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By Sam Macrory - 5th July 2010
In May 1940, Winston Churchill became prime minister. In July, the Battle of Britain was fought above the English Channel. In the month in between, Peter Carrington, having inherited the family baronetcy two years previously, became eligible to take his seat in the House of Lords. It was June 6, 1940, the day of his 21st birthday.
Seventy years on Lord Carrington, at 91, is the longest-serving member of the Upper House, possessing an astonishing political CV which begins, in 1951, with a junior ministerial role in Churchill’s post-Attlee government.
“He actually rang me to ask if I would be the parliamentary secretary at the Ministry for Food,” Carrington recalls. “Can you imagine the prime minister ringing and asking someone if they would become the most unimportant parliamentary secretary? Incredible.”
Carrington went on to serve in the governments of Anthony Eden, Harold Macmillan, Alec Douglas-Home, Edward Heath and Margaret Thatcher, before leaving domestic politics to spend four years as secretary-general of Nato. He has outlived most of the colleagues who he worked alongside, but there is nothing of the relic about Lord Carrington. He remains full of ideas and, most impressively, full of energy.
“Well, I’m not dead,” he replies, with a smile, when I ask how he is. He laughs loudly, I laugh nervously, and we head outside for a photo shoot. “Come on Douglas – join in,” Carrington calls to the passing Lord Hurd. His fellow ex-foreign secretary wisely declines.
A benefit of old age, perhaps, is that you outlive your enemies, but Carrington seems to have had the knack of acquiring only friends – even Mrs Thatcher, whose government Carrington resigned from as foreign secretary during the build-up to the Falklands War in 1982.
“God knows I don’t always agree with her, but I think she’s lonely and I’m rather fond of her, so I gave her lunch just before the election,” Carrington tells me in his office. “These days you have to put a bit of a penny in the slot, so the penny I put in was to say ‘If David Cameron becomes prime minister then he’ll be faced with the most terrible problems, and until he gets in we won’t know whether he has resolution and guts’. I got rather bored of this after a bit, so I pointed a finger at her and said ‘What is more, I had absolutely no idea that you were going to turn out like that’. She said ‘Nor did I’. I thought that was rather charming.”
Back in the late 1930s, how Peter Carrington turned out did not seem so predictable either. After finishing at Eton, he was at a loss as to what to do next. His father told him to join the Army, and the Eton hierarchy agreed. “My housemaster said that it was an extremely wise decision, as there
were only three careers in which a stupid boy can make good: the Army, farming, and stock-broking. I’ve never been a stockbroker, but I’ve been the other two.”
Stupidity doesn’t necessarily rule out a career in politics either, but the housemaster was wide of the mark. As the only son of Victor, the fifth Lord Carrington, a future at Westminster was pre-determined, but an extended career under six different prime ministers was not. Of those six, Harold Macmillan is the prime minister he remains fondest of and, like Macmillan, Carrington masks his sagacity and political nous with the same easy charm of his fellow old Etonian.
The young peer saw action throughout the second world war, ending up in Germany and later awarded the Military Cross. His wartime experience – which included sleeping under a tank with fellow Grenadiers, “who had signed up just to get a square meal” – helped to shape Carrington’s world view. “You saw the misery of the German people, scavenging the streets, and above all you saw the displaced people of Yugoslavia who had nowhere to go.
One was at quite an impressionable age, and one felt deeply that one ought to try one’s very best to make sure it didn’t happen again,” he recalls.
Carrington remained in the Army until 1949, and two years later, at just 32 years of age, he joined Churchill’s government. “I thought he was terrifying. In those days he was a sort of demi-god, and one worshipped at the fountain,” recalls Carrington. “In one cabinet meeting, Churchill was talking about whether we should stop rationing sweets. The minister of food said it was impossible. Churchill said to him, ‘We said we would do it when we got elected, so we will’. Of course, there was no problem.”
Carrington served briefly under Eden. “A very nice man, but one of the great rules in public life is to never follow success,” muses Carrington on Eden’s troubled premiership. Next came three years as high commissioner in Australia. The ambassadorial dinner party circuit seemed to suit him. “It was the most enormous fun, but I knew nothing about protocol.” He soon learned. The best advice Carrington received, after hearing of a guest who took umbrage at the seating plan, was that “Those who mind don’t matter, and those who matter don’t mind”.
Returning home in 1959, he was immediately appointed to the government of Harold Macmillan as first lord of the Admiralty. The two had previously met when Carrington, prior to his Australian adventure, worked with him at the Ministry of Defence.
Following each speech Carrington gave in the Upper House, Macmillan would send a handwritten letter noting how ‘lucky I am to have you’ to Carrington’s office. “I don’t suppose he had read the speech, but it was very good man-management,” Carrington recalls. “He was a really great man. He was rather shy actually, though he became a great actor later on. I had great fun with him.”
On one such occasion, Carrington recalls meeting Macmillan, now retired, on a tour in Australia to publicise his latest book. The press pack, however, was more interested in the end of the Vietnam War, with a peace being brokered in Paris that weekend. “There was no meeting of minds,” Carrington recalls. “After an exasperated journalist said ‘But Mr Macmillan, don’t you realise that tomorrow U Thant [then UN secretary-general] is going to Paris to settle the Vietnam War?’, Macmillan’s eyes, as they did, disappeared below the horizon for about 20 seconds. Eventually he looked up, and said, ‘How very good of him’. I was the only one who laughed.”
Carrington also remembers a meeting with Macmillan shortly before a session of prime minister’s questions. “He was reading Trollope instead of mugging up for PMQs. He used to complain that there wasn’t enough to do. They don’t come like that any more.”
Douglas-Home, prime minister for just over a year, is described by Carrington as under-estimated and very able. “Alec had one great weakness: he was self-deprecating. He was very witty, and made these delightful little jokes, such as suggesting he could only count on the fingers of one hand. The press took it seriously, it stuck, and there was this ‘stupid’ prime minister. But he inherited the job at a very difficult time, and he only lost the election by four seats. It was much better than he’s ever given credit for.”
In opposition under Edward Heath, Carrington served as shadow leader of the House of Lords – “very boring really” – before returning to office as defence secretary in 1970 and then becoming energy secretary shortly before the February 1974 election.
Carrington says Heath “rather blamed me for pushing him into holding an election”. He makes a case for the defence. “I was energy secretary when there wasn’t any, and we would have run out of coal by the middle of February. You had to have an election, though I think he left it a bit late.”
Despite the fall-out over the election date, Carrington remained “very fond” of the “misunderstood” Heath. “He will be thought of as a better prime minister than they think now. He was immensely brave and courageous, and he never wavered in his opinion. His mistake was that he became bitter when he was voted out and replaced by Thatcher. It was a great pity. If he had got over that then he would have been rather useful, and had a much fuller life than he did in the end, when he became rather lonely.”
In opposition after losing the 1974 elections, Carrington returned to his old job as shadow leader of the Lords, working for the first time with the “unknown quantity” of Mrs Thatcher. Again, he praises the last prime minister he would serve under. “She thought she knew it all by the end, but in many ways she saved us when we were going down the plughole. We owe her a hell of a lot.”
On winning the 1979 election, Thatcher made Peter Carrington her foreign secretary, the job he had always wanted. But three years later, he would resign.
This article first appeared in The House Magazine.
The second part of this interview is now online at http://www.epolitix.com/latestnews/article-detail/newsarticle/owl-in-the-eaves/
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