The Burden of Power: Countdown to Iraq - The Alastair Campbell Diaries (121 page)

When the kids came round later in the day, I also felt a growing sense of injustice that I was the only witness having to do this, when I wanted to be having a normal holiday with the family, and after they went down to the pool, I just started sobbing. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said to Sumption, whose expression didn’t really change. ‘It’s all right,’ he said. ‘I totally understand why this is difficult.’ I said I don’t understand why this is happening to me. He said ‘If I were you, I would feel that too. It is dreadful that you are being asked to bare your soul when in my view you have done nothing wrong. But the prime minister set up the inquiry and you have to co-operate with the judge when he asks for this. If he thinks your diary may contain something which helps him, he is entitled to ask for it, warts and all.’ I composed myself pretty quickly, and we went back to the task in hand.

It took five or so hours, and I felt totally drained at the end. ‘So how was that voyage of discovery for you?’ I asked him. ‘It was certainly a discovery. I have read so much about you. Now I think I know you. In fact I don’t think I’ve ever learned so much about someone so quickly.’ He writes books on medieval history and he said ‘I wish there had been people keeping records like this in those days. It would make my life so much easier.’ He felt there was something ‘wonderfully Victorian about it’.
⁷¹
He said it would one day be an amazing service to historians, ‘but I can see why that does not hold much appeal to you right now’. It was an odd experience, to have sat down with a total stranger, and gone through so much detail of my own life and work, and at the end of it to be talking as though we had known each other for ages. I noticed he hadn’t shaved properly, and as the day wore on his clothes seemed to get scruffier, but I felt by the end of the day that I was with someone who knew what he was doing.

In the ensuing days, first Jeremy [Heywood] – on TB’s behalf – and then TB himself came on to say they didn’t agree with Sumption’s
strategy re the diaries. They felt it was unfair, but also wrong, to ask someone to submit a private diary to a public inquiry. I could tell TB was really worried about it, not least by the number of times he told me not to worry. But Sumption resisted the pressure. TB’s argument was that we should fight harder for me not to have to do this. Sumption was adamant that would backfire badly with the judge – on me, but also on the government. Although he did not articulate it in this way, I saw his strategy was maximum openness for minimum disclosure.

We now had to work out process. I was thinking I should probably go home, but Alan felt I should stay here for as long as possible, that if I went back, I would be miserable without the family, would follow the inquiry the whole time, which at the moment I was managing to avoid, and he felt I would do better on the stand if I stayed here than if I went back. I called Alison [Blackshaw] and asked her to come out and join us, so that I could get the diary extracts properly typed up. She arranged to come out tomorrow. We went for dinner at the Goulds’ and I felt so much better. Sumption went off again. I don’t know if it was a joke or not but according to the others he ‘owned a village’ somewhere in the south-west of France. As he left he said I could call him at any time, but he really believed I had nothing to worry about on the substance. I was really worried about the fact I had told
The Times
two other papers had the name but on my first meeting with Sumption, he said it didn’t matter.

Though I felt more at ease with the process, and more confident now I knew I had some decent lawyers involved, I was still not sleeping well, and was feeling real stress not just about the obvious, but also the idea that Fiona and the kids weren’t really having much of a holiday with all this going on around them. Every morning now, I was waking up at 4 or 5, waiting for the next ringing of the bells at the village church, and from time to time the old ‘ask not for whom the bell tolls . . .’ lodged in there. It was impossible not to imagine the worst. The kids kept me going really – the thought that eventually we would get a proper family life back again, and the knowledge that no matter how bad it was, apart from the occasional fleeting moment, I did not think of doing what Kelly had done.

TB was calling regularly now, and was clearly getting more and more anxious re my diaries. At first he had been dismissive, saying it was a fuss about nothing, but I sensed that was him trying to make sure I didn’t get too worried. Now he was getting more agitated and angry,
and strongly disagreed with the Sumption strategy. He felt we should be fighting harder for non-disclosure. I explained Sumption’s strategy as I saw it – maximum openness for minimum disclosure and on the substance he thinks on balance that, whilst there are difficulties in there, it helps our case. Yes, said TB, but you are dealing with lawyers and we are politicians in a political situation. I said yes, and part of the politics is that he set up an independent inquiry and promised full co-operation and we cannot now be seen not to co-operate. What is more, if we refuse and it becomes known, then all hell will break loose again and a lot of it around me. I said I was confident that Sumption’s strategy was right and I thought we had no choice. He asked me several times ‘What’s in these things?’ I explained that I was getting Alison out to help me transcribe, but that in Sumption’s view there was nothing catastrophic. There was a fair bit of bad language. ‘How much?’ A fair bit. ‘Fuck?’ Yes. ‘Cunt?’ Probably, can’t remember. ‘Bloody hell, Alastair.’ He asked if there was anything disparaging about him, or about ministers. Nothing too bad re him. Lots of criticism of Clare [Short], yes, one or two others. Bits and bobs re him and GB. Me thinking of leaving. Fiona and Cherie. ‘What?’ Yes, but Sumption did not think any of that needed to be put in. We ended up swapping notes on the extent to which our respective holidays had been ruined. He also said I shouldn’t worry, that the diaries sounded more embarrassing than damaging, though by now he was back in ‘let’s keep AC calm’ mode.

He called every few hours now, chatting over various things, and eventually I said please let me get on and finish the transcription, and then we can make a judgement as to how bad or not it all is. But he was generally reassuring in these circumstances. He said it was horrible for me, and horrible for all of us, but I should take strength from the fact I had done nothing wrong, and he was confident we would come through this. He said ‘What is the worst thing that can be said against you – that you went over the top? But you had every right to, because these were allegations made directly against you, not just me, and you had every right to defend yourself.’ He felt that there was a chance Hutton would decide this was as much a story about our rotten media culture as the nature of government.

The inquiry was certainly not going well for the BBC, no matter how hard the media tried to spin it their way. But none of us could really gauge which way Hutton was going. We just had to get on and make our case as best we could. Alison arrived, bringing with her my 2002 diary, and a quick flick through that also reassured me, in that it showed how much care we had put into the September dossier,
and it showed in terms how I tried to ensure the agencies were happy with every word and every part of the process. Alison and I started to go through the stuff I had gone over with Sumption. It was not as bad as I feared, though there were one or two points where she winced, usually when I was swearing or saying something derogatory about someone, though it was all stuff she had heard before.

We set up in the dining room/lounge bit of the house and worked on it most of Thursday night, all day Friday, when the lawyers went back to London, most of Saturday, as Alison and I travelled back to England by train, and I finally got a full typed version to Sumption at his house in France by Sunday pm, well ahead of the Monday 5pm deadline, though a lot of people would want to see them before then. He had initially secured a delay to my deadline because of the work required transcribing the diaries but then they came back and said no, the original timetable stood, so we had been working flat out to get through it. Thousands of words and he was trying to reach a deal with the inquiry that it would not be submitted as evidence as such, which would then have to be published along with everything else, but as a supplementary statement.

Fiona and the kids had adapted pretty well considering, and were just carrying on doing everything around us, while I was trying to grab a half-hour here, a half-hour there. It was great having Alison out at the house. The kids liked her and once we got going, I realised it was not going to take quite as long as I feared. When I left for home, and my appearance at the inquiry, Fiona was pretty cold with me, said good luck, but with a ‘if you’d listened to me, you wouldn’t be in this mess’ look on her face. ‘Sorry for ruining the holiday,’ I said. She smiled, shrugged and just said do your best and get back as soon as you can. She was understandably angry that the holiday was being so disrupted. Grace was crying, and later apparently asked the boys if I could go to jail. Rory went off on a bike ride, I guess to avoid saying goodbye, though he and I had had a good chat earlier. Calum was putting on a brave face and playing the hard man. ‘Never forget you’re a Campbell, and nobody messes with our family.’

On the train, we had a table to ourselves and so were able to carry on with the transcription, but it meant me whispering into Alison’s ear as I dictated and I am sure there were people on there who thought I was at it with her. Then some creep from the
Daily Telegraph
, who I don’t think could believe his luck that I was on the train, came up and started to make small talk, pretending to be an ordinary passenger. He was not very convincing. ‘Which paper are you from?’ Er, the
Telegraph
, I wondered if I could do an interview about your
coming appearance at the inquiry, blah blah. ‘I’m busy.’ Alison had typed for hours and hours on end, God knows how many. Her view was that it wasn’t great – particularly the language – but that it did show the kind of pressures we were under and also that we were most of the time just trying to do our best. I had not been seeing the papers at all, had been binning the media briefs, but the impression I got from Philip, who was following it more closely via the Internet, was that it wasn’t going well for the BBC. Ian K emphasised to me again and again that I should trust Sumption, who would be focusing on one thing only – the judge. I had decided to do just that, and though Sumption was happy to argue over a point, and accept my view on things, equally I was happy to listen to him and trust his judgement.

I arrived home and decided to go in through the Farthings’ [Michael and Alison, neighbours] back garden so that the press in the street didn’t know I was there. Audrey was looking after me, and had been reading every word. She felt it was not going well for the BBC. But they were really gearing up for me, and they were desperate for me to fail. Peter M called, and said did I have any idea how much the media wanted me to be a disaster in the witness box? TB was calling more regularly from Barbados now. Before the diaries got out to him, he kept asking me the same questions re content. All I could do was give him Sumption’s view. He felt they were neither good nor bad. But on the positive side, they underlined our side of the story. They showed I did nothing wrong re the dossier. They showed I got very angry re the BBC, and made very clear why. They did show I wanted to put out Kelly’s name, but didn’t and instead did as I was told by him. As for the bad language and the loose language, Sumption’s view was that the judge would not take it amiss. This was a private diary and he would understand.

The point of substance I was worried about related to where it looked like Geoff Hoon was suggesting a kind of ‘plea bargain’ [
see July 4
]. It was becoming clear to me that my lawyers were very much trying to get me to think of myself rather than the government as a whole, and particularly GH. If he had said that, and I recorded it, and it was a problem, it was a problem for him, not me. But I found it hard to think like that. I saw this still as the government under attack, me included, but also the government as a whole. They felt GH could use a ‘cut-throat defence’, and go for me, and therefore it was better I go for him, but I was not comfortable with that.

I called him on the Thursday or Friday, not sure which, and warned him about the line in my diary that they were calling the ‘plea bargain
point’. He was in the States on holiday and said he felt a lot better having gone away, despite the advice to stay. I felt he was under similar family pressures to my own. He said he had indeed been intending to throw the book at Kelly when it became clear he was Gilligan’s source, but then calmed down and felt his honesty was to be commended and even rewarded in some way. He said he was grateful for my call and did not give me the impression he was worried about his own position. The only journalist I was talking to at all really was Phil Webster.
The Times
were about the only paper left covering the story from all sides so far as I could see. Most of them were totally with the BBC, but my sense was their case was falling apart.

I was into the office early to go through a mass of material prepared for me by Clare [Sumner] and Catherine [Rimmer], who were both absolutely brilliant. They were so on top of the detail, and so driven by a belief that we were in the right. The diary extracts were circulated internally and also to a few in other departments. TB thought they were fine, though was worried about one or two observations made re him. Jeremy was still passionately of the view that it was just wrong that I had to do this, and we should have fought harder to stop it happening, but things had really moved on from that. I was trying to avoid adding to the big build-up to Tuesday at the inquiry, so I got back home via the neighbours’ garden network again. I guessed if they had no new pictures they would give less space.

Had they had a camera in the garden they would have got a nice shot of me ripping my trousers, and cutting my leg, on the Farthings’ trellis fence. I decided as well that tomorrow I would stay in Number 10, let the press continue to think I was at home, in a hotel, or wherever, just avoid being seen until I have to be. I had a nice dinner with Audrey, just chatting away about the whole thing, what Bob [Millar, Fiona’s father] would have made of it, the effect it was all having on my mum and dad. Audrey was a hundred per cent full-on supporter, didn’t believe a word against me, hated the BBC for what they’d done, and was not that sympathetic to Kelly, felt he should never have got involved with Gilligan in the first place.