RIGHT, NOW, THE, REALLY THE FIRST QUESTION IS IN 1982, IN JULY THE HOME SECRETARY HAD CANCELLED THE HARD ROCK CIVIL DEFENSE EXERCISES, THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND HAD PRODUCED A, WHAT ESSENTIALLY WAS A UNILATERALIST REPORT AGAINST ATOMIC WEAPONS AND CND HAD ORGANIZED A RALLY OF 200,000 PEOPLE AGAINST NUCLEAR WEAPONS. IN JANUARY 1983 YOU TOOK OVER AS MINISTER OF DEFENSE. CAN YOU JUST DESCRIBE FOR US WHAT THE TERRAIN LOOKED LIKE FROM, FROM YOUR PERSPECTIVE AND FROM YOUR POINT OF VIEW.

The mind of the British people on defense matters was focused very clearly on the Falklands War which of course had been brilliantly executed, and in the background CND were organizing their campaign to influence the result of the General Election, which couldn't be long delayed. They'd had a superficial upsurge in interest and coverage. My task was to put their activities back into focus. It didn't take very long because they basically were flying in the face of deeply held British opinion and British experience. As long as they concentrated on Cruise missiles and the Trident programme, they could gain a certain amount of superficial support but the moment that one asked the British people do you want to get rid of your nuclear weapons, do you want to make some one-sided gesture and abandon the defense policies of the last 40 years which have patently worked, there was an overwhelming majority for the Government party.

OK. WHEN WE LAST MET YOU, YOU ACTUALLY SAID THAT IT TOOK YOU ABOUT SIX WEEKS TO, TO TURN THE DEBATE ROUND.

Yes, well I've said the same thing but...

BUT, NO, NO, I'M, I'M COMING ONTO THAT NOW. I MEAN WHAT DID YOU DO TO SHIFT THE DEBATE, WHEN YOU TOOK OVER? CAN YOU JUST DESCRIBE WHAT, YOU KNOW, HOW YOU ...?

The first thing I had to do was to assess the composition of the debate and the composition was really one of two things: the issue of Cruise and Trident, which, upon which CND was concentrating, and the much larger and more fundamental issue about our membership of NATO, about the conventional and nuclear balance of the NATO policies and about Britain's independent deterrent. My task was to remind people about the essential nature of the NATO alliance and its policies and to fit Cruise and Trident into that context. Well it didn't take very long to put forward an articulation which did that. We of course had to complete with the techniques which CND were involved in to get huge media coverage and we simply went out there and did it perhaps even on a bigger scale than they did so that we got the public attention and got the arguments over.

THERE WERE, THERE WERE TWO THINGS THAT YOU DESCRIBED TO US PREVIOUSLY, WHICH YOU, YOU ISOLATED AS BEING THE MOST MEMORABLE WAYS YOU HAD OF SHIFTING THE DEBATE AROUND. THE FIRST ONE, WHICH I'D LIKE YOU TO DESCRIBE FOR US AGAIN, WAS YOU RECEIVED A LETTER I THINK FROM JOAN RUDDUCK.

Yes, of course CND were up to every device and trick known to try and get the debate onto their own territory and it was a matter of hours after I arrived in the Ministry of Defense that I got this letter from the Chairman of the CND, Joan Rudduck, rather kind letter saying congratulations and CND are very flattered that you've arrived. Now we'd like to have a big public debate with you. Well of course the idea was preposterous, the idea that a British Secretary of State, a member of the British cabinet and representative of British Government was going to be matched evenly with a group of people who represented nobody, a mob on the street was unthinkable. But I'm fairly aware that the British like fair play and they wouldn't take easily, particularly to somebody as personable as Joan Rudduck to a dismissive approach by the Secretary of State for Defense. So I anguished over how to actually reject the request. I knew I was going to but the issue was how to do it in the most sympathetic way, and events fells into my hands, as it so happened, in a totally unpredictable way. I had a long-standing engagement at Newbury, alongside Greenham Common, to address a meeting of the Conservative Party and I decided to use that as the occasion on which I would publicly refuse to debate with CND. I had the letter saying no in my pocket and I arrived at the meeting and to that stage it was all planned but what was not planned and what I couldn't have known is that in order to get into the meeting I had to fight my way through a mob of so-called peace-lovers in the middle of a group of British policemen and of course the cameras were there and what they saw was this group of people hoping to talk about peace actually bringing the British Secretary of State for Defense to his knees in a totally unorderly fracas. So the next day the headlines were mine. It was all about what the CND was genuinely comprising and what their attitudes and their tactics were really about. By letter saying no was what everyone would have expected in the circumstances. So it was a lucky break.

AND LATER ON THAT YEAR IN EASTER, AT EASTER YOU, YOU, YOU AGAIN IF YOU LIKE TOOK THE...

The Easter CND demonstrations were bound to be larger and we knew what they were going to be because they of course have to publish all their activities long in advance as they're a voluntary organization. They have to get the troops mobilized so to speak. So I know that they would go through this process of some vast and very telephoto, telephotogenic occasion at Greenham Common and I wondered what to do myself. I couldn't obviously go and I couldn't make some sort of speech in a rather low-key way because the contrasts would be difficult and I would have to be fully aware that the impact of television and what it could do. Well I thought about it and of course it occurred to me exactly what I should do: to go to Berlin and spend some time with the people who really keep the peace - the British troops and talk to them, have a look at the wall. And so I did that on the Friday before the, if I remember maybe the Thursday before the big CND demonstration, and I arrived back at Heathrow whilst the demonstrations were going on but with people having in their mind where I'd come from and did an interview at Heathrow which people were very kind about, which had a very simple message: that I've just come from where the front line is and where the peacekeepers are and those people, the British troops, they're keeping the peace for these people to take advantage of the peace to put forward their own particular and minority political views. So I think that was a, put the thing in the right context. But by this time anyway the debate was swinging very heavily in the direction of the Government. We'd rapidly recovered the situation, which had slipped slightly and understandably whilst the Ministry of Defense was pre-occupied with the Falklands War.

AND YOU'D, LEADING UP TO THE ELECTION WHICH TOOK PLACE IN JUNE 1983 OF THAT YEAR...

Yes.

...YOU, YOU DESCRIBED TO US YOU MADE QUITE A SOPHISTICATED ASSESSMENT OF THE OPINION POLLS AND THE POLLS THAT WERE BEING DONE...

Yes.

...ON THE NEWS. HOW DID YOU, WHAT WAS YOUR ANALYSIS OF THEM AT THAT TIME?

The polls were very interesting on the subject and they showed, as has previously been the case, that when you go through a modernization of your nuclear weapons - in this case Trident to replace Polaris and the Cruise missiles to update the capability of the F-111 bombers when you go through that process people's very natural hesitancy about a specific weapons system creates perhaps even a majority opposition to that weapon system, but of course what it doesn't do, and what the polls clearly reveal, is in anyway shake people's conviction about the need for the nuclear deterrence within the NATO alliance, so what one has to do, and what the polls very clearly reveal one has to do was to make people realize the context in which this modernization was taking place and to remind them of the fundamental policies which was necessary to secure and maintain, and that's what we set out to do. Once one had got that in one's mind one realized that because public opinion is heavily in favor of the policies of this Government and all previous Governments, in other words the NATO alliance and the nuclear and conventional deterrence. Once you understand that and you know that public opinion is heavily in support of that the task of the politician is merely to remind people of what people strongly believe.

RIGHT, NOW, I MEAN SOME OF THE SUPPORT, SOME OF YOUR OPPONENTS, SOME OF THE SUPPORTERS OF CND AND THE PEACE MOVEMENT GENERALLY WOULD SAY THAT WHEN YOU SET UP DS19 IN THE MINISTRY OF DEFENSE IT ACTUALLY WENT BEYOND THE BOUNDS OF DEMOCRATIC DEBATE. WHAT WOULD BE YOUR REPLY TO THAT?

The organization we had in the Ministry of Defense was extremely small. It was a group of civil servants, headed it has to be said by a very good one called John Ledley (?), and we simply had to service the efforts that ministers were making to put over Government policy. It's a perfectly legitimate and normal activity of Whitehall and endless precedence for what we were doing. So we merely got some other good people to help us.

OK, NOW IN 1983 A RATHER LONG PROCESS OF DEBATE WAS GOING TO RESULT EVENTUALLY LATER ON THAT YEAR IN THE DEPLOYMENT, IN ACTUAL, PHYSICALLY BRINGING THE CRUISE IN AND, AND THE PERSHINGS ROUND ABOUT OCTOBER, SEPTEMBER. FROM YOUR RECOLLECTIONS, I MEAN WHAT WERE THE DEBATES THAT WERE GOING ON IN EUROPE AMONGST, YOU KNOW, THE NATO MINISTERS OF DEFENSE BECAUSE CLEARLY THEY WERE ALL EFFECTED IN SOME WAY BY HAVING TO DEAL WITH PUBLIC OPINION?

Well there were different groups of ministers: there were the ministers from the early basing countries, Germany, Italy and ourselves, who had very clearly the problems of taking the lead and holding firm and establishing the right for Government to carry through its policy. There were then the countries like Holland and Belgium which were basing countries but which were not intended to go through the early deployment and then there were other NATO allies who were not going to base at all but who in varying degrees were supportive of the decision to go ahead with the policies. So my preoccupation was with the first group where colleague ministers were going to have to go through exactly the same sort of issues that I was going to do, so we kept very closely in touch and discussed with each other our problems. I think that the German Minister, Dr Werner and myself had the most significant problems because the Italians, whilst very courageously going through with the policy, hadn't got the very substantial public problem to deal with largely because the bases were, were going to be in Sicily.

COULD I INTERRUPT FOR A SECOND JUST TO ASK ONE QUESTION ... THE GERMANS, THE KOHL ADMINISTRATION, DESPITE HAVING WON THE 1983 ELECTION VERY RESOUNDINGLY CONTINUED TO PUT PRESSURE ON THE AMERICANS THROUGHOUT THIS PERIOD TO KEEP SOME KIND OF VERSION OF THE WALK IN THE WOODS FORMULA GOING. HOW IMPORTANT FOR YOU WAS IT THAT THE AMERICAN ADMINISTRATION SHOULD CONTINUE TO BE SEEN TO BE MAKING SOME EFFORT ON THE ARMS CONTROL SIDE THROUGHOUT THAT PERIOD LEADING UP TO DEPLOYMENT?

Well the whole thrust of the INF decision was a twin-track decision that we didn't accept advice of the Soviet Union to put forward its SS-20 missiles without effective answer from the west but we always said to the Soviet Union if you take them away we won't produce the Pershing II and the Cruise missiles which are our equivalent and that was the whole thrust of NATO policy and rightly so, because that we were trying to maintain if you like a balance of deterrence. We had it until the Soviets broke it, so if we can persuade them to go back to the earlier position there was no need for us to take modernizing decisions of the sort that we did. I think all of us who were involved in the politics of it would have far preferred to have reached what now appears to have been reached, the INF accord before we actually carried through the basing decision in 1983. That would have been much better, very important, very exciting, although in historic terms difficult to achieve aspect of the original decision.

RIGHT, NOW, I MEAN YOU'VE SAID THAT CND MORE OR LESS HAS BEEN DEFEATED AND YOU, YOU KNOW, SAID IT TOOK SIX WEEK OR THREE MONTHS OR WHATEVER AND SO ON AND MOST PEOPLE NOW ARE TRYING TO CLAIM THAT IN FACT THEY'VE SUFFERED A CRASHING DEFEAT BUT AS... A NUCLEAR PLANNING GROUP MEETING IS TAKING PLACE AT MONTEREY THIS WEEK, AND I MEAN PEOPLE HAVE MORE OR LESS SAID TO US LOOK, WHATEVER THEY DECIDE IT'S GOING TO BE NEEDED OVER THE NEXT TWO OR THREE YEARS. AT THE BACK OF THEIR MINDS IS ALWAYS GOING TO BE DO WE REALLY NEED TO STIR UP PUBLIC OPINION AGAIN. DO YOU THINK THAT THE WHOLE, THE DEBATE ABOUT THE INF MISSILES AND THE EXTENT TO WHICH IT BECAME QUITE A PUBLIC DEBATE REALLY MARKED A WATERSHED IN WHAT NATO CAN ACTUALLY DO NOW AND WHAT IT HAS TO WORRY ABOUT?

No, no, nor should it. The protest, I beg your pardon... No, nor should it. The protest groups are not new. There were people saying the same things with the same devastating consequences in the 1930s, long before nuclear weapons had ever been created. It's very interesting to look at the marches and the pictures of them. You can see they have a remarkable similarity to the sort of protest marches of the '60s and the '80s. The 1960s with the modernization at that time produced exactly the same sort of outcry from the left and it did again in the '80s and so it will whenever you try to take the difficult defense decisions because there is a constituency on the left which is fundamentally against the defense policies which people in the Conservative Party believe to be absolutely essential. So one must have to face that as an actor in politics and have the courage to go through with what you believe to be right. There will be need for more modernization programmes of different weapon systems, including the nuclear ones. We have to go through that because that is the essential ingredient of our defense and therefore our peace.

FOLLOWING ON FROM THAT, I MEAN IN TERMS OF THE INF TREATY THAT WE, MOST PEOPLE NOW THINK PROBABLY WILL BE SIGNED... WILL PROBABLY BE RATIFIED. WE WERE IN GERMANY FILMING LAST WEEK AND, I MEAN IT SEEMS QUITE A STRONG CURRENT OF OPINION IN THE CHRISTIAN DEMOCRATIC UNION THAT, THAT FIRST OF ALL GERMANY HAS NOW BEEN ISOLATED SOMEWHAT AND IN FACT THAT THE INF DEAL REPRESENTS A WITHDRAWAL, SIGNIFICANT SHIFT IN THE AMERICAN GUARANTEE, WHICH IS WHAT THE DEBATE WAS ABOUT IN THE FIRST PLACE. I MEAN HOW, WHAT WOULD YOU SAY TO THE CRITICS OF THIS TREATY INSIDE THE CDU IN GERMANY?

That they are I think taking too pessimistic a view. The American commitment to Europe, which of course I strongly welcome and support, consists in the first and in the main analysis with the three hundred thousand troops that are stationed here. That is the thing that binds them to us. And it's only if you see them going and/or so significantly reduced as to reduce its significance, that you should worry about the American commitment here. I cannot conceive of an American president standing apart from a European conflagration in which hundreds of thousands of Americans and their families were abandoned and isolated. I just don't see it. So that's the real rock. Now having said that, you have got to have flexible response. You have to move through the different weapon systems as a, as a hypothesis and the Soviet Union has to believe you have the capability to do it so that they recognize the nature and coherence of deterrence. Now you don't need Cruise missiles to do that. You have a range of other medium-range type weapon systems you have the F-111 bombers, you have the air and sea-launch Cruise missiles, you have tornadoes which are nuclear capable and so there is within the alliance a range of weapon systems which separate the battlefield nuclear from the strategic nuclear.

OK. ONE FINAL QUESTION AND THAT IS DO YOU, DO YOU THINK OR WOULD YOU SAY THAT ONE OF THE PROBLEMS IF YOU LIKE WITH THE DEBATE ABOUT MODERNIZATION IN THE LATE '70S AND EARLY '80S WAS ACTUALLY THE FACT THAT THERE HADN'T BEEN A DEBATE ABOUT WHAT THE ALLIANCE WAS DOING AND WHAT, WHAT ITS TACTICS WERE IN, IN THE EARLY '60S AND '70S?

No but there was. There was a debate about all these things. There's been debates about the NATO alliance all the way through and people like Gaitskill were fighting a huge battle at his time and Wilson had to go through the sort of the, the, the, the activities you would do on the left in order to make some sort of sane policy possible and so all of that was going on in an earlier generation to preserve Britain's nuclear capability. So it, it's not new. The particular weapon systems have got different names but the arguments are not different.

CAN I ASK YOU ONE FINAL QUESTION, MR. HESELTINE, AND IT IS THIS REALLY, WE'RE ALL AWARE THAT THERE ARE THE, AS YOU CALL THEM, HYPOTHESIS, THE DOCTRINE FOR EXAMPLE OF FLEXIBLE RESPONSE, HOW RELIGIOUSLY WOULD YOU SAY THAT THE POLITICAL LEADERS TAKE DOCTRINES LIKE FLEXIBLE RESPONSE OR DO THEY REGARD FUNDAMENTAL POLITICAL TRUST BETWEEN THE ALLIES AS BEING FAR MORE IMPORTANT?

I think that it's often necessary to create a phrase to articulate a set of options which are much more fluid but the words flexible response actually mean more or less whatever you want them to mean. It means that you have the ability to do flexibly whatever you want to do by way of response. Well, you can't have it any much more open than that. But that's a good thing. That's, one shouldn't in any way dismiss that because as the whole purpose of the defense policies of the West is deterrence, you're not envisaging the idea you're going to use any of these weapon systems. What you're doing is building up such an armory of weapon systems that your opponents would never risk attack. We're not going to attack anyone. We must be sure they never dare take the risk and we believe that's necessary because we've seen through hundreds of years when the Soviet Union or the Russians have seen low-risk opportunities for gain, they've taken those opportunities. Now made the low-risk option unthinkable. We've...it doesn't exist. There's only a dramatic and high-risk option and the price is too high and the risks too large and we are at peace.