Leon Brittan

After unsuccessfully contesting the constituency of Kensington North in 1966 and 1970, he was elected to Parliament in the general election of February 1974 for Cleveland and Whitby, and became an opposition spokesman in 1976. He was made a Queen's Counsel in 1978. Between 1979 and 1981, he was Minister of State at the Home Office. He was then promoted to become Chief Secretary to the Treasury, becoming the youngest member of the Cabinet.[6] He warned cabinet colleagues that spending on social security, health and education would have to be cut "whether they like it or not".[7]

At the 1983 election, Brittan was elected MP for Richmond. Following the election, he was promoted to Home Secretary, becoming the youngest since Churchill.[6] During the 1984–85 miners' strike, Brittan was a strong critic of the leadership of the National Union of Mineworkers. He accused them of organising violence by flying pickets, whom he described as "thugs".[8] One factor in the defeat of the strike was central control of local police forces. As soon as the strike began, Brittan set up a National Reporting Centre in New Scotland Yard to coordinate intelligence and the supply of police officers between forces as necessary. Margaret Thatcher's government had carefully planned for a miners' strike, and a Whitehall committee had been meeting in secret since 1981 to prepare for a protracted dispute.[9]

In 1984, after the murder of British police officer Yvonne Fletcher during a protest outside the Libyan embassy in London, Brittan headed the government's crisis committee as both Thatcher and the Foreign Secretary, Sir Geoffrey Howe, were away at the time.[10] In January 2014, secret government documents released by the National Archives disclosed that Libya twice warned British officials that the Libyan embassy protest would become violent – hours before WPC Fletcher was killed.[11]

In September 1986, Brittan was cleared by a High Court Judge of acting unlawfully when, as Home Secretary, he gave MI5 permission to tap the telephone of a leader of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.[12]

In September 1985, Brittan was moved to Secretary of State for Trade and Industry.[13] The reason for his demotion, according to Jonathan Aitken, was that the prime minister Margaret Thatcher felt that Brittan was "not getting the message across on television".[14] In her memoirs, Thatcher wrote of Brittan: "Everybody complained about his manner on television, which seemed aloof and uncomfortable."[15]

Brittan had been criticised as a poor communicator and for his role in the suppression of a BBC television programme in the Real Lives series on The Troubles in Northern Ireland, At the Edge of the Union.[13] Brittan stated that transmission of the programme would be against the national interest and in August 1985 he wrote to the BBC chairman, Stuart Young, asking for the broadcast to be cancelled. The BBC's Board of Governors called an emergency meeting and ruled that the documentary could not be shown. The controversy led to a rift between the BBC's boards of management and governors. It also led to a day of strike action by hundreds of television and radio workers who protested against what they perceived as government censorship.[16][17]

Brittan resigned as Trade and Industry Secretary in January 1986 over the Westland affair.[18] Brittan had authorised the leaking of a letter from the Solicitor General that had accused Michael Heseltine of inaccuracies in his campaign for Westland to be rescued by a consortium of European investors.[18] The rest of the government, led by Margaret Thatcher, supported a deal with the American business Sikorsky Fiat.[18]

Jonathan Aitken wrote of Brittan's resignation: "Soon after a poisonous meeting of Tory backbenchers at the 1922 Committee, he fell on his sword. It was a combination of a witch hunt and a search for a scapegoat – tainted by an undercurrent of anti-Semitism. […] I believed what should have been obvious to anyone else, that he was being used as a lightning conductor to deflect the fire that the Prime Minister had started and inflamed".[14] It was later revealed that Brittan had attempted to persuade British Aerospace and General Electric Company (GEC) to withdraw from the European consortium.[18]

In October 1986, in a House of Commons debate, Brittan made a bitter attack on Michael Heseltine, accusing him of "thwarting the Government at every turn" in its handling of the Westland affair. Brittan said that Government decisions "should have the support of all its members and should not be undermined from within".[19]

In 1989, Brittan revealed in a Channel 4 programme that two senior Downing Street officials, Bernard Ingham and Charles Powell, had approved the leaking of the letter from the Solicitor General. Brittan's claim led to calls from some Labour MPs for a new inquiry into the Westland affair.[20]

Sir Leon Brittan (centre) as a European Commissioner in 1994

Brittan was knighted in the 1989 New Years Honours List.[21] He was made European Commissioner for Competition at the European Commission early in 1989,[18] resigning as an MP to take the position. He accepted the post reluctantly, as it meant giving up his British parliamentary ambitions.[22] Margaret Thatcher appointed Brittan to the Commission as a replacement for Lord Cockfield, whose pro-European enthusiasm she disapproved of; however, in doing so she had overlooked Brittan's own record as a supporter of the European Union and subsequently found his views and policies at odds with those she had expected from him.[22] Brittan passed the merger regulation in 1989,[23] which enabled him to ban the ATR/De Havilland planned merger in 1991.[24]

In 1993 he became European Commissioner for Trade and in 1995 European Commissioner for External Affairs, also serving as a Vice-President of the European Commission. Brittan resigned with the rest of the Santer Commission in 1999 amid accusations of fraud against Jacques Santer and Édith Cresson.[18] During his time as a Vice-President of the European Commission, one subsequently prominent member of his official office was Nick Clegg,[25] who became leader of the Liberal Democrats in December 2007[26] and deputy prime minister in May 2010.[27]

In 1984, in his capacity as Home Secretary, Brittan was handed a 40-page dossier by Geoffrey Dickens MP which detailed alleged paedophile activity in the 1980s, including, according to Dickens, allegations concerning "people in positions of power, influence and responsibility".[32][33] The whereabouts of the dossier is currently unknown.[32] Brittan denied any knowledge of the matter in an e-mail to a Channel 4 News reporter in 2013,[34] and later replied that he had no recollection of it to a query from The Independent newspaper.[35]

Brittan later declared in 2014 that Dickens had met him at the Home Office and that he had written to Dickens on 20 March 1984, explaining what had been done about the files.[34] In an article for The Times, journalist James Gillespie quoted a letter from Dickens dated 7 January 1984 in which he thanked Brittan for his "splendid support". He also gave examples of the allegations in the dossier, including a woman protesting that her 16-year-old son had become homosexual after working in Buckingham Palace kitchens and a civil servant advocating persons caught by Customs and Excise importing child pornography should be referred to the police.[36]

An initial review by Home Office civil servant Mark Sedwill in 2013 concluded that copies of Dickens's material had "not been retained" but that Brittan had acted appropriately in dealing with the allegations. In November 2014, a review by Peter Wanless followed. Wanless said there was no evidence to suggest that files had been removed to cover up abuse.[37]

In June 2014, Brittan was interviewed under caution by police in connection with the alleged rape of a 19-year-old student in his central London flat in 1967 before he became an MP. They had not pursued the allegation when it was first made because of insufficient evidence. The police reopened the investigation after Alison Saunders, the Director of Public Prosecutions, had been lobbied by Labour MP Tom Watson to investigate further.[38] In a statement on 7 July 2014, Brittan denied the claims.[39] At the time of his death, Brittan had not been told by the police that there was insufficient evidence to prosecute him for the alleged rape of the woman.[40] The deputy assistant commissioner of the Met, Steve Rodhouse, wrote a letter of apology to the solicitors of Brittan's widow.[41]

In October 2014, the Labour MP Jimmy Hood used parliamentary privilege to refer to claims that Brittan had been linked to child abuse.[42][43] After Brittan died in January 2015, Watson accused him of "multiple child rape"; he said he had spoken to two people who claimed they were abused by Brittan.[44] Convicted fraudster Chris Fay[45] alleged that he had seen a photograph of Brittan with a child at Elm Guest House in mid-1982.[46] In March 2015, it was reported that detectives from Operation Midland, set up by the Metropolitan Police to investigate claims of child sex abuse, had visited and searched two homes in London and Yorkshire formerly owned by Brittan.[47] One of Brittan's accusers subsequently told BBC's Panorama that he originally named Brittan as a joke and told the Metropolitan Police that two well-known campaigners may have led him into making false claims.[48] On 21 March 2016, the Metropolitan Police confirmed that Operation Midland had been closed without any charges being brought.[49]

On 1 September 2017, it was reported that the Metropolitan Police had paid substantial compensation to Brittan's widow for having raided the Brittans' home "after accepting that the searches had been unjustified and should never have taken place."[50] Carl Beech, whose claims spurred Operation Midland, was convicted of perverting the course of justice in July 2019.[51]