Speeches, etc.

Margaret Thatcher

TV Interview for Yorkshire TV (role of Parliamentary Private Secretary)

Document type: Speeches, interviews, etc.
Venue: Unknown
Source: Yorkshire TV Archive: OUP transcript
Journalist: Geoff Druett, Yorkshire TV
Editorial comments: Item listed by date of transmission. MT probably recorded her contribution to this profile of her Parliamentary Private Secretary, Michael Alison, in Leeds on 20 February 1987 (after TV Interview for Yorkshire TV Calendar).
Importance ranking: Minor
Word count: 2157
Themes: Parliament, Conservative Party (organization)

Richard Whiteley

Hello, good evening to you. Welcome to The Calendar Commentary, as our MPs begin to enjoy the first week of the Easter recess. Nevertheless, we've got a busy programme in store for you tonight, and coming up in the next half-hour or so “The Withered Rose” : How can the Labour Party regain its popularity in the polls? And can Labour realistically hope now to win the next election? We get the views of two of our more outspoken MPs. Plus, “Yes, Prime Minister” : a special film report on the Yorkshire MP who is Mrs Thatcher's right hand man. Interview with Joe Ashton and Austin Mitchell omitted.

Well now, let's move on to the second of our two film reports about the Yorkshire men who stand close to the elbows of the Prime Minister and Neil Kinnock, the Leader of the Opposition. Recently we profiled Kevin Barron, the Labour MP for Rother Valley who is Parliamentary Private Secretary to Neil Kinnock. Now, tonight, we turn our attention to Michael Alison, the Conservative Member of Parliament for Selby. As Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Prime Minister, he finds himself playing a key role in the routine and machinery of No. 10 Downing Street.

Geoff Druett

Every morning at nine o'clock, Michael Alison, Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Prime Minister and Conservative MP for Selby, walks up to the best known front door in the land to start his day's work. As a former minister in both the Northern Ireland Office and the Department of Employment, his selection by the Prime Minister as her PPS was unexpected. For a start, it meant the loss of a ministerial salary. He recalled his feelings on hearing of his new job in 1983.

Michael Alison

Total surprise, total surprise. I had no idea at all. I thought I might be dropped from the ministerial team entirely. That's always a possibility. I thought that I might be offered another ministerial job. That's always a possibility, and one lives in hope. But this option was not one I dreamt of. Ian Gow, my predecessor, rang up and said, “On a very, very long shot, would you consider the very unusual idea that you should take my place?” And I said immediately, “It's a great honour and I accept without question.”

Geoff Druett

As PPS to Mrs Thatcher, Michael Alison had to split himself three ways between his constituency, No. 10, and the House of Commons. [end p1]

Michael Alison

You're a bridge-man essentially between the life at No. 10, the work at No. 10, the Prime Ministerial office in running the Government, and her essential base in politics, which is the Parliamentary party in the House of Commons upon which, at the end of the day, the whole success of her Government depends. I mean, if she's not backed and supported and understood by the Conservative backbench MPs, then whatever happens at Number 10 can be aborted by the breakdown of communications at, um, in the House of Commons.

MT

Do we have some of the backbench committees coming in soon?

Michael Alison

Yes, yes, we've got several lined up.

Geoff Druett

Michael Alison meets the Prime Minister most days. He reports on debates and speeches in both Houses as well as the mood among the backbenchers and their reaction to Government activity. With the Party Whips, he makes sure that Mrs Thatcher is fully informed about morale among the troops she leads. She in her turn is duly grateful.

MT

He's about the House a lot, about the House of Commons, and therefore, if any Member wants to get a message to me quickly, he can go straight up to Michael AlisonMichael and say what he's worried about, or whether he would like to have a few words about something, or whether there's something in his constituency which he's concerned about. Michael 's the main channel of communication, and also, of course, we have a lot of backbench committees, and he attends many of those, and that's where we hear what the Party's thinking, and the direction in which they want policy to go. So it's in policy formation through the Parliamentary party, and the main quick channel of communications, so that if something is going wrong or there's a difficulty, I can see the Member very quickly.

Michael Alison

In a crowd of MPs very often what actually happens is that one of them will say, “Can I have a word with you, Michael?” And when we've finished having a cup of tea, then we stroll off down the corridor. He may have, or she may have, a severe redundancy problem coming up with a firm which looks as if it's going to go into liquidation unless the Government can produce an order for some … maybe a shipyard or something like that. This is where, this is where the important role of the Parliamentary Private Secretary to make all backbench MPs feel that through me they can have access to the Prime Minister, and she will never refuse to see a backbench colleague.

MT

[end p2]

The other means is when we go through the voting lobbies. And I think it's a marvellous idea that we stick to a system where you have to be present in person to vote. And going through the voting lobbies, Michael will often say, “Oh, the PM's in to vote later today. Why don't you have a word with her in the lobby?” And, of course, when I vote, it's not only voting, I pick up five or six things to do as well! But it's all arranged, and it's a marvellous system. We couldn't do without it.

MPs shouting in the House of Commons.

Bernard Weatherill

Order. The whole House wants to hear the answer.

MT

The last Labour Government …   .

Geoff Druett

At the twice weekly Prime Minister's Questions, Mrs Thatcher faces a queue of MPs all wanting her to list her engagements for the day, for there's method in their madness.

Michael Alison

If the question is more specific and related to some particular aspect of Government policy, the Prime Minister would quite often have the right to say that this is the responsibility of the Minister for whatever it may be, and the question gets transferred to that Minister. And the MP then finds that they are not asking a question of the PM at all. So, once that question has got onto the Order Paper, as we describe it, then, as you say, it's open to the Member of Parliament concerned to ask her any supplementary question they like about whatever they really have on their mind.

Geoff Druett

So how do you prepare for that?

Michael Alison

Well, you use your common sense. You listen to the radio broadcasts in the morning, Tuesdays and Thursdays. Above all, you look at the tapes and you look at the newspaper reports, and you see what is likely to attract the attention of backbench MPs. She has to have a very considerable spread of briefing about a whole disparate range of topics. But they are nevertheless containable, in terms of what is likely to be put.

Geoff Druett

Away from London, Michael Alison becomes the Prime Minister's minder.

Michael Alison

I travel with her, travel with her in the car, make certain that I have all the briefing papers she needs, just remind her of who it is who will be meeting her when she steps out of the car, what the name of the mayor or the mayoress are, whether they're going to be there, what the name of the Divisional Chairman of the Conservative Party is, if [end p3] she has forgotten it—she usually hasn't—who else she's going to see, what Parliamentary colleague she's likely to see, make certain that she's fully briefed about everything that is going to happen at the next stop.

MT

[making a speech] The home is vital for the family. It's their security for the long-term future…   .

Michael Alison

It's just conceivable some accident can happen, that her notes suddenly get blown away in a puff of wind, or just by some awful mischance, somebody has missed out a couple of pages in the speech. It's never happened in my experience, but, you know, you always have a sort of fail-safe mechanism, which is why I always have a duplicate of the speech and follow quite closely. She exhausts me in the sense that I know that at ten or eleven in the evening, when we've finished in the House of Commons and I can go home to bed, and I know that she is going to come back here and get into a whole lot of paperwork from her red boxes, and when I've gone home to go to bed, she will settle down for probably another hour or two hours. Now, that idea does exhaust me, because it means that she's working right up into the night and will be up early the next morning. And most of us don't have that. Because she has to spend her working day … she doesn't have much time during the working day to settle down and read papers, because there are meetings, activities, functions, endless public occasions. So she only gets a chance to do the paperwork, the reading, the studying, the annotating and minuting—very important state documents—when the rest of us have gone to bed. Now, that I do find exhausting, but somehow she finds the energy for it.

Geoff Druett

Loyalty to the boss is an essential quality for any Parliamentary Private Secretary. Michael Alison has it in abundance. He's genuinely shocked that anybody could think Mrs Thatcher strident, overbearing, or uncaring.

Michael Alison

It's one of the great gulfs in public comprehension. If the real Mrs Thatcher, whom I work closely with, who is the most unruffled and relaxed and predictable and even-tempered person I have ever worked with in public life, kind, considerate, sense of humour, er, forceful in her responses and reactions, but not temperamental, if you know what the difference is. And the least arrogant person I have ever come across. But she is committed to work, and she does expect others to work the way she does.

Geoff Druett

As Prime Minister, Mrs Thatcher has dealt crisply with backbenchers who don't share her views on Government policy.

Michael Alison

She maintains, and this is part of my job to help her do this, she maintains very close individual relations with a lot of, well virtually all, the Conservative backbench MPs. We do this by means of having groups of them in for drinks at No. 10, groups of them [end p4] in for drinks with her in the House of Commons, groups of them coming in for a cup of tea after Question Time. She dines with groups of them, sometimes in private dining clubs, sometimes in the Members' Dining Room. So when she hears new that a group headed up by Joe Soap is plotting to make some great sort of attack on the Government in relation to its agricultural policy or something, the sting is taken out of it by the fact that she knows all these people and she knows what their strengths and weaknesses are. She can evaluate how seriously to take it, and there will be some circumstances where it's good news to hear of bad news, because you can immediately assess that there is something going on which is serious and worrying, and steps must be taken to avoid the trouble or to reassure the colleagues, or to nip some potential aggravation in the bud.

Geoff Druett

Looking back over his four years at No. 10, Michael Alison concludes its all been a bit like a trip on a cruise liner.

Michael Alison

You can study the way the engine room works, or you can sit in the library, or go to the cinema, or spend your time at the restaurants or the bars. If you're given the chance to spend your time on the bridge of the liner and see how the thing actually works, that is probably the most fascinating place to be, and that's where I've had a chance of being, on the bridge of the liner, looking over the captain's shoulder, seeing all the signals that have come in about the hazards lying ahead, the storms which are coming up, the iceberg that there may be, and seeing how the captain navigates and takes the great ship through to safety. Now, that's a fascinating place to be.

Richard Whiteley

Geoff 's report there on Michael Alison, Mrs Thatcher's right hand man.