Jonathan Aitken FINAL

The speaker discusses their father's unlikely career as a politician and his involvement in the war. They also talk about their own political career and how they were caught in a scandal that led to their imprisonment. They reflect on their time in prison and the value of money. They discuss their relationships with women and the loss of their second wife. They share a childhood experience with TB and the impact it had on their life. We're going to start, if that's OK with politics, I'd like to talk about your father who I believe was a politician before you were. Yes, my father was a rather unlikely politician. First of all, he wasn't British, even though he sat in the British House of Commons. He was a Canadian and in 1938, he had never been out of Canada in his life, but like many Canadians of his generation, he thought of Britain as the mother country. And my father was a bit of a Boy Scout all his life, but when he was a young man, his Boy Scoutism took him into being a very active member of the Territorial Army in Canada and a particular regiment called the Toronto Scottish Highlanders who went around in kilts. In 1938, my father read in a Toronto newspaper that the mother country, which is how he thought of us, was in danger of attack by Germany and it was in danger of losing any such war because of a shortage of pilots. So my father, a Boy Scout that he was, immediately wrote to the Air Ministry in London saying, I'm a qualified pilot, I'm part of the Empire, would you like me to come and join you? And somebody wrote back from the Air Ministry and said, well, if you'd like to come over, we'll look at you. He came over, paying his own fare on the trip, and when he got to the Air Ministry, he produced his documents, which apparently in pilot terms were quite impressive, he'd done everything he could do, and they then said to him, how old are you? And he said, 31, sir. The man at the Air Ministry said, have you brought your birth certificate? And he said, yes, sir. And the wing commander who was said, burn it at once. So he shelled into the flames and the reason for that, he was over the age limit for being an RAF fighter pilot. And having burned his birth certificate, he was immediately enrolled, but anyway, he did join the RAF. And then he was very, very badly burnt after being shot down. He was one of the famous plastic surgeon, Archie McIndoe's first guinea pigs. My father's told me he thought he'd had 148 operations on anaesthetics in his life, having most of them having his face re-stitched together. By the time I really focused on him and really knew him, he was actually very well rebuilt. He was, you could see just, he'd had plastic surgery, but you wouldn't sort of see it on the other side of a room at a cocktail party, or even quite close up. Anyway, after the war, there was a feeling in the country generally, and I think in the Conservative Party, particularly, that these young sons of the empire, as they were known, should, when possible, have seats in the mother of parliaments. And my father was one of about 20 young Canadians, Australians, New Zealanders, South Africans who became British MPs. I was really rather fascinated at a young age by his parliamentary life, which consisted largely of going out into the rural villages of West Suffolk and talking with farmers about pigs or doing a wine and cheese party and some small hamlet. But I just got interested at an early age in politics through him. Before your life changed dramatically, and we'll come on to that, you were tipped at one point to be the next Tory Prime Minister. How corrupting, ultimately, is power? First of all, if you got together all the MPs who at one time or another had been tipped as a Conservative Prime Minister, you'd need a ballroom, not a small cubbyhole to fit them all in. I was tipped as a Fisherman's Minister, but I actually never took it that seriously, for one simple reason. I had been close enough to power at an early age. I worked for my godfather, Sir Wyn Lloyd, and was working on the day he was sacked from being Chancellor of the Exchequer. I knew enough that, actually, once you get to the very top, it's a game of chance, not a game of skill. I think there is part of the trappings of power which are attractive, but I don't think that went to my head at all. People who want to be interesting in politics are people who do something. People who want to just be famous and be important or be saluted as they come down the steps of their private RAF jet, they just want to be somebody. And that wasn't of particular interest to me. I don't say I wasn't somehow flattered being somebody, but on the whole not. It was doing something which mattered to me. Politicians, I'm sure you'll agree, should of course be scrutinised by the public, but I think you endured more than your fair share. How do you look back now on that time where you were unwittingly turned into a sort of national villain? I don't think it was really quite as bad as that, but certainly one particular newspaper, the Guardian, went for me. And I think one of the reasons they went for me, at the time I thought it was all rather personal, maybe for some journalists it was, but actually it was really to do with the temper of the times. Speed the Wikitouris on their way out was a feeling of many journalists, and particularly journalists on left-of-centre papers. Why not? They were allowed to do that. But I think I was just a convenient sort of hate figure. At the time, I was angry and thought it was all very unfair. A lot of rubbish was said on the other hand. One particularly true thing was said, which is I had told a lie about a hotel bill. And the old nursery rhyme goes, oh what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive. So that's exactly what happened. And I stuck to the lie instead of retreating from the lie. I was caught lying, and I paid a heavy price for that. You were sentenced to 18 months in prison in 1999, and you've said before, I was lucky, I managed to get along with my fellow prisoners very quickly. That's what politicians do when they're getting votes. Well, slightly tongue-in-cheek remark, but some truth in it. Suddenly, I was catapulted by the court into a completely negative, hostile environment. What do you do? Try and survive. And my survival mechanism was A, to keep my head down. B, to be as agreeable as I could be to anybody who was passing by. To handle difficult situations as best I could. Quite early on, I was standing around on the wings in Belmarsh doing nothing, as you do most of the time in prison. And a young prisoner came up to me and said in a conspiratorial whisper, hey, I've got a problem. Could you help me? And he said, my problem is I've had a letter from my brief, but I can't read it. Could you read it to me? So I said, sure. And I read him this letter, which was from his sister, enclosing one from the Lambeth Council, telling him he was going to be evicted from his council flat in Lambeth for non-payment of rent, along with his wife and small child. And as I gave him this news, he went up the wall with sort of anger and hysteria. And the only coherent noise out of all the effings and blindings he was doing was, what shall I do? What shall I do? My kid's going to be on the street. What shall I do? As it happens, considering we were both prisoners in Belmarsh, he couldn't have found easily a more expert source of authority to answer this question, because I had been doing eviction cases for 25 years in my constituency surgeries as an MP. So I knew all the little wrinkles which can postpone eviction of one kind or another. So I told him all this, and he was delighted. And I said, you know, this is what I do. And I said, all you have to do is write that down, send it back to your solicitor to the Lambeth Council, and you'll be evicted quickly, I can assure you. I said, oh, that's brilliant, brilliant. And then he said, look, I've got another problem. I don't do no writing, nor no reading, neither. Could you write it for me? I said, sure. So I wrote a letter of appeal. And he was kind enough to say it was rather good. You see, I read it back to him, and he then signed it. And then he did something which was most unexpected. Instead of putting this letter into the postbox or putting it in his pocket, he suddenly transformed himself into a sort of 18th century town crier. And holding the letter aloft, he went on the ring wing shouting at the top of his voice. Hey, guys, this MP geezer of ours, he's got fantastic joined up writing. And this commercial of my graphological skills fell on the ears of a very receptive audience. Because it's a little known fact, except prison insiders. Roughly speaking, a third of all prisoners in the big London jail cannot read or write to an adequate standard. And so as a result of it being known, thanks to the town crier, that there was a fellow prisoner who might be willing to help you with your letters. From that moment on, there was a queue every single night of my sentence of people wanting letters written to them and read to them, often on the most intimate subjects imaginable. And this first of all, became a bustle of a certain amount of good natured prison humour. I remember one old lag saying to me, well, John, so do realise with all this letter writing business of yours, you is making a fantastic impact on the girls of Brixton. They can't believe the sudden improvement in the love letters they're getting from this place. Be that as it may, I was making some friends. And that sort of transformed my status. Instead of being that evil Tory cabinet minister, I was always not a bad bloke. He helped me with my letters and my girlfriend, whatever it was. And I then became sort of part of the kind of prison scenery as an accepted figure rather than as a hate figure. Did it make it less unbearable being there? Or was it not unbearable in itself anyway? It wasn't that unbearable. It wasn't easy. It was uncomfortable. It was pretty miserable. In terms of the actual physical side of it all, I often say that I think my first days in HMP Eton were rather harder than my first days in HMP Belmarsh. So you cope, you know, and I did. Do you despair a little bit at the state of the prisons in our country? Well, I'd certainly like to see a lot of things reformed. But no, I don't. Actually, our prisons are all things considered pretty decent and pretty civilised. We won't get a lot of people saying that, but I know it to be true. Especially when I compare it to things like American prisons. Now, why is it decent? Well, it's really decent thanks to the staff who are underestimated. Some ways I think prison officers are in the most difficult frontline jobs way more often than even police officers or armed forces officers unless there's a war. Because every day there are incidents of people, sometimes mentally ill people, kicking off, making trouble, fighting, trying to commit suicide or dramas of one kind or another. I think too many people go to prison who shouldn't go to prison if we had good alternatives. We have some alternatives. But for example, the number of people doing drug-influenced crimes, I really think we could do much better in treating some of these conditions and imprisoning people from the conditions. And I'm very interested in myself in trying to help people who are on drugs get off drugs and get off crime. And there are many failures, but occasionally when you have successes, it's a tremendous joy. I've been mentoring a young man at the moment who's achieved stopping drugs, getting out of prison, getting into work, succeeding, getting a good job and qualifying, are getting married in a few weeks time and I'm doing the wedding. And that's a great joy when that all works, but it usually doesn't. How did your time in prison alter your attitude to money? Well, I have none of it, which is one way of altering your attitude. I was actually bankrupt. And some people think bankruptcy is absolutely devastating. I always thought this is something I'll come out of one day. I'll earn my living again. I don't know quite how. My children just ask me, how are you going to earn your living at the end of that? And I said, well, if nothing else, I'll be a minicab driver because I know a lot of Arabs. I know the tips are enormous. And I'm not sure I'll get to. But I've always been, I think, someone who sees life through the glass half full rather than through the glass half empty. And even in my worst moments in Elmarsh prison, I always thought life is going to go on. And I've always thought life is going to go on. And I've always thought life is going to go on. And I've always thought life is going to go on. And I've always thought life is going to go on. And I've always thought life is going to go on. And I've always thought life is going to go on. And I've always thought life is going to go on. And I've always thought life is going to go on. And I've always thought life is going to go on. I'm not going to be here forever. I'm going to do something after I come out, which will be interesting. There is a wonderful story in your book about you went to Oxford to study theology. And your son William by then was a hungry teenager, I think. And there's a story about you having only 20 pounds in your pocket. Well, first of all, just going back a bit, it was a rather odd but brave decision to go from prison to the one place in Britain which had worse food than a prison and more uncomfortable beds than a prison. And this was an Anglican theological college called Wycliffe Hall, Oxford. So I was living on a bankrupt weekly allowance. It was, if I remember correctly, it was 200 pounds a week. Actually, that made me just about the richest person in the Wycliffe Hall theology students. So it wasn't quite as I could afford to buy a round of drinks. But even so, there were pressures. And there was one particular moment when it wasn't just the only weekend when money was a bit short at the end of the month, or it was. And my son was coming. And I knew that he had a gargantuan appetite. It was six sausages for breakfast. That's kind of what small boys do. And so I tried to borrow 20 quid off somebody and said, you know what you should do? You should go to the supermarket after midnight. And they sell all the produce at a third of the price, something I had not known before. Anyway, off I go to the supermarket. Sure enough, I'm able to buy a trebly amount of food for my son's visits at a very low price. And still, I've change in my pocket. And I remember just laughing as I came away. I remember the days when I used to go to Harry's bar or Mark's stuff for lunch. And I was amused greatly that I had sort of outwitted the difficulty by, I think, going to the supermarket after midnight. Maybe many people know they can do that. But I didn't. And it was just, to me, another little move in the game of snakes and ladders that you learn how to buy cheap but perfectly eatable food. How do you view the value of money? What does? Well, I don't in any way decry its importance. In the Bible, one of the most misquoted verses is, money is the root of all evil. That's not what the Bible says. It says, love of money is the root of all evil. And I have met many people in my life, like a character in Henry Fielding's novel Tom Jones, who think that money is so important, it's the only subject in life which needs to be thought about or conversed about. I think I was ever quite good. I think everybody has to cut their coat according to their cloth. And it's nice to have enough money to be able to go to the theatre and dinner afterwards. I would like to do that, but on the whole, even now, I can't afford to do that. But I can still afford a perfectly reasonable, moderate lifestyle. And so money is not at all top of my agenda. I count my blessings rather than count my money. As a younger man, I believe that you had a colourful private life. How much have your relationships with women affected the direction of your life, would you say? Well, it's true that probably, like many young men, I had a rather too movemente private life, too many relationships. And it's no use regretting that it happened. But I hope I wasn't unkind too often to anybody, but I probably was sometimes. But the good thing about it was that when the trips were down and marriage came into it, then love was really there. And I feel blessed by both my wives. My first wife is still alive, and I have a good relationship with her. And Elizabeth, who's only died a year ago, we were very close to each other for reasons of faith, as well as the usual reasons people love each other, emotionally and physically. And in her case, for the last six years or so of her life, she's had a brain hemorrhage. And she was very close in terms of tactility. But she was just not well enough to be as kind of a hot lady she was when she was younger. I think I learned with Elizabeth that it's possible to love somebody when they're vulnerable, just as strongly and passionately as you can love somebody when they are exciting and sexually thrilling. You must miss her terribly. I do. I certainly do. But my grief has sort of morphed into gratitude. I commune with her rather a lot in prayer, and also because she's buried just about five minutes walk from where I live. So I often go jogging in the Brompton cemetery in Paws by her grave. So I feel close to her still. And the reason, of course, I was extremely upset when she died, although it was quite predictable. She was very, very ill for a long time. But I've always been absolutely confident that we'll meet again. And so at her funeral, I gave a tribute, quite a high risk endeavor. But the last words were, au revoir, and I always believe that my faith teaches that we'll be reunited one day. Can I take you back to when you were four years old and you had TB and you were admitted to a nursing hospital in Dublin? No, what happened was that I was born in Dublin for reasons to do with the Second World War. My father had been shot down as a fighter pilot and was very badly burned in hospital. My mother was extremely busy working for what is now called the WRVS. The R hadn't been added in those days, but she was doing meals and wheels. And when I came along, what did my mother do? She went back to mum and dad to have the baby. Mum and dad or her father happened to be what would now be called the British Ambassador in Dublin. And I then was really parked with my grandparents for the first three or four years of my life. But I caught TB from a nanny or a nurse. TB was very, very prevalent in Ireland right up till the 50s. Anyway, I caught TB, but nobody noticed in the sort of busy ambassadorial house run by grandparents. I was coughing a bit and Jonathan's a bit seedy, isn't he? Seems a fluey cough that has lasted a long time. But no one really thought it was. And by the time it was diagnosed, my TB had gone a very long way. It had gone into both lungs and into my legs and the bones, which is very bad news. And so my poor, panicky parents had to deal with sort of an advanced TB. And I was taken to a TB specialist on both sides of the Irish Sea. And with one exception, the diagnosis could hardly have been more pessimistic. Mostly it was, I'm sorry, this child can't live. Some would say, this child might live, but he'll never walk. The only exception to this was an Irish doctor who ran his own hospital now, a rather famous hospital called Kappa Hospital, just as I dubbed it. But he was the TB specialist and an orthopaedic specialist of the day. And he said, if this little boy comes to enter my hospital, we will, I think, have a very good chance of him being totally killed. Him being totally killed, but he'll have to be totally immobilized for two or three years. Disabled children don't realize they're disabled. They think it's normal. And I was in the hospital with lots of other people in iron lungs or TB, and the unlucky ones died. We were often wheeling the beds around and little Seamus had passed away in the night. In the middle of this, I met a remarkable nun who was called Sister Mary Thunber. She very much took me under her wing, but I think she enjoyed having quite a bright little boy who was keen to learn. And she taught me everything. I mean, how to read, how to do maths, all the contraption beyond belief. Called the magic lantern, which was a very, very ancient sort of kind of projector, which projected onto the ceiling. And she was very spiritual, of course, but I was protected from that because my grandmother, who was a somewhat bigoted Protestant, could hardly bear the idea of me being nursed by Catholic nuns. It was absurd. But anyway, so she was perhaps under strict instructions not to convert me, not to proselyte me. And one thing I do remember terribly well was that she almost every night used to kneel by my bed and I used to fall asleep. And then I would wake up and still, and I would still see her praying. But she was a huge influence. And she really was my sort of best friend and mother and grandmother and everything rolled into one. Do you think she saved your life with the power of her prayer? Yeah, well, it was very probably. Oh, I'm sorry you're upset. No. She was amazing. I'm happily upset. Very good memories of her. And there was something extraordinary which happened. I came out of that hospital. Aged seven and never saw her again, except once. And like 15 years later, I was about 22 or 23. And I was in Belfast for the covering some part of the IRA war. And I suddenly had to drive, all the aircraft, the airport was closing, and I could get a flight from Dublin. So I, on my expense allowance, I took a taxi from Belfast down to Dublin with plenty of time to spare. And suddenly we were driving. And suddenly I saw a notice board saying Capper Hospital, outside, getting close to Dublin. It's on the edge of Dublin. So I said, I'd like to come in. So in I went. And I arrived. So like, a long time ago, I used to be patient here. I'd love to see Sister Mary Fenbar. And I said, Oh, I'm so sorry. It's impossible to see her. Because she's very, very ill. And you won't be able to see her. But we'll go in and tell her that you're here. So I had a cup of coffee with the other nuns. And then suddenly, she arrived in the room. She was on two sticks, tossing. And all the nuns said, Oh, Hail Mary, this is a miracle. She's never been able to walk. Suddenly she's got up. It's time, she said. And we had a wonderful conversation, which I'm talking about now, full of old jokes and laughter and memories. And she said something again, which she said occasionally when I was there. I said, Oh, you've been saved for some great purpose. This wasn't very obvious what that purpose was at the time. Anyway, we had this wonderful conversation. And there were sort of great jokes about my grandmother trying to stop me being converted. And John Betjeman, who was my grandfather's press secretary, was sent in to make sure that I didn't become a Roman, this kind of stuff. And we used to laugh and laugh. And anyway, I knew she was probably getting near the end. But it wasn't because she was so animated. And these other nuns couldn't believe it. So anyway, we parted. And I said to the nuns, if she does die, be sure to give me a call. And they did. And it was about 10 days later, she died. You still lead a very busy, very active, very engaged life. Does your energy come from your faith? I think so. It's a gift from God. But I have got a lot of energy, presently speaking, I see. And both physically and just still jog a bit, which is just a very generous word, jogging. I plod. But I'm fit and I enjoy life. I'd much rather burn out than rust out. And I have no interest in going to the golf course and doing nothing much in the way of work or interesting things. I'm very fulfilled, very busy, and love what I do. So of course, I'm happy. And I'm not rich, but I'm not poor. And I feel very content with life. Count my blessings.