(c) www.lobster-magazine.co.uk (Issue 43)  | |||
| Summer 2002 |
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Issue 43 | |
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Here Today, Gone Tomorrow: Recollections of an errant politician
John Nott
London: Politico's, 2002, £20
John Nott was a junior minister in the Edward Heath government of 1970-74 and a not quite senior minister in the first Thatcher regime. He has written a rather interesting, occasionally amusing and unconsciously revealing memoir. There is an account of the City, in which he worked in the late 1950s and 60s when it was a gentleman's club, for the most part: a leisurely way to make a lot of money in between lunches; and again, after his resignation in 1983, when it was blown apart by the 'big bang' and turned into today's outpost of Wall Street. These sections are full of interesting anecdotes, odd glimpses of actual operations and some sharp little pen portraits. But the meat of the book is his political career. There is another portrait of Margaret Thatcher as the bossy-boots, intimidating the poor shmucks in her first administration who could not handle being chastised by nanny; accounts of some of the clashes and policy disputes which historians of the period will find useful; and there is the striking comment:
'Margaret Thatcher never believed in liberal economics - it is a complete misreading of her beliefs to depict her as a nineteenth-century liberal..... emotionally she was an authoritarian and protectionist.' (p. 183)Who was Margaret Thatcher?
To me the most interesting section is his account of being a junior minister in the Treasury during the Heath years. His account confirms the analysis I offer of this period in chapter 1 of The Rise of New Labour. Obsessed with British entry into the EEC, Heath embarked upon his 'dash for growth', and turned the bankers loose. Having worked in the City, Nott saw immediately how disastrous the so-called Competition and Credit Control changes of 1972 were when allied to Heath's determination to retain 'cheap money'; and, unusually honest for a politician, he notes:
'So bad was the economic situation inherited by Labour in 1974............it would have been a miracle if the Wilson and Callaghan administrations that followed had been able to correct it in a short five years.' (p. 146)He gives a fairly detailed account of the Falklands War, in which he played a significant part. I don't know the Falklands material well enough to know if there is much of significance here: I rather suspect not, since he cites Mrs Thatcher's account in her memoirs as the best extant source; (14) and there is an account of interservice politics among the armed forces which should dispel any ideas you had - if you had any - that UK military procurement and policy has anything to do with 'national security' or 'the needs of the nation'.
The unconsciously revealing aspect of the memoir is the almost complete absence in it of anywhere north of London. Nott was a bright Cambridge student who went into the City and thence into Parliament. Automatically he looked outwards, abroad. The life of the rest of the UK domestic economy simply passed him by. It was only at the end of his career that he went into the world inhabited by the rest of us and was 'shocked' to discover many women who were the only wage-earners in families and then found out that the big super-markets - 'a complex monopoly', in his words; a cartel in anyone else's - are screwing the food producers.
At one point Nott describes himself as 'a rebel by nature'. Let's see: from public school to Cambridge University, into the City and the Conservative Party, back to the City and thence, after a brief, eye-opening but unsuccessful spell in the real economy, into retirement as a country gentleman - that kind of rebel!
Notes 14 There is nothing which throws light on the report in The Times of 2 April 2002 that Lord Carrington the Foreign Secretary had ignored reports of invasion fears coming from the Joint Intelligence Committee.
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