Letter to Rt Hon Dr David Owen MP from
Sir Robin Butler KCB CVO, Secretary of the Cabinet and Head of
the Home Civil Service
Thank you for your letter of 10 May enclosing
some chapters of your autobiography. These clearly need to be
very carefully checked and I have put that in hand. I will try
to meet your deadline but it is a tight one and I have to ask
you—especially following my recent experience with Bernard
Ingham!—not to give this section to the printers until you
have had my comments on the security aspects.
You will of course know that the Radcliffe Report
recommended that all memoirs by former Ministers should be shown
to me so that I can advise whether they comply with the guidelines
set out in the 1974 Radcliffe Report, namely that they do not:
(a) contravene the requirements of national
security;
(b) injure the country's international relations;
or
(c) undermine confidence in relationships
within Government.
I hope that you will be willing to let me see
the other sections of your book which cover your time as a Minister.
I believe that, contrary to the constant dripping away fostered
by the media, it is important that Ministerial memoirs uphold
the Radcliffe principles but, as other memoirs writers will confirm,
I do try to comment in a constructive, and not a destructive,
way.
14 May 1991
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