No 10 grapples with the internet

John Major was encouraged by his aides to embrace the internet to catch up with the White House and stay ahead of his Labour rival Tony Blair, even though some of his advisers thought email was just a passing fad.

“Various MPs who are computer-literate have made the point to me that it would be advantageous for No 10 to be seen to be up with developments in this area,” wrote Damian Green, then in the government’s policy unit, in a letter to the prime minister’s private secretary, Alex Allan.

“Specifically, connecting No 10 with the internet would keep us up with the White House, which has made a big thing of the modern way the Clinton/Gore administration deals with communications,” continued Green, who later became first secretary of state before being sacked in 2017.

“Internet users will be a growing group of opinion-formers, and I can just imagine Tony Blair showing how he belongs to a new generation by signing up.”

Allan agreed that Downing Street should embrace the internet, but was cautious about “rushing into” inviting the public to send emails to the prime minister, which the Clinton administration was doing at the time.

“I do not believe we would get a huge volume of email in the long run, but we could expect an initial flood as people around the world tried it out for fun,” the private secretary responded.

The letter was sent on 22 August 1994, a month after Blair had been elected Labour leader. But aides’ concerns about Blair’s technological prowess were unfounded, as he was a notorious technophobe who was once described by former spokesman Alastair Campbell as a “pen and paper man”.

The Profumo affair

Major was given permission to read the secret evidence files gathered for the 1963 investigation into the Profumo affair and agreed that they should be withheld for 100 years.

The cabinet secretary, Sir Robin Butler, first alerted Downing Street to the need to review the notorious scandal, according to files released to the National Archives.

Christine Keeler, one of the central figures in the Profumo affair. John Major confirmed the secret evidence files into the affair should be withheld until 2063. Photograph: Hulton Getty

“The evidence taken by Lord Denning during his 1963 inquiry into the ‘Profumo affair’ has been preserved and, after 30 years, a decision has now to be taken on its disposal,” Butler minuted.

The lord chancellor, Lord Mackay, proposed that the papers should continue to be stored in a strongroom for 100 years until 2063. Denning had given an undertaking that the evidence should not be made public.

Butler said he had seen the evidence himself and thought it would be wrong to destroy the papers. “They reflect an extraordinary episode and evoke the character of the 1960s in a very powerful way,” he said. “Historians would judge us harshly for such destruction.”

Alex Allan, the prime minister’s principal private secretary, wrote on the letter to Major: “It is very tempting to suggest that you could not take such a decision with[out] studying the evidence personally!”

Major confirmed that the papers should be withheld until 2063 but he wanted to raise one point with Butler. “Discussed [with Butler] 16/9/93,” Allan noted. “No problem if PM wants to go round to [Butler’s] office and read extracts.”

Kinnock’s fast car

Neil Kinnock wanted a faster Rover and Major fought to prevent ministers from being taxed for their use of official cars. The disputes are exposed in confidential Downing Street records on the government car service.

Neil Kinnock at the Labour party annual conference in Blackpool in 1990. He requested a better car than the scheduled Rover 820. Photograph: David Bagnall/Rex/Shutterstock

In 1987, a letter from Sue Nye, in the leader of the opposition’s office, records a request by the Labour leader for a better car than the scheduled Rover 820 because he “does a great deal on motorways where a more powerful engine is, of course, necessary”.

Sir Robin Butler, the head of the civil service, recommended buying him a Rover 825i because he accepted Kinnock ran up a high annual mileage and pointed out that the secretary of state for Wales, Nicholas Edwards, already had a Jaguar.

But the prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, intervened. On the minute recording approval, she wrote: “Nicholas Edwards was not very fit. That was why he had a more comfortable car for long journeys. In conceding to [Kinnock’s] request, I hope you will point out that some cabinet ministers do similar mileage [yet have lower performance cars]. MT.”

The tax dispute erupted in 1994. The Inland Revenue proposed taxing ministers for use of government cars, sparking a Whitehall battle over political presentation.

Both Major and his principal private secretary were incensed by the money “recycling” scheme, with the head of the service being asked “how we got into this mess and what’s the logic in any of it”.

Allan wrote to the prime minister, warning: “This is very tricky. The proposal is that you and other ministers should pay tax on the ‘benefit’ on the private use of your car – or rather the government should pay on your behalf.” It should be presented “positively, not as something forced out of the government”, he said.

Major noted: “Most people will see this as ludicrous – I agree with them. It is also unpresentable without damage.” It was “recycling” money from one official pocket to another, he added.

VE Day fritter jitters

Major initially refused to personally launch the programme to mark the 50th anniversary of VE Day, fearing a Spam-fritter and Vera Lynn backlash.

The prime minister was keen not to reawaken memories of the public relations disaster the government suffered over its 1994 plans for the 50th anniversary of the D-day landings, which saw veterans and the forces’ sweetheart, Vera Lynn, publicly criticise proposals, including Spam-fritter cooking competitions, as too frivolous and celebratory.

A 50th anniversary of VE Day party at a working men’s club in south London. John Major initially refused to personally launch the programme. Photograph: Gary Calton/The Observer

His principal private secretary warned the prime minister he had been subjected to “a wearisome attempt to reopen your decision not to do the launch” by Lord Bramall, former chief of defence staff, and Lord Slim, who were in charge of putting together the programme.

Allan advised Major: “There is a danger of reopening memories of Hyde Park and Spam fritters: this is not just something that could rebound on you personally. It could get the VE events off to a bad start.”

In a note on the letter, Major wrote: “It was Bramall who screwed up last time over Spam, etc.”

Major’s press secretary, Christopher Meyer, replied that he was “tipping towards” the prime minister doing the launch, “but we would have to be utterly sure there was no danger of a Spam-fritter type rebound (or of Vera Lynn causing trouble)”.

Eventually, Major relented, formally unveiling the VE programme after having been assured that veterans were fully onboard.

D-day glitches

The Canadian prime minister, Jean Chrétien, “was pretty fed up” after UK government aides abandoned him and his entourage alone in a tent after forgetting them during a garden party to mark the 50th anniversary of D-day. “Princess Margaret and the prime minister decided to remain in the hall and talk to veterans, but no one alerted us as to what had happened to Mr Chrétien and no one thought to bring him back to the main hall. He was pretty fed up,” Allan wrote to Major.

The Canadians were upset, too, over the protocol order at Normandy events to commemorate the anniversary, given how many Canadian soldiers fought and died there. “I know that the Canadians found it somewhat frustrating always to be next to last in protocol order [with only the Greek defence minister behind them] at every event. They commented rather pointedly that they came well behind the Grand Duke of Luxembourg, even though Luxembourg has only two living World War II veterans,” Allan wrote.

Thatcher on World Cup diving

England’s 1990 World Cup footballers were praised by Margaret Thatcher for not “diving” during the tournament, in which they reached the semi-final.

Margaret Thatcher with Paul Gascoigne from England’s World Cup squad. Photograph: Sean Dempsey/PA

Thatcher’s speaking notes for a Downing Street reception for the players and their wives indicate that she praised the team for winning the Fifa Fair Play trophy, demonstrating “the very high level of sportsmanship you showed”.

“We all noticed too that when an England player was brought down, unlike other teams, our players did not immediately seek an Oscar for best actor for impersonating the death scene from Richard III,” states her note by her private secretary Dominic Morris.

Ian McKellen

Major requested that a formal note of his meeting with the actor Ian McKellen to discuss gay rights should be “fully Sun-proofed” in case it fell into the hands of certain journalists.

The 1991 Downing Street meeting between the two men was to discuss, among other things, the case for lowering the age of consent for same-sex sexual activities, which had remained at 21 since 1967 but was eventually lowered to 18 in 1994.

On reading the official note of the meeting, which was to be sent to McKellen afterwards, Major wrote: “I am not sure it is fully Sun-proofed. These are unusual matters for a PM to discuss.”

McKellen, a founding member of the gay rights organisation Stonewall, sought the meeting, which was held on 24 September 1991, after enjoying a “beautifully relaxed lunch at Chequers” as Major’s guest.

Blasphemy visions of ecstasy

An outraged Major threatened derogation from the European convention on human rights in a row over Britain banning a low-budget video on the grounds of blasphemy. The foreign secretary, Douglas Hurd, had to remind the prime minister that the UK was unable to derogate “except in cases of war or threats to the life of the nation”.

Visions of Ecstasy, a 1989 19-minute video by the director Nigel Wingrove, became the only work to be refused certification by the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) on the grounds that it featured sexualised scenes of the 16th-century Spanish nun St Teresa of Ávila with the body of Jesus on the cross.

Still from Visions of Ecstasy, which featured sexualised scenes of St Teresa of Ávila with the body of Jesus on the cross. Photograph: BFI

Wingrove appealed to the then European commission of human rights, which judged the case admissible, and the case was referred to the European court of human rights, after the UK government refused to settle.

“This is outrageous. Of course we mustn’t settle,” Major wrote on an official briefing paper on the case. In a private minute, the prime minister wrote that he was not prepared to let others dictate “what films we may or may not show in the UK or what material may or may not offend”.

“This is a matter on which I feel sufficiently strongly to be prepared to consider a derogation from the European convention on human rights, if that were to be necessary in the final analysis.”

The UK eventually won its case when the European court of human rights ruled in 1996 that the UK’s blasphemy laws were consistent with the European convention. The film finally got an 18 certification in 2012.