Speaking for Myself (22 page)

I didn’t know Alastair that well in those days, though you always knew when he was around. He was tall and handsome, though not the kind of handsome that appealed to me. He had a definite presence, and I knew from Tony that he had a powerful personality. What I didn’t know was that he had a temper and an ego you could build a house on.

On the way to Avignon, Tony had been through what he wanted me to do. Alastair was the best man for the job, he said, and he wanted him. It would mean his taking a big cut in salary, so both he and Fiona had to be persuaded that it was worth it. My job was to be nice to Fiona, to reassure her that Tony was a family man, that it would all be all right, that Tony had his priorities and the job wouldn’t ruin her family life. So that’s what I did, whether we were washing up, watching the children, or chopping vegetables together on the kitchen table.

“This is our chance to do something of real importance, Fiona. Tony feels Alastair has a real contribution to make. He says that Alastair is the best man for the job, and I believe him. It won’t be that bad, as I’m not going to let Tony lose sight of the family thing.”

In the end Alastair agreed. He didn’t say so in so many words — at least not in my hearing — but we left for Tim Allan’s parents’ place in Italy with Tony confident that he’d got what he came for.

Our onward journey was as chaotic as usual. We left Flassan at four in the morning, the children lying like sacks in the back of Alastair’s car. Our train to Italy left Marseille around 6:30 a.m. It was all a great rush, and in the end we got on a local train, though at least we had a carriage to ourselves, meaning we could sing songs — my usual way of keeping at bay the kids’ favorite question: “Are we nearly there?”

Chapter 16

Hurdles

I
n 1993 Tony wrote a pamphlet for the Fabian Society, of which we had both long been members. In it he criticized the continued presence, unchanged since it was written in 1917, of Clause IV of the Labour Party constitution, which read:

To secure for the workers by hand or by brain the full fruits of their industry and the most equitable distribution thereof that may be possible upon the basis of the common ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange, and the best obtainable system of popular administration and control of each industry or service.

His position was “How can we be a Party who are supposed to be of the modern world when we still have as part of our objective ‘the common ownership of the means of production and exchange’?” Everyone accepted that wholesale nationalization was no longer part of our policy, but the fact that Clause IV was still there could be used as a stick to beat us with — either by the Tory press, who could pretend that we really did want to nationalize everything in sight, or Militant, who could berate us for not getting on with what was supposed to be a key objective.

Only those closest to Tony knew what he was planning to do. The occasion, of course, would be the annual Labour Party Conference. Scrapping Clause IV, he believed, would set the tone for all that would follow. On one level it was only a gesture — it was axing something that was already dead — but gestures are sometimes important, and if he could get the party behind him on this, the left would be out in the cold, and the modernizing process could begin in earnest. If the electorate was to trust us to run the country, we had to show that the Labour Party had made a clean break with the past.

Paradoxically, the Labour Party as then constituted was a very conservative organization. It didn’t like change, and Clause IV was seen as part of the family furniture, handed down from generation to generation, a much-loved heirloom but now useless and out-of-date.

Although Tony’s personal credit was running high, it was not enough to guarantee agreement. There were plenty of reactionary elements about, especially within union ranks, and he would need all the help he could get. He would even have his Shadow Chancellor to square. Gordon didn’t like rocking the boat, and his line was “Why bother, given it doesn’t really matter?” Tony’s answer to that was “public perception.”

Meanwhile I had my own agenda in relation to the 1994 Labour Party Conference. I was determined that the leader’s wife would go out on that platform looking good enough to take on the world — or at least the massed ranks of the Tory Party — so I continued with my dietary regime and exercise, and I found a new hairdresser. André Suard worked at Michaeljohn, a hip London salon. He had no idea who I was when I first went in — just a new client with a haircut that needed fixing. A radical attempt by my former hairdresser to give me a more modern look had resulted in what can only be described as a mullet. André was in his midtwenties. Although his father was Italian, he had been brought up and trained in France and as a result had a wonderfully quirky accent.

The spiky fringe was not the look for a woman who wanted to be taken seriously, he decided, and short hair on top with a long bob looked doubly ridiculous after being crammed under a sweaty wig during a hot day in court. Although I had a lot of hair, André explained, it was soft. The difficulty would be holding a style. As I wanted to have something I could handle myself, this became a major problem. Even after hours of blow-drying practice, I was incapable of making it look remotely “done.” If I attempted any back-combing, it looked as if a mouse had crawled in to make its nest. It was the same with my makeup. Touching up what had been done earlier had never occurred to me. I had never reapplied makeup nor worried about whether my nose or my forehead was shiny.

My new haircut had its first outing on September 23, 1994, my fortieth birthday. The previous March I had booked Frederick’s restaurant for the party. For Tony’s fortieth, we had just had a party at home. It was not a surprise party, but a surprise there certainly was. Among his things I had found an old tape recording with a label saying “BBC Radio Oxford: Ugly Rumours.” Tony’s student band! Halfway through the evening I played it. The lyrics were deeply profound — sadly, not matched by the reedy voice singing the plaintive dirge. Everybody thought it a great hoot. Well, everybody except Tony.

My mum had been warning me for some time that things would change, and not necessarily for the better, but even she was shocked when the
Evening Standard
took her photograph that evening. In fact, everybody was photographed, as if my guest list might provide a clue to who was out and who was in under the new leadership. But my party owed nothing to Labour or even to Tony. I made a little speech about how much I owed my mum — not so different from the one I’d made twenty-two years earlier, the night before I left for the LSE.

Anji had already warned me to block off Labour Party Conference week. She showed me the stage set for the platform, because I’d need to be color coordinated, or at least wear something that wouldn’t clash. The previous year, at the party conference in Brighton, I’d heard that John Smith’s wife had brought along a hairdresser who was being paid for by the party. My thought then was
Why on earth would Elizabeth Smith need a hairdresser?
Now I was thinking,
I hope to goodness André will be available!
He wasn’t, so Carole volunteered to come to ensure that I didn’t look a complete disaster. She had never been to a Labour Party Conference — she wasn’t even a member of the party — and when she asked if I thought I’d need an evening dress, I burst into laughter.

“This is a Labour Party Conference,” I said. But I would need something for the dozens of functions and receptions I’d have to attend with Tony. There would be media everywhere. It was all about photographs. I’d need something to arrive in, something for Tony’s big conference speech, and possibly something to go home in.

I was beginning to realize that the whole business was both expensive and a diplomatic minefield. If I went looking like a slob, it showed a lack of respect. If I wore the same thing all the time, that, too, showed a lack of respect. Yet I could not appear to be throwing money around. It was a question of “damned if you do, damned if you don’t.” I remembered how Norma Major, wife of the current Prime Minister, never seemed to get it right, at least as far as the press was concerned. A further constraint was that whatever designer I went for had to be homegrown, and the look needed to be “modern” to reflect the “modernizer” label.

That year conference was in Blackpool, a seaside resort north of Liverpool. I hadn’t been there since I was a little girl riding a donkey on the beach. For the first time, Tony had police security. The whole of one floor of the Imperial Hotel was sealed off. Access was by elevator, and there was a policeman standing outside our door and Labour Party stewards patrolling the corridors. I’d had no idea it was run like this. Tony was permanently holed up with Alastair, Peter, Anji, Gordon, or one of the others. I was feeling particularly unsettled, as I had left Ros in sole charge of the kids. She hadn’t even done a night on her own before, and this was for nearly a week. She was incredibly reliable and trustworthy and as mad about soccer as the boys were. All the same . . . Over the next few days, whatever else was happening, Tony and I made sure that we both spoke to them every evening, and we’d hear them arguing about who was going to tell Mum or Dad this or that piece of news.

Anji had told me that on no account could I go down to the conference on my own. If I wanted to go, somebody had to accompany me. At one point I thought,
This is utterly ridiculous. I’ve been coming to conference for years. What are they talking about? I’m hardly a novice.
So I opened the door, sneaked down the back stairs to avoid the elevator, and emerged into the hotel lobby, where I immediately caught sight of Glenys Thornton, an old friend from LSE days.

We were just having a chat when suddenly there were lights and cameras all round and someone with a microphone asking Glenys who she was. I froze. The next moment I felt a hand on my back and then on my arm, and Hilary Coffman was propelling me toward the lift, saying, “Thank you, Cherie,” and it was back to my prison.

The pair of us stood in that lift not saying a word, and I felt my blood pounding. I had known Hilary for years. She had been head of press for John Smith and had also worked for Neil Kinnock. Alastair had brought her in to work for Tony. When the lift stopped at my floor, she handed me over to Anji.

“I thought I told you not to go down there, Cherie,” Anji said as she walked me down the corridor. “You really don’t understand politics.”

“Thank you, Anji, but I do understand politics.” If looks could kill, she should have been dead. Our relationship was deteriorating rapidly. I couldn’t believe it. I was being treated like a naughty schoolgirl. These people apparently considered themselves empowered to tell me what to do.

For years I had devoted myself to helping the Labour Party — treading freezing streets, even giving up weekends and evenings. I had stood as a candidate, for goodness’ sake. As for my husband, he hadn’t always been surrounded by acolytes tending to his every need. I had been there from the beginning, encouraging him when he needed encouraging, listening when he needed someone to bounce ideas off, to talk things through with. From first to last, we were a team. Hopes, plans, dreams — ours was a true marriage, a joint endeavor. Yet this wasn’t a negotiation with my husband; it was ten other people saying “Cherie will do this.” Since I was a teenager, I had been used to having my own political opinions, and not being allowed to voice them publicly was like having a limb cut off. I sensed that I was becoming a nonperson — someone to be wheeled out when appropriate, or perhaps, like an Edwardian child, to be seen but not heard.

My humiliation was made worse by the fact that part of me knew that I couldn’t just go down and pretend that I was like any other delegate, because I wasn’t. Not anymore. I felt highly unsettled, unable to concentrate on anything. I wanted to be involved, just as I always had been, but how could I be? It had been made perfectly clear that I wasn’t wanted.

Then Alastair started fretting about Carole. “We can’t have that glamorous-looking creature here,” he announced.

“Why on earth not?”

“Because I don’t want people to know that you’re having help with your hair and makeup.”

“Elizabeth Smith did last year.”

“That was different.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Alastair. How could it be different?”

“I’m telling you, Cherie, it’s different, and I don’t want the press to know.”

“Because she’s good-looking, you mean? Is that a crime?”

He stalked off. But Alastair had spoken, and the rest had heard. From then on, Carole was banned from going anywhere. She was stuck either with me or in her room and told not to go out under any circumstances.

That conference was the first intimation I had of what was to come. Only the bathroom was sacrosanct, and then only if you remembered to lock the door. My one way of guaranteeing a bit of peace and quiet was to visit Carole’s room.

Conference proceeded in the usual way: going to meetings, listening to debates on the platform, and in the evening attending the various functions, such as Scots Night. I had done a bit of Scottish dancing in school — things like the Gay Gordons and the Eightsome Reel — but to hear it announced that “the leader and his wife will now start the dancing” proved strangely paralyzing, especially with the BBC filming the whole thing for its
Newsnight
program.

Thankfully, dancing was limited to this one occasion. On other occasions we’d simply go in and shake a few hands, Tony would make a little speech, everyone would listen, and then we’d move on to the next one. These talks were basically off-the-cuff remarks that reflected what he was thinking, things that might end up in his keynote speech. Wherever we went, we were followed by film crews, on show the whole time. Meanwhile I tried to follow Pat Phoenix’s example: be nice and smile.

It was the first time I had found myself in this position of appendage, and it did not come easily. I am by nature a doer, not a stander-and-watcher. I had already decided that I would do something for the wives of our MPs, a good number of whom were not politically active. I felt that wives generally got a raw deal in Parliament, and the Labour Party in particular didn’t look after them. (Indeed, the Tories were much better in their support of wives and children.) The least I could do, I thought, was to invite them to tea. It was agreed that I would host a tea party just for the wives of the northwest regional MPs, because few of the others would be there. This proved to be the start of what became known as Spouse in the House, a support group of which I became one of two honorary patrons.