the Conservative Party. I had never met her, and little guessed how much our paths would cross in the future.
No one expected another early general election – public and politicians were battle-weary – but as seats were advertised or fell vacant I applied for them. I received rejection after rejection without interview, and was puzzled and despondent. It was Jean Lucas, by then the agent for Putney, who solved the puzzle after I applied for the vacant candidacy there. She telephoned and asked whether my biography needed to be jazzed up, and then noticed that the biography sent to Putney by Central Office was not mine. She made enquiries. The answer was comical. There were two John Majors. One, me, on the approved candidates list for Parliament, and the other on the list of would-be candidates for the GLC. Someone at Central Office had transposed the biographies, and was sending out my namesake’s – which was pretty thin – to all the seats for which I had applied. Unsurprisingly, I had not been invited for interview.
After Jean’s intervention I was invited to Putney, interviewed and shortlisted. I was led to believe I was the front-runner and likely to be adopted. But, as their selection process rumbled on, a by-election was called at Conservative-held Carshalton, and I was interviewed and reached the last eight. I withdrew from Putney, and an unknown barrister was chosen: his name was David Mellor. ‘He is very clever and one day will make a real name for himself,’ predicted Jean Lucas.
At Carshalton I was preceded for interview by a confident young man carrying a briefcase with the initials ‘N.F.’ prominently displayed. I asked who he was, and was told his name was Nigel Forman. I had a premonition that he would be selected; he was, and comfortably won the ensuing by-election.
I continued to apply for a seat. Sevenoaks did not interview me. At Ruislip Northwood I disagreed sharply with a member of the selection committee over housing and was not invited for further interview. At Dorset South I reached the second round of interviews and was waiting with the others for my ordeal when I saw the selection committee rise respectfully as a well-built young man with dark hair entered the room. One of the other candidates scowled: ‘That’s Lord Cranborne – he owns the constituency.’ That was not quite true, although he certainly owned a lot of land. He was selected, and twenty years later I was to appoint him to my Cabinet as leader of the Lords, and he was to run a crucial campaign for me to save my premiership. Self-evidently, Robert had great ability, so perhaps owning the constituency didn’t matter.
After the two general elections I contested, Standard Bank had realised I was set on a political career, but remained supportive. Roy Mortimer, one of the senior executives, and Peter Graham, the managing director, were unfailingly helpful, even though they knew the bank was second in my working affections. By 1976, Tony Barber, who had been Chancellor of the Exchequer in Ted Heath’s government, was chairman of the bank, and took me with him as his personal assistant to the International Monetary Fund Conference in Manila. That was the year sterling hit trouble and Denis Healey had to turn back from Heathrow Airport to deal with the crisis.
As a result, Tony Barber, his predecessor, was bombarded with press and interviews at Manila, and I dealt with many of them on his behalf; it was my first exposure to high-profile politics, and it lived up to my expectations. I worked eighteen hours a day but it whetted my appetite for the drama of politics. I returned home even more eager for a political career.
When a vacancy for the Huntingdonshire constituency was circulated to all approved candidates I applied immediately, but was not hopeful. It was a rural seat with a large Conservative majority, and it seemed an unlikely home. Norma disagreed. ‘It is for you,’ she insisted. She knew the area because she had been sent to stay with her great aunt in nearby Bourn for summer after summer during her childhood, while her mother Dee continued to work through most of the school holidays. She was confident about Huntingdonshire from the start.
About three hundred candidates applied, including Peter Brooke, Chris Patten, Michael Howard and Peter Lilley, so I knew the competition would be tough. I contacted Andrew Thomson, the agent, and he generously answered all my questions about the association and the constituency.
The first interview merely involved the candidate giving a twenty-minute speech on a Saturday morning, followed by questions. It went well enough, and Andrew Thomson phoned me the next morning to tell me I had reached the last eighteen. Another interview followed, which went better, but against stiffer opposition I was not certain of progressing further. I followed Peter Lilley, and after I had finished, found him sitting on a bench at Huntingdon station waiting for the train to London.
‘It was fine,’ he said, responding to my enquiry, ‘but you never can tell.’ But I thought he looked despondent. Months later Peter was given a lift by a young agent, and was speculating ruefully on why I had been selected for Huntingdonshire. Who was I, he asked, and what had I done to earn such a gilt-edged seat? He seemed aggrieved. The young agent thought Peter was criticising me, and read him a lecture on my virtues. It was Peter Golds – my first trainee agent in Brixton.
After a third interview I was shortlisted. As Huntingdonshire was such a secure seat there was some interest in the final contestants. ‘Crossbencher’, the political column of the Sunday Express, said I hadn’t a chance of selection. Given Crossbencher’s forecasting record, this was good news. That same morning the phone rang. It was a member of the selection committee, Anne Foard.
‘I shouldn’t be phoning,’ she said, ‘but I am – so this must be private.’ She then gave me advice. Be yourself. Show humour. Bear in mind that half the constituency, and the electorate, are big-city overspill. ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘and by the way, the district council meet on Wednesday. It would be good for you to be there to listen. And to be seen.’
It was wise advice. Andrew Thomson had already said pretty much the same thing. Being used to the political activity of Lambeth, Huntingdon District Council was a pleasant surprise. I was almost the only spectator, and the object of as much interest, nudging and winking, as the agenda. And the debate puzzled me. It was fierce, and all about ‘local pyromaniacs trying to burn down our county’, as one councillor put it, to the accompaniment of much support. It seemed like a serious crime wave. Then sturdy, outdoor figures with weatherbeaten faces defended the pyromania, and the truth dawned: they were talking about stubble-burning. It was urban man against rural, and a real eye-opener into the issues that stirred the community. That visit to Huntingdon was one of the best investments in time I ever made.
On the way to the final selection meeting I was preparing myself mentally for another disappointment. I couldn’t get my head around the fact that I might be selected for one of the safest seats in England. Norma had no such inhibitions. She was confident we would win. As our second-hand Austin 1300 estate chugged towards Huntingdon she asked me if I had remembered that ‘Friday is an anniversary’. I hadn’t, but it was.
‘It’s five years to the day that you were selected as the candidate for St Pancras North,’ said Norma. ‘Tonight you must do it again.’
I am superstitious, and that seemed a good omen. The selection meeting was in the Commemoration Hall, Huntingdon, and the final opposition was tough. I learned later that Jock Bruce-Gardyne, formerly MP for Angus, had under-performed, having a foul cold. Lord Douro was thought to have had one piece of good news already that week, having become engaged to the Kaiser’s granddaughter. Alan Haselhurst, later Deputy Speaker, spoke brilliantly, and was the runaway favourite when I spoke, last of the four. It went well, and, the ordeal over, Norma and I returned to the holding room and then to the local pub to consider our chances as the balloting got under way.
The Commemoration Hall as we returned was a scene of pandemonium. A decision had obviously been made. Wild applause and cheering could be heard, and as we hurried to the holding room I peered through the glass windows in the door of the main hall and saw Anne Foard, my telephone confidante of Sunday, standing on a chair whooping, with her hands clapping above her head.
