I was anxious to face criticism where it was merited, but expected the Young Liberals to provide chapter and verse where it was not. I suggested as an experiment that I would be available for an hour a week for the foreseeable future for meeting him and some of his colleagues. This proved beneficial and was continued on a less formalised basis. The irony of the situation is that those who at the time were most critical of the leadership have gone on to join the other two parties and may now be regarded as birds of passage. It was a further irony that in the closing period of my leadership I received very loyal support indeed from Atack’s Young Liberals.
Our local government base continues to expand, and the activity involved strengthens constituency organisations, which has helped lead to striking advances at parliamentary level.
In May 1976, with extreme reluctance, I resigned as leader. I felt that the intense publicity on the subject of the so-called Scott affair was crowding out Liberal coverage of the real issues of the day North Devon was a different issue, and I felt, as did my local Association, that it was just and reasonable that I should contest the seat at the next election.
I was asked recently what I was most proud of and what I most regretted during the course of my political career. For the former: first, to have played a major part in the evolution of a united Europe. Second, that I was involved in the introduction of legal reforms, including being a sponsor of the abolition of capital punishment. Third, the devolution of power from the centre, including Parliaments for Scotland and Wales. Fourth, partnership in industry. Fifth, that I can claim to have fought for the principles of human rights, which include to racialism everywhere, and in particular opposition to the apartheid system in South Africa.
Above all, I played my part in taking the Liberal vote, which had got stuck in a rut, from two million to six million votes. And although this led to almost no increase in representation in Parliament, it broke the mould in that it was recognised at last that we had a three-party political set-up, operating under a two-party electoral system. The electorate at the last general election in 1997 exercised their own electoral reform by tactical voting, and it was the turn of the Conservative Party to be punished by the system.
They were denied representation in almost every major city in the country.
One essential for a third party is to keep in the public eye, to ensure its voice is heard. It was particularly important to be part of the inter-party negotiations (for example on the allocation of party political broadcasts) and also to be involved in three-party discussions on arrangements for general elections. It was also important to ensure that the Liberal voice was heard in debates in the House. I recall on one occasion when there was a two-day debate on an important issue and not a single Liberal was called. As a result of strenuous efforts, which did not please the other two parties, time was granted on what was called Supply Days, which is debating time for the subject chosen by the opposition. When Harold Wilson was Prime Minister he took the view that the opposition was insufficiently funded and in consequence state grants were provided for opposition parties to finance their parliamentary offices – before this, when I became leader I received financial support from party headquarters for one secretary, the other secretary being paid out of my own salary of £3,250 per annum. This new grant was known as the ‘Short’ money after Edward Short, the then Leader of the House.
When it was mooted that the government alone should lay a wreath at the Cenotaph on Armistice Day, Liberal reaction was expressed with devastating force by David Steel, then leader, that the Liberal Party provided two Prime Ministers who were in charge during World War One, and we wished to join in the tribute to the fallen.
On the question of life peerages, Macmillan steadfastly refused to consider the appointment of Liberal life peers, despite the fact that they had supported the Life Peerage Act on the basis that it would make for a more effective balance in the House of Lords. When Harold Wilson became Prime Minister in 1964, he offered Jo Grimond two life peerages and asked who they might be. Grimond replied that a strong case could be made for the nomination of two former Liberal Chief Whips in the House of Commons – Frank Byers and Donald Wade. However, he had some difficulty in deciding, as there was a strong case for including Lady Violet Bonham Carter, as she merited membership of the House of Lords. However, she had had a minor stroke and could not be guaranteed to give full-time service, and not least, she was Grimond’s own mother-in-law. ‘I see the difficulty’, said Wilson. ‘I’ll give you three peerages, provided Lady Bonham Carter is the third, and to save you embarrassment, I’ll put her on my list as opposed to yours’. In 1967, as leader, I asked Wilson whether we could expect further creations. Wilson replied: ‘Yes, you can have two’, to which I replied: ‘I have known certain generous Prime Ministers who have agreed to three recruits’. I got the Prime Minister’s agreement to nominate three.
As for regrets, having actively campaigned when Liberal fortunes were at their lowest; having seen them revive in the ’60s and ’70s, until the present breakthrough with forty-six MPs, I regret that I am no longer on the front line of the battlefield, although I continue to be involved in the encouraging Liberal Democrat advance. Tactical voting is a very fragile plant. Given the next election, with by then a possibly unpopular Labour government and/or a possibly revived and united Conservative Party (which I think unlikely), the Liberal Democrats will need resolutely to campaign to hold, reinforce and improve upon their six million supporters. I hope I may claim that my leadership achieved, as I intended it to achieve, the three political Rs – relevance, reliability and radicalism.
Chapter Five
Commonwealth and Africa
My interest in the Commonwealth started back in the 1940s when I was at Oxford. This was a time when colonial territories were struggling for their independence. India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka had already attained their independence within the Commonwealth in 1947, but African nations, led by charismatic figures like Nkrumah in Ghana, Kenyatta in Kenya, Seretse Khama in Botswana, Kaunda in Zambia, Nyerere in Tanzania, Nkomo in Southern Rhodesia, and a whole raft of countries in the Caribbean and the Far East such as Jamaica, Fiji and Malaysia were all campaigning for their independence. Britain at this period was by no means wholly committed to a multi-racial Commonwealth, and faced problems of racial tension within the UK itself. As a result of my commitment to decolonisation, I have been privileged to count many of the Commonwealth leaders as life-long friends.
I had early on taken a great interest in the plans to federate Northern and Southern Rhodesia and Nyasaland, all still under minority white rule. In my first speech as prospective Liberal candidate for North Devon in July 1952, I said that federation, without African support being a condition of acceptance, was doomed to failure. Significantly, talks on Southern Rhodesia’s position in a future federation took place at the Victoria Falls Conference in 1952 with no African present. In practice, the Labour government laid out the plans for a Central African Federation, and the subsequent Tory government gave it legislative effect – in short one loaded the gun, and the other squeezed the trigger. However, I deal with Rhodesia in the next chapter.
One of my commitments was in regard to the Rivonia Trial in South Africa, where there was a very real possibility that if found guilty, Mandela, who was one of the accused, and at least some of his co-defendant’s would have been hanged. In May 1964 Judge De Wit adjourned the case for three weeks in order to consider his verdict and sentence. In those precious weeks the world was galvanised into action. All-night vigils were held outside St Paul’s Cathedral in London and I myself became Hon. Secretary of the world campaign for the release of South African political prisoners – specifically calling for an amnesty for all political prisoners, the ending of the Rivonia Trial and the abolition of the death penalty. We lobbied scores of governments and although I can only claim that we played a small part, the UN Security Council, with four abstentions that shamefully included the UK and USA, urged the Sout
h African government to end the trial and grant amnesty to the defendants. This was backed by the UN as a whole. In the event the accused were sentenced to life imprisonment.
It is a chilling thought as to what might have happened had the majority view of the whites been allowed to prevail and the death sentences had been carried out. The history of South Africa might have been very different today. Notwithstanding twenty-seven years in prison, Mandela has shown tremendous magnanimity and a total lack of bitterness. This attitude and that of de Klerk, the last white President of South Africa, brought about a measure of reconciliation in South Africa, which is nothing short of a miracle. Mandela’s address to both Houses of Parliament in Westminster Hall in July 1996 was tremendously moving and I leave the last word with him by quoting the wind-up of his speech:
‘To close the circle, let our people, the ones formerly poor citizens and the others good patricians – politicians, businesspeople, educators, health workers, scientists, engineers and technicians, sportspeople and entertainers, activists for charitable relief – join hands to build on what we have achieved together and help construct a humane African world, whose emergence will say a new universal order is born in which we are each our brother’s keeper.’
And so let that outcome, as we close a chapter of two centuries and open a millennium, herald the advent of a glorious summer of a partnership for freedom, peace, prosperity and friendship.
South Africa
Black Sash protest
In 1961 South Africa decided to cut links with the Crown and become a republic. In view of her changed status, it was necessary for her to apply to re-join the Commonwealth. The Commonwealth heads of government were due to meet in London at Lancaster House. A group of MPs, of whom I was one, and who included Fenner Brockway, Barbara Castle and Edith Summerskill, took the view that the racialist policies practised by South Africa, particularly following the 1948 election, which had enshrined apartheid as a social objective, were incompatible with a multi-racial Commonwealth. We therefore decided to protest outside Lancaster House by organising a Black Sash vigil along the lines of the heroic women protesters, outside Parliament buildings in South Africa, wearing black sashes as a mark of protest against apartheid.
We planned that each picket would be four in number and would last two hours. We did not intend to cause any obstruction and, if attacked, would not resist. As a preliminary measure we called on Pandit Nehru, the then Prime Minister of India, to inform him of our intentions and asked for his vote on the question of South Africa’s exclusion from the Commonwealth. The answer was a very carefully chosen diplomatic reply, much to the fury of his sister, Mrs Pandit, who was then the Indian High Commissioner in London. ‘Of course he will vote on the right side for non-racialism. He should have told you so without equivocation’, she said.
I suggested to my colleagues that we should inform the Commissioner of Metropolitan Police at Scotland Yard of our intentions to minimise any difficulties which might arise. We were immediately received by the Commissioner, who thanked us for our courtesy but said that the area in question – around Lancaster House – was not within his jurisdiction since it was the Queen’s private property. Would we like to talk to the Lord Chamberlain at St James’s Palace? We gratefully accepted this suggestion and a call was duly put through to his office. Lord Scarborough was away in India, but the Deputy Lord Chamberlain, Sir Norman Gwatkin, would be delighted to see us straight away. He likewise thanked us for our courtesy in coining to see him, but said there was some difficulty involved, since the Commonwealth delegates were the Queen’s personal guests whilst at Lancaster House and it would be a little embarrassing for her to invite her guests on the one hand and license a protest against them on the other! Why didn’t we mount our protest on the steps of Lancaster House, which come under the Ministry of Works and therefore it would be a matter for Lord John Hope who was then Minister of Works Would we like to see him? We replied that we would, and accordingly a telephone call was put through there and then. He agreed to see us after lunch. He received us very courteously, to which we were becoming accustomed! He said he couldn’t allow us to picket the steps of the front door of Lancaster House since he was responsible for the unimpeded entry of delegates and there simply wasn’t the space. He said that he could offer us the strip of roadway leading from the Mall to Lancaster House. I replied that there was another point of entry by road from St James’s Palace. ‘Very well’, said the Minister, ‘you can have two pickets’. ‘That will mean’, said I rather churlishly, ‘that we will have to double the number of people required for picket duty.’ ‘I am afraid that is your problem’, said the Minister. ‘Right’, I said. ‘We accept’. ‘But you haven’t heard the conditions on which I am granting this. One of your pickets will be directly under the Duchess of Gloucester’s bedroom and I want firm agreement that there will be no noise after ten o’clock at night.’
We complied. The pickets went ahead and carried place names of Sharpeville and Lange, the sites of notorious massacres. Ours was a dignified, and I believe effective, display. South Africa withdrew her application to re-join the Commonwealth. It was a particular joy to me thirty-three years later to attend the service at Westminster Abbey in July 1994, welcoming a fully democratic South Africa back into the Commonwealth.
One slightly humorous spin-off was the reference to a photograph of a very tall Edith Summerskill and a comparatively diminutive Barbara Cast lion picket duty as ‘the Elephant and Castle’! It wasn’t strictly accurate or original since it had previously been applied to a photograph of Barbara with Sir Andrew Cohen, an immensely tall colonial governor. However, the job of politicians is to keep good jokes in circulation!
I wondered where else in the world it would be possible to organise a protest in such a civilised manner.
Arms to South Africa
During the six months leading up to the heads of government meeting in January 1971 in Singapore, the Commonwealth was within an ace of disintegrating, as a result of Edward Heath’s government’s decision to resume arms sales to South Africa. There had been a reference in the Conservative Party election manifesto, ‘A Better Tomorrow’, that Conservatives would lift the non-mandatory embargo on arms sales. The embargo had been approved by the UN Security Council in 1963, and the Wilson government had honoured it. Within a week of the Conservatives’ election victory on 18 June 1970, the South African Foreign Minister, Hilgard Muller, was waiting at the Foreign Office door. As Harold Wilson put it, it was like an alcoholic waiting at the pub door for opening time.
At the Foreign Office meeting, Muller referred to the Simonstown Agreement of 1955, when Britain handed over the naval base near Cape Town, and had agreed to supply anti-submarine frigates as part of South Africa’s programme of naval expansion to guard the sea route round South Africa.
Some weapons had already been supplied by 1964, and there was continuing agreement to cooperate on the sea route. In 1970 Alec Home, then Foreign Secretary, agreed to honour the pledge to sell arms for this purpose and this was indicated to the press before the matter was discussed in Cabinet. Heath wrote directly to the Commonwealth heads of government with reference to the Simonstown Agreement, saying that Britain could not continue to benefit from these valuable defence facilities without being prepared to consider requests for equipment directly related to the sea routes, which we believe to be implicit in this agreement’. The statement to this effect would be made in ten days. Although Heath stressed that the equipment would be for external defence, and not for internal security, there was no hint of what he was considering supplying – some helicopters, for which frigates had been adapted, or a whole new range of equipment?
The messages from the Commonwealth heads of government started to come in. Most were concerned that these weapons could be used for internal security against the African population in South Africa, and in any event would result in the building up of the defence capacities of South Africa. Kaunda sent messages to all Commonwealth h
eads of government; Nverere said Tanzania would withdraw from the Commonwealth if Britain went ahead with a definite decision to resume arms sales; Zambia, Uganda, India and Sri Lanka were also likely to withdraw if Nyerere did so. Pierre Trudeau, the Liberal Prime Minister of Canada, sent Heath a letter expressing his own ‘serious misgivings’, and claiming that many Commonwealth governments were likely to interpret any arms sales as ‘an implicit gesture of acquiescence in the policy of the South African government towards the African population’.
At that stage I went to see Arnold Smith, Secretary-General of the Commonwealth, to urge that a compromise be sought, and suggested that since some thirteen Commonwealth countries bordered the South Atlantic and Indian oceans, could they not form a joint study group which might take the heat out of the situation. It would not matter in practice if they never met but it would be a face-saver for all concerned. Arnold indicated that he favoured the idea and suggested that I should write to Pierre Trudeau in the hope that he might raise the matter at the impending Commonwealth Conference. This I did. Heath, after much persuasion, agreed to postpone his decision to sell arms until after the United Kingdom government had had an opportunity to consult the Commonwealth. Some of the heat was already drawn. In the meantime Kaunda was drafting a declaration of Commonwealth principles, to be presented at the Singapore summit. The dangers of a massive split still remained. It is believed that the Queen was advised against going to Singapore to discharge her now traditional role of entertaining Prime Ministers and Presidents at a state banquet and granting an audience to each in turn. She did not in fact attend. The plenary conference in Singapore agreed to set up an eight-nation study group consisting of representatives from Australia, Britain, Canada, India, Jamaica, Kenya, Malaysia and Nigeria plus the Commonwealth Secretariat. After some skilled drafting amendments by Pierre Trudeau, who had already played a significant part in setting up the study group, agreement was reached on the declaration of principles.
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