In the months following Macmillan’s démarche, Neave was more active at Westminster. He asked questions about the so-called ‘brain drain’ of scientists from the UK to the USA and Canada, discovering that the numbers were low and that many subsequently returned home. He took up the theme in a debate on 24 February, accusing some of the migrant scientists of being in cahoots with the Labour Party to attack government funding of the universities and the Medical Research Council. Neave had robust exchanges with several leading Labour figures, including Richard Crossman and Mrs Judith Hart. The Opposition was making much of the running on science, particularly since Wilson’s ‘white heat of technological revolution’ speech in Scarborough the previous autumn. It was an issue they felt was a natural for Labour, facing a Tory Party led by an earl who famously used matchsticks to work out awkward sums. Neave was equally determined that they should not get away with this tactic, particularly as state supervision of scientific research lay behind it. ‘I am not a scientist,’ he admitted, ‘but I have met a great many scientists, and I believe that fundamental advances in science are not the result of a plan. They are the result of the creative ability of individuals with freedom to do that research. Any interference with their creative ability would be extremely bad and would be unlikely to produce new or better products. It is particularly true of research in industry where, in my opinion, there could not possibly be remote control from Whitehall.’4 A more cogent Conservative view of the role of the scientists would be hard to find. When his emotions were engaged, as they all too rarely were, he could speak convincingly without the need for a civil service brief. And the politics showed through, as in his peroration that day: ‘I do not believe that a socialist policy can be right for industry or for government research.’
When Blue Streak was finally launched at Woomera rocket range in the Australian outback on 5 June, the Aviation Minister Julian Amery was quick to claim a ‘technical success’ in the House, and Neave was equally swift to congratulate the government on this ‘very significant technical achievement’. Excitedly (by his standards), he asked whether ministers had plans for advanced means of space propulsion ‘through atomic or electrical power’. They had not. Nor did the test launch of Blue Streak take Britain into the space age: it flew for only 147 seconds before thrust was terminated. Later that year, Blue Streak was ignominiously cancelled under pressure from the United States. Harold Macmillan was seriously embarrassed by America’s subsequent cancellation of Skybolt, which it had been pushing in its stead.
Neave also continued to harry the government on its failure, as he saw it, to win proper compensation for the victims of Nazi persecution. In particular, he sought satisfaction for the relatives of the fifty RAF officers executed on Hitler’s orders after recapture following the ‘Great Escape’ from Stalag Luft III in 1944, and other British nationals who had died in the concentration camps. Ministers, including R.A. Butler, stonewalled for months, refusing even to publish a full list of those deemed to qualify. Finally, on 9 June, shortly before the summer recess and the start of the election campaign, Butler came to the House to confirm that the Federal German government was to pay £1 million to compensate British victims who had suffered loss of liberty or damage to their health at the hands of the Nazis, and to their dependants. Neave was called first, after the Shadow Foreign Secretary, Patrick Gordon Walker, in recognition of his long campaign. He welcomed the statement with ‘very general relief’.
Polling day for the 1964 election was set for 15 October. Neave faced another three-cornered fight, with Mrs Perl making a reappearance for the Liberals and Labour fielding a new candidate, Frederick Riddell, a schoolmaster. When the votes were counted, Neave had performed a little less well than in 1959, but a great deal better than his party did nationally. The ‘Thirteen Wasted Tory Years’ were over. Labour’s overall share rose by only 0.6 per cent, but the Conservative share slipped by 6 per cent and Harold Wilson was in Downing Street with a majority of five over all other parties. In Abingdon, Neave’s majority fell to 6,373. On his return to Westminster, Neave persevered with his special interests: science, technology and the defence and communications implications of space exploration. Wilson had promised ‘100 days of dynamic action’, but on 5 November, the newly returned member for Abingdon accused Labour of not living up to their promises. During the election, he said, many scientists were persuaded that a Labour government would go ahead with a technological revolution and harness science to socialism. ‘Within a fortnight of taking office they have done exactly the opposite,’ he complained, alleging that Concorde, the supersonic aircraft, would be scrapped. It was not, but his other fears about Blue Streak and the Black Knight missiles were realised. Neave was particularly unimpressed by Labour’s choice as Cabinet Minister for Technology, the elderly Frank Cousins, ‘on loan’ from the Transport and General Workers’ Union where he was general secretary. Cousins, a former lorry driver, had not even been elected an MP, being obliged to enter the Commons via a by-election. ‘There is no special merit,’ he argued, ‘in setting up a new ministry. The problems will not be solved merely by doing that.’ In a debate on the Science and Technology Bill, Neave repeatedly demanded what plans he had for nuclear science and the power station industry, not omitting to mention his personal interest as a director of Thompson. He was relieved that Anthony Crosland, Secretary for Education and Science, accepted an amendment guaranteeing the pensions of government scientists. The Tories might no longer be in power but detailed measures such as this sustained his political credibility back in the constituency.
In the ballot for private member’s bills, Neave won twenty-second place, a difficult site from which to launch new legislation, but he used it to pursue justice for the very elderly who had been excluded from a key provision of the welfare state. He tabled a National Insurance (Further Provisions) Bill aimed at giving pensions to older people not covered by the 1946 National Insurance Act. After a parliamentary spat over precedence, Neave finally rose to introduce his Bill on 25 March 1965. His measure sought to give state pensions to 250,000 elderly men and women (mostly from the professional classes) who had been excluded from the scheme at its inception in 1948. Most were over eighty. The average age was eighty-four. It was a popular measure, though it would cost £30 million a year if implemented in full. Since announcing his intentions nearly five months previously, he had received nearly 2,000 letters.
Neave conceded that his own party had continued Labour’s post-war policy of refusing to give state pensions to this dwindling group, but argued that the time had come to remedy an injustice to the very old. He appealed to Miss Peggy Herbison, the Minister of Pensions and National Insurance, for ‘action and humanity’. The minister was sympathetic but specific in her compassion. Some of the intended recipients were genuinely badly off: ex-teachers with small pensions, former ministers of the church and the like. But others were businessmen and landowners who had deliberately opted out of National Insurance, while almost half of them were already covered by National Assistance and would not benefit financially. The total cost would be nearer £100 million, which would mean higher National Insurance contributions from employers and workers. Neave’s Bill was deliberately filibustered by the government on 26 March, by ministers who continued a debate on the Consolidated Fund all night until eleven on Friday morning, thus killing off private members’ business. Richard Crossman, Minister for Pensions, recorded in his diary that the press found this tactic a ‘parliamentary outrage’. In truth, however, even the Shadow Cabinet had doubts about the measure. Sir Keith Joseph, the pensions spokesman, agreed to meet Neave to try to get him to play down his campaign, ‘but felt he was unlikely to be successful’.5
Neave was deeply distressed by these wrecking tactics and his public profile for the rest of that parliament was much lower. Besides, the Conservative Party had a new leader, Edward Heath. Lord Home had resigned in July 1965, triggering a contest for the leadership under new rules introduced only six months previ
ously. Instead of the mysterious process of the leader ‘appearing’ from high-level horse-trading, MPs now chose their own man. Under the new rules, to be elected at the first ballot a candidate had to win an absolute majority of the votes cast plus a margin of 15 per cent over his nearest rival. If the election went to a second ballot, a simple majority sufficed.
Heath, the Shadow Chancellor with some notably good performances in the Commons under his belt, was determined to be the front-runner from the beginning. His supporters were off the mark before the starting gun was fired. In late June, they leaked stories to the Sunday newspapers about a group of 100 MPs demanding change at the top, and Home was put to the embarrassment of repeated denials that he was about to quit. When the pressure became too strong to withstand, the Tory leader announced to a shocked 1922 Committee on 22 July that he was standing down. The pressure came chiefly from ‘the Heathmen’, who saw the Shadow Chancellor as the right man to take on Labour on the economy. Harold Wilson had inherited a nightmarish balance of payments deficit, forcing tax rises, public spending cuts and eventually ‘voluntary’ curbs on wages. The man who bequeathed him this mess, former Chancellor Reginald Maudling, was Heath’s main rival for the leadership. He was the clear preference of the voters, especially Tories, but Heath had the backing of the City, party activists and the media. His campaign manager, Peter Walker, proved a formidable operator. Indeed, his modus operandi differed little in organisation from Neave’s own campaign to unseat Heath ten years later. In the first ballot, Heath won 150 votes, Maudling 133 and the maverick Enoch Powell, 15. Maudling immediately conceded. There was no second ballot and Heath took over on 27 July 1965.
There was no room in Heath’s Shadow administration for Airey Neave. He was now marooned on the back benches, ploughing his favourite furrows as Labour looked for signs that an early election might yield a bigger majority. A famous by-election in Hull North on 28 January 1966 showed a swing from the Tories to the government of 4 per cent. It was enough. Harold Wilson unveiled a raft of popular measures, including cheap mortgages for those on low incomes, relief for council ratepayers and better pension arrangements. All this was marketed under the confident slogan ‘You Know That Labour Government Works’. It certainly worked for Wilson. On polling day, 31 March 1966, Labour was returned with a majority of ninety-seven. Neave’s majority in Abingdon was slashed to 3,302 in yet another three-cornered fight. On this occasion, his Labour opponent was one of the nuclear scientists whose cause he had so consistently championed. Alan Matterson, a thirty-six-year-old scientist at the Atomic Energy Research Establishment, Harwell, and a member of Abingdon Borough Council, polled 24,447 votes to Neave’s 27,749, while the Liberal, schoolmaster Denis Case, took 7,703. At the rate of decline since the late fifties, Abingdon was in danger of becoming a marginal seat. At a by-election it would not have been reckoned safe for the Tories. The swing against Neave was 3 per cent.
Politically, these were Neave’s darkest days. Not even the work he had put in for the over eighties was properly appreciated. Soon after the election, in late April 1966, Michael Foot, Leader of the House, accused Neave of not being in the chamber when the parliamentary progress of his National Insurance Bill was being discussed: ‘I do not know where he is. Apparently he is so eager to support the proposition that he is not here at all. He is not here tonight as he was not here for thirteen years.’ He had only turned up to please the elderly ‘when he thought it would embarrass the government’.6 Conservative MPs were furious. Neave had been there all the time and Foot was compelled to apologise. Little more than two months later, this measure came back to haunt the government, this time piloted by Dame Irene Ward, the daunting Tory MP for Tynemouth, with Neave powerfully in support. It failed again. Neave did not give up. He was on the attack again in July 1967, moving an amendment to the National Insurance Bill in the teeth of ministerial hostility. That, too, met a sticky end.
Neave also proved to be a constitutional thorn in Labour’s side. He argued persuasively for the Prices and Incomes Bill, which froze pay and dividends for six months and prices for a year, to be debated on the floor of the House, that is, by all MPs and not a committee drawn from each party in accordance with their parliamentary strength. The government proposed to give itself ‘very serious and arbitrary peacetime powers’, he argued during the committee stage of the Prices and Incomes Bill. Quoting The Times in support, Neave declared, ‘We may be bidding goodbye for some time to economic freedom.’7 In the face of such a large Commons majority, he was kicking against the pricks. The government had its way, but Neave could fairly claim to have established a reputation as ‘a Commons man’, an important distinction at Westminster.
Neave kept up the pressure on the victims of Nazi persecution, raising the case of fourteen British prisoners held in Sachsenhausen concentration camp. They included fellow POW escapers, among them Sydney Dowse, organiser of the ‘Great Escape’ from Stalag Luft III. Their claim for compensation had been rejected by the Foreign Office on the grounds that, while the cells in which they were incarcerated were in ‘geographical proximity’ to the camp, they were not inside the perimeter wire. Neave, who had met the Foreign Office minister George Thomson privately a number of times to press his case, now publicly attacked this ‘most pedantic and unreasonable decision’. Thomson claimed that Neave had failed to persuade Tory ministers to back his claim, and refused to go back on the FO ruling. Neave promised to fight the case. It would prove to be a long battle, but he would ultimately win it. He raised the matter again on 7 November, in oral questions to the Foreign Secretary George Brown, who fobbed him off with the ‘floodgate argument’ that any concessions to the Sachsenhausen prisoners would lead to many other and bigger claims which would stretch beyond reason the cash available for compensation. Neave responded by putting down an early day motion on the issue, which was signed by 275 MPs from across the political spectrum. On 4 May 1967, Richard Crossman, the new Leader of the House, refused to give time for a debate, but the government was beginning to shift. Ministers urged Neave and his all-party group of supporters to refer the issue to Sir Edmund Compton, the newly appointed Parliamentary Commissioner for Administration – the ‘Ombudsman’. If he found in their favour, there would have to be a debate. The Ombudsman duly found in their favour and was sharply critical of the Foreign Office in a report published just before Christmas 1967.
At this point, it would be useful to make a chronological leap to February 1968, when George Brown was obliged to ask the Commons to ‘take note’ – that is, approve – the Third Report of the Parliamentary Commissioner which found the FO guilty of maladministration. In the three-hour debate, Brown paid tribute to Neave’s pioneering work, while sheltering behind the cloak of ministerial responsibility to operate the 1964 Anglo-German Agreement which laid down strict provisions for eligibility. He rejected outright the Commissioner’s allegation that Foreign Office officials had failed to supply ministers with the correct information. If things had gone wrong, it was the fault of ministers, not civil servants. ‘I am the one who got caught with the ball when the lights went up,’ he confessed. The Sachsenhausen fourteen were gallant men but ‘borderline cases’. No one had blundered or bungled. However, the Ombudsman ruled that his judgement was wrong. Brown accepted that, with bad grace, and reversed his decision.
Scathing in his response to Brown, Neave was praised by Labour veteran Emmanuel Shinwell, a War Office minister in 1929 who had dealt with similar cases from the First World War, for his courage and tenacity in starting and seeing through the two and a half year campaign. His actions had helped re-establish the authority and dignity of Parliament, and he had cleared gallant officers of any doubt that might have hung about their names. Neave could scarcely ask for more. Certainly, he did not get it from Crossman, who closed the debate without mentioning him by name in the group of ‘a few back-benchers’ to which he casually referred.8 The motion was agreed and the war heroes got their money.
Perhaps unexpectedly
, Neave showed himself on the side of the modernisers in the great debate of that parliament: whether proceedings of the Commons should be televised. In late November, he spoke in favour of televising, insisting that the presence of cameras would have little or no effect on proceedings, but would make them available to a wider audience. He showed common sense where others became agitated over prima donna MPs, convinced that the mass medium of television was the best way of informing people about what went on in Parliament. Neave also linked televising the House to the growing habit of the Wilson administration of operating through the media, rather than the Commons. The term ‘spin doctor’ had not yet been invented, but Neave correctly discerned the trend towards government by news management. ‘I do not want to see Parliament bypassed by other methods of publicity,’ he argued. The very existence of Parliament as a forum of the nation depended on giving the fullest information to the people. The motion was carried and the televising of debates rapidly became as much a feature of the parliamentary scene as Hansard, the official record – and one as little watched as the other is little read. The only exception was the twice-weekly stand-up theatre of Prime Minister’s Questions, which pitted the party leaders in Commons combat. Cameras or no, it had been a busy year for Neave. He was active in debates on the ‘brain drain’, care of the elderly, nuclear energy, toll bridges and the foot and mouth epidemic among English cattle.
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