What a Carve Up!

1

Editor’s Note [1995]: Henry Winshaw remained true to this resolve and has, indeed, some claim to be considered one of the country’s most prolific political diarists. The task of editing his journals — which run to some four million words in total — has proved an enormous one, but it is hoped that the first volume at least will be ready for publication early next year. In the meantime these few short extracts must serve by way of an appetizer.

2

This reticence, it seems, was later surmounted: Ms Carpenter married Henry Winshaw in the spring of 1953

3

Social Insurance and Allied Services

by William Henry Beveridge (1879–1963) became the blueprint for Britain’s post-war welfare legislation and, in particular, laid the theoretical groundwork for the establishment of the National Health Service (see below, passim).

4

Godfrey Winshaw (born 1909) had been shot down by the Germans over Berlin on November 30th 1942. For a thorough, if rather speculative, account of the family crisis which followed, see Michael Owen,

The Winshaw Legacy: A Family Chronicle

(Peacock Press, 1991).

5

This last couplet makes little sense, unfortunately, since Godfrey Winshaw’s body was never recovered from Germany. The impressionable young Henry’s excess of grief would seem to have blinded him to this detail.

6

Margaret Hilda Roberts (born Grantham, Lines., October 13th 1925), later Margaret Thatcher, later Baroness Thatcher of Kesteven, became President of the OUCA in the autumn of 1946.

7

Aneurin ‘Nye’ Bevan (1897–1960), Labour MP for Ebbw Vale who in 1946 obtained passage of the National Health Service Act. Biography:

Aneurin Bevan,

by Michael Foot

(2 vols., London, 1962 and 1973).

8

There arises a regrettable lacuna in the diaries at this point. Either Winshaw kept no records at all for the years 1949–59, or — as is more likely — the relevant volumes have been irretrievably lost. Whatever the explanation, we are lacking any account of his rapid rise to industrial prominence after graduating from Oxford, his selection as a Labour candidate in 1952, his marriage the following year, or his election to Parliament in 1955 (on the occasion, ironically, of a disastrous nationwide defeat for Labour). In my trawl for any kind of documentation which would provide a flavour of the young MP’s political acumen, I have been able to unearth only the following transcript from the BBC archives.

9

Alan Beamish (1926–): distinguished broadcaster who began his career as a BBC political correspondent, and then went on to make his name as an innovative producer throughout the Sixties and Seventies while continuing to make occasional appearances before the camera. After an unhappy period with independent television he retired abruptly in 1990.

10

Derick Heathcoat Amory (1899–1981), later first Viscount Amory, Conservative MP for Tiverton and Chancellor of the Exchequer from 1958 to 1960.

11

In the early morning of July 14th, an announcement from Baghdad Radio stated that Iraq had been ‘liberated from the domination of a corrupt group installed by imperialism’. King Faisal, the Crown Prince Abdul Ilah and General Nuri es-Said had all been assassinated in the military coup, and a Republican regime was proclaimed. At the request of King Hussein, British paratroops were then sent out to Jordan to safeguard the area.

12

Harold Macmillan (1894–1984), later Earl of Stockton. Conservative MP for Bromley and Prime Minister from 1957 to 1963.

13

Margaret Roberts had married Dennis Thatcher, then Managing Director of the Atlas Preservative Co., in December 1951. Their son Mark and daughter Carol were born two years later. (Atlas itself was sold to Castrol Oil for £560,000 in 1965.)

14

On February 3rd Macmillan had proudly told the South African parliament in Cape Town that ‘a wind of change is blowing through the continent’. Certain elements within his own party considered his position on this issue to be dangerously progressive.

15

On September 16th an intruder had broken into the family residence under rather mysterious circumstances, and met his death while launching a violent attack on Lawrence Winshaw. The incident aroused little comment at the time, although a characteristically overheated version of it can be found in Owen,

op. cit.

16

Hugh Todd Naylor Gaitskell (b. 1906), MF for South Leeds and leader of the Labour Party from 1955 until his sudden death in 1963.

17

Gaitskell’s speech in Glasgow on May 6th had been disrupted by supporters of unilateralism, leading to allegations of Trotskyist infiltration of Labour’s youth section.

18

Harold Wilson (1916–), later Baron Wilson of Rievaulx, did indeed become party leader on February 14th 1963. It’s possible, however, that Winshaw may have overestimated the extent of his animosity. I have been able to find only one instance of Wilson referring to him in print, during an interview for

The Times

in November 1965. Winshaw’s name was mentioned in connection with the abolition of the death penalty (which he opposed), and the then Prime Minister is reported to have asked: ‘Who?’

19

Richard Howard Stafford Crossman (1907–74), Labour MP for Coventry East, was at this time Leader of the House of Commons. Curiously his own copious diaries contain no reference at all to this conversation.

20

Confounding the opinion polls, the Conservatives had just won an overall majority of 31 seats in the Commons, with 46.4 % of the national vote. Edward Heath (1916–) became Prime Minister.

21

Keith Sinjohn Joseph (1918–), later Baron Joseph of Portsoken. Secretary of State for Social Services (1970–74) and subsequently for Industry (1970–81) and Education and Science (1981–86).

22

The National Health Service Reorganization Act (1973), which was finally passed on its third reading in the Commons on June 19th by a majority of 11.

23

Barbara Anne Castle (1910–), later Baroness Castle of Blackburn: Labour MP for Blackburn and at this time Secretary of State for Social Services. The strike mentioned here was threatened by paramedical staff at Charing Cross Hospital, who were refusing to serve forty penthouse suites set aside for private patients.

24

Margaret Thatcher had defeated Edward Heath in a leadership ballot and on February 10th 1975 was elected the first woman leader of a major British political party.

25

He probably did. The article in question was entitled ‘The Dawn of a Golden Age’ and contained little evidence of socialist bias.

26

Winshaw’s reference is to James Callaghan (1912–), later Baron Callaghan of Cardiff. His opponents in the leadership contest had been Michael Foot and Denis Healey.

27

Reginald Ernest Prentice (1912–), later Baron Prentice of Daventry, justified his sudden change of political allegiance in an ingenious volume called

Right Turn

(1978). He subsequently became Social Security Minister for two years in Mrs Thatcher’s first government.

28

Respected and powerful merchant bank with which Thomas Winshaw (1914–91) was long associated, first as director and later as Chairman.

29

The Telecommunications Bill for the privatizing of British Telecom was introduced into the Commons in November 1982; it was not actually passed until April 12th 1984, after Mrs Thatcher had won her second term.

30

Sir (Ernest) Roy Griffiths (1926–), Managing Director of Sainsbury’s plc, was Chairman of the Management Inquiry into the NHS which published its report in 1983. It was highly critical of the ‘lack of a clearly defined general management function’ in the Health Service.

31

The confrontation between miners and police took place at Orgreave and was the most violent of the year-long strike.

32

Neil Kinnock (1942–): former leader of the Labour Party, now one of Britain’s two Commissioners to the European Community in Brussels.

33

Dr Jane Gillam, to whom Winshaw is referring here, left the medical profession in 1991 and has since become well known as a freelance journalist writing widely on health issues. For a different account of her television appearance with Henry Winshaw, see the following extract.

34

Mrs Thatcher’s government was returned for a third term on June 11th 1987, with an overall majority of 101 seats and 42.2 % of the national vote.

35

Promoting Better Health

(1987).

36

Working for Patients

and

Caring for People

(both 1989).

37

Margaret Thatcher was deposed as leader of the Conservatives on November 22nd 1990. Her successor, John Major, led the party into its unprecedented fourth election victory in 1992, thereby ensuring continuity in health policy. But this was a triumph, of course, which Henry Winshaw would never live to see.

38

(after several appalling procrastinations)