Rowing Against the Tide - A career in sport and politics (22 page)

Whilst no-one could take pleasure from the obvious pain and hardship to many hundreds of people, there were incidences causing amusement.  At junction 24 the centre of the roundabout was covered in dense undergrowth, and the police had noted a young lad regularly crossing the carriageway and disappearing into the cover. After a couple of weeks their curiosity got the better of them, and they found the lad had been growing cannabis under cover of the trees! The pickets who had managed to get through to the power station, foolishly picketed the front entrance not realising that the coal came by rail to the rear of the power station.

The Poll Tax was the final nail in any political hopes of survival that I might have had. It wasn’t the concept that was wrong, for it was reasonable to ask that everyone who relied on, or used local services, should at least pay something towards those services. No Party at the time believed the old rating system could be sustained, and it militated against home owners improving their properties, for fear of being up-rated. I represented families in a pair of semi-detached homes, one of which had been up-rated in the mid seventies, and the adjacent home which made their improvements after that re-evaluation. These two identical homes found themselves paying very different rates. To compound the injustice, the higher rated home was occupied by a single old lady, whilst the lower rated home was occupied by a family of four.

Sadly I can only assume that the designers of the Poll Tax, - woops,sorry, the Community Charge - had never had any practical experience of Local Government, and were naïve to assume that the majority of Local Authorities, which were Labour controlled at that time, would not use every device to wreck the scheme. I had 22,000 Council properties in my constituency, and they had been accustomed to paying their rent along with their water rates, general rates, and in some cases their heating costs, on a fortnightly basis. For each member of a household to be faced with a booklet with ten vouchers equivalent to ten monthly payments, or two vouchers if they were going to pay in two half year instalments, or just one if they were to pay in one lump sum, was never going to work. It also meant that the other costs would require a separate method of collection from the head of the household.

A small delegation of members with years of experience of local government finance, met with the Minister on the basis that we approved the principle, but were certain that the planned method of implementation was bound to fail. There was a rule that if an individual had not used the “monthly” vouchers after the first three months of the year, they would have to pay in two six monthly instalments. Given that some authorities delayed sending out the books of vouchers, the subsequent queues of “Can’t pay, won’t pay” outside the magistrates courts was the inevitable consequence of not having thought through the practicalities of the collection of the tax. Added to the administrative problems, the attitude of those Authorities who had perhaps three years to go before they faced re-election, could boost the individual charge in that first year, giving them a war chest to spend on favoured topics and to fight the next election, was ignored. In Nottinghamshire’s case the individual charge was boosted by over £100 per person, raising revenue they did not need, and in so doing brought odium solely down on our government who took the full blame for the tax that was more than double the original estimation.

That debacle led to the challenge to Mrs Thatcher’s leadership. There had been a stalking horse the year before, but the Poll Tax and the European issue brought the situation to a head, and for me it became the worst two weeks of my Parliamentary career. My head told me that Mrs T should have retired with all honour after ten years in office, but I knew I owed her my chance to be a Member of Parliament. So my heart was with her, but when Geoffrey Howe made his famous resignation speech, one we were given to understand his good lady had taken years to write, and Geoffrey five minutes to a read, an election was inevitable. It was also clear that if Michael Heseltine didn’t throw his hat in the ring, he never would.

We had never rejected a Prime Minister whilst in office, and I felt I should consult my members and we sent out some 700 letters seeking their views. I was pressured by some to make my view clear, but I took the view that it would have been insulting to members, to seek their view whilst at the same time telling them that I would vote this way or that, regardless of their opinions. The local BBC journalist tried hard to make me announce my view, but in the end accepted that I would wait until I’d gathered my member’s views. She did indicate that I would get a call from the BBC on the Monday morning, before I left to drive to Westminster. I took the call, and happily did not recognise my interrogator. After a few questions were batted away, the voice said “surely you’ve nailed your colours to the mast.” I agreed and said they were blue. End of interview. Only then did I realise I’d been talking to John Humphries, which was perhaps just as well. This was the same weekend of the first part of the TV series of Michael Dobbs’ House of Cards. On arriving at the House, the chief whip Tim Renton, came across the member’s lobby and congratulating me on how I’d handled the interview. In the light of the TV programme I could only reply “You may say that, I could not possibly comment!”

With John Major becoming prime Minister, David Waddington went to the Lords as leader of their House and as Lord privy Seal. Although the press had tipped me for some advancement, it was not to be, and David asked that I join him again as his PPS to seek to improve links between the two chambers. It also meant I remained with Lord Ferrers, who was delighted since he’d never had a PPS before. Attending at the bar of their Lordship’s House for nearly two years, made me appreciate just what an excellent contribution it made to improving legislation. There was never an attempt to challenge the primacy of the Commons, and in practice, whatever amendments they made, unless the Commons agreed to those amendments, the view of the Lower House prevailed. It may not be logical, but it works, and I do fear that fiddling about with a full or part elected Upper Chamber, will have unintended consequences we will live to regret. I certainly doubt that many, if any, of the specialists that from time to time when appropriate to their skills, offer their advice from those red benches, will bother to seek election to an elected Upper House, and that expertise will be lost to our country.

There’s little consolation in coming second even if it’s just your first stab at getting elected, and less so when you’ve worked your socks off for nine years, granted doing what I genuinely loved. But it had been a great honour to have served Nottingham during those years, and I have nothing but grateful thanks to those who had given me the chance to stand, and the thousands that supported me through those years. Suffice to say I achieved more votes when I lost the seat, than when I’d won it in 1983. Funny business politics !

Once the political bug has bitten, it’s very difficult to find a cure, and in my case I simply returned to Local Government, being elected to the County Council in 1993. I had one attempt at being an MEP in 1994, but that was the last year when MEPs were elected on a constituency basis, rather than the regional lists as was the case from 1999 onwards. That year first past the post did not operate in our favour and few of our Party succeeded.

Apart from returning to elected office at local level, I took on the role of speaker finder for the Millbank political supper club, which had been instrumental in my seeking and achieving a seat in the House of Commons. Whilst there, I persuaded a few colleagues to come and address the club, and having spoken to a number of constituencies had the chance to call in a few markers. Once back in the real world I was greatly helped by a good friend Patrick McLoughlin, now the Government Chief Whip, who found me, or twisted the arms of, two or three members from the Commons, to add to any MEPs or speakers from the Lords that made up a programme of five dinners each year. As a result, our chosen hotel gave us a really great deal, such that we had little difficulty in averaging fifty or more members and guests at our dinners spread through October to April each year. The club was a proving ground for many would be Councillors and MPs, and it’s a proud recent record to have had Pauline Latham, Anna Soubry, Andy Stewart, John Hayes, Mark Spencer, Andrew Bridgen, who as members, made it to the Commons, as well as many others who attended simply as guests.

With farmers in Leicestershire during a failed 1994 European Election bid

With Patrick’s help, the quality of the MPs he sent us, greatly aided our aim of encouraging members and guests to stand for office either within the Party’s administration, or as elected Councillors or Members of Parliament. Perhaps our, and his, greatest coup, was to send us two up and coming young newly elected Members of Parliament in David Cameron and George Osborne just prior to the 2005 General Election. It is true however that over the 50 years since the club’s founding, our guests have covered just about every MP who has ever reached Cabinet level. The minute book makes great reading for any current guest, and given we’ve had 250 Dinners it would be invidious to pick out any of those guest speakers over those years.

I served on the County for sixteen years, and whilst it was clearly not as demanding or as rewarding as Westminster, I was grateful to those who selected me, and those who supported me over those four terms. Throughout those years we were in opposition, and it was frustrating in extreme to see one stupid decision after another taken by the majority Labour Group, based on dogma rather than any objective analysis. Never the less, just as I had as an MP, I derived great satisfaction in being able to achieve small benefits for my constituents, by knowing which door to bang on when something needed to be done.

I spent some time as shadow Education spokesman, clashing with the Labour Chairman Fred Riddell, who had made a name for himself Nationally as the most dyed in the wool stick in the mud, who would not address the fact that our County was either the last or one from last, each time the “league” table of County performances were published. His answer to that outcome was that Nottinghamshire was the most deprived County in the country, and that’s why we did so badly in Education. Coming as I did from the East End of London, I refused to accept that as an excuse for failure. Most of his colleagues agreed with our group’s criticisms, but not one of them would take on the Chairman. His, and the labour Group’s first act on taking control in 1981 was to scrap plans to assist any bright children we’d identified in our schools, on the basis that Special Needs only applied to those at the bottom of the educational scale needing remedial help in reading and writing.

Such was his grip on all educational matters in the County, that when I was invited to meet the board of governors at a secondary school in my constituency, I was met by two officers of the council advising the board. The governors were concerned that year after year they had applied to have their temporary classrooms replaced with proper buildings. They had been told that it was all the fault of Kenneth Clarke who was Secretary of State at that time, and that he had blocked their requests. Before the meeting started I was called to the telephone to be berated by Fred Riddell firstly for visiting a school without his permission, and secondly he was not going to have me giving the governors false information as to how the capital grants were shared out throughout the County. I slammed the phone down on him, and to cut a long story short, the officers had to admit to the governors that the County, not Kenneth Clarke, decided priorities, and that in any case Fred would allocate any grant money elsewhere in the County and not to their school.

When the City separated from the County following local government reorganisation in the late 90s, Fred tried to move to find a City seat, but even the City Labour Party could not face having Fred as a colleague, and he decided to retire. As is the custom, there were the usual tributes paid to him for his years of service and particularly to education, and I was faced with making for me the most hypocritical speech of my entire career in public life. I did however start with a comment my mother had impressed upon me, “if you can’t say something nice about someone, don’t say anything at all ". Having said that, and heard the sharp intake of breath from the assembled councillors, I did say that of course it did not apply on this occasion. I’ve lived to regret that hypocritical speech.

In my last eight years I served as deputy leader, and worked in tandem with Cllr Kay Cutts who was one of the hardest working Councillors I have ever met. Since 2009 she has become Leader of the Council, and in the face of criticism from the usual suspects, she has certainly turned the Council’s finances round, saving millions whilst at the same time transferring large sums to front line services and away from backroom bureaucracy. It had taken twenty eight years for the Conservatives to win control of the County, and regretfully those who had benefited from the profligacy of those years, are unlikely to thank the Conservatives for restoring some sense of reality to Local Government provision. No one likes losing what they have taken for granted for years, and those who were engaged in non jobs, or jobsworths, can’t wait for a return of a Labour administration who would be only too pleased to rebuild what they believe is their public sector support base.