When
Lord Carrington was Secretary General of Nato in the mid 1980s it was the
Soviet Union that was the potential enemy and Nato was designed to preserve
the integrity of the Atlantic area. Now that particular threat has disappeared…
“and the question George Robertson, (the newly appointed Secretary General),
has to ask himself, and persuade other member countries to answer, is What
is Nato now for?
“If
the idea is that it is going to be used for humanitarian purposes – which,
I gather, is what was suggested in Washington recently – then are you going
to do it under the auspices of the United Nations? And how selective are
you going to be? When do you intervene and when do you not? These are some
of the questions that George Robertson – who, incidentally, I believe is
an admirable choice for the job – will be faced with.”
Lord
Carrington regrets that the political side of Nato, as originally mooted
in the Treaty, never really materialised – “partly because France didn’t
like the United States’ domination.” He thinks the position has now changed.
“Nato is the only forum in which Western Europe and America have any contact
at all. I think it would be very much better if we tried to expand the
political side of Nato, to make the organisation into a sort of North Atlantic
Group.”
But
might this not conflict with the idea of the European Union?
“I
don’t think so. In the EU you’ve got some neutral countries, such as Sweden
and Austria, and in addition I don’t think any western European government
is prepared to spend the money to make an effective defence force. You’ve
got to have America in there. I genuinely believe that Nato kept the peace
of the world in the Cold War and I think it would be rather silly to throw
away a good insurance policy without having thought rather carefully about
the future. After all, the only thing one ever learns about foreign affairs
is that the unexpected always happens.”
It
happened, certainly, when Argentina invaded the Falkland Islands on April
2 1982 and caught Britain hopping on one foot. As a direct result three
days later Lord Carrington resigned as Foreign Secretary, to the dismay
and regret of some but not all. There was an outcry in Parliament. Eighteen
years later, Lord Carrington has no regrets at his decision.
“I
took the view that it was the right thing to do. We were going to war,
to a very difficult war a long way away, and there were obviously going
to be recriminations about whose fault it was, about who was responsible
and so on… I thought it was better to put a stop to the recriminations
by resigning. Margaret Thatcher said she didn’t think it was necessary.
I said I thought it was. There was not much discussion. I think she realised
I’d made up my mind, and that was that.”
In
his memoirs, (Reflect on Things Past), published six years later,
he wrote: “The anger of the British people and Parliament at the Argentine
invasion of the Falklands was a righteous anger, and it was my duty and
fate to assuage it; the rest was done by brave sailors, soldiers and airmen,
too many of whom laid down not office but their lives.”
Lord
Carrington pooh-poohs any suggestion that his resignation was a matter
of honour and that honour has largely gone out of the window in today’s
political climate. “I don’t think one can say that resigning has gone out
of fashion. It’s all a question of circumstances, and how a minister feels,
and what the Prime Minister thinks. Anyway, let’s get off the resigning
thing can we? It’s frightfully boring, don’t you think?” 
Lord
Carrington is among a dying breed. An aristocrat who fought in World War
Two who entered politics largely “because it is fun”. It is unlikely that
anyone with an inherited title will ever hold high government office again.
His
family traces back to the 17th century. Descended from a draper in Nottingham,
the inheritance is founded on banking. The family home was at Wycombe Abbey
which is now a girls’ boarding school.
Today
Lord (Peter) and Lady (Iona) Carrington live in a magnificent manor house
in a Buckinghamshire village which they have been renovating and improving
since 1945, with a garden of 10 acres which has increased in size each
year. “I do the designing, my wife is the plantswoman – she doesn’t really
talk English, she talks Latin!” They employ three gardeners. I look up.
“I haven’t got a Rolls Royce, or a racehorse, or a yacht. I just have a
garden, which I love,” he explains.
The
Carringtons have six grand children and three great- grandchildren, aged
six, four and two, whom he adores.
“The
four-year-old is so funny. At church the other Sunday he watched a parishioner
go up to the lectern to read the Lesson and when he saw the huge bible
he looked at his mother and exclaimed: “He’s not going to read all
of it, is he?”
Lord
Carrington was 80 last June. He has survived cancer of the kidney and suffers
from pancreatitis. But he remains sprightly. “I read somewhere the other
day that some people my age, otherwise healthy, can’t get out of a chair
without pushing up with their hands.”
As
if to emphasise the point, he positively leapt to his feet. “It’s all a
question of what’s in the mind, isn’t it? My recipe is to ignore the advancing
years.”
We
went out into the garden – surely one of the most beautiful in England
– and Lord Carrington bent down to pick from a patch of Alpine strawberries.
As he straightened up he chuckled and looked slightly shamefaced. “Perhaps
the ground does get a bit further away each year,” he conceded. |
“I
spent about 18 months trying to sort that one out, and in the end the European
Union made catastrophically stupid decisions – like recognising Croatia
and Slovenia, and then asking Bosnia whether it wanted independence when
I told them it would lead to civil war.