Robert Armstrong

Abstract

Joe Haines, who was press secretary to Harold Wilson in the 1970s, tells the story of Robert Armstrong’s part in the hand-over of office in March 1974. As principal private secretary to the prime minister it fell to him to make the arrangements for the defeated Conservative PM, Edward Heath, to go to Buckingham Palace to resign and for the Leader of the Opposition to see the Queen to ‘kiss hands’. Armstrong travelled with Heath to the Palace and stayed on there to greet Wilson. The Labour leader’s political aides, Marcia Williams, Haines, and Bernard Donoughue, decided to get one over on the civil service from the very start. As they waited in the Palace courtyard for Wilson to emerge as prime minister, Marcia Williams told Haines: ‘Get into his official car so that Armstrong can’t travel back to Number 10 with him.’ It would be a symbolic gesture, Wilson’s advisers reckoned, but important in asserting their rights against the mandarins. The new premier swept out and Haines jumped into the limousine. However, he discovered that ‘there were few men wiser in anticipating trouble than [Robert Armstrong]. He had a spare car waiting.’ The Labour team arrived in Downing Street a few minutes later. Wilson waved to the cheering crowd, told the TV cameras that he had a job to do and walked immediately into Number 10. The first person to greet him was Robert Armstrong, who had gone in through the back door before Wilson could get in at the front. As is the convention, he led the civil service staff and the private secretaries who had been working until a few hours before for the outgoing prime minister in a round of polite applause for their new political boss, and was soon deep in conversation with Wilson, briefing him on the urgent issues he faced. That, says Haines, is ‘style with a menace’.¹