Speaking for Myself (14 page)

Parliamentary politics is very different from local politics, and it required a change of focus. On a practical level, Tony began to do more trade union work, getting Derry to introduce him to his union solicitors. He also published an article against the need for a Bill of Rights, his thesis being that with a Bill of Rights, you would be entrusting power to nonelected judges, who are basically white and upper-middle-class.

Union membership was mandatory if you wanted to be a candidate, so while Tony signed up with the Transport and General Workers Union (T & G) in the northeast, I ended up in the central London branch of MATSU, the white-collar arm of the General and Municipal Boilermakers Union (GMB). It was a complete farce. The only people who turned up at board meetings were people like us, who’d basically joined the unions to get credibility and to get on the candidate list.

To get himself known, Tony put himself forward to give lectures at trade union conferences. Barristers were still viewed with suspicion by such audiences, and that was where I came in. I was his passport to working-class acceptability: “I might be posh, but this is my working-class wife, whose father is Tony Booth — you know, the well-known left-winger.” At the end of these things, there was usually some kind of sing-along, and inevitably that would be my cue.

“Cherie will now sing you some Liverpool songs,” Tony would announce, to tentative applause. Then I would put my hands together, open my mouth, and sing “The Leaving of Liverpool” or “In My Liverpool Home,” because Liverpudlians were always powerful in the trade union movement. Thus it was that Tony Blair and Cherie Booth got known within the regional Labour Party, and soon we were both actively looking for seats.

On October 1, 1981, the MP Sir Graham Page died. Though not exactly a household name, he had held my hometown, Crosby, for the Conservatives since 1953, and his death turned our old neighborhood into front-page news (which it had never been while he was alive). Shirley Williams, Secretary of State for Education in the Callaghan government, had lost her seat in the landslide Tory victory of 1979. This could be her chance for a comeback, though not for Labour: she was one of the founders of the SDP. Since she was a good Catholic girl, and the only woman in the Cabinet, her defection had struck me like a slap in the face. When it was announced that she was standing for my hometown (unlike in America, where candidates tend to have long roots in their districts, it is common in England for candidates to choose a race they think can win, even if far from home), I thought,
For goodness’ sake. I’ll throw my hat in the ring!
My father was incredibly excited, though I knew I wouldn’t have a hope in hell.

There was no grand plan, but I have always believed that if an opportunity comes along, you should grab it. Having been fascinated by politics for years, I felt I was at least as good as the other people I had seen put their names forward. If they could, why not me? I saw what was happening to Britain under Thatcher — unemployment and related misery rising inexorably. It wasn’t enough just to hope that somebody else would do something about it. That somebody could be me!

I didn’t even make the candidate short list, while Shirley Williams romped home to become the first SDP MP. However, it certainly got me thinking.

A few months later, at the end of February 1982, another Tory died: Sir Ronald Bell, MP for Beaconsfield, a small town about twenty miles west of London. This time Tony threw his hat into the ring. My father was partly responsible. Knowing that Tony was interested in getting into mainstream politics, my dad arranged for him to have lunch with an MP called Tom Pendry, and Tony came back that evening very excited. Tom had mentioned Beaconsfield; why didn’t he put himself forward for that? He wouldn’t win, but it would be good practice, and, more important, it was sure to be very high profile. Tom knew somebody quite senior in the local Labour Party, and he could put Tony in touch.

Beaconsfield had been Disraeli’s constituency, and basically it had remained Conservative ever since. The Beaconsfield Labour Party wasn’t exactly thriving, and it needed all the help it could get. During the monthlong campaign, Tony put his practice on hold and stayed with my mother in Oxford, driving into Beaconsfield every morning. He didn’t come back to Mapledene Road until after the election on May 27. I would join him in Oxford on weekends but otherwise stayed in London, going up by train to help him campaign whenever my commitments in court allowed.

The timing of the election couldn’t have been worse for a party in opposition. We were right in the middle of the Falklands War: Argentina had invaded the British-owned island of South Georgia in March, and at the end of April came the sinking of the Argentine cruiser
Belgrano,
with the loss of more than three hundred lives. The whole of England was in a state of war fever, with Margaret Thatcher cast in the role of Boadicea.

Everyone joined in the campaigning. Even our old friend Bruce Roe, a Conservative from birth, drove round the streets of Beaconsfield in a sports car, blasting out “Vote for Blair.” Tony’s family was there en masse: Sarah, Bill, and, of course, Tony’s dad, along with his new wife, Olwen. Leo and Olwen had married just four months after us. (I had kept the third tier of our wedding cake for them.) Olwen made all the difference in Leo’s life, and from my perspective she was a dream mother-in-law.

On the distaff side, Lyndsey, Auntie Audrey, and my mum chipped in. But the stars in the Booth camp were my dad and Pat Phoenix. By this time they were courting, if not actually an item. After he’d been released from the hospital in the summer of 1981, my father had returned to Ferndale Road, there being nowhere else for him to go. One evening when he and Grandma were watching
Coronation Street,
Grandma remembered that he had known Pat Phoenix, who played the show’s perennial sex symbol, Elsie Tanner, in the old days. She suggested that he look her up, and they reconnected.

The presence of Tony Booth and Pat Phoenix always guaranteed publicity. She in particular was an inspiration: always beautifully turned out, always with a ready smile, always gracious.

My dad didn’t share Pat’s innate sense of decorum, however. One afternoon we were touring the district’s villages, with Pat and my father leading the way in one car and Tony and I in the car behind. As we were enjoying rural England at its most beautiful — hedges overflowing with bluebells and cow parsley — my dad decided to liven things up a bit by playing “Give Peace a Chance” over the loudspeakers. This was immediately after the sinking of the
Belgrano,
so it was not a good idea on many levels.

Tony was having none of it. “For God’s sake, man, turn that racket off!” he yelled out the window. It took some time for my father to comply, because he simply didn’t hear: Tony Blair versus John Lennon at full volume was no competition. My husband failed to see the humor in it. Fortunately, the message of peace and love, and the subsequent altercation, was heard only by the cows.

Most campaigning is not that glamorous. Knocking on doors, smile at the ready and leaflet in hand, is not everyone’s idea of fun. But I have always loved it, not least because I love meeting people, which ultimately is what it is all about. Whether I have ever persuaded anyone to vote for someone they wouldn’t otherwise have voted for is another question. But I could never be accused of being a shrinking violet.

I don’t think the Beaconsfield Labour Party had any idea what energy and commitment they had got in Tony Blair. It is hard to imagine a group of party activists more fired with enthusiasm, and the atmosphere was tremendous. Of course, by no stretch of the imagination was Beaconsfield winnable, so the most important job was to identify who the Labour supporters were and to make sure they cast their votes, which was important psychologically both to Tony and to the party at large. I was happy to do anything required of me, particularly asking, in the nicest possible way, whether they were intending to support the young and vibrant Labour candidate, who also happened to be my husband. Whenever we could, Tony and I campaigned together, working our way through the electoral roll of the town and its satellite villages, one street at a time. It was a long process, but we were so happy in our joint endeavor. Tony was in his element. Everyone loved him, even die-hard Tory matrons, who once they saw it was the candidate himself coming down the drive, would personally open their front doors to shake his hand (though a couple did set their dogs on him).

Midway through the campaign, Tony took time off to be best man for his brother. Bill was marrying Katy Tse from Hong Kong. The wedding was behind Manchester Square, just north of Oxford Street, but the timing was very tight. I brought Tony’s morning suit with me, so he dashed in from Beaconsfield, changed, performed his duties, and then dashed straight back again, not realizing that he was still in his wedding outfit. A prospective Labour candidate could hardly campaign dressed like that, so as soon as he realized what he had done, he had to dash back to the church again.

Tom Pendry had been right: Beaconsfield was as high profile as they come. Among those who turned up to show their support for the Labour candidate was Michael Foot, then party leader, who came up and had lunch with Tony. Tony had discovered that they were both fans of P. G. Wodehouse, and the poor man was almost in tears, so happy to find someone with whom he could talk about Jeeves and Wooster — much preferred to being harangued about policies by the Labour left.

The whole
Newsnight
team was covering the by-election for BBC TV, and following this lunch, the candidate and the Labour leader were buttonholed outside the restaurant. “Whatever happens tomorrow,” Foot said, “in Tony Blair we have a man I know is going to go far in the Labour Party.” Not for the first time, P. G. Wodehouse had worked magic.

Tony’s campaign had been based on local concerns, not broader Labour mandates. For instance, he’d joined forces with a local pop star’s wife on an environmental issue. Indeed, toward the end of the campaign, a leaflet went out headed “Why Tories Are Voting for Blair.” It turned out to be prophetic, but not in Beaconsfield.

As expected, Tony lost to the Conservative candidate. But he made his mark and showed his skills at campaigning and bringing people together. I remember one journalist commenting, “In Tony Blair you have the candidate that every Tory mother would love their daughter to bring home as son-in-law.”

The night the results came in, the Labour Party–appointed press officer added a final sentence to Tony’s “acceptance” speech: “And that’s why I pledge that I’ll come back and fight this seat again in the eighty-three election.” When Tony saw this, he shook his head.

“I can’t say this, Cherie,” he said. “If I do, then I can wave good-bye to ever becoming an MP.”

“So take it out.”

“Well — you know, they’ve all been really great —”

“Don’t be silly. Take it out!”

He did.

After the election Michael Foot wrote Tony a very nice letter saying what a good candidate he’d been, that he felt Tony had a lot to offer the Labour Party, and not to despair.

In fact, Tony showed no signs of despair. Quite the contrary. By now he had the bug. He might be doing well at the Bar — he was both incredibly hardworking and proving to be a skilled advocate — but he now knew that what he really wanted was to be in Parliament. The problem was finding a winnable seat. Once an MP is elected, he or she tends to stay put, and deselection is rare.

Over the next eleven months we became like vultures. In June Tony tried for Mitcham and Morden and got nowhere. In February 1983 he went for Bermondsey and was again shut out. We both tried unsuccessfully for Oxford East — not a by-election, but everyone was now gearing up for the general election. I at least made it to the final selection.

Following the Labour candidate’s defeat in Bermondsey, all the failed by-election candidates were called in by the party’s National Executive Committee (NEC) to analyze what had happened. The view of everyone, apart from Tony, was that “we haven’t been left- wing enough.” It was then that Tony began to articulate what eventually became the political creed that led to New Labour.

What with all the excitement of Beaconsfield, we had failed to organize our vacation. Not for the first time, my mum came to the rescue with a hotel in Portugal that she could book for us through the office. As neither Tony nor I had been there before, it sounded like the perfect solution.

After his defeat, Tony had decided to concentrate on the northeast. First, a seat in the Labour heartland was more likely to be winnable, and second, it was where his roots were. As usual we worked through August, picking up bits and pieces, then one afternoon Tony called me in chambers.

“Good news and bad news,” he said. “The good news is that a seat in Middlesbrough has come up. I’ve had a word with some of my mates in the T & G, and they think I stand a good chance!”

“But that’s fantastic! So what’s the bad news?”

“One of the key selection meetings is when we’re supposed to be in Portugal. So I’m afraid you’ll have to ask your mum to cancel . . .”

My mum was furious. I was simply resigned. It was so late in the game that we lost all the money we’d put down.

In many ways this constituency was exactly what Tony had been hoping for, which was how I came to spend the night of my twenty-eighth birthday in the Middlesbrough Travel Lodge while Tony went to a meeting. I can remember ringing my mum from this miserable hotel room on my rather miserable birthday and her saying, “I don’t know why you married that Tony Blair. It’s just ridiculous.”

Around ten o’clock he was back at the hotel looking hangdog and shamefaced. There was no point staying in Middlesbrough any longer, he said. Another candidate — who duly became the MP — had sewn it all up long before. I have to say it came as a great relief. Middlesbrough had singularly failed to inspire me. Tony was determined not to be downhearted, displaying a character trait that would stand him in good stead. As the Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers song has it, “Pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and start all over again.”