Be Careful What You Wish For

19

GRIFF HASKINS, the Labour Party’s agent for Bristol Docklands, decided he would have to give up drinking if Giles was to have any chance of becoming leader of the party. Griff always went on the wagon for a month before any election, and on a bender for at least a month after, depending on whether they’d won or lost. And since the Member for Bristol Docklands had been safely returned to the green benches with an increased majority, he’d felt he was entitled to the occasional night off.

It wasn’t good timing when Giles called his agent the morning after he’d been on the binge to let him know that he was going to stand for leader. As Griff was nursing a hangover at the time, he called back an hour later to make sure he’d heard the member correctly. He had.

Griff immediately phoned his secretary, Penny, who was on holiday in Cornwall, and Miss Parish, his most experienced party worker, who admitted she was bored out of her mind and only came alive during election campaigns. He told them both to be waiting on platform seven at Temple Meads station at four thirty that afternoon if they wanted to be working for the next prime minister.

At five o’clock, the three of them were seated in a third-class carriage on a train bound for Paddington. By noon the following day, Griff had set up an office in the House of Commons, and another at Giles’s home in Smith Square. He still needed to recruit one more volunteer for his team.

Sebastian told Griff that he would be delighted to cancel his fortnight’s holiday to help his uncle Giles win the election, and Cedric agreed to make it a month, as the lad could only benefit from the experience, even though Sir Giles was his second choice.

Sebastian’s first job was to make a wall chart that listed all 258 Labour Members of Parliament who were entitled to vote, and then place a tick beside each name to show which category they fell into: certain to vote for Giles, red tick; certain to vote for another candidate, blue; and undecided – the most important category of all – green. Although the chart was Sebastian’s idea, it was Jessica who produced the finished article.

On the first count, Harold Wilson had 86 certainties, George Brown 57, Giles 54, and James Callaghan 19, with Undecided a crucial 42. Giles could see that his immediate task was to get rid of Callaghan and then overhaul Brown, because if the Member for Belper were to withdraw, Griff calculated that most of his votes would come their way.

After a week of canvassing, it was clear that Giles and Brown were no more than a percentage point apart in second place and, although Wilson was clearly in the lead, the political pundits all agreed that if Brown or Barrington were to withdraw it would be a close-run contest.

Griff never stopped roaming the corridors of power, happy to arrange private meetings with the candidate for any member who claimed they were undecided. Several of them would remain that way until the last moment, as they had never enjoyed so much attention in their lives, and were also keen to end up backing the winner. Miss Parish was never off the phone, and Sebastian became Giles’s eyes and ears, continually running between the House of Commons and Smith Square, keeping everyone up to date.

Giles delivered twenty-three speeches during the first week of the campaign, although they rarely made more than a paragraph in the following day’s papers, and never the front page. With only two weeks to go, and Wilson beginning to look a dead cert, Giles decided it was time to go off message and take a risk. Even Griff was surprised by the reaction of the press the next morning, when Giles made every front page, including the Daily Telegraph.

‘There are too many people in this country unwilling to do a day’s work,’ Giles had told an audience of trade union leaders. ‘If someone is fit and healthy and has turned down three jobs in a period of six months, they should automatically lose their unemployment benefit.’

These words were not greeted with rapturous applause, and the initial reaction from his colleagues in the House was unfavourable; shot himself in the foot was the expression his rivals kept repeating. But as the days passed, more and more journalists began to suggest that the Labour Party had at last found a potential leader who lived in the real world, and clearly wanted his party to govern, rather than be doomed to perpetual opposition.

All 258 Labour Members of Parliament returned to their constituencies at the weekend, and they quickly discovered a groundswell in favour of the Member for Bristol Docklands. An opinion poll on the following Monday confirmed this, and put Barrington within a couple of points of Wilson, with Brown running a poor third and James Callaghan in fourth place. On Tuesday, Callaghan dropped out of the race, and told his supporters he would be voting for Barrington.

When Sebastian brought the wall chart up to date that evening, Wilson had 122, Giles 107 with 29 still undecided. It only took Griff and Miss Parish another twenty-four hours to identify the 29 MPs who, for one reason or another, were still sitting on the fence. Among them were members of the influential Fabian group, who made up 11 crucial votes. Tony Crosland, the group’s chairman, requested a private meeting with both the leading candidates, letting it be known that he was keen to hear their views on Europe.

Giles felt his meeting with Crosland had gone well, but whenever he checked the chart, Wilson still remained in the lead. However, the press were beginning to write the words ‘neck and neck’ in their headlines as the contest entered its final week. Giles knew that he would need a substantial stroke of luck if he was to overhaul Wilson in the last few days. It came in the form of a telegram delivered to his office on the Monday of the last week of the campaign.

The European Economic Community invited Giles to give the keynote speech at its annual conference in Brussels, just three days before the leadership election. The invitation didn’t mention that Charles de Gaulle had dropped out at the last minute.

‘This is your chance,’ said Griff, ‘not only to shine on the international stage, but to capture those eleven Fabian Society votes. It could make all the difference.’

The subject selected for the speech was Is Britain ready to join the Common Market? And Giles knew exactly where he stood on that issue.

‘But when am I going to find the time to write such an important speech?’

‘After the last Labour member has gone to bed, and before the first one gets up the following morning.’

Giles would have laughed, but he knew Griff meant it.

‘And when do I sleep?’

‘On the plane back from Brussels.’

Griff suggested that Sebastian accompany Giles to Brussels, while he and Miss Parish remained in Westminster, keeping a vigilant eye on the undecided.

‘Your flight takes off from London Airport at two twenty,’ said Griff, ‘but don’t forget that Brussels is an hour ahead of us, so you won’t touch down until about four ten, which will give you more than enough time to get to the conference.’

‘Isn’t that cutting it a bit fine?’ asked Giles. ‘My speech is at six.’

‘I know, but I can’t afford to have you hanging about in an airport unless it’s full of MPs who haven’t made up their minds. Now, the session you’re addressing should last about an hour, so it will end around seven, well in time for you to catch the eight-forty flight back to London, where the hour time difference will work to your advantage. Grab a taxi as soon as you land, because I want you back in the House in time for the division on the Pensions Bill at ten.’

‘So what do you expect me to do now?’

‘Get on with your speech. Everything depends on it.’

Giles spent every spare moment honing his speech, showing early drafts to his team and key supporters, and when he delivered it for the first time at his home in Smith Square just after midnight to a one-man audience, Griff declared himself well satisfied. Praise indeed.

‘I’ll be handing out embargoed copies to be checked against delivery to key members of the press tomorrow morning. That will give them more than enough time to prepare leaders and work on in-depth pieces for the next day’s papers. And I think it might be wise to let Tony Crosland see an early draft, so he feels he’s being kept in the loop. And for lazy journalists who will only skim the speech, I’ve highlighted the passage that’s most likely to capture the headlines.’

Giles turned a couple of pages of his speech until he came across Griff’s marker. I don’t wish to see Britain involved in another European war. The best youth of too many nations have spilt their blood on European soil, and not just in the last fifty years, but for the past thousand. Together we must make it possible for European wars to be found only on the pages of history books, where our children and grandchildren can read about our mistakes, and not repeat them.

‘Why that particular paragraph?’ asked Giles.

‘Because some of the papers will not only print it word for word, but won’t be able to resist pointing out that your rival never saw a shot fired in anger.’

Giles was delighted to receive a handwritten note the following morning from Tony Crosland, saying how much he’d enjoyed the speech, and looked forward to seeing the press reaction the following morning.

When Giles climbed on board the BEA flight to Brussels later that afternoon, he believed for the first time that he just might be the next leader of the Labour Party.