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By Kevin Kayhart For Dailymail.com
05:59 BST 06 Apr 2020 , updated 05:59 BST 06 Apr 2020
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Lord Armstrong of Ilminster, the greatest ‘Mandarin’ of his generation who inspired the trust of three prime ministers – obituary
He was instrumental in securing the Anglo-Irish Agreement and admitted to being 'economical with the truth' during the Spycatcher trial
By Telegraph Obituaries
5 April 2020 • 6:40pm
Lord Armstrong of Ilminster, who has died aged 93, was Cabinet Secretary from 1979 to 1987 – most of Margaret Thatcher’s years as Prime Minister – and the greatest “Mandarin” of his generation.
Believing strongly in the traditional political detachment and invisibility of the British Civil Service, Armstrong was capable of inspiring the trust of the three very different prime ministers he served closely – Edward Heath, Harold Wilson and Mrs Thatcher.
He was also capable of pursuing, with great subtlety, initiatives of his own. His long commitment to the reconciliation of Britain and the Republic of Ireland bore fruit in the controversial Anglo-Irish Agreement of 1985, on which Mrs Thatcher might not have embarked without his urging….
It was Armstrong’s misfortune, however, to become best-known to the public as the man who admitted, during the “Spycatcher” Trial of 1986 to having been “economical with the truth” in order to protect a confidential government source.
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The trial, an abortive attempt by the British Government to ban the publication in Australia of the memoirs of a former employee of MI5, Peter Wright, brought Armstrong (who had dutifully but unenthusiastically agreed to represent the Government in court) unwelcome fame, and “economical with the truth” entered the popular lexicon.
In fact the phrase was not Armstrong’s own; he was paraphrasing both Edmund Burke and St John Henry Newman who, in his Apologia Per Vita Sua, reminded his readers that the doctrine of “economy or reserve with the truth” was sanctioned by the Fathers of the early Church.
Armstrong, centre, with the Prime Minister Edward Heath inspecting a model of an oil production platform at BP's London headquarters in 1973 Credit: PA
Such self-irony was typical of Armstrong, a man who conformed to the mould of the 19th-century public servant produced by the great Civil Service reforms of the 1850s. Classically educated at Eton and Oxford, disinterested, high-minded, resolutely non-partisan and loyal, he combined impenetrable discretion with a silky intelligence. As his successor, Robin Butler, put it: “He was extremely discreet, and extremely skilful in his discretion.”
Within the Service he was a pillar of bureaucratic orthodoxy who made sure that decisions were arrived at in the right manner. It was he who proposed to Mrs Thatcher, as the Falklands conflict suddenly burst upon the scene in 1982, how she could construct a special committee as the “war cabinet”.
He was not so interested in the modern preoccupation with management, paying less attention to his task as Head of the Home Civil Service, which was added to his Cabinet Secretary role in 1983. He also had a good feel for a “wrong ’un”. In 1983, Mrs Thatcher gave in when he warned her against knighting Jimmy Savile. (Savile eventually got his knighthood only after Armstrong had retired.)
Armstrong was also a man of consensus, a Butskellite and an oiler of wheels. Even his handwriting – a fine italic style – marked out his elegance of mind and expression. He was skilled at statecraft, and at advising prime ministers how to avoid traps. Richard Wilson, Cabinet Secretary a decade after him, described Armstrong as “Thomas Cromwell with a sense of humour”.
To many it seemed extraordinary that Margaret Thatcher should have chosen such an establishment man to be her Cabinet Secretary, particularly as Armstrong had been principal private secretary to Edward Heath. Armstrong, after all, always recalled with pride how, after the conclusion of Britain’s negotiations for EEC entry, he had sat with Heath in 10 Downing Street while the Prime Minister thumped out Beethoven’s Ode to Joy (the European Anthem) on the piano.
It was true that the Eurosceptic Mrs Thatcher and he had very little in common; but he was one of the few in the Civil Service of whom she was in awe. She admired his drafting skill – which led her to call him”the Oracle’ – and his wisdom, though she tried to squash his ambitions as a “sherpa” for international summit meetings, a subject over which she resisted bureaucratic control.
It was Armstrong, in his Cabinet Secretary role as her principal adviser on security and intelligence matters, who guided her through the naming, in 1979, of Sir Anthony Blunt, the former Keeper of the Queen’s Pictures, as the fourth man of the Cambridge pro-Soviet spy ring. He rang Blunt’s solicitor to warn him the announcement was imminent. As a result, Blunt was able to lie low, escaping the attentions of the press; but Armstrong’s action was criticised in Parliament.
During the early 1980s, Armstrong became Mrs Thatcher’s troubleshooter in the handling of the ban on trades unions enforced at GCHQ in Cheltenham. He pushed for a no-strike agreement to a total ban, but Mrs Thatcher insisted on such, and he forcefully executed her will.
In 1983 he had to handle the row within the Civil Service over “whistle-blowers”, following the prosecutions of the civil servants Sarah Tisdall and Clive Ponting under the Official Secrets Act. Tisdall and Ponting had defended their actions in leaking sensitive material on the grounds that they saw it as their duty to expose ministers who had, they thought, lied to Parliament.
As a result, Armstrong drew up a new code of guidance for whistle-blowers in the context of a loyalty code, reminding civil servants that they were servants of the Crown, and “for all practical purposes … of the Government of the day”.
In 1986 Armstrong was a key witness in the Defence Select Committee hearings into the Westland affair, the scandal that led to the resignations of two of Mrs Thatcher’s most senior colleagues, Michael Heseltine and Leon Brittan.
There’s more to read but don’t want to bore y’all
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/obituaries/2020/04/05/lord-armstrong-ilminster-greatest-mandarin-generation-inspired/