A Fortunate Life (32 page)

Printing was largely a family affair. Jane got so proficient at it that she was often left to run Clarissa for a short time while I answered a phone call or saw some visiting activist in the next room. On one occasion I heard a terrifying scream from the print shed and dashed back in to find Jane’s hair tangled up in Clarissa’s flying rollers. She had had the presence of mind to knock down the lever which turned off the power – so preventing an even worse outcome. Nevertheless, quite a lot of her hair had been pulled out, and it took a long time to get the ink out of what remained.

The kids helped with packing printed leaflets and, from time to time, distributing them, too. But these were tough times for them. They saw very little of me, as I usually came home after my ‘real work’ at around 5.30 p.m. and then left an hour later for an evening’s canvassing, or meetings with community groups or my Liberal activist colleagues. And, with the weekends largely taken up with surgeries and printing, I fear they had a pretty meagre time of it. The burdens of bringing them up fell disproportionately on Jane. The only time in the year when we were able to be wholly together as a family without politics intruding was our sacred week’s skiing every winter, when we usually went back to Switzerland and stayed with old friends.

What made things worse for them was that, as I became better known, they became prey to much teasing and even bullying at the local comprehensive school they attended, where Simon became known as ‘Paddy Two’ and Kate as ‘Padwina’. It was not unusual for them to come home with cuts and bruises, having been in a fight because one of their school colleagues had made some disparaging comment about me. Jane and I became increasingly concerned about the effects of this, especially on Kate, who had already had crucial parts of her education disrupted due to our return from Geneva.

In early 1978 we heard the terrible news that my mother had died of a massive heart attack in Australia. This, of course, hit me very hard – but it was especially difficult for Kate, too, for my mother was very close to her. Over the next year Kate became increasingly disturbed and difficult to deal with, and she and I used to have terrible fights.

I would never have succeeded even to the extent that I did in politics, had it not been for my children and the help and support they gave me. But this was given at a price, for politics can be very tough on the offspring of politicians, and the fact that both of them have become not only human beings to be proud of, but also our best friends, is a testimony more to their strength and Jane’s skills as a mother than to my wisdom. In my first two elections, in 1979 and 1983, I used family photos in my election address. But I soon concluded that this was a mistake, and after that we always ensured that there was the widest gap possible between my politics and my children’s lives. I only wish I had realised the importance of this earlier.

But this is to get a long way ahead of the story, for back in 1978 we were still busy trying to learn the art of printing and leafleting, our organisation was still very weak, our funds gravely depleted, and now there was a general election looming. At this stage we were lucky enough to gain another formidable weapon in our fight for Yeovil, whose effectiveness and influence was to prove even more powerful than Clarissa’s.

In mid-1978, our voluntary and unpaid agent, Val Keitch, resigned. Our then Constituency Chairman, a trim and goatee-bearded smallholder called Fred Symes, announced that he had found a replacement: a Territorial Army Major called Nick Speakman, who had agreed to give one night a week – the same time as he gave to TA Drill Night – to the local Liberals. Inwardly, my heart sank when I heard the news. I had been assiduously trying to change the Constituency party from a largely middle-class organisation into one truly representative of all classes in the Yeovil community. Indeed, in comparison with the Liberal organisations of the neighbouring Wells, Taunton and Bridgwater constituencies, one of the distinguishing features of the Yeovil party at the time (and one reason, I believe, for our eventual victory) was its highly informal atmosphere and the fact that it was genuinely cross-class, with many of our members, key activists and officers coming from the council estates of our community. I used to joke at the time that, if you went to a constituency function in Wells you had to wear a dinner jacket, in Taunton, you had to wear a lounge suit, but in Yeovil, the right dress was open-neck shirt, sweater and jeans. So the last thing I thought we wanted in Yeovil was a TA Major. But I completely underestimated Nick, who has no side whatsoever and turned out to be not only a brilliant agent but also a solid rock of wisdom and advice, loved and respected by all in the Constituency. We often laugh about his promise of giving ‘one night a week’ to the Party, as he became the linch-pin and directing mind behind all our subsequent victories and served as my Parliamentary Agent in all my election campaigns from 1979 up to my resignation in 1999. He also, in due course, became the Chair of our local District Council and was awarded the MBE for his community work.

It is now generally acknowledged that Jim Callaghan made a grave error by not calling the election in October 1978; if he had, I think he would have beaten the Tories under Mrs Thatcher. But for us in Yeovil, it was a godsend. It was now clear he would definitely go to the country in the
spring of 1979, giving us more time to plan and prepare for an election which would combine voting for both Westminster and local district Councils on the same day. I spent much of the remainder of 1978 and early 1979 finding local candidates, concentrating on the wards where Labour was strong in Yeovil. In the end we found ten candidates. I then went round with each of them identifying local issues in each ward – ranging across the state of a playground, litter, inadequate council house repairs, the absence of a convenient bus stop etc. In early 1979 we launched a series of leaflets in each target ward identifying these issues and introducing our candidates. I made it clear to the Constituency party that, in this election, properly resourcing the campaigns for these Council candidates should take priority over the resources for my general-election campaign.

And even when the general election came, I reminded them that our target was not to beat the Tories, but to push Labour into third place, the better to be able to squeeze them in the election to follow. At this time, towards the end of the 1978 Winter of Discontent, Labour was very unpopular. But so was the Liberal Party, which was being partly blamed for the industrial strife gripping the country, even though David Steel had ended the Lib–Lab Pact before the Winter of Discontent had started. So we decided to mount our attack on Labour chiefly on local issues – and particularly on the fact that their candidate, a rather decent man called Ian Luder, was not local, but came from Bedford. I fear we were pretty ruthless in getting this message across; no leaflet went out which did not attack ‘Labour’s absentee candidate’. When, after the election was called, it came to light that he was also fighting a District Council seat in Bedford on the same day, we published a leaflet asking, ‘Which seat is he serious about – Yeovil, or Bedford?’ and pointing out that in these circumstances a Labour vote was a wasted vote (which was very cheeky of us; this was normally the charge levelled at those who voted Liberal).

In late 1978 I received another boost to my campaign; my father decided to come back to England for good, saying that, now that my mother had died, he could return home for his last days. To start with, he hoped to live with his favourite sister, my Dorset Aunt Nan. But this did not work out, so he came to live with us. He threw himself into the organisational side of my campaign as well as filling in for me in doing the things with Kate and Simon (such as taking them fishing) which I was unable to do.

It is in the nature of political candidates, their supporters and their families that they have to suspend disbelief and radiate an iron confidence that they are going to win – otherwise how would they ever be able to put up with all the discomfort and embarrassments of campaigning? Despite having told others that 1979 would be a ‘staging post’ election before it started, once into the campaign I quickly fell prey to my own enthusiasm and a strong dose of ‘candidate-itis’, insisting to all that we were on our way to victory. I enjoy campaigning, so the election itself was fun. The people on whose doors I knocked, especially in country areas, were invariably very pleasant. I don’t suppose I was the first inexperienced candidate, and I am certain I won’t be the last, to mistake politeness on the doorstep for intended electoral support in the ballot box.

Additional drama was also injected into my campaign when someone dug up the fact that the new no-hope Liberal Candidate in Yeovil had once been on an IRA death list. Airey Neave MP, a war hero and one of Mrs Thatcher’s closest lieutenants, had recently been assassinated by a bomb which blew up his car in the House of Commons car park, with the result that the election was conducted against the backdrop of heightened security and expectations of further IRA attacks. It was therefore decided at the start of the election that I should be accorded local police protection. This caused considerable puzzlement in deepest rural Somerset when I arrived to address village-hall audiences which could be numbered on the fingers of one hand to the accompaniment of police sirens – but it did my vote no harm!
*

It was just before one of these meetings, early in our campaign, that I caught Nick Speakman carrying more chairs into the parish hall. This seemed curious, since there were about eighty chairs already in the hall, and the total audience who had turned up to hear me amounted to just three. I pointed out to him that our problem, it seemed to me, was not an insufficiency of chairs, but a distinct lack of people, and asked him what he was doing. ‘Read the press release,’ was his answer. When our meeting was duly reported in the Press it told the reading public that when Paddy Ashdown held his election meeting in such and such village hall, ‘extra chairs had to be brought in’.

By polling day I thought we had fought a good campaign and that the vote was moving towards us. On the last Monday of the campaign the
Sun
published a front-page article headlined ‘Nuts in May’ which, in brutal terms, warned people that the consequence of voting Liberal was to put the much-hated Labour Government back in power. Almost immediately I began to feel the vote, especially on council estates, starting to slip away from us. It was my first experience of a Tory card they almost always play on the eve of poll and which was to have a profound influence on my thinking when, less than ten years later, I was leading the Party towards an approaching general election. Nevertheless, I went into polling day feeling good and even just a tiny bit confident about what lay ahead.

So the actual result came as something of a shock.

In later elections, Nick Speakman used to keep me away from the count for as long as possible, having learned that my pessimism on these occasions is contagious and tends to spread alarm and despondency to all around me. For the truth is that I find election counts pure torture. The atmosphere is stuffy, and the smell of sweat and fear all-pervasive. The Council officials counting the vote have usually already done up to twelve hours manning polling stations. Those scrutinising the counting on behalf of the candidates are equally tired and uncomfortable at having to be in such close proximity to those they have just spent three weeks insulting. For me, at least, being a candidate at a count always reminds me of the people described in Hilaire Belloc’s poem ‘The Garden Party’, who

At the count, the piles of votes that have been cast for me seem as weightless and unremarkable as raindrops in an April shower. But each vote that has been cast against me resounds in the pit of my stomach as a thunderclap of disapproval, and strikes like a lightning bolt into my self-confidence and self-respect.

So the evening of 3 May 1979 was a most painful one. The full results were: Peyton (Conservative) 31,321 (47.9%); Ashdown (Liberal) 19,939 (30.5%); Luder (Labour) 14,098 (21.6%). I had lost to my Tory opponent by a massive and increased majority of more than 11,000 votes. I saw Jane’s eyes briefly fill with tears, and I later learned
that the children, sitting at home with my father in front of the television, had wept too. But I had to give the traditional candidate’s speech of thanks, and I tried to mumble a few words. I hoped they sounded a little more dignified than those of the defeated Liberal candidate in the 1946 general election who, before stalking off the stage in disgust, having lost his deposit, declaimed: ‘People of Yeovil, you have been handed the keys of liberty and you have dashed them to the ground!’