Speaking for Myself (25 page)
What had emerged from Philip’s focus groups was that I needed to project a softer image, to show that I was an ordinary mum, which I fundamentally was (though the idea that ordinary mums go round guest editing glossy magazines was another matter). At first I thought “guest editing” meant that I had physically to edit the magazine, but Lindsay remained very firmly in the driver’s seat. “My” issue of
Prima
would be built round my interests, she explained. On the lighter side, knitting emerged as the front-runner. I had been given my first knitting needles by Grandma when I was three. Tea cozies were my pièces de résistance and — I liked to think — much sought after as collector’s items. For this exercise, however, they wanted something that involved a pattern, so we went for a cable-knit sweater. (I didn’t actually knit it, though I would have enjoyed the challenge. There just wasn’t enough time.) Then there were my more serious interests: the abuse of women and children. I had recently been approached by Refuge, a charity for battered wives, and asked whether I would join its board. Until then the charity work I had done had been directly related to my work as a lawyer: giving free advice to the Child Poverty Action Group and the National Centre for Citizenship and the Law, and of course my Wednesday evening sessions in Tower Hamlets.
Veena, whose parents’ flat I had borrowed in Maida Vale, had by this time divorced her first husband and married a charismatic barrister called Gareth Williams, and there was talk of him becoming Attorney General or Solicitor General. It was Gareth who approached me about getting involved with the Justice for Children campaign of the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC). Its aim was to get lawyers to raise funds for an NSPCC facility, which traced child-abuse rings and had specialist social workers who would support the kids through the court process. For a child, giving evidence in a criminal trial is always difficult and sometimes traumatic, and part of what we were looking for — in addition to raising funds — was a change in the way defense counsel cross-examined, because many barristers were still aggressive with even quite young witnesses.
Although it might appear self-defeating to bully a child with a jury present, if the child contradicts himself or herself, he or she is branded a liar, and the abuser gets off. We wanted to change that climate. The Tories had already started exploring whether we could make things easier for children, and after Labour came in, we did quite a lot to support victims in court, including battered women and rape victims, and to change the rules so that they could give evidence behind a screen. All that began with the Justice for Children campaign.
Prima
also allowed me to build on a campaign by Refuge to raise its profile. I wrote an article about how I had become involved as a young lawyer and how important it was for me and for women in general.
Alas, Tony’s office was very dubious about the article. Why should I draw attention to myself? A woman brought in to look at the thorny issue of how I should present myself decided I was asking for trouble. “People are going to assume that the reason you got involved is that your father beat your mother.”
“But he didn’t,” I said. “And that is not why I am doing this.” (In fact, in all these years, nobody has once suggested that it was.) Thanks to Fiona fighting on my side, the office finally agreed, but they remained decidedly apprehensive, muttering under their breath about not needing the extra hassle. They didn’t get any hassle, and my getting involved in the campaign started a relationship with Refuge that continues to this day.
In this, as in so much else, having Fiona there to champion my cause made all the difference. Over those early years she kept me sane: not only in the obvious way — keeping the mail under control and running my schedule once we got into Downing Street — but most important in fighting for family life to be included in the thinking of Tony’s office, something she and I had a common interest in.
In September 1995 Euan duly started at the London Oratory School. On the first day of term, those mothers among us who could went with our sons on the subway. They were only eleven, and most of them had never traveled on the underground on their own. We left home at ten to seven, having arranged to meet up with Euan’s friend at Arsenal station. At Earls Court we changed onto the District Line. By now the carriage was filled with boys dressed in the same uniform, and they were chatting and joking with each other.
“Did you hear?” one boy said to his friend opposite.
“Hear what?”
“Tony Blair’s son’s going to be in our school today.”
Euan said nothing but nudged me, and I gave him a little smile.
From West Brompton station it’s about an eight-minute walk to the school, and that morning our route was lined with older students to mark out the way for the new pupils. As we walked down Seagrave Road, the atmosphere was jocular and lively. A happy start, I thought, to this new chapter in my son’s life. As we approached the school, there was a flurry of activity, and other mothers walking in front of me pulled their children to one side. Then I saw them: three photographers — paparazzi — shouting out my name and running toward us. It was a horrible feeling. It was as if the Red Sea had parted, and Euan and I had to walk up the middle, everyone turning to look and these guys running, their cameras held up against their faces. What could I do? If I tried to join the other mothers, it would end up with their children getting photographed as well, which would get me in even more trouble. I kept walking. By the time we got to the gate, Euan was close to tears, and while everybody else waited until all the new pupils had arrived, we were bundled in, then I was smuggled out another entrance. I got back on the underground feeling upset and angry — upset for my son, but furious with myself because I had failed to protect him.
Once back in chambers, I called Tony’s office, told them what had happened, and said that, in my view, it was a breach of the Press Complaints Code, a set of journalistic standards established by the media to govern how the news should be covered. It worked. After pressure from the office, no English newspaper printed the pictures, although the “story” was reported. I couldn’t believe it. This was an eleven-year-old boy who was going to be traveling every day through central London on his own. Did I really want him to be recognized? Would any mother? Two years later, when Nicky went to the Oratory, he refused point-blank to allow me to go with him on the first day, and who could blame him?
Election Fever
N
ow that Tony was Leader of the Opposition, our visits to Sedgefield became less frequent. Looking back from the vantage point of a woman now in her fifties, I don’t really know how I coped. Although we kept basic clothes at Myrobella, there was still a lot to take with us, not least the hamsters that, for some reason lost in the annals of the Blair family history, always came, too. Live animals weren’t the only thing to think about.
One Friday I was doing a tribunal in Cambridge against Charlie Falconer. As we had a dinner party in the constituency that evening, I’d done the shopping for it in London the night before. I thought the case was going to settle, but it didn’t, and so we were fighting. So there I was fishing out my brief from my bulging briefcase, and Charlie remembers watching in horror as a leg of lamb emerged, dripping blood all over the inside of my sleeve.
As the children grew older, Tony would increasingly go to Sedgefield on his own, leaving on Friday and returning early on Saturday evening. On weekends like those, when the nanny was having her well-deserved time off, I would finally have time to be a normal mother. A favorite Saturday activity was the Sumix Centre, a children’s choir based in Thornhill Square, where Bill and Katy Blair lived. After dropping the kids off at Sumix, I’d pop into Bill and Katy’s for a cup of coffee, then pick up the kids and go home via Lyndsey’s. Then it would be back to Richmond Crescent to help make supper for when Daddy got home.
I have always enjoyed cooking. Roasts were the Myrobella specialty, and on a Sunday I would busy myself in the kitchen while Tony took the children for a walk, often to a place that we called “Wind in the Willows,” a house his parents had always hoped to buy but never did. In London my repertoire revolved around spaghetti and lasagne. We always needed things that could stretch because we never knew who would drop in. I would often experiment, not always successfully it must be admitted. On weekends we would eat together as a family. During the week the nanny usually cooked for the kids, while I did dinner for Tony and me.
By the end of 1995, election fever was mounting. John Major’s government lurched from crisis to crisis, and the general feeling was that it was hanging by a thread. The Tory majority in Parliament was down to twenty-one members and falling; rebels were defying the party line; dissent within the Cabinet over Europe was rife (Major called the Euroskeptics “the bastards”); and there was a tide of sleaze, culminating in a trail of brown envelopes originally reported to be stuffed with cash intended as bribes for several MPs in the “cash for questions” scandal. In addition, the repercussions of the Black Wednesday stock market crash continued to affect both business and individuals, including our family.
Meanwhile I worked on losing weight, while Carole helped me build up my wardrobe. This was not as flip or self-centered as some people might think. The days of thinking that Tony could go to a function on his own while I slobbed out in front of the television were long gone. I was part of the package. Everything would be judged, often cruelly.
Suddenly we were on everybody’s list. Tony’s view was that if an event had political implications, we had to go. So we did, and of course our picture got taken. I can remember the writer Ken Follett, a very public Labour supporter, inviting us to his house: a private dinner, or so we thought. The press had prior notice, however, and the moment we opened the car doors, cameras were clicking. Alastair was furious and gave Ken a tongue-lashing. No doubt he was rude in the way that only Alastair can be, and I don’t think Ken ever forgave him. Alastair took the view that the Folletts were doing it for their own publicity; the Folletts said they hadn’t tipped anyone off and were offended that he’d said they had.
The clothes-buying routine was slowly evolving into something less hit-and-miss. I was using Ronit Zilkha, Caroline Charles, Betty Jackson, Ally Capellino, Paddy Campbell, and Paul Costelloe, all British designers. The clothes would usually have to be altered (that bottom, those hips), and soon a more organized approach evolved. By the time I got to Downing Street, I’d choose from the collections six months before they appeared in the shops. (I’d go to the offices and warehouses once the particular designs had been earmarked.) In September it would be things for the following summer. In January or February I’d be buying for the following autumn/winter season.
It was fascinating to get a glimpse of how the fashion industry works. There I was in the thick of it, talking to buyers and models as well as designers. I saw just how thin the models really were and how they smoked nonstop, and although I never saw them doing cocaine myself, I knew from what others told me that it was rife. I became very friendly with some of the designers. Paddy Campbell, for example, is a fascinating woman who started off as an actress, and we found we had a lot in common.
I didn’t specifically look for women designers, but apart from one or two, it ended up that way. The lovely Paul Costelloe was an exception, a real Irish flirt. I’ve also bought things from Paul Smith. In 1995 Tony and I were invited to an event in the Indian community, and they suggested that it might be nice if I could wear a sari. I mentioned this to Bharti Vyas, the woman who ran the beauty clinic where I’d had my first facial, and one of her staff — a cousin, I think — was persuaded to lend me one of hers. I loved it. A sari is incredibly flattering for my kind of shape; it really makes you stand properly and feel a bit like a princess. A few weeks later, we went to a reception in the Sikh community, and a young woman came up and introduced herself. She was a designer, she said, and would like to work with me.
“The thing is,” she said, “you and I are the same shape, so if something works on me, it would probably work well on you.” That was how I met the fantastic Babs Mahil, who has designed all my Indian things ever since.
Early in 1997 Tony and I met Diana, Princess of Wales. Maggie Rae, by then a partner at another firm, had been involved in her divorce, and Diana had told her that she wanted to meet Tony. She was keen to show that she had something to offer this country, she said, and believed she could do a lot to help promote a more modern image of Britain. As the need for Britain to engage with the modern world was central to Tony’s mission, he was quite taken with the idea.
It was all conducted in the utmost secrecy. Maggie invited Diana to her place for dinner, and Tony and I were invited, as well as Alastair and Fiona. By this time Maggie had moved from her original wreck, but not very far. Diana had already got there by the time Tony and I arrived, and she was down in the kitchen chatting with everybody. She seemed perfectly at home in ordinary surroundings, even making Alastair a cup of tea at one point. What most struck me was how completely obsessed Alastair was by the idea that she fancied him. She was certainly flirting with him (more than with Tony), much to Fiona’s irritation, but every time she moved out of earshot, he’d say to Tony, “She really fancies me, and she’s only asked you so that she can see me.” Although he was doing it in a jokey way, such is his ego that part of him probably wanted to believe it.
There is no doubt that Diana was beautiful, more so in the flesh, perhaps, than came across in photographs. She was tall and slim and immaculately turned out. With me, I think, she was anxious to show her serious side. (No doubt she’d worked out that this would go down better than the flirtatious eyelash fluttering that had Alastair drooling.) Although she said she was no great intellectual, she projected the image of someone who had something to offer. And I believe she did have something to offer. If you have that kind of charisma, it makes sense to use it. Tony certainly saw this, and no doubt in Tony she saw someone who had a similar allure and magnetism.