First Among Equals

When the parliamentary year began again in October Charles was one of the names continually dropped by the political pundits. Here was someone to watch. “He makes things happen,” was the sentiment that was expressed again and again. He could barely cross the Members’ Lobby without a correspondent trying to solicit his views on everything from butter mountains to rape. Fiona cut out of the papers every mention of her husband and couldn’t help noticing that, if any new member was receiving more press coverage than Charles, it was a young Socialist from Leeds called Raymond Gould.

Raymond’s name began to disappear from political columns soon after his success on the budget debate; his colleagues assumed it was because he was busy building a career at the bar. Had they passed his room at the Temple they would have heard the continual tap of a typewriter and been unable to contact him on his off-the-hook phone.

Each night Raymond could be found in chambers writing page after page, checking then rechecking his proofs, and often referring to the piles of books that cluttered his desk. When his Full Employment at Any Cost? Reflections of a Worker Educated After the Thirties was published it caused an immediate sensation. The suggestion that the unions would become impotent and the Labour party would need to be more radical to capture the young vote was never likely to endear him to the party activists. Raymond had anticipated that it would provoke a storm of abuse from union leaders, and even among some of his more left-wing colleagues. But A. J.P. Taylor suggested in The Times that it was the most profound and realistic look at the Labour party since Anthony Crosland’s The Future of Socialism, and had given the country a politician of rare honesty and courage. Raymond soon became aware that his strategy and hard work was paying dividends. He found himself a regular topic of conversation at political dinner parties in London.

Joyce thought the book a magnificent piece of scholarship and she spent a considerable time trying to convince trade unionists who had only read out-of-context quotations from it in the Sun or Daily Mirror that it in fact showed a passionate concern for the trade union movement, while at the same time realistically considering the Labour party’s future in the next decade.

The Labour Chief Whip took Raymond on one side and told him, “You’ve caused a right stir, lad. Now keep your head down for a few months and you’ll probably find every Cabinet member quoting you as if it was party policy.”

Raymond took the Chief Whip’s advice, but he did not have to wait months. Just three weeks after the book’s publication the Prime Minister quoted a whole passage at the Durham Miners’ Rally. A few weeks later Raymond received a missive from No. 10 requesting him to check over the Prime Minister’s speech to the TUC conference and add any suggestions he might have.

Simon Kerslake had sulked for about twenty-four hours after Maudling’s defeat for the leadership. He then decided to turn his anger and energy toward the Government benches. It hadn’t taken him long to work out that there was a fifteen-minute period twice a week when someone with his skills of oratory could command notice. At the beginning of a new session each week he would carefully study the order paper and in particular the first five questions listed for the Prime Minister on the Tuesday and Thursday. Every Monday morning he would prepare a supplementary for at least three of them. These he worded, then reworded, so that they were biting and witty and always likely to embarrass the Government. Although preparation of such supplementary questions could take several hours Simon would make them sound as though they had been jotted down on the back of the order paper during question time—and in fact would even do so. Elizabeth teased him about how long he took on something she considered trivial. He reminded her of Churchill’s comment after being praised for a brilliant rejoinder, “All my best off-the-cuff remarks had been worked on days before.”

Even so Simon was surprised at how quickly the House took it for granted that he would be there on the attack, probing, demanding, harrying the Prime Minister’s every move. Whenever he rose from his seat the party perked up in anticipation, and many of his interruptions reached the political column of the daily newspapers the following day.

Unemployment was the subject of that day’s question. Simon was on his feet leaning forward jabbing a finger in the direction of the Government front bench.

“With the appointment of four extra Secretaries of

State this week the Prime Minister can at least claim he has full employment—in the Cabinet.”

The Prime Minister sank lower into his seat, looking forward to the recess.

CHAPTER FIVE

WHEN THE QUEEN opened Parliament the talk was not of the contents of her speech, which traditionally lists the aims of the Government of the day, but of how much of the legislation could possibly be carried out while the Labour party retained a majority of only four. Any contentious legislation was likely to be defeated at the committee stage and everyone knew it. The Conservatives were convinced they could win the forthcoming election whatever date the Prime Minister chose until the by-election held in Hull increased the Labour majority from 1,100 to 5,350. The Prime Minister couldn’t believe the result and asked the Queen to dissolve Parliament immediately and to call a general election. The date announced from Buckingham Palace was 31 March.

Simon Kerslake began spending most of his spare time in his Coventry constituency. The local people seemed pleased with the apprenticeship of their new member, but the disinterested statisticians pointed out that a swing of less than one percent would remove him from the House for another five years. By then his rivals would be on the second rung of the ladder.

The Tory Chief Whip advised Simon to stay put in Coventry and not to participate in any further parliamentary business. “There’ll be no more three-line whips between now and the election,” he assured him. “The most worthwhile thing you can do is pick up votes in Coventry, not give them in Westminster.”

Elizabeth could only manage two weeks’ leave of absence from St. Mary’s, and yet between the two of them they covered the entire constituency before election day. Simon’s opponent was the former member, Alf Abbott, who became progressively confident of victory as the national swing to Labour accelerated during the campaign. The slogan “You know Labour Government works” was sounding convincing after only eighteen months in power. The Liberals fielded a third candidate, Nigel Bainbridge, but he admitted openly that he only hoped to save his deposit.

Alf Abbott felt assured enough to challenge Simon to a public debate. Although it was usual for the sitting member to refuse to be drawn on such occasions Simon jumped at his opponent’s challenge and prepared for the encounter with his usual diligence. Seven days before the election Simon and Elizabeth stood in the wings behind the stage of Coventry town hall with Alf Abbott, Nigel Bainbridge, and their wives. The three men made stilted conversation while the women eyed each other’s outfits critically. The political correspondent of the Coventry Evening Telegraph, acting as chairman, introduced each of the protagonists as they walked on to the stage, to whipped-up applause from different sections of the hall. Simon spoke first and held the attention of the large audience for over twenty minutes. Those who tried to heckle him ended up regretting having brought attention to themselves. Without once referring to his notes, he quoted figures and clauses from Government bills with an ease that impressed even Elizabeth. Abbott followed him and made a bitter attack on the Tories, accusing them of still wanting to tread down the workers at any cost, and was greeted by large cheers from his section of the audience. Bainbridge claimed that neither understood the real issues and went into an involved dissertation on the problem of the local sewers. During the questions that followed Simon once again proved to be far better informed than Abbott or Bainbridge, but he was aware that the packed hall only held 700 that cold March evening while elsewhere in Coventry were 50,000 more voters, most of them glued to “Coronation Street.”

Although the local press proclaimed Simon the victor of a one-sided debate he remained downcast by the national dailies which were now predicting a landslide for Labour.

On election morning Simon and Elizabeth were up by six and among the first to cast their votes at the local primary school. They spent the rest of the day traveling from polling station to committee room to party checking posts, trying to keep up the morale of their supporters. Everywhere they went the committed believed in his victory but Simon knew that the national swing would be impossible to ignore. A senior Conservative back-bencher had once told him that an outstanding member could be worth a thousand personal votes and a weak opponent might sacrifice another thousand. It wasn’t going to be enough.

By nine o’clock the last polling station had been locked and Simon and Elizabeth collapsed into a local pub and ordered two halves of bitter. They sat and watched the television above the bar. The commentator was saying that during the day a straw poll had been taken outside six constituencies in London and from those figures they were predicting a Labour majority of sixty to seventy seats. Up on the screen flashed the seventy seats most vulnerable to siege by Labour. Ninth on the list was Coventry Central: Simon ordered the other half.

“We should be off to watch the count soon,” said Elizabeth.

“There’s no hurry.”

“Don’t be such a wimp, Simon. And remember you’re still the member,” she said, surprisingly sharply. “You owe it to your supporters to remain confident after all the work they’ve put in.”

In the town hall black boxes were being-delivered by police vehicles from every ward in the constituency. Their contents were tipped on to trestle tables which made up three sides of a square on the vast cleared floor. The town clerk and his personal staff stood alone in the well made by the tables, while council workers sat around the outside carefully stacking up the votes into little piles of a hundred. These in turn were checked by party scrutineers who hovered over them, hawklike, often demanding that a particular hundred be rechecked.

The little piles grew into large stacks which were then placed next to each other, and as the hours passed it became obvious even to a casual observer that the outcome was going to be extremely close.

The tension on the floor mounted as each hundred, then each thousand, was handed over to the clerk. Rumors that began at one end of the room had been puffed up like soufflés long before they had reached the waiting crowd standing in a chill wind outside the hall. By midnight, several constituencies’ results around the country had been declared. The national swing seemed to be much as predicted, around three percent to Labour, which would give them the promised majority of seventy or over.

At twelve-twenty-one the Coventry town clerk invited all three candidates to join him in the center of the room. He told them the result of the count.

A recount was immediately demanded. The town clerk agreed, and each pile of voting slips was returned to the tables and checked over again.

An hour later the town clerk called the three candidates together again and briefed them on the result of the recount; it had changed by only three votes.