Robin Harris (author)

Dr. Robin Harris (born 22 June, 1952) is a British author and journalist. He has written for "The Daily Telegraph" and "Prospect". He has a doctorate in modern history from Oxford University.

Harris was Director of the Conservative Research Department from 1985 to 1988 and a member of the Prime Minister's Policy Unit from 1989 to 1990. He helped draft the Conservative Party manifesto for the 1987 general election.

It was initially thought that Margaret Thatcher's record in government should be recorded by Harris and John O'Sullivan in a political biography covering her premiership titled "Undefeated". [Alan Watkins, "A Conservative Coup: The Fall of Margaret Thatcher" (Duckworth, 1992), p. 209.] What eventually happened was that Thatcher hired Harris to write most of her memoir "The Downing Street Years". In that memoir Thatcher wrote that Harris was "My indispensable sherpa in the enterprise of writing this book" and that "Without his advice and help at every stage, I doubt that we could have reached the summit". [Margaret Thatcher, "The Downing Street Years" (HarperCollins, 1993), p. xiii.] Harris also helped Thatcher write her book "Statecraft: Strategies for a Changing World" and continues to advise Thatcher.

Harris courted controversy when he wrote a pamphlet ("A Tale of Two Chileans") in 1999 defending General Pinochet's "coup d'état" against the Marxist President of Chile Salvador Allende. In an interview with fellow journalist Andy Beckett in 2000 Harris says: "It was a polarising thing. I was on the Right, and I thought it was a bloody good thing it had happened". [Andy Beckett, "Pinochet in Piccadilly: Britain and Chile's hidden history" (Faber and Faber, 2002), p. 179.]

In March 2006 he attacked Conservative leader David Cameron in an article for "Prospect" for what he sees as Cameron's repositioning of the party to the Left. He favourably compared the Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown to Thatcher and claimed both are "immensely able, a workaholic, driven by values from a Protestant upbringing" but that in an election against Brown, Cameron "may look unprincipled and insubstantial". [Robin Harris, [http://www.prospect-magazine.co.uk/article_details.php?id=7330 'Spoiling the party'] , "Prospect", March 2006.]

Notes

Publications

*"The Conservative Community: The Roots of Thatcherism - and its Future" (Centre for Policy Studies, 1989).
*"A Tale of Two Chileans - Pinochet and Allende" (Chilean Supporters Abroad, 1999).

External links

* [http://www.prospect-magazine.co.uk/list.php?author=2156 Articles written by Harris for "Prospect" magazine]
* [http://www.hoover.org/publications/policyreview/3460326.html "The State of the Special Relationship" by Robin Harris]
* [http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/Congress/1770/harris.pdf "A Tale of Two Chileans"]
* [http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/today/listenagain/ztuesday_20060221.shtml Robin Harris talks about Cameron's leadership on the BBC "Today" programme]