'Spindoctoring'
a talk by Geoff Roberts
The
audience were invited to consider a series of anecdotes from Geoff's 30 year
Civil Service career against a background of advances in the technology of
communications, most notably the advent of mobile 'phones and computers.
The first big set piece incident was the Aberfan disaster on 21 October 1966. Then, as a new Press Officer to the fledgling Welsh Office, GR received a telephone call from his colleague in the Gwydyr House Press Office in Whitehall soon after arriving at work, asking if he could make use of a military helicopter offered by the Ministry of Defence. After making several check calls to the South Wales Police he established that there had been a coal tip slide above the village of Aberfan which had engulfed Pantglas School, but was advised that the Miners Rescue Team had the matter in hand.
The
situation became progressively worse throughout the morning and he was sent to
RAF St. Athan to brief the Prime Minister, Harold Wilson, who was flying from
London to visit the disaster. Somehow
the PM's private secretary missed the Police car and summoned GR to chase after
the PM in an RAF car. This futile
mission failed when the car had a puncture in the middle of Pontypridd. A police car came to the rescue and the
private secretary was finally reunited with the PM at Merthyr Tydfil.
Stories about the successive Secretaries of State he served under included some about the different ways Ministers, mainly English, handled the minefield of the Welsh language. Reference was made to his time as Regional Director of the Central Office of Information, Northern Region, and on secondment to No. 10 as Deputy Chief Press Secretary to Margaret Thatcher in her first few months as PM.
GR
served under the following Secretaries of State for Wales:
Cledwyn Hughes, George Thomas, Peter
Thomas, Nicholas Edwards,
Peter Walker, David Hunt, John Redwood and
William Hague.