Rowing Against the Tide - A career in sport and politics (15 page)

My selection for the new seat of Nottingham South, had been even more traumatic and stressful than usual, for often friends would be trying for the same seat, and you just had to take whatever the outcome, shake hands and move on. In this case a local senior Councillor had been appointed as the Party official to organise the three Nottingham selection panels that would ultimately hold their final meetings on three consecutive evenings. They would be in order of perceived winablity, South, followed by East, and then finally North. That Councillor, who had a considerable stake in who from the South constituency could attend, made it clear that although he had been a candidate in the past, he would not be putting his name forward this time, and hence was given the task of organising the panels.
             

My first election campaign, 1968. I was elected to Nottingham City Council with Don and Doreen

Having done so, and almost at the last moment, he had his name added to the potential candidates for the Nottingham South. Having been instrumental in setting up the selection panel, it was clear he thought his selection was a shoe-in, but for whatever reason, and it certainly wasn’t my selection performance, since I had a temperature of about 103, he didn’t win the vote. There had been four candidates on the final list, and we sat in a back office wondering why it was taking so long to announce who had won. Having eliminated two of the four, it transpired that he and I had tied in the final vote, and the chairman, Gordon Craggs, understandably did not wish, as was his right, to cast a deciding vote. On advice from Shirley Stotter the senior area agent supervising the proceedings, the options facing the selection committee were set out. The option of delaying for two weeks to allow the full membership to select was rejected, since East and North would by then have chosen their candidates, and that would have been grossly unfair on the unselected candidate for South.

The meeting agreed to a break of ten or fifteen minutes to talk it through amongst themselves, and they decided that they would vote again, to see if the deadlock could be broken. Apparently I won by a clear majority, and the conduct of the meeting was confirmed by the area agent as fair and correct under the Party rules. The Saturday following my selection was a celebratory dinner at Nottinghamshire County Hall with the Rt. Hon Cecil Parkinson MP as the principle guest. It was meant to be a celebration of my opponent’s selection for the most winnable of the Nottingham seats, and he sat on one side of Cecil, and his wife on the other. Needless to say, my wife and I were dismissed to the far corner of the banquet seating plan, but that was a small price to pay for what turned out to be the most exciting part of my life.

Such was my opponent’s disappointment and anger at what he felt should have been a foregone conclusion, he endeavoured to have the decision overturned by the Central Party. The following three weeks were a nightmare of uncertainty, even though I should have been confident of the outcome, given the assurance by the Party Agent that the outcome was the clear will of the members of the panel, and that the rules of selection had been followed beyond challenge. He finally withdrew his appeal some three weeks later.

Turning up for my first day in 1983, Michael Latham, the member for Melton, took me under his wing and showed me around. We finished up somewhere in the bowels of the palace, and even he who had been a member for some years, admitted he was lost. I was allocated a hook in the cloakroom, and saw the little loop of ribbon that was supposed to allow me to hang up my sword. Just one of the idiosyncratic customs that make the mother of Parliaments so fascinating.

The Sergeant of Arms office handed me a key to a locker for my personal bits and pieces. Now anywhere else, the lockers would be in a normal sequence, but since the number of members had grown over the years, no one had considered sorting them out, and it became a case of “seek and ye shall find”; yet another amusing introduction to the House. I suppose the feeling was that if you were clever enough to get yourself elected, you could find your own way about! I did get myself a desk and a comfy chair in an office above the Chamber of the House, shared with three other colleagues, John Maples, Humphrey Malins and Andrew Hunter. It was a far cry from the facilities enjoyed by the present membership.

We all got along fine, but our secretaries had an impossible task, for five of them shared a single office, each with filing cabinets, typewriters and all the rest of the paraphernalia a secretary needed. The photocopier was in a corridor and shared by heaven knows how many secretaries, and it was a miracle anything was done in a reasonable time. Frankly from what I know now, the present lot don’t know how fortunate they are ! It wasn’t long before I took the decision to scrap any secretarial services in Westminster, and set up an office in a barn conversion at our home in Barton, which until then had been the village hairdressing salon which my wife Sally ran.

When gathering up my office equipment ready to take back to Nottingham, I found that one of the secretaries worked for an old school colleague Nigel Spearing, a year ahead of me at school, and now the Labour member for Newham South. She was surrounded by boxes of mail, and I asked how on earth she could ever find anything. She smiled and said I should see the rest of the stuff at Nigel’s home. Those were the conditions back in the eighties, and clearly the changes in the nineties and following were long overdue and necessary if members were to do a proper and efficient job on behalf of their constituents.

Back in Nottingham, I found a first class secretary in Dorothy Pearson, who’s husband Peter was a Sergeant in the Nottingham Constabulary Vice Squad. She ran a tight ship, and we guaranteed to turn round correspondence within seven days, using a new small twin disc computer at the Westminster end, and one of the new fancy electronic typewriters at the Nottingham end. A computer with a laser printer came a couple of years later. Exchange by first class mail for letters for signing, and tapes for further correspondence, turned out to be much better that trying to run an office solely in Westminster. Dorothy was a gem, and I shudder to think how I could have managed without her. The allowance made it possible to take on an additional part time clerk, who transferred basic details of correspondence onto discs in another small computer. There was no such thing as internet or emails then, and for some colleagues, my little twin slot machine sitting on my desk was a matter of great interest.

Those stored details came in handy when plans to drive a dual carriageway though the Clifton Council Estate in my patch were published. Being the second largest Council Estate in England, it was a matter of major concern. I felt that at least every constituent on that estate, and the two small adjacent developments, who had been in contact with me on various matters in the preceding few years, were entitled to be given the facts, and I approached the Sergeant of Arms for permission to write to them. Back then there were strict controls on the use of Parliamentary stationary, and he was assured that I did not intend to write to all 12,000 households in that southern part of my constituency. On that assurance, he asked therefore how many I wished to write too, and I replied 5264, and if he wanted to check the figure, I would show him the details of correspondence on my little desk computer. He expressed surprise, smiled, and gave me the required chitty to draw the stationary for the correspondence.

Success at the 1983 General Election - Celebrating with the Armstrong-Jones brothers

Dorothy wasn’t just a good secretary, she was a first class personal assistant, and dealt with calls from constituents with great care and courtesy. It also gave us the occasional laugh. A lady called to tell us that her husband had died. Dorothy expressed her condolences and assured her that she would take her husband’s name off the computer records, so she would not receive wrongly addressed letters in the future. “Oh no me duck” she said, “I only wanted to tell you that having been married to that b****** for forty years, at last I can vote Conservative.” Sadly there were insufficient constituents like her came the election of 92.

Having taken a seat that was supposedly a Labour stronghold, and with no desire at fifty one years of age, to take on yet another mortgage, I booked myself in for three or four nights a week at the Carlton club. For largely business reasons, I had been a member of the Junior Carlton for some years, and enjoyed their political suppers, which gave me a chance to see and hear many of the senior parliamentarians in our Party. The most significant of these was Margaret Thatcher, who was the guest of the club barely three weeks after she had taken up the shadow portfolio for the Environment, following her years in Education. The chairman suggested to members that Mrs T might be allowed to speak to her old portfolio, since she couldn’t have had enough time to absorb the complexities of the new. Not a bit of it she indicated, and we were treated to a bravura presentation of her new role, indicating to all that this was a very special lady. So it was no surprise to me when she had the courage to stand for, and win the leadership of the Party.

Shortly after her election as Party Leader, she came to Nottingham to meet the faithful gathered in the large Mecca Ballroom. Major Rook as the Federation Chairman accompanied Mrs T around one side of the ballroom, and I as Vice Chairman introduced Dennis around the opposite side. If any of us had any doubts as to the worthiness of our new Party Leader, they were dispelled that evening. Some time before the 1983 election, she came again to Nottingham and met all the regional candidates and their officers at Belvoir Castle. After that election all the new members and their spouses were invited to No 10 to be greeted by her. As she shook my hand, she said “didn’t we have a great day at Belvoir Castle”. Those small things underlined the incredible recall she had, and it was no surprise to realise her fantastic ability to absorb vast amounts of information, way beyond most of us lesser mortals.

After the merger with the senior Carlton Club, I had one big complaint when I found myself having to stay there three or more nights a week. The beds were awful! Sally suggested I ask the club secretary if I could provide my own bed, on the understanding that when I lost my seat, as was perhaps inevitable, the club could keep the bed. I thought he would be most offended, but no he was quite happy, and a new bed was installed. I therefore had the same room each night, and first call on that room. It gave the doorkeeper some difficulty with members who used it when I was not there, and who complained it was the only one where they got a good night’s sleep!

Having been a local councillor for eight years, I wasn’t particularly nervous about getting to my feet for a maiden speech, but wanted to see how things were done, and planned to wait for some time since there were so many new members following the landslide of the 1983 election. However listening to some of the new guys, I felt that delay might actually make that first hurdle seem higher and higher the longer I delayed, and so on week three I was called. I thought I had done reasonable well, until was grabbed by my whip Douglas Hogg, who apologised for not having caught me before I rose, to tell me that custom required that I should not be too political in a maiden speech. Too late, but at least the Speaker, Jack Weatherill, gave me a smile of good wishes when I left the chamber.

During my first week, Edward Du Cann, the then chairman of the 1922 committee collared me and asked what I hoped to achieve. I told him frankly, that at 51 years of age, and having won a traditional Labour seat, I was just happy just to be here, and that when I left the House, I’d hope to leave it at least with the respect of my peers. The 1922 committee, held on a Thursday afternoon, was I’m afraid something of a joke with some members, for at the first meeting we were told that the meeting was confidential, and should not be reported outside. Driving back to Nottingham that evening, I listened with amazement to an almost verbatim report on what had transpired. It turned out that a few members, or “rentaquotes” as they were known, cheerfully breeched that understanding for the dubious publicity they achieved. At fifty one, it was presumed that I was the father of the new intake, indeed the Guardian suggested that I was old enough to be the father of some of the intake. This myth was sustained until Stefan Terlezki, affectionally known as our Ukrainian Member for Cardiff, owned up to be a year older than me.