First Among Equals

As Raymond left the house the next morning he was greeted by a driver standing next to a gleaming black Austin Westminster. Unlike his secondhand Sunbeam, it glowed in the morning light. The rear door was opened and Raymond climbed in to be driven off to the department. Thank Cod he knows where my office is, thought Raymond as he sat alone in the back. By his side on the back seat was a red leather box the size of a very thick briefcase with gold lettering running along the edge: “Under-Secretary of State for Employment.” Raymond turned the small key, knowing what Alice must have felt like on her way down the rabbit hole. The inside was crammed with buff files. He opened the first to see, “A five-point plan for discussion by Cabinet on how to keep unemployment under one million.” He immediately started to read the closely typed documents.

When Charles Seymour returned to the Commons on the Tuesday there was a note from the Whips’ office waiting for him on the Members’ Letter-board. One of the Housing and Local Government team had lost his seat in the general election and Charles had been promoted to number two on the Opposition bench. “No more preservation of trees. You’ll be on to higher things now,” chuckled the Chief Whip. “Pollution, water shortage, and exhaust fumes …”

Charles smiled with pleasure as he walked through the Commons, acknowledging old colleagues and noticing a considerable number of new faces. He didn’t stop and talk to any of the newcomers as he could not be certain if they were Labour or Conservative and, given the election result, most of them had to be Socialist. A doorkeeper in white tie and black tail-jacket handed him a message to say that a constituent was waiting to see him in the Central Lobby. He hurried off to find out what the problem was, passing some of his older colleagues who wore forlorn looks on their faces. For some it would be a considerable time before they were offered the chance of office again, while others knew they had served as ministers for the last time. As Macmillan had proclaimed, even the most glittering political career always ends in tears.

But at thirty-five Charles dismissed such thoughts as he marched toward the waiting constituent. He turned out to be a red-faced Master of Hounds who had traveled up to London to grumble about the proposed private member’s bill banning hare coursing. Charles listened to a fifteen-minute monologue before assuring his constituent that any such bill was doomed through lack of parliamentary time. The Master of Hounds went away happy and Charles returned to his room to check over the constituency mail. Fiona had reminded him of the 800 letters of thanks to the party workers that had been franked but still needed topping and tailing after every election. He groaned.

“Mrs. Blenkinsop, the chairman of Sussex Ladies’ Luncheon Club, wants you to be their guest speaker this year,” his secretary told him once he had settled.

“Reply yes—what’s the date?” asked Charles, reaching for his diary.

“16 June.”

“Stupid woman, that’s Ladies Day at Ascot. Tell her that I’m delivering a speech at a Housing Conference, but I’ll be certain to make myself free for the function next year.”

The secretary loo

ked up anxiously.

“Don’t fuss, she’ll never know any better.”

She moved on to the next letter. “Mr. Heath wonders if you can join him for a drink on Thursday, six o’clock?”

Simon Kerslake also knew it was going to be a long slog. He was aware the Tories would not change their leader until Heath had been given a second chance at the polls, and that could take every day of five years with a Government which had a ninety-seven majority.

He began writing articles for the Spectator and for the Sunday Express center pages, in the hope of building a reputation outside the House while at the same time supplementing his parliamentary salary of £3,400. Even with Elizabeth’s income as a consultant he was finding it difficult to make ends meet, and soon their two young sons would have reached prep school age. He envied the Charles Seymours of this world who did not have to give a second thought about their next paycheck. Simon wondered if the damn man had any problems at all. He ran a finger down his own bank account: as usual there was a figure around £500 in the right-hand margin, and as usual it was in red. Many of his Oxford contemporaries had already established themselves in the City or at the bar and on a Friday evening could be seen being driven to large houses in the country. Simon laughed whenever he read that people went into politics to make money.

He pressed on with demanding questions to the Prime Minister, and tried not to show how frustrated he was by the expectations of his colleagues whenever he rose each Tuesday and Thursday. Even after it became routine he prepared himself thoroughly, and on one occasion he even elicited praise from his normally taciturn leader. But as the weeks passed he found that his thoughts continually returned to money—or to his lack of it.

That was before he met Ronnie Nethercote.

Andrew Fraser had often read that the anger or jealousy of one man could block the advance of a political career but he still found it hard to accept that it could apply to him. What annoyed him even more was that Hugh McKenzie’s tentacles seemed to have spread through every other department.

Andrew’s marriage to Louise Forsyth had been expansively covered in the national papers and the absence of the Secretary of State at the wedding did not escape the notice of the Daily Express’s William Hickey. They even published an out-of-date photograph of Alison McKenzie looking sorrowful.

Sir Duncan reminded his son that politics was for long-distance runners, not sprinters, and that he still had a few more laps to complete yet. “An unfortunate analogy,” considered Andrew as he had been a member of the Edinburgh University 4 x 110 relay team. Nevertheless he prepared himself for the marathon.

“Don’t forget, Harold Macmillan spent fourteen years on the back benches before holding office,” Sir Duncan added.

Louise accompanied Andrew all over the country for his speeches “of major importance,” usually to an audience of less than twenty; she only stopped traveling to Scotland every week when she discovered she was pregnant.

To Louise’s surprise, Andrew turned out to be a keen anticipatory father, determined his son would not think of him only as a politician. Single-handed, he converted one of the upstairs bedrooms in Cheyne Walk into a nursery and sought her approval for a variety of blue decorative schemes.

Louise was anxious that Andrew should extend the same feelings to their unborn child, if they had a daughter.

Raymond Could quickly gained a reputation at the Department of Employment. He was thought of as extremely bright, demanding, hard working and, not that it was ever reported to him, arrogant. His ability to cut a junior civil servant off in mid-sentence or to correct his principal Private Secretary on matters of detail did not endear him even to his closest staff, who always want to be loyal to their master.

Raymond’s work load was prodigious and even the Permanent Secretary experienced Gould’s unrelenting “Don’t make excuses” when he tried to trim one of the minister’s private schemes. Soon senior civil servants were talking of when, not whether, he would be promoted. His Secretary of State, like all men who were expected to be in six places at once, often asked Raymond to stand in for him, but even Raymond was surprised when he was invited to represent the department as guest of honor at the annual CBI dinner.

Joyce checked to see that her husband’s dinner jacket was well brushed, his shirt spotless, and his shoes shining like a guards officer’s. His carefully worded speech—a combination of civil-servant draftsmanship and a few more forceful phrases of his own to prove to the assembled capitalists that not every member of the Labour party was a “raving commie”—was safely lodged in his inside pocket. His driver ferried him from his Lansdowne Road home toward the West End.

Raymond enjoyed the occasion; although he was nervous when he rose to represent the Government in reply to the toast of the guests. By the time he had resumed his seat he felt it had been one of his better efforts. The ovation that followed was certainly more than polite from what had to be classified as a naturally hostile audience.

“That speech was dryer than the Chablis,” one guest whispered in the chairman’s ear but he had to agree that, with men like Gould in high office, it was going to be a lot easier to live with the Socialists.

The man on Simon Kerslake’s left was far more blunt in voicing his opinion of Could. “Bloody man thinks like a Tory, talks like a Tory, so why isn’t he a Tory?” he demanded.

Simon grinned at the prematurely balding man who had been expressing his equally vivid views throughout dinner. Corpulent and ruddy-faced, Ronnie Nethercote looked as if he was trying to escape from every part of his bulging dinner jacket.