Julian Haviland, who has died aged 93, was a political editor in television and newspapers during a period in British life that encompassed the winter of discontent, the election of Margaret Thatcher as the country’s first female prime minister and the 1980s miners’ strike.
Shortly before Thatcher’s election victory, in the spring of 1979 Haviland, as ITN political editor, interviewed the Conservative leader for ITV’s News at Ten. When he pressed her to give details of possible Tory tax cuts, she produced a £1 note and told him: “At the moment, the money is taken away from you – you have no choice. It goes to the government. Supposing we give it to you in the pay packet, because we believe it belongs to you – you will have an extra £1 or more in that pay packet. You can choose what you do with that.” The television image was a powerful boost to her PR campaign.
Haviland had a reputation for being unwaveringly courteous and polite, as well as intelligent and thoughtful – but he could cut to the chase with any issue. The Labour MP Roy Hattersley, in lamenting an increasing trend for “aggressive” interviewing, wrote in the Times in 1993: “What politicians most fear is the brief question followed by incredulous silence. Mr Julian Haviland, formerly of ITN, used regularly to confound me by asking, ‘Why?’ or ‘How?’. As I wrestled to construct an answer, I longed for Robin Day’s subsidiary clauses, which, as they urged me to be frank, and impressed me with the importance of the question, gave me time to think.”
Another of Haviland’s endearing qualities, a willingness to apologise, served him well when his habit of running late put the schedules of ITV news programmes in jeopardy.
One of those occasions was when James Callaghan’s Labour government faced a no-confidence vote in 1979 as strikes spread across the country and rubbish piled up after it imposed a 5% limit on public sector pay rises. News at Ten’s running order had to be amended when Haviland failed to arrive at the studio from the Commons on time.
Sometimes, the delay was through his eagerness not to miss the latest political whisperings as he walked the corridors of parliament – he would always stop to speak to MPs in the hope of garnering an exclusive titbit or something greater.
David Rose, who worked alongside him as a political correspondent at ITN in the 70s, attested to the respect he was accorded by politicians. “I remember walking through the Palace of Westminster with Julian one morning,” Rose told Richard Lindley, author of the 2005 book And Finally...? The News from ITN. “Three cabinet ministers, Lord Carrington, Jim Prior and Francis Pym, all in turn stopped to talk to him – they took the initiative.”
It was this standing in the eyes of both parliamentarians and colleagues that led the Times to offer Haviland its political editorship in 1981. His return to newspapers had him observing the early days of Thatcher’s government, from recession to battles with the unions culminating in the 1984-85 miners’ strike – as well as strife with her own MPs. He was the first journalist to be phoned by Ian Gilmour following the lord privy seal’s sacking in 1981.
Julian was born in Iver Heath, Buckinghamshire, to Helen (nee Fergusson) and Leonard Haviland, an army major in the 6th Duke of Connaught’s Own Lancers and a military secretary to the governor general of New Zealand.
He went to Eton, then studied English and classics at Magdalene College, Cambridge, before starting his career as a reporter on the Surrey Advertiser. His experience was widened by working on the Johannesburg Star in South Africa, where he learned to speak Afrikaans. In 1959, he returned to Britain as a subeditor on the Daily Telegraph, then a reporter on the London Evening Standard.
He joined ITN in 1961 as a general reporter and occasional newscaster. During his period as a political correspondent (1965-75) and political editor (1975-81), he covered prime ministerial crises faced by Harold Wilson, with the devaluation of the pound, and Edward Heath, who imposed a three-day working week to conserve energy during industrial action by miners and railway workers. He was also the first journalist to interview Thatcher as Conservative party leader.
On the day of George Brown’s resignation from the Labour party in 1976, Haviland found the peer in a Lords bar and accompanied him across the road to ITN’s outside broadcast van for an interview. Walking back to parliament, Brown tripped on the pavement and fell into the gutter. Haviland and a colleague, ITN’s political correspondent Glyn Mathias, helped him up – but not before newspaper photographers had captured the incident. “ITN decided not to use any of the interview with Brown on that night’s News at Ten,” recalled Mathias. “He was too demonstrably drunk.”
Haviland’s decision to leave the Times after five years (1981-86) was heavily influenced by Rupert Murdoch’s sacking of print workers when the News International organisation moved from Fleet Street to Wapping in east London.
Although from a conservative background, his own views were liberal – and such was his reputation for impartiality that all three main political parties asked him to be their press secretary. Instead, aged 55, he retired, moving eight years later to Strath Tummel, in the Scottish Highlands.
His interest in politics remained undimmed as he wrote the books Take Care, Mr Baker! The Advice on Education Reform Which the Government Collected But Concealed (1988) and Talking Heads: Planning Human Resource Development (1989), as well as letters to the Times.
Haviland is survived by his wife, Caroline Barbour, whom he married in 1959, and their three sons, Peter, Charles and Richard.
• Julian Arthur Charles Haviland, political journalist, born 8 June 1930; died 11 August 2023
