Lord Chris Patten
Today, he divides his time between the House of Lords and being
chancellor of Oxford and Newcastle universities. Natalie Hoare talks to
him about his life and his new book, What Next? Surviving the
Twenty-first Century.
I was born in Thornton Cleveleys in Lancashire because my mother had gone there during the Second World War while my father was serving in the Middle East. She moved from Exeter, which had suffered from what they call the Baedeker raids – a good geographer’s expression [a 1942 German bombing campaign that targeted picturesque English cities selected from the Baedeker travel guide to Britain].
My parents weren’t EVEN remotely political: they voted Conservative, but we never talked about politics at home. And I took no part in political activities at university. I acted, I wrote and edited a satirical magazine called Mesopotamia, which was started by the generation that then went on to start Private Eye, I played quite a lot of sport, did a bit of work (but not too much) and got a scholarship to go off travelling around the USA.
Getting involved in politics was a decision that sort of crept up on me. Most of the things that have happened to me since have rarely been the result of a deliberate career choice. According to John Major, I would have been chancellor of the exchequer in 1992, but I lost my constituency, which was a bit of a blow. Who knows whether I would have been swept away in the ERM debacle [the 1992 withdrawal of the UK from the European Exchange Rate Mechanism].
Between 1989 and 1990, I was the environment secretary. The most tiresome part of the job was that I was also responsible for local government finance and had the horrible task of introducing the community charge, or poll tax, as it was called. Far cleverer people than me invented the horrors of the poll tax, but I had the job of implementing it.
I was the last governor of Hong Kong. The handover ceremony itself was tough emotionally, not just because of the historical importance of the occasion – I was all too aware that the whole world was watching – but because I was leaving behind a lot of friends and people with whom I liked working and living. It was a big moment, not just for Britain, ending a period of our history, but I think other people who lived in countries with empires identified with it as well. As it turned out, it went extraordinarily smoothly, but it could quite easily have been a shambles.
Being, in effect, the mayor of a great Asian city made me realise more clearly why I believed some of the things I believe passionately as a politician. It made me more convinced about the efficacy of markets and market economics, and of the relationship between political and economic freedoms. It was also a reminder of how a liberal society involves not just the right to vote, but political structures as well: free speech, clean civil service, good policing, freedom of association and religion – those are all parts of a plural society.
I’ve done a lot of travelling. In my final year as European commissioner, I flew in 185 planes. I was responsible for external relations and our bilateral relationship with countries all around the world in a role that was part diplomat, part politician and part manager of a huge €6billion aid programme. I believe passionately In the importance of geography in our history. How could you not? You can’t talk about any issue – from globalisation and climate change to the increasing impact of the shortage or maldistribution of resources on security – without having an understanding of geography. I use geography as a prism for some of my views, which are based on what I know about history.
I don’t believe that geography is destiny. Undoubtedly, some people living near the equator have a more difficult time, but it’s invariably governments and the way that they have chosen to run their societies that stop them making a recovery from their difficult geographical circumstances. Paul Collier, the Oxford development economist, has pointed out that three quarters of the world’s poorest people live in societies that are, at present, suffering from or are recovering from civil conflict. So to have 700 or 800 million people who are living in very poor societies because of the struggle for resources in their own countries, due to the activities of war lords or as a consequence of government breakdown is, I think, a major reason for global poverty.
Above all, my book is about the dark side of globalisation, the inadequacy of some of the structures that were set up 50 years ago to deal with that and the shift in the global balance of power in trying to cope with those problems. But, at the end of the day, I don’t think that any of the problems are insoluble. And provided nation states learn to cooperate more effectively, and provided that we don’t abandon our reason, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t muddle our way through.
Curriculum vitae
1944 Born in Thornton Clevely, Lancashire
1959–62 Read modern history at Balliol College, Oxford
1979–92 MP for Bath
1985–86 Minister of State, Department of Education and Science
1986–89 Minister for Overseas Development
1989–90 Secretary of State for the Environment
1990–92 Chairman of the Conservative Party
1992–97 Governor of Hong Kong
1999–2004 Member of the European Commission, External Relations
1999–Present Chancellor of Newcastle University
2003–Present Chancellor of the University of Oxford
2005 Elevated to the peerage, becoming Lord Patten of Barnes
I was born in Thornton Cleveleys in Lancashire because my mother had gone there during the Second World War while my father was serving in the Middle East. She moved from Exeter, which had suffered from what they call the Baedeker raids – a good geographer’s expression [a 1942 German bombing campaign that targeted picturesque English cities selected from the Baedeker travel guide to Britain].
My parents weren’t EVEN remotely political: they voted Conservative, but we never talked about politics at home. And I took no part in political activities at university. I acted, I wrote and edited a satirical magazine called Mesopotamia, which was started by the generation that then went on to start Private Eye, I played quite a lot of sport, did a bit of work (but not too much) and got a scholarship to go off travelling around the USA.
Getting involved in politics was a decision that sort of crept up on me. Most of the things that have happened to me since have rarely been the result of a deliberate career choice. According to John Major, I would have been chancellor of the exchequer in 1992, but I lost my constituency, which was a bit of a blow. Who knows whether I would have been swept away in the ERM debacle [the 1992 withdrawal of the UK from the European Exchange Rate Mechanism].
Between 1989 and 1990, I was the environment secretary. The most tiresome part of the job was that I was also responsible for local government finance and had the horrible task of introducing the community charge, or poll tax, as it was called. Far cleverer people than me invented the horrors of the poll tax, but I had the job of implementing it.
I was the last governor of Hong Kong. The handover ceremony itself was tough emotionally, not just because of the historical importance of the occasion – I was all too aware that the whole world was watching – but because I was leaving behind a lot of friends and people with whom I liked working and living. It was a big moment, not just for Britain, ending a period of our history, but I think other people who lived in countries with empires identified with it as well. As it turned out, it went extraordinarily smoothly, but it could quite easily have been a shambles.
Being, in effect, the mayor of a great Asian city made me realise more clearly why I believed some of the things I believe passionately as a politician. It made me more convinced about the efficacy of markets and market economics, and of the relationship between political and economic freedoms. It was also a reminder of how a liberal society involves not just the right to vote, but political structures as well: free speech, clean civil service, good policing, freedom of association and religion – those are all parts of a plural society.
I’ve done a lot of travelling. In my final year as European commissioner, I flew in 185 planes. I was responsible for external relations and our bilateral relationship with countries all around the world in a role that was part diplomat, part politician and part manager of a huge €6billion aid programme. I believe passionately In the importance of geography in our history. How could you not? You can’t talk about any issue – from globalisation and climate change to the increasing impact of the shortage or maldistribution of resources on security – without having an understanding of geography. I use geography as a prism for some of my views, which are based on what I know about history.
I don’t believe that geography is destiny. Undoubtedly, some people living near the equator have a more difficult time, but it’s invariably governments and the way that they have chosen to run their societies that stop them making a recovery from their difficult geographical circumstances. Paul Collier, the Oxford development economist, has pointed out that three quarters of the world’s poorest people live in societies that are, at present, suffering from or are recovering from civil conflict. So to have 700 or 800 million people who are living in very poor societies because of the struggle for resources in their own countries, due to the activities of war lords or as a consequence of government breakdown is, I think, a major reason for global poverty.
Above all, my book is about the dark side of globalisation, the inadequacy of some of the structures that were set up 50 years ago to deal with that and the shift in the global balance of power in trying to cope with those problems. But, at the end of the day, I don’t think that any of the problems are insoluble. And provided nation states learn to cooperate more effectively, and provided that we don’t abandon our reason, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t muddle our way through.
Curriculum vitae
1944 Born in Thornton Clevely, Lancashire
1959–62 Read modern history at Balliol College, Oxford
1979–92 MP for Bath
1985–86 Minister of State, Department of Education and Science
1986–89 Minister for Overseas Development
1989–90 Secretary of State for the Environment
1990–92 Chairman of the Conservative Party
1992–97 Governor of Hong Kong
1999–2004 Member of the European Commission, External Relations
1999–Present Chancellor of Newcastle University
2003–Present Chancellor of the University of Oxford
2005 Elevated to the peerage, becoming Lord Patten of Barnes
