Campbell - Diaries Volume One: Prelude to Power

Volume 1
PRELUDE TO POWER
19941997

Edited by
ALASTAIR CAMPBELL
and
BILL HAGERTY

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Published by Hutchinson 2010

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Copyright Alastair Campbell 2010

Alastair Campbell has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work

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Endpaper photographs: Election Campaign Meeting, Manifesto Launch, Speech Writing on Bus copyright Tom Stoddart Archive/Getty Images; Newspaper Headlines copyright Johnny Eggitt/AFP/Getty Images; Blair with Members of the Shadow Cabinet copyright Sean Dempsey/PA Photos; Blair at 1994 Labour Party Conference copyright Malcolm Croft/PA Photos; all other images from authors private collection.

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In memory of Richard Stott, friend and editor

Sadly, the first person whose role in this book I would like to acknowledge is not here to read it, familiar though he was with every word that follows. In my journalism days, Richard Stott was my editor both at the Daily Mirror and at Today newspaper, and the obvious choice to be the editor of my diaries. He brought to that task the same enthusiasm, professionalism and attention to detail that made him an outstanding newspaper editor. It was a joy to work with him, first as we started to go through the whole diaries, then, after I decided to publish The Blair Years to coincide with Tony Blair leaving office, as we sought to reduce a vast body of words into a single volume of extracts. For much of the time we worked together, Richard was seriously ill with pancreatic cancer, but not even that would prevent him playing his full part. His final contribution was the so-called running feet, the little line at the bottom of each page which sets out the date and gives a flavour of what the page is about, a device also used in Prelude to Power. Im very happy with the running feet, he told me from his hospital bed. I just wish I could get my own bloody feet to run.

By the time The Blair Years was published, he had been sent home to die. I was both humbled and deeply moved when I took the finished product to him, at his home in Kingston-upon-Thames, and I had rarely seen him so proud, sitting up in bed looking at our handiwork. I think both of us knew, as did Richards loving wife Penny, that it might be our last meeting, and so it turned out to be. He died shortly after the book was published. He was a great friend and a superb editor, and I will never forget the role he played in my life, nor the contribution he made to this and future volumes.

Bill Hagerty was the first person I asked to take over, and I was delighted that he agreed to do so. He too was a close friend of Richard, who spoke very movingly at his funeral, and had also been my boss before I made the switch from journalism to politics. He shares Richards interest in, and passion for, Labour politics, and has developed the same enthusiasm for the task in hand. Richard was a hard act to follow, but I could not have asked for anyone better to take up the reins when he did.

Mark Bennett has been a tremendous support to me, starting in Downing Street, from where he resigned his civil service position to work on the 2001 election campaign for Labour. Since then he has combined his own career as a Labour politician with continued work for me, including the transcription of my diaries and tireless work at each stage of the editing process.

My literary agent Ed Victor has been a constant source of support and good counsel as I have contrived to become what he calls my most complicated client. I owe thanks to him, to his PA Linda Van, and to his excellent team.

Both through my diaries and the two novels I have published, I have come to appreciate the professionalism and kindness of many people at Random House. I would like to thank Gail Rebuck, Susan Sandon, Caroline Gascoigne, Joanna Taylor, Charlotte Bush and her team of spin doctors, Martin Soames for his legal advice, Tess Callaway, David Milner, Alison Tullett, Vicki Robinson, Helen Judd, Sue Cavanagh, and Jeanette Slinger in reception for always ensuring one of my books is at the front of the display cabinet downstairs at least when I am visiting the building.

I want to thank Tony Blair for giving me the opportunity he did, and thank the many friends and colleagues who have helped me in good times and bad.

Finally, thanks to my family: my mother Betty, still going strong and thanking me for every day I am not in the news, my brothers Donald and Graeme, my sister Liz, and my common-law mother-in-law Audrey Millar; but more than anyone I owe thanks to our wonderful children Rory, Calum and Grace, and to Fiona, who not only had to live through it all but has had to read it all several times too.

Is it really sixteen years since John Smith died, thirteen years since Tony Blair became prime minister, and three years since he left office, giving way to Gordon Brown?

I have a fairly vivid recollection of those three momentous days, each of them a turning point in British political history. But, perhaps especially when leading the kind of frenetic, full-on existence that modern politics has become, the memory can hold only so much. It is perhaps one of the reasons I keep a diary. Even for me, the author of these diaries and centrally involved as both witness and participant in the events they record, transcribing them was something of a voyage of discovery. Scenes described in sometimes intimate detail and often emotional mood at the end of a day came back to me, often differently from how I had remembered them. Some, indeed, I had completely forgotten. The memory can and does play tricks. My diary is as close as I will get to a full and accurate, if inevitably also partial and personal, account of a life lived witnessing history in the making.