Editing Michael Heseltine (section)

===Secretary of State for Defence 1983–86===
====Appointment====
In October 1982 [[Secretary of State for Defence]] [[John Nott]] announced that he was stepping down from Parliament at the next election. As defence was expected to be a major issue at the election, it made sense to appoint his successor as soon as possible, and Heseltine's name was widely touted. Over the winter of 1982–1983 there were frequent rumours that military top brass were lobbying against his appointment, strongly denied to the press by [[Willie Whitelaw]] (Home Secretary and ''de facto'' Deputy Prime Minister) and [[Chief of the Defence Staff (United Kingdom)|Chief of Defence Staff]] [[Edwin Bramall]]. Heseltine was appointed in January 1983, with the backing of Nott and [[Chairman of the Conservative Party|Party Chairman]] [[Cecil Parkinson]].<ref>Crick 1997, p. 243.</ref>

Bramall had hoped for a period of consolidation after the reorganisations of the early 1980s and the [[Falklands War]]. Thatcher felt that Heseltine was "restless" at the Environment, and that he would bring efficiency reforms to Defence, whilst she also wanted to keep him away from economic and social issues. She appointed her [[Permanent secretary|Principal Private Secretary]] [[Clive Whitmore]] as [[Permanent Secretary|Permanent Under-Secretary for Defence]] (head civil servant for the department – the job had coincidentally fallen vacant).<ref>Crick 1997, pp. 243–4.</ref>

====Nuclear disarmament and 1983 election====
One of Heseltine's main jobs was to campaign against the [[Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament]] (CND), which had grown in size from 3,000 to 10,000 in three years amid public disquiet about the deployment of [[Trident (missile)|Trident]] and [[Cruise missile]]s, and the hawkish rhetoric often employed by Thatcher and US President [[Ronald Reagan]]. Nott had had little interest in campaigning and had left the matter to the Minister of State, [[Peter Blaker]], Heseltine's contemporary from Oxford. Heseltine put together a small group of seven civil servants called Defence Section 19 (DS19) to brief MPs and other opinion formers, and argue the case for Britain to have nuclear weapons. Some, both in the civil service and out of it, had qualms about using civil servants for what amounted to a political campaigning role. Opinion polls showed the public to be opposed to Trident and Cruise missiles, but also opposed to ''unilateral'' ("one-sided" as Heseltine insisted on calling it) disarmament, so Heseltine steered the debate away from the former and towards the latter.<ref>Crick 1997, pp. 244–6.</ref>

At the advice of John Ledlie Heseltine visited at the US Air Base at [[RAF Greenham Common]], and after long prior discussion Heseltine insisted on wearing a combat jacket (not, as was often wrongly asserted, a [[Flak jacket]]; Ledlie does not accept Heseltine's later claim that he was simply handed it by a military figure to protect his coat from the rain). The jacket was a gift to cartoonists and he wore it on several subsequent visits to military bases. In February 1983 he fell over in the melée (he said at the time that he was pushed) when CND protestors surrounded a meeting of Newbury Conservatives, a propaganda gift, and on Good Friday 1983 he was filmed in [[West Berlin]] looking over the wall to the communist east, distracting attention from CND's linking of arms round Greenham Common that day.<ref>Crick 1997, pp. 246–7.</ref>

With a general election looming, Heseltine was keen to associate Labour with CND, and CND with communists and the Soviet Union (ignoring earlier comments by Party Chairman [[Cecil Parkinson]] that this was "manifest nonsense" – the media did not pick up on this). He made such a claim in a speech at Exeter in April 1983, and distributed to Tory candidates information about the background of leading members of CND. This had been assembled by [[Ray Whitney (politician)|Ray Whitney]] MP, but some of it was suspected of having come from intelligence sources. MI5 agent Cathy Massiter later wrote, in 1985 in ''[[The Observer]]'', that from 1981 onwards and especially from 1983 she had been asked to pass on to DS19 (the propaganda unit at the Ministry of Defence) information obtained by wiretaps and by an MI5 mole in CID. MI5 bosses refused to pass on classified material about security matters but agreed to pass on information about the political links of CND members. Even this was in breach of the 1952 Directive from Home Secretary [[David Maxwell-Fyfe]] that the security services not provide information for party political purposes. Heseltine allowed his deputy Peter Blaker to debate with CND, but refused to do so himself, believing that he would be at a disadvantage against the attractive [[Joan Ruddock]]. Blaker did much of the work while Heseltine got the publicity. DS19 was wound up three months after the [[1983 United Kingdom general election|1983 election]], at which Heseltine was widely credited with helping the Conservatives achieve a landslide victory.<ref>Crick 1997, pp. 247–50.</ref>

====Administering the department====
Although the Ministry of Defence already had its own "Management Audit" system, Heseltine insisted on introducing his own version of the MINIS system which he had introduced at the Environment. The Ministry of Defence had a budget of £17 million per annum, and employed 246,000 civilians as well as 300,000 in uniform. Whereas the Department of the Environment had 66 directorates, Defence had 156, each headed by a [[two-star officer]] or a civil servant of equivalent seniority. The organisation chart took months to design and covered four large sheets of paper. In the event Heseltine was too preoccupied by the political matters to pay much attention to the MINIs reports which had taken so long to produce. Heseltine disliked dealing with paperwork, and insisted on having plenty of time to take decisions, and that all reports sent to him had to be first run past one of his advisers for comments. Staff numbers fell by 20,000 (one in twelve) during Heseltine's time at Defence, and many services were privatised, including the [[Royal Ordnance Factories]] whilst the [[Royal Navy Dockyard]]s at [[HMNB Devonport|Devonport]] and [[Rosyth Dockyard|Rosyth]] were put under private management.<ref>Crick 1997, pp. 251–3.</ref>

The three separate service ministries (Admiralty, War and Air) had merged into a single Ministry of Defence in 1981. Heseltine drew up plans on a flight back from Kuwait to merge the services further, so that the three chiefs of staff reported directly to the Chief of Defence Staff instead of being treated as colleagues, whilst some supply services were to be merged. The plans were bounced onto the Chief of Defence Staff, Field Marshal "Dwin" Bramall, over a weekend before publication on Monday, so senior officers had minimal time to drum up opposition in Parliament and the press. There was around three months of protest in the press, including from Bramall's predecessor [[Admiral of the Fleet (Royal Navy)|Admiral of the Fleet]] Sir [[Henry Leach]]. Bramall obtained the concession that the individual service chiefs would be allowed to retain small staffs of their own and have a right of appeal to the Prime Minister. The changes took effect at the start of 1985.<ref>Crick 1997, pp, 253-5.</ref>

Bramall admired Heseltine's "great drive" and his "style, energy and vision about Europe", but was displeased at Heseltine's rudeness. It was not uncommon for Heseltine to summon him to a meeting early in the day, then keep Bramall "on hold" all day as he kept putting back the meeting, and eventually earning himself a rebuke for failing to display the respect with which every officer in the armed forces is trained to treat his subordinates. A number of senior officers spoke of Heseltine in scathing terms, for example for his self-centredness, to [[Michael Crick]] when he was researching his biography.<ref>Crick 1997, pp. 255–6.</ref> Crick observes that with the exception of some defence chiefs, many people who worked with Heseltine came to "admire and respect him", although those who see him from afar are more suspect.<ref>Crick 1997, p. 352.</ref>

====The sinking of the ''Belgrano''====
Heseltine took a hard line on civil liberties issues. He supported Thatcher's [[GCHQ trade union ban|attempt to ban trade unions from GCHQ]]. He supported the prosecution of [[Sarah Tisdall]] for leaking his public relations plans for the arrival of cruise missiles in 1983.<ref name=crick257-260>Crick 1997, pp. 257–60.</ref>

Before Heseltine's arrival at the Ministry of Defence, [[Tam Dalyell]] had exposed inconsistencies in ministerial accounts of the sinking of the Argentinian warship ''[[ARA General Belgrano]]'' during the [[Falklands War]] of 1982, and alleged that the ship had been sunk to sabotage Foreign Office attempts to negotiate peace via Washington and Peru. Heseltine, apparently worried that there might be a scandal comparable to [[Watergate]], asked [[Clive Ponting]], a civil servant who had played an important role in Derek Rayner's efficiency reforms, to draw up a detailed report into the sinking of the ''Belgrano''. At the end of March 1984 Ponting attended a series of meetings with Heseltine. He and the Permanent Under-Secretary [[Clive Whitmore]] wanted to disclose further information to reveal that the ''Belgrano'' had been spotted a day earlier than had previously been admitted. [[John Stanley (Tonbridge and Malling MP)|John Stanley]], thought to be Thatcher's eyes and ears in the Ministry of Defence, initially opposed it, but Thatcher was persuaded that a letter should be sent to the Opposition Defence Spokesman [[Denzil Davies]]. However, both Heseltine and Thatcher rejected Ponting's draft which would have admitted for the first time that the Belgrano had been sighted a day earlier and stated that she was sailing away from the British taskforce when sunk.{{efn|It was finally revealed in 2011 that the ''Belgrano'' had in fact been sailing back ''towards'' the taskforce when sunk, but this intelligence was kept secret at the time – see the article on the ''Belgrano'' for details.}} Ponting later stated that Stanley had asked Thatcher to overrule Heseltine on the matter; he withheld information not just from Dalyell but from the Commons Foreign Affairs Committee, which was conducting its own inquiry, citing national security considerations.<ref name=crick257-260/>

Six days after Heseltine's letter to [[Denzil Davies]], Ponting sent Davies an anonymous note stating that the letter had been written according to the advice of [[John Stanley (Tonbridge and Malling MP)|John Stanley]], but contrary to the advice of civil servants, and suggesting other potential lines of inquiry. Three months later he sent two documents exposing the alleged cover up. Heseltine strongly supported, and by some accounts pushed for, the prosecution of Ponting (Ministry of Defence police had advised against, but the [[Solicitor General for England and Wales|Solicitor-General]] Sir [[Patrick Mayhew]] urged that he should be). Heseltine later said that Thatcher had not been involved in the decision to prosecute. Neither Heseltine nor Stanley were called as witnesses at Ponting's trial in January 1985 ([[Richard Mottram]], Heseltine's Private Secretary, gave evidence on behalf of the Ministry of Defence). To general surprise Ponting was acquitted. A week later Heseltine launched a stinging seventy-minute attack on Ponting in the House of Commons, and a year later he walked out of a [[Channel 4 News]] studio on being told that a recorded interview with Ponting was also to be shown. Stanley was seen as the villain of the piece, whereas Heseltine had merely declined to correct false statements made by others.<ref>Crick 1997, pp. 260–2.</ref>

====NATO====
The Foreign Secretary, [[Geoffrey Howe]], spoke highly of Heseltine's contribution to NATO and [[WEU]] conferences. Heseltine was as angry as Thatcher at the [[US invasion of Grenada]], a Commonwealth country. He wanted warmer relations with the Soviets and was sceptical about the US [[Strategic Defense Initiative]] ("Star Wars"), putting in a brief and grudging appearance at [[Caspar Weinberger]]'s Ditchley Park Conference about the topic in 1985.<ref>Crick 1997, p. 257.</ref>

Heseltine came close to misleading the House of Commons over the meeting of NATO defence ministers at Montebello, Quebec, in October 1983. He stated that no "specific" proposals had been made to update NATO short range and tactical nuclear weapons. In fact a decision had been made ''in principle'' to do so. Crick describes Heseltine's answers as "highly disingenuous and deceitful". At the time NATO was claiming to be cutting back on such weapons, and the peace movement was still powerful in Germany where such weapons might be used.<ref>Crick 1997, pp. 262–4.</ref>

====Defence procurement====
The Defence budget was protected by a NATO commitment to increase defence spending by 3% per annum until 1986, but was still subjected to cuts in the proposed budget during Heseltine's tenure. Some senior military figures felt that Heseltine was obsessed with the minutiae of running the department rather than thinking strategically about defence priorities and procurement. Dwin Bramall recalled that Heseltine never showed an interest in the strategy papers he sent him. Thatcher was highly critical of him for failing to take a decision on the development of the [[Hawker Siddeley Nimrod|Nimrod]] early-warning plane, on which £660 million was spent over a ten-year period, only for the project to be cancelled by his successor. Some accusations were raised (the Commons Select Committee on Defence thought him "vague and evasive" on the issue in 1985) that the accounts were being massaged to push costs into the period after 1986, when cuts would become inevitable. The journalist [[Hugo Young]] later recalled Heseltine briefing journalists confidentially that spending and funding could be reconciled until 1986, by which time he expected "to be gone".<ref>Crick 1997, pp. 264–6.</ref>

In Cabinet, Heseltine resented being kept out of economic debates and suspected he might be reshuffled to the job of [[Secretary of State for Northern Ireland]] as [[Jim Prior]] had been. He had tried to pursue a one-man industrial policy, as defence spent £17 billion per annum, 5% of UK GDP, half of it on procurement, and 90% of that in the UK, with 700,000 British jobs dependent on it. Heseltine was unhappy at the way defence contracts were often awarded on a cost-plus basis (i.e. agreeing to pay the supplier a certain amount over and above his costs, leaving no incentive to keep costs to a minimum). In 1985 he promoted his special adviser [[Peter Levene]] to be Chief of Defence Procurement; special arrangements had to be made to ensure that Levene did not make decisions affecting his own defence company [[United Scientific Holdings]], of which the former Permanent Secretary [[Frank Cooper (civil servant)|Sir Frank Cooper]] was now chairman, and he was paid £95,000 per annum plus £12,000 in pension contributions, more than the Prime Minister or senior civil servants. Thatcher agreed to Levene's appointment over civil service objections. He abolished cost-plus pricing of contracts and stated that he had trimmed 10% off the defence equipment budget by 1989 through greater competitive tendering; enough, as Heseltine put it, to pay for the Trident nuclear missile programme.<ref>Crick 1997, p. 268.</ref>

It had been agreed to spend £280m for two [[Type 22 frigate]]s. [[Norman Tebbit]] (Trade and Industry Secretary), with the backing of the Cabinet, wanted them built at [[Swan Hunter]] in the North East, but Heseltine threatened resignation in January 1985 unless at least one was built at [[Cammell Laird]] on Merseyside, at a cost of an extra £7 million, where Type 22s had been built before. Thatcher let him have his way after he persuaded her that it would reward shipyard workers who had crossed picket lines during a recent strike, but was privately furious, and keen to keep defence costs down in future by buying American equipment.<ref>Crick 1997, pp. 268–72.</ref>

Heseltine also favoured European cooperation in defence procurement, feeling that this allowed Europe to compete with US firms which receive huge orders from [[The Pentagon]]. Crick argues that his experience of Concorde in the early 1970s should have warned him that such multinational ventures are problematic and, because of the political capital invested, hard to cancel when things go wrong. Heseltine played an important role in persuading West German defence minister [[Manfred Wörner]] to back the joint Anglo-German-Spanish-Italian [[Eurofighter]], and contrary to the wishes of Thatcher (and previous defence secretary John Nott) who preferred an American or British fighter. Cabinet refused to allow a loosening of the specifications to allow French company [[Dassault]] to become involved in the consortium. Agreement was reached at Turin in August 1985.<ref>Crick 1997, p. 272.</ref>

Heseltine also sold 132 [[Panavia Tornado|Tornados]] for £4bn to Saudi Arabia later in 1985, accepting oil instead of cash (to the displeasure of Peter Walker, Energy Secretary) so that they would buy British rather than US aircraft. This later formed part of the controversial [[Al-Yamamah arms deal]], the main part of which was signed in 1988.<ref>Crick 1997, pp. 274–5.</ref>