fight and in one form or another that’s what she’s doing for the rest of her life—in some ways I think better than anybody else. If you take it all together—at our commemoration for her I said that she called herself a William Morris socialist and I said that at the commemoration service they had for William Morris, Robert Blatchford said that William Morris was our best man. I said Jill was our best woman.
Michael spoke of how well Jill had taken his devastating defeats in Plymouth in 1955 and during the general election debacle in 1983. Turning to me, he said abruptly: “Now the way to recover from this defeat of hers is your book. It is very important to us. You understand, I’m sure. I’m tremendously pleased you’re doing it. I’m sure she’d be pleased.” I nodded, but I could not honestly say that my biography would be what Jill wanted. Michael wanted it very badly. He proposed a title: “Jill Craigie and the Fight For Women’s Rights.”
It seemed odd to me, however, that Jill’s book, Daughters of Dissent, which I came to regard as her unfinished masterpiece, provoked so much uneasiness in Michael. “What happens about the actual stuff there [in the book] I’m not quite sure. I’ll read it through again sometime, but I’m doubtful whether it should be published separately. If you think it should be, that’s another matter. . .” But he proved resistant to my proposal that it should be published with a foreword and afterword explaining Jill’s intentions and how she planned to complete her work. She had left eighteen substantial chapters (well over 250,000 words), but Michael continued to balk at the idea of publishing because Jill never was able to write about the postwar years when women actually got the vote. When Michael Bessie said the book needed considerable editing and shortening to be published, that pretty much shelved the project in Michael’s mind.
So far as I could tell, Michael never did re-read the book. I sat in Jill’s study for days reading it all and marvelling at the way she created a great drama out of the Pankhurst and Fawcett family histories, including cameo appearances by John Stuart Mill, Disraeli, and many other 19th--century notables. Her book was pure story, it seemed to me, a wonderful narrative composed of multitudes of biographies. There was nothing dry about her approach or arcane about her use of sources. Her work in film and her love of music showed in the book’s images and symphonic structure. Indeed, she had used this material to write a play with music about the suffragettes, eventually also a screenplay. Neither of these works were ever produced.
17
“So ... what’s the time”—an expression Michael invariably used, especially around drink time. “10 to 6,” I said. “I found a nice reference to Jill in Richard Crossman’s diaries,” I told Michael. “Yah ... Ah,” he muttered. “I just happened to pick this up coming down the steps.” It was hard to turn in any direction in the Hampstead house and not find a bookcase. This volume was in the hallway leading to the downstairs kitchen. Actually, the hallway was like an antechamber lined with shelves of Crossman’s diaries and biographies of political figures. “I was looking in the index for an entry under Jill Craigie, but it was not there. It was under Jill Foot.” “Good God, a scandal!” Michael said in mock outrage. “Page two hundred and thirty five,” I continued. “He’s talking about Celia Strachey, John Strachey’s widow.” I began reading: “She had been devoted to John all her life ... She has been a wonderful wife in the same way that Dora Gaitskill and Jill Foot are wonderful wives. All of them are possessive women who fight for their husbands like tigers and all of them, unlike Anne, are politicians themselves and not merely interested in politics.”
I had been hoping to stir Michael to comment. I was already frustrated by his unwillingness or inability to analyse the role Jill had played in his political career. I would later learn from Leo Abse and Glennys Kinnock about this aspect of his marriage to Jill. Michael only asked me which of Crossman’s diaries I was reading. “Volume one, Minister of Housing, 1964-66,” I told him. “How do you think Jill would react to that?” I prodded. He paused, “Well ...” and I re-read the part about possessive wives fighting for their husbands. Michael cleared his throat and began talking about Crossman. “We became much more intimate in the last ten years of his life ... I’m just going to have a short sharp one [a nap] ...” and off he went to rest on the upstairs sofa.
Michael was more voluble later that evening, discussing the Callaghan government and its efforts on behalf of maternity rights. When Margaret Thatcher was elected Conservative leader, she showed no interest in women’s issues, Michael observed with considerable dismay. After which he got on to one of his heroes, Lloyd George and Lloyd George’s affair with his secretary, Frances Stevenson, a strong supporter of women’s rights. Lloyd George said to her, “We can’t have another Parnell case, you know.” Michael mentioned that both he and Jill were interested in Frances Stevenson, whom Michael had met. He did not know that Jill had kept a diary with rather acerbic comments on the submissiveness of secretaries.
Talk of Lloyd George led to an aria about the poor record of Liberals on the subject of women’s suffrage. Michael deplored Gladstone’s opposition but saved most of his fire for Asquith, whose government force-fed the suffragettes. Jill, Michael noted, had given Roy Jenkins a hard time for not adequately dealing with Asquith’s hostility to votes for women in his biography of the politician. Although Jenkins had made certain government documents concerning the Liberal government’s treatment of the suffragettes available to Jill, she continued to hector him. “She would not let him off,” Michael chuckled, “every time she saw him.”
I seized my opportunity: “Do you think that’s part of what Crossman meant when he said Jill was not just a politician’s wife but she was a politician too?” “She wasn’t a politician’s wife at all,” Michael replied. “She was very good to me, but she had her own ... ” When Michael hesitated, I asked, “So a politician’s wife would not speak up, right?” Well, a politician’s wife might not put it the way Jill did, Michael conceded. “She was not doing anything to injure me,” he quickly pointed out. “She did not meekly follow what the males were saying.”
Hoping for further openings, I mentioned a passage in Barbara Castle’s autobiography describing Jill’s effort to corner Harold Wilson, then President of the Board of Trade, about more support for the British film industry. “Barbara said Jill became quite outspoken and she quotes you as saying, ‘Jill, come off it,’ perhaps because she was becoming a little aggressive.” Michael lowered his voice, “I don’t remember that.” I continued: “My impression is that Jill was outspoken and not particularly concerned about being tactful.” Michael seemed to agree that Jill was pursuing her cause “by the best available means.” Jill could be tactless, but Michael asserted that she dealt better with people than Barbara did. Wilson was one of Barbara’s heroes (he promoted and backed her), Michael reminded me, but Michael felt Jill was justly critical of Wilson’s lukewarm support for British filmmakers. For a Labour Party member, Wilson evinced a shocking want of support for leftwing filmmakers and in fact seemed to Jill, all too cosy with rightwing rogues like Alexander Korda.3
“I don’t think it would be much use, ever,” Michael said, referring to any effort to silence Jill. I laughed. “But that did not mean that she lacked subtlety,” Michael added. “I think she was both outspoken and charming,” I offered. “Yes, she was,” Michael agreed. “I also wonder if she had more latitude to be her own person. She wasn’t a member of Parliament representing somebody. She was just representing a point of view,” I suggested. “She wasn’t representing my views. She knew much more than I did about film,” he noted. According to Jill, the trouble started with Stafford Cripps, who seemed in the grip of reactionary filmmakers and then continued with Harold Wilson, Cripps’s protégé. Michael Balcon would have supported Jill in this regard, Michael emphasised.
Michael remembered other instances when Jill had gone after Labour leaders—even Robin Cook for the Party’s policy on the Balkans. This was before Tony Blair’s first election victory when both Jill and Michael thought New Labour had not condemned Serb aggression in stronger terms. James Callaghan himself had come up to Jill to quietly suggest
