Leon Brittan

Jonathan Aitken wrote of Brittan's resignation: "Soon after a poisonous meeting of Tory backbenchers at the 1922 Committee, he fell on his sword. It was a combination of a witch hunt and a search for a scapegoat – tainted by an undercurrent of anti-Semitism. […] I believed what should have been obvious to anyone else, that he was being used as a lightning conductor to deflect the fire that the Prime Minister had started and inflamed".

It was later revealed that Brittan had attempted to persuade British Aerospace and General Electric Company (GEC) to withdraw from the European consortium.

Leon Brittan, Baron Brittan of Spennithorne, (25 September 1939 – 21 January 2015) was a British Conservative politician and barrister who served as a European Commissioner from 1989 to 1999.

After unsuccessfully contesting the constituency of Kensington North in 1966 and 1970, he was elected to Parliament in the general election of February 1974 for Cleveland and Whitby, and became an opposition spokesman in 1976.

As a member of Parliament from 1974 to 1988, he served several ministerial roles in Margaret Thatcher's government, including Home Secretary from 1983 to 1985.

Leon Brittan was born in London, the son of Rebecca (née Lipetz) and Joseph Brittan, a doctor.

His parents were Lithuanian Jews who had migrated to Britain before the Second World War.

He was educated at the Haberdashers' Aske's Boys' School and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he was President of the Cambridge Union Society and Chairman of the Cambridge University Conservative Association.

Brittan then studied at Yale University on a Henry Fellowship.

Sir Samuel Brittan, the economics journalist, was his brother.

The former Conservative MP Malcolm Rifkind, and the music producer Mark Ronson, were cousins.

He was made a Queen's Counsel in 1978.

Between 1979 and 1981, he was Minister of State at the Home Office.

He was then promoted to become Chief Secretary to the Treasury, becoming the youngest member of the Cabinet.

He warned cabinet colleagues that spending on social security, health and education would have to be cut "whether they like it or not".

Margaret Thatcher's government had carefully planned for a miners' strike, and a Whitehall committee had been meeting in secret since 1981 to prepare for a protracted dispute.

At the 1983 election, Brittan was elected MP for Richmond.

Following the election, he was promoted to Home Secretary, becoming the youngest since Churchill.

During the 1984–85 miners' strike, Brittan was a strong critic of the leadership of the National Union of Mineworkers.

He accused them of organising violence by flying pickets, whom he described as "thugs".

One factor in the defeat of the strike was central control of local police forces.

As soon as the strike began, Brittan set up a National Reporting Centre in New Scotland Yard to coordinate intelligence and the supply of police officers between forces as necessary.

In 1984, after the murder of British police officer Yvonne Fletcher during a protest outside the Libyan embassy in London, Brittan headed the government's crisis committee as both Thatcher and the Foreign Secretary, Sir Geoffrey Howe, were away at the time.

In September 1985, Brittan was moved to Secretary of State for Trade and Industry.

The reason for his demotion, according to Jonathan Aitken, was that the prime minister Margaret Thatcher felt that Brittan was "not getting the message across on television".

In her memoirs, Thatcher wrote of Brittan: "Everybody complained about his manner on television, which seemed aloof and uncomfortable."

Brittan had been criticised as a poor communicator and for his role in the suppression of a BBC television programme in the Real Lives series on The Troubles in Northern Ireland, At the Edge of the Union.

Brittan stated that transmission of the programme would be against the national interest and in August 1985 he wrote to the BBC chairman, Stuart Young, asking for the broadcast to be cancelled.

The BBC's Board of Governors called an emergency meeting and ruled that the documentary could not be shown.

The controversy led to a rift between the BBC's boards of management and governors.

It also led to a day of strike action by hundreds of television and radio workers who protested against what they perceived as government censorship.

In September 1986, Brittan was cleared by a High Court Judge of acting unlawfully when, as Home Secretary, he gave MI5 permission to tap the telephone of a leader of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.

Brittan resigned as Trade and Industry Secretary in January 1986 over the Westland affair.

Brittan had authorised the leaking of a letter from the Solicitor General that had accused Michael Heseltine of inaccuracies in his campaign for Westland to be rescued by a consortium of European investors.

The rest of the government, led by Margaret Thatcher, supported a deal with the American business Sikorsky Fiat.

In October 1986, in a House of Commons debate, Brittan made a bitter attack on Michael Heseltine, accusing him of "thwarting the Government at every turn" in its handling of the Westland affair.

Brittan said that Government decisions "should have the support of all its members and should not be undermined from within".

In 1989, Brittan revealed in a Channel 4 programme that two senior Downing Street officials, Bernard Ingham and Charles Powell, had approved the leaking of the letter from the Solicitor General.

Brittan's claim led to calls from some Labour MPs for a new inquiry into the Westland affair.

In January 2014, secret government documents released by the National Archives disclosed that Libya twice warned British officials that the Libyan embassy protest would become violent – hours before WPC Fletcher was killed.