Lord Havers dies

A convivial man who was a capable but not outstanding lawyer was the consensus verdict of the obituary writers on the former Lord Chancellor, Lord Havers, who died last week, aged 69. Indeed, legal observers intimated that he was far more at ease cradling a glass of wine and cigar in the Garrick Club than engaging in political fencing at Westminster. Lord Havers was a traditional 'high Tory' who had little time for revolutionary Th atcherism.
Coming from a legal family -- his grandfather was a solicitor and his father a QC -- Lord Havers was called to the Bar at Inner Temple in 1948 and took silk 16 years later. He became the MP for Wimbledon in 1970, before that sitting on the Bench first as recorder of Dover and then at Norwich. Ironically, as a young barrister he briefly shared chambers with his later boss, Margaret Thatcher.
Above all, however, Lord Havers was well respected for his fierce belief in the independence of the law offices. And he was in a position to know how those posts operated, holding all three major jobs, first as Solicitor-General under Edward Heath (1972-74), then as the longest serving attorney-general in nearly 250 years (1979-87) under Mrs Thatcher, and finally as the shortest serving Lord Chancellor (for five months in 1987).
Officially, he retired from the latter, and most esteemed, post because of long-running ill health. But there was always speculation that the controversial nature of many of his decisions and actions as Attorney-General had finally taken their toll.
Most often cited as one of the high notes of Lord Havers' legal career is the prosecution in 1982 of Canadian professor Hugh Hambleton, who confessed under the barrister's detailed questioning to passing Nato secrets to the Soviet Union. Lord Havers also won praise for his insistance on an enquiry into who leaked the document at the centre of the Westland affair in 1986. He threatened to send the police into Number 10 unless an official inquiry was launched. Perhaps his most celebrated clients were Rolling Stones, Mick Jagger and Keith Richard, whom he defended on drugs charges in 1967.
But there were also black marks. He was highly criticised in some quarters for his handling of the Spycatcher prosecution, in which the author, Peter Wright, was diligently prosecuted in Australia by the British Government, while Lord Havers reportedly turned a blind eye to leaks to other writers, most notably Chapman Pincher. He also caused controversy when seen lunching with journalist Duncan Campbell, who was inquiring into the security forces for a BBC documentary on the Zircon affair.
The Havers legal family tradition does not end with Michael Havers' death: one of his two sons is a barrister and his sister, Elizabeth, is the High Court judge Lord Justice Butler-Sloss.