An Unexpected MP (5 page)

Since the Health and Medicine Bill and the ambulance dispute (which is in another chapter), Ken Clarke thought it would be a good idea to use my energy in a positive way. He asked me to travel the country and persuade GPs that their new contract was a good idea. This was a very tricky job. The British Medical Association is the most ruthless trade union in Britain and they fight low and dirty. Anything that does not provide their members with pots of gold and anything that involves a little bit more work and commitment will be portrayed as an attack on patients, particularly the weak and the vulnerable.

Actually, the Clarke proposals were perfectly sensible, but the BMA was causing trouble. In those days people really trusted doctors and when notices appeared in surgeries urging
patients to sign petitions, there was a groundswell of opinion against the proposed contract. This had to be negatived.

At the height of the debate, when tensions were high, I managed to get my todger caught in my flies. It was so painful that I went to see my GP. As I put the poor little thing in his hand, he smiled. ‘Is this a good time to discuss our new contract?’

‘Ha, bloody ha,’ I laughed through the tears.

When I look back, I really didn’t vote against the government a great deal. I followed the advice of Harold Macmillan to rebel only on one issue at a time. I suspect what gave me the reputation of being more of a nuisance than I actually was is that when I appeared in the media and was asked a direct question I more often than not gave a straight answer, which was sometimes off-message. In those days the right regarded this as bordering on the treasonous. But if the message is rubbish, what’s the point of being an MP?

I
t is fashionable for commentators to argue for politicians to ‘speak human’. This really is the most dreadful nonsense. What the electorate want is for politicians to
be
human. They are fed up with evasive answers from ministers and backbenchers with all the warmth of a speaking clock. It is so obviously a ‘line to take’. But what does depress me is that too many politicians don’t care for people too much. Their votes, yes. But as people? No way. These types are sadly a growing minority. I remember working a room with a new Member who is now a perfectly adequate minister. He pulled me aside and groaned, ‘But aren’t they all so awful?’ I tried to explain to him that some of them were, but most were just decent people who have never met an MP in their lives before. Be polite, be kind and don’t look over their shoulder to find someone to speak to who will be more important for your ghastly career. The likes of him just don’t understand that most people are rarely, if ever, likely to meet an MP more than once. If it is a pleasant experience, they will tell all their friends. If it is all about more me, me, mes than Pavarotti, they will tell even more friends what an absolute shit you are.

I know this may sound completely irrational as someone
who was elected for fourteen years, but I really despise tribal politics. Of course, come an election, I can get as low-down and dirty as anyone. But I hate looking at issues under the party political microscope. That is why, apart from general elections, Harlow for me was a politics-free zone. The most important job of an MP is not to be a slave to the whims of your postbag, but to do your best to protect and help your constituents, try to solve their problems and just be there for them in times of need.

It is really not all that difficult if you have a bit of common sense, a semblance of education and a strong desire to do what you think is right, even if the party hierarchy disagree. And the headed notepaper helps a lot, too. So the biggest high you can ever get out of politics is sorting out problems which may seem the end of the world to so many but which you personally can actually resolve. That is the job I really loved.

Selection as a candidate was a weird process. As I’ve told you, I wasn’t even on the candidates list, but luckily my opponents were even more eccentric than I was. Eventually I got the nomination and many assumed that as we couldn’t possibly win I should just do the respectable minimum and use Harlow as a launching pad for a safe seat. Wrong. I’d got there and as hopeless as it seemed I was going to give it a go.

In those days Harlow Council was very, very left-wing. When I was elected there wasn’t a single Tory on the council. So who was going to sort the election out? Well, I had a lovely old lady from Liverpool called Rose Dickson who was my chairman. And that was about it. So I asked a bright young lad of nineteen called Guy Mitchell to be my election agent (I think I paid him £100) and another youngster called Stephen
Rigden (whom I didn’t pay a penny) to be my gofer. They both were brilliant, hardworking and loyal. I owe them an awful lot.

My first priority was to canvass the council estates. The old school thought I was wasting my time. But Thatcher had changed the landscape. Firstly by allowing people to take pride in their council homes (Georgian front doors) and secondly by letting them buy them at massive discounts. So, rather than the abuse that everyone had expected on the doorstep, it was, ‘Well, I’ve bought my home so I suppose I must be a Tory.’ Too bloody right, matey. Oh, and the Falklands War helped a bit too. I’d love to be part of the delusion that so many MPs have first time round: ‘It was my genius wot won it.’ No, old son, you got in on the coat tails of your leader, and ‘events’.

I won’t bore you with the nuts and bolts of the 1983 election, but one story comes to mind. I was in a particularly grand village (yes, we had them) where every Conservative Party branch meeting started with the list of people ‘we would consider for membership’. What a joke. They were actually sifting through candidates! For me this was too grim for words, so I found a list of ‘unacceptables’ and banged on their doors. My favourite was a house with a brass plate engraved ‘Mr and Mrs Dave the Deal’. Another joy was going to a mock Palladian mansion with the most amazingly expensive furniture and paintings. Here in the great hall was an enormously obese haulier throwing darts at a board adjacent to a Gainsborough. These guys were loaded, and donated, but the local party was just too snooty to talk to them.

Once, I popped my card through the door of a bed and breakfast. The poor chap had had a little spot of bother with the police over some minor matter regarding guns. He was
so delighted to hear from me that he offered to drive voters to the poll on election night. What was so amazing was that he rolled up with chauffeurs in full livery driving Rollers. Can you imagine driving up to a Tory voter on a council estate with a Rolls-Royce and a liveried driver saying, ‘This is Mr Hayes’s lift to take you to the polling station’?

However, there was one minor hiccup. A couple of Labour pensioners decided to take advantage and let slip to the driver that they were actually going to vote for my opponent. I asked him how he dealt with it. ‘Oh, I dropped them in the middle of nowhere and told them to fuck off.’ Not my proudest moment. But the damage was done. I dreaded the headlines. Mercifully, they never came.

A few months before the election, I appeared in court for a young couple who were being evicted from their flat because of drunken parties and an infestation of rats. In evidence, it appeared that they were a rather pleasant pair having a bit of fun. I asked the girl about the rat infestation. She smiled sweetly and told the court that they indeed had a pet rat. I enquired if she had a photograph of it. At that she did better and produced the rat from her pocket. I thought that the old judge was going to have a fit. Far from it, by chance he was a rat fancier, picked the horrible little thing up and tickled his tummy. It transpired that the landlords were just trying to get the property back. So I gave the landlord and his wife absolute hell in the witness box and won the case.

During the election I banged on the door of rather an imposing property. To my horror it was opened by the landlord and his wife. This was going to be a nightmare. So I apologised for disturbing them and said I wouldn’t dream of asking them
to vote for me after giving them such a rough time in court. To my amazement I was offered an outstretched hand, a smile and not just an offer of support but a donation too. Their logic was that, if I could move heaven and hell against them, what could I do
for
them?

Elections are a funny old business.

Although I was delighted to win in 1983, I felt sorry for the guy I beat, the veteran left-winger Stan Newens. I made a particular point of devoting a large part of my acceptance speech to paying tribute to him, as he was an excellent constituency MP and a thoroughly decent man. Politics can be a rough game and no matter how good you are you can’t beat a big swing.

At least I didn’t make the mistake of my old pupil master, Ernle Money, who totally unexpectedly beat Sir Dingle Foot in Ipswich in 1970. Ernle didn’t even bother to roll up for the count; he just went to the White Swan and got very, very drunk. When his agent realised that Ernle was going to win and have to make a speech he scoured the pubs and eventually found him in a heap. The poor chap couldn’t even walk, let alone talk. So the agent went back and made the speech for him, along the lines that Mr Money held Sir Dingle in such high esteem he felt it quite inappropriate to say a few words. Deft footwork.

Surgeries (they are now called advice bureaux) were very rewarding and sometimes a little peculiar. My first constituent was a 93-year-old Chinese man who came to pay his respects, bless him. He didn’t have a word of intelligible English and after many smiles and much mutual bowing I led him to the lift, which broke down and we had to call the fire brigade.
Although I think that my wife Alison, who was taking the notes, broke down far worse than the lift as she had to leave the room in fits of giggles.

Then there was a flasher who actually arrived in a dirty mac and wondered if the new Public Order Act would curtail his right to publicly expose himself. I explained to him that it didn’t but that it was against the law anyway. He went away muttering how dreadfully unfair it was.

And then there was Mr O’Brien. He hadn’t paid any rates or rent for years, as he had named his council house The Freehold. He used to complain that he had been disenfranchised as the council refused to put him on the electoral roll. I asked him if he had ever applied. ‘Certainly not. It is a breach of my privacy.’ Mr O’Brien was an absolute pain to all incumbents. But one day he saved my bacon. Socialist Workers were demonstrating outside my surgery one day and there was a TV crew in attendance. One of the smelly-socks threw an egg at me just as Mr O’Brien was passing by. I grabbed him and the egg exploded onto his jacket. To which I shouted at the camera, ‘Look what these wicked people have done to a poor pensioner.’ Then I led him away, gave him a tenner for the dry cleaners and suggested he sod off.

Then there was an intriguing old fellow, a very tall, elderly Irishman built like an ox, who had a grievance that Joe Jennings the bookmakers had failed to pay out a winning over twenty years ago. It was complete nonsense as the locals told me that he had collected the cash, spent it all on booze and passed out. But once a month he would appear. On one occasion he rolled up at a public meeting flourishing a piece of paper. ‘I have here a letter from Her Majesty the Queen. She
has written that Jerry Hayes is both a liar and a wanker.’ I had a sneaking suspicion that this may have been a forgery.

The trouble was that he stayed around afterwards and I was rather worried that he was going to thump me. Eventually it was just me and this enormous bear of a man. And he was coming for me. Mercifully, I remembered that he had been a proud soldier during the war. ‘Seamus!’ I shouted in my best sergeant-major voice. ‘Atten-
shun
!’ And all that training from all those years ago clicked in. He stood ramrod straight as I slipped out of the back door.

Almost as scary was when a troubled young man bit the ear off a constituent in the waiting room. I thought this was right out of order so I chased after him and had a bit of a scuffle, both of us rolling around on the market square. I soon realised that I was in trouble, as he was a very big lad. Luckily, someone came to my rescue and the police arrived.

Years later I heard that he had been imprisoned for attempted murder. Then I had a phone call from the chief constable to say that the fellow had confessed to a probation officer that he had plans to kill me. I immediately wrote to Angela Rumbold, the Prisons Minister. A month later I received a reply. It was not very cheering. That a prison shrink had been to see him. That the fellow had decided not to kill me after all. And that he had been released two weeks earlier. Thanks a bunch, Angela.

But the majority of the people I saw had serious problems. Three stick in my mind. One, a delightful foster parent who had looked after a young Nigerian girl since she was a toddler. When the child turned fifteen her mother flew over, kidnapped her and took her back to Nigeria. I had an adjournment
debate, meetings with the Foreign Secretary, and eventually I had a meeting with the Nigerian High Commissioner. And what a disaster that was. All the secretaries were dressed in very expensive frocks and the High Commissioner was dripping in gold and a well-tailored Armani suit. Yet his office in those days was ramshackle. All he did was give me a lecture on British colonialism, then said there was a cultural problem and that he could do nothing. The complacent little shit.

Years later I received a lovely letter from the foster mother, thanking me for all my help. Ronke had reached the age of majority and returned home.

But the most moving story of all, which makes me well up just writing this, was a lovely couple who brought their seriously ill daughter to see me, a tiny frail child. She had been pronounced fit to fly by their GP and covered by insurance to have one last holiday with her mum, dad and brother. Sadly, the Greeks gave her the wrong drugs and she needed to be rushed home to a British hospital. The insurance company, a well-known and well-respected one, went back on their policy and refused to fly her back by air ambulance. They would only provide a seat on a charter flight for her and her father. The rest of the family was made to stay in Greece until the holiday ended. Can you imagine the flight, with the father with his dying child, administering morphine suppositories to ease her terrible pain? I am happy to say that I savaged the reputation of that ghastly company on the floor of the House and in the media. The family received compensation but a few weeks later their beloved Sally Ann died. This wonderful family queued up for three hours just to thank me. And yet what had I done? Nothing of substance. When they gave me the news I am not
ashamed to say that I totally broke down. There was much crying and hugs all round.

The other incident that moved me, in a rather different way, was when the family of a young warrant officer based in Hong Kong came to see me. He was just about to be awarded the British Empire Medal by the Governor, my old mate Chris Patten. They were the only family he had and they wanted to see their son’s moment of pride. They were the sort of people you would describe as the salt of the earth. Kind, decent, had worked hard all of their lives, but relied totally on their state pensions. They had as much chance of getting to Hong Kong as flying to the moon. So I wrote to the Secretary of State for Defence. No joy. And to Chris Patten. Nothing. Nobody would help. And then I remembered that the Swire family were a great benefactor to Old Harlow as their old family home had been converted into St Nicholas School. They own Cathay Pacific and are a thoroughly decent bunch. So I wrote to John Swire and explained the problem. Within a couple of days I received a wonderful letter from him. He was a major in the last war. Warrant officers were the backbone of the British Army. The MOD had behaved like tossers. So he flew this lovely old couple out first class and put them up in his finest hotel. What a gentleman.