An Unexpected MP

by Jerry Hayes

  ‘No such document exists,’ she spat.

  This was an unfortunate and fatal remark because Walker opened his briefcase and threw the document across her desk. The print unions had smuggled him a copy. After all, they had printed it.

  It was the end of Labour’s attempts to tame the unions. As soon as Jim Callaghan got wind of it, it was dead in the water. This one act to curry favour with the unions proved to be his nemesis and the making of Margaret Thatcher.

  Callaghan never forgave Castle for attempting a policy that could have begun to set the economy on the right track and saved the Labour Party from itself. She was Health Secretary when Callaghan became Prime Minister. She was the very first to go. Her parting words were, ‘Jim, I don’t mind being sacked, but to be replaced with David Ennals is an insult.’

  The way in which Callaghan’s minority government was ‘run’ is a masterclass of how not to govern and a warning to the lederhosen brigade on the Tory back benches who think that you can push through any sort of legislative programme relying on the tiny parties. You can’t. They will grab what gifts you have to offer and then stab you in the back.

  I once asked Merlyn Rees, Callaghan’s Home Secretary, how they managed to keep afloat for such a long time. He just chuckled and he told me how he and Jim used to patrol the Tea Room and bars and ‘give the boys what they wanted’. So Plaid Cymru got their own TV channel in Welsh, and the Northern Ireland and Scots nationalists got a few gerrymandered seats. Predictably, they all stabbed Callaghan in the back. This is always the price of minority government.

  I was very fond of Merlyn. A really charming and caring man. He told me the story of how a man in a cloak appeared late at night out of the mist surrounding the Commons and so scared a driver that he accidentally ran the man over. The driver swore he ‘looked like Dracula’. Before the police arrived, the unconscious Dracula lookalike mumbled that he was an MP called Rees. The police cheered. Here was the Home Secretary being rushed to hospital. The police never like Home Secretaries. But their joy was short-lived, as the man in the ambulance was actually Billy Rees Davies QC, the ‘one-armed bandit’ and thoroughly dodgy Tory MP for Thanet.

  His nickname came from the fact that he only had one arm and was as trustworthy as a nine-bob note. He claimed that he lost his arm as a hero in the war. Like most of his life, this was fiction. He crashed a fuel tanker stolen from the Germans that he was trying to sell on the black market – the arm went missing in action.

  He was also a thoroughly corrupt barrister. I know; I was briefly in his chambers. Once, he was on his feet in the Court of Appeal when he asked the bench to excuse him for a moment as his client had passed him a billet-doux. One of the judges remarked loudly that this was probably a ‘Billy, don’t’.

  The one lesson that Thatcher learned after the horror of the miners’ strike that destroyed the Heath government was to be prepared and choose your battleground carefully. In those days, the National Union of Mineworkers enjoyed power unconfined. They could bring the country to a standstill. Industry could be shut down and the lights switched off. They had done it before. They had slain a Tory government. But their leaders like Joe Gormley and Mick McGahey were a canny bunch of political operators. They knew what they could get away with and just how far to go – unlike Arthur Scargill, who was addicted to power and showed seriously flawed judgement.

  In Thatcher’s first term, she was wise to back down after a skirmish with the miners. Following the 1983 election she drew up plans to roll out a programme of industrial reform – but slowly and cautiously. She also hired Ian MacGregor, an old American strike-breaker, to run the Coal Board and made Peter Walker, that consummate political operator, Secretary of State for Energy. Walker had been very close to Heath at the time of his downfall and appreciated the need for coal stocks to be built up. He also understood that his department worked seamlessly with the NUM and that any plans he might be developing would be on Scargill’s desk within the hour. Walker countered this by bypassing the Whitehall machine, ensuring his private office dealt directly only with fellow Cabinet members’ private offices. Secret and confidential papers were biked to them directly. He took his department completely out of the insecure Whitehall loop.

  Peter was the first Cabinet minister to invite backbenchers to lunch in his office. I mean a proper lunch, with decent booze, laid on by private caterers at the department. Pretty young girls who had been to finishing school served us and he was wealthy enough to pay for them out of his own pocket, which he did. Politically, this was a very clever move, as he was able to keep backbenchers up to speed in private. Or as private as gossiping politicians ever can be.

  One day he was a little late and insisted that he caught us up on the booze front. He let slip that MI5 had just told him that they had intercepted a container-load of cash from the Russians to support the miners’ strike. He then said that he had insisted that the container be allowed to get to Scargill’s people.

  This rather confused us.

  ‘Why?’ we asked.

  ‘Oh, we did a deal with the Russians. They send money in fraternal solidarity to the NUM and sell us cheap Russian coal so we can break the strike.’ And I thought I was pretty cynical.

  Once, when I was travelling back to Energy Questions, the cab driver performed the usual trick.

  ‘’Ere, you’ll never believe who I’ve just had in the back of the cab.’

  ‘Try me.’

  ‘That Wedgie Benn.’

  ‘Mmm.’

  ‘You’ll never guess what question he’s got lined up for your Walker guy.’

  ‘Go on, mate.’ And he told me.

  I immediately rang up Peter’s PPS to forewarn him. Poor old Tony Benn wasn’t prepared for what hit him an hour later in the chamber.

  The awful thing was that the miners were a thoroughly decent bunch. Never mind all the terrible pictures of violence on the picket line. Whole communities were under threat, not just jobs. And still in the old pit-villages some family members will not speak to each other for their past roles in the strike. It didn’t just divide the country. It divided families and broke communities.

  At the height of the strike I was wandering back to the Commons after a gossipy lunch with a journo. It was the day the miners were lobbying Parliament. And suddenly, in front of me was a platform, with some loudspeakers and about a thousand miners listening to rabble-rousing speeches. My beard and blond curly hair were spotted.

  ‘It’s that Tory MP off the telly!’ went up the cry. Oh dear. I was going to be lynched. ‘You gonna come and talk to us?’ one jeered.

  What on earth should I do? Try and do a runner, get thumped and end up on the news as a cowardly imbecile? There was only one course open to me. So I strode forward, hand outstretched, pretending that I was cool as a cucumber and not bricking it. The crowd parted only to swallow me up.

  ‘Of course I will speak to you,’ I quavered.

  And for the next hour I listened to their grievances and did my best to explain that it was no longer economically viable to mine deep coal. We didn’t agree, but they were polite. I saw in the flesh that these were some of Britain’s finest, wanting to earn their living in the way their families had done for generations. Destroy this and their communities would collapse.

  The miners were so let down by Scargill. He refused to ballot them on a strike. He turned down a billion-pound package to save jobs and start retraining. And he called the strike for the summer, when coal stocks were high. Insane, vainglorious fool.

  In many ways, the miners’ strike was the first whiff of the beginning of the end of Thatcher. It was a great victory for her personally and politically, but it rather upset the comfortable middle classes. If she treats the miners like that, what could she do to us? More prescient than they could possibly know.

  CHAPTER 12

  FACT FINDING

  Some MPs manage to turn overseas travel into an art form. One Labour guy from Liverpool was nicknamed Gulliver, and a Tory,
Neville Trotter (to be fair, he had a constituency interest in airlines), was known as Globe Trotter. But before anyone gets all hot and bothered about how taxpayers’ money is wasted on MPs’ junkets, it is important to differentiate between select committee trips, where you are sent abroad to report on a specific issue, and all-party committee jaunts. The former are paid by the taxpayer and are all business and little play. The latter are funded privately and are designed to persuade MPs to go native – and they are all play.

  In those days, BAA provided a free airport parking pass for all MPs. And when on government business we were allowed to travel business class and clock up air miles for our own use. In these straitened times this would be regarded as a terrible abuse. But in truth the taxpayer wasn’t footing the bill, so what the hell. Nowadays the Daily Mail expects all MPs to behave like monks. It may be why Yvette Cooper dresses like a nun on holiday.

  I’ll deal with select committee trips a little later on. In the meantime it is worth having a look at the all-party groups. In those days they hadn’t multiplied in the way they have today. To be a member of an APG was breathtakingly simple. I once blundered into a committee room looking for my old mate Derek Conway. He was there with three others.

  ‘Hi Jerry, this is the AGM for the APG on Morocco. We are missing a secretary. Are you interested? No work and a few free trips? Interested?’ Of course. But I wasn’t quite sure precisely where Morocco was. Despite this minor handicap I became the secretary. A week later I received a lovely carpet from the King and six months later, as the great expert, I was invited to the state banquet in his honour. All very strange, particularly as he was very late and had all his food cooked for him on a portable stove. But it was fun. Until I realised that the reception at the Guildhall was not one of those where they fill you with champagne until you are ready to burst, but a queue to be clapped in by the Common Council. But, thirsty as I was, the City of London always makes up for it on the booze front.

  The king of APGs which involved overseas travel was Dr John Blackburn, a former policeman and all-round good guy. Unfortunately, he had a bit of a weakness. He could not resist chatting up (in a totally platonic way) any woman who crossed his path. If you entered the central lobby with a woman who could have won the Turner Prize for ugliness John would glide up in slow motion with hand outstretched. He would grasp the lady’s hand, make a great show of kissing it and then launch into his famous opening gambit. ‘My dear, how are your feet?’ This used to cause said woman much confusion until he offered an explanation. ‘I was so worried that you might have hurt them when you fell from heaven.’ For reasons beyond my comprehension, they all loved it. And this was followed by one-liner after one-liner. He didn’t just lay flattery on with a trowel; you could almost hear the cement mixer chugging along in the corner. His favourite trick was to put his arm round some old duck with a face that would have sunk a thousand ships simply to get away from it, and call them his daughter, niece, younger sister or whatever he could get away with without making anyone not involved with this treacly love bombing violently sick. And when it came to love bombing John had earned his wings and a chestful of medals that would make Colonel Gaddafi blush. But oozing faux love to the wives of an African dictator or pawing a member of a Middle Eastern royal family doesn’t always make for good diplomacy. On at least two occasions he was nearly bundled into a plane bound for home. But John’s little vignettes provided us with endless entertainment. He was fortunate he wasn’t stoned to death, missing a limb, or even worse.

  One of my early trips was to South Africa and was fascinating and a little scary. It was organised by John Carlisle, the Tory MP for Luton West, whom we dubbed the Member for Johannesburg West. The idea was to send out a few Tories who would be totally besotted with the wonderful concept of apartheid. Unfortunately, I had broken my index finger in a car accident so I insisted that my doctor strapped it up in such a way so that in every official photograph I look as if I am giving the finger. Which of course I was. Although on the plane over I had rather an embarrassing experience. I was seated next to a very pretty girl from Cape Town. She asked about my finger and offered her sympathy.

  ‘But how do you have a wank, then?’ she politely asked, causing my two parliamentary colleagues Michael Knowles and Richard Hickmet, who were sitting in the row behind, to take an interest.

  ‘Ahem, well, erm…’ I stammered.

  ‘Let me give you a hand then,’ she kindly offered. The front page of the News of the World flashed before me: ‘MP joins mile-high club’. I made my excuses and feigned sleep. I think.

  God, the Afrikaners were a ghastly bunch. Before each meal was a prayer. And then, when we were politely asked if we required something to drink, the splendid Michael Knowles would always save the day.

  ‘A large Scotch, please.’

  Satan had entered the room, thank heavens or whatever. At one time we met ultra-right leader Jaap Marais, who looked a bit like a budgerigar with a squashed beak. His views were utterly vile. And his secretaries gave the impression of being a horrible Mengele experiment in breeding Aeroflot hostesses with Belsen guards. A deeply unpleasant experience.

  One day I thought it might be a good idea to shake off our minders. Why not pop into Soweto? Why not slip into a church service with Desmond Tutu? So I looked him up in the telephone directory and gave him a ring.

  ‘Hi, Archbishop. I’m Jerry Hayes with a parliamentary delegation from Britain. Tomorrow is Sunday, any chance of us meeting up after your church service tomorrow for a chat?’ There was a sharp intake of breath then that famous Tutu chuckle.

  ‘Of course, but it is very dangerous.’

  Dangerous? But we were British MPs. What could they do to us?

  That line of thought was dangerously stupid, although I didn’t think so at the time. I had forgotten that Soweto was a serious trouble spot. Cars with white people were regularly attacked. The necklace, a tyre filled with burning petrol, was a favourite and barbaric means of execution.

  Tutu told me where we could find him. Now, this will shock you. Nobody wanted to take us. So we bribed a driver and lurched through the rubble-strewn streets of Soweto with not a signpost in sight. They had all been torn down. Eventually we reached the church. It was packed. We were the only white faces, like the white spots on a domino. The organ swelled with the great hymns of the C. of E. tradition. ‘All People that on Earth Do Dwell’ sticks in my mind. It was not sung in English but in Xhosa. And then we all started to dance. An enormous African conga line towards (oh dear) the collection plate. I had only the equivalent of a South African £50 note. Sod it. I wasn’t going to be lynched. In it popped.

  Afterwards I spoke to Tutu.

  ‘What message do you have for our Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher?’

  He smiled and in that beautiful, melodious voice he just said this: ‘Tell her to listen to the victims of apartheid not the perpetrators.’

  The man is a living saint.

  Of course we tried to visit Mandela. Quite impossible. Although we did manage to have a chat with his lawyer. But I remember, years later, being at a reception given for him as President in Westminster Hall. He was being led down the steps by our Speaker, Betty Boothroyd. I could see the look of wonder in her eyes. Here was she, a former mill town girl, now Speaker of the House of Commons, with the man she had fought so hard to free. And there she was arm in arm with this man who been imprisoned for twenty-seven years by an evil regime, urging peace and forgiveness. On that day we were all star-struck.

  I remember the day Mandela was freed with great clarity. Ken Livingstone, Charlie Kennedy and I were doing our LBC slot, with Simon Bates in the chair. We were filling time with banter before the moment when Mandela strode to freedom. When it happened I was at the microphone and described it something like this:

  And now the moment has come. This great man, imprisoned for more than twenty-seven years, now walks into the sunlight not as a bitter man but with the air of someone born to rule. He lo
oks almost presidential. This is remarkable and a moment in history we will treasure. Ken Livingstone has tears of emotion coursing down his cheeks.

  To which Ken replied in his South London nasal twang, ‘Nah, it’s my hay fever.’ Bless.

  Next on our travels we were off to see Chief Buthelezi, hereditary leader (not king, that was King Welcome) of the Zulus. Oxford-educated and highly intelligent, he lent us his plane to fly us to his fortress in Ulundi. I remember three things. He was charm personified. He gave me a pair of cufflinks. And our plane was guided down on a red dirt runway by one hundred bare-breasted Zulu women with red flags. You couldn’t make it up.

  Then we went into Bophuthatswana. And what a dodgy bunch they were. Ministers lived in the lap of luxury and travelled their impoverished land in shiny black Mercedes. This was a faux South African experiment in letting the blacks rule a homeland. In reality the government was just a puppet regime whose purpose was to supply black labourers to the south.

  One evening, ministers invited us to a lavish dinner. We were all awash with drink and it was now time for dreary speeches. The trouble was that our host was not only very drunk, he was also very cross-eyed. I think he was intending to call someone else to speak, so Richard Hickmet and I had to guess which eye (one was pointing in his direction, the other in mine) was to be the victim. I took the challenge. Actually, it wasn’t too bad a speech, but it wasn’t that good either. I’m afraid I got a little carried away, ending up heaping praise on these ghastly crooks for ‘good governance … belief in democracy … blah, blah, blah’. Awful, hypocritical crap. But I didn’t want to end up fed to the crocs. My pièce de résistance was ‘… and nobody could accuse you of being corrupt whisky ministers swanning round your land in bulletproof Mercedes.’