Dare to Be a Daniel (11 page)

Growing Up

WHEN I WAS
born in 1925, my father was, as I said, the Liberal Member of Parliament for Leith. Two years later he left the Liberals, resigned his seat and joined the Labour Party. In 1928 he was asked to stand for Aberdeen and was successfully elected there in a by-election.

In that year, when I was three and a half, I visited the home of a Labour MP, Sir Oswald Mosley, who had joined Labour from the Conservatives. I must have been invited to a children’s party, although I don’t remember that; Mother recalled that we regularly played with Cynthia and Oswald Mosley’s children, so presumably that was why we were there. I remember there were enamelled fire ‘dogs’ – one in the shape of a soldier and one a sailor – and at the end I was asked to say thank you and said, ‘Boys and girls and sailors, thank you for a nice tea’: my first speech. Mother had no time for ‘Tom’ Mosley, as he was known, or the British Union of Fascists, which he later formed.

In June 1930, at the age of five (by which time my father was
in
the Cabinet as Secretary of State for India), I went to 10 Downing Street to watch the Trooping of the Colour from the balcony, and Ramsay MacDonald gave me a chocolate biscuit. My mother told me that I said afterwards, ‘I expected to meet the Prime Minister, but I didn’t expect a chocolate biscuit.’

Ramsay MacDonald had been left a widower with five young children, and by the time he was Prime Minister for the second time, his daughter Ishbel acted for him as his host at Number 10. In her hand-written letter of invitation to my mother to take us to see the Trooping of the Colour, she added:

Of course if it is against your principles to make them picture soldiers as fine fellows belonging to a good institution I shall quite understand. I should like to have an anti military lecture for the children after the show, but I think I had better leave that to the parents.

Father had devoted his period at the India Office to an attempt to bring about Indian self-government, for which he was sharply criticised by Churchill. It was at Father’s initiative that a Round Table conference was arranged in London in late 1931 to discuss the future of India. In the election in October that year, Labour was heavily defeated and my father lost his seat. Nevertheless he took me to meet Mahatma Gandhi with my older brother Michael, and I remember the occasion vividly because Gandhi, who was sitting on the floor on a carpet, invited us to sit down next to him. Though I don’t remember what he said, I was much struck by the power of the man who both defeated the British empire and reconciled the British to their defeat – as Archbishop Desmond Tutu later attempted with his policy of Truth and Reconciliation.

When Father lost his North Aberdeen seat, he sent Michael a very sweet telegram from Scotland, saying:

+ +
MUCH MORE TIME FOR GAMES NOW = DADDY
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The 1935 election was the first which I remember and in which I was involved. I thought of myself as a socialist at an early age, although I did not really understand what ‘socialism’ meant. I distributed a little book called
Fifty Reasons Why You Should Vote Labour
. It cost one penny and on each page was a different policy, such as:

No. 1 The Peace Act: Once it was passed no Government without violating the law of the land could resort to war as an instrument of national policy.

No. 15 National Transport: The duty of the National Transport Board would be to bring all forms of transport together to give the public good service and the employees a fair deal.

No. 26 Land Ownership: A primary step towards the national planning of agriculture is to bring all agricultural land under public ownership.

No. 41 Child Welfare: Labour’s Policy is to provide more and better infant welfare centres and to develop, on a large scale, open-air nursery schools.

FIFTY REASONS WHY YOU SHOULD VOTE LABOUR

Prices:

from

T
HE
L
ABOUR
P
UBLICATIONS
D
EPT
.

Transport House,

Smith Square, London, S.W.1

October 1935

3.—DISARMAMENT

Labour stands for drastic disarmament by rapid stages through international agreement.

A Labour Government would maintain such defence forces as are necessary and consistent with our membership of the League.

But the best defence is not huge competitive armaments, but the organisation of collective security and the agreed reduction of national armaments everywhere.

Labour has not “abandoned hope.” It would make a fresh effort, and, in particular, would propose to other nations the complete abolition of all national air forces, the effective international control of civil aviation and the creation of an international air force.

I also distributed a leaflet issued by the Mineworkers Federation (fore-runner of the NUM) describing the deaths and injuries in the pits in the nine years following the general strike when the coal owners were dominant and were supported by the National Government. Having kept it in my archives I had it copied and reissued it, fifty years later during the miners’ strike in 1984–5, as a warning of what was at stake.

THE PRICE OF COAL

7,839 KILLED

1,200,042 INJURED

That is the price of Coal for the years 1927–34. The dead include 231 boys under 16, 320 lads between 16 and 18, and 294 lads between 18 and 20. The killed and injured include 199,612 lads and boys under 20.

THE MINERS’ CLAIM

THE MINERS DEMAND A LIVING WAGE

My first visit to the House of Commons was on 22 February 1937 to see Father take his seat for Gorton, which he had won in a by-election that month. He introduced me to Lloyd George, and to Clement Attlee, who had become the new Labour leader.

Going back to 1932, after the General Election my parents decided to visit Marburg in Germany for two months, where Father wished to learn German and Mother continued to study Hebrew. My mother described how suspicious the German authorities were of her interest in Judaism. It was on the eve of Hitler coming to power, and my parents came back with vivid accounts of the conduct of the Hitler Youth and the danger that was posed to democracy; they brought back with them a vinyl record of the Nazi anthem, the ‘Horst Wessel’ song, which I think I still have somewhere.

I remember listening to one of Hitler’s ranting speeches from Nuremberg being broadcast on the radio, and by the end of the 1930s it was clear that war was inevitable – an idea that had already formed in my mind when I read
Mein Kampf
, a book I still have on my shelves next to the autobiography of Mussolini (whose ideas are now back in fashion with the neo-conservatives who have reappeared in the West). I also have in my possession a booklet issued by the Home Office in 1938 entitled ‘The Protection of your house against air-raids’, which advised: ‘… if the head of the house will consider himself as “captain of the ship” and put these air raid precautions into effect the principal object of this book will have been achieved’. From that it was clear that war was considered a serious possibility. When, aged fourteen and a half, I sat at Stansgate and listened to Neville Chamberlain’s announcement that we were at war with Germany, it was with a great deal of foreboding, but a sense of the inevitable.

By 1939 I was at Westminster School, but my first school (in 1931) was a mixed infants called Graham Street School, which was attached to the Frances Holland School for Girls. My main recollection of it is looking with admiration at the big girls, aged seven to eleven, who dominated the place and made us infants feel rather inadequate. I cannot recall many of the teachers, but the head teacher was Miss Morison, who ran the school very efficiently and always took an interest in me, which I appreciated. The fees were thirteen guineas a term; milk and biscuits were three shillings, dancing two and a half guineas, and extra Latin and arithmetic coaching were five shillings an hour.

The other teacher who made an impact on me was Miss Babcock, who taught religious education, and with whom I had a clash at the first class (when I was five). Miss Babcock said in
Bible
Studies that ‘God was angry’, and I jumped up and said, ‘God is love’. As a result of this, I was sent to an empty classroom during all her lessons to read some child’s book about the Bible. Miss Babcock explained to my mother, ‘The trouble with Anthony is that when I begin, he begins!’ I still remember the misery of sitting in that room on my own.

I sympathise with Miss Babcock now, but at the time she was a fearsome woman with a bun, who frightened me. Unfortunately, she did not deal with the main problem – that I was too talkative.

The only prize I ever won at school was the Toplady Prize for Divinity at Westminster and I still have the book – a Bible – with the inscription inside it. I wasn’t very clever at school and my parents did not take much interest in my progress.

My school reports from the Graham Street School started off quite well: ‘Writing: Good and careful’; ‘French: Très bien’; ‘History: Very good’; ‘Conduct: Very good’. But by 1932 a note of disapproval had crept in: ‘Writing: This needs great care’; ‘Conduct: Generally very good but is apt to be too noisy and excited.’ At the end of 1932 my conduct was ‘Generally very good but is still lacking self-control’. By the time I left in the summer of 1933, all subjects were reasonably good.

An event I remember clearly at infant school was a nativity play, in which I was allocated a very small role as a shepherd whose job it was to stand quietly at the back. But I told my parents I had a much larger role, and they came to watch the play, though they did not even see me. I got into trouble for pinching the bottom of a shepherdess next to me, whose name I now forget.

I was taken to, and brought home from, school each day by car, driven by Father’s secretary Miss Triggs, who represented
Authority
. On one occasion she forgot to collect me, and I recall having lunch with the big girls and crying when Miss Triggs turned up to collect me with a peremptory apology.

It was an Anglican school and we used to go out for walks nearby in the Royal Hospital in Chelsea and look at the Chelsea Pensioners in their red coats and tricorne hats; they looked so very old with a mass of medals on their chests, which they would have earned during the First World War and maybe even the Boer War. Every year the Chelsea Flower Show was held there (as now), and we used to see the preparations, although I never actually went to the Flower Show myself.

From there I was moved to a preparatory school known as Gladstone’s, in Cliveden Place, on the other side of Sloane Square, at which we had to wear green blazers and green caps and were marched out for our daily exercise. Mr Gladstone, whom we were told was a relative of the Grand Old Man, looked the part.

Our rival school was Gibbs, whose pupils wore red blazers and caps, and although I do not recall any competitive sporting activity, we saw them as rivals and occasionally passed these red-coated children and congratulated ourselves on being at Gladstone’s. There was also the McPherson gymnasium near the school, where I took part in boxing matches. I fought one boy, Neville Sandelson, who later became a Labour MP and then joined the SDP.

Gladstone’s used to go every week to the Liverpool Victoria Sports Ground at Acton, where we played cricket and football, and it was there that I first saw a helicopter – I think it was actually an autogyro with a circulating blade at the top. On one occasion there was a fathers’ cricket match, which my dad attended, and, in a very mischievous way, when he was sent in to bat, he
asked
my teacher Mr Leman which end of the bat he should hold. This caused me great embarrassment, much amusement among the teachers and amazement among my fellow pupils.

Sexual education was virtually non-existent and we formed a Sex Society to discuss these matters. When I asked Mother questions she would reply, ‘Darling, it is so beautiful I can’t tell you about it.’ If I asked Father, he would say, ‘Ask your mother!’

When Mr Gladstone’s time was coming to an end, the school was renamed Eaton House and moved a few yards along from Sloane Square. One day we were told that the American Ambassador, a Mr Kennedy, had in mind sending his son to the school. This child must have been JFK’s younger brother, although in the event he did not come to the school.