Revealed: How plot to kidnap PM ended with a beer for abductors

Published on Monday 14 April 2008 22:50

IT WAS an audacious plot by militant Scots students to kidnap the prime minister and hold him hostage.

But last night, as details emerged of the 1964 plan to snatch Alec Douglas-Home, then Tory prime minister, one eyewitness told The Scotsman that the abduction was more like a student prank.

Lady Susan Douglas-Hamilton, in whose house the incident took place, was speaking as details emerged in the diaries of Lord Hailsham, published this week.

Lord Hailsham, the former Lord Chancellor, recounts how Sir Alex related the tale at a shooting party in Birkhill, writing: "An odd story of the 1964 election never published. Alec was staying with John and Priscilla Tweedsmuir, who had no room for Alec's private bodyguard.

"He went to the nearest town (Aberdeen?) and John & Priscilla were left for a time alone in the house. Knock at the door answered by PM in person.

"Deputation of left-wing students from Aberdeen University. Said they were going to kidnap Alec.

"He said: 'I suppose you realise if you do, the Conservatives will win the election by 200 or 300'.

"He asked and was given permission to pack a few things & was given ten minutes' grace. After that they were offered and accepted beer.

"John and Priscilla returned and the kidnap project abandoned. The bodyguard swore Alec to secrecy as his job would have been in peril."

The incident took place in April 1964, shortly after Sir Alec announced an election was to take place that October.

The diary entries were published on the Margaret Thatcher Foundation website.

Chris Collins, editor of MargaretThatcher.org, said yesterday: "If Home's assailants had been darker in purpose, he would have died that night."

But Lady Douglas-Hamilton, who was 14 at the time, said the meeting was all rather amicable and there was no real threat.

She recalled: "That evening, the bell rang. My father opened the door – he had been rector at Aberdeen University – and they wanted to speak to the prime minister.

"The detective was terrified that the prime minister would go with them. He tried to stop him but Sir Alec insisted, and went outside to speak to them. Throughout the friendly exchange, the detective was present."

She also said the students were not bribed with alcohol: "As far as I can remember, we never had beer in the house."

The encounter was captured by a young Lady Douglas-Hamilton in a photograph.

Her childhood home, Potterton House, had been especially prepared for the visit.

She recalled: "It was a lot of upheaval, putting in all the scrambled telephones in. I took him tea in the mornings and my other cooked. He was a good family friend and a wonderful man."

Sir Menzies Campbell, the former Liberal Democrat leader who was at university at the time, said students often pulled pranks for charity week.

He said: "I am not surprised he persuaded the students to give up. He had impeccable manners, charm and integrity."

Lord Hailsham's previously unpublished papers were written in code: a shorthand system that was translated by staff at GCHQ.

He died in 2001 and the papers were given to University of Cambridge's Churchill Archives Foundation, which passed them to the Margaret Thatcher Foundation.

A LIFE IN POLITICS

ALEXANDER Frederick Douglas-Home served as Conservative prime minister for a year from October 1963.

He was educated at Eton, where one of his classmates was George Orwell, and then at Christ Church, Oxford.

Sir Alec became the Scottish Unionist Party MP for Lanark in 1931. He served as parliamentary private secretary in 1937-39 to Neville Chamberlain, witnessing the latter's attempts to stave off war through talks with Hitler.

In 1960 Harold Macmillan made him foreign secretary, a controversial choice, given that Sir Alec was unelected at the time.

His promotion to prime minister, aged 60, followed the resignation in 1963 of Harold Macmillan, who thought he was terminally ill with prostate trouble.

In winning the leadership he renounced his peerage to rejoin the Commons by winning a by-election in Kinross. However, he did not have time to make his mark before being obliged to call an election, which the Conservatives lost.

In 1974 he returned to the Lords as a life peer, attending regularly for 20 years. He died in 1995, in Berwickshire, aged 92.