During our time at Nelson & Colne we had become friendly with a number of very unusual people, some of whom would not normally have been expected to socialise with Tories. Wilf Banks, a life-long socialist with a little goatee beard which he had grown out of sympathy with Sydney Silverman – who had sported a similar appendage – had become a real chum. So had Stan Iveson, the national chairman of the Independent Labour Party. He had spent so much time chatting to Gilly during the February count that there were a lot of tongues wagging in Nelson and eventually poor Stan felt moved to write to the papers. His attempt to stem the rumours only made him the butt of more jokes, his letter in the Nelson Leader being captioned in bold type: ‘They are just good friends’.
Things finally came to a head on the night of the October count. Just when my political future hung in the balance, Stan had a heart attack: and while not a single member of the Labour Party lifted a finger to help, the wife of the Tory candidate proceeded to give him the kiss of life. And, so effective was it that Stan recovered and went on to live for many more years.
When the result was declared I was out by 669 votes. Douglas Hoyle, who is now in the Lords and has become quite a pal of mine, held the seat until 1979 when he was defeated by John Lee. John lost the new seat of Pendle in 1992 and then went off and consoled himself by joining the Liberals. He is now also in the Lords.
Meanwhile, in the country Harold Wilson just achieved an overall majority – by three seats. By 1976 that majority had disappeared as a result of by-election defeats, but the government managed to soldier on, bolstered for a year by the Lib–Lab pact. Then, on 28 March 1979, it lost a vote of confidence by one vote.
CHAPTER NINE
Out of Parliament
and Then Back
At first after my defeat I felt rather sorry for myself, but the feeling did not last long. First thing on the Friday morning after polling day Elspeth Stuart Mills (now Elspeth Pennant Williams) rang up and suggested we went on a walk round Malham Tarn, and half way round I realised that, far from feeling sad, I felt as if a large block of concrete had been lifted off my cranium and I was a free man again. My health also soon recovered.
My secretary, Jean Davy, who had been staying with us for the closing stages of the campaign, spent hours on the telephone trying to get herself another job and eventually she was successful. I, on the other hand, was jobless and had to decide whether I was going to practise in London with all the added expense of accommodation down there, or whether I was going to stay in the north. Doing that of course meant putting into reverse all the plans of the last few years and trying to lure back some of my old clients in Manchester.
I felt that for years I had been lucky to enjoy job satisfaction. Of course there had been peaks and troughs and at times the troughs had seemed pretty deep; but the peaks had more than compensated for them. It was even exhilarating to stand on the edge of the precipice knowing there were plenty of people standing behind ready to deliver a hefty shove to speed one’s passage back to the bottom; and I would not have missed it for the world. I thought my defeat was the end of the road for me and any sadness was tinged with deep thankfulness for a wonderful experience and the great privilege of having served as an MP.
I got a nice letter from Ted Heath. I have been very critical of him and it would be quite wrong if I did not make plain that he was most gracious and kind to me after my defeat.
In January 1975, at the annual general meeting of the Nelson & Colne Conservative Association, I announced that I did not wish to be readopted as their candidate. And there can be little doubt that at that time I did feel that my career in politics was at an end, because in the same month I also declined an invitation to go for interview at Skipton.
On 26 April 1975 my mother died. She suffered a lot of pain towards the end and it was a merciful release. But her death was another sad happening after a difficult year. She was a lovely person who throughout her life never thought of herself but lived for her family. A few months before the end she wrote to us all:
My dear children,
Thank you all a thousand times for all you have done for me in my life – I am sorry about my being tiresome in the last few years.
All my love to you,
Mummy.
Could fill a book but can’t write much.
At the end of 1974 a case of murder at the Habib Bank Rochdale brought a little light relief. A father and son were in a café opposite the bank and when the manager came out of the front door the son got up from his seat, ran across the street and thrust a dagger into the back of the manager’s neck. Both father and son were charged with murder, the Crown alleging that immediately before the son had set off across the street the father had shouted in Urdu: ‘Kill him.’ My equipment for the defence included an Urdu dictionary, with the aid of which I managed to persuade the incompetent interpreter that the words uttered could have meant ‘kill him’, ‘to hell with him’ or ‘fuck him’. The jury acquitted and the man’s family gave me the dictionary as a memento.
But one case in which I was involved was a tragedy for the accused and caused me much worry and unhappiness. Stefan Kiszko faced trial at Leeds Crown Court for the murder of an eleven-year-old girl called Lesley Molseed: and I was briefed for the defence with Philip Clegg (later His Honour Judge Clegg) as my junior. Peter Taylor (later Lord Chief Justice) appeared for Crown. The jury returned a verdict of murder and our appeal to the Court of Appeal was dismissed.
Many years later, after I had become Home Secretary, solicitors acting for Kiszko wrote to the Home Office alleging a miscarriage of justice, and the matter was referred to the section in the Home Office which in those days looked into such cases. I gave instructions that when they had looked in to the matter the case should not come to me but to one of the ministers of state. However, the section submitted its report after I had left the Home Office and it was my successor, Kenneth Baker, who decided that the case should be referred back to the Court of Appeal because of new evidence casting doubt on the correctness of the conviction.
In February 1991 the case came up for hearing with Stephen Sedley (later Lord Justice Justice Sedley) acting for Kiszko and he had an astonishing story to tell. Medical evidence, he said, demonstrated that sperm found on the girl’s clothing could not have come from Kiszko so he could not have been the killer. Furthermore, evidence to this effect had been available at the time of trial but had not been disclosed to either the defence or the prosecution. The conviction was set aside and Kiszko, after sixteen years in prison, was a free man.
The following Sunday a leader appeared in the Sunday Times alleging quite falsely that in the trial I had run a defence without Kiszko’s authority. In making this assertion the leader writer was apparently relying on the fact that at an earlier hearing before the Court of Appeal Stephen Sedley had said there was a suggestion that I had acted without authority, but the leader writer failed to mention that at the full hearing when the conviction was overturned Sedley had told the court in plain terms that he was completely satisfied that advice had been given to Kiszko and his authority properly obtained.
The following day I issued a statement to the Press Association in these terms:
The Sunday Times yesterday reported as if it were a fact the allegation made at the hearing in the Court of Appeal in December that Mr Kiszko’s defence team put forward an alternative plea of manslaughter at his trial without his authority.
As the leader of that team at the time I must make it quite clear that there is no truth in that allegation which was not pursued at the resumed hearing before the Court of Appeal last week.
The last thing I wish to do now is to say anything which might cloud the happiness which last week’s Court of Appeal decision will have brought to Mr Kiszko and his family after their appalling ordeal and so I will say no more than that his defence at the trial was properly conducted in accordance with our advice and his instructions on the basis of the information available to us at the time.
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br /> Had any of us then known of the forensic evidence which persuaded the Court of Appeal that Mr Kiszko could not have committed the crime, the matter would have taken a very different course.
That should have been an end of the matter, but the upshot was that for years I received obscene, insulting and threatening letters from people influenced by what The Times and other papers had said. It was frequently alleged, among other things, that I had used my position as Secretary of State to delay the referral of the case to the Court of Appeal. None of my tormenters seemed prepared to accept the truth – that the whole appalling tragedy would not have happened had it been revealed to the Crown, let alone the defence, that there was evidence that Mr Kiszko could not have produced the sperm found on the dead girl.
In about 1977 Jenny went away to school. It was her own wish. She was not getting on very well at Westholme in Blackburn and she felt that with all her brothers away she must be missing something. When, however, she arrived at Queen Margaret’s in York she found the work very hard and at first was pretty miserable. In one letter home she described what happened when on one occasion she did pass an exam:
I had my last exam today. It was phisics [sic]. Well you know the pass mark is forty and if you get anything over it is really good. Well, I got fifty-two and I passed. It was so nice because they said the results and it went like this. ‘Yvonne Dicson 38 – fail, Alison Leslie 53 – pass, Jennifer 52 – pass. When the teacher told me what I got and said I had passed they all cheered and shouted Huyror [sic].
In 1978 I attended a Northern Circuit dinner in London and found myself sitting next to Mr Justice Kilner Brown who was then the presiding judge on the circuit. He said that he had been asked to find out whether I was trying to get back into the House of Commons or whether I had given up my political ambitions and wanted to go on the circuit bench. I said that at last I felt I had got politics out of my system and I had given up all ideas of going back into the Commons. Three weeks later I was at home when the telephone rang and I learned that David Walder, our own well-liked member for Clitheroe, had died of a heart attack. I knew at once, in spite of all I had said to Kilner Brown, that fate was calling. I simply could not pass up the chance of inheriting a safe seat in Parliament – and not just a safe seat but the seat where I lived and had my roots. I had to throw my cap in the ring, but I also knew that I could not possibly leave matters to take their course and just wait and see how I got on in the constituency selection process. For all I knew the Lord Chancellor might write any day asking me to take an appointment. Worse, he might pick up the papers one morning and read that the person who had been saying he had given up politics and wanted to go on the bench was being considered for selection as the Conservative candidate for Clitheroe. I would never be able to look the man in the face again. So I wrote to Kilner Brown saying that I would well understand if he thought I had taken leave of my senses but I really had meant what I had said when I had spoken to him a few weeks earlier. I did not, however, mean it any longer and I was going to take my chance at Clitheroe. I knew I was burning my boats. It was the gamble of a lifetime but one I had to take, and it made the following months altogether too exciting.
Eventually there came the day when I went to the Crest Hotel in Preston for the first round of interviews and took with me Victoria our cheeky younger daughter, then aged seven. I sat waiting for my interview along with three other would-be candidates and after a little while noticed that Victoria was missing. I set off to find her, opened the door of what turned out to be the room in which the interviews were being conducted and there she was sitting on the knee of the Association chairman. When I came back and laughingly related the story to my fellow interviewees, one said that it was clear he was wasting his time and he was going home.
But all was not over. I was through to the last four but at least one of the other three was a powerful contender, Jock Bruce-Gardyne. Jock had one thing against him. Some years before, he had inherited a safe Scottish seat but over the years he had seen it transformed first into a marginal seat and then, in October 1974, into a gain for the SNP. Anyhow, the Tories in Clitheroe decided that I was the better bet and duly selected me. Jock went off to be selected for Knutsford and an even bigger Tory majority.
A deliciously cruel story went the rounds. One of Jock’s former constituents in South Angus happened to ask a member of the press visiting that part of Scotland: ‘What has happened to Master Jock?’ and got the reply, ‘He’s been selected for Knutsford with a 20,000 majority.’ ‘Oh!’ said the Scotsman, ‘it’ll nay be enough for Master Jock.’ Sadly the matter was never put to the test for Jock, having given distinguished service as a Treasury minister, contracted cancer and had to leave the Commons and ministerial office. He faced his misfortune with enormous courage and after a short time in the Lords died when still a comparatively young man. His death was a grievous loss to Parliament.
The Clitheroe by-election took place in the depths of winter – the ‘winter of discontent’. So there was no shortage of speech material for a Conservative candidate. It was a time when words were spoken which shamed us as a nation. Bill Dunn (an ambulance driver) was quoted as saying, ‘If it (industrial action) means lives lost, that’s how it should be.’ NUPE steward Stephen Eaton did not want to actually kill cancer patients but he seemed to think that delaying their treatment was quite okay. ‘The only effect we are having on the treatment of cancer patients,’ he said, ‘is perhaps to slow it down.’ Trade unionism seemed to have become a sick joke.
Margaret Thatcher came up to speak. I think she was the first Tory Leader of the Opposition who deigned to attend by-elections and she certainly entered into the spirit of mine.
Margaret arrived early one morning and our first port of call was Perseverance Mill, Padiham. The mill workers, male and female, wore ‘Vote Labour’ badges and when Margaret tried to engage a female cloth-looker in conversation she got nowhere, with the lady refusing to look up and answer her questions. Margaret would not give up. She did not move away as I might have done and look for a more comfortable customer. She stood her ground and made it plain that she was not for leaving until she got a reply, and eventually by sheer persistence she wrung out of the woman not only a reply but a smile. In these somewhat icy conditions we emerged into a mill yard packed with surly weavers; but our spirits soon revived for there across the road, hanging out of the upstairs windows of Progress Mills (our family firm) were smiling faces. Shouts of ‘Vote Maggie’ from a few were soon taken up by the rest, and the Labour supporters at Perseverance, while not put to flight, were put to shame. The difference between the two receptions was almost certainly due to the fact that Progress Mills was very much a family affair run almost single-handedly by my cousin John, where union wages were paid but the union itself had a minimal presence. I felt pretty smug about the whole business because I had told Margaret’s office that the right place to visit was Progress and that Perseverance should be left well alone. The know-alls in London, however, said that it was quite wrong for the Leader of the Opposition to visit a nineteenth-century-looking place like Progress. She had to be supporting the best of modern industry. Anyhow, Margaret thought that here was a lifeline to be grasped and linking her arm with mine she set off across the road, dashed through the front door of Progress and into the waiting arms of the workers. We never looked back. From that moment onwards her visit to the constituency was a triumphal progress. The streets of Great Harwood were so packed that our cavalcade ground to a halt. There were bigger and even more enthusiastic crowds in the town of Clitheroe and in Longridge.
It was a very cold day and we repaired to the Punch Bowl at Hurst Green for lunch with the chairman of the Association, James Rawson, sitting on Margaret Thatcher’s left. To my surprise he opened the conversation by suggesting it was about time we went for proportional representation. I thought the Leader of the Opposition would choke on her shrimp cocktail. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘I suppose that is an excellent idea – if (and
then a pause and a sniff) you don’t want the Conservative Party to ever win another election.’ James looked glumly at his plate and except for purposes of consumption did not open his mouth again. We then set off for Longridge and I was so carried away by the occasion that my hand found its way on to my leader’s knee. Anyone who has found himself in that predicament knows that it is very much easier to get into that sort of mess than it is to get out of it. A quick withdrawal only serves to draw attention to the earlier act of folly, and a stealthy withdrawal only prolongs the time in which one’s misdemeanour may be discovered. But all turned out all right. The Leader of the Opposition did not appear to know what was troubling me, and on our arrival at the Conservative Club she was ready with another spirited oration with which to complete her tour.
CHAPTER TEN
On the Ministerial Ladder
Polling Day came and I was back in the House with a majority of 12,500 over Labour. When the result was announced I moved the customary vote of thanks to the returning officer, pointing out that the same swing throughout Lancashire in a general election would mean Labour seat after Labour seat falling to the Tories and our becoming the government. I got a cool reception which the President of my Association said was due to ‘our not liking politics in Clitheroe’.
Taking my seat a second time was a bit of an anti-climax, and when on the Thursday I went to the weekly meeting of the 1922 Committee to be welcomed back little seemed to have changed, with Edward du Cann still chairman. It was said of Edward that when a young member asked him the time he put an affectionate arm round his shoulder and said: ‘What time would you like it to be, dear boy?’ And his somewhat oleaginous manner was not to everyone’s taste; but over the years he worked hard for the Party and had for a time been Party Chairman.
David Waddington Memoirs Page 10