Thank you, Martin Kettle, for your thoughtful and incisive piece on Nigel Lawson’s legacy (A committed unbeliever: Nigel Lawson left the Tory party a complex, divisive legacy, 5 April). I was his private secretary in the early days of the Thatcher government, when he was financial secretary to the Treasury.
Although I disagree with many of the positions that Lawson subsequently espoused – especially on Europe and climate change scepticism – he was an immensely rewarding person to work for. He was a real slave driver and could be infuriating at times (not least to senior ministerial colleagues). But this was always for good reason. He worked very hard and was full of ideas, good at cultivating the best and brightest of officials, and expert at spotting dubious groupthink. He was also kind and often very funny.
What genuinely puzzled me was his transition from being pro-European to an ardent Brexiter. We can only guess at what was behind this, but Lawson’s early engagement with European ministerial colleagues can’t have helped. He regularly attended European budget ministers’ meetings, a truly ghastly event that often went on way into the night and showed member states’ protectionism at its worst. He was always in a bad mood when he got back. But the sense of fun was always there, especially when he started ridiculing his more absurd sparring partners.
Stephen Locke
Private secretary to Nigel Lawson, 1979-81
When someone like Nigel Lawson dies, inevitably people remember and celebrate what they regard as good things about their life. Without wishing to detract in any way from the grief that will be felt by those who loved and admired him, reference to his record, such as cutting a tax in every budget, evoked a different but equally strong reaction for me.
Missing from that record is any acknowledgment that during the Lawson/Thatcher years, Britain received a huge windfall bounty from North Sea oil such as no previous chancellor had enjoyed, and which created the headroom for such generosity to be displayed.
Other countries that benefited similarly, such as Norway, used that freedom to establish sovereign wealth funds that continue to benefit their people to this day. The Tory party, then as now, made a different choice, the consequences of which still afflict us.
Margaret Beckett MP
Labour, Derby South
Martin Kettle says that contemporary Conservatives are no longer the stupid party, which was how John Stuart Mill described them. But Mill clarified his claim further: “I never meant to say that the Conservatives are generally stupid. I meant to say that stupid people are generally Conservative. I believe that is so obviously and universally admitted a principle that I hardly think that any gentleman will deny it.” I think that Mill’s conclusion still stands.
Mark Hebert
Needingworth, Cambridgeshire
I used to think being middle class meant shopping at Marks & Spencer instead of from a Littlewoods catalogue; now I see it means being from “a household that supported a nanny, cook and parlourmaid” (Nigel Lawson obituary, 4 April).
Valerie Gidlow
Faversham, Kent
I always thought it appropriate that an anagram of Nigel Lawson is “we all sign on”.
Greg Quiery
Liverpool
