Speaking for Myself (38 page)

For those four weeks in the run-up to the election, every Friday I’d visit marginals — those districts in which things were so close that a few votes in either direction might tip the scales — close to London. In the final week, thanks to a holiday and my junior on the case covering for me at the trial, I was able to be at Tony’s side.

It was another landslide, with Labour losing only one seat to the Conservatives. The press, however, didn’t look at the huge majority, but claimed instead that it was a victory for apathy because of the low turnout. Tony, rightly in my view, took it as a sign that the public was happy with the way he was going and hadn’t thought there was much need to register their votes. Tony made some ministerial changes. Robin Cook was removed from the Foreign Office, and there was talk of Gordon Brown taking his place, though it didn’t happen. Gordon, who had married Sarah Macaulay in August 2000, had recently been increasing pressure on Tony to commit to leaving office. But Tony knew he still had a lot to do, particularly in the area of public service reforms — namely, health and education — and he was determined to see them through.

The office was also given a shake-up. Tony moved Alastair out of day-to-day press management and gave Anji a new post as head of government relations. Fiona was promoted to head of events and visits. As a result, Angela began to take on more for me, and Sue Geddes joined the office to assist with my official schedule.

Everybody knows where they were on September 11, 2001. I was in chambers: I had two separate case conferences, one in the morning and one in the afternoon, and had just finished the morning conference when the news started to come through. My first instinct was to go back to Number 10. Whenever something important is happening, Downing Street is the place to be. Tony was in Brighton, where he had been due to address the TUC conference. As it was, his speech was simply handed out to delegates. He came straight back to London. His overriding feeling was that everything needed dampening down and confidence maintained, particularly in the financial sector. He was convinced that America would feel beleaguered, and we had to let the United States know it wasn’t alone.

Tony remained very visible. From the start, his was the opposite of a bunker mentality. In his first television address, less than an hour after the news of the attacks came through, he said, “I hope you will join with me in sending our condolences to the people of America and to President Bush from the British people. This mass terrorism is the new evil in our world perpetrated by fanatics who are utterly indifferent to the sanctity of human life. All democratic countries must unite to eradicate this evil from our world.”

Three days later, at a special session of the House of Commons, Tony made a fantastic speech, sending out a message not only to Britain but also to the world:

One thing should be very clear. By their acts, these terrorists and those behind them have made themselves the enemies of the civilized world. The objective will be to bring to account those who have organized, aided, abetted and incited this act of infamy; and those that harbor or help them have a choice: either to cease their protection of our enemies; or be treated as an enemy themselves. . . . We do not yet know the exact origin of this evil. But, if, as appears likely, it is so-called Islamic fundamentalists, we know they do not speak or act for the vast majority of decent law-abiding Muslims throughout the world. I say to our Arab and Muslim friends: neither you nor Islam is responsible for this; on the contrary, we know you share our shock at this terrorism; and we ask you as friends to make common cause with us in defeating this barbarism that is totally foreign to the true spirit and teachings of Islam.

Even before Tony was elected Prime Minister, he thought it important to learn about Islam. Britain has a sizable and important Muslim population, and as far back as January 1997, Khawar Qureshi — a lawyer friend of mine and now a Queen’s Counsel — took us to visit the Regent’s Park mosque. He knew that we were interested and that Tony wanted to meet and talk to other Muslims. During the summer of 2001, while we were on holiday, Tony had in fact been reading the Koran.

The
Washington Post
was soon rating Tony alongside New York’s Mayor Rudy Giuliani as “the only other political figure who broke through the world’s stunned disbelief.” Among the victims were two hundred from the UK, a small percentage of the total toll of three thousand, but 9/11 remains the largest terrorist attack ever on British citizens. That Friday we attended a memorial service at St. Paul’s Cathedral. It was a powerful occasion: not only were we all in a state of shock, but it was so moving to see the relatives of the victims — mostly wives and children, because so many of the missing and the dead were reasonably young. As Tony was anxious to have a face-to-face meeting with the still relatively new President, George W. Bush, the following week we flew to America. By then Tony had already had meetings with all the key European leaders. He believed that the response to the attacks should be international rather than America going it alone.

On that long flight across the Atlantic, I remembered the conversation I’d had with President Bush, when he and Laura had stayed at Chequers the previous spring. We were all having dinner together, and the conversation had been extraordinarily open and frank, thanks in no small part to the presence of the children. George had been talking about the Star Wars missile defense system, initiated by President Ronald Reagan in the 1980s, and how he saw that as the ultimate shield.

But I had grown up under the shadow of IRA terrorism. “Surely,” I’d said, “the real danger is not from Russia or any other country sending bombs, but from individual people in a terrorist attack?”

George had looked bemused at the suggestion. Americans had no sense that such a thing could ever happen to them, and that’s what made September 11 so shocking.

On our arrival in New York, we went first to a processing center near the Hudson River. Everywhere we looked, people had put up pictures of their loved ones, with messages and contact phone numbers, in the hope that they would be found alive. It had been only nine days since the attack, and it was all very upsetting. Knots of people talked in hushed voices. A section of the center was being run by the British consulate, and we talked to those who were counseling the bereaved. The counselors themselves had barely slept in days. We wanted to go on to a fire station — New York firefighters, of course, having become the heroes of the tragedy — but with downtown Manhattan still in a state of paralysis, even with a police escort and motorcycle outriders, we were too short of time. So we went directly to St. Thomas’s Church for a memorial service for the British dead.

We knew that Tony was expected to do a reading, but the question coming over on the plane had been, what? It would be very difficult to get the right tone. Magi Cleaver suggested an extract from a novel by the American writer Thornton Wilder called
The Bridge of San Luis Rey.
Magi had been shifted from the Foreign Office to manage the Civil Service side of the events and visits office. (The arcane regulations decreed that as a special adviser herself, Fiona could manage only other special advisers.) She was a tiny bossy-boots of a person, and everybody seemed petrified of her, but she was charming and lovely to us. She took me under her wing, and I loved her. Having started her Foreign Office career in Chile during the presidency of Salvador Allende, she was interested in all things South American, which was why she happened to have the book with her. The reading ended like this: “There is a land of the living and a land of the dead, and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning.”

After the service I was able to talk to some of the victims’ families, including wives who were pregnant and with whom, I am happy to say, I have been able to keep in touch as they have rebuilt their lives. At the time they were still hopeful that their husbands would be found alive. Tony went straight to Washington for talks with the President, while Bill Clinton agreed to come to the fire station with me in Tony’s place. This particular fire station had been chosen because it had suffered such tremendous losses in the rescue operation, and in those kinds of circumstances, Bill is at his best. The men we met were just fantastic, brave and strong. One I talked to I recognized from one of the now iconic photographs taken that day. At the end they presented me with an American flag — for Tony — folded up in a triangle, with a plaque signaling their appreciation of his support, a thank-you from the firefighters of New York. For years it was on display in Downing Street, and now we have it at home. I was insistent that we take it when we left: a powerful memory of a very haunting visit.

By the time we got back to London, a whole new security regime was being put in place. It had been decided that from now on, I would have permanent police protection. What this meant in practical terms was that I stopped going into chambers every day. Like Tony, I could no longer drive; wherever I went, I had to have a Number 10 driver and a close security officer. Once I got back to Number 10, I had to stay there: no picking the children up from friends’ houses, no dropping them off at sports activities, no popping out to the shops or going for a run in St. James’s Park. If I wanted to do any of those things, a detective had to come with me. Everything had to be planned in advance and marked on the appropriate schedule.

The children were no longer permitted to travel by public transport. One of my main concerns in keeping their faces out of the newspapers was wanting them to lead as normal lives as possible, which meant subways and buses. In fact, we had managed surprisingly well. The nannies, too, were unknown, and could take the children for a hamburger without any fear of their being recognized.

Euan was far from pleased. He had been taking the underground to school since 1996, and the idea of being driven by the police did not go down well. Nicholas wasn’t much happier. Kathryn, still only twelve, was less resistant, as she hadn’t experienced the same kind of freedom the boys had.

Security at this level takes some adjusting to. If you have police protection, you have police protection; it is not some sort of optional perk. You cannot go anywhere without having somebody with you, and the police have to know where you are and what you are doing all the time. One evening that autumn, on the spur of the moment, Kathryn and I decided to go to the theater, to see
Blood Brothers
. The play was written by Willy Russell, whom I knew when he ran a folk club in Liverpool. It starred Barbara Dickson, who, long before she became famous, did a gig at the Trimdon folk club. We were about to set off when I suddenly remembered the security. The ’tecs had left for the day, and I hadn’t made any provision for late-night duties. Although I felt bad, I rang them up and said perhaps they could meet us at the theater. “I’ll just get a taxi there,” I said.

“Sorry, Mrs. B. You can’t do that,” the officer said. “You’ll have to wait till I get there.”

“But we’ll be late.”

“Well, then, you’ll just have to be late.”

Another issue was the nuclear bunker. When we’d first moved in, I had inspected it to see if it was suitable for children. It was totally underground and really spooky. There were army-style bunks, and I couldn’t see how I could ever take the kids down there. Downing Street staff members were divided into groups: Red, Blue, Green, and Orange. In the event of an emergency, the Red group had to come down with us, the Blues were to muster on the lawn, the Greens were to go home but be on call, the Orange group were free to go home and not be on call. Alastair was in the Red group, but Fiona was in the Green group, and I thought,
No way is Alastair going to come in with us and leave Fiona and his kids at home if there’s a nuclear Armageddon.
I’d told the powers that be as much and asked, “Just how realistic is this as a plan?” In response, they’d asked if I wanted to show the children the bunker, and I’d said no.

Now I had to address the matter seriously, so Jackie and I went down, as instructed, taking clothes and games and books for the children. Apart from the hum of the air-conditioning, it was as quiet as a grave. Jackie agreed with me that if it ever came to it, this place would completely freak them out.

In early December the
Daily Mail
ratcheted up its attacks on me. This time it was in relation to Leo. They demanded to know whether he had had the MMR (measles-mumps-rubella) vaccine. “Come Clean, Cherie” was the headline. The great issue of the day was whether the MMR vaccine causes autism. A report — since wholly discredited — had said that it could. Then the
Mirror
joined in. I had innocently responded to a letter sent to me by the mother of an autistic child, saying that I was “keeping an eye on things.” It had seemed fairly innocuous at the time.

A number of people around me, whose views I respected, were vociferously against all forms of vaccination. Over the years I had listened to their side of the argument, and it’s fair to say that I was of two minds. I did get Leo vaccinated, not least because it’s irresponsible not to — there’s absolutely no doubt that the incidence of a disease goes up if vaccinations go down — and he was given his MMR jab within the recommended time frame. I was adamant, however, that I would not give the press chapter and verse. I saw no reason to parade my family’s vaccination records in front of the public. It would set a bad precedent, and everyone — by which I mean Alastair and Fiona — agreed.

Chapter 26

Frontiers

T
he invasion of Afghanistan began less than a month after 9/11. The destruction of the Twin Towers was generally acknowledged to have been the work of al-Qaeda, the terrorist organization run by Osama bin Laden. Their training camps were known to be in Afghanistan, funded in part at least by the Taliban, which provided support and safe haven. In 1998 President Bill Clinton had launched cruise missile attacks on these camps in retaliation for the al-Qaeda attacks on two U.S. embassies in East Africa, but with little effect. On October 7, 2001, the aerial bombing of Afghanistan began, and Kabul fell a little over a month later.