Peter Brooke was Westminster’s Renaissance man. In the course of an extraordinary political career, he filled a multitude of roles with a style and gravitas that marked him out as a true gentleman and a consummate negotiator.
Serving in the cabinet under Margaret Thatcher and then John Major, Brooke was chair of the Conservative Party, secretary of state for Northern Ireland, and then national heritage secretary. He was a respected Conservative parliamentarian for 38 years, as the MP for the Cities of London and Westminster and then as a life peer in the House of Lords, retiring in 2015 (under the provisions of the House of Lords Reform Act 2014).
In a politician’s life, there is always the faux pas waiting to trip you up – and for which you are always likely to be remembered. So it was for Peter Brooke.
In January 1992, while serving as Northern Ireland secretary, Brooke appeared on the well-known Irish chat show The Late Late Show. As Gyles Brandreth (the MP for the City of Chester from 1992-97) wrote in his Westminster diaries, Breaking the Code: “Our hapless secretary of state appeared on the show last Friday and was persuaded to sing solo, giving us a couple of verses of that old saloon-bar stand-by “Oh My Darling Clementine” – doing so within a few hours of seven Protestant construction workers being killed in an IRA bomb attack in Co Tyrone. I may be new to this game, but I think even I would not have landed myself in that one.”
Unionists were outraged at an act that seemed to demonstrate that Brooke was out of touch with the grief of the community, and instantly requested his resignation. The incident was a factor in Brooke being dropped from his position in the reshuffle that followed the general election in April that year.
Peter Leonard Brooke was born in London on 3 March 1934, the son of Henry Brooke, Baron Brooke of Cumnor, a former home secretary, and his wife Barbara (Baroness Brooke of Ystradfellte) – an uncommon example of a married couple in which each partner held a life peerage in their own right. He was educated at Marlborough, and at Balliol College, Oxford (where he was president of the union), before going on to Harvard Business School where he held a Commonwealth Fund fellowship.
After his MBA, Brooke spent a further year at the IMD graduate school in Lausanne before joining Spencer Stuart & Associates, in 1961, as a management consultant and “headhunter” working in London, New York and Brussels. He was made worldwide chair in 1974, before leaving to join the first Thatcher administration in 1979 as an assistant government whip.
Brooke’s political career had actually started in October 1974 when he unsuccessfully challenged Neil Kinnock in the Labour stronghold of Bedwellty. However, in February 1977, in a by-election held as a result of Christopher Tugendhat’s appointment to the European Commission, he was elected the MP for the rather safer seat of the Cities of London and Westminster.
Having served two years in the Whips’ Office, Brooke was appointed a lord commissioner of the Treasury in 1981, moving to the Department of Education and Science as parliamentary under secretary of state after the 1983 general election, and then serving as a minister of state at the Treasury from 1985-87. After the 1987 general election, he succeeded Norman Tebbit to become chair of the Conservative Party, also remaining at the Treasury as paymaster general.
His most prominent promotion was yet to come, when he joined the cabinet, after the reshuffle, at the end of the 1989 parliamentary year. Writing in her memoir The Downing Street Years, Thatcher explained her thoughts on her decision to “remove” two of her cabinet members – Paul Channon and John Moore – and to appoint Tony Newton and Peter Brooke instead: “I also brought into the Cabinet Peter Brooke, who had been a much loved and utterly dependable Party chair. He wanted to be Ulster secretary and I gave him the job.”
She later elaborated: “I had moved Peter Brooke to become Northern Ireland secretary in the reshuffle of July 1989. Peter’s family connections with the province and his deep interest in Ulster affairs made him seem an ideal choice. His unflappable good humour also meant that no one would be better suited for trying to bring the parties of Northern Ireland together for talks. Soon after his appointment I authorised him to do so; these talks were still continuing at the time I left office.”
The IRA’s murderous campaign continued even in London, and after a car bomb had killed Ian Gow (Thatcher’s former parliamentary private secretary) in his Eastbourne constituency in July 1989, Brooke was afforded a 24-hour armed police protection team, making him probably the best-protected politician at the time apart from the prime minister. His negotiating skills were needed more than ever before.
After leaving the cabinet in April 1992, he stood in the election for the 155th speaker of the House of Commons. By tradition, the opposition is usually favoured to nominate one of its own for the chair – in this case, the Labour MP for West Bromwich, Betty Boothroyd. The Commons voted 372 for Boothroyd, 238 for Brooke, with numerous Conservative MPs voting against Brooke on the grounds that he had too recently been a member of the cabinet. In reality, Boothroyd’s charm and personality probably won the day, and she became the first female speaker.
Brooke returned to the back benches, but not for long. A sensational story in The Sun in July that year, concerning the private life of the secretary of state for national heritage, David Mellor, resulted in Mellor’s resignation after parliament was recalled in September.
With his calm nature and added gravitas, Brooke was undoubtedly the perfect replacement. John Major (with a sterling crisis about to erupt) considered him an excellent appointment. Once more back in the cabinet, this time as heritage secretary, a role he held until July 1994, Brooke oversaw the period that followed the establishment of the Press Complaints Commission in response to Sir David Calcutt’s inquiry into privacy and media intrusion.
Only in November 2012 was a satisfactory conclusion reached in the Leveson Inquiry, recommending a new independent body be set up. Brooke also oversaw the restoration of Windsor Castle following the fire that gutted the state apartments in 1992.
Once again on the back benches, Brooke had more time for his constituency in Westminster and the local Conservative Association, as well as more time to make his renowned after-dinner speeches at a whole host of City of London livery functions. He was often to be seen in the House of Commons with John Major while the latter was still prime minister, talking in an animated fashion about one of their favourite subjects, cricket – of which his encyclopaedic knowledge was renowned.
After he stepped down as an MP in 2001, his successor, Mark Field, recalled an amusing story Brooke had related while showing him around the Commons chamber one evening after the House had risen. “We sit on this side, and the opposition sit on that side. Remember Churchill’s dictum: ‘Never confuse the opposition with the enemy. The opposition are the members of parliament sitting on the benches facing you. The enemy are the members of parliament sitting on the benches behind you.’”
Brooke was made a life peer, as Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville, in July 2001, hand went on to hold various select-committee appointments in the House of Lords between 2002 and 2015. He was also chair of the Association of Conservative Peers.
Brooke retired on 16 September 2015. His valedictory speech was followed by tributes from many of his fellow peers. Lord Crickhowell’s “summing up” conveyed the sentiments most aptly: “I feel that I am not alone in feeling immensely sad that our noble friend is leaving after such long and distinguished service in both houses during 10 parliaments. And making a contribution, not just to politics but, among other things, to the national heritage, the arts, historic churches, charities, and, of course, to cricket.
“The tributes paid to him from all parts of the House yesterday, after the statement on Northern Ireland, were an indication of the value of his work there, as secretary of state, at a most difficult time. We are to be deprived of his wisdom but, perhaps even more, we will miss his wit and those historic and political anecdotes, of which he seemed to have a perfect recall and an endless supply.”
Peter Brooke, politician and former secretary of state, born 3 March 1934, died 13 May 2023
