David Waddington Memoirs (11 page)

It was a very cold day and we repaired to the Punch Bowl at Hurst Green for lunch with the chairman of the Association, James Rawson, sitting on Margaret Thatcher’s left. To my surprise he opened the conversation by suggesting it was about time we went for proportional representation. I thought the Leader of the Opposition would choke on her shrimp cocktail. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘I suppose that is an excellent idea – if (and then a pause and a sniff) you don’t want the Conservative Party to ever win another election.’ James looked glumly at his plate and except for purposes of consumption did not open his mouth again. We then set off for Longridge and I was so carried away by the occasion that my hand found its way on to my leader’s knee. Anyone who has found himself in that predicament knows that it is very much easier to get into that sort of mess than it is to get out of it. A quick withdrawal only serves to draw attention to the earlier act of folly, and a stealthy withdrawal only prolongs the time in which one’s misdemeanour may be discovered. But all turned out all right. The Leader of the Opposition did not appear to know what was troubling me, and on our arrival at the Conservative Club she was ready with another spirited oration with which to complete her tour.

P
olling Day came and I was back in the House with a
majority
of 12,500 over Labour. When the result was announced I moved the customary vote of thanks to the returning officer, pointing out that the same swing throughout Lancashire in a general election would mean Labour seat after Labour seat falling to the Tories and our becoming the government. I got a cool
reception
which the President of my Association said was due to ‘our not liking politics in Clitheroe’.

Taking my seat a second time was a bit of an anti-climax, and when on the Thursday I went to the weekly meeting of the 1922 Committee to be welcomed back little seemed to have changed, with Edward du Cann still chairman. It was said of Edward that when a young member asked him the time he put an affectionate arm round his shoulder and said: ‘What time would you like it to be, dear boy?’ And his somewhat oleaginous manner was not to everyone’s taste; but over the years he worked hard for the Party and had for a time been Party Chairman.

The next few weeks only served to remind me how boring could be the life of a backbencher, but I did not have to endure it for long; for on 28 March came the ‘no confidence’ vote which brought about the fall of the Labour government.

That night the catering staff in the House of Commons were on strike and the dining room and tea room were closed. In those days
there was an open-fronted coffee bar on Bridge Street and there, on the evening of 28 March, MPs and other vagrants stood eating bacon sandwiches and sipping hot drinks from chipped mugs while waiting for the ten o’clock division. When it came and the
government
lost, Jim Callaghan rose to say that he would recommend to the Queen that Parliament be dissolved; and shortly thereafter I was back home preparing for yet another election.

It was an election which set me something of a problem. So hard had we worked during the by-election only a few weeks before that we had hardly left a door un-knocked. I decided, therefore, to ignore the towns and villages and visit the isolated farms. I had a splendid reception from people who assured me that a visit from a politician was like a visit from outer space. In the event I was back with a majority of 11,579, the Conservatives had a majority of forty-four seats, and Britain had her first female Prime Minister.

On the day the new Parliament met I was sitting in the dining room when I was told that the Chief Whip wanted to see me. I went along to Michael Jopling’s room and he asked me if I would like to be a whip;
not
, he stressed, a junior whip but a Lord Commissioner of the Treasury with the chance of promotion into a department sometime in the future. I fell for the story and joined the Office.

The next night I was again in the House of Commons dining room when the Prime Minister, who was at the next table, called over to me: ‘What’s that new member doing in the dining room without his jacket on? Go and have a word with him.’ And I got up and gave Tony Marlow appropriate advice. The new Prime Minister also made it very plain that she did not like ministers on the front bench putting their feet up on the Table, even though it was an old custom of the House. ‘You would not treat the furniture in your own home like that.’ But tradition proved a lot stronger than her objections and this was one battle the PM lost.

The Whips Office was then, I think, of a very high standard. We
had a lot of fun but took our responsibilities very seriously. ‘Parties,’ said Enoch Powell ‘need whips as civilisation needs sewerage.’ And we carried out our sometimes unpopular duties with the relish of well-paid sanitary inspectors. In the top office next to that of the Chief Whip sat Michael’s deputy, John Stradling Thomas, Spencer Le Marchant, Tony Berry, Carol Mather, John MacGregor, James Douglas-Hamilton, Peter Morrison (the pairing whip) and myself. Downstairs in another office were the junior whips, Tony Newton, Bob Boscawen and Peter Brooke.

Spencer, with the grand title of Comptroller of Her Majesty’s Household, gave us racing tips, sometimes putting money on horses for us and only confessing what he had done when he handed over the winnings. Tony Berry was Vice-Chamberlain of Her Majesty’s Household and as such had on Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays to send to the Queen a telegram of not less than 300 and no more than 750 words telling her of the goings-on in the House. Another of his duties was to stay behind at Buckingham Palace during the State Opening of Parliament as a hostage for the Queen’s safe return.

James Douglas-Hamilton (then Lord James Douglas-Hamilton and now in the House of Lords as Lord Selkirk of Douglas) was a worrier. One Monday morning he reported that a friend of his who was a candidate for a Scottish seat had got himself into terrible trouble with his prospective constituents. Excessive zeal had led him to attend funerals to which he had not been invited.

James was a man of impeccable manners and when, later, he was translated to the Scottish Office those same good manners got him in to trouble. The driver of his official car was a rather elderly lady and the other drivers in the department complained that whenever his car stopped on arriving at its destination James, instead of waiting for the driver to open the door for him, jumped out and opened the door for the driver. They thought this was not
in accordance with precedent and should be discouraged. Back in the Whips Office and when not writing a book about his uncle, a spitfire pilot, James drove himself and us insane with his tales of woe about the Scottish Conservatives backbench committee. Albert McQuarrie MP complained that the election for the officers of this committee of ten members had not been conducted
properly
. He knew this because before the election he had canvassed all the other nine members and each one had promised him their vote for chairman. How, therefore, could he not have been elected? The ballot papers were recounted with new scrutineers. There was only one vote for McQuarrie – presumably his own.

Bob Boscawen had during the War suffered terrible injuries which he bore with great fortitude, and he was a great companion. He and Carol Mather who, like Bob, had won an MC in France in 1944 and had been on Monty’s staff, were the old soldiers who did their best to keep the rest of the office and junior MPs in order and properly dressed. On one occasion Carol reprimanded Tristan Garel-Jones for wearing a particularly bilious long, green Loden overcoat. ‘The last time I saw anyone wearing a coat like that,’ he said, ‘I shot him.’

Michael Jopling, the Chief, took himself very seriously, and with good reason. A new government formed from a party which has been out of office for some years has a lot of tricks to learn, and a lot of things can go wrong when it comes to the management of business in the House. New ministers did not always turn up in the chamber at the right time and when they did turn up did not realise that what they said was not of the slightest importance. What was important was that they should keep talking until close to but not a second later than ten o’clock. Whips in their turn had to be ready to move the closure when the minister did sit down to prevent the business being talked out, or a member of the Opposition getting the last word. One awful night in the summer of 1980 a minister
was not in the chamber when his business was reached. Spencer Le Marchant, the whip on duty, jumped up and down at the dispatch box bawling ‘I beg to move’ while the Opposition yelled ‘Resign’ and Michael Foot asked the Speaker to adjourn the House. Eventually Jim Prior, who had been in the corridor behind the Speaker’s Chair, rushed into the chamber and began to make a speech in place of his missing junior minister. Unfortunately, he picked the wrong speech on the wrong subject and uproar continued unabated.

There was another occasion when things went very wrong. I reported to the Chief that there was much muttering in the Smoking Room about some business on the Order Paper. There were rumours of a rebellion and the possibility of a government defeat. ‘Don’t worry,’ said Michael, ‘Get all those people into the chamber to hear the minister winding up’; and at half past nine I flushed the mutterers out of the Smoking Room and pushed them into the chamber. They listened to the minister’s
winding-up
speech and then, to a man, marched into the lobby and voted against the government. The next morning there was an emergency meeting in the Whips Office. A new edict was issued: ‘Do all you can to keep our backbenchers out of the chamber. When a minister is replying to a debate encourage no one to listen.’ Perhaps the strict enforcement of this command accounts for the many years of Conservative government which followed.

During the 1979–80 session I was the whip attached to the Department of the Environment and as such was responsible for the Housing Bill of that year. Monica Ferman wrote of the committee stage of the Bill in the
New Statesman
of 21 November 1980:

One day the Chief said that as a great privilege the whips had been invited to go along to No. 10 for tea – a golden opportunity for us as business managers to tell the Prime Minister how we felt things were going on the political front. We trooped in to the drawing room and for a while there was desultory conversation. Suddenly, Tony Newton (who after a very distinguished career went to the Lords as Lord Newton of Braintree and, sadly, died in March 2012) had a rush of blood to the head. ‘Prime Minister,’ he said, ‘my wife is a school teacher and you have no idea what is happening in our schools these days. My wife says that in the mid-morning break the pupils are copulating in the bushes.’ You could have heard a pin drop. It is the only time I can remember the PM being rendered speechless. Afterwards we made poor Tony’s life a misery, constantly questioning what had made him commit this act of political suicide and assure a dramatic end to his career when it had barely begun. In fact of course, Tony went on to great things and we will never know whether the Prime Minister misheard what he said or was greatly impressed by his frank exposition of a matter of great social significance.

Spencer Le Marchant and I were early risers, always in the office by about 8.30 a.m. He used to spend his time ringing the
stock-broking
firm in which he was a partner. I used to see my secretary and get on with the constituency correspondence. One morning I rang my secretary and she said she was very busy and could not possibly come to do my work. Spencer overheard and passed me a note – ‘sack her’ it said. ‘Can’t,’ I scribbled back, ‘who am I going to get to replace her?’ ‘Keep her on the line’ whispered Spencer and started dialling furiously. ‘Got one!’ he cried. ‘Well, Mrs -----,’ I said, ‘I think the time has come for us to part.’ Half an hour later, thanks to Spencer, a secretary with impeccable credentials stood at my desk and many of my problems were solved.

In September 1980 I went on a Commonwealth Parliamentary Association (CPA) visit to Malawi – my travelling companions being David Ennals, Bill Whitlock, John Wilkinson and James Kilfedder. David Ennals was well-meaning but sometimes
something
of an embarrassment. President Banda was much given to dancing with the ladies of the country at great rallies staged so that they could demonstrate their love for him. Once, in the middle of the bush we came up behind a lorry in the back of which were forty or so women. We were told that they were on their way back from National Day where they had been dancing for the President. ‘Signal to the lorry driver to stop,’ said Ennals, ‘I want to dance with them.’ And in the middle of nowhere forty or so exhausted women were asked to disembark so that D. Ennals MP could caper and cavort around them, doing what he imagined was a Banda-like leap, skip, hop and glide, with fly-whisk raised to heaven.

The Malawian MP who was looking after us said that in his view mice were far more tasty than sausage when they were fried with their fur burnt off. Custom had it, he said, that you start with the tail and finish with the head. Perhaps he was pulling our legs. In Blantyre a poster in a school classroom explained the nutritional
value of and best way to cook caterpillars and ants. At one village David Ennals asked the headman if he had to go far to get his water. He replied: ‘No, I’ve got eight wives’; and he looked very well on it. So, in fairness, did the wives.

Later in the trip we visited a hospital out in the wilds and a woman needed a blood transfusion. John Wilkinson very
courageously
offered to provide blood but, much to our amusement, half an hour after doing so he fainted.

I decided that it would be a great pity not to visit Rhodesia in the dying moments of UDI. There were no direct flights from Malawi because of sanctions, so I flew via Johannesburg. As the plane approached Salisbury Airport the cabin staff insisted on the blinds being drawn because, they said, of the risk of a missile attack, and when we entered Meikles Hotel other guests were
leaving
their rifles with the hall porter.

By the end of 1980 I was the whip for the Department of Trade and Industry, Keith Joseph being Secretary of State, and each
morning
had to attend the minister’s meeting. Keith’s right-hand man was Viscount Trenchard who, I imagine, was recruited to the government because of his expertise in the City, but who had the quaintest ideas as to how to perform as a minister. Keith himself had some odd habits. On taking the chair at a morning meeting he would cry ‘Agenda!’ which was the cue for everyone to shout out what he wanted to have discussed that morning. Every morning Tom Trenchard shouted out ‘Private sector!’ and every morning Keith responded in a pained voice, ‘Not the private sector again.’ Michael Marshall, the junior minister, had a room with a leaky roof and on entering one had to avoid tripping over one of the many buckets on the floor.