When you, presumably you were approached by Secret State, when I was watching it not that long ago, actually, and i sat there and there's that phrase that, I can never remember, it Del Boy that said it? It's like déjà vu all over again, Rodney.
Speaker: and And I was watching there and I was thinking, hang on, I've seen this before. was having this really déjà vu and then I suddenly saw this guy at the back wearing a priest's outfit at some funeral. And I'm thinking, this is a very British coup with a different name on it.
Speaker: What makes you say, yes, let's do this? And it was obviously a very different context. A disaster, Prime Minister dies, etc. It was different, but clearly the same idea. Well, if they wanted to do a remake, and I'm very grateful to them because they helped fund My Wall Garden in Northumberland.
Speaker: ah um But they realised, I think, quite quickly that that it would be very hard to improve on the originals. So they needed to make it as difficult.
Speaker: and Sorry, they realized, and overlap, they realized quite quickly but it will be very difficult to improve on the original. So they wanted to make it as different as possible.
Speaker: ah um So ah they made the prime minister a Tory, I think, played game.
Speaker: um They made the Prime Minister of Tory. They made the incident in which he was killed. was a plane crash over the Atlantic, I think, or an explosion, some unexplained.
Speaker: um And so i one thing I did do, and I wish I'd done it with the first version and indeed with the film made of my um my book, Aero Judgment, about the Birmingham bombings, ah I wish I'd written a line into the contract saying that I wish to have a very short part in it, like Alfred Hitchcock used to do... Yes, always a pith.
Speaker: A little candle oil. Yes. But I did it this time. i just You enjoyed dressing up as a vicar, did you? Well, I thought they might make me... and but A bishop, at least.
Speaker: A backbench MP or even, who knows, a minister. um But instead they made me the vicar, conducting the memorial service for the dead prime minister. And so I had a wonderful day over in Cheshire at Alderley Edge, I think it was.
Speaker: Well, that's about five miles from where I am. I'm literally five miles away from Alderley Edge. but both filming this little sequence. And I was dressed up as a vicar and and and and got friendly with all these famous actors who were in it.
Speaker: And I had three little cameos to begin with. ah One was I was to stand outside the church welcoming the the deputy prime minister, or the acting prime minister, that was Gabriel Byrne, gave ah and a very short line to say there ah and then i had to then the the grieving widow was a very beautiful woman and that had to be filmed about 10 times and and i was getting on very well with her um and then finally i had to conduct the memorial service for the dead prime minister uh and uh there was this was all in in this rather beautiful old church
Speaker: There was a choir behind me and I had just to say about three or four sentences and the whole cast of the yeah but the film were lined up in the church.
Speaker: And so it was my big moment. And this was took place in the evening at about eight o'clock. ah And
Speaker: ah it was all done in one take, I thought. And everybody was very kind about my performance. um But after a while, I realised the hour was late.
Speaker: They'd have had to pay a lot more money if they'd and under the terms of the actors' contracts if they kept us on there for another half hour. And so... I realised the director had probably decided not to use that.
Speaker: And sure enough, when the i was sent a copy some months later, i naturally, it was a disc, I put it in my machine and waited trepidation to see how much of my little part had survived.
Speaker: And there I was for four or five seconds greeting the incoming prime minister. ah But both the other, the walk with the beautiful actress, ah um had gone.
Speaker: ah and the And the memorial service had gone. The choir, everybody had gone. and So that was the end of my film career, I'm sorry to say. You'd have to write another book to make sure you're getting the next one, weren't you?
Speaker: Well, I've written other books, but nobody's nobody has filmed them so far.
Speaker: Talking more about you Obviously, you were MP for Sunderland South, which is famously the place where election counts were the quickest in the country. I think you actually had the quickest count four times in a row, didn't you, from memory? 1992, 97, 201, yes, and 2005, yes, four times.
Speaker: The last time in 42 minutes, get that.
Speaker: think that's a good indication of efficiency or... just suggests that we need better counting processes. and No, it looks like we had the best counting process. It was all done by clerks, you know, back bank clerks.
Speaker: um the yeah The reason it happened is because a very go-ahead ah um chief executive of Sunderland City Council decided it was time we got on television for but for good reasons rather than bad, which often some of them did feature in some rather depressing stories.
Speaker: And so he organized scientifically ah the the the election count. Now, the first time, 92, uh, ah
Speaker: the the half the media didn't realise we were likely to come first and they all went to Torquay, including Kate Adie, who came from Sunderland. Torquay always used to well, didn't it? Torquay was always quick.
Speaker: yeah Yes, yes. and And Kate Adie, who comes from Sunderland, was sent to Torquay. And Sunderland declared well ahead of everybody else,
Speaker: And they kept trying to tell her down the line that Sunderland had already declared. And she couldn't get the message. So she kept saying, you know, Torbay's about to declare another two minutes, another three minutes. um But we'd already done so.
Speaker: However, by the time of 1997, which was the Labour landslide, everybody came to us. ah And indeed, we were easily the first ah again. And so at least a line or two, rather like my film, really, ah my appearance in the film, at least a line or two of my victory speech, which was very brief anyway,
Speaker: ah was it was broadcast to the nation. I suppose if you're the first declare, by definition, you're the one that most people get to see, aren't you, as well?
Speaker: but ah we well and Well, you are, but the commentators like talking. and they can't stop themselves. And they talk over and over. 1997, for example, I'd forgotten who he was. He was a professor from somewhere. He was saying, well, this result was very disappointing. It was 10.4 swing to Labour.
Speaker: um He said, oh, well, it wasn't anything like what the Party we'd we'd been he'd been expecting and there wouldn't be a landslide and so forth. And a few minutes later, he then had to spend another few minutes correcting himself when he realised it was.
Speaker: And so that took up most of the time that should have been ah allocated to me on the BBC anyway.
Speaker: ah Obviously, one of things that you're most famous for in the real world, not the fictional world, is your work on the Birmingham Six. Did that affect your attitudes towards the British establishment and how you framed them in the your books like A Very British Coup?
Speaker: ah Well, it didn't because a Very British Coup was written well before I took up the Birmingham pub bombings case. ah But I certainly came up against the establishment. The legal profession and the judges in particular are a mighty vested interest.
Speaker: And so I treated it from the outset, really, as as but as as a political issue, which it was. And my job, I felt, obviously I did the investigating, first of all, and once I was sure of my ground, I saw my job as raising the level of embarrassment to the point ah where it became easier to own up to the truth and than to carry on ah covering up.
Speaker: ah um And so that's what I did. The fact that I had a seat in Parliament meant I could confront the people directly responsible for the criminal justice process, you know, successive Home Secretaries and the Attorney General and so forth.
Speaker: And so that's kind of what I did. So, for example, every Home Office questions, I but but i had a little syndicate of sympathetic members to whom I handed out ah questions.
Speaker: And some of us got called. In fact, sometimes we dominated on one or two occasions, Home Office questions. The Labour frontbench weren't very keen to pursue this at the time. Roy Hattersley ah was a Birmingham MP, and obviously this was very sensitive issue in in Birmingham.
Speaker: but I'd look for opportunities. One had to be inventive too. So if the question on the order paper was about overcrowding in prisons, I would get up and say, and well, one way of reducing overcrowding would be to release the innoc innocent.
Speaker: And then I'd then enumerate the Birmingham Six, the Guildford Four, and maybe Judith Ward as well. And in due course, of course, all those convictions were quashed amidst a great deal of weeping and gnashing of teeth.
Speaker: And do you think it also, i mean, one of the things that these days we see is when I was a kid, ah you used to see MPs shouted at from across the floor for reading.
Speaker: And these days you get people reading questions all the time. Do you think the power of the backbencher is now diminished compared to when you were an MP? Yeah.
Speaker: but it was never that strong under our system ah not like american congressmen or senators who, if they choose to, could exercise considerable power.
Speaker: ah But yes, I agree with you. it It's just awful watching people reading out lollipop questions. It started under New Labour, ah um and which had been scripted in advance.
Speaker: Dreadful. Embarrassing. And there are still people who are capable of asking questions. There are some who like to make speeches rather than ask questions. That's foolish in my view too. you You don't have to be verbose to get your point across.
Speaker: And I don't think I was. No, I'd just say, no, I do slightly disagree with you. I think, as a backbench MP, you were one the people I personally thought, that guy's actually standing up and saying what he thinks.
Speaker: These days, I think that's quite difficult to define which ones are saying what they think, because you see that little piece of cream paper in front of them, and you wonder who's written it.
Speaker: ah yeah Yes. Well, I mean, they may have written it themselves. Many of them are. Yeah. ah um Many of them are very loyal these days.
Speaker: I'm all in favour of loyalty, but you can carry it too far.
Speaker: what was it like to be played by John Hurt?
Speaker: I didn't have much to do with it, really. This is the film Who Bomb Birmingham, which Gnada Television made, ah based on my book Aero Judgment, which is the two final Birmingham bombings.
Speaker: ah I did work on the three documentaries that we put out. um But I did see the script ah in advance and made a few minor suggestions.
Speaker: um I never met John Hurt. I heard him on the radio saying how he always liked to meet the people he played, but he never you never got in touch with me. And... and Well, Gerry Paxman asked me that question. What was it like?
Speaker: and What did I think of it, I think he said? That night, it was on Newsnight. And I said, well, John Hurt has got more hair than I. um But apart from that, it was a fairly good representation.
Speaker: And looking back to it, before we finish, looking back to a very British coup, are there, do you think that... still resonates today when we look at the state of the UK. Obviously, we've got a Labour government now.
Speaker: um Do you still think there are undertones of the establishment trying to prevent things happening? Not really. I mean, half the middle classes vote Labour these days, and the working classes have gone off somewhere ah to to the right.
Speaker: ah um
Speaker: Also, you couldn't get much more moderate and then this this Labour government. i It's an issue about competence, actually, not not about left or right.
Speaker: ah um And I'm afraid they've proved thus far very disappointing. they They're in a trap. And it's a trap entirely of, well, it was the Tories who set the trap, but they didn't have to fall into it.
Speaker: In January 2023, Jeremy Hunt, ah no, i'll ah take let me take that again. ah In January 2024, Jeremy Hunt cut by two pence the the ah basic rate of employees' national insurance, thereby costing the exchequer many billions recurring.
Speaker: He then cut another penny off it in his budget the following April. And also in 2024, Rishi Sunak, Prime Minister, cut a penny, this must have been Jeremy Hunt again, penny off the basic rate of income tax.
Speaker: Now, this was billions and billions lost to the Exchequer. And then they challenged Labour to say, well, ah like what would you do? Would you put it back up again? And instead of saying...
Speaker: ah We'll make up our minds what we're going to do if and when we get elected and see what kind of mess you've left us. And by the way, they might have added, the next election will be about the public's state of the public services, ah not about tax cuts for the already prosperous.
Speaker: If they replied along those lines, which was the obvious answer, but they didn't. They said, oh, no, we won't put up VAT or national and employee national ah insurance or income tax.
Speaker: And they completely shafted themselves. They fell hook, line and shinker into the pit that the Tories dug for them. And they're stuck in it now. I don't know how they get out of it.
Speaker: but ah um We'll see when the budget comes. But it it made my blood boil, the stupidity of it. And but they would have said, they oh, well, we can't afford to take any risk. We've got to um we got to win the election. But it's always obvious at the last election that they were going to win, yeah much more so than in 1997 when Blair was understandably very cautious. We'd been out of office for 18 years.
Speaker: ah oh He was very cautious about tax and and spend. But in 2024,
Speaker: For the very first time in our lives, there was a more or less credible party to the right of the Conservative Party. And it was clearly destined to take a lot of votes away from them.
Speaker: So it was obvious Labour was going to win. Only the scale needed to be ah ah decided. and and And we saw the scale of it under our first past the post system.
Speaker: ah So what on earth possessed them to make that mistake? I cannot imagine. But they are saddled with it, and it's having long-term consequences.
Speaker: Without bringing my um personal history into the question about proportional representation, um do you think that... We were talking right at the start of this discussion about the mandate that Harry Perkins had given in a two-party system where clearly two parties were the only parties that could ah practically run the country.
Speaker: And we now have a system which is much more ah ephemeral, really, with more parties than ever before contesting with credible chances of getting elected. Do you think what constitutes a mandate?
Speaker: Because... Bear in mind, think the lowest turnout of the vote in our lifetimes occurred at the last election, and the party runs country with a massive majority with about a third of the votes.
Speaker: Do you think that's fit for purpose? Well, it's certainly an issue ah to win in such a large majority elections. and with, as you say, a third of the votes, is a very shallow beach on which to stand, very shallow water in which to stand.
Speaker: um I think you could actually, though, ah probably argue that the Liberal vote, too, was a reflection of disgust with the outgoing regime and maybe even the Green vote.
Speaker: ah The problem with electoral reform, which I know liberals, for perfectly understandable reasons, are very keen on, is that it it will give you hung parliaments, the purest forms of law would anyway.
Speaker: You've only got a look at Israel to see ah what can happen if a handful of extremists control the government. ah I know there's various forms of PR. The reform that I would favour and the one which was put to the vote um under the Cameron government was some form of AV, alternative vote, which actually most of the main parties use on their internal elections, so it can't be so disreputable, where you're in the...
Speaker: the voter who is is invited to put down his or her choice in order of preference. Now, that wouldn't get you anything like proportional representation, but it would mean two things.
Speaker: One is that in order to get elected, you had at some stage to get 50% of the votes instead of getting elected on in know barely more than a third.
Speaker: And... and and and it would it it would be fairer it would but it wouldn't be enormously different. You'd still probably get one party with a large majority, a disproportionate... I'm not necessarily just talking about that deliver what's delivered. I'm also talking about the psychology of it.
Speaker: If you get ah massive mandate on ah third of the votes of 60% of the people voting... and you have 400 people sitting behind you in Parliament in parliament compared to 200 sitting opposite you, does that give you a psychological, we are by far the biggest party in the country? And actually, the reality is that most people don't agree with you.
Speaker: Well, if if it has given them that, they certainly don't show it, do they? They behaved as though they're a pale version of the outgoing government. um Who would have expected, ah well, not even a pale version, who would have expected a Labour government to...
Speaker: to ah to drastically cut overseas development aid. Or this year, the budget for the national parks, for God's sakes, only a few million anyway, by 8.2%. I mean, these are things the Tories would never have dared do.
Speaker: at ah So I don't think they're behaving with much self-confidence. um I think one of the things that are large... an unfairly large majority does give you, is it leads to splits and uprisings.
Speaker: Now, this lot are very tame, and many of them were purged before their nomination was confirmed. before their nomination was confirmed ah um But it does tend very often down the line to lead to splits. And you can see all this talk about Starmer, for example.
Speaker: Do we need Andy Burnham as leader? It's all pretty much nonsense. But um but that that sort of thing thing, it's a luxury you can enjoy if you've got a big ah ah majority. It certainly ain't if you've a very small one.
Speaker: So... most Yes, go on. My favourite line in the Times of the other day about Andy Burnham was he was described as not being the prince across the water, but the prince across the ship canal. um Yeah. and One thing I was going to say, i one question that I've got is, obviously we're non-partisan, we don't get involved in the politics of this, but it does strike me as that there is an issue increasingly where...
Speaker: democracy is no longer somehow as important as it was in this process. Do people think their vote can actually have an impact on who runs the country and how it is run?
Speaker: Well, all governments lean towards the centre, whatever programme on which they get elected
Speaker: is, would spare a thought for the French. France is practically ungovernable. They've got three three blocks of each have a third of the vote.
Speaker: None of them will talk to each other. We certainly don't want to go down that road, that's for sure. So there is something to be said for having a decisive majority, a decisive outcome. I have to say the Lib Dems, who of course are very keen on proportional representation, were against it in the days when they were one of the two largest parties for approximately the same reasons as many Labour politicians. Is that the phrase, plus à change? For approximately the same reasons as many Labour, or many...
Speaker: people from the two historical parties, two oldest parties, sorry, two largest parties are today. yeah So yes, what goes round comes round.
Speaker: um Now obviously we can't make people listen for hours and hours My final question to you is ah how would Would you recommend to modern writers How they should right write political thrillers about elections And is there anything else you want to tell the listeners before we finish?
Speaker: ah Well the only thing I want to tell the readers If they haven't read the book The books I should say but Not only of A British Coup But the Friends of Harry Perkins To do so and And if there's any filmmaker out there who wants to make a film of The Friends of Harry Perkins, ah um I'm available.
Speaker: So that's broadly. As to how to write a thriller, I wouldn't presume. I've done four films. one of which did catch the zeitgeist, a very British coup, and the others which are in some respects better.
Speaker: the ah The Last Man Out of Saigon, which is about a CIA agent sent into Vietnam in the last week of the war, ah um and The Year of the Fire Monkey, which is about a young Tibetan being recruited by the CIA to assassinate Chairman Mao.
Speaker: and
Speaker: They're the other two, and they both sold options on the film rights, but nothing ever happened, and they kind of sunk without trace. But I i think in many respects they're better than the better pieces of writing anyway than the then a very British coup.
Speaker: But I'm quite satisfied with how that's turned out.
Speaker: Yes, I must confess that. When my friend of mine said to me, let's do the very British queue, I said, yeah, I completely agree. In fact, I'm going to take Chairman's Privilege and interview Chris myself, ah because having watched it when I was a kid, i think I was 16, 17 when it came out, I remember thinking that was one of the best TV programmes I've ever seen. And it said an awful lot about when I was young, about that question about um the cruise missiles, Greenham Common, and and how...
Speaker: people like Michael Foote, because I always thought at the time, Michael Foote was sort of the person you were looking at. um and Another sort of intellectual left-wing person who really was nothing like Harry Perkins, but neither was Tony Benn, so I couldn't see who that person was supposed to be.
Speaker: and I wondered if, it you know, as it came later, it was more John Prescott than Michael Foote. No, Preza didn't feature on my horizons in 1981 and 1982 when the novel written.
Speaker: But...
Speaker: but ah was was ah was written but yeah but we've discussed the origins of it and
Speaker: it but it wasn't I wasn't the only person, as you will have gathered, to think that there was a film to be made out, or a book to be written, about what would happen in the event of a left-wing Labour government being elected, and a country which is really rather conservative, um and where the institutions, slightly less so now, but where the main institutions were in the hands of a ruling class,
Speaker: um and who who who would behave badly the source of their power influence was challenged. and whose loyalty in some cases was to the United States government, not to the British government, and certainly not to the British people.
Speaker: And so those are themes which i I guess it explores, which are still slightly relevant today, though I don't think many of our ruling class are all that keen on the present United States government, in fairness to them.
Speaker: Quote another fictional politician, you might think that I couldn't possibly comment. um Chris, it's been absolutely wonderful to speak to you today about A Very British Coup and other fictional works about Harry Perkins and so on.
Speaker: Thanks very much for joining us. We'll see you soon. Thank you, Dom. like yeah
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