I recently found copies of various magazines I edited from 1990-2002. It's a bit self indulgent but each Sunday for the next few weeks I'm posting some of the many interviews I did during that period. Subjects include Tony Benn and Ken Clarke (already posted), Gyles Brandreth, Felix Dennis and John Bercow. See Something for the weekend.
In the summer of 2001 I interviewed film director Michael Winner for Freedom Today, The Freedom Association magazine. As well directing some of the most violent movies in cinema history, Winner also had a fearsome reputation as an outspoken and sometimes very funny restaurant critic. But he also had a softer side and was known as the 'British bobby's best friend'. We met at his 47-room mansion in Holland Park, west London. Today it's owned by Robbie Williams who reportedly paid £17 million when he bought it from the Winner family after Michael’s death in January 2013.
WINNER'S WAYS
Founder and chairman of the Police Memorial Trust which he founded in 1984 following the death of PC Yvonne Fletcher, Michael Winner has every reason to look pleased. Despite opposition from almost every quarter – including the police and Charities Commission – there are now 25 memorials, the last one unveiled by his friend Tony Blair in Manchester in May. There are even plans for a national police memorial, designed by Lord Foster, in the Mall.
Why? ‘There is a war with no beginning and no end and that war is fought by the police. It's against all those who would destroy society. It has its fatalities and I think it's right that those who die in that cause should be honoured as other servicemen are honoured.'
Film director and now a famous restaurant critic, Winner believes that at least 20 officers would be alive today had they been armed. But surely, I protest, arming the British bobby will lead to more deaths, like America?
'People always say "like America",' he shoots back. 'They never say "like Switzerland". You don't get shot by police in lederhosen as you walk through Switzerland.'
Throughout the world, he argues, the police have guns. 'The national characteristic and the national availability of guns is different country by country. The national characteristic in America, being a mixed society, is very volatile, far more volatile than here.'
He tells me a true story about a kid who dialled 999. What follows could be a scene from one of his films. 'He said, "There's a burglar wandering around the car park." He then hid behind a car and when the policeman came he shot him. Now I'm not saying that policeman necessarily would be alive. I don't know how many shots were fired and whether he would have had time to return fire, but it seems a bit unfair.'
In truth, one of the biggest issues facing the police is not guns but racism. Fifteen years ago [1986] he recalls being guest of honour at a Scotland Yard dinner. 'The first speaker was a constable. He told a series of the most virulently anti-semitic jokes I have ever heard. And then an ex-police officer spoke and he spent the entire time giving out virulently anti-black jokes.
'I should have said, "Gentlemen, I am a great admirer of the police but you have to learn that this sort of thing is no longer acceptable and you will never be honoured as you should be if this is the way you behave." I should have said that. I didn't have the courage to say it.'
Since then Winner claims to have seen huge changes in police attitudes which is why he is so critical of the Macpherson Report. 'The Macpherson Report was the biggest disaster that's ever happened to this country. This idiot had a marvellous opportunity to do good but he was utterly destructive.'
It was not what Macpherson said, says Winner, but the manner in which he said it. 'It was so inflammatory. He shouldn't have pulled his punches but there is a way to say this that could have helped and he didn't help. We know he didn't help.'
But was Macpherson right? Are the police institutionally racist? 'I'm not sure what that means, quite honestly. That means to me they are all Nazis and I don't think that's true at all, not at all.'
Apart from Macpherson, what really depresses the police, says Winner, is the failure of the justice system to convict many of the people they catch. The fault, he says, is in the jury system. 'A great many professional people get a call for jury service and find a way out of it. So who turns up? The unemployed, or people who to some degree are sympathetic to the criminal.' Not to mention all the jury nobbling that goes on.
Needless to say Winner has great admiration for people who 'have a go'. 'They're putting their lives at risk but I think they're absolute heroes.' It's no surprise then that he was a fan of New York's Guardian Angels which briefly established a British chapter on the London Underground. 'I went to their opening meeting. The police looked at me as if I was insane. Why should you not encourage young people to go out and spend their time protecting their fellow citizens, which is what they were doing.
He is enormously proud of the Death Wish series, one highly influential film starring Charles Bronson followed by some fairly violent sequels. Death Wish, says Winner, prophesied that if the police weren't able to protect them the public would eventually take the law into their own hands. The films, he says, didn't say it was right, although audiences obviously thought so. The message was simply: clean up society or people are going to get desperate and irrational.
So what does Michael Winner believe? 'I believe in justice. I believe the wrong-doer should be punished commensurate with the crime. I believe in the return of the death penalty for many, many crimes. I have said that I would like to see rapists and child molesters shot. I am not necessarily keen to pay to put child molesters in prison for 20 years when we know they ain't going to change. If you want to stop criminals you've got to be absolutely ruthless. Why should we not be ruthless on behalf of people who are raped and mugged and tortured?
'I don't want to live in a tolerant society. I want to live in a very intolerant society. What does tolerance mean? A fellow beats up an old lady and they say you're a deprived child and we'll take you on a Scottish mountain climbing holiday. We're too tolerant!'
The thought occurs that if we really want to clean up crime we should 'Vote Winner'. Perhaps, I suggest, he will stand for Mayor of London one day. 'It did cross my mind,' he says, 'and then sanity returned because you have to devote such energy to these things.'
It also crossed his mind to stand against Michael Portillo in Kensington and Chelsea. Why? 'Because I think he's an idiot. I wouldn't have in myself but I may well have split the vote because I think I would have attracted a lot of attention.'
His view of Portillo reflects his disillusionment with the Conservatives. A lifelong Tory, he broke ranks and voted for Labour in 1997 and did so again last month [2001]. According to Winner he hasn't changed, Labour has. 'It's a new Labour party now. It's a right wing party. It's not the old cloth cap brigade.' What about Blair's attack on the 'forces of conservatism'? 'I took it as meaning the forces against change.'
Other Tories who have annoyed him include Winston Churchill and Gerald Howarth who both tried to introduce private members' bills on the subject of obscenity.
'Howarth's bill was every bit as absurd as Churchill's. It would have stopped people having liberties in this country that they have all over the world. We are already the most censored country in the free world. Films are cut here that you can see in France, Italy, Spain. It hasn't stopped the crime rate going up.'
Winner's problem is not with censorship as such. 'You can't let anything go, of course you can't. I believe in censorship strongly. We all believe in censorship.' The problem, he argues, is that 'Film people cannot make only films about nice people doing nice things. Art and drama and books have always reflected society so make films about nice people and nasty people and the same audiences see both films.'
Violence, says Winner, cannot be pornographic if it's on the screen. ‘It's play acting and everybody knows it's play acting. There is no evidence whatsoever that people go and see a film as a nice person and come out and shoot their neighbour. None.'
Although many of his films were made in America, he was never tempted to move to the States. Winner loves Britain and he loves Europe. Politically he would prefer to keep the pound and he's unenthusiastic about about 'this great European superstate' but in his view it's here and we must accept it. 'If Mickey Mouse was elected it wouldn't make any difference. We're in. I don't know why everyone makes such a fuss about it.'
It is said that he yearns for the Fifties, for a Britain that no longer exists, with fields and forests and woods and dells and rivers, where there are no housing estates and where you don't have too worry about walking down the street at night.
The world, says Winner, is a degenerating place but it's inevitable and we cry about it all the time. 'I'm a realist. We all find masses to complain about but there's a lot of good things.' Travel, he says, is easier, medicine is better, there is greater equality and there isn't the same class system.
He looks at me. 'This world isn't so terrible, is it?'
Michael Winner died, aged 77, in January 2013 following persistent ill health. Among those who paid tribute to him was Andrew Neil, his former editor at the Sunday Times, who said: "So sad to hear of death of my old mate Michael Winner. One of life's great characters."