a great friend and ally. She gave me tremendous encouragement as I agonised over whether I would ever achieve my ambition of being elected to Parliament, and was to play a crucial role in bringing that about. Jean had a trainee agent with her, Peter Golds, whom I knew. He too would more than once play a crucial role in my future.
In January 1969 I became Peter Cary’s deputy as Vice Chairman of the Housing Committee, and two months later, Vice Chairman of the Brixton Conservative Association. Lambeth Council was well served with officers. John Fishwick was an old-fashioned Town Clerk. Ted Hollamby was an enthusiastic Director of Planning, impatient to demolish the slums and build decent houses. He would drive around the borough waving his arms to point out monstrosities, apparently oblivious of the need to keep some control of the steering wheel.
The prince among them was Harry Simpson, the Director of Housing. Harry had begun his working life, aged fifteen, with the London County Council, and became a rent collector. He rose to be one of the most respected housing administrators in the country, and after leaving Lambeth, became Director of the Northern Ireland Housing Authority and, at the end of his career, of the Greater London Council (GLC).
I learned a great deal from this amazing man, and it was his drive and Bernard Perkins’s leadership that earned Lambeth a high reputation in local government circles. Before and after meetings I would join Harry in his office and we talked housing – often late into the night. He was the best tutor there could be, both in housing and in the decent, civilised conduct of public affairs.
I also took an interest in my own housing, and bought my first home: a two-bedroom flat in Primrose Court, Streatham. It cost £5,600, and I was a reluctant purchaser, persuaded to buy by a fellow councillor, Geoff Murray, who already had a flat there. My hesitation was simply because I was too busy to buy, but he chipped away at me until I agreed. Later, a third Lambeth councillor, John Steele, also moved there, and Primrose Court became an annexe to the town hall – and my flat was often crowded with younger members of the council. I remained friendly with Jean, but our relationship had cooled.
That year I visited Russia, where Lambeth was twinned with the Moscow suburb of Moskvoretsky. Only the year before Russia had invaded Czechoslovakia to snuff out the Prague Spring of Alexander Dubcek, and I was interested to see for myself what our Cold War enemy was really like at close quarters.
The visit was a mass of contradictions. The Mayor of Moskvoretsky, a man called Chilikin, exercised his power ruthlessly, not least in his responsibility for housing. ‘It’s cold in winter without a flat,’ he told me, smiling, and I did not think he was joking. We were entertained royally, and I saw my first opera, Queen of Spades, at the Bolshoi Theatre and my first ballet, Swan Lake, at the Palace of Congresses, with Natalia Bessmertnova dancing the lead. I preferred the ballet, little knowing that I would soon meet someone who would introduce me more comprehensively to the delights of opera. The Russian system delivered political power with age, and Chilikin was fascinated that I was thirty years younger than the rest of our delegation. After the ballet he plied me with drinks until the early hours of the morning to see if I could stand the pace. As my father’s remedy for toothache for young children had been neat whisky (it took away the toothache but left a sore head and a sleepy child), I was well able to cope. Chilikin was impressed.
But I was not impressed with the new buildings he showed me. If this was communism, it was appalling. Hospitals had electrical wiring sticking out of the walls; houses and flats were built to a very low standard, with no attempt at landscaping to produce an attractive environment. Only mud and rubble lay between the housing blocks. It was a lesson in what to avoid, but a later study trip to Finland, where the quality of building was very high, left no room for complacency about what we were doing in Lambeth.
That year Lambeth faced a dustmen’s strike over ‘totting’, a practice in which the dustmen ransacked the bins to identify items for resale. We had negotiated the end of totting, but the dustmen went on strike to reclaim the right. We resisted. The strike continued, and the outlook for public health and cleanliness was grim. The Conservative councillors, with voluntary help, decided to collect the rubbish themselves, and commandeered the dustcarts. It was strike-breaking in a unique way. Almost every councillor helped. The action created headlines around the world, but they concentrated mostly on Sir George Young and his wife Aurelia, also a Lambeth councillor. George is a baronet, and the sight of him and Aurelia driving the dustcart and collecting bins was irresistible: ‘My old man’s a dustcart, Bart,’ chortled the press. But the councillors’ response was successful: a settlement was agreed, and Lambeth faced no more industrial action during the Conservative years.
In February 1970 I became Chairman of Housing, and the following month Chairman of Brixton Conservative Association as we began to prepare for the GLC elections on 9 April, and the expected general election. I had been asked whether I wished to contest the GLC elections for Hammersmith and Lambeth, but decided I had my hands full.
The GLC elections were held that year on a borough-wide basis, with four candidates being elected from Lambeth. One of the Conservative candidates was Diana Geddes, who on polling day was working out of our Brixton Road headquarters. Peter Golds brought a friend with him to help bring in the votes. I saw them as they arrived. She was slender, a little above average height, with mid-brown hair, shining brown eyes and a beautiful, curving, glamorous smile. Dressed in a beige checked suit, fawn blouse and white, knee-length boots, she was stunningly attractive.
‘Hi,’ said Peter. ‘This is Norma. She’s come to help.’
She was Norma Johnson, ‘mad on opera’, said Peter, adding that she’d been known to sleep outside Covent Garden all night to get tickets for Joan Sutherland. Within minutes I discovered she was a teacher with her own Mini, her own flat – temporarily living at home because she’d rented it out – not very political, but Conservative, and that she also designed and made clothes.
The demands of election day drove us apart. Norma and Peter went out in her Mini to collect and deliver voters to the polling station. I canvassed, cajoled workers, kept in touch with candidates, filled in wherever necessary and arranged for Norma to attend the count at Lambeth Town Hall. Although the Conservatives won control of the GLC that night, we did not win the seats in Lambeth. But I had found Norma.
A few days later she phoned. She was having a party – would I like to come? Parties weren’t much my scene then, and I wanted Norma alone, not in a crowd. I declined, pleading another engagement. She phoned again several days later. She ‘happened to have a spare ticket for a gala at Covent Garden’. Was I interested? I was.
The gala was a tribute to Sir David Webster, the retiring administrator at Covent Garden. It was a long programme and it overran. The opera house was hot and oppressive, and the music too somnolent for someone who had been reading council papers until 2 a.m. and writing banking essays from six in the morning. As Joan Sutherland closed the gala singing the mad scene from Lucia di Lammermoor, I fell asleep.
I knew from the moment we met that I wanted to marry Norma. Ten days later we were engaged. Norma was an only child. Her mother, Dee, had been widowed as a twenty-two-year-old in 1945 when her husband Norman – who served in the Royal Artillery throughout the war – had died in a motorcycle accident days after it ended. Four months earlier Dee had lost her baby son, Colin, at only six days old, and with Norman’s death she and three-year-old Norma were on their own. When life treated Dee harshly she fought back. For much of her life she held down two or three jobs at the same time to ensure that she and Norma lacked nothing. Norma went to boarding school from the age of four, and had grown up very independent and practical.
My mother was back in hospital with yet another bronchial and chest infection, and I took Norma to see her. For once there was no caution, no holding back, no reservations. She was as certain as I was that this was the right girl.
Meanwhile, in Brixton, a
