Sir Michael Quinlan: Civil servant and defence strategist who explored the concept of the Just War

Quite simply, Michael Quinlan was one of the most intellectually brilliant and influential civil servants in the latter part of the last century. He was born into a traditionally and devoutly Roman Catholic family. Leaving Wimbledon College, he deferred National Service and went straight to Merton College, Oxford, where he obtained a First Class Honours in Mods, and subsequently Greats. He began his Civil Service career in the Air Ministry in 1954.

I first "encountered" him – a better word than "met", given his razor-sharp mind – in the showers under ICI Millbank, around 8.30am on wintry mornings in the late 1960s, after he had played punishing games of squash with his great friend, another young civil servant by the name of Robin Butler, later Cabinet Secretary and Lord Butler of Brockwell. Quinlan was enormously fit and energetic, and until October last year thought little of flying off to high-powered Defence Conferences.

In the spring of 1976, I raised with my friend and parliamentary colleague, John Smith, who had been recently promoted to be Minister of State in the constitution unit (and was later Labour leader), the anachronistic problems of setting up a devolved Scottish Assembly. "You and your friends against devolution will soon be sorted out," Smith retorted. "We have brought in the cleverest civil servant in Whitehall to help Sir John Garlick, the Permanent Secretary: his name is Michael Quinlan."

Smith was right in one respect: Quinlan was among the cleverest of very many clever civil servants. He was wrong in another: Quinlan did not "sort out" the critics of devolution, because by 1977 this intellectually powerful and deeply honest man had come to recognise that there was no long-term logical solution to be had for the setting up of a subordinate Parliament as part, though only a part, of a state which the Government of the day wished to keep united.

But Quinlan's home was not the Department of Constitutional Affairs, where he had been called in as a proverbial fireman, but the Ministry of Defence. His period as Permanent Secretary, where he served Norman Tebbit, Tom King, Ken Clarke and Norman Fowler, was an interregnum between leaving the Ministry of Defence and returning there as Permanent Secretary.

Tom King recalled, "I had Michael twice: first, as Secretary of State for Employment, and subsequently, after I had been away for four years in Northern Ireland, as Secretary of State for Defence. He had a very, very high calibre intellect. He was a shrewd advisor in facing the challenge of 3,000,000 unemployed, but quite outstanding in formulating ideas for our policy document, 'Reorganisation of Options for Change' in the context of ending the Cold War."

Kenneth Clarke, Secretary of State for Employment, concurred. "Michael was excellent at keeping the department running efficiently. But David [Young] and I, two over-active Tory Ministers, were conscious that Defence, not Employment, was the topic of his first natural interest, and that time at the Department of Employment was a passage through to the position he coveted, as Permanent Secretary at the Ministry of Defence, where he was superb."

Not only was he formidable in argument, but Quinlan was formidable in argument with those on whose approval his career might be thought to depend. Quinlan believed it the duty of civil servants to proffer unpalatable advice to politicians, if they thought it was in Britain's interest.

At a meeting for a National Trust Members Group at Haddow House in Aberdeenshire in 2007, after my wife's presentation on an NT property, the chairman said, "And now her husband has agreed to answer general questions." First question: "What is the answer to the West Lothian Question?" (the issue of Scots MPs voting on purely English matters). I replied that if even so clever a man as Sir Michael Quinlan could not resolve it; there was no logical answer to be had. Second Question: "I agree from long personal experience that Michael Quinlan is an exceedingly clever, able and nice man, but did he have anything to do with devolution?"

Over a cup of tea, I discovered that the comment had come from a guest of the chairman, the late Air Chief Marshal Sir John Willis. Sir John had been Vice Chief of the Defence Staff from 1995-1997 and previously had been a senior member of the policy division in the Air Force Department from 1971-82, and was therefore in an ideal position to assess Quinlan's career in the Ministry of Defence.

He told me that Quinlan was never a "soft touch" for the RAF, but it had helped that he had done his National Service with the RAF from 1952-54, (in the Air Ministry itself as his eyesight disqualified him from being a pilot, as he would have wished). Quinlan first came to the notice of the top brass of the RAF just before the Suez Crisis in 1956, when he was promoted to the vitally important post of Private Secretary to Christopher Soames, Churchill's son-in-law and the Under Secretary of State in the Air Ministry, and his successor, Charles Orr-Ewing. Later, all the senior and up-and-coming RAF officers had almost daily dealings with Quinlan, when between 1962 and 1965, he was private secretary to the Chief of the Air Staff, Air Chief Marshal Sir Thomas Pike, and his successor, Sir Charles Elsworthy, later Marshall of the RAF and Chief of the Defence Staff.

Willis said that service chiefs, like him, by no means held all civil servants in high regard. "But what impressed us about Quinlan was that not only was he very clever indeed, and in a thoughtful way, eschewing any easy or cheap argument, but that he was prepared to be candid and tough with Government Ministers."

On his retirement from the Civil Service in 1992, Quinlan became Director for the next five years of the Ditchley Foundation, an organisation which brings together experts to discuss international issues. One of his major duties was to organise Anglo-American weekend conferences in the lovely 18th century house at Ditchley Park, enabling distinguished figures from both sides of the Atlantic to mix in a most congenial way, focusing on particular topics. Michael, and Mary Quinlan – who played an integral part, as she did through their 44 years of outstandingly happy marriage – were charming but ever-purposeful hosts.

The former Chief of Defence Staff, General Lord Charles Guthrie, would never have agreed to co-write a book, an extremely elegant slim volume, on The Just War with anyone for whom he did not have the greatest respect. Guthrie and Quinlan put in a modern context the eternal questions posed seven centuries ago by Sir Thomas Aquinas: in particular, was everything done that could be done to avoid military action, and would the long-term consequences be proportionate to the casus bellum? On this and other counts, Quinlan believed that Bush/Blair's case for invading Iraq failed, and, albeit retired for over a decade, he was welcomed by admirers in the United States – of which he had many – for saying so.

Quinlan was a devout Roman Catholic, and from 2001 was Chairman of the Tablet Trust. In May 2008 he wrote a seminal article, "Matters of Conscience", in which he confessed: "Catholics in public life today face increasingly difficult choices between the values of their faith and the actions demanded by their position." Quinlan observed that our pluralist society would be entitled to be cross if a catholic held up a red card over an issue that was an integral element of the role that had been accepted. "I know a lot of Catholics, including Cardinal Keith Patrick O'Brien, disagree deeply with me about nuclear weapons, for example – but I never felt gravely uncomfortable from the ethical standpoint (wisdom was occasionally another matter) about what I was asked to do."

Catherine Pepinster, editor of The Tablet, said: "Michael Quinlan was the most courteous of men and always supportive of The Tablet and of its independence. He had a love of the Roman Catholic Church and a love of truth. And that was reflected in his dealings with the journal, which has always attempted to be critically fair in reporting on the church. Michael's long experience of Whitehall and his knowledge of Defence were also put to good use by editors, both behind the scenes when he offered more words of advice, and in print, when he wrote erudite articles on nuclear weapons, unilateral and multilateral disarmament, and the war with Iraq. He was steeped in theories of "Just War" and his analysis of defence was always bound in ethical considerations."

In his introduction to Quinlan's book Thinking about Nuclear Weapons, Sir Michael Howard OM, Professor of the History of War at Oxford and Regius Professor of Modern History wrote: "In the preface to his book, Michael Quinlan does me the honour of quoting a remark I made in a recent lecture to the effect that 'the nuclear dragon is not dead, but sleeping'. This if true – and it is hard to believe otherwise – would be sufficient justification for his writing this book, and good reason why we should all read it. For Quinlan is uniquely qualified to enlighten us about the dragon. Not only has he spent a lifetime studying the problem of nuclear weapons, but as a senior civil servant he has played a leading role in formulating British policy for their acquisition, possession, and use. He has, to put it succinctly, taught our masters how to think."

Tam Dalyell makes no mention in his fine obituary of Sir Michael Quinlan of George Younger, whom Sir Michael served as permanent under-secretary at the Ministry of Defence from 1988-89, writes David Torrance.

The two got on well, and Sir Michael told me the following story while I was researching a biography of Younger. The tender for the first three Trident submarines had already been announced, but when the fourth came up under Sir Michael's watch, he tried to convince Younger that three were enough at a time when the UK also had, and envisaged keeping, nuclear delivery systems of other kinds.

“George listened with immense politeness,” Sir Michael recalled, “and said, ‘well it’s a very interesting idea but I think we’ll shelve that, Michael’.” Younger always deployed the nicest method of saying “no”.

When Younger decided to stand down as Defence Secretary in 1989, by coincidence the MoD was to have a special staff outing to the Royal Tournament at Earl’s Court on the day his decision was made public. Sir Michael arranged for the band leader at the tournament to play “Auld Lang Syne” when Younger walked out into the arena. It was a touching gesture from a kind and civilised civil servant.

Michael Edward Quinlan, civil servant: Born London 11 August 1930; RAF, 1952–54; Assistant Principal, Air Ministry, 1954; Private Secretary to Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Air, 1956–58; Principal, Air Ministry, 1958; Private Secretary to Chief of Air Staff, 1962–65; Assistant Secretary, Ministry of Defence, 1968; Defence Counsellor, UK Delegation to NATO, 1970–73; Under-Secretary, Constitution Unit, Cabinet Office, 1974–77; Deputy Under-Secretary of State (Policy), Ministry of Defence, 1977–81; Companion, Order of the Bath 1980; Deputy Secretary (Industry), HM Treasury, 1981–82; Permanent Secretary, Department of Employment, 1983–88; Knight Commander, Order of the Bath, 1985; Permanent Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Defence, 1988–92. Knight Grand Cross, Order of the Bath, 1991; married 1965 Mary Finlay (two sons, two daughters); died Banbury, Oxfordshire, 26 February 2009.