B.W. arrived in my office in a state of advanced dither. His problem appeared to be that the Prime Minister has told the press that the minutes of the Cabinet Committee confirm his story that he did not try to suppress chapter eight of the book.
But, Bernard told me, the minutes are not yet written. I felt that this simplified the problem -- all he has to do is write them.
Bernard did not feel that this was the answer. He was concerned that, according to his recollection, the Prime Minister did try to suppress the book. And he expressed surprise when I expressed surprise at his recollection.
So I explained to him that what I remember is irrelevant. If the minutes do not say that he tried to suppress the book, then he did not.
B.W. went into a greater dither, and said that he didnt see how he could falsify the minutes. He wanted, he said, a clear conscience. I found myself wondering when he acquired this taste for luxuries and how he got into government with it.
Consciences are for politicians. We are humble functionaries whose duty is to implement the commands of our democratically elected representatives. How could we be doing anything wrong if it has been commanded by those who represent the people?
B.W. does not accept that view. No man is an island, he said. I agreed wholeheartedly. And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee, Bernard.
Apprehensively, he asked for my suggestions, and their rationale. I gave him these thoughts to ponder:
1. Minutes do not record everything that was said at a meeting.
2. People frequently change their minds during a meeting.
3. Minutes, by virtue of the selection process, can never be a true and complete record.
4. Therefore, what is said at a meeting merely constitutes the choice of ingredients for the minutes.
5. The secretarys task is to choose, from a jumble of ill-digested ideas, a version that presents the Prime Ministers views as he would, on reflection, have liked them to emerge.
Later today Bernard returned to my office, still confused. He had considered all I had said and likened the question of ingredients to cooking. A dangerous analogy. It is better not to use the verb cook in connection with either books or minutes.
Once again this raised the question of truth (whatever that may be) and Bernards erroneous belief that minutes must in some way constitute a true record.
Patiently, I approached the matter from an alternative point of view. I explained the following points as clearly as I could:
1. The purpose of minutes is not to record events.
2. The purpose is to protect people
3. You do not take notes if the Prime Minister says something he did not mean to say, especially if this contradicts what he has said publicly on an issue.
4. In short, minutes are constructive. They are to improve what is said, to be tactful, to put in a better order.
5. There is no moral problem. The secretary is the Prime Ministers servant.
In short, the minute is simply a note for the records and a statement of action (if any) that was agreed upon.
So, we returned to the meeting in question. What happened? The Solicitor-General had advised that there were no legal grounds for suppressing chapter eight. The Prime Minister accepted that there were no legal grounds for suppression. [Our italics Ed.] That is all that need be minuted.
It is not a lie. It can go in the minutes with a clear conscience. B.W. departed with his conscience feeling less bruised.
These two conversations with Bernard about this storm in a teacup have prompted in me some fundamental thoughts about its origin:
There is no doubt that the real cause of all this trouble is this business of publishing ministerial and Prime Ministerial memoirs.
When I entered the Civil Service in the 1950s it was still possible for a man of intelligence and ingenuity to defend the thesis that politics was an honest and honourable profession. Ministers did not divulge Cabinet proceedings. Leaking to the press was regarded as a breach of confidence, not an instrument of government. And if a Department fell down badly on a job, the minister resigned.
Equally, members of the Civil Service preserved a cloak of anonymity and a tradition of discreet silence which concealed from the rest of the country the fact that they were running it.
Thus Prime Ministerial memoirs and diaries are, I believe, deeply reprehensible. The uninstructed may gain pleasure, and believe that they are being vouchsafed privileged insights, by reading distressingly frank accounts of how politicians reach their main political decisions (or, more frequently, indecisions). Most politicians have a certain lively style, often achieved by those without the reflective profundity to appreciate, or the intellectual apparatus to communicate, those qualifications and modifications which may make their accounts less readable but which could render them reliable.
Leaving aside the poor quality of literature of most ministerial memoirs, the more important caveat remains: revelations of this sort should never be published at all.
In such books the old tradition of the responsible minister and his obedient servant is generally misrepresented as a totally misleading portrait of scheming officials manipulating innocent politicians. Although those at the heart of government are aware that this is an absurd travesty, there is a danger that ordinary simple-minded souls may be deceived into believing there may be some truth in it.
The rot began with the Crossman diaries. And once one Minister reveals the secrets of the Cabinet, the others rush in to set the record straight, which means, of course, to show themselves in a favourable light.
After reading a succession of descriptions of the same period from opposed ministers of the same government, all of whom were by their own account uniformly honourable in their dealings and right in their judgements, it is hard to see where to lay the responsibility for decades of unprecedented and unrelieved political squalor.
The only scapegoat available must therefore logically be the Civil Servant. This has culminated in a distressing and regrettable change in public opinion, so that the necessary role of the Civil Servant in advising caution, taking soundings, consulting colleagues, examining precedents, preparing options and advising ministers on the likely consequences of their proposals if they reached the statute books is perceived as ingrained bureaucratic obstructiveness rather than an attempt to translate narrow political expediency into broad national benefit.
Of course, there is an argument that by maintaining secrecy we would be simply defending the narrow interests of the Civil Service against the greater benefits of more openness about government. Paradoxically, this has not proved to be the case.
When I first attended Cabinet as a Private Secretary in the 1960s, members were irritated at the stultifying boredom of the proceedings and would interrupt with diverting outbursts of truth which would cause much conflict and dissent. Now that I have returned to the cabinet as Cabinet Secretary over twenty years later, all members of the Cabinet are peacefully occupied making notes for their memoirs and will only make the statements that they want others to record in theirs.
This has been enormously beneficial to the Civil Service, for an interesting reason: the fact is that the movement to open up government, if successful, always achieves a gratifying increase in the level of secrecy. Once a meeting -- in Parliament, local council, Cabinet -- is opened up to the public, it is used by those attending as a propaganda platform and not as a genuine debating forum. True discussions will then take place privately in smaller informal groups.
In government these smaller groups often contain one or more senior civil servants, so that some element of intelligence and practicability can be built into proposals before they become public and have to be defended with arguments which represent a victory of personal pride over common sense. So the move to greater openness in public affairs has greatly strengthened the level of secrecy and therefore the quality of decision-making in the higher echelons of government.