ABSTRACT
Despite a lifetime of discreet public service dealing with a myriad of issues over the years, Lord Armstrong is best known to the general public for recalIing a phrase of Edmund Burke's. A British government letter, he told the Supreme Court of New South Wales in November 1986 'contains a misleading impression, not a lie. It was being economical with the truth.' That phrase won hirn his only entry in the Oxford Dictionary of Modern Quotations (1991: 10). To many a horrified liberal or left-wing journalist it was a revealing indiscretion but, as he makes clear in the previous chapter, not to Lord Armstrong. He denounces what he calls the 'simple slogans' of 'open government', 'freedom of information' or the public's 'right to know' as 'emotional blackmail' and adds: 'the more serious point is that open government cannot be an absolute. The pursuit of open government conflicts, or can conflict, with the pursuit of other desirable things, such as the right to individual privacy or the preservation ... of national security.' In short, the fundamental issue for Lord Armstrong, is one of 'reconciling irreconcilables and striking balances'.
