Memoir of the millennium
I've just noticed that The Independent too discusses political memoirs today. The author of the article, Paul Vallely, does not appear to have first-hand knowledge of all the works under discussion. Noting the sheer number of memoirs written by ministers who served under Mrs Thatcher, Vallely writes: "Yet others offer only ammunition for political tittering, such as Norman Fowler's The Minister Decides (the only thing Norman never did, quipped one wag)."
No, no, no! All connoisseurs of the genre know that the title of Lord Fowler's 1991 masterpiece is Ministers Decide. Note the plural. It is an expression of both modesty and collegiality.
I have read this volume. I have to concede that it ought never to have been commissioned; and once commissioned, it ought not to have been published. It is as enervating and trivial as posterity records. Fowler has nary a bad word for anyone. A photograph of the minister flanked by Edwina Currie and a beaming John Major symbolises the author's not really knowing what goes on around him. I should record that Fowler, a former journalist, names Martin Bell as one of his broadcasting heroes (p. 63). He also concludes with prescience: "In John Major, Margaret Thatcher had the successor she wanted. What he achieves will be different, but it will be built on the foundation of the Thatcher years."
My brother owns a copy of Ministers Decide - and though he could easily have peeled off the remainder bookshop's (massive) discount sticker, for some reason he thought it was a good idea to retain it.
(I've only skimmed it, and wasn't minded to delve deeper).
I do have a very soft spot for Fowler, though, for his heroic stint as chairman of the Tory Party during one of their worst by-election runs ever. He regularly had the appallingly thankless task of (a) assuring the likes of Paxman, Snow and Dimbleby that the Tories were heading for a spectacular comeback and the polls were simply lying and then, after the party suffered a record-breaking landslide loss, (b) seamlessly switching into post-mortem mode, as though (a) had never happened. It takes a certain élan to do that, even if it was never displayed in his memoirs.
Posted by: Michael | May 13, 2008 at 08:46 PM
I've been reading Edwina Currie's diaries recently. They're a bit strange - she of course didn't even make the Cabinet, and the main point of the book was to reveal her affair with Major, which is never actually explictly said (he's called 'B' for much of it). Most fun comes from the footnotes which in sections when she is looking forward to post-resignation Directorships, or similar, dryly say something like 'In fact EC was never offered any directorships of public companies', 'in fact her majority fell'.
Posted by: Matthew | May 14, 2008 at 11:56 AM
By the way, wasn't Ministers Decide taken from a quote by Mrs Thatcher, when she was pressed on her relationship with and the relationship between Alan Walters and Nigel Lawson - i.e. advisors advise.
Posted by: Matthew | May 14, 2008 at 12:04 PM
That's right: she was interviewed by Brian Walden after Lawson's resignation, and her mantra was "advisers advise; ministers decide".
Posted by: Oliver Kamm | May 14, 2008 at 12:38 PM
Almost (I've looked this up) she repeated it in her Walden interview but she was quoting herself in PMQs in response to a Neil Kinnock question.
Posted by: Matthew | May 14, 2008 at 01:59 PM