It was very interesting being reviewed by the major media. While the left press – New Statesman, Tribune, Socialist et al – Times Literary Supplement, the London Review of Books and the non-metropolitan and Irish papers like it, we were slagged off by the Daily and Sunday Telegraph, the Sunday Times, the Observer, the Independent; and by Joe Haines in the Daily Mirror. (As we went to press the Guardian had not reviewed it.)
Philip Ziegler had first go in the Daily Telegraph (17th August). Since Mr Zeigler is working on his own biography of Lord Wilson – something he omitted to tell Sunday Telegraph readers – we may presume he read the book, if only to check for useable material. He described us as ‘orthodox hard-left’ – the Independent had us as ‘Bennite’ – which is amusing but entirely false. Au contraire, Dorril is a Freudo-anarchist, with Situationist tendencies; and Ramsay is a premature anti-Militant member of the soft old left of the Labour Party. For Ziegler we had produced ‘ the same old stew of half-facts and wild surmises…precious little added in the way of new ingredients…a dull book, badly written and at times near incomprehensible.’ (Dorril wrote a letter to the Telegraph pointing out the factual mistakes in the review which was not printed.)
Philip Ziegler (Eton, Oxford, Brooks) was in the Foreign Service 1952-67. Having written the official biography of Lord Mountbatten and now doing the same for Lord Wilson, Ziegler is a major historical gatekeeper. The outrage he expressed at the account we gave of Tony Benn and his battle with the Permanent Government in 1974/5, and his assertion that the civil service just does not behave like this, warn us not to expect anything from his biography of Lord Wilson.
The following week (August 25) it was the turn of the Sunday Telegraph. They gave it to Auberon Waugh, who, nothing if not consistent, devoted four-fifths of his text (in one of the biggest reviews seen in the Telegraph in recent years) to running all the anti-Wilson smears again. In the last fifth the book got a couple of derogatory asides, with ‘babyish drivel’ being the highlight. Though he gave no inkling of having actually read the book, Waugh did admit his role in spreading what he called ‘subversive gossip’ against Wilson, the origin of which he declined to acknowledge. Hopefully he will reveal a little more in his own autobiography.
Next was Tom Bower in the Sunday Times (September 1). If Ziegler and Waugh’s reactions were predictable, Bower’s was not. Neither of us know Bower but we have several of his books (Klaus Barbie: Butcher of Lyon, Pledge Betrayed and Red Web, for example). Where Waugh is essentially a joke (albeit a joke wrapped round a very nasty and effective disinformationist), and Ziegler an establishment ‘gatekeeper’, Bower is serious writer, researcher and film-maker. In the event Bower put his foot in his mouth. He had Colin Wallace’s allegations coming ‘shortly after Spycatcher’s publication’ (emphasis added) when even we had them over a year before, and No. 10 Downing Street, two years before. He attributed to us a ‘conviction’ (‘that disloyal intelligence officers were behind every humiliation that Wilson suffered’) which we don’t have, and announced, as if it were a revelation, that the rumours about Marcia and Wilson had first come from Wilson’s colleagues in the Labour Party – something we note on pages 25-6 and 33-4. Bower’s final judgement was this:
‘In elevating playground whispers into major conspiracies, Dorril and Ramsay have minimised the real state-threatening plots that were being hatched by Arthur Scargill and other militant trade unionists, Ulster paramilitaries and international terrorists.’
Had you realised that Arthur Scargill, Ulster paramilitaries and international terrorists (unspecified – any candidates?) had threatened the British state? (Our own assessment is that there hasn’t been a serious threat from the left to the British state since 1919.)
The Independent review by Ian McIntyre appeared on 9 September after Donald McIntyre had earlier written a long and largely sympathetic feature. (Donald MacIntyre got very worked up about accusations that Tony Crosland could stoop to dirty politics and may well have been a CIA ‘agent of influence’.) In response to the Ian McIntyre review I wrote a letter which included this.
‘I would have taken Mr McIntyre’s analysis more seriously however, if his specific charges against us had not consisted of straw men entirely of his own construction. He had us stating that Lord Chalfont was ‘brought into the Cabinet from The Times for his anti-independent views’ and points out that Chalfont was never in the Cabinet. What we actually wrote (p. 55) was that Chalfont ‘had been knighted by Wilson to enable him to sit in the Lords and thus be Minister for Disarmament’. (Incidentally our use of ‘knighted’ is wrong: it should have been ‘enobled’.) McIntyre asks, ‘What precisely was the nature of the ‘Orwellian disinformation’ to which we were exposed during the Thatcher administrations?’ Our answer follows in the final paragraph of the book, immediately after our use of the phrase ‘Orwellian disinformation’: viz ‘promising to ‘put Britain back to work’ yet tripling unemployment’, and so forth. He asks, ‘Who are the mysterious ‘survivors of the Heath government who dominate the Major Cabinet’?’ Well, off the top of my head this morning there are Kenneth Clarke, Michael Heseltine, Kenneth Baker, Tom King and Douglas Hurd.’
The letter was not published.
Best of all there was Joe Haines in the Daily Mirror (2 September) for whom we had produced a ‘ragbag of spelling and factual errors…a regurgitation of the wilder fantasies of Private Eye, Auberon Waugh, Spycatcher, Peter Wright, Colin Wallace and Tony Benn.’ Joe Haines first attacked us in 1986 when Tribune printed an abbreviated version of Lobster 11. Since then he as rubbished everyone who has supported the idea that there were covert operations against the Labour Governments he supported. His motives for this irrational stand are unknown.
Finally there was Robin Lustig in the Observer on 15 September. For Lustig our book was ‘a story we have read before, most notably in David Leigh’s The Wilson Plot‘, and did ‘little more than rehash everything…..that’s available from material already published.’ Lustig’s memory of Leigh’s books is mistaken. We have taken a good deal from Leigh – all acknowledged – but Leigh’s account was much more narrowly focused than ours. In Leigh, for example, there is only one reference to BOSS; Colin Wallace received only 7 (misleading) lines; there was nothing on the Ulster Workers’ Council strike; one page on Rhodesia, a few lines on Cecil King, nothing on Wilson’s economic policies, nothing on the Heath period etc etc. The last third of our book, for example, occupies only a few pages in Leigh’s.