In My Own Time

by Jeremy Thorpe

Second, and far more fundamental, we did not know who had won the election, but we knew who had lost it. My colleagues and I had been very critical about Mr Heath’s handling of the miners’ dispute, which I believe could have been honourably settled. I did, however, offer him a formula of giving general support from the opposition benches for agreed measures. Mr Heath felt unable to accept this (although years later the formula was accepted by Mr Callaghan).

  My suggestion to those present was that in order to get value for money, they should press the Conservative Party to give serious consideration to the whole question of electoral reform. In fact, the Conservative government had reintroduced proportional representation for Stormont in order to avoid a distortion of the respective strengths of the religious communities in the province of Northern Ireland.

  The case for PR was simple. Taking the number of MPs returned, say, from the City of Leeds as being a total of six, PR would ensure two things, First, that each party would be represented in direct proportion to their vote in a multi-member constituency. Therefore a party gaining one sixth of the vote would get one seat, and so on. Second, since the voter could vote for up to six candidates of his or her own party, thus representing a wider choice between varying shades of opinion, this usually strengthened the hand of the moderates.

  Sir Val Duncan (Rio Tinto) immediately reacted by saying: ‘No more money for the Conservative Party until they come out for electoral reform’.

  I want to state clearly that acceptance of the invitation to the gathering did not of itself imply acceptance of the case for electoral reform.

  However, since then support for electoral reform has been growing in all quarters, including the business community, as expressed by the CBI.

  The Jenkins Commission

  In December 1997, the Prime Minister, Tony Blair, appointed Lord Jenkins of Hillhead to chair an independent commission on the voting system, charged with making its report in the autumn of 1998, after which the government was committed to a referendum.

  The Commission’s terms of reference were:

  The Commission shall be free to consider and recommend any appropriate system or combination of systems in recommending an alternative to the present system for parliamentary elections to be put before the people in the government’s referendum.

  The Commission shall observe the requirement for broad proportionality, the need for stable government, an extension of voter choice and the maintenance of a link between MPs and geographical constituencies.

  I include my memorandum, which I submitted to the Commission.

  Memorandum by The Rt Hon. Jeremy Thorpe, submitted to the Independent Commission on the Voting System

  This memorandum seeks to establish a voting procedure which reconciles the almost irreconcilable objectives of combining numerical accuracy with the retention of a strong connection between an MP and his or her constituents, This involves running two different systems in harness, namely: proportional representation by the single transferable vote in the larger cities of the United Kingdom, complemented by the alternative vote in the remaining constituencies.

  One extraordinary factor which arises from the 1997 general election is the fact that there is no Conservative MP in Birmingham, Bradford, Bristol, Cardiff, Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester, Sheffield, Glasgow or Edinburgh. This cannot be healthy in a democracy. Taking approximately sixty city constituencies, there is set out in the accompanying table the collective total gained by each party; the percentage that this represents in the individual constituency; what seats were actually won; and what the probable outcome would be if those constituencies had run the elections collectively on a PR basis. It is fair to say that this latter figure is only an estimate, since the electorate might have voted slightly differently given the absence of what I might vulgarly call the squeeze factor. Cities very often have a corporate view of their problems which brings about a degree of cooperation between local MPs, often of differing political persuasions.

  I do not believe that a three-or four-member constituency in, say, Manchester or Birmingham would make the individual voter feel remote from his MP. On the contrary, it might be the first occasion where a significant minority, at present deprived of representation, would have a chance of getting their voice heard. The great joy of PR is not only that it accurately reflects the support enjoyed by each party, but enables the electors to make a choice not only of party, but of individual candidates within their party. The enlarged parliamentary constituencies would be created by bunching together existing single-member parliamentary constituencies, and could safely be left to the Boundary Commissioners, who would decide the number of parliamentary constituencies to be bunched and any routine amendments to existing constituency boundaries.

  It is an extraordinary thought that the official opposition, by reason of the eccentric voting system under which we labour at present, should be totally without representation in many of the major cities in the United Kingdom. It used to be said that the first-past-the-post system was excellent in a two-party situation and produced ‘strong government’. My dual comments are that we no longer have a two-party situation – we have three UK parties, the two nationalist parties in Scotland and Wales, and no less than four parties in Northern Ireland. I do not know what is meant by ‘strong government’ unless it means arming one party with an overall majority, disregarding the extent to which it might be in a minority nationally, and producing an unrepresentative result for the rest of the political field. To give one flagrant example: in the February 1974 general election the Liberal vote increased from two million to six million. The effect of adding four million to the total result produced only three more MPs.

  The first-past-the-post system does not ensure a fair outcome, even with a contest involving only two candidates. In 1948, using the first-past-the-post system, the United Party of South Africa polled more votes than the Nationalist Party, but the Nationalists won a majority of the seats and claimed that this gave them a mandate to extend and formalise the system of apartheid. It is interesting to reflect that that outcome did not represent the majority view of the South African electorate. For this they paid a heavy price. To have brought this about is attributable to the system whereby one has only one MP returned whether he and his party have polled say 80 per cent or 20 per cent – the majority or minority of votes.

  Although sixty constituencies have been considered for amalgamation, there are other cities which think corporately, such as Coventry, with three MPs at present, which could suitably become a three-member seat. Other cities could be considered by the Commissioners. The whole process could he completed before the next election.

  In order to maintain a close link between the MP and his or her constituency outside the big towns, I would recommend the use of the alternative vote. It does away with two weaknesses of the present first-past-the-post system. It is a fact that over 300 MPs, or almost half the House of Commons, were elected on a minority vote in the 1997 general election – that is, a majority of their constituents were opposed to their return. In the general election of February 1974, the number was 4051 Once these results are aggregated it becomes more likely than not that the government returned will also be in a minority nationally.

  The second great defect of the present electoral system is that where the likely outcome is closely contested between any two political parties in an individual seat, the parties in third place are crucified and their supporters advised that they must in no way vote in accordance with their convictions, but must vote for one of the two leading contenders as the only way to prevent their least favourite party candidate being returned. No vote should be regarded as wasted if people vote according to their convictions. There is something highly civilised in saying to the electorate: ‘As a result of the poll to date no one party has a clear majority, your party is clearly defeated, but we would like you to express your second preference, which you have conveniently marked on your ballot paper’. The present situation is rather like a
man who goes to buy twenty Benson & Hedges cigarettes, only to find that his brand is not in stock and his money is put in the till. Good commercial practice would suggest that the customer should be asked what was his second preference. Equally he could play his part in the election of his Member of Parliament. The need for tactical voting is proof of the shortcomings of the first-past-the-post system. The alternative vote is to be preferred to the second ballot system used in France, which unnecessarily prolongs the contest and takes place in two stages and leads to unseemly bargaining. The additional seat formula linked to AV runs the risk of party listing and is a very blunt way of trying to introduce a proportional result.

  There will be criticism that the proposed arrangements will involve using two different systems in the same election. With the advent of the new Scottish Parliament, the Welsh Assembly and the European Parliament, we will all be using proportional systems of voting (some better than others!) whilst Westminster is still saddled with the old-fashioned first-past-the-post system. When a Conservative government sought to increase the numbers of Euro MPs in Northern Ireland from two to three so that the Catholic minority would be fairly represented, our European colleagues made it clear that the first-past-the-post system would in all probability result in three Protestant Euro MPs being returned. They insisted that if there were to be a third Euro MP, the use of PR for a three-member constituency would be the only guarantee that the Catholic minority would be fairly represented. This, of course, would be on the assumption that they had one-third of the vote, which was highly probable.

  Different electoral systems involving the same principles operate for local government in Northern Ireland and there is no move afoot to revert to the first-past-the-post system operating in the rest of the UK. When David Lloyd George partitioned Ireland he was determined that the Catholics in the north and the Protestants in the south should be fairly represented. He therefore provided PR for the elections north and south. He also hoped that the system would make it less likely that polarisation on a religious basis would occur. It is not a mere accident that in the south, where PR has never been abolished, the Protestant community have produced distinguished state presidents and Cabinet ministers. What is enormously significant, to me at least, is that there are two cathedrals in Dublin, both of which are Protestant, and in the absence of a Catholic cathedral a Protestant one is loaned out when needed for great state occasions!

  Another minor example of dual electoral systems being used in an election was the university seats: nine MPs were elected by STV and three by first-past-the-post. I suppose it could be said that the German electoral system is a blend of first-past-the-post topped up with a proportionate formula, which incidentally was the invention of Asten Albu, the Labour MP for Edmonton, and member of the Control Commission.

  I enclose by way of postscript certain county oddities produced at the last election. With regard to the 1948 South African election result, 547,000 votes for Smuts produced sixty seats, while 442,000 votes for Malan produced seventy-eight seats. Every contest was a straight fight.

  The dual system which I have suggested was recommended by the Speaker’s Conference of 1917. They recommended that PR with the transferable vote should be used in constituencies returning three to five members, and the alternative vote in single-member constituencies with more than two candidates. While the coalition government of 1916 was in office, a scheme was prepared, in pursuance of the Representation of the People Act 1918 for the election of 100 Members by PR. But the Liberal motion to carry it into effect was defeated on a free vote by fifty-six votes.

  At the 1930 Speaker’s Conference, the Conservative Party voted in favour of electoral reform by means of the single transferable vote, whilst the Labour Party supported the alternative vote. In 1931 a bill making provision for the introduction of the alternative vote was actually passed by the House of Commons but was rejected by the House of Lords.

  13 March 1998

  1979 election: application to the courts

  In the course of the 1979 general election, I was provided with an advance copy of a leaflet which was to be distributed in North Devon by Mr Auberon Waugh, a fringe candidate in the constituency. The leaflet was scurrilous and libellous, and I decided that we should issue a writ for libel and an injunction in the High Court restraining the circulation of the leaflet. The importance of an injunction was that without it, by the time the libel action came to court, the damage would have been done. Accordingly we decided to ask immediately for an injunction from a judge in chambers, who happened to be the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Widgery.

  During that morning I was canvassing in a remote area on the North Devon–North Cornwall border at Woolfardisworthy, known as Woolsery, when a black cloud emerged on the horizon, and the entire press corps arrived. ‘What was my reaction to the fact that the Lord Chief Justice had refused to grant me an injunction, on the grounds that the matter should be left until the hearing of the libel action?’ It was pretty depressing news. I said that I would not comment until I had been briefed by my lawyers.

  How right I was!

  I made for the next village, where there was a telephone box in the square, and managed to track down Christopher Murray, one of my solicitors, to find out what had happened. He replied: ‘You are not up to date – understandably.’ It transpired that my legal team had left the Lord Chief Justice and proceeded immediately down the corridor leading to the Court of Appeal, presided over by Lord Denning, the Master of the Rolls. At a suitable moment they had broken into the proceedings in hand and asked, as a matter of urgency, for an appeal to be heard from a decision just made by the Lord Chief Justice. They had asked that pending the appeal a restraining interim injunction be granted. Lord Denning had recognised the urgency of the matter in view of its relevance to the election. Within two hours he had heard the appeal and determined in my favour, reversing Lord Widgery’s decision, and had issued an injunction. The law is capable of acting with speed in an emergency!

  I returned to Woolsery and found the press corps still there. I told them that they were inadequately informed and had themselves been scooped.

  Leadership

  In 1966 Jo Grimond let me know that he intended to relinquish the party leadership. I urged him strongly to stay on to continue to make his undoubted contribution to the party and the nation. Frank Byers, at a private meeting, asked Jo whether he had enjoyed being leader, to which Jo replied: ‘Yes’. ‘In that case,’ said Byers, ‘you can disenjoy the job for a bit longer’. Jo stayed on, but did not tell me when he finally decided to retire, as he felt that in all probability I would try to persuade him to stay on.

  The Parliamentary Party of twelve were the total electorate at the time. We all knew how everyone was thought likely to vote. We subsequently discovered that Peter Bessell, the MP for Bodmin, had pledged his support to two of the three candidates! The one commitment was that Eric Lubbock and I agreed that if either of us were elected the other would give him whole-hearted support. Against that pattern, he continued as my Chief Whip when I became leader. The twelve votes were counted by Donald Wade, a Liberal life peer and former Chief Whip in the Commons. The votes were taken out of a champagne cooler on the Chief Whip’s desk. The result was Thorpe six, Lubbock three, Hooson three. The latter two withdrew and moved that I should now be elected unopposed.

  The Liberal Party has its fair share of internal criticism. Apart from the ham-fisted attempt to depose me while I was on my honeymoon in 1968, I received much help from the party in the House and in the country. One cause for unrest was the relationship between different sections of the party. In the ’40s and ’50s there was very little contact between the Liberal MPs and the party in the country. There was also profound disagreement in the Parliamentary Party itself. Sir Rhys Hopkin Morris (MP for Carmarthen) was a proponent of nineteenth-century laissez-faire; whilst Megan Lloyd George, along with Emrys Roberts (MP for Merioneth) stood for the radical, reforming wing. To the horror of loyal Liberal
s in the country, the Parliamentary Party was known to split and vote in two different lobbies, some for the ‘ayes’, some for the ‘noes’, which justifiably earned the derision of the rest of the House. Despite the fact that the House of Lords contained considerable talent in Viscount Samuel, Lord Beveridge, Lord Pranks and Lord Layton, the Liberal Lords had equally weak links with the MPs in the Commons. On her peerage, Lady Violet Bonham Carter, now Baroness Asquith, asked the Liberal leader in the Lords, Lord Rea, how often the Liberal peers met. ‘Never’, came the reply. ‘Never?’ said Violet. ‘We must meet regularly once a week.’ ‘And this’, said Violet to me, ‘we now do’.

  Political development at local level was taking place by the time I became leader. Local councils which had had no Liberal representation for three decades woke up to find them being elected in twos and threes. This was attributable to the practice of community politics, in which the activist relates to the problems of individuals and fights hard to find solutions. It was suggested that the leadership was hostile to community politics, but far from it; Liberal MPs attributed much of their electoral success to their campaigning in their constituencies on a local and personal basis.

  It was about the time when I became leader that the so-called ‘Red Guards’ were spawned. Originally enthusiastic young Liberals, many of them campaigned for policies which had little to do with the philosophy of Liberalism, and they were becoming an electoral liability. Their criticism of the leadership was intense, not all of it fairly placed.

  Young Liberal national leaders came and went, Peter Hain, now a Labour minister, being one. A number joined the Conservative Party. A point was reached where it appeared that the youth movement and the party were on a serious collision course. I asked their newly elected leader, Steve Atack, to come and see me and told him of my concerns about the situation.