A Fortunate Life (40 page)

The result was that Alan Beith and I had, in effect, an exhausting six-month Leadership campaign. Most of the early part of it was spent scurrying round securing support from key figures; this often involved a kind of informal ‘beauty contest’, with each of us being ‘looked over’ by the grandees and institutions of both the old Parties.

It was in this spirit that, on 20 March 1988, the day after the new Party’s launch rally in Westminster, Jane and I were invited to lunch with the grandee of all grandees (later a key pillar of my Leadership years) Roy Jenkins, at his house in East Hendred, Oxfordshire. We both realised that this was a job interview, even if it took the form of an elegant and amusing lunch preceded by some very good champagne and accompanied by some of Roy’s outstanding claret. The assembled might of the SDP was there, including Dick Taverne, whose wife asked Jane where we lived in London. Jane said we didn’t live in London, we lived in Somerset. But we did have a small flat in London. ‘Whereabouts?’ ‘Kennington,’ Jane replied, attracting a sharp intake of breath and the comment, ‘Oh,
south
of the river’. Driving home afterwards she said that she didn’t even know there was a ‘wrong side’ of the river.

However the occasion cannot have gone too badly, as, from that moment onwards, Roy and Jennifer, who hardly knew me before, gave me their unstinting and unfailing backing, not only in the subsequent campaign, but also throughout my Leadership years, and especially when I needed it most, at the darkest and most difficult times.

I launched my campaign for the Leadership at midday on 1 June 1988 in the Yeovil Liberal Club, after which Jane and I began an extended country-wide tour, taking in every corner of Britain and ending back in London on the day of the count, 28 July. The Ming Group’s preparations paid off handsomely. Thanks to them, we were able to assemble a superb team and mounted a most effective campaign under the slogan ‘The Ability to WIN – the VISION to Lead’.

The campaign itself was, by and large, a positive one, barring only a ten-point anonymous document, leaked to the Press just before the campaign proper began, which incorporated a series of pretty vicious attacks on me personally and professionally, including criticism that I was a loner, a poor communicator, a poor debater in the Commons, lacked a sense of humour and was short on real political and party experience, etc., etc. David Steel immediately criticised the tactic and called for a clean campaign, and Alan
Beith immediately wrote to me saying, ‘This action was not in any way authorized by me or by any organized group known to me, and I would have been wholly opposed to the circulation or publication of any document of this kind.’ I issued a response, saying that I admired Alan Beith’s personal qualities and was grateful for his ‘clear repudiation of both the style and content of the … document. For my part, I think we should now consider this rather unsavoury episode as closed.’

On the morning of the count I was walking through the House of Commons on my way to a farewell lunch for David Steel when I bumped into the veteran Labour MP, Tam Dalyell. He stopped me and wished me luck, adding, ‘You will be elected today, Paddy. Here’s a piece of advice. Keep a diary; you will find in a few years time it will be invaluable to you.’ I took his advice and from that moment on kept a diary every day until I returned from Bosnia in 2006, since when my diary-keeping has been more sporadic, recording only events that seem to me of significance.

Afterwards we all went off to the rather dingy offices of the Electoral Reform Society, where the result of the election was announced: I received 72% of the votes cast, and Alan Beith, 28%. Alan was most generous in his comments, but I could see he was hurt – and understandably so, for he was much the more experienced of the two of us and had served the Party as an MP long before I had even joined. I asked him privately if he would be prepared to become the Deputy Leader to help me out, but added that there was no reason to make a quick decision, as the first thing we both needed was a rest.

And then to the Headquarters of the newly merged Social and Liberal Democrats (as we were then called) at No. 4 Cowley Street, where, after my acceptance speech as the just-elected founding Leader of the new Party predicting the certainty of a bright new dawn, there were photographs.

What neither the Press nor I knew at the time was that the event very nearly never took place at all. For, about half an hour previously, two men from the Inland Revenue had turned up at the front door of 4 Cowley Street with a writ to close the Party down for unpaid National Insurance contributions. Fortunately, they had been hustled into the building before the Press, the cameras and the accompanying circus arrived. Of all this, however, I and my Leadership campaign team celebrating that night, were blissfully ignorant.

Not for long, though. The following morning at a Cowley Street briefing I was told just what a catastrophic state the Party was in. We were heavily in debt, the Headquarters staff demoralised and leaving in droves, the Party in the country was in the midst of an identity crisis, and we were all punch-drunk from the succession of blows we had inflicted on ourselves over the last eighteen months. To make matters worse, we had saddled ourselves with a most ridiculous name, the Social and Liberal Democrats, or SLD – soon converted to ‘the Slids’, or just ‘the Salads’, by the Press and our opponents, who were, by now, accustomed to having wonderful fun at our expense. In a meeting three days after my election I told the staff that nothing mattered now but stabilising and unifying the Party and making sure that we won the battle with the Owenites for control of the centre ground; fighting the Tories and Labour would come later.

By now it was August, and everyone was ready for a break. Besides which, I needed time to rest and think. So I told them all to take a good holiday and come back refreshed, and then went off to Irancy with Jane, where I washed away my concerns and depression in some very hard physical work on our new house and a good deal of excellent red Burgundy. I am in fact a disaster at all things DIY-related. Jane says that, just as you can tell a piece of Chippendale by the standard of craftsmanship, so you can tell my handiwork by its complete absence: nothing is ever straight, and everything will have my blood on it somewhere. So I left the delicate work to others and immersed myself in some good hard navvying, pulling down ceilings and shifting tons of rubbish and earth from the garden. One day, covered in sweat and grime, I was called in to the
cave
of a neighbouring
vigneron
, whose dog had bitten an English lady visitor, and asked to act as interpreter. Afterwards the visitor and her husband, who I could see somehow recognised me, came back to our house for a cup of tea. Eventually the husband, who came from Bradford, could contain himself no longer. ‘I know you’, he said in a thick Yorkshire accent. ‘You’re a teacher from Bradford aren’t you?’ I said I was not. And then he clicked, ‘Oh no you’re not! I know ’oo you are! You’re t’leader o’ that party nobody knows t’name of!’ I did not correct him, for it seemed a fair description and rather better than anything I could think of myself at the time.

But the holiday was not all work. I had time to think as well.

Since I was the first leader of the new Party, it now fell to me to take the lead in creating its shape, organisation and character. And I knew exactly what I wanted these to be. I wanted it to be a genuine synthesis between the Liberals and the SDP, incorporating the best of the two old parent Parties. We needed to keep the radicalism, community-based approach, campaigning spirit and dogged, bloody-minded determination against the odds, of the old Liberal party. But I wanted to ensure that we also incorporated the modernity, professionalism and intellectual rigour of the SDP (I recall saying many times, ‘Just because we are radical does not mean we cannot be efficient’). I have always held the view that there are two competing strands in Liberalism. The first is social liberalism, which understands the importance of what we hold in common, seeks to heal the divisions in society and is dedicated to setting people free from the intrusions of an overweening state. The second is economic liberalism, which understands the importance of individual liberty, the free market and free trade. The two are often in conflict, and so the essence of the liberal debate is to find the appropriate balance between the two for the time and context in which we live. In my view, the old British Liberal Party had allowed social liberalism to become too dominant, and our policies had become far too aligned towards the producer interest, rather than the consumer or ‘citizen’ interest in society. The SDP, on the other hand, was much more avowedly a free-market Party, which put more weight on the interests of the consumer. I wanted to preserve that, so as to move the balance back towards a more free-market economic position than the old Liberal Party normally felt comfortable with.

I realised the name Social and Liberal Democrats would be an issue we would have to tackle, but I thought (wrongly, I soon discovered) that this could be delayed. I made it publicly known that I favoured ‘Democrat’, as I thought it gave the best indication that we were genuinely something new, and it would help knit in the SDP (I was wrong here, too).

I knew my first big task was to unite the two elements of the new Party into a unified whole and, if possible, draw back some of those very good people who had left for the Owenites or the apostate Liberals. So, in setting up my Leader’s office, I was careful not only to draw an equal number of my key staff from both the parent Parties, but also to include amongst my closest advisers some of those who had opposed merger. Indeed, in the end, half my office was made up of people who had actually voted against the formation of the new Party.

Finally, I was very aware of just how limited were the time, resources and political capital that we had to put things right, and concluded that we had to ruthlessly prioritise what we did. The first task was to stabilise the Party’s finances (we were heading for a deficit of half a million by the end of the year). This would mean staff cuts. Then we had to restructure the headquarters and start getting out our messages about why we existed and what we were for to a Party membership that was now deserting in droves. Only when we had done these two things could we begin to think about re-entering the wider political battle. Even then, our first battles were not going to be with Labour and the Tories, but with the Owenites for control of the centre ground. If we could not beat them, we could not survive.

I returned from holiday with a clear set of priorities and a detailed plan of what we needed to do – which was almost immediately overtaken by events. First, our financial situation was much worse than I had been told. I discovered that we would now be technically bankrupt by November, could no longer pay our bills, and even salaries were doubtful. Second, the Owenites were now making real progress. Owen had a very good Conference and was being treated seriously by the Press, while we were still the butt of jokes and derision (our opinion-poll rating at the time was 8%
*
). And third, the Tory Trade and Industry Secretary and former Home Secretary, Leon Brittan, a casualty of the Westland affair, had resigned to become a European Commissioner (where one of his leading staff members would be a young Nick Clegg), meaning there would be a by-election in Richmond, Yorkshire. This would bring us into head-to-head conflict with the Owenite SDP in one of the few areas in the country where they were strong. However much we may not have wanted to fight them yet, we were going to have to – and on ground that favoured them.

In September I had my first Party Conference to get through, at Blackpool. I get very nervous before all speeches, but my first Leader’s speech was sheer purgatory. A Party Leader’s Conference Speech is like no other speech a modern politician has to deliver. It is longer (forty-five minutes to an hour was my usual), minutely scrutinised, emotionally supercharged, critically important at the time and hugely nerve-wracking (or at least I found it so). I am not a natural speaker, like, for instance, Charles Kennedy. I tend to speak too fast, my voice has a habit of rising in register when I am nervous, I have a poor sense
of timing for jokes, and I tend to lose all light and shade in my delivery when under pressure. Later, in order to correct these faults, I went to a wonderful speech trainer who also happened to be an ardent Lib Dem. Margaret Lang taught me how to breathe properly, relax before a big speech and use the full register of my voice. Some senior politicians I know are embarrassed to admit that they have to have their voices trained like this. I don’t know why. However good you are at the other aspects of politics, your voice is the essential tool you have to use to communicate your message – so learning to use it properly is no more strange or embarrassing than learning to use a saw in order to be a carpenter.