A Fortunate Life (34 page)

The team we assembled over these years was an extraordinary one. They were all about the same age as me, came from all sections of society, were utterly committed, and remain to this day some of our closest friends. They were also exceptional campaigners and pretty ruthless when it came to winning a by-election. I remember seeing two of them
leap out of a vehicle in which they were making a last-minute dash to get a voter to the polling station before it closed, in order to help a farmer herd his sheep into a neighbour’s field because they were obstructing the road. On another occasion one of our activists called five times at a house to persuade a supporter to get to the polls, only to find the would-be voter absent. On the final, sixth call, with fifteen minutes to go before the polls closed, he met the voter coming down his own front path. ‘Have you voted yet?’ the activist asked. ‘No. I have just got back from hospital. I am very ill,’ came the reply. ‘Well you had better hurry, then,’ was the response. ‘It could be your last time!’

Despite the fact that our battles with the Tories were strenuous, our disagreements did not carry over into personal animosity, and there was very little bad blood between the two parties locally. Indeed, my next-door neighbour in Norton was an elderly lady who had some difficulty erecting the Tory posters on stakes in her front garden, which was immediately adjacent to mine with its generous crop of Liberal ones – so I always used to do it for her. Perhaps it was because of this that I adopted a policy of never voting for myself, which has always puzzled my colleagues and observers. To me, it somehow seems improper to vote for oneself – so I have always cast my vote for whichever of my opponents I believed on personal (i.e., not political) grounds would make the best MP.

Two other factors also helped our political battle for Yeovil in those years. The first was that in 1981 the Boundary Commission altered the boundaries of the Constituency, removing two strongly Tory areas which had previously been in Yeovil and placing them into neighbouring Somerton and Frome.
The Times
estimated that the effect of this would have been to reduce John Peyton’s Tory majority at the last election from 11,0000 to around 8,000 at the next – still a hefty majority to overcome in a general election, but at least things were moving in the right direction. The second factor was the announcement, also in 1981, that John Peyton would not stand at the next election. The Tories pretty quickly got themselves a new candidate, David Martin, but I had a six-year start on him in terms of getting myself known locally.

By now my strategy of behaving like an MP, even though I wasn’t one, was beginning to bear fruit. More and more people were coming to see me with their problems at my Saturday morning surgeries and now I was getting invitations, which would normally have gone to the sitting MP, to open village fetes and community centres. The Tories
were furious about this, but there was nothing they could do about it, especially since their own MP was standing down.

I soon found, though, that behaving like an MP meant I had to take positions on local issues, and this meant risking losing support as well as gaining it. In 1980, shortly after the general election, there was much unhappiness in one part of Yeovil over a decision to locate a care home for youngsters with learning difficulties in the area; the residents said it would reduce the value of their properties. I visited the area, spoke to the residents, and quickly concluded that this was pure prejudice. So I published a leaflet referring to local opposition to the plan as ‘Yeovil’s shame’. Needless to say, there was a furious reaction from the affected area, but this did not appear to affect our overall support in the town at all.

In the same year I learned that Westland Helicopters, by far the largest employer in the Constituency and then going through a very difficult period for orders, was about to sell helicopters to Chile. One of the Chileans sent over to clinch the deal had, it was reported, been involved in torture during the Pinochet years – including the torture of women such as Sheila Cassidy, who, back in my Foreign Office days, I had accompanied when she gave evidence to the UN in Geneva on the abuses she had suffered. To the considerable anger of Westland workers and the trades unions, whose jobs were at risk if Westland did not get the order, I made a series of public statements and speeches, saying that we should not sell helicopters to this kind of tyrant or ‘buy jobs with the blood of innocents’. There was quite a row about it for a couple of weeks. But, interestingly enough, when the election came round three years later I got overwhelming support from Westland workers, and one or two even came up to me and said that, though they were very unhappy with me at the time, they understood and respected the reasons why I had taken this line, as that was my job.

I learned an important lesson over these incidents. The dangers of putting your conscience and judgement before your popularity are often far less than we politicians realise. The loss of votes in the short term is often compensated for in the long term by the gain in respect. Many voters want their MP to do what is right and often respect those who do, even while disagreeing with them. The scope for a bit of courage in politics is far greater than we think it is, even in this age of spin and the dark arts of ‘triangulation’.

I was beginning to get a wider reputation in the Party, too. I refused all requests to play a role in the National Party, believing that my job was to win Yeovil; the rest could come later. Nevertheless, at the 1981 Liberal Assembly in Llandudno I led the debate on a successful motion to oppose the deployment of cruise missiles, causing acute embarrassment to David Steel and the Party leadership. I still regard this speech as one of the best I have ever made, and it got me my first mentions in the national Press.
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It also made me popular with the Party’s radical element (though I remember warning them at the time that, not being a unilateralist or a member of CND, I would probably soon part with them on this issue when the situation changed). But it did not make me popular with the Party hierarchy, and I remember overhearing one of our senior peers asking, ‘Who is this bloody boy scout, Paddy Ashdown?’

Llandudno was also the Assembly in which David Steel won support for the Party to join with the SDP in creating the Liberal–SDP Alliance. This enabled him to end his leader’s speech with his famous exhortation: ‘Go back to your constituencies and prepare for government!’

Increasingly, Yeovil was by now being picked out as an example of effective campaigning and a rising prospect and, together with other candidates from potentially winnable seats, I spoke on our successes so far to a crowded meeting at the annual Assembly at Bournemouth in 1982. Earlier that year David Penhaligon did a tour of potential target seats in the region and reported back that, in his view, the best prospect for a Liberal gain in the south-west was Yeovil. After this we started getting visits from VIPs and MPs, including Clement Freud, David Penhaligon himself, John Pardoe and, in late 1982, with the election coming into view, David Steel, who opened our newly refurbished (i.e., repainted by Jane, myself and some volunteers) offices in the Yeovil Liberal Club.

But, just as things were beginning to move forward strongly for us politically, they began to deteriorate sharply for us from a personal point of view. By 1981 the first Thatcher recession was beginning to bite sharply and was affecting Morlands, like many other small businesses. The pound was rising, causing the exports, which formed a major portion of Morlands’ business, to become more expensive and
our foreign competitors’ imports to become cheaper. In early 1981 I had to begin laying off workers, which I hated. But worse was to come. Later that year it finally became clear that the whole of Morlands was collapsing, and a few months after this I had to call all my workers together to tell them that Tescan would close and we would all lose our jobs. It was, needless to say, a terrible and painful day.

It also left our family with a real crisis. We now had no financial cushion left. I would have to live off unemployment benefit until I got a job. And getting a job during the recession of 1981–2 was going to be very difficult. I put in perhaps two-hundred-and-fifty applications for local jobs over the following months. All were rejected. I even looked into the possibility of training as a heavy goods vehicle driver (because the money was so good), but soon found I had absolutely no aptitude for the work. (In retrospect this was probably a good thing, for I am, by universal acknowledgement, a shocking driver and would have been, I am certain, lethal at the wheel of a large truck.)

I had by now persuaded the Constituency to sell one of its old Liberal Halls and buy a small town-centre property in Yeovil at 5 Waterloo Lane. In this we now housed Clarissa and another second-hand photo-offset litho to keep her company and share the work. I spent much of my unemployed time growing the printing business, which was now taking on work from constituencies all over the south-west and even commercial work from local community organisations. All the profits from this, however, were ploughed back into the Constituency party, so this was just a time-filler for me and not a money-earner.

Meanwhile, Jane earned us some much-needed extra cash by cooking produce for a local market and picking apples on the village fruit farm. In the autumn we used to go out as a family and gather what we could from the countryside to put in our deep freeze for the winter, especially blackberries, which seemed to half fill the freezer at times. Sloes were another favourite, from which we made sloe gin – when we could afford the gin! This was made in early October and, by family tradition, opened on Christmas Day. On one occasion, never forgotten by my family, I boasted that we could, if need be, live off the land and, to prove it, went out gathering a small fungus called ‘fairy ring champignons’ or
Marasmius oreades
. The French dry these and use them in stews, but I made the pile I had collected into a pie with potatoes. It was so indescribably awful that no one ate a bite of it, and I have never since been trusted with the family cooking.

These were very tough and dispiriting days for us all, but, as usual, the main burden fell on Jane. Things came to a head in late June 1982 when I reviewed our finances and discovered that we now had only
£
150 left in the bank. Something had to be done. Jane and I talked about the situation late one night after the kids had gone to bed. We agreed that we would spend
£
100 of our last reserves on sending the children to Switzerland to stay with friends for their summer holidays. And then, if I had not got a job by the time they came back, I would have to give up and return to my old employers.

Nothing changed until the very last day of July, when, with one week to go before our deadline, two things happened. The first was that I opened the post in the morning to find a cheque for a
£
1,000 from the Rowntree Trust, with a note saying that they hoped I would accept this and that it would help me keep going. It was only later that I realised that my good friend, fellow candidate and future Chief Whip, Archy Kirkwood, had played a part in this. He was working at the time in the Liberal Whips’ Office in Parliament, had spotted my predicament and, together with Richard Wainwright, the Liberal MP for Colne Valley (who had not at the time met me, but in his supporting letter for the grant said he had been impressed by the chorus of support in my favour), had persuaded the Rowntree Trust Social Fund to help. Archy has since dug up my reply to this offer. It is dated 1 August 1982 and reads, ‘I did not believe in fairy godmothers until I read your letter! Quite simply, this [offer] could not have arrived at a more opportune moment’.

The second event, which occurred later that same day, was that I heard that I had been successful in obtaining a post as a Youth Worker in Dorset County Council, funded by the Community Programme.
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The salary was, of course very low, but it was a job, which meant a regular income coming in, and we were delighted.

I started my new job in September 1982 in County Hall, Dorchester and soon found myself totally engrossed in it. My title was ‘Youth Initiative Officer’, a new temporary post which was to last as long as the Community Programme funding did. The task was to work with the County’s Youth Centres to devise schemes to help the young unemployed. I learned a huge amount from my colleagues in the Dorset Youth Service, who, like my colleagues in Normalair, were welcoming
and patient in introducing me to the complexities of youth work – not least to the lesson that successful work with young people depends on having the courage to listen to them, let them take responsibility and be ready to stand back when they make mistakes, so as to give them the space to learn. In the course of this work I devised a scheme that set up a fund, made up of contributions from local businesses, dedicated to helping the young unemployed to start their own businesses, with the local businessmen who had contributed acting as ‘mentors’ to help them get started. (A very similar formula was later adopted by the Prince of Wales in his Prince’s Youth Business Trust – now called The Prince’s Trust.) I was subsequently told by the Youth Service that in 1995 there were still some five thriving businesses in the County, employing several tens of people, which had started life under this scheme.