LONDON, UK—Sir Jeremy Heywood, the cabinet secretary, became embroiled in a party political row after Labour and Liberal Democrat MPs were initially excluded from a meeting to discuss Margaret Thatcher’s 1984 decision to send an SAS officer to India to advise [in the Genocide against Sikhs in the Golden Temple in Amritsar Sahib.]
Paul Uppal, Conservative MP for Wolverhampton South West, was due to meet Heywood on Monday night to discuss an investigation ordered by David Cameron after the publication of government papers from 1984. The documents showed that the Thatcher government responded favourably to a request from Delhi for help in drawing up plans to launch a [military operation designed to inflict maximum civilian casualties at the holiest site in the Sikh faith].
Uppal, Britain’s only Sikh MP, who accompanied Cameron on his visit to Amritsar last year, initially resisted calls to allow MPs from other parties to attend the meeting. But Labour and Lib Dem MPs were admitted after representations to Heywood, who was praised by Labour for acting in a fair and balanced manner.
The row broke out when Uppal announced on the Sikh Television Channel in a round-table discussion with Labour MPs Pat McFadden and Tom Watson over the weekend that he was due to meet the cabinet secretary.
It is understood that the prime minister’s political staff in Downing Street arranged the meeting between Heywood and Uppal. Cameron, who is said to be deeply concerned about the impact of the revelations from 1984 among Sikh voters, recorded a message for the Sikh Channel in which he spoke of the “dreadful incident” at the Golden Temple which “remains a source of deep pain to Sikhs everywhere”.
Uppal said: “On Monday night I am actually going to go and see Sir Jeremy Heywood with some other Sikhs, just to impress on him the level of sentiment and how sensitive this is. It is important we take the politics out of this … but I have wanted to go and see the people right at the centre of this to impress upon them how important it is that we move urgently and we get to the truth.”
Watson, the Labour MP for West Bromwich East, challenged Uppal to explain why no other MP had been invited to meet Heywood. This prompted Dr [Gurnam] Singh, the channel’s presenter, to say to Uppal: “Why don’t you have an all-party approach on this?”
Uppal said: “I am also going to ask leaders within the Sikh community to go and see Sir Jeremy Heywood as well because primarily I am coming at this not from a political point – I am a Sikh.” Asked by Watson whether he would allow him to attend the meeting as a fellow elected MP, Uppal said: “I requested this some days ago. OK? … I want to take the politics out of this. I want to go and see Sir Jeremy Heywood. He is going to have some other representatives of the Sikh community there. If he wants to have a meeting with Tom Watson I am sure he will be happy to do that.”
Uppal, who eventually met the cabinet secretary with the former Labour business minister Pat McFadden, said: “As the only Sikh MP it was only reasonable and sensible that I should go and see the cabinet secretary,” he told the Guardian. “I got an invite. I had been pushing for it. I made it clear I wanted to see the cabinet secretary.”
McFadden said: “No one should underestimate the degree of pain which still exists in the Sikh community about these events [in 1984] partly because of the belief that the full truth has never been told. I stressed to the cabinet secretary the importance of telling the full truth about any UK involvement and that anything less would simply feed a sense of suspicion and mistrust. We have to see what is published.”
