Ministerial Memoirs
The era of the 'Good Chaps' is over.
Last month the Cabinet Office revealed that Liz Truss had broken the rules on ministerial memoirs by failing to accept requests for changes to her manuscript before publication. Under the Ministerial Code, all ministers are expected to submit any manuscripts covering their time in office to the Cabinet Office in line with the 1976 Radcliffe Report.
There are, of course, no sanctions on those who refuse to comply. The Radcliffe rules, which I will come to, are a classic example of the ‘Good Chaps’ theory of government, as articulated by Peter Hennessy, who attributed the phrase to Clive Priestley, chief-of-staff in Mrs Thtacher’s Efficiency Unit:
a good chap knows what a good chap has to do and doesn't need to be told.
The Radcliffe rules apply to senior officials as well. How the rules play out has been described by a number of people, including Iain Dale, Charles Moore and Isabel Oakeshott, but the fullest account appears in Alastair Campbell’s diaries.
Campbell records a conversation about with Cabinet Secretary Gus O’Donnell about the process:
I said how did it work? “Basically, from what I know, people submit their books, we ask them to take lots out and usually we get ignored.”’
He supplies a lot of detail on the process of approval from his conversations with Sue Gray, Director of Propriety and Ethics, over his first, edited volume of diaries The Blair Years (2007). Gray’s job was to examine what was to be published. She said issues might arise about references to the Royal Family, or the Security Services.
But this is a process which requires the co-operation of the ex-minister or ex-official and their editor or publisher. There is no sanction, and nor was one ever intended by the Radcliffe committee.
The committee was established in the wake of the failure of the Labour Government to prevent through legal action the publication of the posthumous first volume of former Cabinet Minister Richard Crossman’s diaries in 1975, although its remit was to think things through from first principles.
The files on the background to the Radcliffe Committee report are available in the National Archives (PREM 16/904), with accompanying minutes from the then Cabinet Secretary Sir John Hunt, Prime Minister Harold Wilson, Employment Secretary Michael Foot, who was one of the executors of Crossman’s Will, and Energy Secretary Tony Benn. Benn’s diaries for the period give an account.
The Radcliffe Committee Report was first discussed by a Cabinet Committee then full Cabinet. The Radcliffe Committee reviewed the history of the publication of ministerial memoirs and the use of official documents including Cabinet papers. (Another valuable and very readable historical account of ministerial memoirs and official papers in the early period of the twentieth century is given by the historian David Reynolds in his book In Command of History: Churchill Fighting and Writing the Second World War). The Committee sought to establish that material should not be published until fifteen years after the events described, and ministers should restirct themselves to what they said and did and refrain from commenting on what others said and did. In conversation with Benn, Roy Jenkins, who had been a member of the Cabinet Committee, said he had no problem with thei Radcliffe recommendations, other than that he thought the period should be ten rather than fifteen years. Radcliffe recommended that each minister should, on taking office, sign an undertaking to observe the principles of the Radcliffe Report, similar to that which they sign in accordance with the Official Secrets Act. (Benn said he wasn’t prepared to do so, and quotes Jenkins as saying he wasn’t either). Ex-ministers should also undertake to submit any manuscript to the Cabinet Secretary. The Committee said that the Cabinet Secretary’s role was not to act as ‘a censor’, and they had no legal authority to enforce compliance. Ultimate responsibility for any publication must lie with the author. Ministers who kept diaries should leave appropriate instructions to their executors (Crossman had died unexpectedly, records Benn). Benn writes of his concern that his diary might be confiscated if he died:
Harold said, ‘My advice to Ministers is don’t keep a diary, and if you do keep a diary, don’t die’.
There is a key passage in the Radcliffe Committee Report which could almost be used as a textbook example of the ‘Good Chaps theory’, where the committee refers to ex-ministers understanding they had ‘an obligation of honour’:
There is no summary in the report, as the committee members wanted people to read the whole thing. But the Cabinet Office did provide a summary for the Prime Minister which is available in the file. Following discussion with Mrs Thatcher as Leader of the Opposition, the Radcliffe Report was published in January 1976. The Cabinet papers, with Harold Wilson’s annotations in red ink, offer interesting background to the discussions between ministers and senior officials. Here he questions whether the expected second and third volumes of Crossman’s diaries were really ‘Dick’s handiwork’ or a ‘re-hash’ by a research assistant:
It is highly unlikely that any contemporary ministers have read the Radcliffe Report. I certainly didn’t while I was in office, but I am well aware of the requirements which apply to me even now, eight years after leaving government. Like UK Ministers, Ministers in the devolved governments are subject to the provisions of the Radcliffe report, and in the Welsh Government, relevant manuscripts have to be submitted to the Permanent Secretary or, in practice, the Director of Governance.
The publication of the Crossman diaries in the 1970s marked a distinct shift in public understanding of the ways of Whitehall, as I say in my book, subsequently reinforced in popular culture by the comedy series Yes, Minister and Yes, Prime Minister. At this time, of course, key documents like the Questions of Procedure for Ministers, subsequently called the Ministerial Code, were not published.
The Liz Truss incident is another example of how the Good Chaps theory no longer functions. In November 2022, five former Cabinet Secretaries wrote to The Times urging that key ministerial standards bodies should be put on a statutory basis.
The current chair of the Advisory Committee on Business Interests (ACOBA), Lord Pickles, wrote to the Deputy Prime Minister Oliver Dowden almost a year ago after Boris Johnson had accepted yet another appointment without properly consulting the Committee, saying that the current rules were out of date and were designed for a time when ‘good chaps’ could be relied on to observe the rules.
His full letter is here:
Two Prime Ministers broke the rules in quick succession. Some ask what the sanctions could be. Well, Prime Ministers enjor public support after they leave office. There could be a sanction on that. Departing Ministers who subsequently break the rules could be subject to financial penalties.
Overall, we need a full review of government ethics. That should be a priority for an incoming government. We cannot rely on outdated conventions, particularly ones which, like Radcliffe, are almost fifty years old. The obligation of honour no longer seems to apply and the ‘Good Chaps’ appear to have long departed.
Interesting stuff, Leighton. It reminded me of one of the greatest Downing Street diaries, by Churchill's private secretary John Colville, which became a source for Martin Gilbert's official Churchill biography. Colville's fellow private secretary John Peck reported years later that he was amazed at the risks Colville ran keeping a diary, and initiated a spoof minute supposedly from Churchill commanding the diarist to bring the diary for inspection. Fortunately for posterity, Colville continued his record, and published an abridged version shortly before he died in the 1980s. They provide one of the most vivid, and human, accounts of Churchill's wartime coalition government.
Incidentally, when I was reading law at university 40 years ago I was told that 'signing' the Official Secrets Act had no consequence at law. You are still liable for any breaches whether you have signed it or not.