Lord Fowler was made a life peer in 2001 – and was the health secretary who designed the memorable AIDS awareness campaign in the 1980s . : Clara Malden
Norman Fowler is one of our greatest witnesses to British history over the last 50 years because he was part of it in so many ways. His unbroken spell in Parliament included 12 prime ministers, starting with Ted Heath, serving first under Margaret Thatcher and John Major, and most recently serving five years as Speaker of the House of Lords.
Lord Fowler – he became a life peer in 2001 – was the health secretary who developed a memorable AIDS awareness campaign in the 1980s; the Transport Secretary who privatized most of British Rail; he was at the Grand Hotel in Brighton when it was bombed by the IRA, and he tried to be a peacemaker when Thatcher, out of power and filled with resentment, attacked her protégé Major.
Surprisingly, he never published his diaries, but at the age of 85 he finally found time to dig out his old notebooks and write The Best of Enemies, his modern take on one of the most intriguing periods of post-war politics. Covering the years 1980-97, the book makes for fascinating reading, not only because it is a “brand new” diary of the Thatcher and Major years, written as events unfolded, but also because Fowler adds his own reflections at the beginning of each chapter: making it a historian of his own experience.
We meet at his flat in Fulham, west London, less than 50 yards from the Thames, and it is exactly what you'd imagine the former Lord Speaker's home to be: exquisitely crafted soft furnishings, books in the courtyard and coffee in the china cup and saucer.
Fowler's House, just as you might imagine the home of a former Lord Speaker. Credit: Clara Malden
Fowler is a tall man with a lean body, although age has given him a slight stoop and stiffness in his gait. , his mind remains clear and he impressively remembers names and events going back to MacMillan's time. He told me that he decided not to write any more books because “it takes up a lot of your time, and when you're 85, you have to be selective in what you do.”
Will this book mark a point in his career? “No! I want to get back to campaigning,” he says. “As Speaker I was able to campaign on [reform] the House of Lords, which I really enjoyed. “And I'm consistently campaigning on HIV and AIDS (for which he remains an ambassador UN), but I haven't been able to do as much as I wanted to in the last 18 months, so I'm going to go back to it.”
When he resigned from Thatcher's cabinet in early 1990, he was the first minister to say he was doing so to “spend more time with my family”. This may have become a universal justification for many ministerial resignations since then, but in his case it was not a euphemism – he and his second wife Fiona had three children, the youngest of whom was six, and he wrote in his diary regrets about that that he had become “a rather distant figure”. He now has five grandchildren, ranging in age from two to 16, whom he sees most weeks, but he is in no mood to become a full-time grandparent. “I don’t take enough time,” he admits. “I can’t remember the last time we had a proper vacation, and it’s stupid.”
Lady Fowler, who was present at the interview, seemed to have long since come to terms with the realization that retirement was not on her husband's agenda. “We recognize that we enjoy different types of holidays,” she says pragmatically. “Norman likes the sun and beaches, I like excursions and sights.”
She recalls a safari with Leon Brittan, Ken Clarke and their wives, and it takes the conversation back to the beginning of Fowler's political career, when in the mid-1970s the three men were a tight-knit trio of young MPs who had it all as students, leading the Cambridge University Conservative Association .
All three subsequently rose to senior positions, Brittan as Home Secretary under Thatcher and Clarke as Chancellor under Major, and all had run-ins with Thatcher. Fowler, perhaps surprisingly, focused on the government's response to the emerging threat of HIV/AIDS in 1986.
“It was the first time I had a fight with her,” he says, “but she was wrong.” Fowler, as health secretary, proposed a bold and outspoken public health campaign with strong messages about the risks of anal sex and condom use, leading to the “Don't Die of Ignorance” campaign with the falling tombstone.
Thatcher was appalled, arguing that “children shouldn't be exposed to unpleasant things,” he explains, and when Fowler's plan was approved by the AIDS Committee, chaired by Willie Whitelaw, she tried to get around them by asking the Advertising Standards Authority to intervene and even trying to use the AIDS Act. obscene publications to stop the distribution of leaflets door to door. She even warned Fowler not to become known as the “AIDS minister.” Fowler stood his ground and Thatcher had to give in, but he says: “We fell out over it and I was very lucky to survive the 1987 reshuffle.”
Fowler at the 1982 Conservative Party Conference with Margaret Thatcher Photo: Popperfoto
He now considers the AIDS campaign his number one political achievement. “Getting infected with HIV at that time was essentially a death sentence,” he says. “There was no cure, no treatment, and the only thing that could be done was to warn people about the dangers, which is what we did.”
The tactic of getting people's attention with the unvarnished truth was based on a successful public health campaign to reduce sexually transmitted diseases among World War I soldiers who used prostitutes, and undoubtedly saved lives. Yet when the Covid pandemic hit, no one bothered to ask his advice on public health.
“It’s a shame for the government,” he says. “Ministers tend not to look back, they want to make their own contribution and not just build on what came before. In this sense, this is not a team game.”
Fowler is also proud of his achievements in privatization when he was transport secretary in Thatcher's first cabinet. When he took on the task, British Rail's subsidiaries included Sealink ferries and a hotel division, which owned famous sites such as Gleneagles (open only six months of the year), and the British Transport Docks Board owned ports such as Southampton, Cardiff and Hull. Even the moving company Pickfords was government-owned.
“No Conservative minister has made any real change to transport since Ernest Marples [in the early 1960s],” says Fowler, whose three transport bills in three years earned him a reputation as a “campaign minister” and paved the way for the path to complete privatization. from British Rail.
After he resigned from his third cabinet post as employment minister in 1990, Fowler returned to the backbench but was coaxed back into action as party chairman by John Major in 1992. By then, the relationship between Major and Thatcher had become toxic (hence the title of his memoirs), and he made it his mission to act as a buffer between them, trying and failing to bring about some kind of reconciliation.
In his May 1992 diary (which he actually kept in a series of reporter's notebooks, a remnant of his former journalistic career), he writes that over lunch with Major at his home in Huntingdon, he tries to discuss building bridges with Thatcher. but Major replies: “It would be a waste of time.”
Thatcher gave an interview to Newsweek in which she stated that Major was not his own man, that there was no such thing as majorism, and that Thatcherism would long survive all of them. Yet Thatcher did everything in her power to keep Major in 10th place after he was ousted in 1990. I think any other prime minister would have done the same with his successor.
“Initially there was a feeling that she had been betrayed by the cabinet, which I was not in at the time, that the cabinet ministers she appointed did not support her, and if that was the case, there was no reason why she should have done so.” . support them. Her defeat was a complete disaster for the Tory party because it left probably the greatest Conservative leader since the war bitter, disappointed and calling on people to remember what she had achieved.”
However, he does not share the view that Thatcher should have gone on and on as she wished. “In an ideal world, it would be better if she went to the electorate, won the election – although probably only fairly – and then, having seen the situation, resigned of her own accord, rather than being kicked out. But it doesn't work that way.”
Thatcher and Fowler at her 1992 Brighton Conference speech. Photo: Richard Baker
Dealings with Thatcher became so awkward that her presence at the party's annual conference became a constant headache for Fowler as the party's negotiating chairman. In 1993, Major fell into a “black depression”, his diary notes, because Fowler tried to “cope” with her by inviting her to dinner in his hotel room, ruining Major's plans to take his staff out for fish and chips. “This would lead to stories of the poor old Prime Minister having no one to dine with except his staff while the Chairman entertained his predecessor at a friendly dinner,” his diary states.
< p>Reading Fowler's diaries, it is impossible not to come to the conclusion that Major's falling out with Thatcher was partly caused by his own self-doubt. Every time Major is given a more important position in the government, he expresses doubt that he is up to the task. “He had a natural humility,” reflects Fowler, “he was not an arrogant man… and he was very sensitive to his upbringing and his background (he left school at 16, with only three O's, and lived in rented flat in Brixton). ). I remember one conversation with him when I said that I thought we had gotten rid of all class differences in the Conservative Party, and he said, “I'm not sure that's true.”
Fowler notes that Major consolidated Thatcher's achievements so successfully that “they were never reversed”, adding: “He was the natural heir to Margaret Thatcher. If only these two could get along.”
John Major and Margaret Thatcher at a Conservative rally in London, 1992. : Trinity Mirror/Mirrorpix/Alamy Stock Photo
His diaries, of course, cover some of Thatcher's finest moments, including the Falklands War of 1982 (when some cabinet ministers, including Francis Pym, the then foreign secretary, thought they could do a deal rather than go to war, he says ) and the Brighton bombing in 1984, which killed five people, including Sir Anthony Berry, Deputy Chief Constable.
His modern story is about being awakened by a “huge crash” and then silence. His diary reflects the confusion in which the hotel guests tried to make sense of what had happened, and Thatcher's determination to continue the conference the next day, after Marks & Spencer opened early to provide people with a change of clothes.
He now recalls that “it really did feel like the First World War because there was dirt and dust falling from the ceiling and this long line of Tory delegates and ministers coming out into the street.”
Fowler's wife Fiona had breakfast that morning with Roberta Wakeham, wife of Chief Whip John Wakeham. Fiona returned to London, Mrs Wakeham remained in Brighton and was killed. Fowler went to visit the wounded in hospital as Secretary of State for Health, where he met Norman Tebbitt, who was himself wounded and whose wife Margaret was left in a wheelchair for the rest of her life, and Wakeham, grieving for his wife.
“Norman tried to be as cheerful as he could [it is said that a nurse asked him if he was allergic to anything and answered, “Bombs”], and Wakeham tried to be cheerful too. They all actually responded great, but oh my god, what a thing.”
Fowler's last ministerial role was as employment secretary, where he was supervised in the late 1980s by “a lawyer called Tony Blair”, as his diary records. As Blair emerges as favorite to replace the late John Smith as leader of the Labor Party, Fowler writes: “I never found Blair particularly formidable.” Does he still hold this view?
“Yes. It is very difficult for the Leader of the Opposition to be formidable. There was no Thatcher, and it was the same with Blair. I don't think the Labor Party won that election in 1997, not because of Blair, but because of the lack of influence of the Conservative Party. Starmer didn't is so formidable, he just needs to tread carefully.”
Fowler says there are “undoubtedly” parallels between 1997 and the upcoming general election, especially as both governments have lost their reputations for competence. He has high regard for Rishi Sunak and Jeremy Hunt and believes calls from some MPs for Hunt to be replaced as chancellor are “mad and wrong”. He adds: “Boris Johnson and Liz Truss have done terrible damage to the party and the only way to turn things around is to show that there are still very competent people in government.”
'It is very difficult for the leader of the opposition to be formidable. Thatcher wasn’t, and so was Blair,” he said. says Fowler. Photo: Clara Malden
He is far from certain that this will happen. While complacency has been a problem for Major's Tories, who deluded themselves that “everything will be all right that day”, the current line-up appears to have already admitted defeat, he suggests.
“I'm surprised there is 50 tories. The deputies who have so far announced that they are resigning. Now is not the time for ministers to apply for a job they think they will get, believing they will lose.
“We should have no illusions, I think the government is looking for defeat on its face.”
p>
He is also sharply critical of the failure of successive Conservative prime ministers to reform the House of Lords. “They didn’t do anything, and I think that’s unfortunate,” he fumes. “Rishi says he is an agent of change, and if ever there was a problem that requires change, it is this one.”
In his five years at Woolsack he has had plenty of time to reflect on the state of the Upper House and proposes a “two-out, one-in” system to reduce its number from more than 800 to about 500, which should be part elected and part appointed and remain in Westminster (calls to move it to the North are “silly”, he says).
“This is the second chamber, it does an important job, but we have people who are appointed to the Lords, they take the oath of office , and you will never see them again. This is crazy.”
The fire in Fowler's belly has certainly not gone out and he is determined to see Lord reform in his lifetime. Having long campaigned for LGBT rights, he says he will also have to “wade into” the transgender rights debate, saying he needs to learn more about the topic while maintaining his core belief in “giving people the freedom to make their own choices.” .
“It’s all a matter of time,” he says thoughtfully. “I'm 85 and I still complain that I don't have time to do anything. I feel like I have a lot of things to do, but I don't have enough time for them.”
It looks like Lady Fowler may have to book holidays without him for a while yet.
Recent Comments