US interference in UK politics

Whenever I see in an American newspaper, which I have to say is very rarely, an item datelined from my old stamping ground, Blackpool, I naturally seize on it.

I'm always disappointed. I expect, or hope, it will be about the pleasures of the Pleasure Beach or whether the Bloomfield Road team has produced another Stanley Matthews and do little boys still stake their lines in the sand overnight and arrive next morning to find them wriggling with plaice? And, by the way, do the cotton workers, if there are any cotton workers, still stroll out along the promenade, early on summer mornings and toss off a slurp of winkles and mussels, followed by a slab of tripe in a sea of vinegar?

Well, I admit, such passing thoughts are recollections of a remote society whose heroes and heroines might as well be engraved on medallions, as in anybody's memory. Cecil Parkin, the jester of English cricket, tilting the edge of his shoe and persuading the ball to run up his leg into his hand. Gracie Fields, bringing the house down at the Palace before London had ever heard of her. Jack Hylton playing 'Who' and 'Sunny' to a thousand swirling couples in the Tower Ballroom.

Enough of this morbid memorising! It was triggered by a dateline in the New York Times – a dispatch written by the chief of its London bureau. It said, Blackpool, England, October 1. Perhaps this fairly new correspondent was off on a regional jaunt to acquaint Americans with a part of British life outside the usual numbing round of Westminster, Mayfair, the London real-estate explosion and the arrival of a new breed of investment bankers who owe nothing to ties to the old school tie.

Alas, it was not about life as it's lived in Blackpool 51 weeks in the year. The headline was, for a brief moment, a puzzle. 'US Interference Shaping Up as British Issue'. Sure enough, Blackpool had made the foreign headlines for the only reason it ever does – the Labour Party was holding its annual conference there and I gathered that the enemy this time – for a day or two, anyway – was not so much Mrs Thatcher as Mr Caspar Weinberger, the American Secretary of Defense. What was he doing at Blackpool?

He wasn't. May I say, for listeners in Mexico or the New Zealand Alps, that the previous weekend, Mr Weinberger, being interviewed by the BBC in Washington, expressed what is certainly the administration position that the British Labour Party's commitment to remove American nuclear weapons, including cruise missiles, would severely weaken the Anglo-American alliance and could, quote, 'strengthen isolationist tendencies in American public opinion'.

Promptly, or rather before the interview was broadcast, my old paper, which had received a text of the taped interview, wrote that it amounted to a pre-emptive strike against the election of a Labour government. Then up spoke the old defence horse, Mr Denis Healey, and accused Mr Weinberger of being in open collusion with the Conservative party to prevent Labour winning the election.

Now who should show up at Blackpool but the American ambassador! Nothing odd or sinister in that, it's quite normal for American ambassadors to attend the annual political party conferences, acting, I ought to say, as interested observers, by no means intending to run interference. But then the ambassador was interviewed on television and spoke nothing but the truth, that Secretary Weinberger does, indeed, speak for the Reagan administration.

This unfortunate television series reminded me of the never-to-be-forgotten – it ought never to be forgotten – the historic embarrassment of the British minister in Washington, almost one hundred years ago. The story ought to printed and framed in the study of every British ambassador to the United States and every American ambassador to Britain.

1888, then, the year of a presidential election. The British minister – it was before the days when the United States was thought worthy of having a full-blown ambassador – the British minister was one Sir Lionel Sackville-West. The election campaign, which was a hot one, was between President Cleveland, renominated by the Democrats, and an Indiana lawyer, Benjamin Harrison, nominated by the Republicans.

In those days and for quite a while afterwards, New York state was often decisive in the November election. The Republicans redoubled their efforts to discredit President Cleveland with New York's Irish voters who'd been shaken four years before by the admission of Cleveland that he had an illegitimate son. They were not, however, quite as shaken then as they were by the Republican candidate's howling characterisation of the Democratic party as a party of rum, Romanism and rebellion.

Cleveland, in spite of his private lapse, was elected president but he presided over a very negative, lacklustre administration for four years and now, the Republicans, proclaiming that an Irishman's religion was no impediment at all to his voting as a patriotic, thoughtful citizen, wooed and flattered him.

It might have been a tight election, but an Englishman in California, a naturalised American, wrote in good conscience to Sir Lionel Sackville-West in Washington asking for guidance through the exotic jungle of American politics, which of the two candidates, the Republican Harrison or the Democrat Cleveland, did the minister think a first-time voter ought to choose.

Sir Lionel wrote back, 'Mr Cleveland is the man'.The Republicans got hold of Sir Lionel's letter. Not surprising, since they'd put the innocent Englishman up to the original request for guidance. Two weeks before the election, they published the letter far and wide. It was a shocker. The Republicans carried New York State handsomely. Mr Harrison went into the White House. Sir Lionel was recalled.

Ever since, and well into my time, British ambassadors in Washington were well acquainted with this cautionary tale and made a point of being conveniently out of the country – a much-needed rest or pressing private business or whatever – on the verge of a presidential election.

Well now, a British party's annual conference is not an election, but it is as close as British political parties come in mood and political sensitivity to the eve of a General Election. It's a time when any ally of Britain, whatever its feelings about the British government in being and the opposition, might well stay mum. The feelings of President Reagan and of Secretary Weinberger are surely very well-known about retaining American cruise missiles. Everyone knows they deplore the Labour promise to get rid of them. But there is time to remind Britons about them and a time to lie low, to say with the late, immortal Stanley Baldwin, 'My lips are sealed'.

Mr Weinberger's appointments secretary might have had his memory jogged about how Sir Lionel Sackville-West walked blithely into the elephants' den. He might have noted down on Mr Weinberger's calendar, October 1, British Labour Party Conference at Blackpool – suggest secretary avoid all interviews with BBC or play golf. Or something.

Well, on Thursday, another foreigner, Mr Pik Botha, was accused of interference, but this time in the domestic policies of the United States. A few hours before the Senate was to vote to join the House in overriding the president's veto of a bill imposing strong sanctions against South Africa, the foreign secretary, Mr Botha, telephoned several senators with a quite straightforward threat. If the Congress voted the sanctions, South Africa would boycott the importation of American wheat. That would be a blow to Mr Reagan likely to take his mind off the promise, or the results even of the Iceland little, or pre-, or mini summit.

This country, with only a fifth of the farmers it had 50 years ago, is yet going to produce the bumper wheat crop of all time. It desperately needs foreign buyers if the farmers of the prairie, the great wheat bowl on the Midwest and beyond, are not to plunge even deeper into debt and misery.

Mr Reagan, probably giving thanks that just now he has no cause to threaten the Soviet Union with an embargo on American wheat – last time it happened there was such a whirlwind of protests out of the Midwest that Mr Reagan quickly dropped it – Mr Reagan recently offered (begged would be too cruel a word), offered to sell to the Soviet Union 3.85 million metric tons of American wheat, subsidised wheat, of course. Last Tuesday was the deadline for the offer. The Soviets ignored it. No sale. They had, only three days before, bought one million metric tons from the European Community for $11 a ton less than Mr Reagan was offering.

Nobody in Washington seems able to explain why, in what is a critical time for American grain farmers, the administration offering the wheat eight dollars or so above the world price.

What most likely happens now is that the administration will have to help the beleaguered farmers out by increasing their subsidy – a policy which has outraged some of the president's closest advisers, including, interestingly enough, Secretary of Defense Weinberger who, having his being outside the Department of Agriculture, cannot interfere in his own president's domestic policies.

Needless to say, the wheat farmers are livid. Four or five Midwestern Republican senators who need to hold their seats in November if the Republicans are to keep their control of the Senate are, at the moment, excessively unpopular in their home states.

There! I've done a whole talk without saying a word about Daniloff and Zakharov. It's really quite simple. The Russians proposed trading Daniloff for Sakharov. Mr Reagan said, 'Never!' So, 24 hours after Daniloff went home, so did Mr Zakharov. Mr Reagan says it was not a trade, not a deal. Mr Shultz says it was not a deal.

The only question unanswered is, when is a deal not a deal?

This transcript was typed from a recording of the original BBC broadcast (© BBC) and not copied from an original script. Because of the risk of mishearing, the BBC cannot vouch for its complete accuracy.

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