in circles, hopped, stepped, jumped up and down and cheerily sang to himself out of sheer exhilaration?
I planned the future and, more immediately, wondered how early I could phone Dee, Norma’s mother, with the news. I needn’t have worried about that. As I stepped into our flat the phone rang. It was Dee. She was very agitated. ‘She’s had the baby, hasn’t she?’ she said. ‘I know she has. I haven’t been able to sleep. Is she all right?’
I told her. She sighed and hung up without a word. Moments later she phoned back.
‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘I was so relieved. I knew, just knew she was having the baby. Now tell me all about it.’
So I did. And if the world ever contained a more relieved and pleased grandparent – well, I can’t imagine her.
At first Elizabeth was going to be called Jane. But that didn’t last. When I visited Norma in hospital the following day she was cuddling a plump and contented baby.
‘I don’t think Jane is right,’ said Norma. ‘She looks like an Elizabeth.’ And so Elizabeth she became.
Later that month I was selected as the prospective parliamentary candidate for St Pancras North after addressing the interview panel and answering their questions. I had received an enthusiastic response, and was told I had won comfortably. ‘Some voted for you and quite a few for Elizabeth,’ as Joan Couzens, soon to be my press officer, put it. Joan was one of a number of characters in the association, and certainly the most vivid. She loathed the Labour Party she saw in London, which brought out in her some outrageously right-wing instincts which were held in check by her common sense. She enjoyed flirting with them, however, and often wrote me draft press releases in poetry, based on her instincts, not her common sense, which we both knew could never be used, but which gave us great fun. She was a fine artist as well, and she and her husband Bertie became firm friends.
St Pancras North may have been unpromising political territory for the Conservatives, but my three years as its candidate, which embraced both the February and October general elections of 1974, taught me a huge amount about the party and the volunteers who ran it at local level.
Tony Dey, the agent, was laconic and efficient. Bob Bell, the President, and his wife Edith, Francis Klein, the Chairman, Dennis Friis, Roland Walker and so many others worked tirelessly for little political reward other than to uphold Conservative principles. They weren’t ideological warriors. They believed in the Conservative cause. They grumbled sometimes about some of the leaders and some of the policy, but they loyally battled on.
I worked hard for them in St Pancras. Between my adoption as prospective candidate and the February 1974 election I worked the seat as if it were a marginal, visiting it nearly every evening and every weekend. Margaret Jay, who succeeded Tony Dey as my agent, worked me hard – and herself as well. Norma joined me whenever she could. It was hard work but it was a lot of fun too, although it became harder as Ted Heath’s government ran into difficulties.
Ted had been elected on a strong centre-right platform, but events had forced him off it. Trade union power forced up wages and prices and brought about an incomes policy that upset many in the party and even caused discontented murmurings amongst the St Pancras North loyalists. Ted took Britain into the Common Market, an inevitable, correct and courageous decision, but one that was very controversial, too.
Then came the miners’ strike over a pay claim that would have given some miners up to a 50 per cent rise. The National Coal Board had offered 13 per cent, which was rejected, and an overtime ban began. The miners were led by Joe Gormley, a traditional Labour figure, but not a militant. His interest was in the miners’ well-being and not in attacking the Conservative government. Other miners’ leaders, though, such as Mick McGahey and Arthur Scargill, did see the chance of confrontation and bringing down the government.
The strike worsened. Implacable positions were taken and Ted Heath was forced into a box. Many Conservatives, mostly but not exclusively on the right, wanted to ‘take on’ the miners. ‘Who governs the country?’ they asked. Others recognised the sympathy and respect in which the miners were widely held by the British people. Some of their leaders might be militant, but the British sense of fair play knew that the miners did a job that few would care to do. The public admired the miners and liked the common sense they often heard from rank-and-file NUM members. But they did not like the militants.
Crisis beckoned, and the three-day week was imposed from 31 December 1973 as stocks of coal fell. Pressure mounted. Ted Heath had a dilemma. If he negotiated a settlement because of the economic effect the strike was having, he would be accused of weakness, especially from within the Conservative Party. If the strikes continued the economy would suffer, and gradually public opinion would turn against the government. The third choice, a huge gamble, was a general election to reinforce the government’s authority. Little thought was given to what would happen if the government was re-elected, but the strike itself went on.
Ted Heath went for broke and called the election on the theme of ‘Who Governs Britain?’ At the time I was delighted, and the early opinion polls were favourable, as was reaction on the doorstep, even in St Pancras North. But a one-issue election is dangerous. Midway through the campaign complex evidence on miners’ pay suggested that they were earning even less than the NUM had declared. Harold Wilson claimed an election had been called over an ‘arithmetical error’. Sympathy swelled for the miners.
The public mood changed. Unhappy Tories voted Liberal, and Labour crept home as the largest party. Ted Heath was out and Harold Wilson, to his surprise and everyone else’s, was back in Downing Street, at the head of a minority administration. One bright spot was that George Young was elected to Parliament with a small majority at Ealing, Acton. In St Pancras North Jock Stallard was alarmed by the strength of support I had in some streets, but overall he won comfortably.
A second general election later that year was inevitable. The St Pancras North Conservative Association generously told me I could seek a better seat with their blessing, but could recontest St Pancras if I failed to find one. I did not try very hard, although I was shortlisted for marginal Paddington, where I was narrowly defeated by Mark Wolfson, later MP for Sevenoaks. I also applied for Portsmouth North, where I was assailed with questions about flogging and hanging, which the questioner favoured – whether sequentially or alternatively I wasn’t sure – and I didn’t. That was the end of Portsmouth North, who picked a well-known businessman, John Ward, who would later become my PPS when I was prime minister.
After this setback, I decided to stay in St Pancras North, and contested it again in the second general election of the year in October. The constituency was of little interest nationally, and the only publicity we received was for my new agent, Sue Winter, the youngest in the country and very pretty. It made no difference. Again I lost, after a rather bitter campaign and an unpleasant count, with jeering Labour activists. Jock Stallard’s majority increased. Labour gained seats nationally, and had a very narrow overall majority of only three seats. Soon they would need to rely on Liberal support to stay in government.
By now Norma and I had sold our flat in Primrose Court and bought a modern end-of-terrace house, West Oak, in The Avenue, Beckenham. Elizabeth was growing, and we needed more space. West Oak was a small estate in lovely wooded grounds, full of mostly young married couples, and we were very happy there. Among our neighbours were David Rodgers, a former aide to Iain Macleod, and his wife Erica, who had been National Vice Chairman of the Young Conservatives.
Norma was pregnant again, and James was born in January 1975. I was again present at the birth, and he arrived much more speedily and with much less drama than Elizabeth. We had no difficulty over his name: he was James, if a boy, from long before he was born. He was a fit, contented baby from the very start.
Politics
