Eight Miles High by James Philip

Author:James Philip [Philip, James]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2019-10-27T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 35

Friday 10th February 1967

Conference Room, USS United States, San Francisco Bay

Sir Roy Jenkins, the United Kingdom’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations (Designate) had – somewhat reluctantly, because he was not really a morning person – allowed his twenty-nine-year-old Appointments Secretary, the man who was effectively his day-to-day chief of staff, to schedule a breakfast meeting with his new United States counterpart, George Bush.

This had meant rising at dawn for the irksome car ride through San Francisco, across the Bay Bridge and a thankfully short boat trip, across grey, ominously choppy waters to the conference venue, the USS United States. Given that his lord and master, Tom Harding-Grayson had kept him up half the night; he was not in the best of humours as the US Navy barge came alongside the great liner that dull morning.

“I apologise if I was a bit testy earlier,” he confessed to his immensely competent, and even after only a few weeks acquaintance, utterly irreplaceable Appointments Secretary.

“I hardly noticed, Sir Roy,” the younger man smiled.

Robin Butler was one of Sir Henry Tomlinson’s – the Cabinet Secretary and Head of the Home Civil Service’s - protégés. Until last summer he had been the most youthful Permanent Secretary in the land, working with the marvellously ebullient and debonair Minister of Sport, the former England cricket captain Edward ‘Ted’ Dexter. The two men had become the firmest of friends and it had seemed natural, when Dexter announced he planned – with the full support of the Prime Minister - to take a sabbatical from government, and tour with the England XI in South Africa that winter, that Butler should move on to better, greater things.

Everybody agreed that Butler had done an exemplary job guiding his ‘first minister’ through his relatively stormy tenure at ‘Sport’. Ministers in their first post, regardless of their familiarity or otherwise with their departmental portfolio were, generally speaking, accidents waiting to happen; thus, it paid to keep a very attentive and protective eye on them until they had shown that they were up to the job.

The other thing everybody agreed was that, even if Ted Dexter had not set houses afire, and hardly been sure-footed, especially in his first year in the job, the successful organisation of the 1966 Soccer World Cup in England had been a triumph of political will, and behind the scenes one of exceptional organisational prowess. Naturally, Dexter had taken most of the public kudos but the Home Civil Service knew exactly who had been the power behind the throne; and recognised a coming man when it saw him!

Robin Butler, who had joined the Treasury in 1961, was that most ‘civil’ of civil servants – the unflappable, effortlessly competent, chivalric product of Harrow School, where it went without saying he had been Head Boy, and a graduate of University College, Oxford where he had achieved a double first and in his spare time twice won a Rugby Blue – had leapt at the chance to work with, and for Dexter.

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