Thread by @ajcdeane

This is the 21st instalment of #deanehistory.

In this challenging time people are understandably reflecting on things & realising that there are things that they regret.

Looking back, I realise that I was insufficiently rude to two people. The first was Geoffrey Howe.

I partially owe that conclusion, and the existence of this thread, to the brilliant “The Spy & the Traitor,” by @BenMacintyre1, which you should read.

In the dark days of Soviet Russia, Oleg Gordievsky spied for us for a generation. He was blown because of a CIA traitor. Whilst he thought he was probably discovered, he still went back to Moscow from London (where he could have claimed asylum and all would be fine) because…

1) there was a chance he wasn’t blown; and 2) there were more secrets potentially to be had, and 3) he was one of the bravest men the world has ever seen.

The KGB, having promptly detained and questioned him and shown their hand to him, wrongly tried to play a long game to get more evidence of guilt, letting him go home to his flat (which was bugged) and so on. They were trying to break him down slowly.

It might take time, they reasoned, but they were sure of their position as nobody had ever escaped the USSR. This was logical, but false, confidence… First, OG managed to give his signal to the MI6/diplomatic team at our Moscow embassy that he was going to try to escape Russia.

A plan had been in place for years for this, with British diplomats posted to Moscow accustomed to walking past certain places at certain times with distinctive carrier bags and confectionary as the signal that they were always there to protect him.

But having a plan is different to executing it.
To actually be carried out, to rescue this man who had done so much for us, needed sign off at the highest level.

Regrettably, Geoffrey Howe was at the highest level and said, gosh, it all sounds like it could be a bit awkward with the Russians, sod him, he can die.

Fortunately, above highest level is the Thatcher tier.

Margaret Thatcher said, thanks for that Geoffrey; but he has helped prevent nuclear war and served the democratic west my whole political life. We are going to get him and we are going to bring him home.

Hence the famously escape with Gordievsky in the boot of a diplomat’s car, with said diplomat’s wife changing the nappy of said diplomat’s baby on top of the boot to put off the sniffer dogs (which worked). No thanks to Howe, Gordievsky is alive & well somewhere in the UK today.

Howe was a Bencher of my Inn of Court, Middle Temple– one of various great institutions I’ve been lucky enough to drift through. I met him & loathed him for his anti-Thatcherism but, callow youth, I failed to voice it beyond surliness & now realise I had all the more reason to.

Still, I'm reminded by the ever excellent @JeremyBrier that, on the all too few occasions I attended Hall at Middle Temple, on the toast to “absent friends” I would always bellow, in the silence as everyone was dutifully sipping, “EXCEPT GEOFFREY HOWE.” So there’s that at least.

The other person I was insufficiently rude to was Edward Heath. That’s a story that can wait for another day.

It occurs to me that, given that unlike me Jeremy has a distinguished legal career, such was all my doing, not his. He was present, but not involved.

Sometimes writing something down brings back a memory with great clarity.

So it was here: I really want to stress how good MacIntyre’s book is.

I read it late into the night as the escape unfolded. I remember actually punching the air & exclaiming aloud when they pulled it off.