By GEOFFREY PARKHOUSE,
Political Editor
LORD Alistair McAlpine called them stupid, the people who blew up the
house at West Green in Hampshire that he had handed back to the National
Trust the week before. It was standing empty after a highly-publicised
#1.75m sale of its contents last month.
But the 48-year-old peer is a classic IRA target as a genuine ''family
friend'' of the Prime Minister, who was one of the first to telephone
him yesterday morning. A hit against him would have wounded her as much
as when they killed her friend Airey Neave, MP, at the House of Commons,
just after she gained power in 1979 and he was about to become Northern
Ireland Secretary.
She led 3000 mourners in St Paul's Cathedral only 29 days ago to
honour the life of Lord Alistair's father Lord Edwin McAlpine of Moffat.
Father and son are descendents of eight generations of Scottish kings.
Father and son raised the money for Mrs Thatcher's election campaigns as
personal friends and staunch supporters. Father and son set a precedent
in recent history by being together as life peers on the Lords benches.
For more than a year the anti-terrorist squad have known that the IRA
are targeting ''softer'' security targets like Lord Alistair, who they
failed to kill along with the Prime Minister in the Brighton bombing in
1984. It was he who emerged from his shattered hotel room to organise
Marks and Spencer in Brighton to open specially to provide clothing for
those who were left with only their night attire -- and send the bill to
him. I did my bit and lent him a Garrick Club tie, which he wears daily,
and did not wish the IRA to deny him this eccentricity.
A scion of the McAlpine construction firm, responsible for much of its
Australian and American interests, he is the sort of rich man who ought
to come into everybody's lives, as was his delightful father. He
generates fun and interest and argument. A group of McAlpines at table
can only be described by the collective noun a ''chuckle''.
Alistair seems blessed with a sixth sense that tells him when to do
something different. This enhanced his abilities as a collector, as
evidenced by the #1.75m his household effects fetched at West Green,
near Hartley Wintney, which he used to rent from the National Trust. It
also probably saved his life when early yesterday the empty house was
blown apart.
He had a zoo there once, including a flock of flamingoes. He bred the
original English cattle, and won prizes. He had one of the finest
collections of ancient agricultural equipment, as he has now a most
comprehensive collection of boomerangs in his house in Perth, Western
Australia.
His acquisitive instincts and compulsions are renowned. His charm is
that he can talk about his passions without being didactic. When his
interest runs out on one thing, he takes up another. Since a heart-valve
replacement operation a couple of years ago, he has been concentrating
on antiquities. The illness brought about another of his habitual change
of life decisions.
He resigned as Tory treasurer. He spends much of the year in Venice
and Broome, the West Australian pearling station (which he discovered by
accident, landing there in his private plane instead of Derby, a few
hundred miles further on). Typically, he bought up the town, including
its open-air cinema and Chinese restaurant, in order to preserve it.
Then he established a grade one zoo (which allows him to import
serious animals, although, mysteriously, the Australian customs won't
release a whale's penis he picked up somewhere. The whale had been dead
for 50 years. He also built a Japanese-style luxury hotel on what is
called Hundred Mile Beach, because there is 100 miles of it. Typically,
his Aussie business pals in Perth who scoffed at his investment in
Broome, have now followed him up there.
He may stay there longer than he did at West Green (16 years). Why did
he make the move that might have saved his life? He explained it thus in
a magazine article a few days ago: ''Now I need a new home with a
different feel -- harder, emptier, sharper.
''I am a nomad of nomad stock, setting little store in possessions;
anxious in their pursuit, casual in their disposal. I love many things
and hate quite as many. No work of art is, however wonderful, a
substitute for its creator, nor of more consequence than the meanest man
that would destroy it.
''Why sell all? To rid oneself of the chore of making a choice, to
make a different style of life, to win the freedom to choose again.''
He admires the philosophy of General Hawley, who led the cavalry at
Culloden, and who fixed above the door at West Green the motto: ''Do as
you feel inclined.'' Pity that the daft IRA, if indeed it was them, took
the invitation so literally. Many are glad that the man who brings
another dimension to life survived their stupidity.
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