turn into the corridor that leads to the Members’ Lobby and the Chamber. As I did so a figure emerged from the shadows. It was Tristan Garel-Jones.
He clasped my arm: ‘I’m worried about the government,’ he said.
Tristan was the first rebel of our intake. He voted and spoke against the government over its handling of independence for the Banaban Islands, situated in the South Pacific and soon to be part of the minuscule state of Kiribati. This minor rebellion was led by Sir Bernard Braine, a senior Member who was anti-abortion, anti-drink and pro-island. He impressed us new boys by his fiery sense of injustice, and a passion that was easily aroused and easily stilled. His indignation could be Vesuvial, and to witness an eruption for the first time was awesome, even if the frequency of subsequent eruptions diminished their excitement. Bernard’s constituency of Essex South-East (subsequently renamed Castle Point) included Canvey Island, but he had a bee in his bonnet about all islands – he loved them like a father. In 1979 his affections had settled on the distant and unfortunate Banabans, and he drew new Members to his cause. He was persuasive – ‘Don Quixote de la Essex’, someone called him – and Tristan signed up as his Sancho Panza, though I doubt he could have found the Banabans on a map.
Tristan was not the only Blue Chip to share Bernard’s passion for islands. Jocelyn Cadbury, the newly-elected MP for Birmingham Northfield and a specialist in the cultural history of Polynesia, also threw himself into the battle. A shy, sensitive, painfully principled man, a few years later he took refuge in a better world by his own hand. I cannot remember what happened to the Banabans, but I will not forget Jocelyn’s fate. I heard of his death with dismay early one evening at a garden party in Huntingdon. Later, when the Blue Chips had their portrait painted by Rose Cecil, Robert Cranborne’s sister, we asked her to include Jocelyn. He is there in a portrait on the wall, poised ethereally on the fringes of the picture, remembered fondly by his parliamentary friends.
A new Parliament meant elections for the 1922 Committee, the representative body of all Conservative backbenchers. I knew few of the candidates. Nor did many of the other new Members. But we quickly began to learn parliamentary ways. We received notes from every candidate inviting support. Cabals were formed for and against – the political instinct to be part of a tribe was very strong. The Smoking Room was full of partisans. The bars abounded with rumour and gossip. Sir Edward du Cann’s Rolls-Royce was reported in action, drawing up in Westminster side-streets beside new Members and offering them a lift to the Commons. One more carload. A few more votes. It was good-humoured and clubbable, and we all loved being part of it. I voted for Sir Edward (without the incentive of a lift in his Rolls), and found him to be one of the best chairmen of a meeting I ever saw. He did attract stories, though.
‘What time is it, Ted?’ he was once asked. ‘Dear boy –’ peering at his watch ‘– what time would you like it to be?’
Another colleague told me how, crying into his brandy in the Smoking Room because his local newspaper had attacked him, he had sighed to Sir Edward, ‘I suppose after years in this place you get used to being attacked.’
Sir Edward patted his arm: ‘Nice people never do.’
These were jolly elections, with a drink in the Smoking Room often making the bargain between candidate and elector. Mr Pickwick, with his experience at Eatanswill, would have felt very much at home.
I settled down, decided to listen and learn before committing myself to a maiden speech, and was elected Joint Secretary to the Conservative Backbench Environment Group, with John Heddle, the new Member for Lichfield, as my partner. I shared a large office with other Members including John Carlisle, who was to become a persistent and outspoken opponent in later years, and who took pleasure in offending every politically-correct code that existed. John Butcher, an opponent also on some issues, but more thoughtfully and less vociferously, was another companion of those early days.
Huntingdonshire was a huge constituency that generated a large postbag which increased every year as I became established there. My secretarial problems were soon solved. One day a small figure with fiery red hair bounded up to me outside the Commons post office.
‘I always said I’d come and work for you if you got elected. So here I am!’ she declared. It was Barbara Wallis, my former colleague from Lambeth days.
‘I thought you worked for Chris Patten at the Conservative Research Department,’ I said.
‘I did,’ said Barbara, ‘but that’s then, and now’s now. I’ve come to work for you. I know you’ve got no one. These are my terms.’
So began a happy working relationship that was to last until Barbara retired, thirteen years later, having spent two years with me at Number 10. And even then she only left after identifying her successor, Gina Hearn, who remains with me still, offering the same high-quality service.
Barbara was indomitable. No MP was a hero to her, and she was something of a legend among the members of the Secretaries’ Council, the Westminster secretaries’ ‘trade union’. She was astute politically, having served on Lambeth Council with me and twice contested the parliamentary constituency of Feltham, and had forceful political views that veered from very liberal to intensely crusty Conservative. She was loyal and fearsomely efficient; the constituency purred at the ultra-smooth service she provided, and I basked in the credit that was largely due to her own efficiency. Yet later, when everyone else urged me to run for the leadership of the party after Margaret Thatcher resigned, Barbara dissented. ‘It’s too early,’ was her view. I entered the contest anyway, and Barbara joined the team, worked day and night, and was ever-present in those dramatic few days.
Not every new MP takes cheerfully to the place. Some never do. With my unusual background (for a Conservative MP) and lack of practised gentlemen’s-club ways, you might suppose that at first I felt ill at ease. Not so. As a new backbencher I was as happy as Bunter in a bakery. In the early days I was not among those who dined eagerly with members of the Cabinet and other senior figures in the party. I attended a drinks and question session one evening with the Chancellor of the Exchequer Geoffrey Howe, and saw the danger of such occasions. Some new colleagues had views, and brought them forward. ‘Why are the government …?’ ‘Should not the government …?’ ‘It is surely clear that we should …’ They sounded to me like talking press releases culled from the Campaign Guide to the Election. Geoffrey gently explained the political realities of life, and left some of the more assertive questioners looking rather callow. Others, saying nothing, gave the impression of being tongue-tied or (depending upon their demeanour) wise. I decided that short, pithy questions were the best option and stuck to those. Having now spent many years on the other side of the desk at such meetings, I’m sure that early judgement was right. As Kenneth Baker once put it, in a slightly different context, the line between sycophancy and rebellion is difficult to tread. I watched others carefully, and noted what worked and what did not; I saw the mistakes some made by self-promotion and an eagerness to lend a glib line to every passing newspaper hack.
I made my maiden speech in mid-June in a debate on Geoffrey Howe’s first budget. The Chamber had barely sixty Members in it when I rose to speak, but that did not diminish my nervousness. I was well-prepared, but even so, looking up, I was pleased to see the familiar face of Canon Ronald Jennings, a constituent from St Ives, sitting in the Public Gallery for the debate. He smiled down with a clerical benevolence that I took as a very good sign.
It was an unremarkable first speech: the traditional tour of the constituency, a mention of Oliver Cromwell, Huntingdon’s most famous son, a complaint about the government grant to Cambridgeshire, broad support for the budget. Soon it was over and, if I had not distinguished myself especially, I had not disgraced myself either. It is a tradition in the Commons that maiden speeches are greeted with acclaim provided the first-time orator manages to string together a few sentences. I received, therefore, ludicrously
