The Godfather: The life of Brian Burke

By Quentin Beresford

Once touted as a potential prime minister, former Western Australian premier Brian Burke has had a rollercoaster career. This is the first major biography of this charismatic and influential politician who even out of power and disgraced, pulled political strings in WA and beyond.

The most popular premier in the nation in the 1980s, Brian Burke went to gaol twice after the scandals of WA Inc. His reputation was thought to be damaged beyond repair, but he became a successful lobbyist for some of the most powerful corporations in the country. As the Corruption and Crime Commission steadily closed in on him he was shown to be running a virtual shadow cabinet in his home state.

Quentin Beresford tracks the rise, fall, resurrection and then collapse of the man in the Panama hat, examining what it is in Burke's personality, the nature of Labor party factionalism and the business community that brought him such power and influence across the country.

'In this absorbing account, Beresford succeeds in unraveling the strands of Brian Burke's life, exposing the forces which fashioned his now notorious public persona.' - Carmen Lawrence, former WA Premier and Federal ALP parliamentarian

• Language: English
• Publisher: Allen & Unwin
• Release date: Aug 1, 2008
• ISBN: 9781741766936

Book preview

THE

GODFATHER

THE

GODFATHER

THE LIFE OF BRIAN BURKE

QUENTIN BERESFORD

First published in 2008

Copyright © Quentin Beresford 2008

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or 10 per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to Copyright Agency Limited (CAL) under the Act.

Allen & Unwin

83 Alexander Street

Crows Nest NSW 2065

Australia

National Library of Australia

Cataloguing-in-Publication entry:

Beresford, Quentin, 1954–

The godfather: the life of Brian Burke/Quentin Beresford.

9781741755565 (pbk.)

Includes index.

Bibliography.

Burke, Brian, 1947–

Australian Labor Party.Western Australian Branch – History.

Criminals – Western Australia – Biography.

Premiers – Western Australia – Biography.

Political corruption – Western Australia.

Western Australia – Politics and government – 1976–1990.

994.10692

Set in 11/16 pt Caslon by Midland Typesetters, Australia

Printed and bound in Australia by Griffin Press

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

To Marilyn

and my family scattered across Australia

CONTENTS

Acknowledgements

Introduction

1 Son of Labor

2 The making of a political operator

3 In the shadow of Huey Long

4 The fixer

5 Crony capitalism: Burke and WA Inc

6 The rise and fall of an ambassador

7 On trial

8 Back from the brink

9 Return of the Godfather

10 An uncertain future

Epilogue

Notes

Bibliography

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

THIS BOOK HAS TAKEN A SUPPORTIVE community to produce. Heading this list are those who agreed to be interviewed. It was not an easy decision for some, given the controversial nature of the subject matter. The contribution of people’s memories, insights and first-hand observations have added a layer of intimacy to the events in the book that could not be gained simply from the public record. I thank the following: Les Ayton, Kim Beazley, Malcolm [Mal] Bryce, Peter Clough, Colleen Eagan, Peter Gormon, Gerard Gormon, John Halden, Bob Kucera, Margot Lang, Dr Carmen Lawrence, Bevan Lawrence, Jim McGinty, Barry MacKinnon, Paul Murray, Brian Peachey, Phillip Pendal, Joseph Poprzeczny, John Quigley, Susanne Roberts, Martin Saxon, Beth Schultz,Tom Stephens, Arthur Tonkin, Michael Thorn,Tim Treadgold, Judyth Watson. It should be remembered that several of these interviewees had distinguished careers serving the public in the government led by Brian Burke and were uninvolved in the events surrounding his WA Inc activities.

Several of those interviewed deserve special mention. Mal Bryce, John Quigley and Martin Saxon made themselves available for repeated interviews, extending over many months. In different ways, each played a central role in the events discussed in this book and, therefore, their participation has added depth to the account. I was very fortunate, too, that Joe Poprzeczny persisted over many months in helping me draw out the implications of Burke’s Marist Brothers education and the half forgotten idea of distributism.

Some people agreed to be interviewed only on the basis of anonymity. I extend my thanks to them.

I appreciate the generosity of those people who gave me access to their own files on the politics of the period. Ready access to Martin Saxon’s extensive and award-winning journalism from the 1980s and early 1990s was invaluable. Saxon’s career reminds us of the crucial role investigative journalism plays in a democracy. Bevan Lawrence, who led an important public movement calling for a Royal Commission into WA Inc, had assiduously collected a wide range of newspaper material to which he gave me access and this added greatly to the depth of my knowledge of the WA Inc era. Also very helpful was Dr Harry Phillips’ extensive writings on Western Australian politics in his role as one of the state’s most respected political scientists.

I am conscious of how much I have been able to draw on the work of individual journalists who have written about Burke over the years. I have acknowledged my debt to these people in the bibliography.

I was also fortunate in having a number of people prepared to read and comment on the manuscript. I am very grateful for those people who reviewed the manuscript for the publishers. Dr Carmen Lawrence, Phillip Pendal and Dr Harry Phillips offered valuable comments. Martin Saxon was also generous with his time in reading and commenting on the draft. However, the reviewers are not responsible for matters of fact or interpretation: the author naturally takes responsibility for the finished product.

Edith Cowan University has supported my research career over fifteen years with grants and study leave. On this project, in particular, I would like to thank several people who are now no longer at ECU: Professor Patrick Garnett, Dr Peter Bedford and Dr Sherry Saggers. Thankfully Mr Bill Noble is still providing great administrative support at the university as he did for me on this project.

My publisher, Allen & Unwin, has my gratitude for its enthusiasm and for providing such a range of professional expertise. It has been a delight to work with Elizabeth Weiss, Rebecca Kaiser, Kelly Fagan, Elizabeth Croger, Ann Lennox, Andrew Hawkins and the rest of the team.

I owe a great debt of gratitude to my research assistant, Bianca McKinney. Her energy and skill at locating diverse sources of information never ceased to amaze me and the information she turned up added greatly to the account of Burke’s life.

I would like to thank Dr Chris Sheil for pointing out to me the value of historian Marc Bloch’s writings on patronage and for providing a dialogue on this vital link to Burke’s career, as well as discussing with me Machiavelli’s ideas.

I never lose sight of the support given by my family to my writing projects. As the cliché goes, writing is a solitary pastime. I am fortunate that my adult children show great interest in these projects and tolerate my absences more than they should have to: my thanks and love to Michelle and William and to my son-in-law, Des, and grandson, Jacob. In Sydney, Matthew, Karen and Bianca are never far from our thoughts.

The dedication at the beginning of this book is the smallest token of my appreciation for the contribution my wife Marilyn made not only to this project, but extending in so many ways over the quarter century of our married life. In this, as in past projects, I have been blessed in having the benefits of her dialogue about the issues and her editorial eye for narrative.

A note on methodology:

I made an approach to Brian Burke regarding his possible involvement in this project. After a short discussion he passed me on to his daughter, Sarah, with whom I had an extended and pleasant conversation.We discussed an offer I made to her father for an interview that would be included in the book as an extended epilogue in which he would have an opportunity to respond to specific issues raised by his career. I also offered to follow up on any contacts the family passed onto me as possible people to interview. However, the family did not proceed with these offers.

Given the requests of anonymity, I have de-identified most interview material unless specific approval was given to be named as a source and/or the use of a name is in some way crucial to the text. However, everybody interviewed did have direct contact with the events covered in this book and all material has gone through an extensive process of verification. In nearly all cases, information which is not attributed complements the public record.

The term ‘Godfather’ has for years had several meanings in everyday language. Its use in the title of this book has been taken from references on the public record to Burke operating as a controlling figure in the Labor Party—a man enthralled by power, capable of attracting loyalists of near total devotion and able to directly influence people’s careers. In this context, Burke has, on more than one occasion, been referred to as a ‘Godfather’ figure in the Labor Party. The term carries no other inferences.

INTRODUCTION

ON 6 NOVEMBER 2006 BRIAN BURKE, former premier of Western Australia, manoeuvred his ample frame out of the double glass doors of the building housing the state’s powerful Corruption and Crime Commission to a waiting media frenzy. The scene was bristling with contrasts. Sporting a panama hat and dark glasses, the burly ‘hard man’ of ALP politics, who had been jailed twice since leaving office, clutched his wife’s hand in a tight, childlike, chest-high grip. The grilling he had just undergone over his nefarious lobbying activities did not suggest the respectable business consultant he professed to be. Yet during this appearance, and on succeeding days, accounts of influence peddling at the heart of government involving a network of compliant and often singularly devoted ministers, backbenchers and local councillors revealed that Brian Burke had provided a uniquely successful service. For his clients in the business world, including some of the wealthiest in the nation, Brian could pull strings, get the best outcome, deliver on access—and it was all done discreetly, secretly. For the six years between 2000 and 2006, Burke acted as a mole for business in the very bowels of government in the most resource-rich state in the nation at the height of its economic prosperity.

In the weeks that followed his first appearance before the Corruption and Crime Commission, the story of his extraordinary prowess as a lobbyist—and the unconventional methods he often used—gradually smeared a number of state and federal Liberal and Labor politicians. While Burke became convenient ammunition in the endless rounds of combat in Canberra, journalist Matt Price summed up public reaction to the extraordinary revelations emanating from the Corruption and Crime Commission when he wrote: ‘All around Australia people are shaking their heads in utter bewilderment. How on earth is a dodgy character like Brian Burke still able to exert such malevolent influence, both in and outside WA?’¹

How indeed? Describing Burke as a ‘dodgy character’ purporting to be a legitimate business consultant just scratches the surface of his paradoxical life: image and reality have rarely meshed. This is clear in each of the three main phases of his public career: premier of Western Australia between 1983 and 1988, ambassador to Ireland for three years after retiring from politics, and business consultant/powerbroker in the Labor Party since the late 1990s. In each of these phases he lived parallel lives; his public persona concealed his private actions. He was among the first wave of politicians in the late 1970s to utilise the power of the media, becoming one of the undisputed masters of political spin. Burke used this skill to mask a fascination for both wealth and power and, importantly, his indifference to many democratic conventions.

In his first phase, this mastery of the media helped him become the most popular political leader in Australia during the mid 1980s. But behind the carefully cultivated charisma, Burke engaged in a world of secret deals with high-risk entrepreneurs which, by the time he left office at the beginning of 1988, had begun to unravel as the WA Inc scandal. During 1991 and 1992 a royal commission exposed the layers in which Burke concealed his reckless and secretive dealings with high-profile entrepreneurs, bypassing the proper processes of government. The after-effects of these deals were staggering: billion-dollar losses to the taxpayers while, at the same time, the Labor Party had received multi-million-dollar donations.What had been Burke’s reason for risking fundraising on this scale? And did he in any way gain personal benefit from the donations?

In the second phase of his career, his parallel life was equally pronounced. While ambassador to Ireland, Burke was again involved in several questionable business dealings. Called back from his post to appear before the Royal Commission into WA Inc, he eventually faced charges which sent him to prison twice during the early to mid 1990s. It was widely thought that his reputation was so damaged that he would never again occupy a public role. Few at the time understood the duplicity which had led to such a dramatic fall from grace. Kim Beazley, an old friend of the family, was at a loss to explain how the Brian Burke he knew was the man exposed during the WA Inc Royal Commission: ‘The fate of Brian Burke is one of the things that mystifies me. Next to Neville Wran, he is the best politician I ever came across, and that things could have gone so bad still baffles me.’²

Out of jail by late 1997, and bitter about his loss of reputation, Burke set about securing his redemption. In the third phase of his career he managed a comeback to public life that must rank as one of the remarkable feats of modern politics. He re-established his authority in the right wing of the Labor Party where he even played an influential role in state and national Labor politics. And he also became a successful businessman through a consultancy he formed with former ministerial colleague Julian Grill. Part of their business strategy was to rebuild Burke’s public image which Burke largely orchestrated by exploiting old contacts in the media. These were used to project the view that Burke had been a scapegoat for the excesses of WA Inc. Yet, while trying to reclaim his respectability, Burke was simultaneously building his business consultancy by ruthlessly exploiting contacts in the Labor government and bending the processes of government decision-making to achieve outcomes for his clients. His business strategies were unconventional and often audacious, revealing a love for intrigue and risk taking.

Having to face his accusers again for actions similar to WA Inc only deepened the paradox that is Brian Burke. He not only seemed unaware of the implications of the powers of the Corruption and Crime Commission— whose genesis can be traced to the recommendations of the WA Inc Royal Commission—but he showed little capacity for self-reflection about his previous fall from grace. Just when many thought Burke had rehabilitated himself as a respectable business figure, he was revealed as a masterful but deceitful lobbyist. Kim Beazley was among the group shocked at reading the transcripts, describing their contents in two despairing words: ‘Dreadful.Awful.’³ Beazley may have acknowledged Burke as a flawed character, but not a malevolent one. For others who had been close to Burke in government, or who had observed him at work in the Labor Party after his second stint in prison, the Corruption and Crime Commission hearings revealed the man they knew only too well: the charmer, the networker, the intimidator. Yet even among this group there was surprise at the extent of his cynical, self-interested activities.

Burke’s ability to disguise his private activities forms the subtext of this book. What shaped Brian Burke to operate in this way? On the surface, the question is not an easy one to answer. He had a strong family background. The son of a prominent Catholic federal Labor politician, he grew up eulogising his father’s commitment to helping society’s battlers. Yet there were great tensions in his father’s world that embroiled the son. Tom Burke was at the epicentre of ‘the Split’, one of the most tumultuous battles in Labor history; an acrimonious, ideological struggle between Catholic and communist influences in the Labor movement. Brian and his brother,Terry, grew up in the shadow of their father’s bitter defeats in this internal struggle.

However personality has also played a role in fostering his covert activities. From the time he was a teenager, Burke stood out as someone possessing a special combination of interpersonal skills. He commanded more than the normal quotient of attention: he had the ‘gift of the gab’, the ability to charm, and a capacity to attract loyalists. These innate skills were nurtured in the bearpit of Labor factional politics. By the time he became premier he had refined these skills into a personalised style of leadership. He adopted much the same approach in his career as a business consultant where his armoury of personal skills disarmed selected cabinet ministers, party officials and, it has been claimed, some senior bureaucrats.

A wealth of material exists on Burke’s character. No other contemporary political figure has been so systematically examined by official inquiry. The WA Inc Royal Commission, the Corruption and Crime Commission hearings and a lengthy Select Committee report into one of his controversial consultancy deals have together generated many thousands of pages of evidence on Burke’s career and these offer unparalleled insights into his character, leadership style, methods of operation and relationships with political colleagues and business. This voluminous evidence is a repository of information on the nature of modern politics.

A capacity for charm, manipulation and deceit is common to many political leaders. This shift to a more intensely Machiavellian approach to politics over recent years has emphasised the moral flexibility of leaders and their need to pursue a competitive advantage over opponents. If Burke had retired from public life as premier in the late 1980s, his career would have served as a classic illustration of this shift. But as a business consultant and an influential powerbroker in the Labor Party, who brought many of the same qualities to the fore again, it became obvious that Burke’s character goes beyond a Machiavellian framework.

Few share Burke’s ability to use personality as a secret weapon. He can readily project a number of different sides to his personality while masking his motives. While some always harboured suspicion about this talent, most were seduced by it. His reputation as one of Australia’s most popular premiers was built on his ability to project charm and a sense of intimacy with the public. Burke was the ‘ordinary man’s’ premier. In reality there was nothing ordinary about Burke’s quest for power nor his fascination with the risk-taking world of business. At the individual level, Burke could extract extraordinary levels of loyalty from those in his close circle through his innate understanding of how to target an individual’s strengths and vulnerabilities. Above all, he understood the power of flattery. This skill enabled him to convince others to engage in his undertakings. Yet flattery and charm were only part of Burke’s arsenal. Occupying parallel worlds necessitated a willingness to engage in secrecy, deceit and obfuscation—Burke was a master of intrigue.

While the evidence shows that Burke used his personal skills in calculated ways, his behaviour defies easy categorisation. He has always possessed some contradictory personality traits.While using his personal skills in often pernicious ways, he has been a devoted husband and family man.When in trouble, Burke has a habit of invoking the unconditional love given to him by his family. Family means a great deal to Burke, beyond even its Catholic underpinnings. While antagonistic, and frequently vengeful to many outside his circle, he has enjoyed trusting relationships with a range of longstanding friends. Burke’s generosity towards this group has a genuine quality. And, for someone whose motives were often self-seeking, he did show flashes of interest in a more equal distribution of social opportunities, especially early in his career. Despite these contradictions, however, I have tried to avoid retreating into the convenience of describing Burke simply as an enigma. There is a core to Brian Burke.

A third component which played a part in Burke’s career is the weakness in the political system in which he operated. Burke’s story is a cautionary one about the vulnerability of democracy. He may have possessed the drive and skills to pursue wealth and power, but his personality and career must be placed in the context of the institutions of democracy that validated his skills, often turning a blind eye to his deployment of them. Consequently, Burke has been able to capture key elements of his party, the bureaucracy, the media and parliament. He is remarkable for not only achieving this degree of control while premier, but reclaiming a large part of it when operating as a business consultant and Labor powerbroker. Why were these institutions so prone to being captured? And how did Burke deploy his skills to do so?

Brian Burke’s is a story like few others in Australian politics.With its succession of triumphs and tragedies, its links to Labor Party history and culture, its tentacles into the world of business, its shadowy links between money and politics, and the power of the media, his career is a case study in understanding the darker sides of modern politics.

CHAPTER 1

SON OF LABOR

RISING TO GIVE HIS FIRST SPEECH IN state parliament in November 1973, Brian Burke paid an emotional tribute to his late father, Tom. He said that ‘any credit that is mine is due to him’.¹ Fourteen years later, when announcing to parliament his impending retirement, the touching bond was undiminished. Describing his father as ‘the greatest single influence on my life’, the soon to be departing premier again felt compelled to acknowledge his debt saying, ‘My achievements are to his credit.’² There is nothing unusual in an adult paying such a tribute to a parent except that Burke’s carried an unusually reverential tone; it was as if he had lived in the shadow of an idealised version of Tom. Continuing his farewell speech, he said he hoped he had ‘brought some of his [father’s] forbearance, humility and unselfishness to this Parliament’.³ Few who knew Brian Burke well at the time would have described him as either humble or selfless. And Burke himself must have been aware of the contradiction: that after five years of engaging in reckless, secretive and high-stakes games with Perth’s entrepreneurs, he sought to leave office cloaking himself in his father’s personality, which he rightly described as thoroughly decent. At the time, the full extent of the contradiction escaped everyone.

So how had the father shaped the son? And why had the son idealised himself through the father? These are tantalisingly difficult questions to untangle because Brian Burke was born into a family steeped in both religion and politics during one of the most tumultuous times in ALP history. Tom Burke would carry to his grave the scars of his battles within the smoke-filled backrooms of the ALP. His young son would witness his father’s sad demise.

Tom Burke, like so many of the post World War I generation, grew up in the shadow of the Great Depression which hit Western Australia harder than most other Australian states. Born into a family of keen Labor supporters in the country near Moora, he was luckier than most in having the resources and determination to survive the catastrophic collapse of the economy. His father, Peter, descended from Irish immigrants, was a battling farmer before buying a cartage contracting business to ply produce to and from the West Perth markets. This provided a stable income while thousands were being thrown out of work. Peter’s sons joined him in the venture. With two horses and two carts, the family toiled from three in the morning until five in the afternoon.⁴

The slump in the price of wheat—the mainstay of the state’s already fragile economy—sparked financial hardship in city and country. This spilled over into political protest and militancy.While he was enrolled at City College to study accountancy part-time, Tom could not have escaped the desperation of the demonstrations organised by the unemployed with their pleas for ‘solidarity or starvation’. The family took an intense interest in politics: ‘Religion and Labor was all we got—father used to eat and sleep the Labor Party.’⁵ ‘Grandma Burke’, Tom’s grandmother, was the enforcer of the moral code, taking it upon herself to round up the local community for attendance at church.

Spartan and morally upright, the Burke family weathered the Depression. But at times it must have appeared to them that the democratic system might buckle under the weight of the hard times. Fear was aroused by several protest rallies. One held in the centre of Perth turned ugly when conflict erupted between the several thousand protestors and the police. As a Labor family, the Burkes were more than likely to closely follow these events. At the intersection of politics and economics lay the family’s other abiding loyalty, the Catholic Church. It could not have escaped the Burkes’ attention that communists were thought to be stirring the pot of protest among the unemployed.⁶ The Catholic Church was growing ever more alarmed at the appeal of communism among its working-class flock.⁷ As the seeds of a struggle for the soul of the ALP were being sown, Tom Burke started to make his way in the world, and into Labor politics.

Fired by his father’s enthusiasm, Tom joined a debating society and practised speaking in front of a mirror,⁸ and upon the completion of his commercial qualifications he threw himself into Labor activism. He had joined the party some time after Labor’s victory at the federal elections in 1929 under leader James Scullin. Soon afterwards the Burke family participated in its first election, a state election which was lost by the Collier Labor government.⁹ Described as ‘an earnest man of high attainment’,¹⁰ Tom had a role in forming the Perth branch of the ALP. This raised his profile and helped him win endorsement to contest the 1937 Federal election, which he lost.

Events over the next few years kept Burke from renominating. Still working as a carter, he married Madeline Orr and later joined the Royal Australian Air Force. Regarded as a young man of potential, and amid the darkening clouds of World War II, Burke maintained his involvement in the administrative affairs of the ALP until 1943, when he became the Labor candidate for the federal seat of Perth. This time he won, earning the affection and support of his intensely political wider family.Tom’s sister Mary lived in the country and regularly sent him her thoughts on rural politics. In fact, when she had the telephone connected in the mid 1940s, the first bill created an almighty commotion because almost all of it had been incurred talking politics with her brother.

On joining the federal parliament, Tom quickly won the affection of both Prime Minister John Curtin and Treasurer Ben Chifley. Chifley, in particular, took a shine to him as Tom stood out among his colleagues for his grasp of financial matters. Loyal and charitable and sympathetic to battlers, he was regarded as a devoted Labor man. He carried into parliament many of the values of old working-class Australia. In his maiden speech he made a heartfelt declaration that Labor would never again allow a ‘man-made depression to ravage the life of the nation’.¹¹ And he argued that good wages were crucial to addressing the pressing problem of lifting the nation’s birthrate. He was an enthusiast for the White Australia policy, too. In one speech, he robustly declared that Australia should not apologise for the White Australia policy, explaining: ‘Racial superiority is not involved. The White Australia policy had to be introduced because unlimited immigration from Eastern countries would submerge the comparatively small white population here; and the whole of Australia’s living and working standards.’¹²

Two years after Tom entered parliament, and in the dying days of the war, a tired and worn-out John Curtin died in office. The by-election for his seat of Fremantle was won by Kim Beazley Sr, and Tom and the new member of parliament quickly became firm friends. They shared much in common. Both were deeply religious (Beazley belonged to the religious movement called Moral Rearmament) and fiercely anti-communist. Tom was best man at Kim’s wedding and later on their families enjoyed social occasions together. Their two sons, Kim Jr and Brian, spent a lot of time in their early years together, and were almost like cousins.¹³ Both men nurtured their political ambitions—Tom dreamed of one day serving as the federal treasurer in a government led by his good friend.

At this time Labor had several fights on its hands which occupied Tom’s energies, none bigger than the one over Labor’s plans to nationalise the banks. Burke became one of the frontline defenders of the plan after Chifley dropped the bombshell following the 16 August 1947 Cabinet meeting.¹⁴ Emerging from the meeting with a wide grin to announce the government’s intention, Chifley seemed unprepared for the predictable backlash.While the plan caused outrage in the financial sector, and sent shivers down the backs of many Australians, Labor members of parliament with bitter memories of the Great Depression were resolute. Tom could remember the attitude of the banks during his father’s failed farming venture in the lead up to the Depression.¹⁵ With his characteristic manner of speaking at the dispatch box with one of his hands tucked in the back of his trouser belt, Tom told parliament that the development of the country was being impeded by the ‘huge burden of capital indebtedness’ endured by farmers embroiling them in ‘a never ending struggle to make ends meet’.¹⁶ With the nationalisation of the banks, farmers along with home builders and home purchasers would be provided with ‘the money they require at a reasonable rate of interest’.¹⁷ Labor members were flooded with letters of protest as the measures passed though both houses of parliament only to be struck down by the High Court in August 1948.

Against this stormy background Tom’s wife Madeline had given birth to Brian on 25 February 1947. He was the couple’s third child.Terry was the eldest child, followed by Anne. The family home was in the solidly middle-class suburb of Wembley, notable for its strong Catholic population and the