Obituary: Sir Bernard Ingham

Sir Bernard Ingham was once a Tory-baiting, trade union-loving scourge of the capitalist classes.

His newspaper columns in the 1960s sniffed at Sir Ted Heath's "stagnant mind" and dismissed Sir Alec Douglas-Home as a "bomb-happy fossil". One even began with the words, "Dear fellow serfs..."

Yet, a decade later, he was the devoted mouthpiece of a right-wing Conservative prime minister who found herself at war with the unions and presiding over record levels of unemployment.

It was an extraordinary journey across the political spectrum - from socialist standard-bearer to Baroness Margaret Thatcher - for the proud son of Hebden Bridge.

Yorkshire heaven

He was born in Halifax Royal Infirmary on 21 June 1932, but grew up further up the Calder Valley.

For Sir Bernard, Hebden Bridge was not just a weaving town in Yorkshire. He revered its simple Northern values, and straight-talking men and women. It was, for him, as close to heaven as you get on Earth.

The young Bernard Ingham was devastated to fail the 11-plus exam

His father, Garnet, ran the local weaving union after work at the factory, and became the town's first socialist local councillor. His mother, Alice, was secretary of the women's co-operative guild. They were devout Baptists and die-hard Labour.

Bright at school, he was devastated to fail the 11-plus. The shock set off his asthma and forced him into bed for days.

His parents found the money to pay for a special place at Hebden Bridge Grammar, without which Sir Bernard would almost certainly have become a weaver like his father. But university was out of reach for a blue-collar family from the North.

Lady Thatcher's chief press secretary was once an ardent Labour supporter

Aged 16, he left school to become a trainee reporter at the Hebden Bridge Times. Within two years he was running it single-handed.

He would later have the paper delivered throughout his time in Downing Street, and delighted in telling political correspondents they fell far short of its lofty standards of journalism.

The Yorkshire Post poached him to be their man in Halifax, where Sir Bernard chewed Woodbine tobacco and became known for his Stakhanovite work ethic. After seven years, he became the paper's Northern industrial correspondent based in Leeds, taking with him his police officer wife, Nancy, and baby son.

Socialist beliefs

Politically, he was still virulently anti-Tory. His columns for the local Labour Party newspaper violently attacked the Conservative government as an enemy of the workers. Comprehensive education, full employment and wealth distribution were sine qua non.

He fought - and lost - a council seat for Labour, and once became so agitated in argument that his false teeth flew across the room. He simply paid no attention and carried on declaiming, until someone asked him to put them back in.

In 1965, he moved to London to become an industrial correspondent for The Guardian. It was a dream job, until he was passed over for promotion in favour of a younger man with an Oxbridge education. Deeply offended, Sir Bernard stalked out.

He became press officer for the Prices and Incomes Board, harbouring deep contempt for his old profession. When this was merged with the Department of Employment, he found himself working for a fellow Yorkshire redhead, Barbara Castle.

Sir Bernard got on very well with Dame Barbara Castle

Sir Bernard adored her. He'd been shocked when, just months after Harold Wilson entered Downing Street, the communist seamen's union leadership demanded a 17% pay increase. He now wholeheartedly supported Castle's plan to impose pre-strike ballots.

But Lord Wilson backed down. Later, when asked what he admired about Lady Thatcher, Sir Bernard's answer was always the same: the Iron Lady had "guts".

Transferred to the Department of Energy, he worked for Tony Benn. The pipe-smoking socialist treated civil servants as roadblocks to reform, and the antipathy was mutual. Benn, said Sir Bernard to a friend, was "stark staring mad".

Margaret Thatcher

On 3 May 1979, the Conservatives swept to power. The former Labour Party stalwart was an odd choice to become chief press secretary for the new government. Some doubted he could work for a Tory leader, but then Lady Thatcher was not an average Tory.

She, like Sir Bernard, was a Northern outsider. Both were devoted to small town values, believed in the morality of hard work above all else, and were suspicious of establishments.

The Tory party he despised seemed based on privilege - and his new boss disliked her party's toffs every bit as much as he did. For Sir Bernard, Lady Thatcher wasn't a Tory - she was a radical.

Sir Bernard was not the obvious choice to become Lady Thatcher's chief press secretary

For a decade, he promoted her cause with the zeal of the convert, at times straining the neutrality of his civil service post. His dedication meant that when his wife was hit by a lorry, and had to spend months in hospital, Sir Bernard didn't take a day off work.

Bluff, aggressive and often brutally frank, he did daily battle with the parliamentary lobby. And woe betide any member of the cabinet who upset his mistress.

When Leader of the House Francis Pym made a speech about the economy which did not please Lady Thatcher, retribution was swift. Articles appeared in the press - citing Downing Street sources - calling the errant minister "Mona Lott".

When another member of the cabinet, John Biffen, wondered aloud if the Tories should fight the next election with a "balanced ticket" - code for less than full-throated Thatcherism - he opened the papers to find he was a "semi-detached member of the government".

Sir Bernard Ingham with Lady Thatcher

'Rough-spoken Rasputin'

Mr Biffen, half-joking, dug himself an even deeper hole by referring to Sir Bernard as Downing Street's "rough-spoken Yorkshire Rasputin". He was sacked shortly afterwards, later ruefully describing the Downing Street press secretary as the "sewer but not the sewage."

Sir Bernard got into real trouble when he was suspected of having ordered - or at the very least failed to stop - the leaking of a letter from a government law officer critical of Michael Heseltine. Lady Thatcher herself only just survived the scandal, but the prime minister always forgave him. Sir Bernard was "one of us".

When she moved Sir Geoffrey Howe from the Foreign Office, he demanded the title deputy prime minister. The papers all ran well-sourced articles claiming it was a courtesy title with no real significance. Howe was undermined and resigned a year later, his resignation speech famously savage.

Sir Bernard (left) undermined Geoffrey Howe (right) in press briefings

When Mr Heseltine's leadership challenge won enough votes to force a second round of voting, Lady Thatcher was in Paris. Millions watched on TV as the prime minister's lantern-jawed minder elbowed reporters aside in her search for a microphone.

Bunkum and balderdash

Sir John Major's first appointment in Downing Street was Sir Bernard's successor. After more than a decade at Lady Thatcher's side, advancing her cause even at the expense of colleagues, few thought he could work for anyone else.

He retired - with a knighthood - to the modest bungalow in Purley, south London, he bought in the 1960s. He wrote his memoirs, Kill The Messenger, and became a regular defender of Lady Thatcher's legacy in print and on television.

A reliably controversial pundit, Sir Bernard refused to retreat from his view that the 1989 Hillsborough disaster - which claimed the lives of 97 Liverpool fans - had been caused by "tanked-up yobs". This was not the conclusion of a later public inquiry.

Sir Bernard attending Baroness Thatcher's funeral at St Paul's in 2013

Sir Bernard will be remembered as the former socialist who cast aside his old beliefs when he found a leader who inspired him. He came to hold an influence within the Thatcher project second only to her private secretary, Charles Powell.

His biographer Robert Harris - who saw him up close as a member of the parliamentary lobby - believed that he came close to being Britain's de facto minister of information.

He would have undoubtedly dismissed this - with a flick of his legendary eyebrows - as the judgement of a journalistic profession he came to regard as "institutionalised hysteria".

Or in his own words - spat out in a Yorkshire growl - "bunkum and balderdash".