Liberal Lion: Jo Grimond: A Political Life

LIBERAL LION JO GRIMOND: A POLITICAL LIFE

PETER BARBERIS

Published in 2004 by I.B.Tauris & Co Ltd 6 Salem Road, London W2 4BU 175 Fi�h Avenue, New York NY 10010 www.ibtauris.com In the United States of America and in Canada distributed by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of St Martin’s Press 175 Fi�h Avenue, New York NY 10010 Copyright © Peter Barberis, 2004 The right of Peter Barberis to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or any part thereof, may not be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmi�ed, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior wri�en permission of the publisher. ���� 1 85043 627 4 ��� 978 1 85043 627 0 A full CIP record for this book is available from the British Library A full CIP record for this book is available from the Library of Congress Library of Congress catalog card: available Typeset in Palatino Linotype by Steve Tribe, Andover Printed and bound in Great Britain by MPG Books Ltd, Bodmin

Contents

Preface and Acknowledgements

iv

Part I – L�������� 1. 2. 3. 4.

First Light Into Parliament Man for the Islands Whip Hand

3 17 33 49

Part II – L�������� 5. 6. 7. 8. 9.

Leader Internationalist Orpington Man High Noon A’Whoring

67 81 97 111 127

Part III – T������� 10. 11. 12. 13. 14.

Dile�ante Revolutionary Second Wind Father of the Alliance Autumn in the Soul Liberal Lion

Notes Bibliography Index

143 159 173 187 203 217 247 257

Preface and Acknowledgements

‘R��� �� �������, ������� but biography, for that is life without theory,’ the principal character was famously advised by his father in one of Disraeli’s novels.1 At the same time, it is sometimes said that good biography makes bad history. Much no doubt depends upon what kind of biography and what kind of history. What is offered here is essentially a political biography, albeit one that presents the ‘whole man’ inasmuch as is necessary to understand the public persona. And Jo Grimond always maintained that there was more to life than politics; he was the proverbial ‘rounded man’. He also thought that too li�le history is wri�en by those who lived it.2 That has its problems. Proximity engenders vividness, the genius of ‘time, place and spirit’ that can be lost with distance. On the other hand, it can destroy perspective, so engendering distortion. We are all creatures of our age, politicians no less. Their deeds, triumphs and disappointments, their ideas and the influence of those ideas upon the people around them – all are played out within the contemporary zeitgeist. Timeless as some politicians may seem to a passing generation and to whatever extent they may indeed help shape the times within which they live, they are, inevitably, creatures of their age. So this book is in effect a life and times of Jo Grimond. Jo Grimond never held ministerial office. That for a decade he led a political party which boasted only a handful of MPs and with li�le prospect of power may suggest that he never rose to the political ‘officer class’. Some commentators have seen him as ‘a�ractive but lightweight’.3 Yet office is not all. Nor is naked power. Jo Grimond had neither but he had great influence, perhaps more than he realised. By his charisma, his personal qualities and in the clarity of the creed he espoused, he inspired a generation and more of people – outside as well as within his own party, non-partisans no less than political activists.4 He gave politics a good name; he seemed to stride beyond the grubby footholes of political intrigue and

Preface and Acknowledgements

v

manoeuvrings. Ideas were his primary stock in trade – many of them, proffered in speeches, books, pamphlets, varied journalism and broadcasting as well as in personal discourse. There is thus a lot of Jo Grimond in the public domain even though he kept no diary and was not a vigorous correspondent. I did not know Jo Grimond personally. It may therefore be thought something of a false familiarity that textual references are generally to ‘Jo’, a form that seems only to have emerged publicly during his party leadership years, though one that he used well before the war. In conversations I have had with those who did know him, and in many wri�en accounts, ‘Jo’ seems quite the natural form. The affections of the constituents that he represented formally for over thirty years and whose cause he continued to champion for a decade therea�er are remarkable, even ten years a�er his death. Few MPs indeed are the subject of a formal event, replete with commemorative booklet, organised by the local constituency to celebrate the fi�ieth anniversary of their election to parliament – especially a�er an interval of nearly two decades since last they represented the constituency.5 And when, at a meeting of the Liberal Democrat History Group, members present were invited to cast votes for the best party Liberal/Liberal Democrat/SDP leader of the twentieth century, Jo topped the poll, ahead of the three sometime premiers who tied for second place – Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, H.H. Asquith and David Lloyd George.6 So much for office! We must not be misty eyed. People pass, personal recollections fade. What this volume seeks to do is to set Jo Grimond’s political career in its wider context; to assess his achievements and influence – not only within and upon his party but also the wider body politic and upon the creed he espoused: liberalism. I was well into my research for this volume when I learnt that Michael McManus’s offering was in the pipeline.7 I have proceeded independently, withholding my perusal of his efforts until my own work was close to completion. While the subject is recognisably the same, it will be apparent that I have given rather different emphasis to some of the events in Jo Grimond’s career. I see his politics as having been within a distinctly liberal tradition; and I spend some time in the opening and closing chapters examining certain aspects of that tradition. That is not to deny the changes of inflection and sometimes of real substance in his position down the years; rather to assert that he was and remained a liberal. In writing this book, I have accumulated many debts. First and foremost, I pay tribute to my friend and colleague Peter Joyce. Originally it was to be his book, but when he set it aside, before having really started, he kindly furnished me with the texts of hundreds of Jo Grimond’s speeches, together with other miscellaneous material. In addition, he read and commented upon my manuscript, as did Norman Litherland. Johnny Grimond was accommodating in giving me his time and in dealing with a succession of requests for information. I should like to record a special note of thanks to Michael Meadowcro� for his help, encouragement

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and hospitality; and to Jo’s former secretary, Catherine Fisher. I acknowledge the generous help given by Orkney photographer Charles Tait in connection with some of the photographs. Many other people have given their assistance, either in granting me interviews or in replying to my requests for information, in directing me towards further sources and in many other ways, great or small: Joyce Arram; Lord Avebury (Eric Lubbock); Diane Baptie; Claire Ba�y; Kenneth Beck; Rt Hon Alan Beith MP; Rt Hon Tony Benn; Lord (Robert) Blake; Duncan Brack; Frances Carlisle; Joanne ClementDavies; Lisa Cole; Harry Cowie; Iain Dale; Steve Davies; Jenny Deans; Edwin and Margaret Eunson; David Dimbleby; Alison Fraser; Lord (Sir Ian) Gilmour; Lord (Tony) Greaves; Professor Stephen Haseler; Lord (Emlyn) Hooson; Lord (Sir Geoffrey) Howe; Claire Jamieson; John Graham Jones; Professor Grant Jordan; Rt Hon Gerald Kaufman MP; Dick Leonard; Rachel Lloyd; Sheena Macdonald; Ian Maciver; Norris McWhirter; Lucy McCann; John McHugh; David Mackie; Lord (George) Mackie; Margeorie Mekie; Gerry and Nora Meyer; Judith Moore; Ann Murphy; Nigel Nicolson; Lien O’Neill; Allen Packwood; John Pardoe; Christine Parker; David Partner; Lord (John) Pa�en; Annie Pinder; Sarah Preihs; Sir Adam Ridley; Jackie Robertson; Eoin Sco�; Dr Arthur Seldon; Lord (David) Shu�; Ian Simpson; Sir Cyril Smith; Lord (Sir Trevor) Smith; Lord (Sir David) Steel; Rt Hon Jeremy Thorpe; Rt Hon Jim Wallace MSP; George Watson; Edward Wheeler; Ben Whitaker; Ruth Williams. Needless to say, in making these acknowledgements I intend in no way to implicate anyone else for errors of fact, quirks of interpretation or ma�ers of judgement, for which I bear sole responsibility.

Part I LAMPLIGHT

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got an airing on the stage of national (i.e. British) politics. Above all, he retained an abiding affection for his beloved St Andrews. His last book – published in 1992, a year before his death – was an elegantly penned guided tour of the famous town. There is an air of wistfulness in his descriptions of the buildings, the people and of the community in which he grew up. Characteristically, he acknowledged the inevitability, indeed desirability, of change while noting that not all changes had been for the be�er – a reflection of his (mature) political credo and of his outlook on life in general. He complained bi�erly about a hideous hotel erected during the 1980s on the former railway station adjacent to the old golf course.3 Jo’s father, Joseph Bowman Grimond, was a Dundee jute manufacturer born in Broughty Ferry on 8 July 1875.4 An only child, he had taken over the business founded by his grandfather Joseph (Jo’s great grandfather) who came from Blairgowrie, at the foot of the Sco�ish Highlands. In so doing, Joseph had brought his brother into partnership. It was thus under the names of the two brothers, J. and A.D. Grimond, that the firm continued to trade. They did so from the Bowbridge works, founded by great grandfather Joseph in Thistle Street, Dundee. The nineteenth century was the heyday of the industry, feeding as it did the growth and prosperity of the Sco�ish east-coast town that came to account for some ninety per cent of the jute manufactured in the UK. Many of the larger merchants of the nineteenth century bought the raw yarn and commissioned the cloth, building factories that embraced more or less the entire production process of spinning, weaving, dyeing and finishing. Jute manufacture began in earnest in Dundee from the early 1830s, quickly becoming the town’s major industry. J. and A.D. Grimond was neither the first nor the largest jute firm. But the family held its place as one of the powerful Dundee jute dynasties of the nineteenth century.5 Standing in a site covering over thirty acres, the Bowbridge mill was ‘a great Kremlin-like range of buildings magnificently constructed of dressed stone’.6 Despite cyclical downturns, the business contributed to and in turn thrived upon Dundee’s general prosperity. During the third quarter of the nineteenth century, its population grew more rapidly than that of any other town or city in Scotland except Glasgow, almost doubling in thirty years to reach 165,000 by 1881.7 The jute industry profited from wars in the Crimea, in America (civil war) and elsewhere, notably the FrancoPrussian War, the Boer War and, later, the First World War. In truth, these fillips provided only temporary deliverance from the downward trend that had become increasingly evident from the 1870s. Cheaper labour and production processes in India together with perhaps a lack of flexibility among the Dundee manufacturers heralded long-term decline.8 Notwithstanding a brief upturn a�er the First World War, the jute industry was never to regain its former glory. Jo’s father resisted when, in the mid 1920s, a buyout was proposed; but other shareholders outvoted him. Whatever his misgivings, it was in no sense the trap door to financial ruin. For when he died in

First Light

5

February 1929, his personal estate was valued at £192,446, some £12m at today’s prices.9 Given the state of the industry, the buyout was a blessing in disguise – not only for his father, but also for Jo himself who in due course might otherwise have been obliged to take the reins. That it was a blessing and that the transaction was part of a merger boom the like of which has from time to time been a feature of British industry did nothing to prevent Jo, in later years, from deriding the episode as an example of ‘bigger means be�er’.10 It is difficult to say to what extent the experience helped to foster the classic liberal preference for small and medium-sized enterprises in an openly competitive market. More likely it served to strengthen a disposition already well formed. During the 1860s, great grandfather Joseph Grimond had developed a ‘jute palace’ at Kerbat House, later renamed Carbet Castle.11 This was typical of the way in which middle-class manufacturers there and elsewhere began to enjoy the fruits of their enterprise. As such, the residence was situated on the outskirts of Dundee, set apart from the rapidly expanding working-class quarters of the town. It was here in Dundee that Jo’s father met his future wife, (Helen) Lydia Richardson. The Richardsons were a Birkenhead family but Helen’s brother, Foster Richardson, had moved to Dundee to work for J. and A.D. Grimond. The brothers-in-law maintained a close friendship, winning the 1924 (tennis) Calcu�a Cup Foursomes. Jo’s parents were married in Oxton, near Birkenhead, on 14 August 1898. As middle-class families gravitated to the outskirts of the larger towns and cities, so they also sought refuge in satellite towns. Thus the Grimonds took a property in St Andrews. To describe St Andrews as a satellite of Dundee or of anywhere else is of course misleading. Although only fragments remain of its medieval cathedral, the university dates from the early fi�eenth century and it claims the most famous and venerated golf course in the world. Since 1124 the town has enjoyed royal burgh status, though the population of some 12,000 is li�le more than it was in the 1920s. Set between the sea and a generous open hinterland, St Andrews was and remains a compact, predominantly middle-class Sco�ish town. Here the Grimonds took up residence, first in St Mary’s Road, then in No. 8 Abbotsford Crescent – Jo’s birthplace. A five-storey Georgian house of generous proportions (including basement), the property formed part of a concave terrace no more than a golf drive and pitch away from the first tee on the famous Old Course. The Grimonds rented their home from William Carmichael McIntosh, a marine biology professor who owned most of the terrace. His bequest to the university was later converted into accommodation for students, now McIntosh Hall, the remaining houses being similarly adapted but known as Abbotsford Hall. Abbotsford Crescent remained a Grimond residence until the late 1940s when Lydia moved elsewhere in the town, to No. 22 Hepburn Gardens. There was a political connection to 8 Abbotsford Crescent, albeit a tenuous one. Previous occupants had included Sir Robert (Tom) Boothby of Edinburgh, whose

6

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son, Robert, was later to claim fame as a Conservative MP for East Aberdeenshire (1924–1958) and sometime confidant of Winston Churchill, not to mention a longstanding affair with Lady Dorothy, wife of prime minister Harold Macmillan. But there was li�le politics in Jo’s early years at Abbotsford Crescent. Like many of the Sco�ish textile manufacturers of the period, his father played li�le part in local affairs. He was not by nature gregarious, preferring the company of his family and close friends. Until the enforced relinquishment of his business interests, he made the daily journey between St Andrews and Dundee – fi�een miles there and back again, taking advantage of a very good east coast train service. The family unit was tight, though in no way insular. Sport and outdoor recreation were highly valued. Both parents played golf to a good standard, encouraging likewise all three children. It was a stable, secure and in many ways comfortable environment, though not, as is sometimes supposed, one of patrician descent. Jo was quick to correct interviewer Keith Kyle on that point, claiming that the Grimonds were ‘lower upper’ rather than ‘upper class’.12 The nurture of ‘values’ and a sense of individual responsibility featured strongly. Jo and his two sisters were taught to be ‘good citizens’. The family a�ended church: religion was a cloak worn loosely but willingly. On one occasion later in life he described himself as a renegade from the Church of Scotland for whom the Sabbath meant something.13 There was some confusion as to his familial religious connections, which were in fact with the Episcopal (Anglican) Church.14 In any event Jo’s own church a�endances as an adult were irregular, though he remained a firm believer who regre�ed the decline of religion in society and occasionally preached at the local parish church near his adopted home in Orkney. Family holidays were taken in the south of England and, following his father’s enforced retirement, in France – no doubt nurturing Jo’s later penchant for foreign travel. Occasionally, life could be serious, though for the most part it was ‘open textured’. There were few of the highly charged, heart-searching dinner table discussions that characterised some of the more overtly politicised families of the cha�ering classes. Yet there is no doubt about the Grimonds’ party leanings. Down to the 1920s, the Liberals remained the natural party of the manufacturers, especially in the north of England, Wales and Scotland, though the Conservatives had, from at least the 1870s, made increasing inroads. He traced his family’s liberal affiliations back to his great great grandfather, who had been one of those newly enfranchised under the Whigs’ Great Reform Act of 1832 and for whom Jo possessed a certificate endorsing the vote cast.15 Jo enjoyed a happy upbringing at Abbotsford Crescent, along with his parents, two sisters and never fewer than four house servants.16 He received more a�ention than might otherwise have been the case, on account of the fact that his sisters, Gwyn and Nancie, were his elders by fourteen and eleven years respectively. Gwyn le� the family home in 1919 to marry Billy Corbe�, whose father, Archibald

First Light

7

Cameron Corbe�, had been the Liberal MP for Glasgow Tradeston from 1885 until his elevation to the peerage in 1911 as the 1st Baron Rowallan.17 Billy later achieved fame as Chief Scout and as Governor of Tasmania, by then the 2nd Baron Rowallan. Jo got on well with him, as he did with Willie Black, his other brother-in-law.18 All three Grimond children were active in pursuit of sporting and other outdoor activities, enthusiasms developed more from their mother than from their father. Jo was an accomplished golfer, good cricketer and competent tennis player. In this sphere, though, he was outshone by his elder siblings who excelled at golf and, especially, at tennis. The two sisters were four times winners of the Sco�ish ladies’ doubles; Gwyn won the Sco�ish ladies’ and mixed doubles championships. They both played at Wimbledon. Jo maintained close contact with his sisters, spending most of his late childhood and adult Christmases at family gatherings in Rowallan Castle, near Kilmarnock until they died in the 1970s – Gwyn in 1971, her husband six years later. He also continued to make regular visits to Teasses, a commodious mansion in Fife, the home of Nancie and Willie Black. A�er a�ending a local school in St Andrews, Jo was sent to Gibbs School, 134 Sloane Street, London SW1. Under the headship of Mr C.H. Gibbs, the school was ‘inspected and recognised as efficient by the Board of Education’.19 It was the only school that he ever enjoyed.20 But it provided only brief respite, the prelude to a far less agreeable experience. For a�er only one term with Mr Gibbs and for reasons that remain unclear, Jo’s parents moved him to Evelyn’s, a preparatory boarding school in Middlesex about which, in later years, he made noticeably brief and elliptical reference.21 Clearly he was unhappy, if not desolate, under the yoke of a regime in which privacy was rare. It came as a relief to arrive at Eton. Jo was the first of his family to go to Eton. He did so not as a Colleger but as an Oppidan – that is, a full fee-paying pupil. As such, he was given his own room from the start, a privilege extended to Collegers only from their second year. Indeed there was probably more privacy for boys at Eton than at any other public school during the interwar years.22 Like other Oppidans of his time, Jo was pitched into a house among boys of different ages. He was thus able to extend his horizons. So long as he remained a Lower Boy, though, he was denied ‘social’ access to other houses. He was subsequently to become a house captain, taking the mantle from William Douglas-Home, younger brother of future premier Alec and himself to become a renowned playwright. The two were to remain lifelong friends. William Home described Jo as a ‘large, cheerful and untidy boy’.23 Many years later, they were joined by broadcaster and cricket commentator Brian Johnston, another Eton contemporary, to record for the BBC television series Reunion, a programme featuring groups of three people who had been together at school. Unscripted and with li�le prompting from chairman Brian Redhead, the three old boys ranged widely for thirty minutes, agreeing that Eton was ‘the best trade union in the world’.24 Future diplomat Con O’Neill was another contemporary with whom Jo became friendly towards the end of his days at

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Eton, as was Jasper Ridley. Both friendships were sustained, that of Ridley being especially close, though tragically aborted by war. As his fag, Jo had one Anthony Fisher, future founder member of the Institute of Economic Affairs with which he was later to become associated.25 Eton was and is quite simply the most famous school in the world. During Jo’s time there (1926–1932) it accounted for over one sixth of all MPs in the House of Commons – to be more precise, 106 MPs (seventeen per cent) of the parliament elected in 1931. If its grip was later to relax, it has never lost its pre-eminence. When Jo entered Parliament he was one of 84 Old Etonians, some thirteen per cent of the MPs elected in 1950.26 At the beginning of Jo’s last parliament as a member of the House of Commons (1979), there were 51 Old Etonians, eight per cent of the total.27 By now the only other non-Conservative was the Labour MP Tam Dalyell, one of Jo’s stoutest adversaries in the devolution debates of the 1970s. Eton during the interwar years was described by Michael Astor, one of Jo’s near contemporaries, as ‘a microcosm of the outside world, harbouring among its twelve hundred boys young men of nearly every description: scholars, laggards, toughs and aesthetes, gentlemen and cads, Roman Catholics, Jews, even Hindus and one Buddhist’.28 A microcosm it cannot have been, though pluralist it probably was. Astor was one among a galaxy of luminaries who overlapped there with Jo. In addition to those already mentioned – and representing many walks of life – may be named Bernard Fergusson (Lord Ballantrae), future governor of New Zealand; the philosopher A.J. (Freddie) Ayer; secret agent Nicholas Ellio�; the traitor Guy Burgess; and Giles Alington, who became an historian and Oxford tutor. The la�er was the son of Dr C.A. Alington, the headmaster of Eton throughout Jo’s time – an imposing figure and renowned scholar. But it was other more immediate figures of authority who claimed Jo’s admiration – notably his first housemaster Geoffrey Headlam; and history tutor Robert Birley who, among other things, helped to organise occupational centres in Slough to relieve unemployment.29 But it was the Provost, M.R. (Monty) James, who stood out for Jo as the most impressive man he ever met – in force of personality, if not in the magnitude of his achievements, more redoubtable than either Churchill or de Gaulle.30 With due discount for the enchantment of hindsight, there is no doubt that James and the many other characters – indeed the whole Eton experience – constituted a vital formative influence. Jo made his contribution to Eton. He joined a number of societies, among them the Political Society. Figures from the world of public affairs, national and international, were by tradition invited to address its meetings. As a rule, discussions were relaxed and by no means narrowly political in focus. So, in his role as President of the Political Society, Jo was upping the stakes in inviting Mahatma Gandhi. It was a slightly risqué venture. In and out of detention and deeply involved as the Indian leader was in delicate negotiations with the British government, the authorities at Eton were nervous but had been presented with

First Light

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a fait accompli by their enfant terrible of the moment. It was the autumn of 1931 and Gandhi was on a two-month tour of England. In the event, his talk to the Political Society passed without incident, though he seems not to have made a particularly favourable impression. Jo was also one of the Eton Society, known as Pop, membership of which conferred certain privileges in a�ire such as the wearing of multi-coloured waistcoats. It was a self-selecting and self-regulating group of boys with its own ‘anti-establishment’ mores. During his final term at Eton, Jo was the president of Pop. It was an honour cherished perhaps as much as any he was to earn in his life, reflecting as it did the acclaim of his contemporaries. Presaging the measured irreverence that was to become a trademark, he wrote in the magazine Change that ‘its [Pop’s] very excellence lies in the fact that it is open to every danger and could never have originated in the brain of a schoolmaster’.31 From Eton, Jo went up to Oxford. The transition was not quite automatic. He briefly toyed with the possibility of joining a company that would have taken him to Buenos Aires. Still, to Oxford he went – to Balliol College, one of the older and most prestigious colleges. He arrived in the autumn of 1932 as a Brackenbury scholar, a distinction earned following fiercely competitive examinations taken during his final term at Eton. Eight of these scholarships were available, each tenable for four years to the value (in 1932) of £80 per annum.32 Jo’s scholarship was for History. There were other foundations, so that Jo was one among some fi�y Balliol scholars. They were the elite of the undergraduate elite, followed by exhibitioners – thirty or so at Balliol during Jo’s time. The remainder of the undergraduate population were ‘commoners’ who, together with fellows and all others, formed a college community of approximately 275 during the 1930s. It was a relatively cosmopolitan community – more so than any of the other Oxford (or Cambridge) colleges of its day. Balliol was founded late in the thirteenth century by John Balliol of Barnard Castle, County Durham. During the 1930s, it remained to some extent under the shadow of the legendary Benjamin Jowe�, master of the college from 1870 until his death in 1893. Jowe�’s immediate influence had been immense, his legacy powerful and long lasting. A man of the cloth, he nevertheless held that really great men were never clergymen, a fact that he ascribed to the incompatibility of creative genius with the constraints of received creed.33 Jowe�’s steadfast religion acted upon and through the medium of the everyday world. He sought less to leave his imprint on the church than to nurture men of secular public affairs. Religion, higher morality and personal character were among the central elements, spliced to the pronounced virtues of leadership, duty and public service. Under his tutelage, the former heavily disciplined regime in the college gave way to a more relaxed one in which liberal, even radical, thinking was encouraged. At the same time there came to be a greater emphasis upon collegiality, embracing closer relationships between fellows and students.

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Successive generations of Balliol products bear testimony to Jowe�’s legacy. Three twentieth-century premiers were Balliol men: H.H. Asquith, Harold Macmillan and Edward Heath. Other post-Second World War political figures include John Boyd-Carpenter, Henry Brooke, Peter Brooke, Ian Gilmour, Denis Healey, Roy Jenkins, Frank Longford, Chris Pa�en, Nicholas Ridley and Frank Soskice – all cabinet ministers. With such alumni, not to mention many senior civil servants, Balliol has retained a tradition of public service unsurpassed by any other Oxbridge college. But it was during and immediately following Jowe�’s mastership that the imprint was strongest. It le� its mark on leading pre-First World War and inter-war figures such as Lord Curzon, Alfred (Lord) Milner and Leo Amery, each in their different ways associated with the higher administration of the empire. In particular, it was the Liberal generations of H.H. Asquith, Sir Edward Grey and Herbert Samuel that marked the meridian of Balliol influence in ‘high politics’. Ably supported at the official level by Balliol products such as William Beveridge, these emissaries brought to flower in the immediate pre1914 decade a tranche of social welfare and related reforms unsurpassed by any Liberal or, arguably, other government in modern British history. Theirs were not the only hands on the tiller. Non-Balliol, non-Oxbridge – indeed non-university – people, such as David Lloyd George and Winston Churchill, played key roles. Moreover it is difficult to know to what extent the college experience of the Balliol men themselves contributed to their deeds in office, though for some, like Asquith, it was a definitive influence.34 There is li�le doubt that Balliol bore at least some influence. And among the most notable Balliol figures was the liberal philosopher T.H. Green. Green’s influence upon liberalism and upon wider affairs has sometimes been exaggerated, perhaps inflated by an element of mythology.35 Still he was and remains significant; it will be useful therefore to outline the main tenets of his thought. They constitute a vital ingredient in the intellectual soil from which Jo Grimond’s brand of liberalism was to flower. During a relatively short life, Thomas Hill Green (1836–1882) made his contribution to the liberal cause at both the intellectual and the practical levels. As one of Jowe�’s former students at the college, he remained until his death a Balliol fellow, inspiring his own loyal band of followers including Bernard Bosanquet and R.L. Ne�leship. In the world of practical affairs he was a Liberal councillor on Oxford Town Council. But it is in the medium of ideas that Green was best known and is now best remembered. Here he helped to redefine and modernise the liberal credo. In so doing, he drew upon streams of thought that were unconventional to the purpose for which he employed them. Yet his touchstone remained unambiguously liberal. Early and mid nineteenth-century liberalism had been shaped by a belief in the maximum freedom from constraint compatible with social order, including freedom of expression, religious worship and political association; with the inviolability of the individual; with free trade and economic exchange largely

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unfe�ered, save on the altar of high morality or national security. The role of the state was to be minimal, taxation sparing. In fact, successive governments of the period – even and especially Whig/Liberal governments – had permi�ed exceptions, so fuelling the growth of state activity. Force of circumstance and sheer pragmatism played their parts – precepts by no means foreign to the liberal temper. Implicitly, sometimes explicitly, there was an element of utilitarian calculus. State intervention could be justified if it enhanced the general good – crudely defined by some Benthamite utilitarians as the aggregate ‘cost benefit’ of pleasure over pain. Tory-style paternalism was placed at a heavy discount, though liberals were also sensitive to the need for social and cultural ‘glue’. The individual, though, was the measure of all things – the discerner of his or her own interests, of what constituted pleasure or pain. That at least was to be the working assumption, notwithstanding the fact that the individual may misjudge those interests, perhaps for want of education or moral vitality. Thus liberal thinkers and men of practical affairs such as John Stuart Mill and William Gladstone gave expression to the need for improvement and ‘moral upli�’, especially though by no means exclusively among the lower orders. Such injunctions were born of sincere conviction. Green struck hard against the ethic of utilitarianism that intellectualised man as ‘a bundle of tastes… passive to the real activity of his spirit’.36 So long as people remained slaves to such tastes or appetites, true freedom would elude. Drawing from the German philosopher Immanuel Kant (in some ways an unusual source for an English liberal), Green saw that the human mind impresses its own stamp upon all that it apprehends.37 There is a distinction between natural and moral agency – and between the ‘good’ or ‘desirable’ as distinct from the ‘desired’.38 And there is a further distinction between instinctive and ‘self-directed’ actions. The former are almost gut impulses – involuntary, unthinking, non-deliberative. Self-directed actions are, by contrast, the products of deliberation – that higher plane of morality in which we ‘place ourselves outside our sensations and distinguish ourselves from our desires’.39 Thus there are two (at least two) selves – the immediate, passion driven self; and the more reflective, more elevated moral self. In the warp and we� of day-to-day affairs, the la�er, while remaining full of potential, is typically subjugated to the former, especially among those classes that are denied the luxury of good living. Yet we cannot be truly free until the moral self is brought fully into play – or, as Green put it, until we achieve the ‘reconciliation of will and reason’.40 In seeking reconciliation, Green drew upon an even more unlikely source – the German philosopher G.W.F. Hegel. Hegel had shown how, by a process of ‘dialectic’, one set of ideas could be pitched against and ‘reconciled’ with another to form a new synthesis. The synthesis marked a more elevated stage. Successive such stages thus held the promise of progress towards an ideal endgame, so to speak. Now the ‘true moral self’ would prevail in harmony with all other ‘true moral selves’. In a broad sense, the state would

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be the incarnation of this harmony – though for Hegel the state implied not quite what we would mean by that term today, being more the ‘society of societies’. At any rate, the state was to be at once the facilitator and the embodiment of the ‘good life’. In associating with such ideas – and against the empiricist tradition of British liberalism – it is easy to see why Green and his disciples became known as the Oxford Idealists. He gave many hostages to fortune. The metaphysical grounding of his thought was a source of irritation to some liberals who were otherwise in broad agreement with the practical implications of his ideas. Jo was an empiricist.41 He was dismissive of what he called ‘the import of Hegelian nonsense’ into British philosophy,42 though some modern scholars have claimed compatibility.43 Many of the Idealists’ notions were indeed rooted in holistic conceptions that stuck in the craw of some contemporary liberals, though Jo was o�en inclined toward a wide-angle perspective. Other critics have baulked at the explicit ‘broad church’ Christianity – the lashings of theology found in the writings of Green.44 Again, Jo was o�en reluctant to invoke the scriptures, while making increasing reference to Christian values when, later in his career, he became worried about possible threats to the social fabric. No less contentious among liberals was Green’s notion of ‘positive’ as distinct from ‘negative’ liberty, famously criticised by Isaiah Berlin on the ground that it was a confused formula that could be used to justify acts of oppression if employed by a tyrant.45 Yet it was precisely this redefinition of liberty that provided the cornerstone for the new liberalism of the late nineteenth century – enabling that true freedom in which, for Green, man ‘has power to act according to his will’;46 or, as he asserted elsewhere, ‘the liberation of the powers of all men equally for contributions to a common good’.47 Here the state has a role in ‘empowering’ the citizen; to equip the citizen to be a good, or at any rate a be�er, citizen – ideas that remained central to Jo Grimond’s brand of liberalism throughout his career. Green asserted the imperative of freedom from restraint (negative liberty), while acknowledging its insufficiency, indeed irrelevance, to those entrapped by poverty. As Hobhouse put it: ‘freedom without equality is noble in sound and squalid in result.’48 In a genuflection to egalitarianism or inclusivity (to use a modern term), Green himself had declared: ‘there can be no true right to property of a kind which debars one class of men from such free exercise altogether.’49 The state must act, not simply to help satisfy immediate material needs but to set a ‘high’ tone – not merely to reflect but to set the pace as ‘the flywheel of society’, to borrow Bosanquet’s famous phrase. Green’s metaphysics and his espousal of a more active state have been the source of much confusion. He has been seen as having appropriated elements of traditional conservatism, while remaining consistent with a liberal form of socialism.50 As a ‘moral regenerationist’ he retained a doughty individualism, while as a moral reformist he gave hostage to a tentative collectivism more boldly

First Light

13

asserted by some of his followers.51 He may well have been an inspiration for some of the early ethical socialists, though much turns upon what is meant by socialism.52 But it was liberalism that he sought to refocus, if not to refashion; and it was to the liberal conscience that he spoke.53 Notions of community and good citizenship were to enrich not subjugate the individual. Early and classical liberal concerns for freedom of expression, association and pursuit of interests were to be upheld. The state could and should set an example; it could encourage and provide the conditions conducive to moral elevation – but it could not make people be�er citizens. Virtue was an interior condition, albeit one with a social dimension. And where the state did intervene in practical affairs, it should do so within the skein of market capitalism and the canon of individual responsibility. A good deal of Green’s thought permeated the spirit if not necessarily the le�er of Jo Grimond’s liberalism throughout his political life. He did not swallow Green whole: he was too much of an independent spirit for that. His writings and speeches provide few references, though he certainly lamented the fact that Green and his fellow idealist F.H. Bradley had been despised or forgo�en.54 Many of Green’s writings are dense, hardly popular fare; it was to the more immediate cadences of J.S. Mill’s On Liberty that Jo would turn at the high tide of his career as providing the sheet anchor for a liberal conscience.55 Moreover, he stood in the traditions of other liberals such as Ramsay Muir and Ellio� Dodds, as well as Green and Mill.56 In any case, Jo was an ideas man rather than a political philosopher or theorist. Yet, detached from their metaphysical bearings, the central tenets of Green’s philosophy intersect with more of the ideas espoused by Jo throughout his career than do those of any other classic liberal thinker. The progressive stamp and moral touchstones; a belief in the ‘good life’, by no means assured and to be the product of free will not administrative fiat; the sense of community born of active citizenship; the notion of civil and political society consisting in ‘free institutions’ in relationship with but at some distance from the state; of a state that set standards but which could not and should not try to make its citizens more moral; of a public interest and a general will rooted in reason as the source of sovereignty – all these elements of the Green legacy provide a useful point of reference in understanding the liberalism of Jo Grimond.57 Neither at Oxford nor at any other stage did Jo experience a Damascene conversion. Rather, the ideas of T.H. Green and Green’s disciples exerted a more subtle influence through a kind of ‘intellectual osmosis’. Something of the spirit of T.H. Green still lingered at Balliol throughout the 1930s.58 At that time, A.D. (Sandy) Lindsay was master of the college. Though a socialist, he certainly endorsed the tradition of public service, the ‘good life’ and the reverence for community. He had wri�en a highly favourable essay about Green, later adapted as the introduction to Green’s Lectures on Political Obligation.59 Ironically, Lindsay had entertained Mahatma Gandhi at Balliol for a fortnight during the Indian leader’s tour of England in 1931 – the same

14

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visit during which Jo had brought him to speak at Eton. He later came to wider a�ention as the ‘popular front’, anti-appeasement candidate in the Oxford City by-election of October 1938. The local Liberal and Labour associations supported his candidature as he stood in opposition to the ‘Chamberlainite’ Conservative Quintin Hogg (Lord Hailsham) – unsuccessfully as it happened. As master of Balliol, Lindsay adopted the practice of seeing regularly and in pairs all first-year undergraduates. Closer to most of the students was F.F. Urquhart, the dean of Balliol upon Jo’s arrival and fondly remembered as one who ‘spread through the college a feeling of good-will’.60 Among Jo’s tutors were the historians Vivian Galbraith and Humphrey Sumner, together with the economists William Allen and Alexander Rodger, the la�er succeeding Urquhart as dean. Others included the philosophers Charles Morris and John Fulton, later to find fame as chairman of a commi�ee that produced one of the most famous reports on the civil service. In the university at large, big names abounded, including the young A.J. Ayer and professorial gladiators such as G.D.H. Cole, Sir Arthur Salter, J.R.R. Tolkien and R.G. Collingwood. Jo never a�ended Collingwood’s lectures, but he later cited the esteemed historian’s autobiography as his choice for the ‘book in my life’ series in the Spectator.61 On the whole, Jo appreciated the educational experience he had at Oxford, reflecting that ‘of its sort it was good’.62 In making this somewhat backhanded compliment, he was pitching Oxford – and other seats of higher learning – against the backcloth of his own ideas of a university. He acknowledged Oxford’s excellence as a mind-stretching experience. It exposed him to ideas, creeds and belief systems from which he had hitherto been largely insulated. He regre�ed, though, that there had not been a more practical focus; that there had been a gulf between what had been taught and the world in which most people lived. He extolled a university education that was both liberal and vocational.63 But he came increasingly to feel that the vocational was driving out the liberal. He did not want education to become narrowly technical or a training ground for the professions or for bureaucrats. His idea of a university was closer to that of John Henry Newman, upholding the cultivation of the intellect, the independent pursuit of knowledge linked to public service and the realm of the spiritual. Even in his own day, the virtues of what he called ‘a good training in… moral philosophy’ were found wanting in the university curriculum, a deficiency partly made good by the college system.64 The college was the jewel in the crown – not just the tutors but also the fellow students. At Oxford, Jo quickly made new friends and strengthened existing bonds. His old chum Jasper Ridley (affectionately known as ‘Bubbles’) joined him from Eton having won a classical scholarship. So too did Guy Branch and Con O’Neill. Other Eton contemporaries went to different colleges – William Home to New College, John Paton and Lionel Bre� to Magdalen. At Balliol, Jo now enjoyed the luxury of two rooms to himself, and entertained freely. Former Eton pal Bernard

First Light

15

Fergusson expressed mild envy at his host’s ‘civilised, easy way of life’, noting that he tired ‘not only the sun but the moon with talking’.65 His activities were by no means confined to the college. Indeed during his final year he moved out of college and took lodgings in No. 21 Beaumont Street along with Ridley, Bre�, Mark Pilkington and John Pope-Hennessy.66 A li�le further along the street, at No. 9, lived other contemporaries, including Mickey Burn and Jeremy Hutchinson. The predominantly Balliol (and ex-Eton) contingent in Beaumont Street seems to have achieved something of a cult status among contemporaries. Perhaps in partial recoil from the culture of the college, there was, according to one close observer, ‘an absence of worldly ambition’ among the Beaumont Street set, members of which were ‘heavily touched by the politics which Bloomsbury had neglected’.67 Its members were serious, hard working but never solemn. There were distinct mores – a counter-culture in which ‘it would scarcely have been possible… to be prominent in the union.’68 There was a demand for ‘emotional integrity’,69 though it was not an homogenous group or any kind of ‘total society’. Rather, it was a group of individuals among whom Jo was by no means the most luminous, being described by Lionel Bre� as a shy man of ‘infinite good sense and lazy charm’.70 Jo maintained other friendships. During vacations there were foreign excursions – to Spain, Switzerland (where Urquhart had a chalet), France and Germany. The la�er visit, made with Con O’Neill in 1934, coincided with Hitler’s ‘night of the long knives’ – the infamous murder of SA (Sturmabteilung) leaders that took place on 30 June. The incident no doubt reinforced Jo’s antipathy to totalitarian regimes. It was probably also a factor in the resignation of O’Neill from his position at the British Embassy in Berlin four years later, following Chamberlain’s betrayal of the Sudetan Czechs at the Munich conference in September 1938. For a term, Jo edited the Oxford student magazine Isis – or The Isis, as it was titled down to the 1950s.71 He did so without the assistance or remission from studies that would be the lot of many of his successors. He reckoned to have done the job badly – probably a false modesty. With appropriate light humour, a later edition of the magazine described how ‘day a�er day, dressed as Siegfried or Wotan and fondling his lion cub, he would stalk into the Isis office and give a twist to the manifold rack on which the sub-editors were stretched together…’72 Jo took his studies seriously. Although his was a History scholarship he began reading the closely related papers in Modern Greats. He went on to take a first in PPE – one of the fourteen (ten per cent of the total) to do so from that school in the summer of 1935. Among the examiners that year were future top civil servant John Maud and Roy Harrod, biographer of J.M. Keynes. Jo did not join the Oxford Union – surprisingly for one who was to become so prominent in the world of politics though, as noted above, understandable as a member of the Beaumont Street group. It was never a source of regret, though there may have been an element of post-hoc rationalisation. He held the Union

16

Liberal Lion

partly responsible for encouraging a ‘spurious intimacy’ and superficiality that he came increasingly to see as one of the less welcome features of the modern age.73 He was interested in politics and it was while at Oxford that he set his future sights. In his memoirs he makes the terse comment: ‘I decided that I would be a politician and a Liberal politician at that’.74 To nail one’s colours to the Liberal mast in the 1930s was to make a particular kind of statement. The last Liberal administration had been replaced by a wartime coalition in 1915. Never again was the party to form a government, its fate sealed by the steady rise of the Labour Party. The trauma of war, the assault on the liberal conscience followed by the rupture between Asquith and Lloyd George had hastened followers into two camps, each with their own structure and parliamentary whips. With only brief respite during the general election of December 1923, Liberal ranks remained divided for most of the 1920s, spli�ing three ways for a time a�er the fall of the second Labour government in 1931 with the ‘official’ Liberals of Herbert Samuel, the independent Liberals of Lloyd George and Sir John Simon’s National Liberals. The la�er grew increasingly close to the Conservatives under whose umbrella they effectively operated long before they formally merged a�er the Second World War. Under the now unified leadership of Herbert Samuel, the Liberals put up only 161 candidates in the general election of 1935, securing a mere twenty seats. Such was the state of Liberal party politics into which Jo was to pitch himself. He thus did so knowing that he was forfeiting any realistic possibility of ever holding an office of state. Edward Heath, a near contemporary at Balliol, acknowledged the virtues of the Liberals’ commitment to an open society and to social and economic freedom but judged that ‘it was already clear… that they were a spent force in British politics and that nothing practical could be achieved by supporting them.’75 With the la�er sentiment Jo would profoundly disagree. His career was to be the living expression of the thesis that a ministerial box is by no means the sine qua non to achievement in politics and public life. Besides, his family were Liberals and it was within the bosom of Liberal politics that he was to become more deeply and inexorably drawn.

Chapter 2

INTO PARLIAMENT

J� G������ ��� ��� rush headlong into the cauldron of party politics. Nor did he stay on the extra year at Oxford for which his Brackenbury foundation was available. Instead he chose to seek admission to the bar. A call to the bar was, and to some extent remains, an entrée to many walks of life, even for those who do not pursue long-term careers as lawyers. The cut and thrust of the adversarial system has o�en been an invaluable experience, allowing would-be politicians to develop their debating skills. When Jo entered Parliament, no fewer than 86 MPs were barristers.1 Along with his friend Jasper Ridley, he was admi�ed on 21 October 1935 to the Middle Temple, one of the four Inns of Court.2 He did so as a Harmsworth Scholar, an endowment afforded by press baron Lord Rothermere in memory of his father, Alfred Harmsworth, who had been a member of Middle Temple. In years to come, Jo’s nomination papers for parliamentary elections described him as ‘barrister at law’, even when he was an established MP. He might have gone to the Sco�ish bar but found una�ractive the requirement to spend three further years at university. While admiring many aspects of the English legal system, he derided much of its pomp, ceremony and cant. More than that, he remained critical of its exclusivity – more effective than a trade union closed shop, he later claimed.3 In particular, he felt uneasy about the opaqueness, about the convolutions of some of its procedures, the inequities and the financial extortions. For all his misgivings, Jo stuck to his task. Although not making a permanent career, he later dismissed any suggestion that he had not taken his legal training seriously, insisting that he simply felt unsuited to the work.4 Having passed his examinations and eaten the requisite number of dinners (three per year), he was called to the bar in January 1937. He had by this time spent six enjoyable months in a solicitor’s office in Ludgate Circus before going into chambers led by Freddie Van den Berg KC, where Quintin Hogg had become a member.5 Here he was

18

Liberal Lion

a pupil to Mr Alchin. A li�le later, he became a marshal to Mr Justice Lewis, a circuit judge. He lodged for a time along with John Hogg plus former Eton and Oxford friend William Douglas-Home. They had rooms at 35 South Eton Place in Belgravia, a house kept by T.L. Crisp and his wife, Gertrude. When Jo later le� to get married, his place was taken by another Eton and Oxford contemporary, Brian Johnston, who described Crisp as ‘the perfect gentleman’s gentleman’, his wife as ‘an absolute saint and a perfect cook’.6 Even while doing his legal training, politics remained in focus. Soon a�er he le� Oxford, prime minister Stanley Baldwin called a general election, having succeeded the ailing Ramsay MacDonald in June 1935. The National/Coalition government that he inherited was largely Conservative; under his premiership it became overwhelmingly so. Sensing a favourable wind, the avuncular Baldwin sought to press home his advantage. In the general election of November 1935, the Conservatives swept the board, returning 432 MPs to Labour’s 154. Having fought at least a nominally united campaign, the Liberals were routed. Fielding candidates in only 161 constituencies, their total vote of 1.4 million was lower than at any time since the turn of the century, even allowing for the smaller franchise pre-1918. The party’s efforts yielded twenty seats. If there had been any residual hopes about the Liberals’ prospects of office, they can have lingered no longer. The Manchester Guardian was polite in its observation that ‘though its numbers are small it has good debating power’ while acknowledging that ‘the election raises serious problems of stocktaking and revision which need to be faced with realism.’7 During the election, Jo directed his efforts to the cause of Arthur Irvine, whom he had met at Oxford. Irvine had recently been called to the bar at Middle Temple, having taken an appointment as secretary to Lord Hewart, Lord Chief Justice of England. Hewart’s book The New Despotism, published in 1929, had struck a chord with many Liberals, raging as it did against the advance of executive power. In seeking election in Western Aberdeenshire and Kincardine, Irvine was contesting a constituency then held by a Conservative (C.M. Barclay-Harvey) but which had returned Liberals on and off down the years. It was Jo’s first active encounter at the hustings, his role being to ‘warm up’ the audience in readiness for the main speaker. It was not a gratifying experience. He was slightly star-struck at the accomplished oratory of his mentor who was only four years his senior. In time he, too, would learn how to handle a live audience, though it did not come easily. Despite Jo’s assistance – and that of the intrepid Dr Mary Esslemont – Irvine’s bid was to no avail. He later entered Parliament – but as a Labour MP, not a Liberal. It was through his private life that Jo now became more fully drawn into the citadel of Liberal politics. He had started seeing Laura Bonham Carter whose parents were both well placed at the high table of party affairs – Sir Maurice

Into Parliament

19

Bonham Carter and Lady Violet, daughter of H.H. Asquith. A student of T.H. Green at Balliol College, Asquith was one of Jo’s political heroes. As a twentiethcentury premier, Asquith’s tenure in Downing Street was to remain unsurpassed in duration until that of Harold Wilson in the 1970s and, for uninterrupted tenure, until that of Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s. If Green’s ideas provided the intellectual backdrop for his (and Asquith’s) political philosophy, then it was Asquith for whom Jo held a torch as the model politician, paying full homage to his achievements in office. But he was no less impressed by the personal qualities of one who ‘carried on the Gladstone tradition of politics as a heroic and endless engagement in trying to translate moral a�itude into practice and raise the standards of aesthetic and intellectual as well as economic life’.8 Summing up the assets of the last man to lead his party into government he said: He had political imagination. He believed in the power and responsibility of politicians. He held to the tradition that politics is more than administration: more than office: more than a career: that it is an education as well as the management of life in all its aspects. The public service is a service to the public and not an opportunity to manipulate their affairs.9 With these words, wri�en in the 1970s, Jo was no doubt striking a note of party and of family allegiance. He was also expressing his own view of politics and of some of the qualities by which he too would hope to be remembered. Pleased he would have been with the epitaph, offered nearly a decade a�er his death, as ‘perhaps the last British politician cast in the Asquithian mould’.10 He certainly had some of the ‘tranquil consciousness of effortless superiority’ – Asquith’s famous description of Balliol man. Things o�en came easily for him – perhaps too much so at times, leading to an alleged lack of ‘hunger’. The Bonham Carters were a family with long-standing Liberal connections in their own right.11 A Balliol man like his political master, Sir Maurice Bonham Carter (‘Bongie’) had been private secretary to the illustrious premier between 1910 and 1916, from which vantage point he met Violet, Asquith’s only daughter. Maurice and Violet were married in 1915. They had four children – two sons, two daughters of whom Laura was the second, born on 13 October 1918. The two boys were younger: Mark (born 1922) later to become a Liberal MP, and Raymond (born 1929). Lady Violet was one of the most famous ‘belle politicos’ of her age – some mark of distinction for one who never became an MP. Twice she stood for Parliament, twice she was defeated before being raised to the peerage in 1964 at the age of 77 as Baroness Asquith of Yarnbury. She enjoyed a long-standing, platonic relationship with Winston Churchill, begun in 1906 and maintained until his death in 1965.12 A fearless champion of her father’s cause, she went to endless lengths to defend his reputation in the face of critics, Liberal or otherwise. In so doing

20

Liberal Lion

she helped to keep alive the Asquith-Lloyd George schism long a�er the central protagonists had le� the scene. While never holding any high office of state, she had a distinguished record of public service – as a member of the executive of the League of Nations Union; as a governor of the BBC during the Second World War; as vice chairman of the United Europe Movement in 1947; and as president of the Royal Institute of International Affairs (1964–1969). Within the Liberal Party she was twice president of the Women’s Liberal Federation (1923–1925 and 1939–1945) and, between 1945 and 1947, was president of the Liberal Party Organisation. In his memoirs, Jo observed that ‘in spite of or probably because of her sophistication she was curiously innocent,’ a trait he saw also in his own mother.13 Undoubtedly, Lady Violet was an influence upon Jo, both directly and through her daughter. She gave no quarter in pursuit of the causes she upheld – above all that of liberalism. Yet she was a�entive to her children. In February 1920, and with Laura not yet 18 months old, she wrote, with biblical overtones: ‘what does it profit a woman to gain even to save the whole world if she lose her own child.’14 Such would be the touchstone for her daughter, no less redoubtable if less conspicuous to the wider public in an age when women were making their mark in slightly greater numbers than before. Both the Asquiths and the Bonham Carters had loose connections with Jo’s part of the world back in Scotland. For many years, until his defeat in the ‘coupon’ election of December 1918, H.H. Asquith had represented the constituency of East Fife, adjacent to St Andrews. ‘Bongie’ spent some of his time in Scotland – summers at Beaufort Castle, the home of Lord Lovat in Beauly, Invernesshire; and at other times, visits to Dalnawillan in Caithness, the home of Sir Archibald and Marigold Sinclair. Since 1922, Sinclair had been the local MP for Caithness and Sutherland, a seat he was to hold for twenty-three years. Under the free trade banner he had followed the Samuelite Liberals into opposition in 1932, resigning from his briefly held portfolio as secretary of state for Scotland.15 Then, when Samuel lost his seat three years later, Sinclair assumed the party leadership. For ten years (1935–1945) he held the reins.16 In particular, he became an increasingly vocal opponent of the policy of appeasement, a passion shared by Lady Violet and, of course, Winston Churchill under whom he had served as second-incommand of the Royal Scots Fusiliers during the Great War and in whose cabinet he held office as secretary of state for air for much of the Second World War.17 It was in the early stages of Sinclair’s party leadership that he first entertained Jo, Laura and others among their circle of friends. Jo had already experienced the Sinclairs’ hospitality at a grouse shoot on the Caithness moors before he had met Laura. And it was upon leaving the lodge at Dalnawillan that they decided to get engaged, which they did in November 1937. Laura was barely eighteen when first she met Jo. Their engagement followed within the year. Despite the Sco�ish excursions, their courtship was based mainly in London and the south of England – partly at the Bonham Carters’ country

Into Parliament

21

1. ‘The church of the House of Commons’: Jo and Laura outside St Margaret’s, Westminster, on their wedding day, May 1938.

retreat in the village of Stockton in the Wylye valley, near the Salisbury plain; and, more commonly, in the family residence of 40 Gloucester Square.18 The la�er provided an easy facility for regular companionship, being not far from Jo’s lodgings in South Eaton Place. Lady Violet approved of her prospective sonin-law. Upon the engagement she wrote in her diary: ‘Of all the young men who have loved her in the last 18 months (and there have been many and various) I like him far the best – so I am overjoyed.’19 But she added: ‘My only regret is her youth (just 19). I hoped she would go on “shaking a loose leg” (as Father called it) for many years more – and I shall hate losing her so soon.’20 Certainly Laura was at the hub of ‘society’. Among the beaux who competed for her a�ention was Philip Toynbee. They had met in 1933 when she was fi�een, he seventeen.21 Another was Donald Maclean, a connection that was to resonate when, many years later, he declared himself as a Soviet spy. Maclean’s father, Sir Donald Maclean, had taken temporary leadership of the Liberals in the House of Commons from February 1919 until Asquith’s return to Parliament the following year. A close friend of the Bonham Carters, Sir Donald was godfather to Laura’s younger brother Mark. Jo and Laura were married on Tuesday 31 May 1938 at St Margaret’s, Westminster, the church of the House of Commons since the early seventeenth century. Jo had been inclined to arrange it for the morning that he might return to chambers in the a�ernoon, but Laura had the contrary and decisive vote!22 The ceremony was performed by Canon J.O. Hannay, assisted by the Rev. R.B. Parker. Jasper Ridley was the best man – a compliment Jo returned the following year when his long-standing friend married Laura’s elder sister, Cressida. Those present in the congregation were a veritable cross-section of the ‘good and the great’.23 In addition to close members of the family there were, among the Liberal cognoscenti,

22

Liberal Lion

the Sinclairs, Viscount and Viscountess Samuel, Viscount and Viscountess Esher and Arthur Irvine. Conservative families were well represented too, including Lord David Cecil, Mr and Mrs John Boyd-Carpenter, Victor Cazalet, the Hon Alfred Ly�elton, Mrs Winston Churchill and Mrs Quintin Hogg. The socialist cause was less in evidence, though among the guests was Nigel Nicolson, himself to become a Conservative MP but whose father Harold was a diplomat and sometime Labour National MP who later joined the Labour Party. The presence of so many notables undoubtedly owed far more to the Bonham Carters than to the Grimonds. But some of Jo’s past connections included his Oxford contemporary Guy Branch and his old Eton housemaster Geoffrey Headlam. The reception was held at Hyde Park Gardens. The happy couple began their honeymoon at The Elms, Ro�ingdean, lent for the purpose by Reuters correspondent and subsequent proprietor Sir Roderick Jones, before leaving for the south of France. It proved to be a durable marriage. In public, harmony usually prevailed. For the most part it was a natural harmony, though each could be the other’s most stringent if constructive critic – especially Laura of Jo. Upon celebrating their golden wedding anniversary, she observed to one of the guests how remarkable it was that two cantankerous people had managed to live together for so long. She went on to add: ‘Perhaps it’s because he is deaf and I won’t listen’.24 Deafness did begin to overtake Jo – but that came much later. From the first, both he and Laura maintained their identities as two strong, independent-minded individuals. It was in some ways an unlikely chemistry – he almost congenitally untidy, she notoriously unpunctual. Yet they were each able always to raise the flag to the trumpet call: untidiness never meant indifference, nor unpunctuality a lost opportunity. It was a marriage of minds as well as of hearts. And both minds (and hearts) were united in one cause – that of liberalism. There were to be four children from the marriage: Andrew, born in 1939; Grizelda (1942); Johnny (1946); and Magnus (1959). Laura followed her mother in a�ending first and foremost to her family. During her early married years, she rarely caught the wider public eye. Instead she provided a secure enclave that was to be a source of strength for Jo. More positively, if initially from behind the scenes, she gave him throughout his political career much practical, ‘handson’ assistance. She was an additional, unofficial agent, prominent in running the constituency when Jo was away, especially during his years as party leader. She was a source of inspiration, part of his political conscience on issues such as heritage, devolution, decolonisation, defence, women’s rights and the plight of the deprived. In time she would see more daylight in the vista of public affairs – as a parliamentary candidate, as a magistrate, a local councillor and, in her mother’s footsteps, as president of the Women’s Liberal Federation. Increasingly she took the platform in her own right. She bore many of Violet’s characteristics. While lacking the last ounce of grandeur, she was nevertheless an effective public speaker. She brought passion and intensity to the issues that she held dear,

Into Parliament

23

perhaps surpassing her mother in the practical art of ‘can do’ and in the sustained application of her intellect. If during the earlier years of the marriage she seemed to subsist in Jo’s shadow, then it was partly because such was her wish, partly because she was so effective in nourishing the oak under which she remained in semi-obscurity. To that extent, any story about Jo Grimond must be the story of Jo and Laura. The 1930s was more than the decade of economic depression and prelude to war. While relatively high levels of unemployment were experienced almost everywhere for at least a time, the blight bore with particular severity upon areas associated with traditional industries, exposed as they were to the chill winds of international competition. Other areas were far less badly affected. Here there was palpable expansion and prosperity, triggered by new industries and service sector activity, especially during the second half of the decade.25 For many, living standards began to rise. By the late 1930s, millions were taking annual holidays away from home, most owned wireless sets and some ran cars – made more widely available by the advent of ‘hire purchase’, payment by instalment schemes. For the Grimonds and their circle, holidays were already an assumed feature of life – holidays abroad at that. Nor did their economic circumstances dictate the need for hire purchase schemes. Like many others of their class, their lifestyles were enhanced by the phalanx of minor luxuries and other appurtenances of what came to be known as the consumer society. In the late 1930s, Jo continued his legal work but was becoming more active politically. He was involved for a while in the 8.30 Club. Founded in 1936, it was a debating society of young Liberals who gathered on six occasions each year until a few months prior to the outbreak of war and may have had a brief existence a�er the war.26 At a meeting held in March 1937, Jo unsuccessfully opposed a motion that ‘the present distribution of colonies is inequitable.’27 His argument was that the colonies were of strategic importance and that Britain was a be�er manager of its outposts than were other colonial powers. In October 1937, he wrote to inform Sir Archibald Sinclair that he had been adopted as the Liberal candidate for Central Aberdeenshire, a development that had, he said, raised up a ‘dust of protest’ in his legal chambers.28 The previous candidate, Dr Russell Thomas, had defected to the Liberal Nationals a year earlier and Jo was hoping to get a free run from Labour in a ‘popular front’ anti-national government arrangement. As it happened, wider events were to overtake his candidature. Still, Sinclair received good reports of Jo’s speech from a local party official.29 In November 1938, Jo spoke at the Oxford Liberal Club, offering ideas that ‘owed more to Keynes than to classical, free market liberalism’.30 That same month Lady Violet was pulling strings in an effort to get him a brief platform appearance at Bridgewater in support of the by-election candidature of the Independent Progressive Vernon Bartle�, who carried Labour as well as Liberal Party blessings.31

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The Grimonds’ first child, (Joseph) Andrew, was born in March 1939. By now the couple were resident at 18 Drayco� Avenue, Chelsea. On the wider political front, the transitory moment of relief that followed Neville Chamberlain’s ‘peace surrender’ of the Sudetan Czechs at Munich in September 1938 had given way to yet greater anxiety. There was a widespread assumption that war was inevitable. On 15 March 1939, Hitler’s troops entered what remained of Czechoslovakia, so violating the Munich agreement. Now Chamberlain the appeaser guaranteed Poland. The final countdown to war had begun. From its ravages – unlike the blight of unemployment – there was no escape, even for the relatively comfortable middle classes. Hitler invaded Poland on 1 September 1939 and, a�er further fleeting prevarication, Chamberlain declared war two days later. Like many others, Jo enlisted a few days before the formal declaration of war, joining the 2nd Fife and Forfar Yeomanry. As he says in his memoirs, he did so through the nepotism of his brother-in-law, Willie Black.32 It meant that he was spared the full horrors of front-line fighting. To that extent his was not a heroic war. Initially stationed in Fife, subsequent postings during the earlier stages of the war took him further afield, including Aldershot and Ulster. He became known among his cronies – officers as well as sergeants – as a practical joker though he was, according to one source, less enamoured of reciprocations!33 Although he remained for the moment within the British Isles, Jo was nevertheless away from Laura for quite a lot of the time. She retreated for periods with Jo’s mother in St Andrews, though it was in Edinburgh that Grizelda was born in February 1942. For the duration of the war, Laura took the two children for summer and Christmas breaks to her parents’ wartime country residence at Manor Farm in the village of Stockton, Wiltshire. Occasionally they were joined by Jo. He was with them at Manor Farm to see in the new year of 1944, along with his brother-in-law, Mark. Mark’s safety had been a cause of considerable anxiety. Serving in the 8th Army, he had been captured in March 1943, escaping shortly a�erwards to return to England. A less happy outcome signalled the fate of Jo’s friend, and now relative through marriage, Jasper Ridley. He had been captured in 1942 during the North African campaign and then held prisoner in Italy. He too made his escape but was killed by a landmine while trying to reach Allied lines a couple of weeks before Christmas 1943. The whole family was deeply distressed. For Jo there was further sadness in the loss of other members of the Beaumont Street set, including Guy Branch and Mark Pilkington. In a le�er to his mother-in-law, he confessed: ‘I have no Spartan feelings.’34 While certainly no pacifist, he saw li�le glory in war, nor hankered for posterity in the annals of martyrdom. Yet he too was soon to be drawn closer to the heat of ba�le. Now in the 53rd Division, he was despatched to Belgium and then, just a�er the D-day landings of June 1944, to Normandy. Jo’s life was never in serious danger, but he saw enough to become aware of the mismatch between the image and reality of warfare – in its organisation and in aspects of human

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behaviour for which it provided a platform. In particular, he reflected critically upon the sensitivity to status among the officer (and other) ranks. Clearly he was ill at ease. Former Eton and Oxford contemporary Lionel Bre� visited him in a dreary headquarters ‘surrounded by people completely unlike himself so that he seemed a different animal, a noble beast in a farmyard’.35 When the war in Europe ended on 8 May 1945, the 53rd Division was in Hamburg. By now he had become Major Grimond. It was during the war that there arose the opportunity that ultimately provided Jo with a parliamentary constituency and, into the bargain, a home for the rest of his life. Lady Louise Glen-Coats had been the prospective Liberal candidate for Orkney and Shetland since 1938 but had indicated her wish to withdraw. The local constituency accepted her recommendation that Jo be adopted as the Liberal candidate for the next general election. The si�ing MP was Basil Neven-Spence, a Conservative Shetlander. He had won the seat in 1935 when the Liberals had contested only sixteen of Scotland’s seventy constituencies, six of which (including Orkney and Shetland) the party had been defending. Prior to that, Orkney and Shetland had been a Liberal stronghold. Only twice – and then briefly – since the creation of the constituency in 1832 had the party yielded to its opponents.36 Ironically, the hapless Conservative opponents had included Robert Boothby whose father had been sometime resident at 8 Abbotsford Crescent, St Andrews

2. ‘Major Grimond’: Like many others, Jo Grimond remained enlisted but was granted special leave to pursue his candidacy in the general election of 1945.

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prior to the Grimonds’ tenancy. Losing to Sir Robert Hamilton in the December 1923 election that heralded the first Labour government, the inimitable Boothby had nevertheless le� his mark. Many years later, islanders regaled Jo with stories about his arrival, equipped with two large Fair Isle sweaters in a vain a�empt to win local favour.37 Jo would not make the same mistake as Boothby. But his party was at low ebb, both in the country at large and in Orkney and Shetland. Participation in the wartime electoral truce had been a mixed blessing for the Liberals. Spared Conservative and Labour opposition, they had been able at by-elections to retain seats that might otherwise have been in jeopardy; most notably, Sir William Beveridge who, without the prospect of a reasonably free run, might not have agreed to carry the party colours in the Berwick-on-Tweed by-election of October 1944. By no means all activists were enthusiastic supporters of the truce, Lady Violet being among those who felt that the party stood to gain more from a position of independence in open contest. Organisationally and financially, the war had taken its toll on all the main political parties. The Liberals were in particularly poor shape. A large number of the more generous subscribers had dri�ed away; there was an overdra� and, during the early years of the war, fewer than seventy candidates were ‘fixed’.38 And when, with allied victory in sight, many prospective candidates came forward there remained a lack of organisation. The general election of 1945 was in many ways an exceptional one – in the circumstances in which it was called, the administrative arrangements for its conduct and, of course, in the result. A�er VE Day, Churchill offered the other parties what amounted to an ultimatum – either to postpone the contest until the end of the war in Japan (at that time a conflict of unknown duration) or else an immediate election. But the Liberal Assembly in February 1945 and, more critically, the Labour Party Conference three months later sounded the deathknell to the wartime coalition government. All the Labour and all save one of the Liberal ministers withdrew from office. Gwilym Lloyd George, son of the recently deceased former premier, was the only Liberal to serve in Churchill’s caretaker government that took office on 23 May 1945. The campaign was already underway when Parliament was duly dissolved on 15 June. Polling day was set for 5 July, though the count would not take place for another three weeks to facilitate the collection of ballot papers from the 1.7 million troops stationed abroad, some of whom were still engaged in ba�le zones. Like all other service personnel who were candidates in the election, Jo Grimond was granted temporary leave to conduct his campaign. Cecil Walls, a local lawyer, was his agent in Orkney, his Kirkwall office serving as a temporary party headquarters. He had introduced Jo to Edwin Eunson, future secretary and stalwart of the local Liberal constituency association. When the two first met, Jo announced himself: ‘Mr Eunson? I’m Grimond. I believe you have the right way

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The Liberals contested 307 of the 640 constituencies, more so than at any election since 1929. The decision to stand so many candidates reflected tensions within the party.46 By and large, the leadership wanted efforts to be concentrated more in the winnable constituencies while rank and file members pressed for a broader front. Inasmuch as local constituencies remained relatively autonomous, the broad front approach prevailed. It reflected dilemmas that were to dog the Liberals for years and decades to come. Should the party organise on a broad front to allow the possibility, however unlikely, of forming a government; or should it abandon hopeless seats while nurturing more promising areas with a view to returning to office as a medium or long-term aim; or concentrate upon the more obviously winnable constituencies, far fewer in number? The la�er in effect meant a different strategy. No longer would the formation of a Liberal government remain a realistic objective. At best, the party would hope to hold the balance in a ‘hung’ parliament. More likely, it would seek influence, helping to shape the political agenda and pa�ern of debate inside and outside Parliament, nationally and locally, perhaps helping to effect real change on specific issues. Arguably more realistic, such a strategy is o�en more difficult to sell to activists, lacking as it does the focus and breadth of appeal needed to sustain morale. If the Liberals were unclear as to the most favourable strategies and tactics, then they were (and remain) no less divided as to how severe a defeat the party suffered in 1945 and as to the future significance of the election. In terms of votes per candidate, it was the party’s worst performance to date; there were seventy-six lost deposits. Many would agree that it was ‘a grim defeat’.47 Probably fewer share Michael Steed’s belief that ‘it deserves to be regarded as the Party’s most successful election campaign between 1929 and 1959.’48 The sophistications of psephology o�en give rein to varying interpretations about the precise conclusions to be drawn from seemingly disappointing outcomes. In their analysis of the election, McCallum and Readman held that there had been ‘a very decisive verdict against the Liberal party’ but that ‘it might be rash to state that there was a verdict against liberalism, the beliefs and prescriptions of which found so large a place in the propaganda of the other parties.’49 The party flag may have been lowered, but the colours of liberalism would rise again. Yet if the party was no longer able to carry the colours of the creed then there arose another question: what should be the relation between the Liberals and the other two main parties? That, too, was to become a vexed question for the leaders and party faithful alike. For the time being, most of the defeated candidates were obliged to pursue careers outside politics, sometimes in pastures anew. Jo Grimond was no exception. He now took two jobs in succession that were to reflect aspects of a longer-term political agenda: internationalism; and heritage and conservation. By the time the war in Asia came to an end in the middle of August, Jo, while not yet formally demobilised, was already gainfully employed, having become

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director of personnel for Europe at the United Nations Rehabilitation and Relief Administration (UNRRA). Like the earlier association with the Fife and Forfar Yeomanry, his entrée to UNRRA rested upon a personal connection – this time Toto Morhange, a family friend whose job he now took. There was at that time a desperate need for rapid recruitment of well-qualified people from different nations, especially those coming out of the forces.50 UNRRA’s objectives were to provide relief supplies (food, clothing) and relief services (health and welfare), together with rehabilitation supplies and services. The relief provided was intended to be temporary: rehabilitation would create the necessary conditions of self-help to meet this objective. Its main headquarters was in Washington, DC, but European operations were directed from Portland Place in London, established shortly before VE Day. From here Jo worked most of the time, in charge of personnel services for some 1,500 staff. Much of the activity was focused upon the devastated nations of central Europe and the liberated countries. At UNRRA, Jo gained experience upon which he later drew in parliamentary debates and on other public platforms. As many of his reflections were negative as they were positive, though. Certainly he upheld the humanitarian sentiments that had in the main driven UNRRA’s creation. He applauded the unstinting efforts of the many front-line workers who tried to ‘deliver’, o�en in extremely difficult conditions. Thus by the summer of 1946, there remained nearly half a million displaced Europeans, over five million already having been successfully repatriated by the military forces.51 Jo acknowledged the qualities of some of those with whom he worked closely but was in many ways as frustrated at UNRRA as he had been in the forces by what he called the ‘bureaucratic top hamper’.52 He was no less enamoured of the preponderance of new ‘office procedures’. Nor did he like what he saw in such dealings as he had with ‘establishment’ institutions – for example the Bank of England and HM Treasury, including an encounter with mandarin Sir Frederick Leith-Ross. At the same time his initial anti-Zionism was in tune with that of UNRRA – at any rate its British element, opposed as it was to any special dispensation for Jewish refugees fleeing from the central states of Europe to Palestine.53 While sensitive to the plight of the Palestinians, Jo nevertheless later became a friend of Israel. It is doubtful that he had either the appetite or the aptitude for a long stretch in any purely administrative position. In 1948, UNRRA was in any case wound up. By now he had become secretary of the National Trust for Scotland (NTS). Set up in May 1931, its jurisdiction had, by the early post-war years, come to embrace some 100,000 acres of wild land and over a hundred buildings. Jo’s secretaryship (1947–1949) coincided with quite an active period of acquisition, a goodly number of properties and sites of interest having been presented to the Trust during and immediately a�er the war.54 He was directly involved in the Trust’s acquisition of the gardens at Threave and of Elizabeth Sharp’s house at Hill of Tarvit, a contribution later acknowledged by Labour MP Tam Dalyell, not an

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ardent Grimond fan.55 But, as at UNRRA, administration and management were not Jo’s most conspicuous gi�s. Still, his work with the NTS kindled a genuine interest and knowledge in ma�ers of heritage and conservation, issues that he and Laura were to champion publicly for the rest of their lives. With nearly six months le� of the 1945–1950 parliament, prime minister Clement A�lee sought dissolution. Polling was set to take place on 23 February 1950. While the Labour government was enacting some of the most momentous reforms of the modern age, the Conservatives had begun to reshape their policies. The Liberals, too, engaged in a bout of reappraisal. They did so with some difficulty, though. Despite the disappointment of 1945, many rank and file members continued to believe that there was a large potential Liberal vote, if only electors could be persuaded to follow their convictions. In an atmosphere ‘almost of religious revivalism’, the 1946 Assembly launched a foundation fund.56 New constituency associations were formed, existing ones reinvigorated. But there were convulsions within the parliamentary party. Sinclair’s defeat in 1945 had necessitated the election of a new leader. Gwilym Lloyd George was approached but declined, continuing his gravitation towards the Conservatives. Rhys Hopkin Morris refused to allow his name to go forward, disaffected by the manner in which the party was conducting its search for a new leader.57 So, Clement Davies emerged to lead the party for the next eleven years. He took the reins on 2 August 1945, Thomas Horabin becoming chief whip. In March 1946, Horabin resigned his position, leaving the party a few months later to sit as an Independent, before joining the Labour Party the following year. Thus when Parliament was dissolved in February 1950 there were only ten Liberal MPs. In the event the Liberals fielded 475 candidates. Contesting more seats brought more votes (2.6 million) but a lower average percentage poll per candidate than at any general election before or since. The author of the Nuffield study concluded that it was ‘defeat on a scale which it would be hard to parallel’.58 No fewer than 319 Liberal candidates lost their deposits, forfeited in those days upon failure to gain one eighth of the poll. More so than in 1945 the result brought a rude jolt to those who thought that the party could profit from a ‘blanket’ approach. Not until the 1970s did it again a�empt anything so ambitious – and then in manifestly more promising circumstances. The election of 1950 le� the Liberals with nine MPs, three of which were new to the House. One of them was Jo Grimond. It was not certain that Jo would be a candidate in the election. He had kept his options open when, in February 1947, the Orkney Liberal Association formally invited him to be their man again.59 As he stayed his hand, Edwin Eunson was despatched to stay with the Grimonds in Hamilton Dover House, their NTS home in Prestonpans, near Edinburgh. Eunson warned Jo that other prominent Liberals had expressed an interest in the constituency, including sometime SNP candidate John MacCormack and Philip Fothergill. He recalls that Jo was concerned about

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the Shetland Islands, asking for reassurances of support.60 With reassurances readily given to Eunson by Shetland Times editor Basil Wishart and with Laura keen for him to stand, Jo agreed. Local Liberals put everything into the campaign and, with the publication of Liberal Orkney, le�ers to the press, countless posters and a full schedule of meetings, he enjoyed a high public profile. He now had a new election agent in Orkney, Cecil Walls being replaced by another solicitor (and Conservative sympathiser) Jackie Robertson. It was the first of seven successive elections in which Robertson was to play the role. Eunson continued as the permanent constituency agent in Orkney, his aunt making available the upstairs room of her town house in Victoria Street, Kirkwall as the local party headquarters, an arrangement that continued until 1970.61 In Shetland, Basil Wishart was now Eunson’s counterpart. Additionally, Jo had the assistance not only of Laura but also, for the final week, of Lady Violet. Nationally, her role during the campaign had been the cause of some controversy when it became known that her friend and now opposition leader Winston Churchill had offered her some of the broadcasting time allocated to the Conservatives. The offer was clearly part of Churchill’s a�empt to cull the Liberal vote but it was met by a firm ‘no’ from leader Clement Davies and from other party elders.62 In his address to local constituents, Jo played upon the great state welfare reforms of the Asquith government. He set running two hares that were to distinguish his public profile for years to come – the call for a highlands development authority and support for devolution. He paid particular a�ention to agriculture, of central concern in Orkney and Shetland. Here he wanted an extension to the wartime price guarantees and assured markets for livestock breeders; a more discriminatory application of farming subsidies to help the efficient without sheltering the inefficient; and the growing of wheat as well as barley crops in Orkney. With these cadences he spliced a rugged, market-orientated liberalism to the human needs of his prospective constituents. The land issue had long been a classic liberal chime. The ability of the cro�er and farmer to improve the property that they owned or in which they lived had a special resonance in the highlands and islands of Scotland. Jo made it his business to understand and to let it be known that he understood. As in 1945, it was a three-cornered contest. His Conservative opponent was again the si�ing MP Basil (now Sir Basil) Neven-Spence. Harold Leslie, QC (later Lord Birsay) represented Labour. Snow fell over the islands on polling day, a bigger problem for the Liberals with their more limited resources than for the other two parties. All three parties were subject to the legal injunction by which the use of cars was restricted to one per 1,500 electors in county areas, a severe inconvenience where, aside from the two main population centres of Kirkwall (Orkney) and Lerwick (Shetland), the people were sca�ered among the outreaches, including a multiplicity of small, separate islands. Jo nevertheless managed to visit all the islands as well as the two main towns. Polling took place

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Liberal Lion

on Thursday and Jo hired a radio to listen to results as they came in from across the country. The declaration for Orkney and Shetland was delayed until the following Monday a�ernoon. This time he was there to hear the returning officer announce the result: Grimond 9,237 votes; Neven-Spence 6,281; Leslie 2,956. ‘I’m delighted’ was his only public comment before making a swi� exit from the hall en route to London.63 The Conservative-inclined Orcadian opined that he had ridden the crest of a Liberal revival in the constituency that had lain dormant for twenty years.64 It also noted that ‘his good looks, charm and easy manner made many converts (especially with the fair sex).’65 By whatever agency, he was now an honourable member of Parliament. Many years later, he recalled his election as having been the summit of his ambition at the time.66

Chapter 3

MAN FOR THE ISLANDS

S��� 160 �� ��� candidates elected in February 1950 had not sat in the previous parliament. Most of them were, like Jo Grimond, entering Westminster for the first time. Among the Conservative debutants who went on to hold cabinet portfolios were Robert Carr, Edward Heath, Iain Macleod, Reginald Maudling, Duncan Sandys and Christopher Soames. Two other future Conservative cabinet ministers were to become be�er known to posterity for other reasons – John Profumo, at the centre of a sexual and security scandal during the early 1960s; and Enoch Powell, remembered chiefly for his controversial views on immigration and opposition to Britain’s membership of the EEC. The national swing to the Conservatives was not enough to bring about a change of government. Labour was back – but with a greatly reduced majority. The relatively few Labour members among the new intake included future cabinet ministers Fred Mulley and Anthony Crosland. The la�er’s revisionist thinking, as well as that of Roy Jenkins, was to become a factor in Jo’s bid for a centre-le� realignment when later he sought to woo the Labour right. Many of these MPs from the ‘class of ’50’ were to remain part of the parliamentary landscape during his time in the House. Parliament reassembled on 1 March, MPs filling the benches of the House of Lords, the Commons, damaged during the war, remaining out of commission until the end of the year.1 Jo got the chance to make his maiden speech on the fi�h day of the debate on the King’s speech, Friday 10 March. Observing the necessary etique�es with polite despatch, he took only a li�le longer than the customary ten minutes to deliver a hard-hi�ing, businesslike oration. He focused on the problems of Orkney and Shetland, the case for devolution and the question of a federal Europe. Orkney and Shetland, he told the House, were ‘two li�le worlds of their own… very different from each other even in their own land and their own economic affairs, but certainly very different from things down here’.2 He

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went on to outline some of the specific problems facing each in turn of the two groups of islands. Shetland, ‘a country of cro�ers and fishermen, poor people in a small way of business’,3 had had to sustain falling prices for its wool and for its kni�ed products, together with a poor herring season. Freight charges on fish now imposed an additional burden, exacerbated by the deregulation of white fishing. Cro�ers had been adversely affected by the increased purchase tax on tweed. Unemployment was beginning to rise as the local economy found itself unable to sustain the existing population. Presaging debates that were to resurface with a vengeance during the Thatcher years, he argued that ‘it is not enough to say that the Shetlanders should leave their homes and go south to find work elsewhere.’4 On the contrary, there was much that could and should be done to regenerate Shetland by way of improved infrastructure – be�er roads, harbours, piers and houses. So, too, in Orkney where specific types of houses were needed, mobilising local skills with the assistance of appropriate grants. Transport was a problem to which he was to refer time and again. For the moment, he confined himself to the ‘special problems of the great area from Perth right up to the north of Shetland and out to the Outer Isles’.5 No doubt in the belief that the reforming zeal of the A�lee government was waning, he expressed the hope that there would soon be time for Parliament to a�end to local ma�ers. He was certainly correct in acknowledging that that would require a different psychology. For, since the middle years of the nineteenth century, local bills had yielded pride of place to essentially national affairs, at any rate in Parliament’s legislative deliberations. He told the House, defiantly: ‘We are very apt to talk… in general terms, of production, employment, dollars, and so on, but it is, as we all know, a human problem.’6 On the question of devolution – Sco�ish self-government as he called it – Jo gave his support ‘not in the least on nationalistic grounds’ but as ‘a question of efficiency’.7 He observed that ‘the functions and scope of government are increasing every year, and must do, but many people feel that the Government is a remote and even a faintly hostile affair which is not their concern.’8 Thus, he reasoned, devolution would ‘do something to bring government back nearer to the ordinary people’.9 It was not a question of wanting to break away from England: rather that ‘if, as may well be the case, we have not the time here to consider all these ma�ers, then give us the opportunity to do it ourselves.’10 Devolution was therefore quite compatible with the union and with ‘some sort of federal government’ that may, he suggested, be ‘the ultimate solution for all Europe’.11 With these last arguments he sought to fend off the taunts of Conservative MP Robert Boothby, who castigated the Liberals for advocating what he considered to be the contradictory policies of integrating Western Europe while disintegrating the British Isles.12 In making this allegation he was referring to comments made by Jo’s colleague, Archibald Macdonald, also in a maiden speech. Macdonald pointed out that the Sco�ish Covenant – a petition for Home Rule – had received

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in the division lobby.19 But when, in making his reply to the King’s speech, party leader Clement Davies indicated that the Liberals would be abstaining, he was smartly upbraided by his parliamentary colleagues. At a meeting on Wednesday 8 February, Rhys Hopkin Morris objected, indicating his preference for outright opposition. Jo gave his support to the Hopkin Morris line, along with Roderic Bowen, Emrys Roberts and Donald Wade.20 So for the moment, all the Liberal MPs voted together in opposition. The government nevertheless survived the division. When, two weeks later, the same group of Liberal MPs met again, Jo was elected as Chief Whip. The vacancy had been occasioned by the narrow general election defeat of Frank Byers in his North Dorset constituency. With virtually no parliamentary experience, Jo took the chalice. If not quite the proverbial poisoned chalice, it was o�en to contain sickly substances. The job fell to him because other potential candidates, be�er equipped by virtue of experience, were the subject of fierce enmities – most obviously Hopkin Morris and Megan Lloyd George. By contrast, Jo was untainted by faction. He seems fairly quickly to have established a working relationship with Clement Davies; and his other parliamentary colleagues were prepared to invest their trust. At thirty-six, he was five years older than Byers at the time of his appointment to the same position. A closer examination of his role as chief whip will be given in the next chapter. Jo was never inward looking. He did not get bogged down in the minutiae of party administration. Besides, there was much about the world of Westminster politics to a�ract an energetic young MP. Although new to Parliament and one of only a small group of Liberals, his prior connections helped to ease him into wider circles. He was dining with Alec Douglas-Home in 1951 when the la�er received news of his father’s death.21 Together with Home, Jo was to become a member of the Other Club, founded in 1911 by sometime Conservative minister F.E. Smith (Lord Birkenhead) and Winston Churchill, then a Liberal. It had been created in the wake of the constitutional crisis following the Lords’ initial refusal to enact Lloyd George’s ‘people’s budget’, its main purpose being to provide a bridge between warring factions within and between the parties. This fact notwithstanding, it retained rule 12, famously a�ributed to Smith: ‘Nothing in the rules or intercourse of the Club shall interfere with the rancour or asperity of party politics.’22 It met regularly when Parliament was in session, usually at the Savoy Hotel. Members were drawn from both houses and, increasingly, from circles outside politics – ‘young Turks’ as well as ‘men of position’. There was a mixture of respectability and irreverence about its conduct. Exchanges would sometimes be highly charged, at other times more relaxed – on all occasions lubricated by the finest cuisine and liquor. It was an ideal vehicle for an up and coming MP to extend his network, away from the public gaze. The Other Club was a forum in which members discussed not only the passing trivia of the moment but also the great issues of the day, though with Britain’s

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post-war decline as a world power it operated in a ‘thinner atmosphere’.23 And although Jo was not immediately drawn within its sanctum, there were many fibres on the wider canvas that would absorb him and the world at large during the 1950–1951 parliament. Early in the new parliament, controversy broke over an issue that was to become a cause célèbre on and off during the next few years – and one in which Jo was to become actively involved. Seretse Khama was heir to the chie�ainship of a tribe in Bechuanaland, a British protectorate in southern Africa. Like Jo, he was a Balliol man and had remained in England to study, training as a lawyer. He now met a white Englishwoman, Ruth Williams, the couple marrying in September 1948. The marriage placed great strain on his relationship with his uncle, Tshekedi, who acted as regent while Khama was completing his studies. Partly at Tshekedi’s behest, the Bamangwato tribe at first held Khama’s mixed-race marriage to be incompatible with the chie�ainship, though it so�ened its position at least to the point of conditional acceptance. The position facing the British government was a complicated one. It did not want to appear insensitive to tribal sensitivities. Besides, Bechuanaland was one of three protectorates – the others being neighbouring Basutoland (Lethoso) and Swaziland – the administration of which required the active co-operation of South Africa. The emerging policy of apartheid in South Africa had been given further focus by the Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act, 1949. British recognition of Khama’s chie�ainship may, in the circumstances, have sullied relationships between London and Pretoria. The British government feared that the South Africans could activate their legal claim to the three protectorates, so exposing them to the horrors of apartheid. Seretse Khama was invited to London where he met successive Labour Commonwealth secretaries Philip Noel-Baker and Patrick Gordon Walker. Both tried unsuccessfully to persuade Khama to renounce the chie�ainship. When he refused, Gordon Walker prohibited his return to Bechuanaland for a period of five years. Immediately, Khama claimed that he had been tricked into coming to London, so as to facilitate his exile. Liberal opinion across the political spectrum was offended by this apparent violation of human rights. To make ma�ers worse, the government refused to publish the findings of a judicial inquiry, completed in March 1950. That inquiry would support critics in their belief that the British government’s main concern was the likely response of the South Africans. Gordon Walker would claim that he genuinely feared the loss of the three protectorates.24 Subsequent research has vindicated him to the extent that he was not exaggerating the fear of South African reprisal; that the rights of Khama and his wife had to be weighed against ‘the liberties of nearly two million Africans who might otherwise end up under South African rule’.25 Moreover, a�er the Conservatives returned to office in 1951, Khama’s exile was pronounced

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permanent. In the event, he returned in 1956, having renounced the chie�ainship. He became the country’s first president upon its independence ten years later as Botswana. But critics forever maintained that the episode had brought no credit to Britain. Together with Labour MPs Tony Benn, Fenner Brockway and others, Jo became active in a pressure group known as the Council for the Defence of Seretse Khama and the Protectorates. Upon its creation in November 1952, he became vice-chairman, Brockway assuming the chair with Benn as treasurer.26 It helped to stimulate and sustain Jo’s growing conviction that Britain’s role as an imperial power was neither sustainable nor justified. The Liberal Party was already commi�ed in principle to some sort of federalism across Europe. Sharper focus was given to these ideas with the publication of the Schuman Plan. Published on 9 May 1950, it contained proposals for the pooling of Franco-German coal and steel industries under a supreme authority with sovereign powers. Certain other European nations quickly showed a positive interest – Italy, Luxembourg and Belgium.27 The Netherlands stayed its hand, agreeing nevertheless to join in discussions. But the A�lee government declined any involvement. With A�lee himself indisposed and foreign secretary Bevin in hospital, it fell to acting premier Herbert Morrison to deal with the ma�er. A�er taking initial soundings he said, famously: ‘It’s no good… the Durham miners won’t wear it.’28 There ensued a two-day debate on a joint Conservative-Liberal motion bidding the government to participate on the same basis as the Netherlands – that is, without prejudice to its position. Party leader Clement Davies informed the House that the Schuman proposals had been endorsed by every Liberal council and commi�ee that had had the opportunity to meet.29 He allayed fears about the Commonwealth and about relationships with the USA.30 With approval, he quoted the words of Neville Chamberlain, albeit u�ered in the very different circumstances of November 1939: ‘Federate or perish.’31 For the Conservatives, Anthony Eden was prepared to countenance ‘a high authority… whose decisions would be binding upon the nations who were party to the agreement… provided we are satisfied with the conditions and the safeguards’.32 The government was unmoved. The Chancellor of the Exchequer, Sir Stafford Cripps, argued that, while the Netherlands had li�le to lose, British coal accounted for half the output of Western Europe, her steel industry up to a third. Supranational control would, he said, reduce access to markets and trade with the Commonwealth.33 He drew a distinction between intergovernmental bodies such as the OEEC and the supranational organisation proposed by Schuman.34 Thus were the ba�le lines of argument if not of party established for a generation and more. Jo did not speak in the debate. He made two unsuccessful a�empts to interject while Richard Crossman was holding the floor. He was clearly vexed as the wily le�-winger derided the Liberals for giving their support to a supranational authority that would override Parliament, so removing any vestige of democracy.35 The government prevailed in the division,

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for which Jo acted as one of the opposition tellers. The day before Parliament began debating the Schuman Plan, North Korean troops trespassed the 38th parallel, taking them into South Korea. It was the first overt invasion of an internationally recognised boundary since the Second World War.36 Already the Cold War was a reality. Tensions over Berlin continued in the wake of the 1948 Soviet blockade and subsequent western airli�. In October 1949, Mao Tse-Tung’s communist forces had finally triumphed with the proclamation of the People’s Republic of China. The Soviet Union had exploded its first nuclear weapons. The world held its breath as the major powers squared up over Korea. The British were almost as fearful of an intemperate US response as they were of the intentions of Soviet leader Stalin.37 British troops were nevertheless soon in action under the auspices of the United Nations. The war in Korea dragged on for three years. It became one of the defining conflicts of the Cold War and of the wider relationship between the western world and communism. Totalitarian regimes, communist or otherwise, were an affront to everything for which Jo Grimond stood. During a Commons foreign-policy debate at the height of hostilities in Korea, he emphasised the need for Britain to stand shoulder to shoulder with the Americans who were ‘absolutely essential to the defence of democracy and to any real chance of raising living standards throughout the world’.38 He never wavered in his support for the closest possible Anglo-American accord. Nor, though, was he prepared to give the USA a blank cheque of approval. Thus in June 1952 he publicly acknowledged the folly of bombing a power station close to the border in Korea as truce negotiations were in process.39 At other times he talked of the need to maintain limited objectives in Korea, avoiding ‘moral and ideological overtones’ that would risk escalation and possible total war.40 He had come to think that a great disservice had been done by excessive talk about the Iron Curtain; that communism was perhaps not immutable.41 While upholding military action in defence of South Korean integrity, he therefore wanted to develop and strengthen contacts with the communist world – far more so than the British or US governments were at that time prepared to contemplate.42 Such a position, he knew, invited obvious charges of appeasement, a term of derision applied with heightened indignation during those early post-war years. It was as much in deference to realpolitik as to first principles that he squared potential critics (and perhaps his own conscience) with the observation that communist aggression was not of the same ilk as the rise of Hitler and Mussolini.43 He was in favour of peaceful co-existence. Communist China should be brought into the UN, notwithstanding its military involvement in Korea at Stalin’s behest from November 1950.44 British (though not American) recognition of the Maoist regime had been quickly forthcoming but, initially as a counter to the Soviet boyco� of the Security Council, the USA held out successfully for many years against Red China’s membership of the UN.45 ***

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The Cold War gave piquancy to an incident that brought mild and oblique embarrassment to Jo and his family. On the night of Friday 25 May 1951, Donald Maclean le� England forever, together with fellow diplomat Guy Burgess. Two weeks later it became known that they had defected to the Soviet Union, their departure prompted by fact that their cover was about to be blown. For many years they had been betraying British state secrets. Burgess had been one of Jo’s contemporaries at Eton. Maclean, as noted in the last chapter, had been part of the society circle in which Laura (and Jo) had moved during the 1930s. He had entered the Diplomatic Service in October 1935, having been interviewed by a panel that included Lady Violet. His communist sympathies were probed by members of the panel who were, according to one account, impressed by his frankness and his good looks.46 No one could have known what was to follow, though. Laura later acknowledged that she had wondered why Maclean had chosen the Diplomatic Service, unconvinced as she had been about his disclaimers to communism.47 While back on leave from Cairo in the spring of 1950, Maclean had lunched with Jo who tried, unsuccessfully, to persuade him not to return. Despite reports about the diplomat’s fragile state of mind, he later recalled that there had been nothing wrong with Maclean’s memory or with his grasp of the international situation.48 When the ma�er was debated in Parliament, Jo initially remained silent. Lady Violet’s only public u�erance at the time of the defection was a defence of Maclean’s pregnant wife, Melinda, who had, she felt, been subject to unwarranted intrusion by the press. Among other things, one report carried details of an interview falsely claimed to have been given by Mrs Maclean. Later Jo asked home secretary David Maxwell Fyfe to introduce legislation to compel the publication of denials or else set up a press council.49 The Royal Commission on the Press had in 1949 recommended the creation of an independent, statutory council both to protect the freedom of the press and to safeguard professional standards. No action had been taken. In 1952, Jo seconded a motion introduced by Labour MP and former newspaper editor Charles Simmons calling for the establishment of a press council. Jo acknowledged that competition between newspapers was a partial safeguard but feared that ‘in the search for a bigger circulation the Press may infringe certain rights of individuals (who)… in a democracy have a right to the presentation of accurate news’.50 He denied any Pauline conversion to fascism, urging that it was very much a liberal trait to balance differing and sometimes competing rights; that it was ‘not intended to bring the executive into the Press but to allow the Press to do its own organisation freely among its own members’.51 In July 1953, a non-statutory Press Council was set up, though not for some years did it operate with the independent chairperson and lay representation for which Jo and others had called.52 It was in ma�ers closer to home that Jo began to make his mark in Parliament – especially in ma�ers connected with his own constituency and the region of which

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it was a part. The great party machines and the growth of central government had steadily eroded the independence of the individual MP. By the time Jo entered Parliament, it had long been acknowledged that party labels yielded more votes than did the personal qualities of the candidates. But the individual still ma�ered – not only as a figment of psephology, but also in the minds of many MPs, Liberal MPs in particular. Jo never tired of championing the cause of individualism, the more so as he observed a social and political milieu increasingly hostile to its sustenance. The individual of classic liberalism was never the atomised creature of neo-anarchy. That was certainly not Jo’s idea of individualism. As noted in Chapter 1, he endorsed the T.H. Green tradition of the ‘individual within the community’. The value of localism and of community politics was to be one of his and his party’s enduring touchstones. As such it was natural that he should give at least as high a priority to his constituency as did any other MP to theirs – and much more so than most. That he had entered the House with a solid but not yet impregnable majority was an almost superfluous further incentive. Of greater significance was the character of his constituency. For if the people of the northern islands were lucky to have Jo as their MP then he, in turn, was fortunate to represent a constituency the uniqueness of which offered the opportunity to stand proud on the platform of national politics. In a radio programme that marked the tenth anniversary of his election to Parliament, he told presenter Ian Grimble that he was lucky to have a constituency in which ‘individuals really are individuals… very much more interesting than representing a slice of Birmingham or a bit on the map of Manchester’.53 Remote as the islands are, a great sense of community necessarily prevails, yielding strong and durable affinities. Upon visiting New Zealand in the 1950s, Jo was received by the Orkney and Shetland Society of Wellington, many of whose members took The Orcadian and the Shetland Times.54 Most maps of the UK fail faithfully to convey the geography of Orkney and Shetland. Typically, they are shown as an insert, so obscuring both their precise location and their expanse. Situated off the north-east coast of Scotland each is an archipelago – over sixty islands in Orkney, some one hundred comprising the Shetland Islands. Nearly all the islands are clustered around the two respective mainlands with the exceptions of Fair Isle (about halfway between the two but under the jurisdiction of Shetland) and Foula, the most isolated inhabited island in Britain, lying due west of Shetland. The southerly to the most northerly extremity of Orkney is a span of approximately seventy miles; likewise that of Shetland. Se�ing aside the Fair Isle, a nautical expanse of some fi�y miles separates Orkney from its northerly neighbour. The longitudinal boundaries of all the islands taken together are thus set over 190 miles apart – a greater distance than that of any other parliamentary constituency. At its nearest point, Orkney is no more than six miles from the Sco�ish mainland, visible from the coast on most days; while Shetland stretches north to a point roughly level with the southern tip of

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Greenland, nearer to Bergsen (Norway) than to Aberdeen. Many of the islanders – especially Shetlanders – retain a spiritual affinity with Scandinavia, though the spoken word is English with a notable absence of Gaelic or of any clan system. On each mainland there is an administrative centre in and around which the majority of the respective peoples live – Kirkwall in Orkney, Lerwick in Shetland. Over a hundred miles of sea and land separate Kirkwall from Lerwick. Both Kirkwall and Lerwick have long provided a richer seam of social and economic activity than would normally be possible for towns of their size. Today in Orkney some nineteen of the islands are populated, including the mainland; in Shetland, fi�een. Even when first he represented the constituency, nearly half of all the populated islands contained fewer than a hundred souls. Depopulation was to be one of Jo’s cris de coeur, the trend being reversed only temporarily in Shetland during the North Sea oil boom of the 1970s and 1980s. In a Commons debate in 1952 he told MPs: ‘The population is decreasing; as the population decreases, trade decreases; as trade decreases, freights rise; and as freights rise the population decreases still further.’55 What was needed, he said, was a ‘comprehensive policy which will cover agriculture, fishing, industry, housing, roads, landholdings, education and so on’.56 The sheer remoteness of many of the islands, their terrain and the proximity of the sea are all obvious factors. Climatic conditions play their part, too. The Gulf Stream brings a welcome temperance: cooler summers than on the British mainland are balanced by winters that are only a li�le more severe. The main hazards are fog and high winds. Gales of a hundred miles per hour did irreparable damage in Orkney towards the end of January 1953, and Jo was consumed with the task of lobbying hard in Westminster for assistance. He welcomed the appointment of Sir Basil Neven-Spence to a special departmental commi�ee, but called for ‘some principles of aid on occasions of national disaster’.57 The need for piers and harbours for many of the smaller islands was another perennial call, even when the elements were more clement. During Jo’s early years as an MP, transport between the islands was predominantly by water, there being long-standing passenger and freight cargo services from Aberdeen to Orkney and Shetland. Yet a�er nearly two decades as an MP he still described shipping freight as ‘the single most serious handicap from which the islanders suffer’.58 Surprisingly, perhaps, the northern islands of Orkney enjoyed regular inter-island air services established before the Second World War.59 Later, air services from many of the Orkney and Shetland islands to their respective mainlands were to become part of the domestic network, as were services from Kirkwall and Lerwick to Aberdeen and Glasgow. But by the mid 1950s, Jo was complaining that while in the old days there had been an air service round the islands of Orkney, ‘by a curious inversion of progress we have now not got one.’60 What his constituents wanted was to get from their respective islands to Kirkwall or Lerwick and back in the same day. He saw helicopters as the way

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forward, a successful trial having been concluded in the late summer of 1954. With an increase in traffic, he argued, there was every chance that air services between the islands would be economically self-sustaining.61 For all his confidence in the long-term financial viability of passenger services, Jo knew that freight services by sea and air were o�en sustained against the collar of economic logic. He knew that the market must be given a helping hand – not the invisible guiding hand of abstract exchange but the tangible presence of state subsidy. Time and again he called for help from the government, asserting that reduced transport charges were the ‘absolute keystone’ to the efficacy of a more comprehensive policy for the islands.62 Transport within many of the islands remained a cause for concern. Speaking in a Commons debate in 1952, Jo said bluntly: ‘any Highland member who was satisfied about roads… would have the greatest difficulty in holding his seat.’63 In telecommunications and broadcasting, too, he ensured that the Westminster world was aware of the relative deprivation experienced by the peoples of Orkney and Shetland. In a debate on television broadcasting developments towards the end of 1953, he reminded MPs that parts of his constituency were unable to receive some of the existing radio programmes, though his plea for a reduced licence fee fell on deaf ears.64 As will be seen in the next chapter, Jo strongly supported the introduction of commercial television. Yet ITV did not reach Orkney until the 1960s, while Shetlanders did not receive BBC TV until 1963. Transport infrastructure and communications networks are vital to economic prosperity, even in islands where many people work the land. There were and had always been manifest differences between the livelihoods of Orcadians and Shetlanders. Moreover, things were already changing when Jo became an MP, therea�er continuing a relentless pa�ern of transformation. Despite its superior soil, less than forty per cent of Orkney’s land was under cultivation by the early post-Second World War years, mostly family-owned farms.65 The people of Orkney are nothing if not resourceful; amalgamations and larger-scale farming were already gathering momentum during Jo’s time as an MP. Besides, the economy has never been a one-stringed instrument. In Highland Park and Scapa, the mainland boasts two of the most renowned whisky distilleries, maintaining exports throughout the world. If agriculture remains the predominant industry, the output from the two distilleries is the second most significant in terms of annual turnover. The third is tourism, not to forget manufacturing.66 In Shetland, the traditional livelihoods are cro�ing, knitwear and fishing. Cro�ing typically involves the production of sheep and ca�le for landed farmers to fa�en – again placing the cro�er at the mercy of freight charges. That the cro�ing industry has survived is due in part to the programme of land improvement instituted by the cro�ers themselves, especially during the 1960s. Cro�ing also owes its survival to diversification. Very few cro�ers at any time since or indeed well before 1945 have given all their energies to or derived all their incomes from

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their cro�s. They have been encouraged to diversify, o�en with the assistance of enterprise grants payable on condition that they continue to work their cro�s.67 The knitwear industry has been one such channel of diversification. During Jo’s time as MP, kni�ing was a co�age industry, engaging many of the womenfolk in Shetland’s 2,700 cro�s. It was another local industry with special characteristics championed by Jo as the local MP. He once described it in the House of Commons as ‘an industry without parallel in Great Britain’.68 He was nevertheless unsuccessful in his a�empt to secure exclusive rights for the Shetland mark (a stamp of authenticity indicating that the goods were the product of Shetland) in order to protect it from ‘a flood of foreign products’.69 No less significant and certainly more fraught has been Shetland’s fishing industry. The islands are located near to ‘one of the richest basins in the world for seafood’.70 The revival of the 1950s and 1960s followed the early post-war rebuilding of the fishing fleet. Vessels were equipped with dri�nets for herring in the summer, while using seine nets for haddock, cod and whiting during the rest of the year.71 By the turn of the 1960s, fish-processing plants were being established on the mainland and on some of the islands. Inevitably there were tensions between the short-term needs of the industry and concerns about long-term stock depletion, about the demarcation of fishing territory and about international competition, not least with the prospect and then the reality of Britain’s membership of the EEC. The la�er was to become of central importance for Jo as he sought to allay anxieties about the effects of a broad policy his support for which was to be a defining feature of his career. So, too, were the effects upon his constituency of the discovery of North Sea oil. In the field of social services, two areas presented particular difficulties for the islanders of Orkney and Shetland: housing and education. Security of tenure for smallholders was largely established by the Cro�ers’ Act, 1886, passed during Gladstone’s third ministry – a favour long remembered and from which the Liberals profited for many decades. Even with secure tenancy there remained many delicate ma�ers. Co-operatives were encouraged. Increasingly, grants and loans were provided for the improvement of existing buildings and for the erection of modern bungalows. With such assistance came tighter regulation, particularly under the aegis of the Cro�ers’ Commission established by the Cro�ers’ Act, 1955.72 Neither the Commission nor other aspects of the 1955 act were targeted exclusively at the cro�ers of Shetland or the much smaller minority in Orkney. Cro�ing was and is a feature of the Highlands more generally, as well as of the Western Isles. But Jo played an active role in the passage of the legislation through Parliament. He did so with a critical disposition. The proposed Cro�ing Commission, he claimed, would have ‘neither sufficient power nor sufficient money’.73 Moreover, in a sideswipe at the ‘good and the great’ by which Whitehall set such store, he proffered that members of the Commission were likely to be people ‘whose impartiality is guaranteed by their complete ignorance of the industry’.74

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Jo acknowledged the special requirements of education – above all the needs of those living in remote, thinly populated islands. Throughout the British Isles, schools with one, two or a handful of teachers found it difficult to survive the preference for larger units that became a feature of education policy from the 1950s onwards. At primary level, in particular, there remained a necessity to maintain such schools. Logistics and sheer necessity provided the grist: Jo, among others, was happy to grind the mill. It gelled with his own disdain for the ‘bigger means be�er’ philosophy that pervaded many walks of life during much of his time as an MP. In 1954, he moved a motion to increase teachers’ salaries and allowances, making reference to additional expenses incurred and the relative privations experienced by teachers in the outlying islands of his constituency.75 Such teachers were the lynchpins of their communities.76 On that occasion he was unable to secure more pay, but the Sco�ish Office did agree to designate all Orkney and Shetland schools as ‘remote’ for the purposes of other dispositions. Later there were some successes. In 1965, a new school was built on Bruray (Shetland), an island of 35 inhabitants. Two teachers provided both primary and secondary tuition in what became the smallest secondary school in Britain.77 In 1980, the NTS helped to build a new hall for a school in Fair Isle. It did so in conjunction with the local authority and the local community – an unusual combination, to which Jo gave his blessing. Inevitably, education and local industry are closely linked to the social fabric – perhaps more so in Orkney and Shetland than in most other places. If local industry declines, if schools close, then the community is immediately and noticeably weakened, perhaps placed in jeopardy. Jo never tired of upholding the importance of ‘neighbourhood’ and ‘community’, notions that meant a good deal to both sets of islanders who, in their different ways, were o�en of necessity given to co-operative effort and camaraderie. At the same time, Orcadians have been seen as ‘reluctant to push themselves forward or to behave emotionally, and… are sceptical of too much enthusiasm’.78 Such characteristics, together with a strong, widespread belief in private enterprise and self-help, certainly endeared the peoples of both islands to Jo Grimond. He in turn earned their respect, not only in his pursuit of their interests but also by his immersion in their world. That respect was further enhanced by the fact that he never tried to mix his polished tones with any false imitation of local accent or manner of speech.79 At the same time his outlook, like that of many of the islanders, came to be shaped by ‘the long, dark nights, bleak landscapes and sombre skies of an Orkney winter [that] are not exactly conducive to gaiety or buoyancy of spirit’.80 In later years for sure he would protest against the fashion for ‘forced enjoyment’. If there is bleakness in some of the islands’ landscapes, then they harbour a rich heritage, not least in their ornithological and sea bird populations. It was perhaps natural that Jo should wind up the second reading of the Protection of Birds Act, 1954, introduced as a private member’s bill by Lady Tweedsmuir, Conservative

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MP for Aberdeen South. Apart from birds, there is the Shetland pony, now used mainly for leisure; many species of wild flowers; and more ancient monuments per square mile than anywhere else in the UK.81 Many prehistoric sites date back to the later Stone Age, especially on mainland Orkney. Even before the advent of North Sea oil, there were threats and potential threats to the heritage of Orkney and Shetland. In seeking to defend the unique character of his constituency, Jo Grimond became a conservationist long before conservationism became fashionable on the wider political scene. He quickly came to be seen by his constituents as an energetic, enterprising and significant figure with a genuine interest in their welfare in its widest sense. In the 1950s especially, this set him apart from many MPs from the other two main parties who, with notable exceptions, regarded their constituency work as something of a weary routine, perhaps symptomatic of unfulfilled ambition or of a career that had se�led at ‘low tide’. But for Jo, as for many Liberals of his age, the representation of local constituents was a worthy enough end in itself. He was one of the first MPs to hold regular surgeries, from the early 1950s making himself available to meet constituents once a month in an upstairs room of Mrs Partner’s house in Kirkwall that served as the party’s Orkney headquarters.82 Although unlikely to hold office, he would become associated with developments on the wider national and international canvas. Yet of his constituents and the character of his constituency he remained a doughty and unabashed champion. With justification, the Orkney Liberal Association described him toward the end of his first parliament as ‘a man for the islands’. Jo Grimond was not the first MP for Orkney and Shetland to be remembered with affection. Arthur Anderson, a Shetlander and Liberal MP between 1847 and 1852 was said to have been exceeded by no one in helping to improve the lot of his people.83 But Jo’s contribution must be reckoned at least the equal, year for year: and no other has ever matched his thirty-three years as MP for the constituency. Never did he take his local electors for granted. When campaigning, he visited every inhabited island. He made it his business to a�end wherever possible the more significant events in the local calendar. During the 1950 election campaign Jo had promised that, if sent to Parliament by the people of Orkney and Shetland, he would make his home there. He and Laura had taken temporary residence in a lakeside co�age owned by Eric Linklater in Merbister, Orkney. And in 1951 he delivered on his promise by purchasing the Old Manse House in Firth, one of the smaller of the thirteen parishes on the Orkney mainland, about seven miles from Kirkwall. Jo’s election agent, Jackie Robertson, acted to secure the property at a competitive auction.84 Though he and Laura had of necessity also to maintain a house in London, the Old Manse was to remain ‘home’ for the rest of their lives. It is to this day jointly owned by their surviving children, Grizelda, Johnny and Magnus.

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3. (above) The Old Manse of Firth, near Kirkwall, purchased in 1951. The building was later extended but continued to be the main base for Jo and Laura until the end of their days. It is now jointly owned by their three surviving children, for whom it provides a civilised vacation retreat. 4. (le�) Constituency publicity material for the general election of October 1951, the first defence of the seat he had won twenty months earlier (Orkney Liberal Democrat Association).

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Every summer, Jo would spend extended periods at home in his constituency. When Parliament was in session, he would still return north whenever possible, at least every other weekend, making his way back to London for the start of the next week’s business. The journey involved a round trip of some 1,200 miles. O�en, during his early years in Parliament, he would catch the overnight sleeper from London to Edinburgh or to Dundee or Aberdeen and then on to Orkney. Occasionally he would go via Inverness when there were meetings to a�end of the Highlands Panel. Increasingly he would fly from London to Glasgow and on to Orkney. Nevertheless, it was a tiring journey, which he made up to thirty times a year throughout his time at Westminster. The people of Orkney and Shetland repaid the Grimonds’ loyalty and, in particular, Jo’s efforts on their behalf. They did not have long to wait for the first opportunity to show their appreciation at the ballot box. The A�lee government, severely but not fatally wounded in the 1950 election, had clearly run out of steam. The last of its great nationalisation measures – that of iron and steel – was at once the most controversial and most tentative. The Liberals, too, were unsure and divided. A�er some wrangling, all the Liberal MPs joined with the Conservatives in opposing the second reading in November 1948. The Iron and Steel Act went onto the statute book the following year, though it did not come into effect until 15 February 1951. By now the government was living on borrowed time. With illness and even death (Ernest Bevin) to exacerbate the difficulties of managing a small majority, a general election was called in the autumn of 1951. Polling took place on 25 October. As widely expected, it brought a change of government. The Conservatives were now in office with a modest but workable majority, though Labour polled more votes. The Liberal decline continued. The party contested only 109 constituencies, far fewer than before, partly because one of its paymasters, the Joseph Rowntree Trust, was unwilling to support the ‘blanket’ approach adopted in 1950.85 There was also some difficulty in finding suitable candidates. In the end, the Liberals were reduced to a parliamentary rump of just six MPs. One of them was Jo Grimond. For the first time, Jo was defending the constituency as the si�ing MP. NevenSpence having retired, the Conservatives put up Archibald Tennant, ironically a nephew of Lady Violet’s stepmother, Margot Tennant. Labour’s colours were carried by Magnus Fairnie, a miner from Musselburgh. Jo stood to be counted on his achievements and activities on behalf of the constituency. In the event, his majority was more than doubled to 6,391. He took fi�y-seven per cent of the votes cast, being the only Liberal to win in a three-cornered contest and in the face of Conservative opposition. Indeed he was now the only Liberal to represent a Sco�ish constituency.

Chapter 4

WHIP HAND

D�������� �� ��� ������������ academic commentator as ‘the last protest of the Celt against the Anglo-Saxon’, the Liberal Party was at its lowest ebb by the early 1950s.1 A worse election result than that of 1950 could hardly have been imagined when candidates took to the hustings twenty months later. Yet, while contesting fewer seats, Liberal candidates averaged only 14.7 per cent of the poll in their various constituencies, as against 11.8 per cent in 1950. With only 109 candidates, the party’s share of the national poll (2.5 per cent) was the lowest it was ever to record at a general election. Clement Davies declared himself to be less depressed about the result than he had been in 1945 or 1950 – though he could find no logic to account for his feelings.2 His party was weak, almost bankrupt. The tiny band of six MPs proved to be somewhat less difficult to manage than the nine of the 1950–1951 parliament, though many of the ba�les were to continue unabated. As chief whip, Jo had the task of maintaining a semblance of unity. His remit extended only to the parliamentary party but he could not ignore the wider convulsions. Jo acknowledged his own ‘idleness and incompetence’ as chief whip.3 Discounting an element of self-effacement, the job was perhaps never his forte. It demands patience, constant a�ention to detail, a ‘hard edge’ and, on occasion, the subjugation of principle and personal inclination to the expedience of political calculation for party’s sake. William Rees-Mogg later recalled that, even a�er four years in the job, Jo seemed uncertain as to what a Liberal whip was supposed to do.4 Equally, his fellow Liberal MPs did not make life easy for him. As shepherd of the flock, he was unable to prevent all the strays from deserting the cause. As a liberal he did not necessarily concede defections or dissenting voices as signalling a failure of party management. Probably no one else in the circumstances could have done be�er. Besides, he could go only as far as party leader Clement Davies

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was prepared to allow. And Davies, in turn, was neither inclined nor equipped to exceed what the traffic would bear. Party discipline among Liberals would remain an elusive if by no means coveted objective. As the tactics to be adopted by the Liberals in response to the King’s speech had been a point of contention when Parliament reassembled a�er the general election of 1950, so it was again a source of tension when a new session began in the autumn of that year. There ensued a revolt, during which Emrys Roberts told Clement Davies that the party was being badly led. Although the arrow was aimed chiefly at Davies, Jo was also in the firing line. The force of the complaint was that the leader should in the first instance consult on ma�ers of policy not the chief whip but the deputy leader.5 Lady Megan Lloyd George had been appointed deputy leader of the parliamentary party in an a�empt by Clement Davies to keep her ‘onside’ and to maintain unity. The ploy was a failure. For now, in November 1950, she, along with Edgar Granville, sided with Roberts, supported from outside Westminster by Dingle Foot. Clement Davies arranged to meet them in an effort to thrash things out but was unable to clear the air.6 All four rebels were to leave the party, though not for the moment and not while they were si�ing MPs. In the meantime, they continued to be a brooding presence within the ranks. Perhaps the most deeply debilitating split was that between Megan Lloyd George and Rhys Hopkin Morris – the one bound eventually for the Labour Party, the other appearing to lean towards the Conservatives, albeit out of a dogged adherence to traditional, free-market liberalism rather than any hankering for a rival party that he never intended joining. It was to the Conservatives that a small number of Liberal peers did defect in the spring of 1950. In April, Lords Reading and Rennell published a joint le�er to Lord Samuel, leader of the Liberals in the upper chamber. They claimed that the Conservatives were ‘the only party capable of offering effective resistance to socialism’.7 They were critical of the ‘broad front’ approach adopted by the party at the recent general election, declaring that they were ‘unable to see… any major question which separates Liberals from Conservatives into two hostile camps’. The following month Lord Cozens-Hardy threatened his exit from the party only a few days a�er Lord Willingdon had resigned his position as Liberal whip in the House of Lords. Lord Moynihan, later also to defect to the right, replaced Willingdon. These disturbances in ‘another place’ did not make any easier the job of party whip in the House of Commons. The reverberations were felt right across the party. Clement Davies told Gilbert Murray that the position was ‘more serious now than it has ever been in the past… there is no party today but a number of individuals who… come together only to express completely divergent views’.8 Jo did not remain passive. Following a meeting of the Liberal Party Commi�ee on 28 April 1950, he wrote to Lord Moynihan. The primary objective was to prevent any more Liberal peers from resigning. In an impassioned, handwri�en le�er to

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his opposite number he declared: This is the moment when we are all trying to come to a firm agreement on policy and strategy. It is clear that they [the defectors] do the Conservatives no service by joining them and they can do infinite harm to the future of both Liberals and Conservatives. The Liberal Party Commi�ee is now starting to draw the party together on a definite line… which would give the party a future in Parliament. This is presumably what your colleagues want. It will be a tragedy if they go at this moment in ignorance of the great possibilities just coming into sight.9 There was a second string to the argument. If the peers who were now threatening resignation could not be held within the party, then: There does not seem any reason why they should apply for the Tory whip or publish anything. They could be kept away from the House for a week or two… They [the Liberal Party Commi�ee] feel an effort should be made to see these peers and reason with them personally.10 At one level Jo was merely the handmaid of the Liberal Party Commi�ee. At another level, he was more than that. With less than two months’ experience as chief whip, he was learning his cra� in the business of arm-twisting. Of course, he had li�le leverage. Thus reason was to be the main instrument. Equally, there was a rueful pragmatism about the suggestion that if reason failed to hold the dissidents within the party, then they could at least be muted. Jo’s appeal helped to stem the haemorrhage – at least for the time being. Samuel was able to prevail upon other would-be deserters not to jump ship. But smoke continued to fill the air. A month before the departure of Reading and Rennell, Conservative opposition leader Winston Churchill had called for a select commi�ee on electoral reform. It was clearly intended to draw the Liberals and to drive a wedge between them and Labour. Prime minister A�lee quickly rejected the suggestion. It was nevertheless unse�ling for many Liberals, especially those who began to think that their party’s main opportunity for influence lay with some sort of alliance – if indeed it had any long-term future as an independent entity. During the 1950 election campaign Churchill, speaking in Leeds, had offered the Liberals ‘an honourable and friendly arrangement’.11 With that and his overture on electoral reform he was gently chided by A�lee in the Commons as an ‘ardent lover of this elderly spinster the Liberal Party’, though with the aim of hastening its demise.12 Two months later, Conservative Party chairman Lord Woolton proceeded to make the strongest bid so far to woo the Liberals. He told a meeting of Conservatives that: ‘Liberals and Conservatives are only seriously divided in thought when they look backward: when they look forward the lines

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of thought are no longer parallel, they are converging.’13 He dismissed as ‘minor problems’ that could be ‘discussed at our leisure’ a number of controversial issues such as devolution, peacetime conscription and compulsory co-partnership in industry. It was these among other issues that impelled the Liberals to maintain their independence, reaffirmed by the Liberal Party Council on 10 June 1950.14 At the same time, while Woolton undoubtedly had Churchill’s backing, there was li�le enthusiasm from the Conservative rank and file. Conservative overtures did not end there. In the summer of 1950, R.A. Butler tried unsuccessfully to persuade Lady Violet to work for a Conservative-Liberal pact on the basis of an ‘overlap prospectus of principles’.15 Butler, like Woolton, was clearly acting as Churchill’s emissary. Jo was on the inside track, having lunched with Churchill and Lady Violet in the spring.16 The initiative ran aground, partly because other Conservatives were not prepared to support Churchill and Butler on electoral reform. In terms of parliamentary arithmetic, Churchill’s calculations made much sense. While his party remained in opposition, the Liberals could be useful allies. Yet the wooing did not cease even a�er the October 1951 election brought him back to office with a modest but workable majority of 21. Lady Violet, who had not entered the fray in 1950, stood as the Liberal candidate in Colne Valley. At Churchill’s behest, the Conservatives gave her a clear run in a straight fight with Labour. He spoke on her behalf during the campaign. She was narrowly defeated but, in the circumstances, might have succeeded had not many Liberals turned to Labour and many Conservatives abstained.17 Before accepting the invitation of the local Liberal association, she had sought and received the blessing of her party leader, readily agreeing to the one condition – that she made no pledge to either of the other parties.18 Still, she received much flak. There was further heartsearching within Liberal ranks when Churchill tempted Clement Davies with the offer of the education portfolio, possibly with a seat in the cabinet. Davies was summoned to Chartwell where the eminent statesman exercised his persuasive powers. The offer to the Liberals seems to have included two further junior ministerial positions. Davies was sorely tempted but among senior figures in the party only Lady Violet was favourably disposed.19 It is not clear whether Jo was formally consulted, though he would certainly have had knowledge since he was at that time lodging with his mother-in-law in her Gloucester Square home. Lady Violet in any case later acknowledged that Davies had probably been correct in his refusal, claiming that she had feared an economic crisis and political fallout of 1931 proportions when Samuel and Maclean had joined the coalition.20 The trail of defections was to continue. Having lost his seat the previous autumn, Edgar Granville joined the Labour Party in January 1952. Megan Lloyd George followed. She, too, had been defeated in the October 1951 election. And, although she did not join Labour for another three years, she informed the local Anglesey

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Liberal Association in November 1952 that she no longer wished to be the party’s candidate.21 Two others were to take the same route: Dingle Foot, Liberal MP for Dundee 1931–1945; and Wilfred Roberts who had held the North Cumberland constituency between 1935 and 1950. Both joined Labour in 1956. Like Megan Lloyd George, Foot was to return to Parliament as a Labour MP. Shortly before Foot’s departure, party strategist Edward Martell le� to form a far-right libertarian group initially called the People’s League for the Defence of Freedom. Having worked tirelessly to keep the Liberals afloat during the late 1940s and with a central role in the 1950 and 1951 election campaigns, he had therea�er become an increasingly disruptive presence. These dissident elements le� shock waves as they made their way out of the party during the early and mid 1950s. The party at large seemed ready at a moment’s notice to amplify the notes of discord. Nowhere is this disposition be�er illustrated than in the annual assemblies. On a myriad of policy issues, two in particular served to expose the ba�le lines of political philosophy that divided many within the party: state support for agriculture; and compulsory co-ownership in industry. As noted in the last chapter, Jo established himself as a supporter of guaranteed prices and assured markets for agricultural products. He saw clearly the need to temper the meanderings of the free market with the firm hand of state intervention in order to prevent economic decline and consequent social dislocation. In so doing he was marching in step with official party policy. The other main parties were broadly of similar mind, the war and early post-war years being marked by a consensus about the need to protect agriculture.22 But restive spirits began increasingly to torment the souls of certain Liberals. The issue was again debated at the 1953 Ilfracombe assembly, the abolitionists being led by arch free-trader Oliver Smedley. It was he who carried the day as delegates resolved that there should be a gradual abandonment of guaranteed prices and assured markets for agriculture. The Manchester Guardian commented that: ‘the cost of proclaiming a free economy as the distinctive Liberal policy was being counted all a�ernoon by those who had been defeated.’23 Among those who had been defeated and were counting the cost was Jo Grimond. He spoke against the motion, declaring that a touch of the old Beveridge was working in his blood. He reminded delegates that the Liberal Party was primarily concerned with human beings; that they were discussing not agriculture but the lives of those people who lived on the land. Although unsuccessful in his plea, he was given a ‘specially warm welcome by the delegates’.24 In fact it was not a total defeat for the ‘protectionists’. The assembly acknowledged ‘the special position of farmers on marginal lands’. And when the following year the assembly reaffirmed its decision, it carefully added a clause under which the government would be obliged to provide farmers with ‘an outlet for their produce at remunerative prices’ until adequate competitive marketing arrangements

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could be established.25 Jo was never the prisoner of his constituents’ interests; nor could he afford to ignore them. At a party meeting held when controversy was raging over the future of the Egg Marketing Board (EMB), he remarked to stunned silence: ‘A lot of people in my constituency depend upon the sale of eggs; and if ge�ing rid of the EMB means that I lose Orkney and Shetland, then I’m in favour of retaining the EMB.’26 The idea of employee share-ownership was by no means novel in Liberal circles. It was part of a broader view that upheld the virtues of ownership, later expressed in slogans such as ‘property owning democracy’ and the ‘stakeholder society’. At its Blackpool assembly in 1948, the Liberal Party had accepted a resolution favouring legally induced co-ownership in industry, a policy effectively reaffirmed four years later when a motion asserting the voluntary principle was defeated.27 It was the element of state enforcement that stuck in the craw of many party members. The ba�le rumbled on, reflecting as it did different strands of liberalism, each finding institutionalised expression within the party organisation. On the one hand, the Co-Ownership Commi�ee and its chief spokesman Ellio� Dodds were keen to secure legislative enforcement.28 On the other hand, the element of compulsion was opposed by the Economic Commi�ee, mindful of the need to mollify industrialists as well as to uphold the liberal tenet of voluntarism. A further point of contention lay in the specified period by which companies of a certain size should be required to conform. These qualms notwithstanding, Dodds and his associates won the day by a narrow margin at the 1954 assembly. The Manchester Guardian observed that upon his ‘largely emotional’ appeal to delegates ‘Reason… appears to have played a reluctant part in the proceedings.’29 That was not quite the end of the story. Two years later, the policy of compulsion was held in abeyance, later to be readopted in 1962 and subsequently modified.30 Co-ownership was to become a central feature in Jo’s thinking, a policy with which he was to be closely associated though to which he later acknowledged as having enjoyed undue a�ention from himself and his party to the detriment of wider issues of participation.31 In contrast to the abandonment of protection for agriculture, the 1954 resolution on compulsory co-ownership was seen as a defeat for the libertarians and a victory for the advocates of ‘social welfare’ and ‘social reform’. Jo was clearly marked out as one of the social reformers. At the same time it was partly his job as chief whip to transcend internal ba�le lines. To what extent, then, did he succeed in keeping the parliamentary flock on pastures narrow? Just how close was the Liberal Party to dissolution and extinction during the first half of the 1950s; and to what extent can the efforts of Jo Grimond be said to have saved it from such fate? Jo’s jurisdiction as chief whip extended only to the parliamentary party – himself and eight other Liberals elected in February 1950, reduced to a total of six from October 1951. As we have seen, they were a disunited group. Notes of discord

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sounding outside Parliament were o�en echoed inside the chamber – and vice versa. In these circumstances and inasmuch as he considered it his job to maintain unity, the odds weighed heavily against him. While Labour remained in power during his early days as chief whip, unity in the division lobby was indeed elusive. In the two parliamentary sessions of 1950 and 1950–1951 there were 215 divisions in which the whips were applied. On no fewer than twenty-seven occasions (12.5 per cent), Liberals straddled the lobbies. On a further eighteen occasions (8.5 per cent) all the Liberal MPs abstained en bloc. That means that the Liberals, when they did vote, tended to vote the same way for most of the time – in fact a li�le more than two to one in favour of the Conservatives. But these figures obscure the good number of occasions when cross voting was averted only by individual ‘diplomatic’ abstentions – impossible to quantify with precision but not infrequent. A�er the Conservatives returned to office in October 1951, things seemed to be a li�le less fraught. During the 1951–1952 session, the six Liberals cross-voted in only six (2.8 per cent) of the 224 divisions in which the whips were active. It is tempting to explain the greater cohesion by fact that the three ‘rebels’ had lost their seats in the general election – Megan Lloyd George her seat at Anglesey, Edgar Granville and Emrys Roberts theirs at Eye (Suffolk) and Merionethshire respectively. Closer analysis reveals a more complex reality. The le�-wing rebels had indeed struck a note of defiance in the debate on the King’s address in November 1950. But it should not be forgo�en that when the following day they abstained in a division on continued government controls over the economy, they were joined by the chief whip himself.32 In fact the three rebels were no more likely to carry their convictions into the division lobby than were their parliamentary colleagues. Donald Wade and Hopkin Morris were both more prone to defy the whip. And on one occasion, in June 1951, Clement Davies was the sole Liberal to support Labour in a division on the Finance Bill. Five of his colleagues voted with the Conservatives, three others (George, Grimond and Wade) abstaining.33 On two further occasions over the next couple of days, Jo and his leader found themselves in opposing lobbies.34 The two men were never soul mates, though they maintained a cordial working relationship. They would dine together from time to time in the House of Commons. Occasionally, the Grimonds entertained Davies at their home in 71 Kew Green, the commodious house in Richmond-onThames into which Jo, Laura and their three children had moved early in 1953, having purchased the property the previous ‘back-end’. From around this time, Jo had the services of a new personal secretary, Catherine Fisher, who replaced Revel Guest. For thirty years until his retirement from the Commons and indeed a�erwards, she gave unstinting support, for a time also assisting fellow Liberal MP Arthur Holt. During elections she accompanied Jo as he travelled around the country, including his constituency. She typed all the speeches, articles and books from handwri�en dra�s, a task for which she

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mixed economy. Those years also saw the gradual (and imperfect) transformation from the wartime legacy of a command economy to a more open textured regime in which government would try to manage the economy by means of aggregate demand manipulation rather than by heavy-handed direction. Thus it was hoped and assumed that government would be able to keep the economy on an even keel, sustaining steady growth along a middle path that avoided the perils of recession leading to high unemployment or of excess demand bringing high inflation. At the same time, government would hope to maintain a surplus of exports over imports and to avoid a ‘run’ on the pound such as could precipitate devaluation, the relative values of currencies against the US dollar being fixed (unless deliberately varied by agreement) under the terms of the Bre�on Woods agreement of 1944. Such was the essence of what came to be known as the ‘Keynesian consensus’. If early post-war governments by no means always adhered to its every detail, Keynesianism nevertheless provided the touchstone, the basic assumptions upon which economic policies were discussed. Jo Grimond was no exception. In a Commons debate in 1953 he offered almost a textbook disquisition when he said: if we are going to try to run a mixed economy… one of the most essential things… is to try to hold the balance between too deflationary a policy, with the danger of unemployment, and too inflationary a policy, which would ultimately destroy confidence and gravely weaken all the advantages of the welfare state.38 He doubted whether the implications had been considered with enough care, acknowledging the elusive democratic objective of reconciling the conflicting pressures being made by different sections to increase their share of the cake.39 Foreshadowing the debates of the 1970s, he warned that the easiest thing was to please everybody, so inducing inflation. It was therefore necessary to ‘look at all methods by which that can be avoided’.40 Much would depend upon circumstance – upon the shape of the economy at a given moment, as would befit the Keynesian analysis. Thus when he observed that in certain parts of the country inflation was giving way to lack of purchasing power he told MPs, ‘the need now is not to curtail purchases… but… to stimulate them.’41 Yet six weeks later he judged: ‘we have not yet moved over from a condition of inflation to a condition of deflation such as would justify the Chancellor of the Exchequer in reversing his policy.’42 On another occasion, he acknowledged the need to ‘increase exports and to curb home consumption of certain types of good’.43 If Jo generally endorsed Keynesianism, he was by no means suborned by nor uncritical of the new orthodoxy. It was with an air of mild disapproval that he lamented: ‘Apparently… we have to accept the pure milk of Keynes.’44 While talking in Keynesian terms about the relationship between savings and

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investment, he regre�ed that only a slump could allow a reduction in taxation.45 The government’s fine-tuning was too fine for Jo. More fundamentally, he doubted the efficacy of the Keynesian or any other system to deliver ‘economic miracles’. In a Commons debate on the 1952 Finance Bill, he said bluntly: ‘Any political party which professes to be able to guarantee full employment… is misleading the country.’46 Much depended upon trends that were sometimes beyond the control of the government; upon the propensity of managers and shareholders to risk their capital; upon the mobility of resources and labour; and, not least, upon the existence of a high level of social services.47 Again, these warnings were a trailer for the more forthright heart-searching of the decades to come. Jo was to make a number of such u�erances during the first half of the 1950s not, as with some conservatives or even socialists of the period, because he felt ill at ease with the techniques of Keynesianism, still less because he had any qualm with its underlying philosophy – rather because he began to fear that politicians were promising too much in its name. Nor was he an unqualified free trader. There were occasions, he said, when a tariff could be justified, though the onus must always rest upon the protectionists to establish their case.48 In these senses, Jo held back from any full embrace of the Keynesian consensus. In other ways, too, his observations betrayed concerns that were to be more fully expressed in his own and in the wider political agenda of the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. As would befit a Liberal, he extolled the virtues of small business, even when it was unfashionable to do so. He was no sentimentalist. ‘If the small man cannot offer the service which a company can offer, then regretfully… he must go to the wall,’ he told fellow MPs.49 But he thought that small businesses should be given the opportunity; that the banks, instead of behaving like savings banks, should ‘provide small sums of money for really small businesses, small sums of money for risk investment’.50 According to Jo, good labour relations were among the manifest benefits of small businesses.51 Conversely, he feared the power of the big trade unions. Speaking at a rally towards the end of 1955, he said: ‘Week by week unions demand fresh wage increases which are killing any prospects the chancellor has of controlling inflation.’52 He spoke against national, mass bargaining, preferring disaggregated negotiating structures.53 As inflation began to escalate during the 1960s and 1970s, successive governments were to encourage movement in exactly the opposite direction, hoping that centralised (and more moderate) agreements would prevail on a wider front. Ironically, perhaps, Jo’s call for disaggregation chimed in more sweetly with the ‘post-Fordism’ of the 1980s and 1990s. No less out of step during the 1950s was his suggestion that pay rises should be tied not to the cost of living but to productivity.54 While upholding the virtues of private enterprise Jo, like others in his party, had been pragmatic about the nationalisation programme of the early post-war Labour government, taken as a whole. If iron and steel was a nationalisation

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too far, he denounced Conservative denationalisation plans as threatening ‘the substitution of one monopoly for another’.55 He was to say much the same about the Thatcher privatisation programme thirty years later. The prevention and control of monopolies remained a prominent and consistent theme in his thinking. Private monopolies were hardly more acceptable than public ones. Where the state did play an active role as a producer, Jo thought that it should be subject to the same economic and commercial strictures as a privately owned company. Thus he opposed the Conservatives’ re-enactment of the 1947 Treasury guarantee (i.e. fixed loan charge) on moneys borrowed by the British Rail Board. He accused the Chancellor of the Exchequer of playing the wicked moneylender to the optimistic heir, insisting that ‘if the nation wants to take over the railways it should take over the risk.’56 Prefiguring the Beeching Report ten years later, he told MPs on another occasion: ‘The first thing the railways need to do is to get somewhere near making ends meet… we must face the fact that intermediate stations must be cut out and bus services substituted.’57 Where services were run, though, they should be run properly to meet the needs of the public. On other ma�ers during the early and mid 1950s, Jo anticipated debates that were to resound ten or twenty years later. In describing the economic situation in 1952 he claimed that the country was spending too much on non-productive investment, government being the chief culprit.58 It was a foretaste of the ‘crowding out’ thesis that became fashionable in some circles from the mid 1970s – the view that the non-productive, tax sustained sectors of the economy were a burden to the wealth-creating sectors.59 He welcomed the shrinking gap between rich and poor but wondered whether there were adverse effects upon incentives. He was prepared therefore to countenance ‘a certain amount of inequality’ so long as the less fortunate were safeguarded by ‘a really adequate system of social services’.60 If anti-statism was to be among his most strident ba�le cries of the 1970s then it was an amplification of notes struck during the 1950s. He believed then, as later, that Britain had the best civil service in the world; that it had contributed to the country’s success. But he insisted that ‘if there is threat to… liberty today it does not… come from powerful individuals, but… from the Executive and also from powerful corporations, public and private, which have grown up within the body politic’.61 Two months later he told an audience in Rochdale: ‘Government by pressure group at home is as self-destroying as a world of warring sovereign states… the all-powerful state has failed to bring in the Golden Age because it does not inspire the individual but merely placates certain interests.’62 Again presaging the ‘corporate state’ thesis that became fashionable from the mid 1970s, he observed that the growth of government (and of taxation) had proceeded with li�le interruption upon a change of party in office. It was not a surprise. Even before their return to office he had derided the Conservatives. Their cry, he said, could be summed up as ‘anything you can do, we can do slower.’63 While he thought substantial reductions in taxation to be unfeasible he continued to insist

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that ‘it is the duty of any government to try to reduce the administrative costs of central and local government.’64 In this guise he appears more in the Gladstonian than in the Chamberlainite tradition of liberalism, a point of distinction that will be considered more fully in the final chapter. Nowhere were Jo’s views and his brand of liberalism pronounced more clearly than in relation to one of the more notable domestic issues of the mid 1950s – the introduction of commercial television.65 He was in general a strong supporter of a commercial channel to provide competition for the BBC. At that level he saw it as a welcome breach of a monopoly, giving the public greater choice. So far as light entertainment was concerned he was ‘not in the least moved by the cry that the people cannot be trusted’.66 Nor was he satisfied that the impulse of competition be mediated directly by the government. He told MPs: ‘It is not agreed by Milton, Mill or Laski that the defence of freedom of speech can be entrusted to the Executive.’67 He wanted to limit the interventionist powers of the Postmaster General, leaving greater direction in the hands of the proposed independent television authority and of public discussion. Yet he acknowledged that it was reasonable to place upon the authority an obligation to screen religious programmes.68 It was in dealing with the more serious and controversial secular programmes, though, that his views were more interesting. Here he applauded the BBC for having been ‘fairly brave’. He went on: ‘If the BBC is not brave enough, then the chance of advertisers being sufficiently brave is about nil.’69 Allowing Lever Brothers on the air did not meet the arguments of the Areopagitica; the advertisers would probably not be interested in sponsoring the more serious programmes. If they did not, then the new channel would fail to compete with the BBC: ‘one does not give any competition to The Times or the Manchester Guardian by proliferating Daily Mirrors’, he argued.70 He did not want the new corporation to be a shadow of the BBC; nor did he want it to become entirely dependent upon advertising revenue. The ITA should therefore receive a share of the licence fee. Alternatively and long before the age of ‘pay per view’ he wondered whether it was possible ‘to have a slot machine so that people may to some extent choose their own programmes’.71 The ITA was duly established, the first broadcast being transmi�ed in September 1955. By now Jo himself had become a minor media figure. On a number of occasions from 1952 onward he participated in BBC television and radio programmes, visiting recording studios in Glasgow and Manchester as well as in London. More than most politicians of his age, he quickly adapted to the new medium. He also began to develop what was to become a more active role in wri�en journalism, penning occasional pieces for The Spectator. He sometimes dined with journalists – for example Francis Boyd, future political correspondent of the Manchester Guardian; and sportswriter and broadcaster John Arlo� who stood as a Liberal candidate in the general elections of 1955 and 1959.72 There were lunches and other gatherings that he a�ended from time to time, organised

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5. Old soldiers never forget the war! Reunion at the annual dinner of the Fife and Forfar (Dundee Branch) Yeomanry, March 1955. The others (le� to right) are A.J. Strachan, Lt. Col. W.G.N. Walker and Lt. Col. C.S. Hampton, TD.

by such as The Economist, not to mention Richards Press of which he was a board member. On all these fronts he was cementing foundations that were already yielding dividends in terms of ‘networking’ and from which his public persona would be launched onto higher planes over the next decade. By the mid 1950s, Jo’s horizons were set well beyond national boundaries. He was an executive member of the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association and an active participant in meetings of the Inter-Parliamentary Union. Now and again he would a�end functions organised by the English Speaking Union; the Federal Union; and the United Nations Association. Closer integration between Britain and Europe was to become one of his abiding campaigns and he was involved from the early 1950s in the United Europe Movement. At the same time he remained strongly pro-American, being an active member of Friends of the Atlantic Union. Almost as an obligatory part of his job as an MP he met visiting parties from all corners of the earth – not only ‘official’ government or ambassadorial dignitaries but others too, including journalists. Increasingly, he began to visit foreign lands. Just a�er Christmas 1953 he embarked upon a three week parliamentary delegation to the Middle East, accompanied by Conservative MP Douglas Marshall and Labour’s Patrick Gordon Walker.73 During the 1954– 1955 parliament, his travels embraced Germany, Israel and France, the la�er as part of a parliamentary delegation to the NATO offices in Paris. While at Balliol

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he had established what would be a long-lasting friendship with Samuel Beer, professor of politics at Harvard University. Beer had been active on behalf of Franklin Roosevelt during the 1930s and continued to be associated with Democratic party politics as well as nurturing a specialism in British politics. His visit to Britain in 1953 cemented a relationship that sustained some of Jo’s many trips to the USA, the first of which had been before the war. As chief whip, he was a member of the Liberal Party Executive Commi�ee, though he a�ended by no means all its meetings. As a ma�er of routine he a�ended meetings of the Liberal Candidates’ Commi�ee, the Liberal Agenda group and other party meetings held regularly inside and outside the House of Commons. He was on the executive commi�ee of the National Liberal Club as well as the Sco�ish Liberals. Reflecting his wider interests, he was also a member of the Liberal International and of the Liberal Foreign Affairs Group. Wherever possible he participated in the Liberal Summer Schools. He did not neglect his constituents. Again, they in turn rewarded him with their favour when on 26 May polling took place for the general election of 1955. Jo spent most of the campaign visiting his constituents. During one six-day period he spoke at twenty public meetings in eight of the Shetland Islands. At the national level, the election brought victory with an increased majority for the Conservatives, Churchill having recently retired to be replaced as party leader and prime minister by Sir Anthony Eden. The Liberals were spared further decline, though the green shoots of recovery were as yet barely perceptible. Fielding 110 candidates (one more than in 1951) the party increased its share of the national vote only slightly from 2.5 per cent to 2.7 per cent. No fewer than sixty Liberals lost their deposits. There were no Liberal gains; nor did the party lose any seats. The same six Liberals were returned to Westminster, Jo again being the only one to overcome Conservative opposition, though this time he was not alone in having fought a three-cornered contest.74 He was the only Liberal to increase his majority – to 7,993 votes, claiming sixty-four per cent of the poll, compared with fi�yseven per cent in 1951 and forty-seven per cent in 1950. The favourably disposed Orkney Herald proclaimed triumphantly: ‘If for some reason Orkney found itself cut off from the rest of Britain tomorrow, there would be only one person with claims to the new throne.’75 The dissolution of Parliament had been announced on the penultimate day of the Liberal Party assembly at Llandudno, so stimulating wider interest in its proceedings. For Jo it presented an opportunity since he was scheduled to make the final main speech in the absence through illness of party leader Clement Davies. He nobly acknowledged that Davies had ‘refused all temptation to till the easy fields where… sweet things come to quick flower’, instead preparing ‘the rough ground from which we hope a new Liberalism will spring’.76 Democracy,

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he said, ‘is not only a ma�er of counting the votes, but of influencing minds’. In a wide-ranging, roistering address he highlighted in particular three themes: greater opportunity; the wider distribution of property and profits; and the need for ‘a new loyalty, a new conception of modern society’. Clearly he hoped to establish himself as the forward looking, go-ahead politician and his party as a progressive force in British politics. The Manchester Guardian noted that the chief whip had not hitherto revealed himself clearly to the party, having spoken in ‘a rather modest, diffident way’. Now, it proclaimed, he had spoken ‘with such firmness, breadth of view and authority that delegates rose to him as to a man capable of leadership in the future’.77 When next Jo addressed the full assembly he would indeed be on the threshold of the party leadership.

Part II LIMELIGHT

Chapter 5

LEADER

A� ��� ��� ���� of 1956 dawned, the honeymoon was already over for Conservative leader and prime minister Anthony Eden.1 Even so, few could have guessed that, one year hence, Eden would be about to make his exit from Downing Street and from public life. Eden’s opposite number, Hugh Gaitskell, was beginning to establish himself as leader of the Labour Party, having succeeded Clement A�lee shortly before Christmas. It was within the Labour Party rather than the Conservative Party that new winds of intellectual energy were blowing most strongly. Revisionists such as Hugh Gaitskell, Roy Jenkins, Anthony Crosland and Douglas Jay were challenging some of the fundamentals of traditional Labourite socialism.2 Jo had social contact with some of the central figures – certainly Roy Jenkins and, to a lesser extent, Gaitskell and Crosland.3 Crosland in particular became an intellectual flag bearer for Labour’s revisionist wing, his Future of Socialism becoming one of the most accomplished expressions of the creed. Capitalism, asserted Crosland, had been tamed, its worst excesses eradicated. The welfare state, the mixed economy and the near full employment equilibrium apparently facilitated by Keynesian demand-management techniques obviated the need for further extensive programmes of nationalisation. The state could direct without owning. It could do so through the democratic processes of intelligent planning and fine-tuning, rather than the heavy hand of the command economy. Crosland was offering no olive branch to the Liberals. Electoral considerations aside, he seems to have had li�le interest in the Liberal Party or in Jo’s later ideas about realignment4 – even if certain contemporaries were to see his brand of pragmatic reformism as differing li�le from Jo’s new radicalism;5 and even if he was in a sense a ‘Liberal among Labourites’.6 In strengthening the revisionist tendency within his own party, Crosland also provided a platform for those Liberals who

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would see the makings of a bridge and perhaps a redrawing of the boundaries that separated the parties – none more so than Jo. By the time Crosland’s Future of Socialism was published, in October 1956, storm clouds were thickening on the foreign front. As the vapour mists receded, there emerged a much more explicit and widespread acknowledgement of what had for some time been the brute reality: Britain was no longer a major world power. Quite incidentally, there also emerged a new leader of the Liberal Party: Jo Grimond. Two events dominated world news headlines in the autumn of 1956. The people of Hungary were in rebellion against the yoke of state communism. The revolt was quickly crushed by the Soviet Union as it sent tanks into the ‘satellite’ capital, Budapest. The partial relaxation in the Cold War was abruptly reversed as western governments hastened to condemn the Soviet intervention. Few in Britain demurred. Yet if there was near universal agreement about the situation in Hungary, the nation was sharply divided over another international convulsion – the Suez crisis. In 1876, the British government purchased shares in the Suez Canal Company and, six years later, Liberal premier William Gladstone sent troops to help safeguard British interests. A British military presence remained in the canal zone, even a�er a 1936 treaty had terminated British occupation of certain cities, Egypt having fourteen years earlier been granted independence from its former status as a British protectorate. Tensions continued to fester. In 1952, Egypt’s King Farouk yielded to a military regime under the leadership of Colonel Abdul Nasser. Two years later, and within months of assuming the presidency, Nasser signed a new Anglo-Egyptian Treaty under which British troops were to leave the canal zone by June 1956, while retaining the right to re-enter in the event of war or threat of war.7 British financial and commercial interests were looking ever more precarious, the policy of the government increasingly uncertain. As negotiations for the new treaty were in progress during the summer of 1956, Jo asked in the House of Commons what would happen if the Egyptians were to interfere with British shipping in the canal.8 He wanted a general defence plan for the whole area, doubting whether the presence of a British military division could solve the problems.9 French commercial interests were also at stake, while the USA sought to ameliorate hostilities between Israel and the Arab states. Despite Anglo-American-Franco peacemaking efforts, the Israelis had upped the stakes with an a�ack in February 1955 upon the Egyptian town of Gaza. Later that year, President Nasser announced the purchase of arms from the Soviet bloc. Britain and the USA nevertheless initially agreed to fund the Aswan Dam in Egypt, only to withdraw seven months later, in July 1956, following the collapse of another Anglo-American Middle East peace initiative and the consequent policy decision to work for Nasser’s isolation. Jo expressed concern at the decision to abandon

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the Aswan project because ‘a withdrawal at the heels of the Americans’ had put Britain in a somewhat difficult position.10 The following day, Nasser announced the nationalisation of the Suez Canal Company. How should the British government and its allies respond? Should there be a military showdown? What were the short, medium and long-term prospects if Nasser remained unchecked? What would Nasser do next? These were among the questions that teased politicians, pundits and citizens – and over which opinion began to bifurcate.11 Other questions began to seize the policymakers and cognoscenti if not yet the general public. Could Britain mobilise her allies and, if so, to what end? Could and should the United Nations play a role – if so, what kind of role? Crisis filled the air as the Commons was recalled in the middle of September. The Conservatives favoured a more robust response, including the use of force if necessary, though divisions within their ranks became increasingly apparent. Labour was more resolute in opposing force except under a UN umbrella. The Liberals were at one in wanting UN involvement, tabling an amendment for the referral of the dispute to the twenty-two-nation Canal Users’ Association. Beyond that, they were by no means united. When, on 13 September, the Commons voted on a Labour motion of no confidence, all five Liberals present rallied to the government;12 but only three – Jo, Arthur Holt and Donald Wade – supported the government’s own motion, the other two abstaining.13 Parliament had not given the go-ahead for war. Eden was still mixing the language of negotiation with that of possible combat. But later the same evening it was Jo, Arthur Holt and Roderic Bowen who, among the Liberals, joined the government lobby in re-adjourning the House until 23 October.14 For a critical five weeks, the government was spared the probings of Parliament. Suez was a prominent concern among delegates to the Liberal assembly at Folkestone, though not to the exclusion of other issues. On the opening day, Jo moved a resolution tabled by the Kingston, Maiden and Coombe associations calling for a more aggressive policy on automation in industry. More importantly, Jo was now seen as the natural heir to the party leadership. He was given a rousing reception, one delegate describing him as ‘the Liberal Moses’.15 Without doubt he was the popular choice to succeed Clement Davies. Such had been the message conveyed to the ailing leader over the summer by party treasurer Major-General Grey.16 At that point Davies was reluctant to go, Grey disinclined to push. But Philip Fothergill seems to have had fewer inhibitions.17 According to his agent, Davies still arrived at the annual assembly at Folkestone intending to hold on but sensed the tide flowing against him.18 There was li�le surprise when he used his winding up speech to announce his intention to retire in just over three weeks’ time. He told delegates: ‘I can step down knowing that there is a worthy successor waiting’.19 It is difficult to imagine that Jo had no inkling as to the skirmishing that had been going on below deck. He had kept his head down, having departed the conference hall by the time Davies made his speech. For that he wrote to his

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leader in apologetic terms.20 He went on: ‘I deplore the events (press articles etc.) which led up to your decision’.21 Thanking his leader ‘a thousand times’ for what he had done for the party, he implored him to delay his resignation until the new year while offering to cut short his visit to the USA if needed.22 On Sunday 30 September, Jo le� the UK for New York. In the event, he returned some ten days before scheduled. Upon his return, fellow Liberal MPs duly elected him as their leader. Technically, he was leader only of the parliamentary party; de facto he was also the leader of the party at large. The party faithful had got their Moses. He was to lead his people to be�er things, if not quite to the promised land. He had the requisite youthful vigour: at 43 he was the youngest Liberal leader since Lord Hartington in the 1870s. He was succeeded as chief whip by Donald Wade. Jo took the reins of leadership on 5 November 1956, the day British forces took Port Said. At dawn the following day the main contingent of troops landed in the Suez Canal zone. Almost immediately the British cabinet agreed to suspend operations. They did so under intense and irresistible pressure from Washington, marking one of the most humiliating climb-downs. British power was exposed as a myth, seemingly a hostage to American whim. Undoubtedly there had been genuine misunderstandings between Britain and the USA. Exactly who was to blame was and remains more difficult to ascertain. By way of post-mortem, a�ention focused upon prime minister Eden’s handling of the whole affair – in particular the allegation that he had colluded with the French in encouraging the Israeli a�ack on Egypt towards the end of October. Such an a�ack would allow Anglo-French forces to invade ostensibly as peacemakers. Few were fooled. The political fallout brought Eden’s resignation in January 1957 under cover of illness. In his memoirs and until his death twenty years later he denied the alleged collusion, though by then the weight of evidence against him was considerable.23 Jo’s task as Liberal leader in the immediate a�ermath of Suez was a tricky one. As we have seen, the party had been divided, as indeed had Labour and, even more so, the Conservatives. Jo was perhaps fortunate to have been absent as the denouement proceeded. For when he returned the position was clearer. The small band of Liberals had begun to incline against the government, only Arthur Holt abstaining as the House divided on 1 November.24 With greater confidence he immediately called for direct UN involvement, regre�ing that Britain had become separated from its allies in the Commonwealth, many of whom had been aghast at the turn of events.25 Under Jo’s tutelage, the Liberal Party now became firmly ‘anti-Suez’. In the major Commons debates on 8 and 12 November and again on 6 December all Liberals present sided with the Labour opposition, there being no ‘diplomatic’ abstentions. But just as Lord Straboli had le� the party to join Labour towards the

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end of October,26 so now a few relatively minor figures reacted otherwise. Within days, during the middle of November, Lord Russell of Liverpool resigned from the party, believing that it had now become too hostile to the government. He was followed by two former Liberal parliamentary candidates – F.N. BeaufortPalmer and the author John Creasey.27 Jo held his nerve, maintaining the position he had now adopted. Speaking in Glasgow he appealed for a policy of the ‘extreme centre’, a phrase coined earlier by The Economist.28 He castigated the Conservative right-wing Suez Group, which, he claimed, had made the running with disastrous results. He was much more sympathetic to those on the le� who wanted to hand the problem over to the UN; but UN involvement, necessary and desirable, should not obscure the need for a clear British foreign policy both for the short term and for the longer term. For the longer term he wanted a stronger role for NATO; moves towards a United Europe; a permanent UN police force; a plan for the management of the Suez Canal; and safeguards for oil supplies. If Suez le� the Liberals less seriously tainted than the Conservatives it was partly because the party had a much smaller presence within Parliament and was unlikely to form a government. Yet there was a sting in the tail. Rhys Hopkin Morris died on 22 November 1956. Kept away from the House by illness for all the critical debates over Suez, he had remained so�o voce in his support for the government, sparing the newly elected leader any undue embarrassment. The byelection to fill his Carmarthen seat was set for 28 February 1957. It was not quite the first electoral test for the Liberals under Jo’s leadership, polling at Chester having taken place a few days a�er he took over. But Carmarthen provided a severe examination of his leadership qualities. To encourage the Conservatives to stand aside as they had done in each of the four post-war general elections, the local Liberal association put up Morgan Davies, a candidate on the right of the party. The Conservatives duly maintained their passivity, the more so since Davies explicitly endorsed government policy over Suez, so contradicting his own party leader. There was further piquancy in that the Labour candidate was former Liberal MP Megan Lloyd George. Quickly she dubbed Morgan Davies as the ‘Suez candidate’, twisting the knife with the assertion that she agreed with Jo Grimond!29 What was Jo to do? Should he disown the Liberal candidate and stand aloof; or should he do his duty for the party, trying to ‘square the circle’ as best he could? As the dutiful leader, he chose the la�er – a mistake, as he later acknowledged.30 It was almost impossible to offer support to the candidature without giving tacit credence to Davies’ position on the one issue, Suez, which came to dominate the campaign. In the event, Lady Megan was triumphant, leaving the Liberals with just five MPs, the lowest in their history. Jo and his party would recover, but the odour lingered. Over two years later, critics still described Carmarthen as a skeleton in Jo’s cupboard.31 The darkest hour is just before the dawn. For the Liberals, the dawn would

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unremarked change in the British political climate’.37 Jo remained ‘admirably cautious’.38 Again there was a substantial fall in the Conservative vote, though now, more noticeably than in Rochdale, Labour’s share also diminished. Given the underlying national swing to Labour at this time, the Liberals could feel that they were drawing support away from the two main parties in more or less equal measure. Partly at Jo’s behest, the party now decided to set itself against forming an anti-socialist front. To what extent can these electoral successes and near successes be a�ributed to Jo’s leadership? The performance in Rochdale may have been enhanced by Ludovic Kennedy’s celebrity status and perhaps also that of his wife, the ballerina Moira Shearer, who campaigned actively. Kennedy has testified that his enthusiasm was kindled by two factors: the Suez fiasco; and Jo’s elevation as Liberal leader. The appeal lay in Jo’s ability to ‘reflect and forcefully articulate’ the views that Kennedy now realised were his own views, together with the ‘lightness of touch’ that seemed absent in other party leaders.39 More directly though without exerting any pressure, Jo made the connections that resulted in Kennedy’s adoption by the Rochdale (Liberal) Reform Association.40 His appearance during the campaign drew a capacity audience. His unforced charm, his easy manner and sheer integrity were an inspiration, helping the party to a�ract many public personalities such as Kennedy and, later, Clement Freud who has expressed his huge admiration.41 It was in terms of his personal qualities, the inspiration that others drew from those qualities and, of course, in popularising a credible liberal creed that Jo best served the cause – more so than in the art of party management. That is not to say that he neglected the party. Within weeks of his assuming the party leadership he issued a confidential briefing le�er to all prospective candidates. It marked out clear lines of policy; the position of the Liberals on policy issues in relation to the two main parties; and much practical advice about how best to promote the cause.42 The Liberal upturn as reflected in Rochdale and in Torrington was to some extent a function of protest built upon the temporary unpopularity of the two main parties. The Conservatives remained in the doldrums, while internal dissension continued to dog the Labour Party. Jo was right to be cautious. By the summer and autumn of 1958 it had become clear that, for the moment at least, the Liberals were not to make any further electoral advance. Already, though, he had made an impression not only within but also beyond the confines of his own party. Former Conservative MP Christopher Hollis had wri�en that ‘In Mr Grimond the [Liberal] party has as a leader one of the most a�ractive and intelligent members of the House of Commons.’43 Not everyone was enamoured. Following the Liberal assembly at Torquay in September 1958, an old party member noted that Jo had ‘perhaps unconsciously developed the Anthony Eden vocal technique, but without having mastered the microphone’. He criticised the ‘tasteless a�ack’ on the House of Lords as redolent of Lloyd George – ‘a

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needless display of Limehousing’.44 In his speech, Jo had said: ‘Let us bust open the patronage and privilege by which both Socialists and Tories manipulate our politics and maintain their rigid out-of-date party structure.’45 Too many prizes in the law, the church, commerce and in social life, he said, went to those whom the ruling clique found agreeable. If lacking the venom and flourish of a Lloyd George, it was nevertheless classic anti-establishment Grimond. The a�ack on ‘privilege’ drew Jo into a spat with Lord A�lee. In an exchange of le�ers, the former Labour leader claimed to have been unjustly implicated. He denied that any of the judicial or episcopal appointments made during his premiership had been ‘political’, challenging Jo to cite specific instances to the contrary.46 Jo countered with the defence that his remarks were not directed to any specific appointment, rather to the system by which they were made.47 Whoever was judged to have had the be�er of the argument, Jo was certainly being taken seriously by the normally reticent A�lee. He remained defiant. In a speech to his Orkney constituents he again asserted that patronage and the honours list played a large part in cementing the power of the Tory and Labour party machines. He went on: ‘The knowledge that so many appointments rest with the government has an effect right down the line and people are bound to believe that any criticism of orthodoxy will tell against them.’48 By now Jo had consolidated his reputation as a forward-looking radical reformer. Not only in his speeches, but also increasingly in published writings he began to develop and refine his ideas. In July 1957, he published one of the first party pamphlets to carry his name. Its fi�een pages of tabloid text were a tour de force – an indication of the way he wanted the country to go rather than a ‘se�led, detailed Liberal programme for general consumption’.49 The tone was as notable as the particular prescriptions, with references to the need to abandon caution; to go all out for the jackpots – new jackpots not old ones; and to work towards the vision of a liberal society that was expansive, humane and civilised.50 Materialism alone was not a sufficient end; nor should there be undue reliance upon government. In terms vaguely reminiscent of T.H. Green, he said that the endeavour should be ‘to free the personal qualities and social forces from which a good society can grow’.51 In this sense his liberalism was ‘ideal orientated’ – ‘positive’ but not statist. Among the specific proposals contained in the li�le pamphlet were a number of constitutional reforms. These ideas Jo had already set out at greater length in a chapter he contributed for a collection under the editorship of George Watson and associated with the Unservile State Group. Jo had not been among the inaugural members of the Group when first it had met at Oxford in 1953. But he a�ended many of the subsequent gatherings that took place from time to time until it formally disbanded in 1990.52 Down the years, Jo wrote two pamphlets in the Unservile State Series. In his chapter for the edited volume – the first publication

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specification of its application had generated progressively greater support from the middle of the nineteenth century onwards. A�er a number of abortive a�empts at legislation, a bill introduced by the Eden government finally became law during Macmillan’s premiership. Jo had a long-standing distaste for the death penalty. He thus nailed his colours to the mast of the out-and-out abolitionists. He doubted the deterrence value of capital punishment – only that it deterred the same criminal from murdering twice!60 He questioned the efficacy and the justice of a�empts to differentiate between various types of murder and the use of different weapons or instruments of murder in determining the application of the death penalty; and he was unhappy about the special position in which the new law placed police officers, for the murder of whom capital punishment would be retained.61 He further protested at the government’s handling of the ma�er – in particular its a�empt to manipulate what should essentially have been a free vote. He called upon the House of Lords to reject the bill, with the incidental objective of demonstrating the value of having a second chamber. Along with fellow Liberals Clement Davies, Arthur Holt and Donald Wade together with a number of other, predominantly Labour, abolitionists he voted against the reform.62 It was a calculated gamble. Had they prevailed, there might have been no reform for the moment. But the government ranks held sway in both houses and the bill received royal assent in March 1957. The door to further reform was ajar, though the abolitionists would have to wait a few years yet before their demands were satisfied. Jo was no less forthright in his critique of another piece of moral legislation enacted by the Macmillan government. In 1957 the Wolfenden Commi�ee had reported a�er three years’ deliberation on the questions of homosexuality and of prostitution. Legislation on homosexuality would have to wait another ten years; while the government’s more hastily prepared plans to curb street prostitution drew only selectively upon the Wolfenden recommendations. It was neither the government’s intention to make illegal nor to provide a ‘cure’ for prostitution – only to deter prostitutes from plying their trade on the streets, giving police the necessary powers to that end. Jo took issue on a number of points. He endorsed the indignation of many women MPs and women’s groups who objected to the term ‘common prostitute’. It was, he said, ‘not useful’ and ‘priggish’ to boot.63 Rejecting the argument that any legislation was be�er than none, he called for more time fully to consider the Wolfenden Report. He feared that enforcement of the legislation would drive the problem underground, so curing one evil by creating a worse one.64 It was inequitable in that the bill made no provision to deal with the ‘male partner or the curb crawler’; and that, in contrast to the law in Scotland, prosecution could be secured upon the evidence of one witness.65 In any event, the problem was relatively localised – though one that bore upon some of the otherwise more salubrious areas of London such as Mayfair, as home secretary R.A. Butler himself acknowledged.66 In the absence of any welfare or remedial

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dimension, Jo had the suspicion that the proposals reflected a facile manoeuvre to remove from the vista of the privileged merely the outer manifestation of a deeper problem. Certainly he had no sympathy with the argument that legislation was necessary to spare those who objected to being solicited on the street but were unwilling to come forward with evidence. Unpleasant though it could be, he believed that such people should have strength enough to testify in a witness box if they had been ‘genuinely annoyed’.67 Again, Jo’s protestations were to li�le avail. The Street Offences Act was given royal assent in July 1959. It would be an exaggeration to claim that his public pronouncements on that and other issues of the day sprang directly from any fine-grained, systematic liberal doctrine. Such was not in any case the stuff of liberalism. Still, he had by now established himself as something more than a jack-in-the-box politician, ready to pop up with a homespun response or idea on each and every issue. In April 1959, he published his first full-length volume. Like all his later books, The Liberal Future followed an approach by a publisher to Jo, not the other way around.68 The product of some four months’ work sandwiched between other activities, the book searches behind and beyond the ephemeral issues of the day. To give the text a wider embrace, Jo tried to contain his agenda for a Liberal programme within an appendix, though in fact there were numerous specific policy prescriptions in chapters such as those on co-ownership, the social services, education and political reform. It nevertheless offers perhaps Jo’s most extensive and explicit statement of broad political philosophy. While in no way a complete theoretical treatise, there are interesting refinements and developments of some of the central tenets of liberalism in the modern age. In establishing his own bearings, Jo made reference to various liberal and nonliberal writers – J.S. Mill, Karl Popper, Adam Smith, Edmund Burke, G.W.F. Hegel and Karl Marx among others. There is no mention of T.H. Green, and only a fleeting reference to his protégé Bernard Bosanquet. Green’s spirit never seems far away, though. Thus in upholding the ‘negative’ liberal virtue of reasoned argument rather than command, Jo placed his weight firmly behind the view that a Liberal government would need also to take ‘positive’ action to promote liberal conditions.69 Maintaining the distinctly busy, progressive tone that had marked The New Liberalism pamphlet two years earlier, he enjoined Liberals ‘always to be thrusting, progressive, enterprising in outlook’.70 Indeed, the Liberal Party must remain progressive since it could ‘never be satisfied with less than a fully Liberal society’.71 No one had all the answers: not even and – perhaps especially – not the state. Thus he rejected holist philosophies that had cradled state planning, preferring instead the more modest claims of Popperian ‘social engineering’ and empiricist intervention.72 In the best liberal tradition, such empiricist intervention would be guided by reason. But it would not be the reason of rudderless, clinical logic chopping. Rather, à la Burke, Kant and Hume, it would embrace also the

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to engage in cultural imperialism, as he did in expressing a wish to revive the standards of the Medici.84 As noted in the opening chapter, Jo had a Christian upbringing, one that provided an anchor throughout his life. He was never pious, believing that religion should not generally be used by politicians to justify particular initiatives. It should, however, provide a backdrop, a point of reference. There is something Tawneyesque in his observation that free-market capitalism smiled on acquisition and that it was therefore ‘not always in accord with Christian teaching’.85 It behoved liberals to maintain a critical appreciation of the capitalist system. Yet it was socialism not capitalism that was the ‘mad bull’, he said.86 Not for the first time, and certainly not for the last, he expressed fears about the ‘slither towards dependence on the state’, in part the consequence of a failure to establish the proper role of state activity.87 Explicitly or implicitly, the sanctity of the individual pervades much of The Liberal Future. Among other things he identified the twin precepts of opportunity and responsibility. The degree of emphasis that he gave to one or the other would vary as circumstances changed over the years. It was a constant theme that they were different sides of the same coin.88 John Stuart Mill had underlined the ‘responsible’ use of individual freedom; and Jo specifically applauded Gladstone for having roused the nation to its responsibilities.89 At the same time, given the social and political realities in Britain during the late 1950s, opportunity meant change. He made the classic plea of the radical that proposals for reform should be judged not against existing conditions but (implicitly) in anticipation of the new milieu they were intended to hasten.90 On the whole, The Liberal Future was favourably received. The Times was more cautious, wondering whether many of the policy prescriptions could not as easily appear in a publication of the progressive Conservative Bow Group.91 ‘Critic’ in the New Statesman said that, aside from electoral reform, few people knew what the Liberals stood for – and that Jo’s book offered li�le help.92 There may have been uncertainty among the general public as to the position of the Liberal Party; and critics who did not subscribe to the liberal creed may not have been convinced by Jo’s arguments. But there was li�le credibility in the point that he had failed to set out his stall. As with Faber and Faber, when commissioning the book, reviewers were of course aware that a general election was in the offing, probably in a few months’ time. It would be Jo’s first as Liberal leader.

6. Internationalist! Outside the Palace of Westminster with a visiting party from the German Federal Republic, May 1956 (Crown copyright, Central Office of Information).

Chapter 6

INTERNATIONALIST

T�� ������ �� 1959 was one of the warmest, driest, sunniest – and seemingly longest – in living memory. The ‘feelgood factor’ had begun to redound to the benefit of the government. Having sustained a long period of unpopularity a�er Suez, the Conservatives had during the closing months of 1958 started to edge ahead in the opinion polls. By the late summer of the following year, prime minister Harold Macmillan was enjoying the approval of some two-thirds of those sampled by Gallup.1 It was now two years since he had declared that most people had ‘never had it so good’. That was the phrase that stuck, ironically so in a speech intended as a warning about inflation and with an expression of doubt as to prosperity’s sustainability.2 There was further irony in the assumption of economic growth, a cornerstone for much of the centre-le� revisionism within the Labour Party and for many of the ideas proffered by Jo Grimond in The Liberal Future.3 In time, this assumption would become increasingly precarious, demanding a reappraisal for which Jo was among the first to call. For the foreseeable future, though, prosperity and expansion remained the order of the day. There was expansion in the Grimond household, too. On 13 June 1959, Jo and Laura’s fourth and last child was born. (Thomas) Magnus was baptised two months later in Firth Parish Church, Orkney. To a far greater extent than his siblings, Magnus was to be reared on the soil of Orkney. He received all his formal schooling there, a�ending Stromness Academy (a non-boarding school), in contrast to Andrew and Johnny, who went to Eton, and Grizelda, a pupil at St. Paul’s, London. There was no political weight in the parents’ decision, other than to allow their youngest son to a�end the school of his choice. Jo seemed happy to reflect that his children had been to different types of school.4 The tide that brought high hopes at Rochdale and Torrington had receded, while leaving its mark. Opinion polls indicated Liberal support into low

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double figures. The party planned to contest over 200 seats at the next general election, more than at any time since 1950. Many of these constituencies were held by Conservatives, so dispelling any wild talk about a ‘carve up’. In Bolton, where Liberals and Conservatives had held back in the east and west divisions respectively, the pact continued only a�er a visit by Lord Hailsham and much heart-searching by members of the local Conservative association. The general election of 1959 was a pivotal event in the development of British electioneering. It was the first in which television was a significant feature, though to what extent it affected the outcome remains far more uncertain. Some three quarters of all households now had a television set, nearly double that at the time of the 1955 election.5 The new medium was in the process of testing to destruction various formal restrictions upon the transmission of political material. Jo’s questioning of postmaster-general Charles Hill in the autumn of 1955 had been instrumental in the li�ing of the fourteen-day moratorium by which broadcasters were obliged to refrain from discussing ma�ers prior to their being debated in parliament.6 Granada defied further restrictions by presenting all three candidates in its coverage of the Rochdale by-election in March 1958.7 Cameras were for the first time invited into the Palace of Westminster to televise the state opening of Parliament in October 1958. It was another quarter of a century before they penetrated the chamber; long before then, though, the character of election coverage on television had changed almost beyond recognition. As one commentator put it: ‘having been a shackle, impartiality had become a sword.’8 In 1959, and for the last time, political leaders were spared confrontation before the cameras on terms other than their own. Still, the BBC’s Hustings and Granada’s Election Marathon generally extended the scope as well as the audience reach of politics on television. It is probably an exaggeration to say that modern mass media have imparted a presidential character to British general elections but there may have been a progressive tendency to focus upon the party leaders. As the 1959 election approached, it was noted that if Britain had a US-style presidential election, then anyone voting for either of Jo’s opponents deserved ‘the immediate a�ention of two doctors and a magistrate’. By comparison with Harold Macmillan and Hugh Gaitskell, the same pundit held Jo to be ‘almost miraculously free, frank, honest and upright’.9 Parliament was dissolved on 18 September. Two days later, the Liberal Party launched its manifesto, the last of the main parties to do so. Titled People Count, nearly half the text consisted of a personal message from Jo. Critical of both the Conservative and Labour Party machines, he claimed that while the election would produce either a Tory or a socialist government, the type of Tory or socialist government would depend upon the strength of the Liberal vote. It was vital to build up a progressive alternative party – a ‘non-socialist opposition

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whose arteries are not too hard to stand the flow of real blood of enthusiasm about the real issues of our time’.10 He elaborated upon this theme when opening his party’s campaign in Central Hall, Westminster. In a widely publicised address to a moderately a�ended meeting, he outlined three reasons for voting Liberal. First, it would help in the task of building up a radical-liberal alternative to the Conservatives who, he said, had held onto power not because people liked them but because ‘they don’t know a be�er house to go to.’11 It was the job of the Liberals to build that house. Second, a higher Liberal vote would put a check on the other parties: ‘They will be compelled to think liberally and it will put a curb on their extreme wings.’ Third, he wanted more Liberal MPs in the House to raise liberal issues and to stop ‘the real blimp Tories and…the socialists who want more nationalisation’. If the election le� the Liberals holding the balance, they would not impede the business of government but would ‘give the party with the majority a reasonable chance to carry out the more generally agreed parts of its programme until another election is held’. His words had some effect. Gaitskell accused him of sidling up to the Conservatives in the expectation that the return of the Macmillan administration was the likely outcome. And in what was to be his last election as a parliamentary candidate, Winston Churchill dismissed as ‘absurd’ Jo’s suggestion that a stronger Liberal presence would serve to trim the extremes of the other two parties.12 Having fired his opening salvos, Jo retreated to his constituency where he remained during most of the campaign. Over the next two weeks, he visited all the inhabited islands, as was now his custom. His status as party leader brooked no neglect of the people of Orkney and Shetland, being, as one local newspaper put it, ‘Jo to them all’.13 Electorally speaking he was, in Lady Violet’s words, ‘as safe as a church’.14 Certainly, he could have lent more weight to the national campaign without threat to his re-election or undue offence to his constituents. Given his wider responsibilities, his judgement – noble in itself – was questionable. Without him, the first of the Liberals’ two television broadcasts was widely regarded as shambolic – a fi�een-minute slot introduced and concluded by John Arlo� with serial contributions from Mrs Renee Soskin, Mark Bonham Carter, Robin Day and Dr Glyn Hughes, the la�er delivered partly in Welsh, so excluding the vast majority of viewers.15 Donald Wade and Ludovic Kennedy featured in radio broadcasts, but not Jo. The authors of the Nuffield election study thought it odd that the Liberals did not make more use of their star performer.16 Belatedly, Jo tried to rationalise his position. He told an audience in Rochdale that he and his colleagues had decided to hold their fire ‘until we saw the whites of the eyes of our enemies’.17 When Jo re-entered the national arena he did so with a bang. His solo performance in the second of his party’s televised election broadcasts, on 3 October, was generally reckoned to have been the best of the campaign.18 Eschewing supplementary visual aids and with no change of camera angle, he

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addressed viewers head-on, uninterrupted. For ten minutes he outlined the main features of the Liberal programme. That he overran his time and was cut off a few seconds before he had finished seemed only to add to the sense of informality and sincerity. Thus he remained on the right side of the narrow line that separates the endearing from the unacceptable variety of amateurism. A narrow, wavering line also reflected cross-currents in Jo’s character. Party managers o�en fre�ed over his appearance in public – the wayward shock of hair, the skewed tie of one who seemed naïvely unaware of ‘image’ yet who possessed a certain vanity; who had the patrician bearing with the common touch; whose notorious parsimony nevertheless allowed full aperture to a manifest generosity of spirit; whose eccentricity was matched by a lack of pomposity; whose easy charm and media friendly countenance obscured a shyness and apparent occasional aloofness. Such is the unevenness of the human condition, amply illustrated in one of its deceptively complex specimens. When writing about Jo, Norman Shrapnel once remarked that ‘people expect them [politicians] to be what they appear, even if they never try to disguise the fact that they are quite different.’19 Whatever the case, his television appearance was a great success. Two days later, he embarked upon a one-day helicopter tour that took him in stages from Newquay to Rochdale at a cost to Liberal central funds of some £600.20 In the West Country, he spoke to quite large audiences, travelling in a forty-car convoy from Bideford and other scheduled stops en route to Hereford. From Hereford he flew north, touching down shortly a�er 6.00 p.m. at Manchester airport. In Greater Manchester and Lancashire he fulfilled ten further engagements before making his way to Glasgow later that evening. ‘MR GRIMOND – DEUS EX MACHINA’ proclaimed the Guardian headlines, observing that ‘never before in the history of British electioneering has a party leader on tour made so few speeches at so many stops.’21 In most of those northern constituencies, he managed no more than the briefest of ‘good luck’ wishes to the respective Liberal candidate before speeding away to his next port of call. Things did not always go to plan. He failed to fulfil a scheduled engagement in support of Trevor Smith at West Lewisham, the young Liberal candidate not being entirely mollified to learn that Jo had instead accompanied Johnny to his first day at Eton!22 The image of a man on the move, a man with a mission nevertheless gelled with the message that he had consistently enunciated since becoming party leader and which he had reiterated at the outset of the campaign. ‘The fact is,’ he said, ‘that we are a progressive party or we are nothing.’23 At Bideford he talked about ‘a sweeping tide of liberalism’ and the possibility of a Liberal landslide in certain places.24 More pointedly, he said, ‘a great spirit in the Labour Party… is willing to come along with the radical movement, but it wants a breakthrough and some signs from the people that this is what is wanted.’25 A big vote for the Liberals would provide such a sign. Jo hoped for a Liberal vote totalling two million across the nation.26 It was a

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realistic target. Some polls were suggesting a fi�een per cent share of the vote. Moreover, just a few days before polling day, up to one fi�h of the electors had yet to make up their minds. There was all to play for. In the event, the 216 Liberal candidates received some 1.6 million votes, claiming on average some seventeen per cent of the poll per candidate in constituencies contested, though only six per cent of the votes cast throughout the country. Fi�y-six Liberals lost their deposits – four fewer than in 1955, though accounting for just over a quarter of the candidates instead of more than half. Twenty-six Liberals worked their way into second place, an advance upon the eleven of 1955. But the biggest disappointment lay in the inability of the party to increase its presence in Parliament. Again, it returned six MPs. Mark Bonham Carter lost Torrington while Jeremy Thorpe triumphed in the neighbouring constituency of North Devon that he had been cultivating for some years and in which he conducted what was described as ‘an American style campaign’.27 The voters of Orkney and Shetland again rewarded Jo’s loyalty. He was returned with an increased majority and a greater share of the poll – the only Liberal to do so in the face of Conservative and Labour opposition. But while by no means a disaster and with suggestions of be�er things to come, the performance of the party nationally was an anticlimax. Old debates resurfaced as to the wisdom of contesting more seats, many of which were probably unwinnable. It is difficult to know whether the party’s absence from ‘no-hope’ areas would have facilitated a more concerted effort in constituencies where success seemed within sight – and, of course, whether such effort would have secured the prized victory. Even Jo’s fleeting presence in North Cornwall was insufficient to help Edwin Malindine make up the four percentage points by which he had trailed in 1955. As in 1955, most of the be�er Liberal performances were in constituencies held by Conservatives; and it was generally in Conservative rather than in Labour territory that local Liberal associations tended to offer candidates, though by no means exclusively so. But now there was evidence that Liberals were drawing only slightly more support away from the Conservatives than from Labour.28 Still, Liberals had li�le bearing upon the overall outcome of the election – a handsome hundred-seat majority for the Conservatives. Any talk of the Liberals holding the balance in a ‘hung’ Parliament or of significant influence upon the government came to an abrupt halt. If not before then certainly now Jo was a figure in the mind’s eye of the general public as well as of the ‘cha�ering classes’. That he was seen more as a ‘vigorous, almost non-political leader’29 than as the bearer of a party flag had something to do with the Liberals’ failure to project a distinct image. It also reflected Jo’s own brand of politics. Party labels and certainly party boundaries were for him realities to be acknowledged rather than celebrated. On the Sunday immediately following the election, he told his constituents: ‘I have always said we should have

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a new progressive party, and it would have to a�ract many people who, at present, lean towards the Labour Party… we should try and have a new alternative to the Conservatives. Naturally, it is very early days.’30 In a subsequent newspaper interview he was more cautious, emphasising: ‘I have not yet spoken to anyone in London about it and I really mean nothing more than I have been saying on the subject for some time.’31 He did not envisage any imminent amalgamation with the Labour Party. Indeed as one sympathetic Liberal commentator said, it was a case of inviting the mountain to come to Mohammed.32 Jo’s speech in Shetland was a louder echo of noises he had been making for some time. Some sixteen months before the election, he had talked about the possibility of ‘a new Liberal-Labour alignment… leading to a party of the le�’.33 It was part of a wider pitch against narrow nationalistic sovereignty set out in twelve steps towards a liberal society. The Times noted that: ‘Mr Grimond foresees a possible realignment of parties with the Liberals in the van on the side of internationalism.’34 It was by no means a novel idea. In 1951, the Welsh Liberal Assembly had suggested a fusion with moderate Labour elements to form a new, radical party.35 Indeed similar ideas were implicit in the popular front movement of the 1930s of which Jo’s abortive candidature in Central Aberdeenshire was a product. Whatever its provenance, Jo now became identified as the standardbearer for the idea of some sort of radical, centre-le� realignment. In a sense it was a rational foray. Three successive defeats, each by a greater margin than the one before, caused some to wonder whether Labour could ever form another government.36 Although the ruptures that had dogged the party for much of the 1950s seemed to have been partially healed before the election, distinct ‘camps’ remained. As noted in the last chapter, the revisionists, for whom nationalisation was not an article of faith, shared some of Jo’s ideas – at least in terms of practical policies, if less so in terms of underlying political philosophy. Yet as events were to show time and again, party loyalties o�en prevail over policy and even over electoral considerations of mutual advantage, certainly in the short and medium term. Jo’s overtures met with a cool response, both within his own party and among Labour people. Frank Byers said that any talk of a Liberal-Labour alliance was ‘extremely premature’ and that it was ‘far too early to make any comment on suggestions of that sort’.37 He agreed, though, that his party had a�racted people from Labour. But Labour’s general secretary, Morgan Phillips, flatly rejected the idea as ‘wishful thinking’. ‘Such a proposal,’ he said, ‘has no place on our agenda.’38 Labour elder statesman Lord A�lee, with whom Jo had crossed swords eighteen months earlier, was more dismissive. Asked to comment on the idea, he said: ‘I regard liberalism as a method of escapism.’39 Undaunted, Jo wrote a New Statesman article in which he tried to drive a wedge between those ‘fervid state socialists’ with whom Liberals could never agree and the bulk of Labour that ‘now accepts Keynesian economics – the liberal alternative to socialism’.40 In denying

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From his early days as an MP, Jo Grimond was strong and active in his support for international initiatives. In The Liberal Future he spelled out the aims of Liberal foreign policy as being ‘to promote a liberal world… by helping to create international authorities through which peaceful change could be agreed and enforced and all the time to work for freer trade and greater prosperity with due regard to the true interests of the British people’.46 He acknowledged the shortcomings of the UN but held that it was ‘the only embryo world authority we have.’47 Shortly before the 1959 election, he warned a gathering of Liberals that the world was changing and that Britain must ‘either be in the van of change or pushed into a back water’.48 A profound psychological change was needed. He went on: ‘We have simply got to give up thinking of foreign policy as being Britain versus the world… [or] as something different from home policy.’49 It was a consistent theme of his that successive British governments harboured delusions of grandeur, especially Conservative governments. Such delusions had led to Munich and Suez as well as to an abdication of leadership in a more integrated Europe. As Britain’s position in the world had declined, policymakers, he o�en asserted, had become ever more concerned with empty notions of prestige ‘like old gentlemen who begin to worry about their success with the girls’.50 It was time for the country to abandon its insularity. Laudable in certain circumstances, the mo�o of minding one’s own business had led to considerable and avoidable suffering in international affairs.51 Inevitably, any conflation of general observations made by Jo (or anyone else) about foreign policy on different occasions and to different audiences in a rapidly changing world threatens the exposure of inconsistencies. It may be be�er for Britain to mind its own business here, though not necessarily there. A more finely shaded picture of Jo’s position and that of his party can be had by examining two broad areas of foreign affairs that claimed a�ention during the late 1950s and the turn of the 1960s: Britain’s descent from empire, including the role of the Commonwealth; and the movement for European integration. The late 1940s brought the first phase of Britain’s loss of its empire, mainly in Asia. During the 1950s, the focus shi�ed to Africa and other outposts; empire was already yielding to commonwealth. By the time Jo became Liberal leader, only the speed and precise nature of the transformation remained serious issues of contention. By and large, the process was accomplished in relatively orderly and peaceful fashion, certainly by comparison with the bloodbath that accompanied the French withdrawal from Algeria. Gold Coast became the first former British African colony in Africa. Jo a�ended a commemorative tea party in the House of Commons on Independence Day, 6 March 1957. Along with Hugh Gaitskell, Frank Cousins and Lord Hemingford, he was enlisted by the Movement for Colonial Freedom, an organisation with which he had had some contact following its inception in 1954, though in which he had never assumed any executive role.52 Jo thought that the transition in Ghana had been skilfully handled, giving the lie to

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any pretence that Britain was the oppressor of all coloured nations.53 A number of trouble spots remained, though. During the second half of the 1950s, Cyprus was a constant thorn in the flesh of a British government reluctant to relinquish sovereignty. Britain’s withdrawal from Palestine in 1948 had increased the relative military strategic significance of the island once described by Disraeli as ‘the key to Asia’. Jo alleged that British policy was also driven by the wish to appease Conservative backbenchers, who were sore about successive retreats in the Middle East, a fact acknowledged by a Colonial Office official.54 In July 1954, Henry Hopkinson, a junior minister in the Churchill government, declared that Cyprus would never be granted independence, so rousing the ire of Greek Cypriots in their demands for enosis – the union of Cyprus and Greece. A renewed guerrilla campaign began to capture international a�ention. The National Organisation of Cypriot Fighters (EOKA) was inspired by Archbishop Makarios III, though its operations were directed by its founder, Colonel George Grivas. The British imprisoned and then exiled Makarios who now became a martyr to his cause. EOKA intensified its campaign, British troops and governing personnel maintaining the rule of law with great difficulty. In classic fashion, the government refused to negotiate under duress of terrorism. But Jo and others had come to see the futility of such a position. In June 1957, he told fellow MPs that in the long run the government would have to negotiate with Makarios, among others.55 Jo’s analysis of the situation was highly unfavourable to the government. At a meeting in Chelmsford in May 1958 he said that the subordination of democracy to defence in Cyprus had proved disastrous.56 The whole situation would never have arisen had the British government given a firm date on which ‘the right would be given to Cypriots to determine their own future’ and if it had made clear that until that date was reached, it would introduce democracy to the Cypriots ‘under firm government’. Such a move was of course highly problematic. For the Turkish Cypriot minority, supported by the Turkish government, insisted upon the formal partition of the island – a demand fuelled by their fears of enosis. By now, in the a�ermath of Suez, the military importance of the island to Britain had declined and Makarios was eventually persuaded to abandon enosis as a condition of his release from exile. The Macmillan government continued to set its face against partition, as Jo again pressed the prime minister to renounce British sovereignty and allow the Cypriot people to determine their own future with possible assistance from NATO and UN peacekeeping forces.57 He criticised the constitution subsequently promulgated as being a document of unnecessary complexity that, in adopting the form of an Anglo-style parliamentary system in the absence of a culture of ‘give and take’, threatened to leave the Turkish Cypriots permanently outvoted.58 It was a dark but prophetic notice. The constitution was duly enacted, Makarios elected as president (with a Turkish vice-president) towards the end of 1959 and the island given its full independence the following

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year. But British troops returned in 1963 to try and restore peace between the Greek and Turkish communities. The ‘thin blue line’ of separation became that of rigid partition in 1974 following Turkish invasion – an unhappy legacy of British rule. Jo may have been justified in his belief that partition might have been averted by a more enlightened British policy during the 1950s. Neither he nor anyone else seemed able to find a formula for effective and harmonious longterm integration. The Central African Federation (CAF) was an ambitious but flawed initiative sponsored by Whitehall – a ‘deviation from the inevitable historical trend of decolonisation’.59 It sought to bring under one umbrella the states of Northern Rhodesia (Zambia), Southern Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) and Nyasaland (Malawi). The hope was to pool to their mutual advantage the complementary natural, human and political resources of the constituent states. British commercial interests would also prosper, though the Churchill administration presented its proposals as ‘an act of creative statesmanship within an imperial framework’.60 There were genuine fears that, in the absence of federation, the already ‘suspect’ Southern Rhodesians would ‘cosy up’ to the apartheid regime in South Africa.61 From its inception, the CAF was condemned by most within the Labour and Liberal parties. Dingle Foot had warned the 1952 Liberal Assembly that, on almost every possible test, it had become clear that African opinion was negative.62 In the late 1950s the Conservative government appointed a commission under the chairmanship of Lord Devlin yet rejected the ensuing, highly critical report. Jo complained that nothing had been learned from Suez or from Cyprus and that ‘we are not capable of holding down vast areas of Africa by force.’63 While hoping that the white se�lers would help to create a genuine multi-racial society, he was adamant that ‘ultimate power must rest with the Africans.’64 Having rejected Devlin, the Macmillan government set up another commission under the chairmanship of former cabinet minister Lord (Walter) Monckton. Addressing MPs on 28 January 1960, Jo again railed at the government’s stubbornness in precluding the possibility of disbanding the federation, by now a lost cause and an obstacle to self-determination in the eyes of many.65 A few days later, the climate changed when Harold Macmillan made his famous ‘winds of change’ speech – a wake-up call to the apartheid regime in South Africa delivered to the two houses of parliament in Cape Town.66 When Monckton reported towards the end of the year, the government had to acknowledge that the CAF was doomed. By a series of turns, it was finally laid to rest in 1963 under the guidance of R.A. Butler. The three constituent elements were extricated but there was no simple solution. Jo accepted the need to protect the European minority while insisting upon black majority rule, not least in Southern Rhodesia where he urged the government to assert itself with some plain speaking to prime minister Roy Welensky.67 Here he was able to draw upon information provided by the

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Africa Bureau, with which he had loose connections and of which Laura was an executive commi�ee member between 1957 and 1967.68 The active African parties were able to assert themselves in Nyasaland and, to a lesser extent, in Northern Rhodesia. But the white se�lers of Southern Rhodesia who had come to dominate the CAF successfully resisted the process of full democracy for a further twenty years. Much poisoned water was yet to pass under the bridge. Jo had initially been circumspect in the immediate a�ermath of Macmillan’s ‘winds of change’ salvo. During a Commons debate he wondered whether it was possible for apartheid to ‘be diminished, or broken down, or improved in any way’.69 He described it as a system that ‘came into being in the hope of combining together different nationalities and which has failed to some extent’.70 The emphasis changed dramatically, though, a�er the Sharpeville massacre. On 21 March 1960, South African police killed 67 Africans as they demonstrated in protest at the ‘pass laws’, introduced to restrict the movement of non-whites. Jo joined the chorus of condemnation, calling upon Macmillan to issue a ‘strong statement’ commensurate with his ‘winds of change’ sentiments.71 He began to harden his stance, demanding to be told why the British representative had abstained in a recent UN vote of censure against South Africa.72 He complained bi�erly at the ‘public washing of our hands’ at the Security Council. Yet he was careful to offer the South African government an olive branch. He went on: ‘it is a compliment to South Africa that we feel that an expression of opinion by this country, if it is not wholly hostile… may have some effect’.73 He did not think that Britain should drive South Africa out of the Commonwealth; nor did he want the Commonwealth to be compromised by accommodating an immutable South Africa.74 Without some movement from Pretoria, though, it was difficult to envisage any meeting of minds. At the Liberal Assembly that autumn he urged Britain to be guided by the wishes expressed by the black African spokespersons.75 He later participated in a protest march from Trafalgar Square to Hyde Park to commemorate the first anniversary of the Sharpeville shootings. Along with a coloured South African and others including Tony Benn and Lady Violet, he carried a banner inscribed simply ‘Remember Sharpeville’.76 In the event South Africa withdrew from the Commonwealth, an outcome Jo thought preferable to expulsion. Jo had no misty-eyed delusions about the Commonwealth. He objected to talk about it being a ‘family’ or a ‘club’. Rather, he wanted it to be a functional organisation, calling for necessary restructuring to provide technical and personnel services to member states and to other underdeveloped nations.77 In so doing he no doubt drew upon his UNRRA experience, to which he occasionally referred. The Commonwealth was a central consideration in many of the debates surrounding another issue that now began to dominate external policy – Britain’s role in a more integrated Europe.

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As we have seen, most Liberals deprecated the A�lee government’s negative response to the Schuman Plan. The party maintained pressure for Britain to play a more active role in Europe, its 1956 assembly doing so with specific reference to the economic integration of Western Europe and, especially, the plans for a common market that had emerged from the Messina summit the previous year.78 Some Liberals, such as Oliver Smedley, bridled at the creation of an economic community as constituting an external tariff. A further complication beckoned with proposals that resulted in the creation of the European Free Trade Association (EFTA).79 The idea of a free-trade area emerged from the bowels of Whitehall as ‘Plan G’.80 It was conceived as a loose federation of nations – EEC and non-EEC – between which there would be free trade while eschewing the more bureaucratic, integrationist character of the nascent economic community. The Macmillan government came to see it as an alternative and as a counterweight to the EEC, membership of the respective bodies becoming mutually exclusive.81 Early in 1957 there appeared in Liberal News the first of a series of key policy articles. It stated that ‘Liberals support the proposal that the United Kingdom should join the free trade area not the customs union’ – in other words EFTA not the EEC.82 Since the article claimed to bear the party leader’s endorsement, some held Jo responsible for having diminished his predecessor’s commitment to Europe.83 But it was at that stage far from clear as to exactly what would be implied by either EFTA or the EEC or if and to what extent there would be tension in their co-existence. There was much loose language while proposals remained embryonic. The EEC – known then and for long therea�er as the Common Market – came into existence in January 1958, though only in stages over the next ten years did there emerge a customs union recognisable as a full ‘common market’. EFTA was established in November 1959. By this time, Jo had expressed concern that it could become a source of division within Europe.84 At EFTA’s inception he emphasised that ‘the European movement… is not primarily an economic movement but a political movement.’85 Within six months he was saying more bluntly: ‘the creation of the Seven as a counter-blast to the Six was clearly our [i.e. Britain’s] error, and the fact that it was our error makes it all the more necessary for us to get out of that error.’86 There was only one thing for it: Britain must abandon EFTA and apply to join the EEC. With added resolve, Jo badgered Macmillan to open negotiations for Britain’s entry to the EEC. Macmillan was at first cautious, mindful about the state of opinion in his party. Although full-blown Euroscepticism did not seize Conservative ranks until the late 1980s and 1990s, the roots were clearly evident from the 1950s. For the time being, the majority were prepared to follow Macmillan’s lead. The Labour Party was more evenly divided, the pro-Europeans o�en ba�ling against the collar of a sceptical and even hostile tendency, reflected not least by leader Hugh Gaitskell. The Liberals could thus claim not only to have been the first

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of the mainstream parties formally to call for Britain’s participation in a more integrated Europe but also to have done so with notable consistency. It has been suggested that in embracing Europe, the Liberals were engaging in a product differentiation exercise.87 Certainly it provided an effective riposte to those who claimed that the party lacked distinctive policies. But there can be no denying the sincerity of Jo and his colleagues; nor can they be accused of cheap electoral opportunism. The electoral dividends were dubious, not to say discouraging. Liberal voters were generally less enthusiastic than party members and leaders.88 Jo did not push the Liberal Party towards Europe. It was already so inclined before he came to the helm. And it was Mark Bonham Carter who was to make the critical speech to the Llandudno assembly in 1962, helping to secure the party’s firm endorsement for British participation in the EEC while the Conservatives prevaricated and Labour remained predominantly opposed. On Europe, Jo was certainly strengthened by his brother-in-law and by Arthur Holt, one of his closest confrères within the parliamentary party. Jo nevertheless gave clear and increasingly strident voice on this issue as on others, using to good effect his position as a national figure. O�en in the late 1950s and 1960s critics held that Jo and his party were prepared to take Britain into Europe at almost any price. Such was the implication, it was sometimes asserted, of emphasising the political over the economic virtues of membership. In response, Jo began increasingly to castigate successive governments for having abrogated their responsibility – a familiar chime among pro-Europeans. In April 1960 he told the Commons that it was ‘the worst mistake of British diplomacy since the war’; an opportunity missed when the leadership of the continent was ‘hers for the taking’.89 On other occasions he met objections with detailed rebu�als. In the debate on the Queen’s speech following the 1959 election he denied that membership of the EEC would contradict Britain’s obligations to the Commonwealth. On the contrary, the Commonwealth would welcome ‘entry into European markets’.90 Nor did he think it would be contrary to UN or NATO commitments.91 With echoes of Churchill’s ‘interlocking circles’ speech in Zurich a�er the war, he said that Britain enjoyed ‘a central position in the Commonwealth and is also an extremely important European country while, at the same time, having intimate ties of history and language with the United States’.92 Britain’s role was ‘to prevent those different societies from becoming exclusive and to try to make them pull together, not against one another’.93 He recognised the need to lock Germany into a European partnership – preferably a united Germany. The continued division of Germany remained a concern, compounded by the creation of the Berlin Wall in 1961. Jo thought that the existence of West Germany in a more fully integrated Europe would exacerbate tensions with the communist East – but that it was a risk worth taking.94 He felt obliged to deal with other specific concerns, such as those about agriculture. He tried to reassure British farmers that the Six knew how to look a�er agriculture.95

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In time, the National Farmers’ Union and, to an extent, the farmers of Orkney and Shetland came to accept the force of this argument; though Jo was never able to persuade the fishermen of Shetland. Nor was he able to lay to rest Liberal concerns about the external tariff. Over the next two years or so he developed these points. Increasingly, they were accompanied by warnings as to the consequences should Britain fail to take her place at Europe’s high table. The Commonwealth, he said, may begin to look more towards Washington or even Bonn. Britain would be the obvious dumping ground for surplus products from EEC countries.96 And, as the Macmillan government stood on the threshold of making Britain’s first application for membership, Jo told his Shetland constituents that the country was paying dearly for the government’s miscalculations: ‘under Mac-the-Dither we have taken step a�er step too late.’97 He pressed Macmillan to proceed without delay. At the same time, he wanted anti-dumping measures to be negotiated as a condition of entry as well as safeguards for pensioners and families – an acknowledgement that membership could in the short run be inflationary. Indeed he dissented strongly from the view that Britain’s economic difficulties would be solved by going into Europe in the absence of government policies to tackle costs and tariffs.98 Yet he was no less adamant that ‘it is no good going into Europe holding one’s nose, so to speak.’99 On 31 July 1961, Harold Macmillan announced the government’s intention to seek membership of the EEC. The official application was made a few days later, precipitating some eighteen months of negotiations. The government had moved towards the Liberal position, though the influence of Jo and his party was probably minimal. On one aspect of membership most Liberals remained at odds with the government – that of sovereignty. Macmillan, like Heath a decade later, flatly denied that there would be any significant loss of national sovereignty. The implication was that any loss, if such there were to be, would be a cause for regret. But for Jo and for many Liberals, sovereignty was not a badge to be worn with particular pride; rather it was the symbol of an outmoded and potentially dangerous nationalism. During his early days as party leader Jo had dismissed as ‘wild and visionary’ the ideal of a world government.100 In The Liberal Future he wrote that ‘by a�empting to spread the umbrella of international unity too widely in its early stages we shall weaken it.’101 Conversely, he acknowledged that for many practical purposes the nation-state remained a useful and necessary instrument.102 Potential evil arose only when it demanded ‘absolute loyalty… and [from] the incompatible claims of all states’.103 Such incompatibility sprang from notions about absolute sovereignty in which states a�empted to shape their destinies unilaterally and with insular abandon. That, he said, was the legacy of the nineteenth century and was no longer feasible. By contrast, the modern world was one of interdependence in which no country could save itself from booms and slumps, defend itself without

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assistance or carry on its foreign and colonial policies to the exclusion of world opinion.104 He went further, calling for supranational bodies with executive as distinct from merely advisory functions. Much good had already come from ‘surrendering some power to wider combinations’.105 While wary of abstract formulations, he said that it was not just about relinquishing some sovereignty but also, in Humean fashion, about the need for ‘a wider symbol which may engage our sentiments as well as our reason’.106 Jo’s embrace of European integration and his wish for Britain’s participation owed as much to ‘vision’ as to cost-benefit calculations. Yet in also upholding a vital role for the nation state he not only maintained a grip on political reality but also articulated a sincere belief in the need for balance. Supranationalism and the nation-state were by no means incompatible, so long as there remained a healthy and workable partnership. In the late 1950s and during the 1960s and 1970s it seemed necessary to emphasise the supranational. Only later and in (arguably) changed circumstances did he seek to bend back the stick. At heart he was an internationalist; and so he was to remain.

7. At his desk in the House of Commons, May 1962 (Crown copyright, Central Office of Information).

Chapter 7

ORPINGTON MAN

I� J� G������ ��� his party were able to claim distinctiveness in their policies on Europe there was also clear water on the closely related topic of defence, especially nuclear weapons. As on Europe, the Liberal preference for federalism over national sovereignty was the mainspring. The changing state of international affairs and of domestic politics provided the focus by which particular positions were adopted. Like most Liberals, Jo upheld the idea of collective security – essentially the application of the rule of law in international relations. As noted in the last chapter, he acknowledged the imperfections of the UN. But it was preferable to the old diplomacy to which most of the leading nations continued to cling and ‘which acts as though the units of the world were still the nineteenth century independent states’.1 Thus he was dubious and sometimes downright scathing about the utility of summit conferences. Prime Minister Harold Macmillan set much store by such meetings – select gatherings of world leaders. Jo ridiculed Macmillan’s ‘Washington honeymoon’, a mini-summit with President Eisenhower, from which emerged a ‘declaration of common purpose’.2 The immediate failure of the four-power (USA, UK, France, Soviet Union) summit in May 1960 to agree a testban treaty confirmed Jo’s fears that such occasions were apt to provide platforms for posturing and, in particular, for dictators to score cheap points.3 Indeed he agreed in general with Labour’s Denis Healey that such occasions could serve to entrench rather than to conciliate – a kind of negotiation blight.4 Thus he hoped for the meltdown of the summit into a ‘series of foothills’.5 Part of Jo’s objection to the summit mechanism was that it was predicated upon and reinforced the notion of national sovereignty; that it was an obstacle to supranationalism. He understood the difficulties, especially now that certain nations possessed nuclear weapons while others were straining at the leash to

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join the ‘nuclear club’. Could and should the number of nuclear weapons and nations possessing them be held in check, perhaps reduced – if so, how? And if the communist bloc could not be persuaded, then should the West take its own initiative? These were tricky issues. If the global embrace of the UN lacked the necessary clout, then the western-orientated NATO perhaps offered be�er prospects. In a major Commons debate shortly before the 1960 Christmas recess, Jo said: ‘We must be prepared to give up our sovereignty if we have a NATO deterrent and hope to keep ultimate political control… we either have to give it to one individual or to a supranational body’.6 With these words, he distilled a good deal of his thinking about nuclear defence. He was by no means alone among Liberals in questioning Britain’s possession of an independent nuclear arsenal. Indeed he had appropriated a 1957 amendment proposed by a local constituency branch, subsequently proclaiming it as party policy prior to its endorsement at the annual assembly at Torquay in September 1958.7 But on this policy above all others he led the way, placing his party ahead of the Labour Party by nearly two years.8 It – and Jo – inspired a number of Labour supporters to join the Liberals, including former Bevanite and future Liberal MP John Pardoe. Pardoe recalls: ‘When I joined the Liberal Party… I thought I was moving le� – that is the effect Jo’s leadership had on one’.9 Things were going well for Jo as Christmas approached. He was a happy family man, fulfilling a heavy programme of public engagements, meeting people from various walks of life. He dined with the actor James Robertson Justice, his predecessor (and successor) as rector of Edinburgh University. He had been elected in November 1960, defeating newspaper proprietor Roy (Lord) Thomson and Labour MP Philip Noel-Baker. Then, just before Christmas he narrowly avoided serious injury. His car was in collision with a lorry on the Stamford bypass in Lincolnshire. Together with daughter Grizelda, he was treated for minor cuts, the pair continuing their journey to Scotland by train. He told reporters that he had been lucky to escape with ‘an enormous black eye’.10 He was back in action again when Parliament reassembled the following month. If the Westminster club is a civilised enclave, it offers scant respite in a fast-moving world. In February 1960, France had exploded her first nuclear bomb, becoming the fourth nation to possess such weapons. In so doing, she followed the route taken by Britain three years earlier, the first British hydrogen bomb having been exploded in May 1957.11 It stimulated the creation, first, of the National Council for the Abolition of Nuclear Weapons and then, from 1958, the most famous of modern peace movements – the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND). CND’s first president was the philosopher Bertrand Russell, its chairman Canon John Collins. Although initially a ‘broad church’ absorbing various peace groups, CND soon gravitated to a unilateralist position, calling for Britain (and other nuclear powers) unconditionally to renounce their weapons. Jo was never a unilateralist. Perhaps recalling the taint of Carmarthen early in his

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leadership, he declined to speak on behalf of Captain Lort-Phillips, the allegedly unilateralist Liberal candidate in the Ebbw Vale by-election of November 1960.12 But he did meet John Collins on a number of occasions prior to and a�er Collins’ resignation from CND in 1962. Jo maintained a consistent though occasionally precarious position amidst the tortuous nuances of disarmament politics. He drew heavily upon Alastair Buchan, one of several expert policy advisers.13 He did not think that Britain could justify possession of nuclear weapons, believing the government’s policy to be ‘unnecessary, dangerous and expensive’.14 An independent British deterrent made li�le additional contribution to that of the West as a whole. Jo suspected that it was maintained for ‘out-of-date reasons of national prestige’.15 Nor did he think that the possession of such weapons bought influence or were necessary for Britain to gain influence.16 Moreover, as he told a meeting at Chippenham, Britain’s testing of nuclear weapons could give the Soviets an excuse for maintaining their stockpile.17 It became increasingly necessary for Jo to distance himself from the unilateralists who were now beginning to make headway in the Labour Party and even within the ranks of his own party. At the Liberal Assembly in the autumn of 1960, delegates voted overwhelmingly against unilateral disarmament. In so doing, they gave the decisive signal for which Jo had called so as to remove any ambiguities prior to the Labour conference scheduled the following week. Even one of the Liberals’ strongest unilateralists nevertheless expressed her support for Jo as party leader.18 By contrast, much rancour a�ended the unilateralist motion passed by Labour at its conference, a decision famously reversed the following year. As an ideal, Jo envisaged one western deterrent that would demand ‘a pooling of sovereignty and abandonment of the idea that each nation has some control over these major weapons’.19 If collective security through NATO remained elusive, then he came to see that Britain and other countries must fall under the umbrella of the USA. ‘American strategic backing is enough for the Alliance’, he declared.20 He did not share the traditional Conservative disdain for ‘nouveau Americana’, being favourably impressed by the energy, enterprise and openness of the American people. Nor did he accept the le�’s condemnation of US political and military might, even if he sometimes felt uncomfortable with its application. In general he considered US power to be an asset to the western world as a whole. He saw strength in greater partnership, finding it inconceivable that the Americans would desert their European allies. Britain’s relationship with the USA around the turn of the 1960s was coloured by developments in available weaponry. In April 1960, the Macmillan government announced its decision to discontinue development of the long-range ballistic missile Blue Streak. Instead, it would purchase from the Americans the airborne missile Skybolt, when it became available. Jo welcomed the decision inasmuch as it was an acknowledgement by the government of the vulnerability of static site

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From time to time he tried to exploit Labour’s inner tensions. For example, he humoured a Liberal rally in London by claiming that the differences over defence policy between Labour leader Hugh Gaitskell and le�-winger Richard Crossman would baffle a mediaeval theologian – but that what was really at stake was a division about ‘the sort of party they are trying to be’.31 In his dealings with the Labour Party, Jo was teased by two dilemmas. First, inasmuch as he sought realignment, tender words and deeds would be needed; but so long as his own party was to remain an independent force then there could be no question of sparing the rod. The second dilemma was a related one: whether the aim should be to form a Liberal government or to coalesce into a new party. This second dilemma, although the more profound, remained for the moment the less taxing. There was no imperative for an early decision. Vague and inclusive language, albeit unintentionally so, helped to fudge the issue. Besides, the need to build up electoral support was a prerequisite to both objectives. Only as support began to gather and with a more propitious climate did reconciliation become problematical. Jo kept the realignment pot simmering. During the fall of 1960 he talked about the need for a ‘spring cleaning job on the le� in this country just as Kennedy has done in America’.32 John F. Kennedy’s election to the US presidency the previous week was to be an inspiration to centre-le�, progressive movements throughout the western world. He represented very much the modernity, the ‘fresh start’, meritocratic, anti-establishment ethos with which Jo was identified. By contrast, Britain remained apparently fossilized, though the seeds of change were already beginning to germinate. The title of Michael Shanks’s book The Stagnant Society (1961) symbolised an advancing popular mood. Shanks claimed, among other things, ‘growing support for the idea of some sort of alliance between the right wing of the Labour Party and the Liberals’.33 He went on: ‘Mr Gaitskell has more in common in policy and outlook with Mr Grimond than with Mr Cousins’.34 The door to realignment seemed momentarily to have been nudged ajar in the autumn of 1961 when maverick Labour MP Woodrow Wya� called for a Lib-Lab electoral pact.35 But Gaitskell moved quickly to slam it shut. At a press conference in Cardiff he instead invited Liberals to join the Labour Party if they thought that there were no policy differences.36 There was of course no chance that Jo would follow Megan Lloyd George and Dingle Foot into the Labour Party – then or at any time. On 7 December 1961, he wrote privately to the Labour leader endorsing Wya�’s position. He received a friendly but unfavourable response.37 For the time being it was ‘no go’. Thus when Wya� made a further overture in a New Statesman article the following January, he was more cautious.38 In Time and Tide, owned by joint party treasurer Rev. Tim Beaumont and in which he had a regular column, Jo wrote: ‘It is very kind of Mr Wya� to admit that the Liberals could be useful allies – just when the public opinion polls show that it is the mounting Liberal,

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not the Labour challenge, that the Tories have to fear… No thanks Woodrow.’39 He said that his party did not want an electoral pact nor did he wish to play ‘life saver’ to the Labour Party in its present state.40 Roy Jenkins entered the fray, saying that ‘all talk of a realignment of forces of the le� are out of the question.’41 But he added, tantalisingly ‘… until a�er the next election’. Jo was on ‘social terms’ with Wya�, as he was with Roy Jenkins. As leader of a small group of Liberals in Westminster, it was natural that he should consort with members of other parties. Thus he was friendly with Ian Gilmour, who became a Conservative MP in 1962 and who was editor and proprietor of The Spectator, to which Jo had contributed from time to time since 1953. The Grimonds and the Gilmours dined at each other’s houses from the mid 1950s and throughout the 1960s, probably more so at the Gilmours.42 It was more of a professional relationship that brought Jo into contact outside the House with Labour’s Tony Benn. The two had rubbed shoulders for a time on the Seretse Khama Defence Commi�ee and, though more obliquely, in its successor, the Movement for Colonial Freedom. So it was that he involved himself in the campaign to keep Benn in the House of Commons and to support the subsequent legislation that would permit the renunciation of a peerage. In November 1960, the death was announced of Viscount Stansgate, Tony Benn’s father. By law Benn automatically inherited the title, there being no facility for renunciation. In defiance, he contested the by-election held in May 1961 to fill the ensuing vacancy in his constituency and was duly returned with an increased majority by the people of Bristol South East. Then twice he tried and twice he was denied the opportunity to put his case before MPs at the bar of the chamber in the Commons. On both occasions, Jo spoke unavailingly in Benn’s favour.43 But the Commons’ Privileges Commi�ee (in March 1961) had decreed him to be disqualified, a decision effectively endorsed by the Election Court which declared the defeated Conservative candidate Malcolm St Clair to be the elected member for the constituency. Benn was not at that stage a figure of the le�. His efforts at mediation over the unilateralist issue had been rejected by the Labour Party, prompting his resignation from its national executive. His republicanism was a further source of embarrassment to party managers. He was glad therefore to have support from outside as well as from within Labour ranks. One of Benn’s biographers describes Jo as an ‘unlikely ally’.44 On the contrary, he was playing true to form. Back in 1955 he, along with Clement A�lee, Aneurin Bevan and Roy Jenkins formally ‘witnessed’ Benn’s first unsuccessful declaration of renunciation. He was a strong supporter of House of Lords reform. Moreover, he was moved by a wish to strike against what Walter Bagehot called the ‘cake of custom’ and by the liberal principle that an individual should be free to renounce an inherited title. Lady Violet’s involvement in the campaign was a further source

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of strength. Both she and Jo contributed to the Bristol Fund, established to help Benn meet his legal costs. Eventually, a joint select commi�ee of both houses recommended the right of renunciation and a bill to such effect received royal assent in July 1963. Three weeks later Benn was duly re-elected unopposed either by Liberals or Conservatives, St Clair thereby honouring an earlier promise. In conversation with David Butler at the height of the crisis Benn acknowledged that ‘Grimond’s support has been tremendous’.45 Jo did not neglect affairs within his own party. He is generally remembered as one for whom the minutiae of party management held li�le a�raction. Jeremy Thorpe, his successor as party leader, was by comparison more adroit in lubricating the wheels of party bureaucracy, exploiting a particular knack for persuading wouldbe donors to replenish the coffers. Jo by contrast had a lazy streak, finding it difficult sometimes to maintain momentum once the initial spark had faded or when other challenges beckoned. Yet his presence generated electricity within the party. O�en it would be as a figurehead, from whom others would draw inspiration. Occasionally, he would lay his own hand upon the plough – at any rate during his early leadership years. From the early days of his leadership he sought to achieve a greater degree of unity and cohesion. He apprised the LPO executive of the need for some consistency of ‘party line’ among candidates and their local associations.46 At his behest, a Political Research Unit was created in 1957 to conduct public opinion surveys, a facility already available to the other main parties and a standard weapon of modern electioneering. Shortly a�er the 1959 election, he proposed the creation of a small standing commi�ee to give thrust and direction to the party’s work. Among its fruits was the creation of an Organising Commi�ee, initially known as the Standing Commi�ee. Jo was not a member of that commi�ee but his imprimatur lent weight to its work and it came over the next few years to have a powerful influence.47 Other organisational changes followed. In 1961 the Federation Constituency Office was established to improve liaison between the three arms of the party’s extra-parliamentary structure – the headquarters, the federations and the local constituency associations. The work of building up the weaker federations and local constituencies was effectively shared between two of the most able headquarters’ staff, Pratap Chitnis and Edward Wheeler. Wheeler was also secretary of the Special Constituency Commi�ee, set up under Jeremy Thorpe in April 1962 to work with minimum publicity to supplement the party’s other fund-raising activities.48 Jo was more directly responsible for other initiatives. He led a small group that spawned a publication dra�ed by Michael Fogerty, professor of international relations at University College, South Wales. Titled Opportunity Knocks and published in 1961, the pamphlet prefigured two aspects of economic thinking that, while hardly novel, were to characterise government policy in the years

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ahead under Harold Wilson: production targets; and state regulation of wages and profits if voluntarism were to fail. Together with Mark Bonham Carter and a few others, Jo launched two series of pamphlets intended to disseminate ideas on aspects of liberal political philosophy: the New Directions series, supervised by a commi�ee led by Jo; and a further series emanating from various party panels. From the spring of 1961, there were panels on consumer protection; local government reform; transport policy; land rents and housing.49 They augmented the existing Education Commi�ee of which Laura was a member. At the annual assembly held later that year Jo launched the ‘Call to Action’ campaign, essentially another recruitment drive. It was followed a year later by the ‘Tell the Nation’ campaign, more specifically targeted to a�ract disillusioned Labour supporters. Jo was a valuable asset in the party’s a�empt to a�ract high-calibre people. He mixed freely and easily in intellectual circles, consulting at various times leading academics of the day such as professors (or future professors) Ralf Dahrendorf, Frank Paish, Alan Peacock, Richard Titmuss and Michael Zander. By no means all these people had Liberal sympathies, though some with whom he had contact did place their expertise at the disposal of the party. Thus Professor Bryan Keith-Lucas chaired the policy panel on local government reform. And in 1962 the Economist editorial writer Christopher Layton began a seven-year stint as economics adviser to the party – in the early years effectively as Jo’s personal adviser. At the same time, Donald Wade was made deputy leader to help relieve Jo of some of the burdens of parliamentary leadership.50 Given the number of Liberal MPs, the Daily Express no doubt felt justified in likening this manoeuvre to the spli�ing of the atom.51 Jo wanted to go further, giving his support to a proposal for the creation of a ‘shadow cabinet’ from among the small body of MPs. But he felt obliged to defer in the face of manifest unease among the party faithful. Arthur Holt succeeded Wade as chief whip, having previously chaired the Liberal Publications Department commi�ee, in which capacity he ended the unanimity rule, so making easier the publication of more contentious pamphlets.52 It is one thing to reorganise a political party, to reinvigorate the personnel and rearrange portfolios; it is another thing for such initiatives to bear fruit. There were some qualified successes. In September 1961, the Executive Commi�ee was told that party membership was an estimated 300,000, a further 100,000 being ‘targeted’.53 Today such figures would be cause for jubilation, though in the early 1960s they were modest besides those claimed by the two main parties.54 Still, the number of affiliated constituencies rose from 290 in 1960 to 417 in 1963, by which time there were some 175 honorary or full-time agents. Circulation of Liberal News continued to increase, exceeding 25,000 by the spring of 1962, the party having decided a�er the previous general election that it should become more of a propaganda organ, less of a forum for internal debate. Omens for the future looked be�er, too. By early 1962 the National League of Young Liberals were claiming a sixty per cent increase in membership with 310 active branches.55 Yet, when all is said, the Liberals had a lot

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of ground to make up. As Wallace noted, despite improvements in organisational efficiency it ‘never came within reach of a disciplined mass movement’.56 The Labour Party had its organisational deficiencies, highlighted by Harold Wilson’s famous analogy to a penny-farthing bicycle. But chief agent Edward Wheeler admi�ed that the Liberal position was worse. In some ways, though not others, it was ‘more like a sedan chair – no wheels at all’.57 It was in policy rather than in ma�ers of party organisation that Jo le� his stamp. Ideas were his stock in trade. He would listen, read, assimilate and then shape anything that bore the semblance of a workable policy. In sheer fertility of ideas and published output, he exceeded any other Liberal parliamentarian since Lloyd George. Two pamphlets in the New Directions series carried his name: Be�er Buys, a charter for competition and consumer protection; and Growth Not Grandeur, a wider-ranging set of proposals for national economic regeneration. Published in April 1961, the la�er contained a number of proposals subsequently endorsed by the party at its annual assembly – targets for economic growth; an independent growth-generating agency, prefiguring the Department of Economic Affairs; more specialists in Whitehall, a pre-echo of the Fulton Report, though by no means a novel idea; capital gains and profit taxes; and the abolition of surtax and Schedule A (income derived from property). It had been dra�ed by Harry Cowie, the party’s director of research. Cowie recalls that Jo demurred before accepting the dirigiste character of some of the ideas.58 Still, he put his name to the pamphlet, giving strong leadership in its public presentation. And where Jo led the party followed. Of course, the organisational and other reforms helped to ensure that he could push out the boat confident that most at least of the senior figures in the party would be on board. He need not and did not quite make policy on the hoof, though that was the impression sometimes given. Charles Moore later recalled how during the 1959 election campaign he had been indifferent to the observation that he had just confounded party policy, calmly asking to be apprised as to the relevant passage in the manifesto.59 His personal standing was enhanced when in October 1961 he became a privy counsellor. Conferred almost five years a�er he had become party leader, the honour was described by The Guardian as ‘welcome but overdue’.60 He had indeed been made to wait much longer than either his predecessor or his successor: Clement Davies had been appointed in 1947 within two years of assuming the leadership, and Jeremy Thorpe was to wait only months. Its main practical value lay in the greater ease with which he would now be able to claim the floor of the House. He also joined the list of the ‘great and the good’ from which members of official commi�ees and commissions were drawn – not exclusive to privy counsellors and not a great a�raction to one who thought that there were too many such commi�ees. ***

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In and outside the House Jo continued to chip away on a number of issues that stirred the liberal conscience. Having supported the 1957 Homicide Act, he tabled questions from time to time seeking review. Here, as we have seen in an earlier chapter, was an issue that transcended party lines, though reform was to come only upon a change of government. In the meantime, Jo championed individual cases such as that of Timothy Evans, widely thought to have been unjustly hung in 1950 for murder. He called for a free pardon and the return of Evans’ remains to the family.61 Fellow Liberal Ludovic Kennedy had just published a book claiming Evans’ innocence.62 Aside from the injustice itself, campaigners were driven to expose the insensitivity and arrogance of the ‘establishment’ in refusing to acknowledge a series of errors in the initial police handling of the case through to the subsequent inquiry. It was to be another five years before a posthumous royal pardon was granted under Labour home secretary Roy Jenkins. Proposals to restrict the number of immigrants gave Jo another stick with which to beat the Macmillan government and to sport his radical credentials. Already he had claimed that ‘it is more difficult to get in here than it is to get into many countries that we regard as less enlightened.’63 The factual accuracy of that statement is debatable. For there had since the early and mid 1950s been a growing influx of immigrants, mainly from ‘new’ Commonwealth countries. More people continued to emigrate than to immigrate; and many of the predominantly Afro-Caribbean and Asian immigrants were UK passport holders, reflecting the responsibilities of empire and commonwealth. Such considerations did li�le to deflect controversy as successive governments considered only to reject the possibility of restrictive legislation. Labour had introduced the Nationality Act, 1948 but the Macmillan government now became the first explicitly to restrict immigration. The Commonwealth Immigrants Bill sought initially to place restrictions upon immigrants from the Irish Republic as well as the Commonwealth. Jo ridiculed this proposal, later withdrawn.64 Indeed, he was fundamentally opposed to the bill in its entirety. ‘Seldom can a worse Bill have been defended by weaker arguments’ he told MPs.65 He gave some hostage to fortune, though. If economic circumstances were to change it was conceivable that the need for labour may diminish.66 To that extent, there was a utilitarian as well as a moral dimension to his argument. Presumably, if the country no longer needed the skills now offered by the immigrant contingent, then the compassionate case for entry may have to be set aside. At the same time, the government, having refused to abandon its bill, yielded to Jo’s objection to the retrospective application of its provisions.67 He also successfully championed the cause of those seeking entry to acquire qualifications in a ‘profession, trade or industry’, despite the home secretary’s fear that it would open too many doors.68 The Commonwealth Immigrants Act received its royal assent in April 1962. By now, Jo and his party were riding on the crest of a wave. The previous month, the

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crowds.76 On polling day, he was driven around the constituency in the boot of a Chevrolet car. Inevitably he reaped personal dividends, receiving a journalistic bouquet from William Rees-Mogg who opined: ‘The new Liberal Party must be dated from the time of Mr Jo Grimond’s taking over the leadership’.77 An NOP survey found that forty per cent thought that he would make a good prime minister. With the wind of Orpington and the local council elections in his sails, he declared: ‘whatever happens now, they [British politics] will never go back to what they were six months ago.’78 Pundits seemed to agree. The Times gave him credit for having created a ‘new political a�itude’ – one of ‘political protest, of antiestablishmentarianism that has not been fossilised’.79 The Observer talked about the prospects of a ‘political ménage-à-trois’. The longer the Liberal revival continued, it insisted, the greater the likelihood that ‘these minor political earthquakes may be the result of a major shi� in the political geology of the country’.80 Although more cautious about the Liberals’ national electoral prospects, David Butler acknowledged that ‘it is now more plain than ever before that the electoral pa�erns established over the last generation are breaking down’.81 The fumblings of the government helped the Liberals to maintain their momentum in the months following Orpington. In July, Macmillan sacked a third of his cabinet, widely seen as a panic measure dubbed as ‘the night of the long knives’. In the House of Commons, Jo described the sackings as ‘a devastating vote of no confidence’.82 The premier was not even a good butcher because ‘good butchers kill the right animals in the right way’.83 More seriously, the most regre�able casualties were ‘public confidence in the processes of the government, public confidence in the decency of politicians, and public confidence in any belief that any party has any principle except the principle of sticking to office through thick and thin’.84 His mother-in-law thought it the best speech she had heard him make in the House.85 But it was fellow Liberal MP Jeremy Thorpe who, with a memorable line, inflicted the more incisive wound. Inverting the words of St John’s gospel he quipped: ‘greater love hath no man than this: that he lays down his friends for his life’.86 Leading a party that was seen as an increasing threat, Jo found that the knives were sharpening for him, too. The Conservatives in particular were worried. The political correspondent of The Times noted that ‘Mr Grimond will not u�er a word or hold his tongue, even in his twilit Orkney retreat, without the fact going into the swelling dossier at Central Office.’87 ‘Destroy him and the cause [of new liberalism] is gone,’ it continued. Cabinet minister Iain Macleod claimed inconsistencies in the Liberals’ spending and taxation plans, a tactic that had been employed to good effect by the Conservatives against the Labour Party during the 1959 general election campaign.88 Political commentator Alan Watkins asked tartly: ‘Is not Mr Grimond in his ineffectual seeming way a greater menace to parliamentary democracy than the most dedicated communist or fascist?’89 The rationale was that the Liberals had succeeded in exploiting the miscellaneous

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grievances of the disaffected – as had Hitler during his rise to power. He dismissed the much-vaunted ‘Grimond revolution’ as ‘a deliberate a�empt to lose the [Liberal] party’s principles in order to gain as much support from as many different quarters as possible’. During a generally friendly thirty-minute television interview with Malcolm Muggeridge, Jo flatly denied that he had met any Liberal voters who could be described as Poujadist, though he did admit that his own position was closer to Labour than to the Conservatives.90 That did not satisfy some within his party. Patrick Lort-Phillips, jilted by Jo two years earlier as the Liberal candidate at Ebbw Vale, now joined Labour declaring: ‘The Liberal Party have killed themselves by organisation. Orpington was the ultimate triumph of organisation over the human spirit… in place of a leader they have a figurehead.’91 The personalisation of such a�acks was evidence of his high profile in public life. He was now fair game for the pundits. Popular columnist Herbert Kretzmer wrote that ‘Mr Grimond is in vogue in a big way,’ adding that behind his easy charm there lurked ‘something disturbingly arrogant’; that he was handsome in a ‘rather unbearable teacher’s-pet kind of way’.92 Unbalanced as a character portrait, there was nevertheless some truth in the assertion. It was further indication of his standing that he was now criticised for having spoken on the Cuban missile crisis from his Orkney constituency rather than from the House of Commons. ‘Crossbencher’ in the Sunday Express saw it as evidence of his lack of potential for Downing Street.93 Any connection, however tenuous, between Jo and Downing Street would have been inconceivable when he assumed the party leadership – indeed before Orpington. On Monday 22 October 1962 the world was alerted to the possibility of a showdown between the two superpowers, the USA and the Soviet Union. The Americans had discovered a build-up of short and medium-range Soviet missiles sited in Cuba. More missile-bearing Soviet ships were known to be on their way to the area. The Americans responded initially with a maritime blockade from Wednesday 24 October. That evening, in his Orkney constituency, Jo expressed misgivings about the American action, fearing an escalation. For the moment he remained in Orkney. The next day the Commons reassembled, though only so it could be prorogued before the opening of the new session, scheduled for the following Tuesday. Macmillan made merely a brief statement; Gaitskell was restrained and generally supportive. UN a�empts at mediation seemed to be bearing li�le fruit as the world waited on tenterhooks over the weekend of 27–28 October. In the event, Soviet leader Khrushchev backed down, matched by American undertakings not to invade Cuba. In the debate on the address, Jo said that the crisis underlined the futility of the independent British nuclear deterrent.94 Alluding to the famous words once u�ered by Aneurin Bevan, he continued: ‘It was said that without it [the nuclear deterrent] we might have to go naked into the conference chamber. With it, we never got into the conference chamber at

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all.’95 He asserted that Britain had been informed but not consulted, reaffirming his long-held view that ‘our proper role is through conventional arms.’96 Jo shared the general relief that war had been averted, nuclear or otherwise. Even now it is difficult to know just how close a call it was. Yet although the immediate crisis had passed, it le� many people feeling that the world was a dangerous and uncertain place. The stakes remained high.

Chapter 8

HIGH NOON

E���� �� ��� ��� year of 1963, Jo embarked upon a two-and-a-half-week tour of North America. He had been invited to receive a Chubb Fellowship from Timothy White College, Yale. The trip took in meetings with some of the world’s leading alumni. Accompanied by his son Johnny, he departed from London airport on Friday 4 January, leaving behind a country gripped in the worst freeze-up for sixteen years. Arriving in New York, he moved on to spend a few days in and around the Yale campus where the Chubb Fellowship was conferred. From Connecticut he travelled to Washington DC, staying with Washington Post journalist Max Freedmann. While in Washington he met US president John F. Kennedy. For Kennedy, the meeting was more a ma�er of courtesy than of realpolitik, though his position on most issues was probably closer to Jo’s than to either of the other two British party leaders. Jo found him ‘confident and impressive’.1 In Washington, Jo was also scheduled to meet Arthur Schlesinger, MacGeorge Bundy and other senior Kennedy aides.2 He did so at the suggestion of his longstanding friend Professor Samuel Beer, whose hospitality he and Johnny enjoyed. A�er visiting the Council of Foreign Relations in Chicago, he completed his tour in O�awa, where he met leading members of the Canadian Liberal Party. He arrived back in England on Sunday 20 January. While he was in America, there occurred back home two events that were to have a profound effect upon the political scene. First, on 14 January, Charles de Gaulle announced his rejection of Britain’s application to join the EEC. It took some people by surprise, though the French leader had for some time been signalling his displeasure at Britain’s closeness to the USA, confirming his longheld view that the UK was not serious about Europe. De Gaulle may also have had another and contrary fear – that Britain would become too serious about Europe, so challenging French supremacy. Be that as it may, his word was an

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8. With John F. Kennedy in the White House, January 1963. (Associated Press).

effective veto. The efforts of the British negotiating team and their supporters had come to nought – the failure of a national strategy.3 Jo and others continued the fight, though they were to experience further disappointments before success was secured. Four days a�er de Gaulle’s veto came the second defining event – the unexpected death of Hugh Gaitskell. Paying the customary Commons’ tribute, he presaged his own epitaph in saying that his former adversary gave ‘the lie to those who think that politics are concerned only with office’.4 A�er the usual jockeying, Harold Wilson was elected as the new Labour leader. While never soul mates, Jo and Gaitskell had been quite well acquainted though, as noted in the last chapter and whatever his private inclinations, he gave no encouragement in public to the notion of realignment. Less still was Wilson inclined to rock the boat. Jo knew him less well than he had known Gaitskell. His election was a setback though not yet the death knell to any prospect of realignment. With Wilson at Labour’s helm, Jo was no longer the youngest of the three main party leaders. There was only three years in it, though, and over the next eighteen months they shared in the pursuit of a wounded and seemingly fated government. Indeed, The Economist later claimed that, in choosing Wilson, Labour had in some measure been responding to Jo.5 Although Wilson had the bigger drum to bang, they marched to much the same beat. They did so because by temperament and out of sheer necessity they were impelled to move with the spirit of the times. And that spirit was one that demanded change.

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Much has been said – and sometimes overstated – about the climate of social change in the 1960s. As a piece of artistic truth, wider societal inferences have sometimes been drawn from Philip Larkin’s famous autobiographical line: ‘Sexual intercourse began in nineteen sixty-three… between the end of the Cha�erley ban and the Beatles’ first LP.’6 Of course there was nothing new about ‘loose’ or unconventional lifestyles – or about the challenge of youth. Such phenomena had been known to earlier generations. Even in the relatively staid 1950s there had been rock ’n’ roll, Teddy boys and harbingers of new horizons with such plays as John Osborne’s 1956 play Look Back in Anger.7 The arts o�en led the way; the world of politics was usually slower and reluctant to follow. But by the early and mid 1960s things were becoming more permeable. Satire had begun to make its mark – again, not for the first time though now more so than ever before. The BBC television programme That Was the Week That Was (‘TW3’) had its first transmission in 1962. That it fed upon the stage show Beyond the Fringe and the fortnightly magazine Private Eye should not obscure the fact that it was TW3 that captured the mass audience, providing a bridge between popular entertainment and current affairs. More seriously, the weekly magazine New Society signalled a penchant for moderate, progressive anti-elitism, drawing upon the latest empirical research into aspects of the ‘other Britain’.8 It was launched on 4 October – symbolically, though entirely coincidentally, the day before the Beatles released their first Parlophone single and the premier of the first James Bond film, Dr. No. Things would never be quite the same again. No longer could politicians insulate themselves from the changing world around them. Anachronism and quaint inefficiency were more embarrassing than moral turpitude – or so it seemed. There were fewer bolt holes for the reactionary or the faint-hearted. They could and did have their say. Sometimes they were able to whip up a backlash; but they did so in a climate that was steadily hostile. Inevitably the reality differed from the image: there was o�en less than met the eye. Much remained unchanged, or else changed li�le and slowly. But increasingly the image was what ma�ered. Politicians of the centre-le� would have to ride – and in the process serve to heighten – the tide of change if they were to maintain their progressive credentials. No one was fully in control of the process. Jo and Harold Wilson were no exceptions, however sincere their sentiments. Jo would later rein back some of his progressive lurchings. Even at the time he was ambivalent about TW3. He thought it transmi�ed ‘thoroughly bad things – not offensive… but just incompetent things’.9 As the only television programme of its type, he considered it a bad template for satire. Characteristically, he put his faith in competition. Thus he regre�ed the demise of TW3 early in 1964, calling for more adventurous – indeed risky – programmes to counter the ‘devitalised orthodoxy’.10 He later applauded the audacity of Private Eye in publishing stories that appeared nowhere else – and doing so ‘on the whole more accurately… than at least the so called “popular” press’.11 ***

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spectacle’ – the mysteries of ‘smoke-filled rooms’ rather than election.33 In so doing they had chosen ‘a very nice man who has never shown the least zeal for reform or progressive ideas… [and] a defender of Munich and Suez’.34 While the Conservatives were embroiled in their leadership manoeuvrings, the air still hung heavy with the smoke of two of the more famous conference speeches of the age. At his party’s conference in Scarborough, Harold Wilson fashioned his famous line about forging a new Britain in the white heat of a scientific revolution.35 Three weeks earlier, at the Liberal annual assembly in Brighton, Jo delivered one of his most memorable speeches. As was now the custom, Jo made his speech on the last day of the Liberal assembly – 14 September 1963. For seventy minutes, punctuated by applause and laughter, he held his audience. It was a tour de force in which ‘change’, ‘citizenship’ and ‘opportunity’ were chief among the watchwords. He offered a critique of the existing order; an outline of Liberal proposals for a new Britain; and a rallying call to the party faithful. The Profumo affair, he said, was only the latest example of decline in public life, ‘the shoddiness, the lick of paint on ro�en boards, the lack of candour, the lack of quality in the activities of those who lead us, which makes people contract out of their responsibilities’.36 No wonder, then, that there was a cynicism about the conduct of our political affairs. Young people felt around them a ‘twentieth century Ruritania’ in which background and privilege counted for more than being good at doing a job. He gave a warning about the fate of Spain which, while enjoying its period of greatness in the sixteenth century, had ‘corrupted itself in the trappings of outworn prestige and grandeur’. He detected in contemporary Britain a backing away and a ‘snide dissociation from the great past and the beckoning future’ that would, if it continued, be the death of the country. It was necessary therefore to get people once again to identify with their institutions and their country – to ‘kindle again… the flame of political interest, to catch the divine spark’ that was so lacking in public life. He was relatively general in his comments about his party’s specific policies – mainly because delegates had debated them in detail over the preceding days. He specified four desiderata for citizenship: that Britain should get right its role in the world, abandoning the nuclear race while playing a full role in Europe and respecting Commonwealth citizenship; that citizens should be given clear political choices; that they must feel some confidence in the distribution of wealth within society; and that there should be a programme of constitutional reform embracing Parliament, the executive, the civil service and the judiciary. The la�er he expounded upon with calls for reforms of the penal system; an opening up of the legal profession which he described, not for the first time, as more restrictive than the most reactionary trade union; and a more independent judiciary. Other parties, including Labour, had, he said, been too timorous. Yet he used language similar to that of Wilson in saying:

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How dare people think that when science is undergoing revolution a�er revolution, when the whole structure and obligations of government have changed, that it is impossible to change the political institutions by which we run the country. He had opened his speech by lampooning critics who sneered at his party and its proclivity for open debate, sometimes reopening apparently se�led lines of policy. A Liberal assembly, he said, ‘comes together so that we may together fashion our policy, see each other, talk to each other as equals, take the pulse of the party, and feel the fist of the party when necessary’. Finally, he rallied his troops. He expressed confidence in leading figures, making specific mention of Frank Byers and party president Lord Ogmore, as well as the wisdom of advisers such as professors Fogerty and Wheatcro�. Departing from his text, he looked along the platform towards his brother-in-law and mother-in-law, saying ‘if the prime minister is going to lay his relations on the line I will back mine against his’.37 With reference to the impending general election, he offered much the same message as he had done in 1959: ‘the temper of whatever government there is going to be will be validly affected by public support given to the Liberal Party.’ There was no talk of deals, pacts or coalitions – or even of a Liberal government. But it was his concluding remarks that caught the headlines: War has always been a confused affair. In bygone days commanders were taught that when in doubt they should march their troops towards the sound of gunfire. I intend to march my troops towards the sound of gunfire. Politics are confused, and the picture of political controversy is obscured by many issues. But we will march onwards to the sounds of the cannon… There are enemies, difficulties to be faced, decisions to be made, and passion to be generated. The enemies are complacency and wrong values and inertia in the face of incompetence and injustice. It is against this enemy that we march.38 Unsurpassed as a platform speaker, Jo was o�en, like many great orators, nervous before making a major speech. He would rehearse the modulations, intonations and gestures. Party staff at headquarters would sometimes give assistance, though they found it a difficult task. Michael Meadowcro� recalled that Jo was not good at incorporating speechwriters’ contributions, other than as verbatim. Since their phrases were never as good as his, they resorted simply to producing notes ‘in order to ensure that he rewrote the items in his own style’.39 For many of the big occasions he would enlist Mark Bonham Carter, certainly for the ‘gunfire’ speech. Francis Boyd described it as ‘the most critical speech of his career as Liberal leader’.40 He was, Boyd claimed, the ‘father and mother

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figure of the Liberals’. Not all were won over. The Times criticised the ‘gunfire’ peroration as having grim connotations.41 Leading Conservative Iain Macleod tried to deflate his rival by reassuring his own party faithful that they ‘need not waste time on Mr Grimond’s Fred Karno effort’ – it was a long, long way to Tipperary.42 James Margach told his readers in the Sunday Times that ‘The Grimond model is still powered by a le�-hand drive’, while acknowledging that the party had abandoned its syndicalist forays of the previous year in favour of a more responsible centre-le� position.43 When Jo talked to the annual assembly about the sound of gunfire he was not using the phrase for the first time, though delegates were not to know. In the introduction to his second book, already in press, he had wri�en that ‘Britain should march towards the gunfire.’44 Titled The Liberal Challenge, it was published in October 1963 by Hollis and Carter. It was, he explained, neither an election manifesto nor accepted Liberal Party policy. Its 300 pages nevertheless embraced fairly detailed proposals spanning a wide range of policies. There were chapters dealing with the reform of Parliament; economic policy; industry and development planning; education; welfare and ‘communal’ services; defence and foreign affairs. There was less extemporising about liberal philosophy than in the earlier Liberal Future, though sha�s of the abstract permeated much of the book. For example, he derided as a ‘metaphysical monstrosity’ any Rousseauan notion of a reified ‘general will’.45 But he believed in a more limited ‘common will’ of particular objectives ‘so long as members of a community agree to get a particular job done’.46 Such a will could be manifest in the Quaker ‘sense of the meeting’. He went on: This type of democracy with its emphasis on synthesis rather than antithesis, with its a�empt to get participation in executive decisions, was part of the Sco�ish tradition and is practised now to some extent in the Sco�ish churches.47 At the same time he made approving reference to Milton Friedman, future guru of the new right – specifically to the association between free market capitalism and democracy. Of course, he knew that the book would be seen as a drum beat for the forthcoming election. Yet he set himself against any ‘surrender to the horse-race view of politics, the view that the only interest is who wins and that the content of politics is unimportant’.48 On the evening of Friday 22 November, Jo was ready to address a gathering of Oxford University Liberals when news broke about the assassination of John Kennedy in Dallas. Along with the other party leaders, he offered his tribute in a swi�ly arranged television appearance. He a�ended the funeral in Washington DC the following Monday as part of a British contingent that included Sir Alec

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and Lady Douglas-Home, Harold Wilson, the Duke of Edinburgh and the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire. Jo travelled separately, ahead of the others. In his haste he arrived at Heathrow without his passport or visa. Fortunately, a delayed departure allowed the Pan-American staff to make the necessary remedial arrangements.49 Jo had not always agreed with Kennedy’s every manoeuvre. He complained about the contrast between his administration’s toleration of rightwing dictatorships and the violent reaction against Castro’s Cuba.50 He later reflected that Kennedy had not been a great radical or an innovator.51 Yet he greatly admired the young president’s courage. Later, speaking in the Commons, he said that Kennedy would ‘long be remembered for his firm but restrained defence of freedom’.52 Jo was soon back on the hustings, speaking at Felixstowe the following weekend in support of Aubrey Herbert’s candidature in the Sudbury and Woodbridge byelection, set for 5 December. In the event, Herbert finished third, unable to improve upon his performance in the previous general election.53 Already the Financial Times had asked ‘is the Liberal revival spent?’54 The a�erglow of Orpington had faded, though where the party had built up a good standing it showed itself able to perform creditably, as in the Colne Valley by-election of March 1963, where Richard Wainwright advanced into second place, taking nearly forty per cent of the poll. There were certain internal frictions at headquarters. The Executive Commi�ee were told in the summer of 1963 that the Liberals had been unable to maintain their momentum and were having difficulty in securing funds because they had failed to define their role as a party.55 Frank Byers urged Jo to appoint a General Election Campaign Commi�ee, which he duly did under his (Byers’) chairmanship.56 There was a perceived need for be�er liaison between the leader and party candidates, though there was no explicit criticism of Jo.57 Jo’s ‘hands off’ approach to ma�ers of party management was a weakness and also a strength. He is said by some to have been neither a particularly good chairman nor well equipped to get the best out of a team.58 His loyal secretary has acknowledged that he would sometimes return from party meetings before they had reached their conclusion.59 Jeremy Thorpe recalls that it was sometimes difficult to get him to make a decision.60 On the other hand, Jo never saw himself as a managerial leader. Such may well have diminished both his ability to lead from the front and his capacity as an independent ideas man. And if he was less closely involved than he might have been in the steady, calibrated promulgation of detailed policy within formal channels, then he was more relaxed about internal dissension and could, when necessary, add some inflection to official party policy. It was a source of frustration for some but, while in his ‘pomp’, it usually worked to the advantage of the party as a whole. On the national political stage and as the longest-standing leader among the main parties, Jo remained confident in asserting the Liberals’ rights. During the 1950s he had refrained from demanding a greater allocation of broadcasting time

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and from casting aspersions about the funding of the other two parties. Now, though, he began to lose such inhibitions. The BBC and Southern TV invited him to appear on air following official complaints that there had been no Liberal presence on some of the programmes dealing with the Denning Report or the appointment of the new prime minister.61 It was agreed that in the forthcoming general election the party would receive some three fi�hs of the television exposure given to each of the two main parties, an improvement upon approximately one quarter granted in 1959.62 Jeremy Thorpe assumed responsibility for supervising and planning the party’s national television and radio broadcasts. Jo was certainly in favour of greater media coverage – not only of his own party but also of politics and public affairs generally. Having earlier opposed the idea of televising Parliament, he now called for edited highlights if not yet live coverage. ‘Once the press ceases to report the House of Commons democracy will suffer,’ he said.63 Of course, he was aware of some of the dangers. He warned that the introduction by Harold Macmillan of regular prime minister’s press conferences could take Britain further down the road towards a presidential system.64 The 1959 parliament was one of only two during peacetime in the twentieth century that lasted its full, legally permi�ed duration.65 Thus the build-up to the general election of 1964 was one of the most protracted in modern times. The election manifesto, Think For Yourself – Vote Liberal, invited electors to put reason before party prejudice, as well as outlining a range of policies. It was based upon the earlier programme, Partners in a New Britain, published in September 1963, and upon speeches made by Jo, most notably his ‘charter for new men’. The party had at its 1963 assembly approved Beveridge-type proposals for a Liberal Social Charter. And in a speech the following June, Jo added his own spin: ‘we shall not get abundance into our generation unless the people who understand and lead the technological revolution – the new men – are given their heads.’66 Specifically his ‘charter’ was a call for: more room at the top for people of ability; rewards for skill; a reduced burden of income tax, with the introduction of taxes on capital gains; stronger anti-monopolies measures; plant bargaining; sabbatical leave; greater mobility of labour; transferable pension schemes; redundancy benefits for retraining. It was the kind of message that he repeated time and again in the months preceding the election, part of his broader pitch for modernisation and reform. He told a gathering of Liberals in Margaret Thatcher’s Finchley constituency that there was ‘a generation heaving just below the surface… kept down by a conservative, fuddy-duddy, timorous upper crust’.67 To an audience in Maidenhead he used the parable of the talents – so afraid were the government that they had buried the one talent rather than risk it to investment.68 Inevitably, the Conservatives were the main bu� of his criticism. They were, a�er all, the government, the si�ing targets. He told his own constituents:

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9. At the hustings, supporting the candidacy of Liberal hopeful Vaughan Davies in Withington, Manchester, 1964 (Guardian Newspapers Limited).

The Tories a�er thirteen years in office have done nothing to cure the fundamental cause of troubles in the free enterprise system which are the failure of British industry to get rid of out of date a�itudes and work new machines to the full. The Tories may claim to be a government of businessmen. They are not. They may be a government of financiers, but they are miles out of touch with go-ahead management at the productive end of British industry.69 Equally inevitably, as a ‘modernist’ critic of an allegedly slothful government, his language was o�en similar to that of Harold Wilson. His call to ‘cut the dead wood out of the boardrooms’ was redolent of Wilson’s talk about sweeping the cobwebs out of the boardrooms of British industry.70 He made a specific play upon Wilson’s promise to bring Britain kicking and screaming into the twentieth century. Addressing a meeting near to his London home he said: ‘Sir Alec seems to be dragging us into the nineteenth century. I hope there will be a lot of kicking and screaming before he succeeds.’71 He kept the Labour Party within his sights, too. Its socialist heritage, he claimed, was not fire in its belly but dead weight in its luggage. Although it did not believe in nationalisation it nevertheless intended to nationalise some more industries.72

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He was particularly scathing about Labour’s plans for land nationalisation. He excoriated Labour leaders for their ‘jealousy of the small, self-reliant, enterprising man’.73 But it was for its lack of radicalism that he reserved his heaviest salvos – its insularity, especially over Europe; its lack of support for radical parliamentary reform; its inability to understand private enterprise. He mused: ‘No one knows how the Labour leaders will react under pressure… [when] situations which need a driving belief in the way you want to go recur again and again.’74 It was a precursor to those who would later cite Wilson’s alleged lack of political principle as a factor contributing to his government’s being too easily blown off course. He nevertheless gave a touch on the tiller of realignment. The Labour Party, he said, was a coalition of three elements: socialists; conservatives of the le� – ‘decent, bigoted, dull; and Liberals who had lost their way’.75 Clearly, it was the la�er group that he hoped to lure. With a thriving Liberal Party, he hoped that they would acknowledge that there was another home waiting for them. For all Jo’s vigour and the party’s renewed efforts, the Liberals were unable to make much headway in the opinion polls during the months preceding the general election of 1964. They failed to win any seats in the elections for the newly created Greater London Council. In the columns of The Observer, columnist Nora Beloff wrote: ‘These are dog days for the Liberals.’76 She reminded Jo of his earlier entreaty to get on or get out. The allocation of Jo’s time in the long run-up to the 1964 general election was agreed between himself, party headquarters, the Sco�ish Liberal Party and his local constituency. He spent less time in his constituency than during the 1959 campaign, spreading his a�ention over a wider geographical area embracing much of the country. As well as a helicopter, he now made use of a five-seat Aztec aeroplane, in which he was frequently accompanied by Tim Grierson, secretary to the parliamentary party. The Liberals had twice the number of full-time agents (now sixty) that they had employed during the 1959 campaign and, despite the earlier worries of party managers, three times the annual income.77 During the height of the campaign they were able to use celebrities Ludovic Kennedy and Honor Blackman in a television broadcast on 7 October. For the most part Jo wore the cloak of modernity, enjoining electors to support radical change. Occasionally he waxed lyrical, as at Paisley only three weeks before polling day. It was an unusual and brave appeal for any politician to make at that stage of proceedings and it is worth se�ing out the central passages of the speech. He told his audience that if democratic politics were to survive some idealism must break through. He went on: Idealism, the belief that the individual is more than a smaller or greater part of a machine however efficient that machine may be – and certainly we could do with efficiency – the belief that the individual is capable of

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Liberal Lion becoming deeper, more aware of beauty and more aware of reality beneath every day experience, that he is capable of greatness, this is good; is the very spirit of this ancient country. Frustrate it or a�empt to pervert it and you are heading for disaster. I do not believe that this spirit can be satisfied with the empty show of nuclear power. I do not believe that this spirit can be satisfied by the establishment of a highly mechanised replica of Russian or American society. I believe that we shall only re-establish our faith in ourselves as a nation if we discover the true nature of these ideals and create an atmosphere in which they can flower. I believe that there is a longing in everyone for beauty. For beauty in every-day life… beauty that bears the stamp of individual human greatness and is not just a symbol of material success or a maimed travesty born of months of human pe�iness in commi�ees and councils… If the spirit of this country is at last released, if we can organise ourselves on a war footing, if we can go to war together on poverty, on loneliness, on ugliness, on squalor, on intolerance and narrow-minded bigotry, then I promise you that we can make the next ten years the greatest in our history.78

It was a Janus-faced performance – a hymn to radical change with trappings of endearment to a lost world. The previous evening he had appeared for twenty minutes on Election Forum, the first of the BBC’s three programmes featuring each in turn of the party leaders.79 Robin Day, Ian Trethowan and Kenneth Harris fired a selection from 19,000 viewers’ questions. The parliamentary correspondent of The Times noted that the compères, especially Harris, were ‘hostile almost to the point of rudeness’80 – a technique of broadcasting journalism then in its infancy. But Jo was ‘quite unmoved’, giving a performance that was ‘in the top flight’. The same correspondent noted that it was less satisfactory as a rendition of the Liberals’ policies, a deficiency ascribed to the ‘strangely superficial and peripheral nature of the questions’.81 Much of the interest seemed to be in Jo’s intentions should his party be le� holding the balance of power, a point on which he was reluctant to be drawn. Quite apart from the political delicacy of the ma�er and the state of the other two parties, much would of course depend upon how the Liberals fared at the polls. And while post-Orpington hopes had receded, opinion polls during the early stages of the campaign proper showed a distinct upturn in Liberal support – a phenomenon unknown in recent general elections. Polling took place on 15 October. The outcome was almost a hung parliament – certainly the closest call between the two main parties in a general election since 1910. Labour took 317 seats against 304 for the Conservatives. The 365 Liberal candidates drew over three million votes – more than at any election since 1929. Where Liberal candidates stood they a�racted on average only a slightly greater

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share of the votes (18.5 per cent) than in recent elections and almost the same as in 1945. More importantly, there was a modest increase from six to nine in the number of successful candidates – but hardly a decisive breakthrough. For some it seemed that the Liberal potential for advance was limited no ma�er what the party did, while others held that the modest upturn was at least as much a consequence of its campaigning as of other factors.82 For the first time, Jo’s majority in Orkney and Shetland fell, albeit slightly and still leaving him with one of the safer seats in the country. With 62.6 per cent of the votes, he finished 42.6 per cent clear of his nearest rival, as against 45.7 per cent in 1959 and 43.4 per cent in 1955. Laura had done much to make up for Jo’s inevitable absences from the constituency then and throughout his time as party leader. Her energy was boundless. Local constituency workers were unanimous in acknowledging the strength that her presence added to their efforts, though there was occasional mild irritation at the tenacity with which she supervised some of the detail. Even in the high noon of his career, however, Jo did not neglect the local people. He engaged in a 1,000-mile tour of the Sco�ish highlands and islands during the summer of 1964; and he canvassed vigorously in Orkney and Shetland, though not quite so extensively as in previous elections. During the 1959–1964 parliament, he had continued constantly to ventilate local issues on the floor of the Commons – o�en raising familiar issues such as support and protection for the fishing industry; conservation of maritime stocks; the plight of the cro�ers; freight charges and transport, including the introduction of hovercra�. In the a�ermath of the election, it was politics at the national level that held the a�ention. For the first time in thirteen years there was a Labour government – one with a slender overall majority of four. Many people wondered how long the new prime minister Harold Wilson could carry on without calling a general election; and what, given the parliamentary arithmetic, would be the relationship between his party and the Liberals.

10. Family gathering in the Old Manse, 1964; le� to right: Laura, Jo, Magnus, Johnny, Grizelda and Andrew (Sinclair’s Studio).

Chapter 9

A’WHORING

T�� ������ �� ��� 1964 general election was a tantalising one for Jo Grimond’s hopes for a radical centre-le� realignment. It was neither so bad nor as good as it might have been. A decisive Labour victory would have put paid there and then to any such talk. Conversely, a clear mandate for the Conservatives might have convinced many on the Labour right that the be�er long-term prospects lay in a marriage of sorts with the Liberals. In the short term, a hung parliament would have given the Liberals some leverage to extract policy concessions from the government. As it was, Labour was in with a majority which, while small and precarious, was enough to survive for the time being without Liberal assistance. There was loose talk about Harold Wilson offering Jo an olive branch, perhaps even a cabinet post. The call never came. Woodrow Wya� again flew the kite of a Lib-Lab pact as the only way to keep the Conservatives out, expressed in a newspaper of which he was the managing director.1 This time he was supported by fellow Labour right-winger Desmond Donnelly.2 Wilson remained unmoved, Jo aloof. Speaking to the Liberal Party Commi�ee in London he said that Wya� and Donnelly were ‘two individual members of the Labour Party who at present speak only for themselves’.3 Clearly, he knew the nature of the beast. In the event, Harold Wilson walked the political tightrope with consummate skill for almost eighteen months before calling another general election. Unless Labour MPs broke ranks, Jo realised that the government was safe in the division lobbies. Upon his return from Orkney shortly a�er the election, he told reporters at London airport that it remained his long-term aim ‘to build up an effective radical non-socialist alternative to the Tories’.4 The question of a Lib-Lab alliance did not arise for the moment. The Liberals would not be harrying but would ‘support the Labour Party in any steps it may take to meet present economic difficulties and in pu�ing through a programme with which we are mutually agreed’. That did

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not include the re-nationalisation of the steel industry, though he thought that the government’s small majority would demand the shelving of that and of other more controversial measures. A�er thirteen years under the Conservatives there was much rejoicing in progressive circles at the return of a Labour government. For a while hopes and expectations ran almost in tandem. Jo was able to give many of Wilson’s early reforms his ready assent. A�er all, some of them followed ideas that he had first mooted; while in other cases there was a natural coalescence, albeit with reservations as to how the government would choose to proceed. He acknowledged broad agreement on such questions as legal reforms, social services, the reform of industrial relations, the need for stronger curbs on restrictive practices, the introduction of rent tribunals and the creation of a Land Commission.5 He welcomed the appointment of a secretary of state for Wales, common ground between the parties before the election. He was gratified by the creation of the Highlands Development Board, for which he had been calling for more than ten years. Others had been at the forefront, too; but Jo’s had been the consistent voice for the campaign in Westminster, now led from the Liberal benches by the recently elected Russell Johnston.6 Jo was concerned now to ensure that it should have adequate powers and finance;7 and that it should be led by high-calibre people.8 But he complained that Labour had no intention of proper devolution to Scotland.9 The government’s plan to designate Scotland as a development area failed, he insisted, to discriminate between different regions of what was a diverse economy in a heterogeneous country. It smacked of classic Whitehall insensitivity, however well meaning. Jo believed strongly in regionalism as well as home rule for Scotland and Wales. The Wilson government quickly announced its intention to create economic planning boards, though Jo was to be disappointed in his hopes that they would enjoy executive powers and that they would be directly elected.10 Again, he welcomed the creation of the Department of Economic Affairs (DEA), for which he had campaigned long before the election. But he questioned its relationship with the Treasury (a well-founded concern, as it turned out); and still felt that there was a need for a ‘high level unit which looks over the shoulder of the different ministries’.11 He had hopes for the National Plan. It eventually appeared in September 1965, but within a few months he was dismissing it as ‘a survey, not a programme of government action’, the assumptions of which had been knocked out of the ring.12 What he wanted was a more comprehensive plan with targets determined ‘bo�om-up’ through a process of consultation and with be�er-integrated machinery for implementation. It should embrace population change, industrial location, housing and other related policy areas. In short, he wanted the government to be more dirigiste – in some ways a surprising position for a Liberal. Yet he was saying no more than he had been

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saying for at least eighteen months prior to the general election. His pitch was for indicative planning – macro-supervision and guidance rather than detailed control and direction. He wanted to work with not against the grain of market capitalism. Thus he eschewed the centrally driven micro-interventionism favoured by many within the Labour Party. If he remained unsure as to how far control should follow where guidance failed, then he was by no means alone. It was and remains a feature of the progressive dilemma, especially for progressive liberals. In one sense, he was pushing the indicative dimension to its limit, appearing to trespass into advocacy of the more detailed forms of regulation normally opposed by liberals. On many occasions before the election, he had called for mechanisms to regulate wage and price increases. Here, as on a number of issues, there was common ground with Labour. But he came to see the prices and incomes policy of the Wilson government as starting from the wrong end – ‘the end of trying to hold down incomes instead of increasing productivity’.13 An across the board ceiling had two defects, he claimed. First, its prohibition of pay rises above the government-determined ‘norm’ was a disincentive to harder work and increased efficiency, hence to greater productivity by which non-inflationary pay rises above the norm could be justified.14 Second, the maintenance of a norm would in practice mean near uniform pay rises for all, even those whose contribution to wealth creation was minimal. He favoured a more discriminatory approach to ‘establish certain lines for the development of incomes on a fair basis’.15 It remained unclear quite how that objective could be achieved without recourse to ‘heavy’ micro-interventionism or to involvement in ‘particular claims or prices here and there throughout the economy’ to which he was otherwise opposed. The problem seemed to defy solution. Over the next decade or so incomes policies were to bring successive governments into conflict with the trade union movement. While voting as o�en with the opposition as with the government, Jo and his fellow Liberal MPs supported Wilson when it ma�ered during Labour’s first twelve months in office. In February 1965 and again six months later, the Liberals declined to endorse opposition motions of censure. By now Jo’s support for the government was accompanied by increasing irritation. He dismissed as phoney Wilson’s a�empt to rally the nation with talk about the Dunkirk spirit.16 Above all, he felt that the Labour government had failed to modernise. As he had o�en argued, reform, like charity, begins at home. Wilson had merely tinkered with the machinery of government, creating new ministries in ad hoc fashion without any strategy and without any apparent consideration for the constitutional implications. There seemed to be a lack of courage, imagination and strategy. And Jo had no doubt that it emanated from Downing Street: ‘We were promised a powerhouse. We have got an arbitration board anxiously reconciling competing interests and placating any sections of opinion which may be electorally threatening.’17

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Jo maintained a sense of compassion, regard for fair play and even morality in his position. Such traits were evident in his response to two of the trickiest foreign policy issues of the period: Rhodesia and Vietnam. The problem of Rhodesia lay squarely with the British government. As noted in Chapter 6, the Central African Federation was finally laid to rest in 1963. In (Southern) Rhodesia, one of the three constituent elements of the federation, social and political divisions prevented the adoption of a fully democratic constitution. Thus, when the federation dissolved, Rhodesia reverted to its former status as a British colony. Jo and his Liberal colleagues had been at one with the Labour Party in opposing the limited franchise constitution bestowed (in 1961) by the Macmillan government. Another dimension now emerged as the increasing militancy of the white Rhodesian Front government brought to the fore, in April 1964, a new leader, Ian Smith. Smith remained obdurate in resisting (black) majority rule. And if the British government would not grant independence on anything short of a universal adult franchise, or conditions leading to it, then the shackles of colonialism would have to be abandoned in a unilateral declaration of independence (UDI). As Smith threatened UDI, politicians and commentators rehearsed their positions. Jo was among those who in the summer of 1965 sought and received assurances from Wilson that there would be no constitutional change without the full consent of the majority of Rhodesians.18 By the autumn of that year, UDI was looming closer. Jo was fired up by Laura who co-authored two le�ers to The Times.19 In the second of these le�ers, wri�en two weeks a�er UDI (11 November), she argued that the deployment of British forces could be a lesser evil than the abdication of responsibility and the success of the rebellion. She dismissed Harold Wilson’s plea for more time to study oil sanctions, calling upon the government to respond positively to Zambian president Kenneth Kaunda’s invitation to provide a base for British troops. Here she provided the cue for Jo who made the same point in a speech to the National Liberal Club the following day.20 UDI, he said, was an affront to the rule of law. The Smith regime had become an illegal one that should be replaced by a government prepared to broaden the franchise and guarantee the rights of black Rhodesians. How, though, should (and could) the British government secure representation for black Rhodesians? Wilson duly activated oil sanctions, assuring the British public that they would bring the Smith regime to heel within weeks. Critics claimed that he had done so knowing that there were many loopholes, rendering sanctions only partially effective. Almost from the start, Jo wanted effective oil sanctions with some consideration as to a total trade embargo, preferably with UN assistance.21 Soon he realised that oil supplies were reaching Rhodesia via South Africa. He raised questions about British Petroleum, a governmentowned company believed to be circumventing sanctions.22 He agreed with the

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Archbishop of Canterbury, Michael Ramsey, that it was a moral issue; and that it may be necessary to enforce the rule of law.23 A month a�er UDI, he lamented: ‘had we at once deployed a few troops or even police to support the governor… the illegal rebellion might well have collapsed.’24 Many on the centre-le� concurred, expressing the same sentiments with equal vigour. But the moment had passed. Highly imperfect sanctions prevailed for almost fi�een years before black majority rule was established. It is impossible to know whether earlier and more decisive action by the Wilson government would have strengthened the moderate black movement in Rhodesia (Zimbabwe), so averting the increasing tyranny of the Mugabe regime from 1980. Vietnam was a US rather than a UK debacle, though for nearly a decade from the mid 1960s it claimed much a�ention on this side of the Atlantic. Upon gaining its independence from France in 1954, Vietnam was divided into a communist north and a non-communist south. The South Vietnam regime became steadily more dependent upon the USA and increasingly unpopular among its own citizenry. President Kennedy had stationed military advisers with orders to fight only if under fire. In August 1964 a US vessel was a�acked and Kennedy’s successor Lyndon B. Johnson gave the signal for open hostilities. Over the next few months more armed American troops arrived in Vietnam; by the end of the decade there were some half a million of them. War escalated and casualties mounted, but US bombing failed to overcome the Vietcong (North Vietnamese communists). Jo was one of the first British politicians to voice concern in the House of Commons when in March 1965 he told fellow MPs that ‘we appear to be in danger of sinking into an absolutely bo�omless bog.’25 Three weeks later he struck a note of scepticism about the pronouncements issuing from the Conservative and Labour front benches when he said: ‘If American policy in Vietnam is to succeed, it must have a definite objective, the means must be reasonable to the purpose, and it must show some signs of succeeding.’26 Of course, he had no illusions about the obduracy of the Vietcong. He was no apologist for communism; on the contrary he was a ‘cold warrior’. But he did suggest that the Americans cease their bombing to give space for negotiations. In truth there was li�le that he or the British government could do to persuade the Americans, though it is now known that Wilson did more than was apparent at the time to bring pressure to bear upon US president Lyndon Johnson.27 In any case, Jo considered Johnson but a pale shadow of his predecessor.28 Vietnam was the death knell to his continued presidential ambitions. In two other areas of foreign policy Jo maintained upon the Wilson government pressure he had exerted upon previous Conservative administrations – over commitments east of Suez; and entry to the EEC. He continued to call for a scaling down and ultimate abandonment of Britain’s presence east of Suez.29 The UK could no longer continue to play the role of world policeman. Hopes

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of an early withdrawal under Labour were frustrated and not until July 1968 did defence secretary Denis Healey make the critical announcement. In the meantime, Jo urged a ‘maximalist’ approach to the EEC.30 He wanted a Europe of the communities, transcending the confines of national sovereignty, not a Gaullist Europe of the old pa�ern ‘tied together by treaties’.31 Wilson and, far less fairly, newly elected Conservative leader Edward Heath he identified as adherents of the la�er model. He supported Wilson in making Britain’s second a�empt to join the EEC and was disappointed though not surprised when in November 1967 de Gaulle again applied the veto. It confirmed Jo’s view that the French president was ‘a bad partner in the western alliance’.32 That Jo was ahead of the game in his advocacy of a number of policies subsequently pursued by the Wilson government is not to say that his voice was decisive. It was more at the level of helping to create a climate of opinion that his influence, such as it was, had purchase. Rarely did the government have to rely on Liberal votes, though had all seven Liberals opposed the government, the Race Relations Act of 1965 would have fallen at its second reading.33 Instead, six of them gave the measure their support and it survived the division by 261 votes to 249, Roderic Bowen being the Liberal absentee. Conversely, the Liberals were instrumental in defeating the government’s proposals to nationalise the steel industry, though Jo shrank from pu�ing his party’s case in the House, leaving the task to Emlyn Hooson. On this issue, Labour right-wing rebels Woodrow Wya� and Desmond Donnelly – together with a few ‘diplomatic’ abstentions – exerted the greater leverage. And when Wilson no longer depended upon their votes, he proceeded to take the steel industry into public ownership. Jo’s campaign for the creation of parliamentary select commi�ees had li�le more bite. His call for a comprehensive system of departmental commi�ees was close to the model adopted in the longer term. But the ad hoc commi�ees set up in the 1960s under the tutelage of Labour minister Richard Crossman were li�le more than embryonic. Besides, there was some ambiguity in Jo’s thinking on this issue. On the one hand, he did not want MPs to become too cosy with the executive lest their independence be compromised. ‘It is not desirable,’ he said, ‘for MPs to know too much about why decisions are taken.’34 Yet a few months later he seemed to be countenancing cross-party commi�ees that would have some role in the executive function.35 Shortly a�er Labour’s return to office, Jo had been excited by Wilson’s promise to consider ‘various proposals for electoral reform’.36 Whatever the premier’s personal inclinations, there was to be no departure from the single-member, simplemajority system that sustains the two main parties to the chronic disadvantage of the Liberals. Jo was more successful in another ma�er. Under the Conservatives he had complained about the failure to create any Liberal peers. Soon a�er taking office, Wilson satisfied the claim. He accepted Jo’s recommendation that

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Frank Byers and Donald Wade be raised to the peerage, Wade having lost his West Huddersfield seat in the 1964 general election. Indeed he went further. To spare any embarrassment to Jo, he took his own soundings among the Liberal cognoscenti before adding Lady Violet to the list.37 Three new Liberal peers were welcome to the party, though their creation was the only concrete gesture to emerge upon the change of government. In the words of the sage, the mountain had long been in labour only to produce a mouse. It was the parliamentary arithmetic – and Wilson’s nerve – that made it that way. For a moment in the autumn of 1965 it looked as if the balance of forces was about to be disturbed. The government’s majority had been reduced to three with the loss of the Leyton by-election earlier in the year. Now, on the eve of the party conference season and shortly before the opening of a new parliamentary session, the speaker Sir Harry Hylton-Foster died. By convention neither the speaker nor the two deputy speakers (technically the chair and vice-chair of Ways and Means) vote. Hylton-Foster was a Conservative and his successor would be drawn from the Labour ranks, so threatening to reduce to one the government’s overall majority. There was speculation that Wilson would seek to encourage Jo’s candidature, a suggestion amplified in a television interview given by Peter Bessell, Liberal MP for Bodmin.38 Jo was furious, sharply dismissing any such notion.39 He had neither the desire nor the aptitude and there is no evidence that he was approached. Labour MP Horace King was duly elected, so leaving a vacancy for one of the deputy positions. To Wilson’s relief, Jo’s Liberal colleague Roderic Bowen stepped forward to fill the breach, maintaining the delicate balance between the two main parties, the other deputyship continuing to be held by a Conservative. That was not quite the whole story. There had been a good deal of frostiness between Jo and Bowen, probably emanating from the la�er’s forlorn hopes for the leadership nine years earlier. His frequent absences from the House were a source of irritation to Jo and other Liberals, occasioned as they o�en were by the priority Bowen gave to his legal work. It was therefore a surprise that he was offered and accepted the deputy speakership. It was less surprising that he did so without consulting his party leader.40 Jo was not amused. Bowen was an opponent of any Lib-Lab pact or proposal for realignment, of which Jo had not abandoned hope. In the spring he had talked about ‘some reasonably long range agreement with the government’.41 Towards the end of June he suggested a closer working relationship between Liberals and the Labour government.42 And over the summer there were reported discussions between members of the respective parties about what the traffic would bear for the government’s programme in the forthcoming session of parliament.43 By the late summer, even Anthony Crosland, not otherwise an advocate, was becoming interested in the possibility of a Lib-Lab pact, fearing that the government could not go on.44 Wilson, never keen on the idea of a pact, had taken soundings

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among Labour MPs through his emissary Gerald Kaufman, who also came to talk to Jo.45 While there was some support from the Labour benches, the majority were opposed.46 There had long been resistance from within Liberal ranks, too. Outward expressions had usually been muted and restrained, partly from a more general willingness to give Jo his head, partly because Jo had been careful to keep his options open. In any case, he was genuinely circumspect about a pact, unless there were clear benefits on offer for the Liberals. He had said as much in private discussions with Wilson with whom he had a lengthy meeting on 6 August.47 But he never wavered in his long-term vision of a realignment of the radical centrele� to form a new mass party separate from a smaller socialist party. Liberal sceptics were girding their loins. The creation of a Liberal Independence Commi�ee was threatened. Its putative sponsors wondered why, if elements within the Labour Party really were sympathetic, they did not join the Liberals.48 It was said (though unconfirmed) that within the parliamentary party Jo had the full support only of Jeremy Thorpe and David Steel; and that Peter Bessell and Emlyn Hooson were resolutely opposed.49 Jo therefore proceeded with caution. The Times detected in his opening speech to the Liberal assembly in Scarborough a feeling of regret that some basis for co-operation with Labour had proved elusive.50 He had never thought, he told delegates, that the establishment of confidence between Labour and Liberals would be easy; and that, crucially, there had been no public response from anyone of authority in the Labour Party.51 He chimed the notes of independence with a vigorous rallying call for his party to set the pace of the political agenda. In a widely quoted (and sometimes misquoted) line he said: ‘Our teeth are in the real meat and our muscles exerted in the real power struggle of politics.’ In his winding up speech towards the end of the conference, he summarised the essential differences between his party and Labour. Both parties believed in freedom, participation and equality though the Liberals placed a higher value on the first two than did the socialists. He highlighted other differences on issues such as industrial relations, decentralisation, foreign policy and, above all, the failure of the Labour government to ‘stamp a new character on British affairs or a�empt to change… the atmosphere in which we live’.52 If Wilson wanted to widen his appeal, he would have to acknowledge, sooner or later, that there was a large body of ‘middle opinion’ dissatisfied with the two main parties. Newly installed party president Nancy Seear had, however, already underscored the sentiments of many delegates when she said in her inaugural address: For forty years we have prophesied that the country would come to recognise the need for a non-socialist progressive party. We have not spent these years isolated but undefiled in the wilderness to choose this moment of all moments to go, in the biblical phrase, a’whoring a�er foreign women…53

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Delegates were still prepared to give Jo a free hand. But it was clear that any pact with Labour was a non-runner and with it, for the foreseeable future, any prospect of realignment. It had been some seven years since Jo had begun to push out the boat for realignment. It had been very much his initiative; the failure was therefore essentially his failure. Could he have played his hand to be�er effect? Probably not, though his search for a realignment of the le� may have unnerved some Liberals. It also excluded potentially friendly spirits within Conservative ranks.54 Less of a le� incline may have been more profitable in the longer term. He had o�en been deliberately vague as to whom exactly he hoped to mobilise. If he showed more interest in Labour recalcitrants, it was never his intention to exclude potentially sympathetic Conservatives. But when he first mooted realignment, and for some years therea�er, there remained li�le sign of serious fragmentation within Conservative ranks or any harder-edged radicalism – not, in fact, until the Joseph-Thatcher axis of the mid 1970s. At the same time, he may have misjudged the Labour Party, though he did not, as has been suggested, assume that it consisted mainly of relatively friendly and civilised spirits such as Roy Jenkins.55 He knew perfectly well that it was a coalition of interests embracing many who would be no more acceptable to the Liberals than the Liberals to them. He knew, too, of the conflicts that existed between the different elements of that coalition. If he misjudged the Labour Party it was in two other and rather different senses. First, he may have seen Labour’s internal feuding as evidence of a proclivity for schism while underestimating the ability of factional elements to unite in the face of ‘outsiders’. Second, with Labour now in office, however small the majority, those within the party who were more favourably disposed towards the Liberals were not going to rock the boat – especially those, including Jenkins, who now had ministerial portfolios. They were not going to surrender their position for some highly uncertain reconstitution of political forces. In any case, potential ‘pro-Liberals’ within the Labour Party were by no means of one mind.56 They were divided over Europe. If that division was not itself an insuperable difficulty it was partly because Europe was not at that time a consistently significant factor on the political landscape. As Joyce says, no cross-cu�ing issue emerged to provide the pivot for realignment.57 Perhaps he should have set out with greater force a firmer, more uncompromising prospectus for realignment. To do so he would have needed some senior Labour figures with whom he could ‘tango’ – more senior and more of them than the relatively isolated voices of Woodrow Wya� and Desmond Donnelly. He maintained friendly contacts with Roy Jenkins but Jenkins was circumspect in public. So, too, were successive Labour leaders Hugh Gaitskell and Harold Wilson. They were at one in their private judgement that Jo would be unable to carry enough Liberals to make worthwhile any risk of internal division in Labour ranks. Gaitskell had said so privately shortly a�er Orpington, judging Jo to be well to the le� of most of his party’s supporters.58 Whatever he said in

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public, Wilson took much the same view, feeling also that Jo had overstepped the mark in his comments to the 1965 Liberal assembly about the Labour le�.59 Equally, a firmer realignment prospectus would certainly have divided Liberal ranks. The party was a fierce guardian of its independence. Successive revivals of the late 1950s and 1960s had convinced many activists that the party was viable. To this extent, Jo was the victim of his own success. Many saw the daylight of a possible Liberal government – if not now, then as a discernible prospect. Realignment negated any such idea. That was not a worry for Jo, who was quite prepared to pitch in with kindred spirits from other political planets. For him party labels and the boundaries by which they were demarcated were of less consequence than beliefs and policies. More than most within his party he realised that it would be necessary to lose the fly in order to catch the trout. Still, there needed to be the prospect of clear benefits and some reciprocal moves from potential suitors, in the absence of which he was no less vigorous in defence of his party’s independence. To this extent, there was no fundamental difference between him and Nancy Seear. They were on good terms; in no sense did Jo feel chastened by her assembly address.60 Nor did he think that a small group of leading politicians could or should effect a recasting of the party system. He believed that if it were to come about, it must be because it was wanted by ‘electors and not merely professional politicians’.61 Here, there were two conundrums. First, without a cue from the political leaders it might be difficult for any such wish among the electors to find positive and constructive expression. In the absence of such a cue, voter disenchantment with the status quo was likely to be expressed negatively, either in abstentions or in ‘protest votes’. It was in terms of protest votes that opponents had typically dismissed successive peaks of support for the Liberals. Second, support for the Liberals – not least in by-elections – had ebbed and flowed during Jo’s years as party leader. It had received another fillip in the spring of 1965 with the by-election victory of future party leader David Steel in Roxburgh, Selkirk and Peebles, a constituency previously held by the Liberals when Jo first entered Parliament. It seemed almost an affront to people such as those in Roxburgh who had returned a Liberal MP to talk about submerging the party within a larger entity. Jo’s efforts for realignment would in time bear fruit: but the pear was not yet ripe. He might have played his hand differently but probably to no be�er effect. It was with some heaviness that Jo pondered his position towards the end of 1965. Rumours began to circulate about his possible resignation as party leader. Thus, early in the new year, he indicated via party headquarters that he would not retire before the next general election; nor, if there was another close result, before the election a�er that. Crucially he added: ‘If, however, the next election produces a decisive majority the ma�er might be considered.’62 However noble his intentions, it was an error of judgement. With a large Labour victory on the

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cards he seemed to have given hostage to his future as party leader. Two months later Wilson went to the country. On 10 March, Jo launched the Liberal manifesto For All The People, the last of the offerings from the three main parties. In the opinion of The Times it lacked some of the zip of the party’s previous publications.63 No less significantly, it added: ‘Mr Grimond’s distinctive contribution to the manner of British politics is by now the common coinage of electoral dealings. His imitators have robbed him of a good deal of his impact.’64 This was a backhanded compliment. He had been ahead of his time; others had now caught up. Shortly before the election, Jo convened an ‘away day’ meeting of Liberal MPs held at Kiddington Hall, Woodstock, Oxfordshire – the home of former party president Lawrence Robson. Among various television appearances, he again participated in the BBC’s Election Forum, fielding a selection of viewers’ questions some of which, inevitably, were about his possible retirement. He had wanted a three-way debate in the studio alongside the other two party leaders, but they were unable to agree; so each was given a separate programme. As the campaign progressed, Jo focused upon three major issues: the need for new departures in foreign policy, in particular British withdrawal from east of Suez and entry to the EEC; the need to combat inflation and increase productivity; and the need for a comprehensive regional policy. A li�le more than a week before polling day he said to his constituents in Lerwick: ‘It is not much good ge�ing rid of the 14th Earl of Home if the 14th Mr Wilson is going to cast himself in the same mould.’65 In fact, the previous summer, the former earl had yielded the Conservative leadership to the more meritocratic Edward Heath, the first to be elected to the position under a change of rules instigated by Home. Heath’s time would come, but the present hour belonged to Wilson. Jo was still in Lerwick when he and Laura received tragic news. Their eldest son Andrew had been found dead in his Edinburgh flat, having taken an overdose of tablets. A financial sub-editor on The Scotsman, he had been assisting the Liberal candidate in the Edinburgh North constituency. Accompanied by daughter Grizelda, Jo was flown to Edinburgh in an RAF helicopter (personally authorised by Harold Wilson) where he identified the body. The funeral, a private affair, took place on Saturday 26 March – poignantly, Andrew’s birthday. Jo hardly ever talked about his son’s suicide, even in family circles. As one of his surviving sons puts it: ‘he had some difficulty in discussing affections and emotions.’66 It hit him hard – and, of course, Laura too. Meanwhile, Lord Byers stepped in to deliver the scheduled election broadcast that weekend. On the Monday, Jo returned to the fray, taking a press conference before flying to Dyce airport to begin a tour of West Aberdeenshire. The election brought the expected Labour landslide – a ninety-nine-seat majority. Yet within short order the government was to experience not calmer but more turbulent waters. From a series of crises beginning in the summer of

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1966 with the national seamen’s strike and a government-ordained pay freeze, Harold Wilson’s reputation never fully recovered. It would be another thirty years before his party again received a comparable endorsement from the electorate. Meanwhile for the Liberals the 1966 election brought a welcome increase from nine to twelve MPs, giving the party its strongest presence in Parliament since 1945. All had prevailed in three (or more) cornered contests. There were slightly fewer Liberal candidates than in 1964 (311 compared with 365), claiming a slightly lower average percentage of votes per candidate (16.1 per cent as against 18.5 per cent). Thus there was consolidation, but li�le advance. Any lingering prospects of influence or of a Lib-Lab pact were gone – at least for another decade, realignment even longer. The party licked its wounds, having the previous summer moved its headquarters from Victoria Street to premises in Smith Square. Pratap Chitnis replaced Tim Beaumont as head of the LPO, the la�er becoming (unpaid) chair of the Organising Commi�ee. The shoots of democracy were beginning to bear mixed fruit within the Liberal Party. In the a�ermath of the 1966 general election, executive commi�ee member Richard Lamb criticised the party leadership for the dearth of new policy, compared with the fertility of the period 1959–1962.67 In a subsequent salvo, he held Jo responsible for not making greater use of his personal popularity with the nation to rally support for Liberal economic policy.68 When the la�er article appeared late in November 1966 Jo was on a visit to Israel, where he called for Britain, France and the USA to prevent any violation of the Israeli-Arab frontier.69 He had not long since returned from a tour of Eastern Europe that embraced Poland, Hungary and Romania, culminating in the Soviet Union, where he met leading officials and politicians, though not, as he had hoped, prime minister Kosygin.70 He reported his observations in a series of seven feature articles for The Guardian, subsequently published as a booklet. He gave his readers a critical but balanced and nuanced account of ‘living communism’.71 Earlier in the year, he had been less fortunate when a planned visit to China was cancelled a�er the communist regime refused to grant him a visa. Scheduled for three weeks in May 1966, the trip was to have been sponsored by another newspaper, The Observer, at that time edited (and family owned) by his old Eton and Balliol contemporary David Astor.72 It was no great surprise when, at the party headquarters on Tuesday 17 January 1967, Jo announced his resignation from the leadership, though the timing caught some people unawares. His secretary, Catherine Fisher, was given no advance warning.73 Interim political obituaries poured forth from all quarters of the press, national and local. There was near universal acknowledgement of his personal qualities and of his having revived the fortunes of his party. The Economist said that, to a public disabused of political heroes, Jo shone as the one honest man.74 The Observer commented that he had shown spirited integrity to be compatible with

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the profession of politics.75 He was said to have ‘moved the Liberals away from a laissez-faire approach… [and] reawakened their sense of social responsibility’.76 The same editorial went on: ‘He insisted and still insists on a moral approach to politics – an a�empt to see whether the quality of life will gain or lose.’ The Western Morning News said that he was ‘far and away the outstanding figure in his party’ and that some would consider him the most popular figure in politics.77 It ascribed his acclaim to a ‘compelling and frank personality’. Another regional paper said that the Liberal Party without Jo was like Hamlet without the Prince. ‘For years,’ it said, ‘the party has been his own creation… It is entirely Jo Grimond’s doing that Liberals can no longer be mistaken for Tories in disguise.’78 Such plaudits contained the seeds of discord. If Liberals could no longer be mistaken for Conservatives, then not all were happy with the le�ward, more radical turn that Jo’s leadership had imparted. The Yorkshire Post thought that he had le� a party wearing socks with holes in them, one blue one red. Instead of simply resigning the Liberal leadership he might as well have gone the whole hog and joined the Labour Party.79 Another local paper remarked that his decade as leader of the Liberal Party had been a personal triumph for Jo Grimond, rather than for liberalism.80 The Scotsman, expressing its admiration, wondered whether he would prove indispensable.81 Perhaps, unwi�ingly, he had allowed himself to become so. Naturally, he denied that he had become or had made himself indispensable as party leader. Any such hint would imply an act of irresponsibility in his relinquishing the leadership, so leaving behind the prospect of a vacuum. There were many misgivings about the haste with which his successor was to be chosen – by ballot among Liberal MPs just twenty-four hours a�er his resignation. Technically, it was an election for the leader of the parliamentary Liberal Party. It was therefore for Liberal MPs to elect their leader. It was possible for the twelve MPs to be speedily summoned by Lord Wade, to whom arrangements were entrusted. Jo voted for Jeremy Thorpe, his second and third-preference votes being cast for Eric Lubbock and Emlyn Hooson respectively.82 There was a slightly unpleasant undertone. Hooson has claimed that Laura tried to persuade one of his Sco�ish colleagues not to support ‘that Welshman’.83 As things turned out, the party would have been be�er served by a Hooson (or Lubbock) leadership. In the event, Thorpe was elected. The Manchester Liberal Federation spoke for many party members, though, in having appealed for an extra week to allow for further consultation. The party’s constitutional review commi�ee had been commissioned in the summer of 1965 to consider, among other things, arrangements for future leadership elections. Its report was ready to be considered by the LPO executive. The timing of Jo’s resignation and the despatch with which his successor was chosen were therefore seen by some as evidence of a ‘stitch-up’. That is probably going too far. On the other hand, he may have become irritated by a call from the LPO executive that it should receive from him regular three-monthly schedules

Part III TWILIGHT

12. Appearing with journalist Marjorie Proops on the ABC television show The Sunday Night People, June 1968 (Mirrorpix).

Chapter 10

DILETTANTE REVOLUTIONARY

F��� ���� ��� ���������������� of party leadership, Jo widened his arc. He began to devote more of his time to journalism. Within weeks he had become a nonexecutive director of Manchester Guardian and Evening News Ltd., being the only part-time member of the board. He remained a trustee until 1983. He had been close to Alastair Hetherington, at that time also a director as well as editor of The Guardian, a newspaper traditionally sympathetic to the Liberal cause. Not only in The Guardian but also in other newspapers, Jo continued to write feature columns: The Times, the Daily Telegraph, The Sun, the Sunday Times and The Observer. Among the current affairs weeklies, he was at times a regular contributor to The Spectator and, less frequently, to the New Statesman and New Society, with ‘one-off’ pieces for such as the Geographical Magazine and the London Magazine. Later there would be a regular feature in The Field. Shortly a�er relinquishing the party leadership, he became a trustee of the Joseph Rowntree Social Service Trust (JRSST), a position he was to hold for 18 years. Founded in 1904 by the famous Quaker philanthropist whose name it bore, later (1990) becoming the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust, it seeks to promote causes associated with the ‘common good’, broadly defined, having a long-standing record of support for devolution, decentralisation and electoral reform. It was thus very much in Jo’s parish and that of his party, which had received its first injection of moneys from the trust in the mid 1930s, when its future began to look doubtful. It also supported other organisations with which Jo had a glancing connection, such as the Africa Bureau and the Acton Society, conceived as a Liberal counterpart to the Fabian Society but which developed a non-party orientation prior to its dissolution.1 In different ways it has supported ‘progressive’ elements within (and outside) all three main parties – not least in introducing the so-called chocolate soldier scheme in the early 1970s by

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which frontbench opposition spokespersons were afforded the benefit of paid assistants, a facility later financed by the exchequer. Jo never availed himself of the opportunity, feeling no inclination to look beyond his trusted secretary, Catherine Fisher. He did not approve of the trend but kept his counsel when the JRSST agreed to the disposition of funds for the purpose. He was in any case adept at ge�ing agreement to support some of his preferred schemes. And he had long championed the manner in which the trust came to its decisions – a ‘sense of the meeting’ without recourse to voting. He a�ended meetings held quarterly in York where, from the mid 1970s, he o�en stayed with Pratap Chitnis, by then also a trustee. There was some irony in the Quaker connection of the JRSST inasmuch as Jo was no teetotaller. He could – and sometimes did – consume quite large amounts of alcohol with li�le perceptible effect. Towards the end of 1967 he resigned as an underwriting member of Lloyds, occasioning mild embarrassment by the consequential exposure of his having previously failed to disclose the fact in the (then voluntary) register of MPs’ interests.2 He had been a Lloyds member throughout his time as party leader. Now, though, he became joint vice-chairman of the Young Volunteer Force Foundation, along with Conservative MP Selwyn Lloyd. The organisation incurred some criticism from other voluntary bodies because of its sponsorship by the government. Its chairman was Labour minister Douglas Houghton, other members including the athlete Robbie Brightwell and Des Wilson, a future Labour parliamentary candidate, then recently installed as director of Shelter. Jo became actively involved (from 1968) in another charity, the Mental Health Trust. As chairman, he launched an appeal for £250,000 to establish a national network of rehabilitation centres and other projects.3 One can only speculate as to the extent, if any, to which his son’s tragic death was a factor here. Foreign travel, always a passion, presented further opportunity. In the autumn of 1967 he visited Yugoslavia, about which he featured in a forty-five-minute documentary for the BBC series One Pair of Eyes.4 He was fascinated at the way a motley nation of people expressed their riches, their diversity and their sheer optimism within the skein of communism. He also made one of his many visits to the USA, this time extended to include Bogota, Columbia, and to Mexico from where he dispatched copy for his column in The Guardian. In the autumn of 1968 he went to India to a�end a Liberal International colloquium in Coonoor.5 He returned bearing a gi� for Catherine Fisher, as he always did having been abroad – an indication that his legendary parsimony was not immutable.6 Within months of his visit to Yugoslavia, there was turmoil in another European communist state, Czechoslovakia. Recently elected first secretary Alexander Dubček was crudely blocked by the Soviet authorities and by other members of the Warsaw Pact as he tried to introduce liberalising measures. In April 1968, Soviet tanks entered Prague. Dubček and other Czech leaders were briefly arrested or vanquished as ‘normalcy’ was restored. It was a jarring echo of the Soviet

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invasion of Hungary twelve years earlier. Again, there was outrage throughout the western world. Jo was the chief speaker at an all-party rally in Birmingham on Sunday 25 August. He maintained a high profile on the issue. Addressing a group of students later that autumn, he declared that the communist old guard had proved incapable of adjusting to modern trends. Naturally, his sympathies lay with the progressive, relatively liberal elements in Czechoslovakia but he counselled caution, questioning the extent to which it was possible to reconcile freedom with any form of communism. With prophetic precision he said: ‘In twenty years’ time we shall reap some rewards for the tragedy of the Czechs – a defeat for the Soviet Union.’7 Jo had taken an anti-Zionist position upon the creation in 1948 of the state of Israel.8 Many, especially on the centre-le� and others sympathetic to the plight of the Jews, had been wary about the principle of a religious state.9 They also feared that it would provide a convenient excuse for the expulsion of Jews from other countries. Jo was further concerned lest western nations salve their consciences over the Holocaust at the expense of the hapless Arabs. He was by no means an enemy of Israel, a country he visited. He championed the Jewish people without whom, he said, ‘democracy, culture and industry would be impoverished’.10 He understood the insecurity that impelled the Israeli government to invade the West Bank and Gaza area during the six-day war in June 1967. The Arabs, he declared, wanted not merely to contain but also to deny the existence of Israel. He nevertheless appealed, in vain, for the Israelis to retire behind their former borders and for a wider recognition of the Arab refugee problem. Arab refugees were to prove a long-term problem, having repercussions well beyond the region. Another humanitarian cause célèbre made news headlines as, from May 1967, the predominantly Igbo (Ibo) people of eastern Nigeria declared UDI, claiming identity as the sovereign state of Biafra. The Nigerian federal government of General Gowan reacted sharply in resisting what it saw as a threat to the integrity of the nation. Murder, disease and starvation were to be the fate of untold numbers of Biafrans beaten into retreat by the advancing federal troops. Following his instincts on behalf of the oppressed, Jo supported the Biafrans. Jo believed that they constituted a substantial nation, not a mere tribe as the Nigerian government claimed.11 As such they had the right to self-determination – a classic liberal doctrine in the tradition of William Gladstone and Woodrow Wilson. Secession was possible, as shown by the creation of Cameroon.12 But his ire was directed most of all towards the British government, which stood alone with the Soviet Union in continuing to supply arms to the Nigerian federal government. Jo claimed that it was, even including Suez, ‘the most shameful act of foreign policy to be conducted by a British government since the war’.13 He flatly denied Wilson’s claim that the supply of arms was an entrée to influence by which restraint might be exerted.14 On the contrary, he held that the policy

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not only served to exacerbate the plight of the Biafrans but was also an obstacle to British influence.15 Along with over a hundred others, he put his name to a le�er of protest to Wilson organised by Labour veteran Lord (Fenner) Brockway, chairman of the Commi�ee for Peace in Nigeria (CPN).16 Jo was not a member of the CPN executive, though others close to him were involved – David Steel, Eric Lubbock, Lord Beaumont and Lady Violet, pursuing one of the last great causes before her death in February 1969. Its sponsors included Russell Johnston. In the event the supply of arms continued, the Nigerian federal government prevailed and the Biafrans surrendered in January 1970. It was partly in protest against British policy over Biafra that John Lennon famously returned the MBE which, along with the other Beatles, he had been awarded four years earlier. It was one among a number of gestures, not only by Lennon, but also by many members of a new generation of young people whose political consciousness had been formed almost exclusively during the post-war years. Jo was the product of an earlier ‘formative vintage’ – the 1930s. Many radicals from the earlier period found it difficult to relate to the zeitgeist of the 1960s, seeing only a pale shadow of the dark decade that had fired their passions before the war.17 Jo, too, would make unfavourable comparisons between, for example, the 1960s’ protests over Vietnam and the active engagement of republican volunteers during the Spanish civil war, o�en at risk to life and limb.18 He nevertheless remained one of the more sympathetic among Westminster politicians towards the new youth culture, especially the more radically orientated student contingent. Nowhere was he more at ease in public than when among students on campus. While deploring the disruption that seemed to engulf many universities during the late 1960s, he talked about aspects within society at large ‘which might cause genuine dissent among youth’.19 He expressed sympathy inasmuch as ‘a lot of young people feel that they are being trained to suit the needs of a bureaucracy, of government, of business or of professions.’20 These were among the bêtes noirs against which he railed for much of his career. He understood the powerlessness experienced by many in the face of the big ba�alions. Direct action, sometimes violence, was ‘an international problem arising partly from the failure of government to reflect the voices of its citizens and deal with the problems’.21 No less significantly, he said that it had also arisen partly from ‘the failure of mankind to adjust its customs and morals to a situation in which its power has been so greatly increased’. While endorsing moral considerations he had, earlier in his career, warned against undue recourse to morality in politics.22 Increasingly, it now came to assume greater prominence in his public u�erances. It gelled with his concerns for the health of civil society and local community. Within the Liberal Party, youth was already making its presence felt, to the increasing embarrassment of the higher echelons. The 1966 assembly at Brighton

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had been marked by the first unmistakable expressions of dissatisfaction among the more militant members of the Young Liberals – the young ‘red guard’ as they were called, two separate organisations: the National League of Young Liberals; and the Union of Liberal Students. It was not simply a ri� between generations. Senior members of the party executive experienced a growing distance between themselves and the twelve Liberal MPs. In November 1967 a meeting was held to clear the air, involving new leader Jeremy Thorpe, party chairman Lord Beaumont and executive chairman Gruffydd Evans.23 Jo was not involved. Nor was he a member of the policy review commi�ee, established the following summer under Lord Wade. He seemed palpably to disengage from the hub of the party. The Young Liberals (YL) continued to make their presence felt, creating successive tidal waves of controversy. Their magazine, Gunfire, took its title from Jo’s famous 1963 assembly speech. Now the guns of the party were turned upon him, as he appeared to underwrite the cause of the young dissidents. There was a double-barrelled assault. First, he had given to militant YL chairman Louis Eaks the text of a speech he had planned but had not yet delivered. It was published by the YL as the first issue in its new Synic series. Here, Jo developed his thesis about the inadequacy of conventional processes, including the existing political parties, to meet the needs of ordinary people, leading to a ‘continuing resentment with the system’.24 ‘If the parties distort politics,’ he continued, ‘why not abolish parties?’25 But it was what followed that caused dismay. ‘However unpalatable it may be,’ he told his readers, ‘the truth is that again and again useful reforms have been achieved in Britain by force a�er argument has failed… the way to get to the public is to create a disturbance. Thus the temptation of action not words is increased.’26 He went on: ‘Liberals should be clear that many of their cherished concepts like freedom and discussion are in the last resort justifiable because they yield good results. If the results are not forthcoming we must look at the whole argument again.’27 He pressed his argument to its logical conclusion: ‘It is possible that many of the changes necessary will only be achieved by action which the organisers of the present bureaucracies would regard as illiberal and revolutionary.’28 It was more a lament than a call to arms – a common-sense formulation of the counsel of despair described by Kant: If there is nothing that commands respect through reason, such as the basic rights of man, no influence can prevail upon man’s arbitrary will… [and] since there is no appeal to right but only to force, the people themselves may resort to force and thus make every legal constitution insecure.29 But condemnation was swi� amidst allegations that he had lent legitimacy to political violence. Invited to defend himself on the BBC radio programme The World at One, he explained that force was deplorable but that it would remain a feature where people saw no other means of making their voices effective.30 In

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what was to be an unfortunate illustration, he reminded listeners about the past use of violence in Ireland. Amidst the furore over the Synic article, Jo found himself in the firing line on a second, closely related count. He had agreed to address a YL meeting, the socalled ‘free assembly’. Party managers were irked, judging him to be a potentially disruptive presence at what was already a difficult time for Jeremy Thorpe. Thorpe must have been irritated. He maintained sangfroid in all his public u�erances on the ma�er, while later reflecting that Jo might have done more to help.31 It was indeed a tricky time but Thorpe did not feel threatened. He upheld his fellow Liberal’s freedom to speak out. Nor was Jo a threat. Although one newspaper columnist applied the sobriquet ‘emeritus leader’ he had no intention of taking back the reins.32 That said, he might have shown greater sensitivity to the likely trouble that he would bring to his successor. But his general inclination was to temper the wind of power politics to the shorn lamb of principle, rather than viceversa – sometimes to the point of naivety. Jo was surprised by the divisions of loyalties he had occasioned. They received full expression at the party assembly. Supporters rushed to his defence – David Steel and John Pardoe among the MPs. Opponents, while generous, were no less scathing, Russell Johnston having recently derided his former leader as a ‘dile�ante revolutionary’.33 Typically, Jo was not present to hear these debates. In the event, his own thirty-minute speech to the YL meeting passed without alarm. And, in addressing the main assembly two days later, he spoke for eight minutes in favour of a proposal, narrowly defeated, for a UK federal parliament consisting of representatives from separate ‘national’ parliaments to be established in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.34 Like many sobriquets, ‘dile�ante revolutionary’ was wide of the mark while containing nuggets of truth as a description of the real Jo Grimond. He bore something of the dile�ante, underscored by the patrician bearing that he had assumed if not cultivated. Art, he once said, is intimately concerned with civilisation.35 He had a love of the arts in many of their forms – fine art, the performing arts, architecture, literature and so forth, though he had no ear for music. In particular, he developed his interest in paintings, purchasing a number of minor originals and championing the cause of many Sco�ish painters.36 In politics, he tended to deal more in the large coinage of ideas than the small change of court intrigue. To those for whom the ‘art of the possible’ had a more immediate resonance and for whom the minutiae of administration were necessary and important appurtenances, some of Jo’s salvos were an understandable source of consternation. Now that he was no longer party leader, he felt free to fly his kites. He sometimes exuded an air of whimsy; he liked to fire off ideas and see what would be the response. And he maintained a cache within the party and the nation at large. When Jo Grimond spoke, people still listened. Not surprisingly some, especially within the party, felt that he was indulging his freedom in causes

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He was not expressing dissatisfaction with his own party or with its present leader and ruled out the possibility of an amalgamation with the SNP. Even a pact seemed unlikely. Contrary to rumour, this had been rejected by the Sco�ish Liberals on the ground that there was too wide a gulf between its proposals for a federal system of Sco�ish self-government and the separatism favoured by many within the SNP.39 Such feelings were mutual. Ewing declared that there was no prospect of any ‘pooling of resources’ unless the Liberals opted for full Sco�ish independence.40 The defeat of Jo’s federalist proposal at the 1968 annual assembly was more a ma�er of detailed policy than of first principle. Delegates approved a motion seeking parliaments for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland together with provincial assemblies in England – effectively denying only the parliament for England and the federated UK parliament for which Jo had called. But there was an undercurrent of concern about Jo. On the day that he addressed the Young Liberals he had a long, private discussion with Jeremy Thorpe. Later in the day, Thorpe publicly invited the SNP to enter into a pact with the Liberals – on condition that it abandoned its policy of separatism.41 It was widely believed that Jo was instrumental in persuading his successor to make the offer, though he did not accompany Thorpe to the press conference. As we have seen, prospects for a pact were slim. Jo remained undaunted, strengthened by Laura who urged that the two parties work side-by-side as ‘complementary forces’.42 He embarked upon a Gladstonian mini-Midlothianstyle campaign early in 1969. In quick succession he spoke at four venues – Galashiels (21 January), Inverurie (22 January), Aberdeen (23 January) and Dingwall (24 January). At Galashiels, Jo made his appeal: ‘all those who accept the paramount necessity that Scotland must establish its right to decide its own future should come together behind one candidate in each community.’43 Fellow Liberal MP James Davidson had just introduced a Bill to promote referendums in Scotland and Wales. At Dingwall, Jo now called for ‘united action by Liberal and SNP supporters for a specific purpose’, such as Davidson’s bill.44 Speaking at Inverurie, though, he gave the SNP a clear warning against separatism, regre�ing that the nationalists had rejected even the modest notion of different parties co-operating on ma�ers of common objective while retaining their separate identities.45 In a sense he had answered his own question. The SNP were not for a ‘united front’. Instead its chairman, Arthur Donaldson, accused Jo of trying to prise rank and file SNP members away from their leader.46 Jo did not give up. Winifred Ewing was among the thirteen MPs, mostly Liberals, who voted in support of Davidson’s bill when it was defeated at its second reading.47 Interviewed on the eve of the annual party assembly later that year, he said that Liberals should ‘march along with any other groups who are going our way’.48 Asked whether that included the SNP he replied in the affirmative. His renewed overture drew a fierce rebuke from Johnston who asserted emphatically that the

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scheme of immense complexity, including ‘patronage’ (appointed) peers to be chosen for their expertise on Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland as well as the English regions. Opponents swi�ly mobilised, though they had quite differing motives. Some were broadly satisfied with the status quo; others wanted complete abolition, while others again sought more radical reform. Ultimately they were successful in conspiring to emasculate the Bill, mobilising every legitimate parliamentary procedural manoeuvre. Jo was one of the radical reformers. He insisted that an appointed second chamber would be equally as undemocratic as existing arrangements.54 He wanted a directly elected chamber – one that would complement, not merely supplement, the work of the Commons, perhaps handling specific areas such as foreign policy. Separate spheres would deflect the classic criticism that an elected second chamber threatened the legitimacy of the House of Commons. With its plans to refashion the system of industrial relations the government was no more successful. In the light of the increasing incidence of well-publicised industrial disputes in the mid 1960s, Wilson, in concert with employment secretary Barbara Castle, decided reluctantly to modify the time-honoured principle of free-collective bargaining. The state would step in to regulate the activities of employers and employees alike, most significantly in its proposals to curb ‘unofficial’ strike action by the introduction of mandatory regulatory procedures. It was an a�empt to uphold law and order in the workplace. While moderates of various shades lent their support (at least in principle), opponents quickly began to vent their spleens. Here the critical voices came mainly from the government’s own benches, buoyed up by the trade union movement. Another embarrassing climbdown followed.55 Jo thought that Barbara Castle’s proposals were irrelevant and approached trade union reform the wrong way around.56 In particular, he thought that more bureaucracy and state intervention were unnecessary and a hindrance in policing the rule of law which, he held, should rest upon consent. He retained his faith in employee participation and an unwavering countenance against heavy-handed bureaucracy. In a foreshadowing of Thatcherism he told students at Jesus College, Oxford in July 1969: ‘we need less and stronger government.’57 To the amusement of his audience he warned: ‘if the present trend goes on you will have to pass examinations in eating, sleeping, making love… [and] to join the appropriate society before you are allowed to do either.’ The late 1960s was a pivotal period in British politics and society. The hopes upon which the Wilson government had been carried into office had largely vanished. Its apparent failures underlined a loss of confidence in political institutions and in politicians themselves, breeding a cynicism and alienation that could provide the grist for extremism. Needless to say, they were not the failures of Labour alone. A trend of decline in support for both the main parties was becoming evident in a phenomenon that came to be known as ‘dealignment’.58 Old

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loyalties, mores and social networks seemed to be changing but the direction and certainly the destination remained unclear. Jo and many within his party saw these changes as favourable to their cause. He in particular had subscribed to the so-called ‘embourgeoisement’ thesis by which traditional class structures – and the antagonisms that went with them – were believed to have been eased by a new-found affluence among the working classes. Yet research now began to cast serious doubt as to whether greater affluence had had much effect on wider class structures or relationships.59 For all that, the working classes were not quite the working classes of old; nor, for that ma�er, were the middle classes. Increasingly confident working-class militancy together with a more selfconscious professionalism and managerialism brought a rapacious utilitarianism that threatened to engulf the idealism of the early and middle years of the decade. The ‘good society’ remained an elusive dream. For Jo Grimond, aspirations of ‘community’, ‘morality’ and the ‘good society’ had always been among the bedrocks. Now these features of his political philosophy came more to the fore during what were for him pivotal years, too. He still believed in progress and improvement, but worried that society was losing its way. Some twenty years before Margaret Thatcher, he used the Church of Scotland assembly to deliver one of his more philosophical speeches. He talked about a crisis of confidence in the assumptions of modern government – in one sense the final break with the nineteenth century, yet in another sense a return to the very problems that had obsessed great thinkers such as Rousseau, Kant, Hume, Bentham, J.S. Mill and Karl Marx.60 Politics, he said, had come adri� from its foundations in ethics and sociology. People were no longer content simply to cast a vote every five years: they wanted to deal with ‘issues as they arise’. To another religious audience he deprecated the ‘highly materialistic kingdom’ in which human beings were now used as a means to some end, not an end in themselves.61 To a further gathering he lamented: ‘we have allowed not so much a permissive as an amoral fog to permeate everywhere.’62 He went on to state his firm conviction that neither markets nor individuals operate in a vacuum. Rather, they must operate in a society which ‘through government and in other ways expresses a certain code of values’. It was the loss of any such code that he found regre�able. He did not wish to impose a dogmatic morality. Nor was he antipathetic to the greater sexual permissiveness of the age. He wrote: ‘In the ma�er of sexual morality, permissiveness is o�en positive and humane; where permissiveness becomes harmful is where it leads to a total denial that there are any moral issues at all.’63 The new permissiveness therefore demanded a new morality ‘based on the needs not only of the individual but of society’.64 He added: Liberals should now face the question of whether a new corporate emphasis should be given to morality now that institutions and bureaucracies play such a part in our lives. Are we entitled to debauch ourselves, say, by indefinite

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It was very much the qualitative, social dimension of liberalism handed down from T.H. Green and the mature John Stuart Mill. For these nineteenth-century thinkers, the state should set standards – not that it could make people moral but that it could provide the benchmark towards which the human condition, in its widest sense, could be elevated. In no area of modern public policy were these principles given more vivid expression during the 1960s than in race relations. Race relations had become an ever more sensitive issue. The influx of immigrants had in some areas brought tensions. Right-wing Conservative MP Enoch Powell ignited passions when in April 1968 he delivered his ‘rivers of blood’ speech. It was neither the first nor the last of his broadsides on the subject – but it was the most notorious. Whatever the intentions, his text was widely interpreted as having racist overtones and as an a�ack, among other things, upon the ‘liberal establishment’. Conservative leader Edward Heath was swi� first to condemn and then to sack Powell from the shadow cabinet, amidst threats of counter-resignations. Jo Grimond’s initial response was careful. In an interview given in his constituency on Sunday 21 April, the day a�er Powell’s speech and with the shockwaves only beginning to erupt, he talked about the need for more honesty in politics as well as the break-up of the two-party system.65 He referred to the recent expulsion from the Labour Party of Desmond Donnelly and the resignation of Humphrey Berkeley from the Conservatives, the la�er explicitly for the alleged failure of his party to embrace multi-racial policies. Jo thought that Berkeley’s departure would leave the Conservatives more heavily exposed to Powellite influence. In classic liberal fashion, however, he upheld Powell’s right to speak out, even if his outbursts brought consternation. He delivered his Raymond Priestley lecture at the University of Birmingham in May 1968 when Powell’s invitation to address students at the same university the following month had been temporarily withdrawn by the university authorities and when, in protest at the withdrawal, Labour (later Liberal) MP Christopher Mayhew was threatening to cancel his scheduled visit.66 Jo had no truck with Powell and his sentiments over immigration – or for that ma�er his anti-Europeanism or his immutable unionism. He had opposed the Conservatives’ 1962 Immigration Act and he objected no less vigorously to the Wilson government’s 1968 Commonwealth Act. The la�er became the subject of heightened interest in the light of the ‘rivers of blood’ speech as home secretary James Callaghan tried to stem the growing tide of immigrants. In particular there were increasing numbers of Asians deported from Kenya under the ‘Africanisation’ policy of president Jomo Kenya�a. These people, along with a

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similar contingent from neighbouring Uganda, were British passport holders, a concession granted by the terms of their countries’ independence charters. Callaghan now moved substantially to modify that concession. To the critics it was a shameful act of inhumanity, later acknowledged by Callaghan as a ‘distasteful necessity’.67 Jo doubted the necessity. He conceded that immigration controls may at some stage be appropriate in certain circumstances – but even then, the Kenyan Asians should be given priority.68 As on previous occasions, he held that immigrants could well enhance ‘our public services and businesses’.69 He deplored what he described as a ‘racial Bill’ that involved a breach of faith in the terms of independence with the withdrawal of ‘an essential right of citizenship’.70 He was equally uneasy about the discretion granted to officials in dealing with the claims of applicants.71 In his defence, Callaghan argued that restrictions on the numbers of immigrants was matched by measures that would assist their assimilation within British society. Such was among the aims of the Race Relations Acts, of which Jo was a strong supporter. For a moment Jo now fell foul of certain elements within the ‘progressive’ fraternity. Late in 1969 he was placed fourth in the ballot for private members’ bills. He had intended to introduce a referendum bill on constitutional issues but instead sought to modify the Race Relations Act. Prompted by the case of a family whose advertisement for a Sco�ish daily helper was held to have been illegal, he wanted to amend the law to permit discrimination in favour of a ‘racial group’. The Home Office assisted in the dra�ing of the bill that had the support of Winifred Ewing as well as fellow Liberals, two Conservatives and two Labour MPs.72 But it fell at its second reading.73 By now things were ho�ing up on another dimension of race relations. Passions had been excited by the refusal of Vorster’s apartheid regime to allow the Cape coloured cricketer Basil D’Oliveira to play on South African soil. D’Oliveira had been introduced to English cricket by journalist and former Liberal candidate John Arlo�. He was eventually chosen for the England team to visit South Africa in 1968–1969, a tour cancelled by the MCC in response to the obduracy of the host government. The South Africans were scheduled to tour England in the summer of 1970 but pressure mounted for the MCC to withdraw its invitation. For some, even if opposed to apartheid, such a course of action would be an unjustified intrusion of politics into sport. Besides, competitive sporting engagements could provide a bridge by which diplomacy could serve to weaken the loathsome system of segregation. Others thought that to engage with such a regime was itself to sully the good name of sport; that the refusal to play cricket against the undoubtedly talented and sports-minded South Africans was a legitimate element in the wider package of economic and other sanctions that would help bring apartheid to an end. The question was, how far should the process of deprivation proceed – and by what means should it be prosecuted? Here the Young Liberals

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led the way. Under Louis Eaks, ably assisted by future Labour minister Peter Hain, they embarked upon a programme of direct action. Young Liberals were themselves divided as to the propriety of some of their members who, endorsed by Eaks, began to sabotage pitches during the early months of 1970. In March of that year, Eaks was voted out as chairman in favour of Tony Greaves, more moderate though no less determined that the tour should be cancelled. In the end, the Wilson government effectively forced the MCC to cancel the invitation.74 Jo was opposed to the tour but did not like to think that the government had surrendered to the threats of the demonstrators when ‘neither they (the government) nor the cricket council would give way to reason.’75 Following the logic of his earlier Synic article, he said that it was imperative to find ways of making reason more effective. He was becoming increasingly embarrassed by some of the wilder extremities of protest politics. Yet he kept his faith in youth, especially those in higher education. They in turn continued to express their appreciation. In 1970, Jo was elected chancellor of Kent University. In March of that year he was also installed as rector of Aberdeen University.76 He was now well versed in the holding of such offices, following his earlier association with Edinburgh. He had been less fortunate, though, in the university of his home town of St Andrews where he stood for election towards the end of 1967. Here he was beaten into second place (among four candidates) by the West Indian cricketer Sir Learie (Lord) Constantine, now working alongside Mark Bonham Carter as member and chairman respectively of the Race Relations Board.77 There was no rancour. With a call for new ways of making reason more effective, Jo marked the opening of his formal schedule of engagements for the 1970 general election campaign. For the first time in fi�een years he took to the hustings unencumbered by the burdens of party leadership. Nevertheless, he delivered the second of his party’s main national television broadcasts, recorded in a Glasgow studio. He did so quite competently, though the authors of the Nuffield study noted that he now ‘seemed older, with less of the freshness and vigour of earlier campaigns’.78 As ever, he gave generous a�ention to his constituents. He told an audience in Kirkwall that he was fighting the election on a policy of positive Sco�ish liberalism.79 The election was also a family affair. Laura had been cultivating the West Aberdeenshire constituency that James Davidson had gained for the Liberals with a modest majority in 1966. When, for family reasons, he announced his decision not to stand, Laura was nominated to fight what was obviously a winnable seat. She was therefore disappointed to be beaten into second place by the Lt. Col. Colin Mitchell, an anti-EEC Conservative known as ‘mad Mitch’ on account of his exploits with the British Army in Aden. It was her one and only parliamentary candidature – a loss, since she would have been an excellent MP. Laura’s efforts to enter Parliament meant that she was unable to devote quite

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the same energies to helping Jo in Orkney and Shetland. He was re-elected, albeit with his majority halved. When the election was over, Laura again focused upon the politics of the constituency, though now more in her own right than as Jo’s unofficial secretary. Increasingly, she stayed in Kirkwall while Jo was away in London or elsewhere, becoming (from 1974) a local Orkney councillor. She and Jo thus began to live more of their lives apart – conditions in which infidelities sometimes breed. There were, so far as is known, no extramarital relationships with the Grimonds. If there were any ‘flings’, then the tracks were well covered. The marriage was by now in ‘deep leaf’. It had never been a ‘hand-holding’ relationship and thus they remained a devoted if sometimes distant couple, able to sustain the widening of their respective circles, sometimes overlapping, sometimes not. There was the slow but perceptible advance of Jo’s deafness, perhaps contributing to the occasional slight awkwardness in wider company – offstage, if less so when the eyes of the world were upon him. It may have been a factor in the sense of Olympian ‘distance’ that some people began to notice from around the early 1970s. The 1970 general election was a family affair in another sense. The Grimonds’ second and eldest surviving son Johnny stood as the Liberal candidate for North Angus and Mearns. Pitched against si�ing MP Alick Buchanan-Smith in a safe Conservative seat, he narrowly lost his deposit. He enjoyed the experience but had no desire to stand again.80 On the wider front, too, there was disappointment for the Liberals. Their parliamentary strength was reduced from thirteen to six, polling fewer votes per candidate than in any election since 1950.81 The election also brought to an end Harold Wilson’s first spell in Downing Street, the Tories being returned to office under the leadership of Edward Heath.

13. Tilling the soil – a favourite pastime, whether in his Orkney or London home (Phoenix Photos).

Chapter 11

SECOND WIND

I� ��������, �������������� ����� breeds recrimination. Liberals were quick to point the finger in the wake of the 1970 election comedown. Jo’s ‘radical frolics’ of the late 1960s made him an obvious target. It was in his earlier bid for a realignment of the le�, though, that Liberal MP Emlyn Hooson identified the ‘seeds of disaster’ as having been sown.1 Jo remained unrepentant.2 In fact most of the brickbats within the party were reserved for Jeremy Thorpe. Personal and political animosities were suspended, however, when Thorpe’s wife Caroline was killed in a motorcar accident as the House of Commons was reassembling a�er the election.3 With Thorpe indisposed it fell to Jo to make the Liberal response to the Queen’s Speech. He welcomed the overtures towards the EEC but berated the government for resuming the sale of arms to South Africa.4 He was also disappointed that there was no hint of an incomes policy,5 a position he was later to modify. Conversely, Prime Minister Heath was to be drawn reluctantly towards an incomes policy of sorts but for now proclaimed the virtues of free-market bargaining. In some ways, the first eighteen months of his premiership was an unscripted rehearsal for Thatcherism a decade later. The talk was about rolling back the frontiers of the state. There would be less but firmer government; a withdrawal of the less effective state subsidies and benefits; and an a�empt to nurture individual responsibility. In the economic sphere, the Heath government came to office with two closely related policies: to reform the system of industrial relations and to control inflation. In seeking to reform industrial relations, Heath followed the pathway down which the previous Labour government had ventured, only to retreat. Whereas Wilson – in deference to trade union objections – se�led for a voluntarist model, Heath’s resolve and relative party unity brought to the statute book a new piece of legislation, the Industrial Relations Act 1971. It differed in some ways from the

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proposals introduced and then withdrawn by Labour. But the broad objectives were the same: to provide a more orderly, stable, state-regulated framework for the conduct of industrial relations. Like the Labour proposals, the new act was supported by a good deal of ‘responsible middle opinion’. Yet when up and running it appeared to founder in the face of union hostility and, in consequence, a loss of enthusiasm even among some of its earlier supporters.6 Jo was among the wobblers. He had derided the statist aspects of the Labour plans but gave initial support to the Conservative proposals, no less statist. Though he did not speak in the debate, he voted with the government when the bill received its second reading.7 While occasionally supporting Labour amendments, he generally lent towards the government during the report stage. Addressing an audience in Kirkwall, he excoriated Labour for simply ‘reacting with howls’ to whatever the Tories proposed.8 It was, he said, a symptom of the party’s ‘bad conscience and intellectual dishonesty’. Labour criticisms, he asserted, served to inflame passions, lending legitimacy to strike action towards which he became steadily less sympathetic – especially the unofficial walkouts that the Heath legislation was designed to curb. Yet, by the spring of 1972, he was calling for the repeal of the act, complaining that it had ‘bedevilled a great deal of our industrial life’.9 He did not exonerate those trade unionists who had frustrated the working of the legislation. But he had come to believe – as had many – that it behoved the government to acknowledge its failure. In his Beveridge lecture, delivered in November 1971, he noted: ‘all recent governments… have found it quite impossible to follow the programmes on which they were elected.’10 He was thus among the first to articulate a growing belief during the 1970s that Britain was becoming more difficult to govern.11 He was also among the first politicians publicly to acknowledge the phenomenon to be known as ‘stagflation’. In February 1971 he referred to ‘an exceptionally dangerous situation of inflation plus stagnation plus high unemployment’.12 He did not waver from his long-held view that inflation was the most serious of economic maladies. Now accompanied by rising unemployment, low investment and industrial unrest he saw it as the classic prelude to an a�ack on liberty, with veiled references to Nazi Germany.13 It was becoming clear to Jo, as to many others, that these circumstances presented a fundamental challenge to Keynesian economics, predicated as they were upon an assumption of ‘trade-off’ between unemployment and inflation. The Heath government seemed powerless in a�empting to deal with both problems simultaneously. And when early in 1972 unemployment rose towards the one million mark for the first time in a quarter of a century, Heath and his chancellor, Anthony Barber, began more explicitly to reflate the economy in what posterity knows as the U-turn. Already the previous autumn, Jo had complained that reflation was really inflation – more specifically, demand inflation ‘which again and again has got us into trouble’.14 He went on: ‘I question whether we can spend our way out of unemployment. I hope in

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idea of British membership; they also maintained their position with a strength and degree of common purpose unmatched by their rivals. It was not true, as sometimes asserted, that Jo and his colleagues supported entry at any price. Yet he was undoubtedly prominent among the ‘visionaries’. As such he had tended to eschew the ‘balance sheet’ approach of costs and benefits. Time and again he emphasised the political considerations – o�en played down but in fact the most important, as he had said when addressing a rally while Wilson was girding his loins to reopen negotiations.24 Moreover, he understood all about the industrial and technological spin-offs. He envisaged an enhancement in trade, while acknowledging the need for transitional arrangements for agriculture. He cast his gaze wider, wanting common European foreign and defence policies.25 He talked about possible monetary union.26 More than perhaps any other politician of his time, he saw the loss of national sovereignty not simply as a consequence but as a desideratum that the British government should welcome. The Heath government had no intention of signalling any significant loss of sovereignty. Blandly, perhaps disingenuously, if legally correct, it declared in its white paper: ‘There is no question of any erosion of essential national sovereignty; what is proposed is a sharing and an enlargement of individual national sovereignties in the general interest.’27 Although Jo never wavered in his view about sovereignty, he had by this time begun to have some serious reservations about other aspects. As closer proximity beckoned, the fine print became more prescient and less a�ractive. Proceeding down the aisle, so to speak, he glanced at the spouse to be and began to notice blemishes that had previously not been manifest or had escaped a�ention. Approaching the altar, he bridled, though in the end tied the knot. He wanted a full exploration of the terms. It was be�er, he said, to get them changed now than to wait until negotiations had been concluded and then set up a howl.28 He did not think that Britain should be slipped into the EEC by sleight of hand; nor did he want the EEC to become another larger bureaucracy. Scotland in particular would stand to lose in the short term unless there were be�er conditions for regional development, freight charges, farming and fishing. It was over fishing that the most blood was spilt. Jo’s old Balliol friend Con O’Neill was one of the most senior officials in the team that negotiated Britain’s entry into the EEC. He described fisheries as ‘economic peanuts but political dynamite’, becoming in the end one of the most intractable issues of the entire negotiations.29 A 1964 European Fisheries Convention, to which Britain and other nations outside as well as within the EEC were signatories, reserved fishing rights for each country within six miles of its coastline with conditional rights for a further six miles, beyond which there was ‘open fishing’. The EEC had hastily concluded though not yet ratified a common fisheries policy as Britain and the other three applicants (Republic of Ireland, Denmark and Norway) opened formal negotiations for entry at the end of June 1970. The

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Heath government was less than two weeks into its term of office. Momentarily it seemed that the 1964 Convention would be replaced by open fishing ‘up to the beach’ – presented as a fait accompli to the applicant states. The issues were complex. All four applicant countries had extensive coastlines, giving fisheries a greater significance than for the existing member states. It was not quite clear how British fishing interests would best be served. Deep-sea fishing in distant waters would probably benefit from extended access to other offshore waters. Conversely, the inshore fisheries of Scotland, the east coast of England and of Devon and Cornwall stood to lose heavily if exposed to boats from other countries. The depletion of stocks was a further factor. The Norwegians, not party to the 1964 Convention, seemed at times intransigent in maintaining the status quo, hence a twelve-mile limit. Such would have exacerbated the sense of grievance within the UK, especially Scotland, in the absence of reciprocal concessions. The Norwegians had a strong bargaining position. Their continued membership of NATO was considered highly desirable but by no means to be taken for granted in the event of a rebuff from the European Economic Community. Throughout 1971, negotiations proceeded on eggshells. Political pressure mounted. The British negotiating team had initially underestimated the importance of the issue. They were readily disabused as Jo, Robert (now Lord) Boothby and others led the protests. Orcadians and, in particular, Shetlanders were incandescent at the prospect of losing their twelve-mile limit. Jo was scarcely mollified when the British government proposed a six-mile limit. On 9 June, he wrote to agriculture secretary Geoffrey Rippon: ‘I cannot understand how a government which, when in opposition, assured fishermen that a twelve mile limit was essential now says that they are willing to abandon it.’30 There was an element of naivety in his complaint, a difficulty he sometimes had in recognising that principles, however sincerely held, are sometimes sacrificed to expediency in the crossfire of competing demands that ministers (and officials) have to reconcile. Almost certainly he, like many others, had failed earlier to appreciate either the piquancy or the detailed complexity of the factors involved in translating high policy into ground-level operation. Jo took his objections almost down to the wire. In the crucial October 1971 debate about the principle of EEC membership, he told MPs: ‘Although I am a pro-marketeer of long standing, if we were not to reach a satisfactory solution on this aspect [the twelve-mile limit]… I should have to reconsider my decision about entry.’31 A couple of weeks later, he expressed unease at the considerable resources employed to try and brainwash the public into acceptance.32 But at the critical moment he bit the bullet. He was among the 356 MPs who, on the evening of 28 October 1971, voted to approve the principle of Britain’s entry to the EEC – a majority of 112.33 That he did so with the fisheries dispute as yet unresolved suggests a triumph of principle over interests – or perhaps an element of brinkmanship on behalf of his constituents rather than any serious intention to pull the plug.

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In the end, the fisheries dispute was se�led more or less to everyone’s satisfaction, granting twelve-mile limits (subject to later review) for Orkney and Shetland together with a goodly proportion of the Sco�ish and parts of the English coastlines. Edward Heath signed the treaty of accession on 22 January 1972, facilitating the entry of the UK the following January. Jo never recanted from his pro-Europe position. But he amplified some of the caveats that he had entered during the period of negotiations. He wanted Britain, as a member state, to push for be�er decision-making. A few months a�er entry he said: ‘If everything is concentrated in Brussels and the golden triangle the policy is doomed to fail from the start.’34 It was part of his long-standing but still growing fear about the creeping power of bureaucracy – at international as well as national level. Great achievements do not always bring popularity to their bege�ers. Sometimes the benefits are not immediately apparent, even to the beneficiaries. At other times, initial opprobrium is followed by disapproval, perhaps when the government in question is no longer in office, leaving only its reputation to tarnish. As o�en as not, governments lose public confidence not on account of that which they would regard as their enduring legacy but because they become engulfed in other ma�ers, sometimes and sometimes not of their own making. Such was the case of the Heath government. Failing to hold the line on its industrial relations legislation, overtaken by a world oil crisis exacerbated by another Arab-Israeli war and struggling to maintain his domestic pay policy, Heath got himself embroiled in a bruising conflict with the miners during the winter of 1973–1974. With the miners working to rule and threatening strike action, he placed the country on an emergency footing with power restrictions that, among other things, permi�ed only a three-day working week. Seeking a showdown, he called a general election, polling taking place on 28 February 1974. It was a snap election, but all the main parties were able quickly to mobilise. The Liberals had over the previous two years enjoyed some measure of success. In parliamentary by-elections Cyril Smith had set the ball rolling, winning Rochdale from Labour in October 1972. There followed four other gains, all from the Conservatives – Graham Tope at Su�on and Cheam (December 1972); Clement Freud at Isle of Ely and David Austick at Ripon (July 1973); and Alan Beith at Berwick-on-Tweed (November 1973). Spirits were high, though there was li�le serious talk of Orpington proportions. On that occasion as on others, the bubble had burst fairly quickly partly, according to some critics, because Jo had drawn the Liberals too close to Labour. It still seemed that the Liberals profited from dissatisfaction with a Conservative government, unless Labour colours were also flying high. In the early 1970s, unlike the early 1960s, Labour in opposition failed to capitalise. Indeed Beith’s triumph at Berwick-on-Tweed was accompanied by a Labour loss to the SNP at Glasgow Govan. The SNP were cock-a-hoop, planning to contest every Sco�ish constituency in the next general election. In

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the event, they did so in all bar one case – Orkney and Shetland. For all their differences over independence, the SNP judged Jo to be the Liberals’ strongest pro-devolutionist. In a trenchant campaign, Conservative candidate John Firth alleged that Jo had ‘an arrangement’ with the SNP; and that he had neglected the needs of his constituents.35 Neither charge stuck. In a three-cornered fight (as in 1970), Jo trebled his majority. His efforts not only for the cause of devolution but also for his constituents’ fishing interests received their due reward. Nationally, the Liberals contested 517 seats – more than ever before. They secured over six million votes, their greatest ever haul; and the highest average number of votes per candidate since 1935. As ever, there were suggestions that the party had a�racted protest votes among the many electors disillusioned with both the other main parties, though now there was evidence of disaffection with specific policies rather than ‘some sort of diffuse, nihilistic or poujadiste response to modern society’.36 Disappointingly, the election yielded only 14 Liberal MPs, a net increase of three upon the party’s position at the dissolution. Yet it was enough to give Thorpe and his colleagues real leverage. For the two main parties were neck and neck, Labour returning 301 MPs to the Conservatives’ 297, albeit the Conservatives received nearly a quarter of a million more votes. ‘We’re all minorities now,’ joked Thorpe. The Liberal MPs found themselves at the centre of a�ention. Would they help to sustain the Heath government; or would they decline, so passing the chalice to Labour? Indeed could they agree among themselves? On Saturday 2 March, Thorpe met Heath at Downing Street. In their respective memoirs the two men give somewhat different accounts about what exactly was said. They agree that Heath offered the bait of a speaker’s conference (no more) to consider electoral reform and a cabinet post, though Thorpe denies that he indicated a preference for the Home Office.37 Be that as it may, his initial failure to consult senior colleagues was a source of irritation.38 Clearly he was tempted; no less clearly he knew that many within the party would be opposed. The following day (Sunday) he consulted Jo, along with David Steel and Lord Byers. Thorpe has claimed that Jo’s opposition was less strenuous than that of his colleagues.39 So it may have been; but nor was he moved to offer support. Meeting Heath again later in the day, Thorpe was obliged to declare that there was li�le likelihood of a deal. Harold Wilson thus began his second spell in 10 Downing Street, this time leading a minority Labour government. The Liberals gave no formal guarantee of support; but Wilson was prepared to chance his arm. Shortly a�er the February 1974 general election, Jo a�ended the three-day Koningswinter conference. Usually held in Koningswinter on the Rhine and inaugurated in 1950 by Frau Milchsack with help from Robert Birley, these conferences afforded the opportunity for British and German citizens from all walks of life to exchange ideas in convivial surroundings. On this occasion, it

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was held in Edinburgh, at the university. Jo was accommodated in Pollock Hall where, unfortunately, he slipped while taking a shower and broke his arm. He later returned to the conference, strapped up and with stitches in his elbow. Upon his return to Downing Street, Harold Wilson had plenty on his plate, working to restore industry and the economy. Europe was not done with, either. Labour divisions remained and, now back in office, Wilson’s predicament was exquisite. In the end, he decided to square the circle by calling a national referendum – the first of its kind in the UK, though by no means a novel idea in British politics.40 If responsibility for the decision lay with the people at large, it would be possible to give rein to Labour’s warring factions without violating the constitutional conventions of collective responsibility and without crystallising the issue into a false leadership versus rank and file ba�le. The people would be asked whether or not they wished the UK to remain in the EEC. Wilson claimed that he had renegotiated be�er terms than those obtained by Heath, so justifying his government in recommending acceptance, though the difference was barely perceptible to most commentators. Jo was already a convert to the idea of a referendum. Towards the end of 1969, Liberal ranks had been split when Jo and two of his colleagues were among fi�y-five mostly anti-EEC members who gave their support to a motion, duly defeated, by Conservative MP Bruce Campbell calling for electors to be given the opportunity to vote as to whether Britain should enter the EEC.41 From time to time he had renewed the call. So when in the spring of 1975 it became clear that there would be a referendum, he took the platform to launch the ‘Keep Britain in Europe’ campaign, sponsored by Britain in Europe, an all-party umbrella organisation. Having been persuaded by Roy Jenkins to become one of the vicepresidents, he stood shoulder to shoulder at the press conference alongside Jenkins, together with Labour’s Cledwyn Hughes and Conservatives Reginald Maudling and William Whitelaw plus Sir Con O’Neill, now retired from the diplomatic service.42 Jo said: ‘If we were to come out this summer I can see no other result than fiercer inflation and even higher unemployment.’43 At another press conference, he focused upon Scotland. Aware that the SNP were opposed to entry, he said that total independence would almost certainly lead to a tariff wall at the border with England, to the detriment of the Scots.44 In the wri�en as well as in the spoken word, Jo augmented the effort to keep Britain in Europe. Publisher Rex Collins had approached him to write a book accompanying the campaign. Jo was unsure of his ground and consulted Trevor Smith who suggested as a suitable co-author a young academic, Brian Neave.45 The contract was signed on 10 March and the manuscript delivered seven weeks later. Among other things, they suggested that a referendum was justified by the failure to present the argument about entry as a clear issue between the major parties.46 Although co-authored, Jo allowed Neave two-thirds of the royalties, no mean reflection of their relative contributions.

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With substantially greater resources, the bulk of the ‘respectable establishment’ and a government recommendation in its favour, the ‘yes’ campaign duly prevailed. Across the nation and in a ratio of two to one the people registered a wish to remain within the EEC. In Scotland there was less enthusiasm – 58.4 per cent in favour – and in Jo’s constituency still less.47 Here the overall verdict was fi�y-three per cent in favour. But that masked a disparity between the two groups of islands. For, while most Orcadians (sixty-two per cent) were in favour, the Shetlanders were fi�y-six per cent against, on a forty-seven per cent turnout. The Shetland Times reported that its correspondence columns had been ‘strangely quiet’ with li�le evidence of active campaigning on one side or the other.48 One correspondent did complain that Jo had upset some locals by describing the Shetland result as a blot on his copybook.49 The fisheries debacle had no doubt taken its toll. The twelve-mile limit had been won but subject to subsequent review, though in the event the limit was upheld. Shetlanders may also have been led by their Nordic affiliations. Norway, having forced the issue over fishing, then withdrew its application following a referendum. The 1975 referendum took place amidst mounting economic difficulties. In the general election of October 1974, Labour improved upon the position it had established in February. It now had a majority, albeit a slender one that was not to last. More immediately, inflation was high and rising; so, too, was unemployment. For the time being, Wilson was able to placate the trade unions with an incomes policy, which, while crude, permi�ed reasonably generous se�lements, especially to lower-paid workers. Union leaders were drawn closer to the heart of Whitehall. In measures such as the Trade Union and Labour Relations Act 1974 (TULRA) and the Employment Protection Act 1975 (EPA) they got broadly the kind of legislation they wanted. Jo supported the government to give a second reading to TULRA which, among other things, repealed the Conservatives’ Industrial Relations Act.50 But he voted against the EPA, taking exception to the provision for maternity leave. He believed that women should receive paid maternity leave, but that it should be a charge upon the community, not the employer.51 On the other hand, he thought that too much public money was being poured into ventures such as the British National Oil Corporation.52 He had made similar observations about the Heath government’s a�empt to bail out the ailing Upper Clydeside Shipbuilders, the original idea for which he believed to have been mistaken.53 Whereas Heath had intervened reluctantly, Wilson now seemed to do so more readily if no more successfully. Interventionism now had as its champion the new secretary of state for industry, Tony Benn, working through the medium of the National Enterprise Board. Increasingly such policies stuck in Jo’s anti-statist craw. If he became progressively more jaundiced about Labour’s statism, Jo did not abandon his radicalism during those early and middle years of the 1970s. He

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remained unrepentant about realignment. As Jeremy Thorpe was engaged in discussions with Heath in the a�ermath of the February 1974 election, Jo wrote about the need to abandon the old two-party system.54 He expressed his longheld preference for a realignment of the le�, believing that the possibility had been brought a li�le closer by the election result. But he thought that a petition for electoral reform handed in to 10 Downing Street by the Young Liberals was ill timed, as did other Liberal MPs and indeed some Young Liberals.55 In different ways he nevertheless maintained pressure for constitutional reform. He suggested the need for a wri�en constitution to protect the individual citizen from overgovernment and the erosion of freedom by bureaucracy and interest groups. In so doing he was twelve months ahead of the famous ‘elective dictatorship’ lecture delivered by Lord Hailsham (Quintin Hogg), now a Conservative elder statesman and in whose steps he had followed in chambers a�er coming down from Oxford.56 On occasion he was not averse to ‘unconstitutional’ behaviour, where the cause seemed worthwhile. Thus, in January 1973, together with David Steel and Russell Johnston, he disrupted business in the Commons’ standing commi�ee on the Local Government (Scotland) Bill. Following sharp exchanges between Jo and James Prior,57 they were protesting at the absence on the commi�ee of any Liberal MPs. Having made the protest, Jo promised that there would be no repeat, though the chairman was granted powers of eviction in any such event.58 Jo got some (if not complete) satisfaction in another of his long-standing causes: the broadcasting of Parliament. Unfortunately he was not in the House on 24 February 1975 when it agreed to radio broadcasting for an experimental period, while rejecting by a narrow margin a proposal to allow its proceedings to be televised.59 He believed that Parliament should be more open to the people it served. Similarly, he believed that Whitehall should be more transparent, deploring its excessive secrecy, not least the a�empt to prevent publication of former cabinet minister Richard Crossman’s diaries. ‘Democracy,’ he once claimed, ‘has failed to control and use bureaucracy… the modern bureaucrats of the unions and professions are in tacit alliance never to oppose each other’s claims.’60 With these words he was in advance of what came to be known as an emergent form of corporatism.61 Nor was he confident that the media were any longer capable of providing an adequate counterweight. On the contrary, in his Beveridge memorial lecture – and on other occasions – he a�acked the media for selectivity, sensationalism and inaccuracies. He vented his spleen on the BBC. Usually, he targeted institutions, ideas or groups of people – or individuals as office-holders or as representing a wider constituency. Seldom did he engage in ad hominem onslaughts. On one occasion, he permi�ed himself an exception. He excoriated the BBC and those within its cosy, inner circle who, he asserted, ‘think the same thoughts… live in the same circles and even it seems that if one dies a successor is be�er to have the same name’.62 It was the Dimbleby brothers, David and Jonathan, following in the line of their

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late father, Richard, who felt the full force of Jo’s invective – every spring-loaded syllable. David was at that time presenting BBC TV’s Twenty Four Hours, Jonathan The World This Week on Radio 4, while younger sister Sally was a BBC researcher. Jo developed his onslaught: ‘How many more Dimblebys have been employed by the BBC? … unless you are one of the dinner gongs to which the Pavlov’s dogs of the media respond you have li�le chance of being on it.’ There seems to have been no animus between Jo and the Dimbleby family;63 they were simply a foil for Jo’s assault on the BBC and ‘the establishment’. Nor is it likely that he was playing on the old Asquith-Lloyd George animosities, Richard Dimbleby’s father Fred having for a time been one of the Welsh premier’s confidants.64 There was irony in the outburst, coming from one who had down the years used the media extensively and to good effect. He was never an outsider, more an anti-establishment establishment man. He probably preferred it that way. He was expressing something of the powerless frustration many felt against the might of official bureaucracy. On another occasion, as the Wilson government announced further economic stringencies, he berated ministers and civil servants for excessive use of official cars. Se�ing himself as an example, he recounted how he had sold his car (a mini) and had taken to travel in London by tube, bus and foot.65 A further a�ack in a Times article three weeks later brought him into conflict with, among others, John Dryden, secretary-general to the staff side of the Civil Service National Whitely Council and who derided the ‘romantic absurdity’ of Jo’s ‘gunfire’ speech.66 Twelve years on it was a reminder, if nothing else, that his famous speech had le� its mark. In other ways, he continued to hone his radicalism. During the early 1970s, he headed a review team charged with the task of investigating the role of women at all levels and areas in the University of Birmingham. The report, twenty months in gestation, recommended more part-time appointments, husband-wife appointments and the provision of crèches.67 Back in the 1950s he had championed the cause of equal pay – in practice, as he put it, not just in theory.68 Now he began to call for a new lead in women’s liberation. In the past, Jo had tended to assume, as did many reformists, that economic growth would help ease the path to redistribution and fairer shares. By the 1970s, growth could no longer be taken for granted. Nor was it any longer accepted without question as a desideratum. Tracts such as Schumacher’s Small is Beautiful (1974) began to sound the clarion call for the environmentalist, anti-growth lobby. Again, Jo was well up with the game. Three years before Schumacher’s volume he was arguing that growth was a ma�er of quality, not just quantity.69 Yet his critique of economic growth did not embrace any challenge to the logic of market capitalism. As the desperation of the Labour government deepened, leading eventually to the fateful IMF loan later in the year, Jo contemplated the gravity of the situation in the early spring of 1976. It was with no relish that he talked about a ‘serious economic crisis’ that threatened to ‘bring down our whole structure like a

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pack of cards’.70 Li�le can he have known that, within days, Harold Wilson would announce his resignation. The country was stunned. Wilson was duly succeeded as premier and Labour leader by James Callaghan. Thus in li�le more than twelve months the three main parties were each to have a change of leadership. For the Conservatives, Margaret Thatcher had replaced Edward Heath in February 1975. And, within two months of Wilson’s departure, the denouement of the Thorpe affair gave Jo his second wind as Liberal leader, albeit temporarily. Jeremy Thorpe first met Norman Sco� in 1961.71 There followed what Sco� later claimed to have been a homosexual relationship (at that time illegal), steadfastly denied by Thorpe. In 1971, alerted by a third party on Sco�’s behalf, Liberal MPs David Steel (then chief whip), Emlyn Hooson and Lord Byers concluded a secret inquiry. They did so with Thorpe’s knowledge and that of Scotland Yard. Satisfied that Sco�’s allegations were unproven, they were nevertheless uncomfortable and, in any case, cognisant of Thorpe’s colourful lifestyle. Jo had long suspected his sexual proclivities but knew nothing of the wider aspects that were about to unfold. In a quite unconnected episode, Thorpe was embarrassed by a Department of Trade report into the collapse of London and County Securities, of which he had been a director. He was not held personally responsible for any loss of depositors’ moneys but he was reminded that his reputation – and that of other public figures – was ‘not only his most marketable but also his most vulnerable commodity’.72 On the same day (29 January) that the report was published and while defending himself against charges of social security fraud, Norman Sco� made his first public assertion of a past sexual relationship with Thorpe. Thorpe made a swi� denial. Initially and to the surprise of many, Harold Wilson sprang to Thorpe’s defence, suggesting a slur emanating from South Africa, both men – though many others as well – having been vocal critics of the apartheid regime. On 4 February, Thorpe met all thirteen Liberal MPs and six peers who affirmed their support. Interviewed on ITN later that evening, Jo said that Thorpe had denied the allegations and should be allowed to continue his successful term as party leader.73 Events now slowly began to turn Jo’s head. That month (February) Sco� was a witness in court as Andrew Newton stood accused of possessing a firearm and ammunition with intent to endanger life. As police were gathering their evidence, the DPP asked for a further investigation into a shooting incident the previous autumn in which Sco�’s dog had been killed. It took only a further small step for Thorpe to be implicated in this bizarre incident, with the allegation that Newton had been hired as Sco�’s intended killer. Politically, too, the cord was drawing tighter. Thorpe had survived expressions of discontent at the party’s annual assembly in September, with the aid of Cyril Smith, who, over the summer, had succeeded David Steel as chief whip. There followed three poor by-election showings early in March 1976 – lost deposits at Coventry West and at Wirral; and

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reality. Certainly he was fla�ered. Yet he knew that, when the shine had worn off and the immediate trauma had passed, the doubters would begin to chime out their notes of discord. He had been there before. He did not mind dissent, but he sensed that the party could grow uneasy if he returned for a lengthy spell. So he asked for time to think, promising to give his answer the following morning. That he did, agreeing to return but only as a caretaker leader while elections were set in hand to determine a long-term successor. So he was back in the saddle, albeit for a strictly limited period. The party was relieved. His decision was well judged, though it did not meet with unalloyed approval. Journalist James Fenton talked about ‘marching backwards to the sound of gunfire’.85 At a special assembly in Manchester on 12 June (brought forward from September), the party decided upon new arrangements for the leadership election. In the ensuing contest, David Steel defeated John Pardoe, becoming the first leader of a mainstream British party to be elected by a constituency not confined to MPs. The result was announced on 7 July. Jo’s shop-minding interlude had lasted less than two months. For Thorpe, worse was to follow. A�er a further journalistic exposé in the autumn of 1978, he was brought to trial the following year, accused of conspiracy and incitement to murder Norman Sco�. The trial was postponed pending the general election of May 1979 in which he sought, unsuccessfully, to hold his North Devon seat. He was acqui�ed on both charges. Fairly or unfairly, a good deal of odour nevertheless stuck and, with the onset of Parkinson’s disease, he was effectively finished in public life. Jo, by contrast, still had a few more miles le� on his political clock.

Chapter 12

FATHER OF THE ALLIANCE

B���� ������ �� ���, Jo’s tenure as caretaker leader did not pass entirely without note. He remained a fertile source of ideas, presenting his parliamentary colleagues with ‘the most extraordinary documents… several closely typed sheets of paper would arrive on his thoughts’.1 On the public front, there was mild controversy following his suggestion that people who wanted to play sport in the UK should be allowed to do so, from wherever they came.2 The remark followed the government’s prohibition of a visiting cricket team from Rhodesia, a country still governed by the ‘rebel’ Smith regime that continued to deny the franchise to black people. Some of his supporters, including Young Liberals, felt that Jo had changed his colours, remembering his earlier position over South Africa. Later that year, he was the target of an outburst from YL president Peter Hain, who claimed, among other things, that Jo’s ‘continual harking back to the mythical golden age of “liberal society”’ typified what was wrong with the present party leadership.3 Hain’s broadside was not damaging. He and other members of the Radical Action Group had been no less scathing about David Steel following the young leader’s call for a government of national unity. Hain’s disaffection finally led him into the Labour Party in September 1977. Nevertheless, from the mid 1970s many people noticed what they took to be a distinct rightward shi� in Jo’s demeanour. In The Bureaucratic Blight, a pamphlet published by the Unservile State Group towards the end of 1976, he gave his defenders as well as his critics much upon which to reflect. Drawn partly from a number of articles wri�en for The Times, the pamphlet offered few new lines of thought. But in force of expression it represents one of Jo’s most acerbic critiques. As the antithesis of democracy, bureaucracy and the bureaucratic a�itude had, he asserted, become almost all pervasive, leading to ‘a

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highly inefficient socialist state in which freedom and originality are suppressed’.4 Underpinning the analysis was a view that state functionaries, purporting to serve the national interest, in fact furthered their own interests – a position strikingly similar to the ‘public choice’ model beginning to gain ground among certain of the ‘new right’ libertarian school.5 It was not only paid officials but also elected politicians, albeit with honourable exceptions.6 Nor was it merely a modern manifestation of the ‘age old lust for power and wealth’.7 Rather, the state had become subverted to the interests that it had nurtured – trade unions, big business and the professions among them. Trade unions, he said, could prove to be the ‘last line of freedom against conformity’ – but that seemed unlikely and there was li�le reason to expect from them that ‘degree of wisdom and morality… which is absent from ministers and top bureaucrats in all walks of life’.8 The British disease lay in exalting those who ‘do not produce above those who do’9 and in an invincible faith by the establishment in their great political skills, for which Ireland and Cyprus were scarcely laudatory advertisements.10 Among the specific maladies of the bureaucratic blight were state endorsement for the trade union closed shop; the embrace of technological determinism; an apparent inability to reason that some cost was incurred in doling out state benefits; the elevation of social work into an industry; and a continuing inclination towards nationalisation when ‘a smaller and smaller genuinely private sector is being asked to carry on its back a bigger and bigger inefficient public sector’.11 He lashed out also at teachers and the education of young persons in the ideals of socialism with li�le clue as to the history of barbarity in the Soviet Union; the emasculation of any sense of community in urban programmes handed down from central government; and a media that constantly demanded more action. The optimism of the early and mid 1960s had gone the way of the Hungarian revolution.12 The country was living on Liberal capital, a legacy that made it still a thoroughly pleasant place in which to live.13 Like the Roman Empire, though, it would not last. As in his Synic article some years earlier, he doubted (with regret) the efficacy of reason and majority will. Things were, he believed, closer to the brutish state of nature described by Hobbes than the ‘liberal situation’ of Locke or J.S. Mill.14 He saw some rays of hope in the response of some members of the Labour Party,15 though he was not sanguine. The other and seemingly more powerful gleam of light came from right-wing politicians such as Sir Keith Joseph and Norman Tebbit who were trying to prise their party away from its conservatism to become a more radical, anti-bureaucratic force.16 To some extent, Jo’s ire was a response to what seems in retrospect to have been the apogee of the peacetime ‘command state’. He was not the only Liberal to be making such noises. Emlyn Hooson said that ‘we have become one of the most over governed countries on earth.’17 The government of James Callaghan brought a combination of high public spending, more centralised and perhaps indiscriminate state controls together with (arguably) more cumbersome

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organisational structures, not to mention a bigger stake in the ownership and finance of industry than hitherto. Yet there was li�le to cheer, with consistently high levels of inflation, chronically low levels of investment and productivity, rising unemployment and, in the end, a failure to keep the trade unions onside. Such, at least, was the case against the government. It became an agenda-se�ing critique, forcing the government onto the defensive. The hapless Callaghan became the only Labour premier never to have been endorsed by the electorate. It was a dubious distinction shared with three of his twentieth-century Conservative predecessors, A.J. Balfour, Neville Chamberlain and Sir Alec Douglas-Home. Within months of succeeding Harold Wilson in Downing Street he found himself presiding over a minority administration following a Conservative gain in the Walsall North by-election of November 1976. Two backbenchers (Jim Sillars and John Robertson) had already resigned the Labour whip in preference for the newly formed Sco�ish Labour Party; and in December of that year Roy Jenkins relinquished his Stechford constituency to become president of the European Commission. The la�er was to have a more profound bearing upon events than Labour’s defeat in the ensuing by-election. No less significant than the thirteen Liberal MPs were the eleven SNP members in shaping the behaviour and ultimate fate of the Callaghan government. Callaghan’s three years in office were marked, among other things, by two issues that had long held Jo Grimond’s a�ention: the relationship between the Liberal and Labour parties; and devolution. The la�er in turn connected with another of Jo’s preoccupations – protecting the interests of his constituents. By dint of circumstance, these three threads became intertwined in a complex and o�en uncomfortable web. Amidst the discomfort, Jo never lost his integrity. If he responded in ways that seemed superficially at odds with his earlier pronouncements, then it was as much in honour of first principles as of surrender to the politics of expedience. As we have seen, devolution – or home rule as he preferred to call it – was one of Jo’s long-standing and most cherished objectives. In November 1973, following the Kilbrandon Report, he had introduced a private member’s bill proposing Sco�ish and Welsh parliaments, elected by PR with three representatives per constituency. Each parliament would enjoy tax-raising powers to the level of ten per cent of the revenues from UK sources; and freedom to legislate in all save ma�ers of defence, foreign affairs and major aspects of planning and economic management. Fellow Liberal MPs David Steel, Emlyn Hooson and Russell Johnston were joint sponsors of the bill, along with SNP members Margot MacDonald, only recently elected, and Donald Stewart.18 Inevitably, the bill was stillborn, lost in the dying months of Edward Heath’s premiership. Labour came to office commi�ed to devolution, though there were divisions within its ranks. With the Liberals and the SNP snapping at its heels, the government nevertheless published a white

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paper in November 1975, followed by a bill twelve months later. The Scotland and Wales Bill proposed a 142-member, elected Sco�ish assembly, though with no direct powers of taxation and dependent for its finance upon block grants from Westminster. Like many home rulers, Jo was quick to expose the weaknesses of the bill – the lack of tax-raising powers proposed for the assembly, which he wanted to have been a parliament; and the restrictions on its field of authority. Simply transferring the Sco�ish Grand Commi�ee to Edinburgh would not set the bagpipes playing, he warned.19 He also thought that it was a mistake to introduce a composite bill, rather than separate bills for Scotland and Wales.20 Yet, while he acknowledged that Scotland was large enough to be economically viable, he opposed separation on the grounds that it would mean a loss of the fruitful relationship that had evolved with the rest of the UK; and that it would encourage ‘ingrowing and narrow tendencies’.21 Equally, he pointed out that remoteness was not solely a ma�er of distance. Thus for many Scots, Edinburgh was almost as remote as London.22 From this observation sprang four points that consistently characterised his position on devolution. First, he was worried that the government’s proposals would be a disaster if they involved the spread of the London disease to Edinburgh. It was essential therefore to establish ‘a new form of government which… springs from the essential characteristic of Scotland and its traditional institutions’.23 In the pamphlet A Roar for the Lion, published in September 1976, he made a second point: that the proposed Sco�ish assembly should sit for only a few months in the year.24 He now feared that it could add to the total burden of government. It was not an argument against having an assembly, rather a plea for its introduction to be accompanied by a comprehensive shake-up of the whole system. In his view, the (unelected) regional tier should be sacrificed. The worry about additional bureaucracy and over-government connected with a third concern: to ensure that the transfer of functions was accompanied by a reduction in the number of civil servants in Whitehall. Here he came to agree with the Labour anti-devolutionist critic Tam Dalyell that there should also be a reduction in the number of Sco�ish constituencies in Westminster. Jo further suggested that a proper parliament for Scotland and Wales reduced the need for a second chamber at Westminster.25 That led to a fourth observation – that the government bill lacked any clear distinction between the powers of the Westminster Parliament and the powers of the proposed Sco�ish and Welsh assemblies.26 Despite these reservations, Jo supported the Scotland and Wales Bill for its second reading just before the Christmas 1976 recess.27 But, together with all bar Emlyn Hooson among his fellow Liberal MPs, he helped to defeat the government’s controversial guillotine motion two months later.28 Although much parliamentary time had already been spent in debate, Jo knew that the truncation of the process would prevent the hearing of a number of Liberal amendments. It was not the end of the bill. Its tortuous passage – and that of subsequent, separate, bills for

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Scotland and Wales – was for the moment to continue. Quite how tortuous and to what li�le ultimate effect no one yet knew. Nor was it the end for the Callaghan government, though it was further weakened by the guillotine defeat. Defeat for the government over its guillotine motion was compounded by another reversal in the division lobby as Liberals added their votes to those of the Conservative opposition a�er a public expenditure debate on 17 March in which all government supporters abstained.29 Yet Jo and his colleagues supported the government in defeating a Conservative no-confidence motion six days later.30 On this occasion, Liberal support was crucial: had the thirteen Liberal MPs voted with the Conservatives, the government would have been defeated and a general election made inevitable.31 It was averted by the Lib-Lab pact. Working with another party in itself presented no obstacle to Jo’s political conscience. He had from time to time suggested as much, though it was a far cry from the permanent realignment for which he had long hankered. Much would turn upon the terms of any pact. It was here that Jo now demurred, one source describing his role as ‘querulous’.32 Certainly he seemed intent on rocking the boat, at first behind the scenes and then more publicly, only to lay a steadying oar across the bows to prevent it from capsizing. As usual, party discipline never came easily when pitched against a point of principle. Yet on this occasion dissent was tempered partly by a personal loyalty to the party leader, partly by the tactical imperative as the fuse burnt slowly away on the Callaghan government. David Steel had generally supported Jo’s policy of realignment. In addressing delegates at Llandudno for his first annual assembly as party leader he had talked openly about coalition. He thus led very much from the front as he concluded the Lib-Lab pact with prime minister Callaghan. The pact provided machinery to keep the two parties in touch, including a consultative commi�ee chaired by Labour’s Michael Foot; and regular meetings between government ministers and their Liberal ‘shadows’. In addition the government promised: to publish a white paper concerning direct elections to the European Parliament (EP), though with no firm commitment as to their introduction; to reconsider devolution; and to support the Homeless Person’s Bill introduced by Liberal MP Stephen Ross. There was evidence that many local Liberals initially supported the pact, though a sizable minority judged it to be more favourable to the government than to their party.33 Liberal MPs were more cautious. Within a week of the pact, seven of them, including Jo and David Steel, voted against the government in favour of a Conservative motion condemning defence cuts.34 The government survived the vote. Jo had already indicated that he saw li�le occasion to sustain a government that had led the country towards what seemed to him a ‘rather moth-eaten version of Mussolini’s corporate state’.35 If there was any justification for the pact, it lay in the Liberals using it to strike a blow for electoral reform. Otherwise the party should work for a realignment of progressive forces following the downfall of

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the government and the ensuing general election.36 Steel, he felt, had sold himself and his party too cheaply. Thus, along with David Penhaligon, he declined to endorse the dra� that his leader had prepared for the prime minister’s perusal on the eve of the pact. Having made his point, he was prepared for the moment to row along for the sake of party unity.37 In spite of the vote over defence cuts, the pact held in the division lobbies. But Jo did not fully avail himself of the opportunities provided for consultation with Labour energy minister Tony Benn, whom he was shadowing. He was not in any case enthralled by the energy portfolio, from which he had asked to be relieved some li�le while before relinquishing it in October 1977. Some of his parliamentary colleagues had by this time become unhappy with his performance in the role, Steel later describing the pairing with Benn as one of the least productive of the pact.38 The two kept their contacts to a bare minimum – out of mutual antipathy to the pact, rather than out of any personal enmity. On one occasion when they did meet, Jo confided that he did not care for the politics of ‘smoke filled rooms’.39 He told Benn that if the Liberals were to be involved then they ought to be in the government or else excluded altogether, rather than be implicated.40 Thus when, towards the end of the 1976–1977 parliamentary session, Steel arranged a two-day weekend meeting to discuss the future of the pact, Jo, along with Penhaligon and now Cyril Smith, again registered his opposition. The three were in a minority and the other Liberals pledged their continued support. A month later Jo was at the centre of an embarrassing affair when, unable to a�end a further meeting arranged by Steel the day a�er he had spoken to Callaghan, he wrote a private le�er to his parliamentary colleagues se�ing out the case for ending the pact. Unfortunately the contents of the le�er were leaked, an indiscretion blamed on Cyril Smith, though never proven and emphatically denied.41 In order to limit the damage, Jo agreed to make a clean breast of his position. So he penned an article for the Daily Mail. Confessing that he had gone along with the pact because it had carried the support of the majority of the Liberal MPs, he acknowledged that Labour had honoured its side of the bargain with ‘scrupulous fairness’.42 He further acknowledged that there had been some strength in the arguments for the pact, though they were ‘far from compelling’. Moreover he wanted to reserve his right to oppose what he thought to be wrong, should the occasion arise; he did not want to be inhibited by any pre-emptive arrangement. He had now nailed his objections firmly to the public mast. Yet by the end of the year he had modified his position. As the party prepared for a special assembly meeting to be held in January 1978, he struck out in defence of the pact – at least as a temporary arrangement. He still maintained that it had been a mistake and that it should be abandoned before the next general election.43 But he did not think that the issue some Liberals were now claiming as a stumbling block was significant enough to justify ending the pact – namely PR for the direct elections to the EP. He remained in favour of PR and of direct election to the

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EP; but he now opposed the list system that had been placed on the table as affording too much power to the respective party managers, placing in jeopardy the relationship between representatives and their constituents. The House of Commons had just decisively rejected PR, both for the Sco�ish assembly (on 23 November 1977) and, ten days earlier, for European Parliament elections. Jo and the other Liberal MPs had unsuccessfully opposed an amendment adopting the first-past-the-post method for EP elections. Callaghan was able quite legitimately to claim that in allowing these votes he had honoured his obligations under the pact. Jo therefore felt that a Liberal withdrawal at this juncture would look like an act of narrow party interest. In any case he saw that ‘Humpty-Dumpty’ could not be put back together again; there could be no return to the immediate pre-pact position. So he was not among the hundred opponents listed in Liberal News a few days before the special conference, Cyril Smith being the only MP named.44 When the party assembled in Blackpool, the pact was overwhelmingly reaffirmed, Steel being granted discretion in consultation with senior party figures.45 Steel won the day and, for the time being, Jo was more than half on board. But disaffection was spreading within the ranks, fortified by a growing awareness that the parliamentary party had li�le by way of concrete policy to show for its forbearance with the government. There was li�le surprise when it came to an end in July 1978. Few tears were shed for an arrangement seen by some as a squalid act of appeasement. But as one MP later reflected, it had been an educative process – not only for fellow Liberals but also for some people in the Labour Party.46 For Steel it was perhaps an end in itself.47 He, a�er all, was the party leader. Jo no longer was and it is difficult to know how he would have handled affairs had he still been at the helm. While the Lib-Lab pact helped to sustain the government, the parliamentary process continued its meanderings in the direction of devolution. There were now separate bills for Scotland and Wales, both receiving their second readings in November 1977. But the Liberals were again unhappy about the government’s a�empt two days later to truncate debate by applying the guillotine. Only a�er much soul-searching did Jo give his assent. To add to his earlier reservations, he was now seized by the concerns of his constituents. On the morning of the guillotine vote, a deputation of Shetlanders had met John Smith, Labour minister in charge of piloting devolution through the Commons. The islanders agreed to postpone holding their own referendum only upon receiving certain assurances. Among their immediate and more specific concerns was a fear that revenues from ‘their’ North Sea oil would be distributed across Scotland, so forfeiting the concessions that Jo had helped to establish under the Shetland County Council Act 1974, including the requisition of land and the maintenance of a reserve fund for venture profits. The council – of which Laura was a member – had already made known its opposition to devolution, demanding special protection from

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the proposed Sco�ish assembly if not total exclusion and continued rule from London.48 As Jo told the Commons, many of his constituents were aghast at the prospect of being run by a party of Glasgow trade unionists and Edinburgh lawyers.49 Yet he never felt that total exclusion was viable; things could not simply carry on as before in Orkney and Shetland while everything else in Scotland changed.50 He began to see the Isle of Man as a possible model, though he was obliged to acknowledge the force of Conservative MP Malcolm Ri�ind’s remark that the Isle of Man was not represented in Westminster.51 The government accepted his amendment allowing Orkney and Shetland each to have its own elected member in the Sco�ish assembly. He regre�ed the implicit division of his constituency but could see no other way forward. Besides, each group of islands had its own local council. In the short run, the provision was overtaken by events. But over twenty years later when Scotland did get its own parliament, there was special provision for Orkney and Shetland to be separately represented – the only case of a constituency boundary not being coterminous with that for Westminster. Much water had by then passed under the bridge. The arrangements under the Scotland Act 1998 are only an indirect consequence of Jo’s earlier efforts, though he did help to establish the principle. The recalcitrance of many Shetlanders and Orcadians had deep cultural roots, reflected in a history of distinct lifestyles and experience of day-to-day autonomy. Each separate from the other, both sets of islanders were no less determined to maintain their identities not only from the incursions of the UK but also from those of Scotland. Such feelings were heightened by the discovery in the late 1960s of North Sea oil. For Shetlanders in particular, oil brought mixed blessings. As the magnitude of the oil reserves and the scale of the subsequent explorations became apparent, Jo had expressed increasing concern about the implications for the islanders. He had been consistently critical of the piecemeal planning of oil development in the area.52 During the February 1974 general election campaign he had complained that the oil companies, while making huge profits, were paying li�le or no tax.53 He wanted an insurance fund at the disposition of the government to help deal with the growing environmental pollution54 and to assist fishermen who had been adversely affected.55 An ‘immense infrastructure’ of housing, roads and services of all kinds was needed, he said.56 But he did not wholly concur with the campaign slogan – ‘It’s Scotland’s oil.’ Two thirds of it, he pointed out, was Shetland or, to a lesser extent, Orkney oil.57 At the same time he believed that the conservation of energy resources was probably best dealt with by the UK as a whole.58 Increasingly, he began to worry that the revenues were being squandered and that, as the flow receded, Shetland in particular would be le� flat.59 On this point he was in no way assuaged by the behaviour of the Thatcher government.60 If the discovery of North Sea oil bore the more heavily upon Shetlanders, it had implications for the people of Flo�a, too. Indeed, all Orcadians were to some extent

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affected, indirectly if not directly. They felt no less a need to defend their interests – interests that their MP was, as always, happy to help promote. Jo maintained his public campaign, not only in connection with issues of the day such as oil and fishing, but also on perennial questions such as spirit duties, freight charges and air travel. He did so during the 1970s with a vigour undiminished from that of his ‘tenderfoot’ days in Parliament over a quarter of a century earlier. Jo badgered John Smith to agree that any referendum on devolution be administered as for that on the EEC in 1975 – that is for results to be announced separately for each region and group of islands. But he abstained as his Liberal colleagues helped to defeat Labour MP Willie Hamilton’s a�empt to secure a referendum across the whole of the UK.61 He saw that devolution was not exclusively a Sco�ish or Welsh issue but one that had wider constitutional significance; and that, whatever the strict legalities, it would not be possible for future Westminster parliaments to abolish the Sco�ish assembly. Yet on the same night that Hamilton’s motion was lost, he and the other Liberals rallied in vain to defeat a further amendment moved by George Cunningham, Labour MP for South Islington. Thus the secretary of state for Scotland was empowered to place before Parliament an order rescinding the Scotland Act if fewer than forty per cent of those entitled to vote in the referendum voted ‘yes’.62 It proved to be the Achilles heel of the government’s devolution plans. Nor was that its only reverse. For on the same evening – ironically Burns’ night – Jo secured provision for the secretary of state for Scotland to establish a commission to recommend ‘such changes in the government of that area as may be desirable’ for Orkney and/or Shetland if the majority of persons in those respective groups of islands registered their opposition to the act.63 The SNP tried to ‘talk out’ Jo’s amendment, leaving only thirty seconds for its introduction. ‘A damned close-run thing, if I may say so,’ he exclaimed.64 Government ministers were shocked at the size of the majority for Jo’s amendment. It was affirmed by 204 to 118 votes. His position was now an unusual one. He had in effect opened up for his constituents the possibility of being governed under a system at variance with that of their countryfolk but on terms as yet unknown. He had delivered them – if such was to be their will – from devolution, a principle for which he had fought throughout his political career yet for which he could give only partial support as proposed by the Callaghan government. Perhaps it was fortunate that the government was not offering the more extensive home rule package for which he had called. That might have made it more difficult for him to respond with integrity to his constituents. Still, he had to negotiate some tricky corners. In a�ending its inaugural meeting, he tried to guide the Shetland Movement away from too firm a strike for autonomy.65 It was for the weakness not the strength of its devolution proposals that he continued to scold the government. With the referendum less than three weeks away, Jo maintained that what was on offer was a ‘horseless, engineless carriage

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of a Sco�ish assembly’ replete with all the ‘old paraphernalia of London’ on top of what he alleged to have been a tenfold increase in the size of local government in Scotland.66 Nevertheless, he signalled his intention to vote ‘yes’ on polling day, 1 March 1979. Nearly fi�y-two per cent of the votes cast in Scotland were in the affirmative. But they constituted less than a third of the electorate, so falling foul of the ‘Cunningham rule’. There would be no devolution for the foreseeable future; nor need for special arrangements in Orkney and/or Shetland. The islanders in any case signalled their disapproval, only twenty-eight per cent (Orkney) and twenty-seven per cent (Shetland) registering support at the ballot box. Arch antidevolutionist Labour MP Tam Dalyell made his presence felt in the constituency and his campaign may have had some effect. The Orcadian thought that Jo’s heart was not really in it; he told one reporter that it was a bad bill introduced not for the good of Scotland but as a Labour manoeuvre.67 Somewhat churlishly, the leader of the Shetland ‘Yes’ Campaign held confusion over Jo’s amendment to be responsible for the low turnout – fi�y-four per cent and fi�y per cent in Orkney and Shetland respectively.68 The fate of the government followed that of one of its more fraught a�empts at reform. For in its exasperation over the loss of devolution, the SNP supported an opposition motion of no confidence. So did the Liberals, Jo included. Thus by a margin of one vote on the evening of 28 March the government was defeated and Callaghan obliged to go to the country.69 The general election of May 1979 is remembered above all for having brought to office the Conservative government of Margaret Thatcher. Like the Liberals before the First World War – though unlike Labour in 1945 or 1964 – it gained rather than lost momentum as it went along. Moreover, the ensuing eighteen years of continuous Conservative government surpassed that of any other during the twentieth century. Thatcher’s eleven unbroken years in Downing Street likewise set a record for a twentieth-century premiership. The election brought li�le elation for the Liberals. Quite apart from the pact, the 1974–1979 parliament had been a frustrating one. There was some cheer shortly before the general election when David Alton ended a run of by-election disappointments with a spectacular victory in Edge Hill (Liverpool), recording the biggest swing to date in any postwar by-election. Alton kept his seat at the election five weeks later but that joy was marred by Emlyn Hooson’s defeat in Montgomery, a seat held by the Liberals for over a hundred years. There was a net loss of two Liberal seats across the country, John Pardoe going down in North Cornwall as well as Jeremy Thorpe in North Devon. In what was to be the last time he contested the Orkney and Shetland constituency, Jo held his seat comfortably, a majority of nearly 7,000 leaving him some thirty-five per cent clear of the second-placed candidate. Having withheld from ba�le in 1970 and in February 1974, the SNP had challenged Jo in October

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1974 and did so again but now received less than five per cent of the vote.70 Jo could feel vindicated in the position he had adopted over devolution. During the election, his activities were concentrated mainly north of the border. He nevertheless took part in a BBC nationwide debate broadcast in Birmingham, where, accompanied in the studio by Michael Foot and Michael Heseltine, he discussed the future of Britain. Otherwise he made li�le impact in the national news bulletins.71 Away from the public spotlight, Jo busied himself with other things. In November 1978, he became chairman of Job Ownership Ltd, a position he maintained for a good many years. It was the creation of sometime Liberal parliamentary candidate Robert Oakesho�, who knew Jo socially. A small, non-profit making organisation intended to promote worker-owned businesses, the company still exists, its main role being to facilitate changes in the nature of ownership – for example where there exists no line of succession in a family business.72 Jo now had a personal involvement in a cause he had long championed. Careful to declare his interest – though not an income-generating one – he later sought an amendment to the Companies No. 2 Bill, so securing statutory recognition for job ownership companies on a par with co-operatives.73 Although he was not available to chair all its meetings, Job Ownership was an additional commitment. Yet he continued to publish prolifically. He was always good at managing his time and developed the knack of composing passages while journeying on his extensive travels, be they abroad or within the UK. Thus he completed manuscripts for two books that he published in the late 1970s: The Common Welfare and the Memoirs. In a lecture in Edinburgh in the autumn of 1976, he lamented the decline of ‘plain, ordinary conscience’ in politics, suggesting that the social services ‘without the blessings of the Almighty play the part of the Catholic Church in the Middle Ages’.74 It brought a sharp reaction from the editor of Social Work Today, who said that he could become to the social services what Enoch Powell was to race relations.75 The controversy excited the interest of publisher Maurice Temple Smith, who asked Jo about the possibility of ‘a really sane book which did not have to support the sacred cows of the interventionist le� but which was motivated by a genuine sense of social and personal concern (which would of course annoy the far right)’.76 Jo was happy to oblige; the result was The Common Welfare. The book discharged salvos aimed at many of his by now familiar bêtes noirs – the party system; the loss of parliamentary control; the dead hand of centralisation; and the growth of government patronage. In the economic sphere, he lamented the secondary economy of perks, careerism and index-linked public pensions; the hankering for indiscriminate growth; merger mania; the hostility of successive governments to small businesses; the coercive power of the trade unions and,

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more generally, the intimidation of pressure groups and the mentality of those who demanded what he called ‘ransom money’.77 The public service, he said, had become a self-serving interest; it gave too li�le value for the increasingly large share of national wealth that it was consuming. A ‘huge cat’s cradle of services in cash and kind’ had led not to a welfare society, only to a welfare state.78 Marks and Spencer, he suggested, had done more to improve the living standards of the worse off than had most social workers.79 In equally caustic fashion, he asserted that architects and planners had done more damage to most of Britain’s cities than had Hitler.80 When the book appeared in September 1978, it inevitably drew the ire of sections of the centre-le�. It had been wri�en in some haste. Despite that, and the fact that the chapters do not fall into a coherent sequence, it cannot be dismissed as a cheap rant. On the contrary, the salvos are matched by some thoughtful, analytical passages. There is the consistent thread of concern for community and for ‘common good’.81 A free society must, he said, be a libertarian society, incorporating a free market and voluntary co-operation.82 At the same time, he acknowledged that ‘fragmentation may go too far’;83 that there must be limits to markets;84 and that there was a need to ‘make everyone’s start in life more equal’.85 The spirit of T.H. Green still stirred his political conscience. A li�le earlier he had wri�en: ‘Liberty is not primarily freedom from restraint – it is not simply economic liberty, it is liberty to choose and decide in all sorts of ways. It imposes obligations… individual freedom can only be exercised in a community.’86 While still working on The Common Welfare, Jo had begun to write his memoirs. He had been approached by more than one publisher down the years but eventually se�led on Heinemann. He a�ended a Foyle’s luncheon on 16 October 1979 to promote the book. He also recorded an interview with Michael Parkinson for BBC television, though was too busy to read a taped version for the blind and handicapped.87 The Memoirs received mixed though mostly generous notices. Ma�hew Moulton in The Scotsman said that it was not for the style of the writing but for the quality and range of his reflections that Jo’s reminiscences were notable.88 Certainly he cast his net wide, drawing in a dense and motley collection of people with whom he had had contact or had observed from close quarters – indeed to the point of becoming ‘overcrowded with people’.89 The same reviewer noted the ‘disjointed snapshots’ that were part of the book’s charm. William ReesMogg described the memoirs as those of ‘an amateur, or connoisseur of ideas, not a creative artist’, noting that they were ‘unevenly wri�en’.90 Even less kindly, another reviewer described what he judged to be a somewhat ‘sad, waffling, depressing book by a nice man who is deeply disillusioned’.91 More politely, Francis Boyd saw him as a ‘benevolent oligarch’ – a romantic figure for all to see.92 Just weeks a�er the publication of the memoirs came a tremor in the political landscape that inevitably engaged Jo’s a�ention and active involvement. Once again there seemed to be the possibility – and, as it transpired, the partial

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realisation – of a realignment of party boundaries on the centre-le�. As events began to unfold, however, Jo was at first cool. On 22 November 1979, Roy Jenkins delivered the annual Richard Dimbleby lecture. With over twelve months remaining of his EC presidency, he nevertheless directed his a�ention to the UK. In terms not dissimilar to those used by Jo in the past, he spoke of the ‘constricting rigidity – almost the tyranny – of the present party system’.93 The electoral system had frozen the pa�ern of politics, holding together the incompatible.94 What was needed was ‘more change accompanied by more stability and direction’ – in other words ‘a strengthening of the radical centre’.95 Though elliptical in prescription, Jenkins was widely held to have called for a new political force – a realignment, if not the creation of a new party. Yet Jo took some time to warm. While David Steel gave a qualified welcome and the Bath Liberal Association was said to be on the verge of inviting Jenkins to stand as a Social Democrat and Liberal candidate, Jo frostily told an audience in Watford: ‘it is ge�ing a bit late’, though he le� the door open for ‘genuine converts’.96 Labour’s social democrats had put up a poor fight, in some cases having traded their principles for lucrative positions. That, he insisted, sat uneasily with their proclamations about equality. Responding to an invitation from The Listener, he wondered whether the time had now passed for a radical centre realignment for which he had called years earlier, entreating Jenkins to ‘come down into ba�le’.97 Only gradually did he begin to see that here at last was a real opportunity to be seized. Writing ten months a�er Jenkins’ lecture, he declared that many social democrats were ‘still only go-slow state socialists’.98 As to the prospect of a new party, he doubted the efficacy of ‘a conglomeration of the disappointed, the muddle-headed and the timid’.99 In his Eighty Club lecture of October 1980 he dismissed the temptation to win votes by ‘a rather woolly moderation’ or by the politics of democratic socialism and the doctrine of a ‘be�er yesterday’ that sought refuge in a return to Keynes, Beveridge and Gaitskell.100 Such an approach met failure by reinforcing it. He demanded to see the credentials of those who saw an opportunity for a new party – did they still hanker for public control of all the means of production?101 At the same time, he saw no purpose in keeping the Liberal Party alive unless it promoted liberalism. He was ‘deeply impressed’ by the need to co-operate with allies. But it was the likes of Margaret Thatcher and Sir Keith Joseph who now reflected the mainstream of liberal philosophy.102 Clearly Jo’s earlier a�empts at realignment had le� him with a jaundiced view of potential allies in the Labour Party. But now a minority of Labour MPs had either le� or were about to leave their party as new vistas beckoned. On 25 January 1981, the Council for Social Democracy was established following the ‘Limehouse declaration’. It was the point of no return.103 The Social Democratic Party (SDP) was created two months later. Jo now began to warm as the new party moved towards alliance with the Liberals. He joined Roy Jenkins on the platform

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during the Warrington by-election of July 1981, Jenkins later claiming that Jo had begun to see his 1960s’ dream for radical realignment becoming reality.104 He was not otherwise active on that occasion, though he played a more prominent role in his ally’s triumph at Glasgow Hillhead eight months later.105 He told reporters that he had been won over by the fact that once again ‘politics smelled of hope and generosity’.106 He now wanted not merely an alliance but an amalgamation of the two parties, while acknowledging the short-term impracticability of such a suggestion. Thus he appeared on a platform alongside Jenkins and another member of the ‘gang of four’, Shirley Williams, together with David Steel at a seminal fringe meeting held on the eve of the Liberals’ 1981 annual assembly at Llandudno.107 Jo begged Liberals to ‘seize this chance’ which, for him, had now created ‘something of a reality out of a dream’.108 The party would be mad, he said, to reject the first opportunity of power for sixty years. Steel, Jenkins and Williams rightly claimed much of the limelight; but Jo was not overshadowed. His presence was important, not least because of his initial coolness about the alliance.109 Steel, who instigated the event, has no doubt that Jo’s presence was ‘absolutely crucial’.110 He now thought the venture a worthy one, although he continued to press for more radical, long-term policies. Jenkins said that if one man made the alliance it was David Steel; but he acknowledged Jo’s contribution, not only at Llandudno but also in preparing the ground against the odds with his bid for realignment many years earlier. It was on that account that he described him as ‘father of the alliance’. The accolade, declared at a rally in the Royal Albert Hall, may have been a seductive gesture to the Liberals,111 but it was well merited.

Chapter 13

AUTUMN IN THE SOUL

I� ������� � ������ of memoirs, a politician tacitly acknowledges that the hour of the locust is gone, the autumn chill nigh. New challenges may await, but life’s journey is entering a new season, even if the cycle is yet to complete its course. Reviewing Jo Grimond’s memoirs one critic had remarked that ‘the grand old man of the Commons has finally hit the nostalgia trail’.1 Upon publication of his memoirs, Jo was sixty-six, not quite a political veteran. Still, for every MP older than he in the parliament of 1979 there were over sixteen younger.2 Jo had fought his last campaign as a parliamentary candidate. While maintaining the Old Manse as their home in Orkney, he and Laura had in 1976 purchased a property in North London at 24 Priory Avenue, Chiswick. It was a house scarcely smaller than the one in Kew Green and they continued to employ a ‘helper’. Jo necessarily spent more time there than Laura, busying himself in the garden, especially at the weekends on which he did not return to Orkney. At every opportunity he still travelled to Orkney, his preference. Years did not wither either his love for the islands or his enthusiasm for travel. He made no more trips to the USA a�er the mid 1970s. But he continued to make frequent visits to many quarters of Europe. Such visits sometimes had a political dimension, allowing him to draw upon foreign comparisons when engaging in debates back home. For example, in 1977 he made his first visit to Mondragon, northern Spain, where he was impressed by the resourcefulness of Basque nationalists who had by then set up some seventy co-operatives following the first venture in 1959.3 He was no less impressed with what he saw in Bologna, where social workers’ co-operatives had circumvented the official bureaucracy. That these initiatives had been taken by le�-wing, communist groups seemed in no way to diminish his admiration or his inclination over many years publicly to champion their achievements – especially those in Mondragon. On other occasions, his excursions were more distinctly recreational, as when he

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(Pratap) Chitnis. In his maiden speech nearly two weeks later he quoted with approval Palmerston’s dictum that ‘we cannot go on legislating for ever.’11 Like his illustrious predecessor, Jo thought that there was too much legislation and that much of it was either unnecessary or self-defeating in its complexity. He was neither overawed nor misty-eyed about what he impishly called a well-run old folks’ home, describing his passage from the Commons to the Lords as akin to ‘a voyage through the looking-glass into the land of Alice’.12 More seriously, he doubted both the collective sagacity of their lordships and the quality of the debates they generated.13 Jo’s elevation to the upper chamber did not signal a complete break with Liberal Party politics. In the penultimate week of the 1983 general election campaign he undertook a gruelling five-day tour of hopeful Alliance seats, taking him from London to Caithness and Sutherland. During the last week he toured the islands of his old constituency, helping to secure the election of Jim Wallace.14 Typically, he thought that the Liberals had become too well organised at the expense of ideas. For the time being, the party and its SDP allies could reckon themselves justified. Alliance candidates drew nearly eight million votes. In so doing, they took a quarter of the national poll, only two percentage points behind Labour. In terms of the popular vote it was the high tide. But it yielded only twenty-three MPs, of whom seventeen were Liberals, the electoral system largely preventing it from overcoming the plateau effect. During the early days of the Alliance, Jo had jumped the gun in calling for coalescence. The much-heralded merger was slow in maturing, beset by many difficulties, as much organisational and strategic as philosophical.15 But it was hastened by the results of the 1987 election, in which the Alliance fell back slightly, claiming 22.6 per cent of the poll for twenty seats, seventeen of which were Liberal. The two parties as one seemed to have a be�er chance of breakthrough than running separately in tandem. Early in 1988, Jo was brought in to reinforce the pro-merger majority as delegates gathered in a snowbound Blackpool. He had had no direct involvement in brokering the merger but gave it his blessing, arguing that it was be�er for liberalism to survive in practice and in government than have its name ‘preserved in some glass case’.16 For all his fixation with ideas, he also remained a man of practical affairs. Jo’s exit from the Commons more or less coincided with publication of A Personal Manifesto, his last book on politics. In many ways it carried on from The Common Welfare. Offered as a personal statement of ideas for the Liberal/SDP Alliance, some critics saw it as being closer to the philosophy of Thatcherism.17 A sense of foreboding pervades its pages – civilisation sullied if not quite paradise lost. He regre�ed that: The Greek ideals of restraint, of economy, of serious application to the cultivation of the mind and the Christian teaching of poverty, charity in all its

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With Tawneyesque ruefulness, he acknowledged that the Greek and Christian ideals had never been realised but held that they had now been abandoned even as aspirations. ‘Neither democracy nor a free market can flourish without common feelings and values,’ he asserted. Such yearnings for common public morality had been part of his political language for many years. With a government in office commi�ed to free-market capitalism, there was now no less of a premium upon public morality. Perhaps unwi�ingly, he had rediscovered the ‘moral sentiment’ dimension in the writings of Adam Smith and other classical economists of the Enlightenment.19 Without the cohesive framework of morality, shared ideals and accepted codes of behaviour, free-market capitalism threatens to yield not a liberal society but anarchy. Aside from laments about declining civilisation, A Personal Manifesto is peppered with familiar Grimond tirades about the ills of bureaucracy, now allegedly infecting local as well as central government.20 Thus he hesitated in championing local authorities, while maintaining the virtues of local democracy. He questioned the so-called Butskellite consensus, highlighting the apparent failings of traditional Keynesian assumptions about a trade-off between unemployment and inflation. He tried to rewrite his own earlier quest for realignment, claiming, though less convincingly, that it had been aimed not only at Labour moderates but also at the le� of the Tory Party.21 Significantly he concluded that ‘the optimism which existed a�er the war, when governments pledged themselves to maintain full employment and believed that they could do it, has disappeared.’22 Even some of the friendlier critics found these and other of his u�erances around this time unduly pessimistic.23 Certainly, they betrayed an element of autumn in the soul – an older man reflecting that things were not quite what he had once known them to be. No longer, it seemed, did the spirit of Beveridge run through his blood. Of course he had no monopoly in the analysis of decline. As the optimism of the 1960s receded, it had become almost a routine national obsession. And if some of the gloomier prognostications were overdrawn, there is no doubt that things had changed. Thus Jo reminded his readers: ‘Beveridge did not look forward to the indefinite extension of the welfare services, but to a time when greater personal wealth would enable us to do without them.’24 But such happy prophecies had come to the end of the road.25 Similarly with Keynesian economics, though again his analysis was not that the original ideas had been misplaced but that the competitive economy upon which Keynes made his assumptions had been steadily undermined.26 ‘The mixed economy worked,’ he said, ‘so long as the public sector was small. Once it became larger than the private sector it strangled its host.’27 Its renewal would require bold action inspired by radical thought.

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During the second half of the 1970s and the 1980s much of the more original radical thinking came from the ‘New Right’, loosely termed. Eurocommunism and, later, the New Times initiative associated with Martin Jacques marked new departures for the far le�, though here ructions remained mainly within the family, so to speak. The domestic political turmoil within the Labour Party that induced the SDP and then the Alliance found early textual expression in books by three of the original gang of four: Shirley Williams’ Politics Is for People (1981); Bill Rodgers’ The Politics of Change (1982); and David Owen’s Face the Future (1981) and A Future That Will Work (1984). In reviewing the works of Rodgers and Owen, Jo was keen to emphasise their compatibility with the liberal creed.28 As he told a television interviewer Elaine Grand: ‘I find the SDP astonishingly liberal.’29 By this time, the Alliance was establishing itself and he was pu�ing his shoulder to the wheel. Yet, as always, he sought soul mates wherever he could. In his agenda for realignment and in his flirtations with the SDP he had shown scant regard for party boundaries. He therefore had few inhibitions in extolling some of the intellectual high priests of the New Right and its fellow travellers – Milton Friedman, F.A. Hayek, Ralph Harris, Arthur Seldon, Alan Peacock, Samuel Bri�an and Norman Macrae. They and others that he championed were not all conservatives; indeed in a sense none of them were. More accurately they should be seen as radical libertarians. As such they chimed in with and provided some of the intellectual grist for the ‘Thatcher phenomenon’. At a more practical level, it was equally natural that Jo should rub shoulders with what would otherwise seem strange bedfellows; and that he should be the subject of pained expressions from the progressive fraternity. An address he gave to the Adam Smith Club drew a motion of censure from Simon Titley, chairman of the Young Liberals.30 Jo was reported as having made favourable comment about the National Association for Freedom (NAFF, later known as the Freedom Association). It was thought that he had subsequently appeared on a NAFF platform. NAFF was established in 1975, its moving spirits being Colonel Julian Hobbs and Michael Ivens, director of Aims of Industry.31 Its dramatis personae aroused the deepest suspicions of the le� and of mainstream liberals. Its fi�een-point Charter for Rights and Liberties and its activities in circumventing picket lines during the two-year Grunwick industrial dispute were broadly in line with Jo’s thinking. For two years from the summer of 1976, workers were in dispute following the dismissal of a number of union members (including some Asians) by company owner George Ward. Ward was a member of the NAFF, which took up his cause with vigour as violence escalated on the picket lines, culminating in a day of action in July 1977. None of the dismissed workers were reinstated but the public impression was one of intimidatory picketing and the disruptive power of the trade unions. Such intimidation and disruption was anathema to Jo, as it was to the NAFF and indeed to many others. But Jo did not endorse other elements of NAFF’s

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Jo never became deeply immersed in the IEA, even less so in its international equivalent the Mont Pelerin Society (MPS). Preceding the IEA by ten years the MPS was the product of a conference organised by F.A. Hayek. It held – and continues to hold – meetings every year or two, supplemented by regional gatherings.42 Jo was quite well known among certain of its leading lights, though he was never a member of the MPS and there is only one recorded instance of his having a�ended a meeting – as a guest at Cambridge in 1984.43 He was more closely involved a li�le later in the Radical Society. Founded in 1988 by former Labour then SDP MP Neville Sandelson and Professor Stephen Haseler, it was strongly anti-collectivist, seeking to uphold the principles of merit and enterprise in an effort to build upon the reforms of the Thatcher and, later, the Major government. In July 1988, Jo gave an address to one of its earliest meetings.44 For a short time he became involved, along with an unusual mixture of people including former trade union leader Lord Chapple, former Conservative minister Lord (Norman) Tebbit, former Labour minister Richard Marsh and the broadcaster (and former Labour MP) Brian Walden. He contributed one brief article to its journal.45 But he never became deeply immersed, detaching himself as some of the more avowedly partisan spirits of conservatism proved unwilling to countenance issues such as House of Lords reform and federalism.46 Jo’s flirtations with these organisations caused some consternation among those who thought that they reflected a distinct shi� to the right – or at best idiosyncratic meanderings. At the same time, he maintained more extensive involvement with ‘progressive’ liberal organisations such as the Minority Rights Group (MRG), founded in 1969 to secure the rights of ethnic, religious and linguistic minorities throughout the world. The following year, Jo succeeded Richard Oliver as chairman, handing the baton back to his predecessor in 1975.47 Meetings were held up to six times a year and Jo is remembered as an ‘affable and tolerant’ chairman.48 He remained a sponsor until the late 1980s, alongside such as Lord Goodman, the Marxist author Milovan Djilis and Gunnar Mydral, all of whom – like Jo, David Kessler and Jo’s Eton associate David Astor – had been founder sponsors.49 His association with the MRG reflected both his internationalism and his liberal conscience. He contributed a chapter to an edited volume.50 During these years, Jo maintained a presence from time to time in the broadcasting media. He featured in a thirty-minute interview with television personality and former Liberal candidate Robin Day in the BBC series The Parliamentarians, telling his host that the virtues of Parliament still outweighed its faults. ‘I’m a fully paid up parliamentarian: I adore the place,’ he said.51 Some months later, in the autumn of 1979, he was a panel member on the second instalment of the long-running current affairs programme Question Time, chaired by Day for many years.52 He was on good form. With a mixture of seriousness and frivolity he warned the audience about the perils of political manifestos. ‘When a party takes office,’ he said, ‘it finds

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that parts of the manifesto are irrelevant and parts are damaging.’ It was clearly a tease to another member of the panel, Labour’s Peter Shore who rose to the bait with protestations about Jo’s irresponsibility. In 1983, he was the subject of This is Your Life, members of the family finding their apprehensions unfounded as to his reaction when the carefully guarded secret was sprung upon him.53 He featured in three half-hour programmes titled The Twentieth Century Remembered, transmi�ed in the autumn of 1984. His interviewer, Keith Kyle, gave him ample scope for reflection and exposition as he was drawn along successive phases of his life.54 As ever, by no means all of Jo’s activities were exclusively political. He continued to be chancellor of the University of Kent, a position he took seriously and which he held until 1990, completing a twenty-year stint. In 1984, he was proud to receive an honorary fellowship from his alma mater Balliol College. The following year, the University of Stirling conferred an honorary doctorate.55 His journalistic output showed no sign of slackening. He had always taken the opportunity to comment upon a wide range of issues. A change of editor at The Field in 1984 heralded his enlistment to write a regular column with a roving brief.56 There, along with his pieces for The Spectator, the Daily Telegraph and elsewhere he spread himself across a wide canvas, confirming the dile�antism that critics (and some of his supporters) had long held to be his trademark. Many were now convinced that, politically, he had moved to the right. To what extent had Jo shi�ed his position? If there had been a shi� then was it of greater magnitude than can be explained by changes in the surrounding political and social landscape? And was it a conscious shi� as distinct from the accretion of incremental calibrations, each barely perceptible, even (and perhaps especially) to the subject? In one sense, some of Jo’s pronouncements upon the early days and even the later years of the Thatcher administration suggest a distinct and deliberate shi� from the high noon of his party leadership. On the first anniversary of Thatcher’s coming to office, he expressed his hope that her government would succeed – but only so would it be possible to set about building a ‘sane alternative to socialism’.57 Eighteen months later, he was bemoaning two wasted years in which ‘she [Thatcher] has hardly produced any policies relevant to the philosophy she espouses or, where she has, they have been put into practice in such a way that they were bound to fail.’58 The jungle of bureaucracy in central and local government, in quangos and various advisory bodies had been gently pruned – no more; li�le had been done for those who did not enjoy ‘perks, security, the closed shop, the automatic increment, the indexed linked pension’.59 In a mid-term assessment for the IEA he concluded that Thatcher was in danger of being ‘hanged for virtues her government does not possess’.60 As the Thatcher government completed its first term, he said that its radicalism had been greatly exaggerated; that it was compounded more of the moderate James Prior than Norman Tebbit.61

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Objectively, there was some truth in these observations. Thatcher’s early years in office had been marked by a greater caution than her critics were wont to allow, born of a necessity if not a desire to compromise with recalcitrant members of her cabinet. To that extent, Jo’s criticisms may be seen as those of one who thought that the Thatcher government had not been Thatcherite enough. Such would be a highly superficial, partial and distorted interpretation. He never countenanced persuading voters to give their support to other than Liberal or SDP candidates. He may have contributed to others’ misunderstanding of his position. His journalism was sometimes idiosyncratic, though his speeches in the Commons and then the Lords were much less so. Either way he was, quite simply, no Thatcherite. On a range of specific issues throughout the 1980s there was manifest distance between Jo and the government, no less so in their respective philosophies. During the 1983 general election campaign he warned that ‘efficient as markets are you need money to operate in them… The Tories have been kind to the rich.’62 On the floor of the Commons, he had complained about a system in which British industry was ‘wholly at the mercy of people moving money around the exchanges of the world’.63 Along with other Liberals, he supported a motion of no confidence in the government’s economic policies, though he was as scathing about the official opposition as he was about the government.64 The fall in inflation during the early months of 1982, he said, was largely a function of the very high levels of unemployment – an indication of his continued if by no means unconditional belief in the Phillips curve.65 With necessary downsizing in the steel and mining industries, he called for more activity to help find alternative employment for those made redundant.66 The ‘Tebbit doctrine’, by which referrals to the Monopolies and Mergers Commission were to be made primarily on grounds of market competition, he wanted to splice to broader considerations about national interests, including the effects upon communities and the views of the workers who were affected.67 Perhaps one of the most distinctive legacies of the Thatcher era is privatisation. In principle, Jo was favourably disposed, indeed an enthusiast. But his enthusiasm was conditional upon the satisfaction of three factors: less government control; more direct worker involvement; and greater competition to the benefit of the consumer.68 The first he considered to have been achieved to some extent, the other two hardly at all. The government, he complained, had missed the opportunity to introduce meaningful employee involvement, preferably as owners, though he applauded the management buy-out of the National Freight Corporation as a welcome exception.69 He tried unsuccessfully to introduce an amendment to the Transport Bill facilitating management ownership70 and he suggested that certain of the coalmines, instead of being closed, should be turned over to the miners. And if opportunities had been missed for employees, then consumers were no be�er served by the privatisations of the 1980s. He had li�le faith in the new regulatory bodies, nor in the prospects for competition. With a note of sarcasm

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he said: ‘No case so far has been advanced for changing public monopolies into private monopolies at vast public expense unless it is thought to be a good thing to provide huge profits for the City of London.’71 In any event, he believed that certain public services should not be subject to the profit motive and should not be judged by commercial standards. Such services should remain firmly within the public sector. As such, they should be subject to direct democratic accountability, unclu�ered by the appurtenances of surrogate markets or quasi-commercial management techniques. A further and more specific feature of the later Thatcher years was the community charge, or poll tax.72 Jo had long been a critic of the rating system, his preference being for some form of local income or spending tax. He was not impressed by the government’s introduction of the poll tax in Scotland as a test bed for the rest of the country. He seemed to have shi�ed from the position expressed in A Personal Manifesto when he now supported an amendment, duly defeated, seeking to exempt certain people from payment. It had been an avowed aim of the government that all local citizens should make some financial contribution to the provision of local services; that the total exemption of a sizable minority of local ratepayers had encouraged their irresponsibility in electing profligate councils in certain areas. In an outright challenge, Jo described as ‘ludicrous’ the idea that people who sleep under the arches on the Embankment would be moved about local elections by fact of having to pay towards services.73 He thought it much more likely that they would see how, by taking their names off the electoral register, they could evade payment.74 Moreover, he objected to the likely administrative costs and the increase in bureaucracy. The widespread and deep-seated unpopularity of the poll tax was a contributory factor in Thatcher’s demise. Less widespread feelings – but almost equal in intensity – were aroused by the introduction of student loans as a partial replacement for non-repayable grants. Many years earlier Jo had called for experimentation in different ways of financing higher education, including loans.75 Presented with the hard prospect, he was now flatly opposed. He felt, first, that it would reduce the number of students from poorer homes.76 Second, he did not want young people to be encouraged to think it normal or essential to begin adult life in debt. Third, he thought the financial burden would bear heavily upon graduates who entered lower-paying jobs, especially young women. And fourth, he saw it as another cumbersome administrative burden. In terms of economic and social benefit, he judged that graduates on account of their education gave to the community as much as they gained personally from their enhanced status.77 On many human rights and conscience issues, Jo remained a critic of the Thatcher government. He unsuccessfully opposed a clause in the Criminal Justice Act 1988 that allowed jail sentences, once passed, to be increased.78 It was, he believed, an a�ack upon justice, made worse by fact that it had arisen from a popular press campaign that appealed to ‘public emotion’. Similarly, he

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opposed Section 28 of the Local Government Act 1988. He did not doubt that some local authorities had abused their position or that the government’s motives were honourable in wanting to protect schoolchildren from exposure to teaching that allegedly favoured homosexuality. But he thought the clause was another unnecessary knee-jerk reaction to a problem that was not widespread.79 Besides, he thought that the courts would have great difficulty in interpreting what constituted the ‘promotion’ of homosexuality. On the international front he was no less critical. He was impatient with the government for its apparent prevarication in ratifying the UN convention against torture.80 At the same time he was appalled by its refusal to receive the Dalai Lama.81 It had done so allegedly to appease China while entertaining the Iraqi health minister – only months, as it turned out, before that country’s invasion of Kuwait and the subsequent engagement of British troops in the first Gulf War. In other ma�ers of defence and foreign policy, Jo remained at odds with Thatcher. He agreed that Argentine forces should leave the Falkland Islands, while insisting that it was not so much a question of whose flag flew there as of ensuring that the inhabitants were equipped with the ‘necessaries of modern life’.82 He felt uneasy about the triumphalism that a�ended the islands’ recovery, not least the service in St Paul’s Cathedral, which exceeded all his forebodings.83 He felt that the cost of the Trident missile would occasion cuts in conventional and more essential areas of defence expenditure – a long-standing Grimond complaint about nuclear weapons.84 He continued to be a commi�ed European – sceptical on some points but never a ‘Eurosceptic’ as commonly understood. In A Personal Manifesto, he called for immediate entry to the European Exchange Rate Mechanism.85 He repeated the call only a few months before chancellor John Major announced Britain’s relatively brief and ill-fated entry.86 Increasingly, over the years, he had expressed his irritation at the detailed meddling, the pe�ifogging regulations that emanated from Brussels. Here, too, he feared that the bureaucratic blight had taken its toll. But he continued to take the broader view, recognising that the absence of conflict among the major European powers alone justified the pe�y tribulations.87 He thought that the full implications of European membership should be recognised and matched by changes in the British constitution; that the people of Britain, unaware of their already deep immersion in Europe, were dri�ing in a boat towards a weir into which they would inevitably be swept. But he still judged it to be, on balance, a beneficial weir.88 In their respective a�itudes to Europe, it is possible to see some of the similarities and also the contrasts between Jo’s outlook and that of Margaret Thatcher. They shared a dislike of ‘Fabian’ statism. For Thatcher it was spliced to a fervent defence of national sovereignty. Federalism was a dirty word. Jo, by contrast, continued to uphold a federalism in which national sovereignty had li�le purchase, either as the objective reality or as a virtue to be pursued. His version of subsidiarity was one that went right down to the roots of the body politic.

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Internationalism and constitutional reform (including home rule) had been consistent features of Jo’s public platform throughout his career. They had been so even when they had been in the doldrums, well down the agenda, as was devolution during the 1950s and again during the 1980s. On other specific points there was a consistency that belies any notion of his having shi�ed his position – for example on the ills of inflation, bureaucracy and his general anti-statism. To that extent, the relationship between Jo and the world had changed by the 1970s and 1980s more because of changes in the world than because of the shi�s in his position. To a point, a partial symmetry between Jo and Thatcher became apparent as the spirit of the age of which Thatcherism was a product gave wind to issues that had always formed a certain part of his agenda. But overlap was never total eclipse. Many aspects of Jo’s thinking remained fundamentally at odds with the Thatcher phenomenon. As that phenomenon gathered in momentum from the mid 1980s, so the contrasts became ever more visible. Jo looked much less like a Thatcherite Conservative because he had never been a Thatcherite and because he had never been a Conservative. Like heavenly bodies in the universe, there was an apparent proximity when observed along a one-dimensional co-ordinate, so obscuring the distance that lay between them. And as the constellation moved on its course, so the distance again became more readily apparent. That is not the whole story. There were shi�s in Jo’s position. They arose from three sources: a sense of disillusionment as he grew older; logical conundrums, not to say inconsistencies, in the position he had adopted on certain subjects; and inherent loose ends in the creed that he espoused. In certain respects – though not in others – Jo became disillusioned as he grew older. It was a slow process. He had railed against the complacency, the seemingly hapless inefficiency of successive Conservative governments of the 1950s and early 1960s. The impression he o�en gave was that the government was not doing enough when it should have been doing more – or at any rate failing to seize the initiative on a range of issues. While he had reservations about Labour, he expected more effective government from the Wilson and, later, Callaghan administrations. In Jo’s judgement, the fruits of their efforts yielded not more effective government, only more government. Thatcher he initially saw as having shed the shackles of the ‘establishment’; but again and now for rather different reasons he found the reality less agreeable than the promise. Perhaps he was, a�er all, a never-to-be-satisfied permanent opposition politician. Amidst all that, his diagnosis and the focus of his message had changed – not a volte-face but a shi� of emphasis. Increasingly, he began to see not simply the failings of this or that government but also and more importantly an underlying decay at the heart of the social fabric feeding the body politic. In the 1950s and for much of the 1960s he had taken for granted the existence of a widely shared public morality. From the 1960s he no longer did so, feeling the need explicitly to champion the

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cause of ‘liberal civil society’. Even in his later years he never pointed the finger of blame at the open textured mores of the 1960s, which he continued to see as having been in itself a welcome development.89 At the same time, it is telling that in one of his later speeches in the House of Lords he alluded to Hugh Gaitskell, whose fading reputation he regre�ed and whose belief in equality had become passé in the age of Thatcher.90 It was not the regimented equality of outcomes that Jo applauded; rather the ‘equal right to some opportunity and some basic advantages in life… [a] fair society’. He condemned the wanton pursuit of riches as leading to a society that impoverished all, even those who derived benefit. There was no loss in the vigour with which he expressed his position. He could still deliver the cu�ing phrase, be it with pen or tongue. But there was a profound sense of regret, the cri de coeur of the progressive who, upon reflection and with long experience, acknowledges that the good society of his life’s hopes and labours is a more elusive prize than he had reckoned. It was more of an accretion of successive disappointments and disillusions – perhaps even an unconscious process – rather than the product of any deliberate change of gear. There were in any case loose ends in some of the positions he adopted over a number of years on specific policy issues. Incomes policy and ‘planning’ are cases in point. In principle, a national incomes policy frustrates the ‘free wheel’ of the competitive market economy. As such, Jo was o�en opposed to such policies. At other times he gave his support – uneasily and for different reasons at different times. On some occasions he acknowledged the sheer necessity of a state-imposed embargo on potentially inflationary pay se�lements where ‘market discipline’ seemed to have broken down – either across all sectors of the economy, as during the late 1960s and 1970s; or with specific reference to the public sector, during the 1980s. For a time during the 1960s he also endorsed a national incomes policy as a fairer and more civilised mechanism than the ‘free for all’ collective bargaining that seemed to be threatening anarchy along with inflation. Similarly during the 1960s Jo for a time endorsed planning. He had ridden the high tide of the ‘Keynesian consensus’, o�en with enthusiasm, while sometimes expressing doubts. Perhaps the interventionist Jo of the early and mid 1960s was never quite the real Jo Grimond. Still, he did endorse some sort of planning that would rest uneasily with any Hayekian declamation about the inherent inability of the state effectively to substitute for the genius of the market. At no stage in his career did Jo embrace unbridled market capitalism. In the 1950s and through to around the mid 1960s he was inclined to see the need for the state to apply a corrective harness. But when it went too far he feared that the freedom of the market – and the consequential benefits that it offered, political as well as economic – had been placed in jeopardy. Yet he never recanted from his belief that the Wilson government had been right to create the planning-orientated Department of Economic Affairs in 1964. Such would have been the logic of his later position. Instead he held Wilson to have been misguided only ‘in detail’, having allowed a

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15. Jo and Laura became freemen of Orkney, the scroll being presented by Orkney Islands Council convener (and Jo’s former agent) Edwin Eunson, August 1987 (Charles Tait).

potentially useful innovation to be killed off by the Treasury.91 At other times he expressed faith in short-term as distinct from long-term planning.92 If he le� a number of ‘loose ends’ in his thinking on certain issues, it was in part the product of the political philosophy that he espoused – liberalism. There are inconsistencies, potential and real, in all political philosophies. They are perhaps more profound in liberalism than elsewhere; and liberals are perhaps more wont than the purveyors of other political philosophies to betray if not to celebrate their loose ends. In so doing, they can appear to grant undue hospitality to their rivals. An emphasis upon the free economy seems to veer towards Thatcherism; the reassertion of community veers towards organic, one-nation conservatism; the welfare tradition evinces strains of social democracy, if not socialism. There are similarities but also essential differences between, say, the liberal ‘community’ of common values and shared morality and the ‘organic’, hierarchically ordered if no longer paternalistic vision of one nation conservatism – or, conversely, the Fabian central direction or bureaucratic collectivism of socialism, or social democracy. Liberalism is not merely a formula for ‘pick and choose’ from the other mainstream political philosophies. And in the next chapter, it will be shown that certain characteristics, more widely associated, have long been embedded within the liberal tradition. But liberals have sometimes felt obliged to adopt the

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methods of their adversaries in order to achieve certain of their own cherished goals. Potentially illiberal acts may occasionally be necessary to uphold the liberal society. Certain freedoms for certain people may have to be curtailed in order to maintain freedom for most people most of the time. There is o�en a notional trade-off between economic, political and social liberties, not to mention different notions of what constitutes liberty. Yet to talk about trade-offs is to imply a rank utilitarianism and, perhaps, an abandonment of principle with which many liberals feel uneasy. Jo Grimond o�en felt such unease. He might have made life easier for himself had he not been a liberal; or if he had neither wri�en nor talked so much about his politics. But he was a liberal; and he wrote and talked a good deal about his politics, sometimes showing scant regard for consistency in the fine detail. Exactly what sort of liberal and where he rests within the liberal tradition – both in terms of his ideas and in his personal legacy – are questions that will be addressed in the next chapter.

16. An ageing couple: Jo and Laura pictured on the driveway of the Old Manse, 1984 (Gunnie Moberg).

Chapter 14

LIBERAL LION

N�������������� ��� ‘������’ in his soul, Jo Grimond maintained an active profile in public life throughout the 1980s and into the very early 1990s. He had lost only a li�le of his vitality and none of his humour. On one occasion he rose in the House of Lords to address ‘the noble lord the computer’ a�er a minister had a�empted to deflect criticism by reference to printing errors in a bill that was under discussion.1 Physically, there were some signs of decay. His hearing had been a problem since the early 1970s, if not before. He was uncomfortable using a hearing aid, though he did so on occasion – perhaps selectively as convenience demanded! Conversely, he may sometimes have heard more than he let on, though no one knows for sure. Without doubt it was a disability; one of which he was acutely conscious and which did not ease with advancing age. Talking to himself he found easier than talking to others, he once said in jest.2 The disability had a temporary and somewhat comic knock-on effect. While receiving treatment for a thyroid problem, he misheard the instructions given by his physician, who in any case had a speech impediment. He thus misapplied the medication. The result was an exacerbation of the condition for a time until the correct application was established.3 By now, observers were noticing a gaunter countenance. An operation involving the removal of part of his stomach did not help. He complained of poor circulation and had at least one minor stroke of which, characteristically, he made light. He nevertheless continued into the early 1990s to a�end and speak regularly in House of Lords debates. Although he claimed that his memory was failing him, his intellectual powers were otherwise unimpaired. He maintained a steady output of journalism as well as the full-length volume on St Andrews, published in 1992. ***

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Five years younger than her husband, Laura by contrast remained sprightly. With unflagging energy, she continued her many public activities. Possessed of moral certainty, as Polly Toynbee once said,4 she threw herself into a number of causes, not least women’s rights and conservationism. She had been a magistrate in Richmondon-Thames. During the 1970s she had served on the Sco�ish Ancient Monuments Board and was a founder and honorary president of the Orkney Heritage Society in which capacity she worked tirelessly to preserve historic buildings – also of the Orkney Blide Trust and of the Hoy Trust, set up to protect the natural beauty of that island. She had been a member of the Orkney Islands Council since its inception in 1974, serving with distinction as chair of its housing commi�ee. When Jo stood down as MP for Orkney and Shetland, Laura acted as agent for his successor, Jim Wallace, during the 1983 general election. She continued therea�er to be an active member of the local association, giving assistance to Wallace’s campaign four years later. Door-to-door campaigning and leafleting had been part of her routine for many years, going back to Jo’s days as party leader when she would o�en appear on public platforms two or three times a week. Up and down the country, her efforts over the years had augmented those of local party workers at by-elections, including Roy Jenkins’ candidature in Warrington (July 1981) and Hillhead (March 1982). Between 1983 and 1985 she was president of the Women’s National Liberal Federation, following in the footsteps of her mother forty years earlier. She was a member of the Liberal Party national executive, playing a prominent role during the 1970s and 1980s in opposing the unilateralist defence tendency. Between 1984 and 1986 she was a member of the Liberal/SDP alliance defence commission. During the early 1990s she excoriated the government for its handling of the situation in the former Yugoslavia, campaigning to set up a hostel in Orkney for Bosnian refugees. Here she worked in tandem with the Minority Rights Group, of which Jo was a sometime chairman and for which Bosnia became a cause célèbre in the early 1990s. While enjoying nothing like the national renown accorded to her husband, she made occasional national media appearances – for example on the BBC Radio 4 programme Woman’s Hour and, on television, in the BBC’s Question Time, where she was given somewhat rough treatment by Robin Day. It was therefore a shock to everyone when Laura was struck down with a stroke towards the end of 1992. It was quite a severe one, effectively ending her public life. Jo felt the blow. Not only was he deprived of an indefatigable dynamo, but he also felt obliged to spend more time tending his stricken wife. From the turn of the new year in 1993 he was seen less frequently in the House of Lords. He nevertheless spoke on a number of occasions, participating with particular relish in the debate on employee share ownership – an essential, he said, for the spread of wealth.5 He observed that the Thatcher years had brought a steep decline in the power of organised mass labour. To that in itself he did not object but thought that the result had been a shi� in power towards capital. Unless that capital was more

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widely shared among the majority of people then state socialism, unpopular for the moment, would again rear its head.6 It was shortly a�er 6.00 p.m. on Thursday 21 October 1993 when he sat down on the red benches having made what turned out to be his last public u�erance. He returned home to Orkney for the weekend where he suffered a severe stroke on the Saturday evening. He died the following evening, 24 October. Tributes flowed freely. Many commented upon his personal qualities – the easy charm; the irreverence; the humour, o�en self-deprecating; the generosity of spirit and almost total lack of malice. The Times remarked that he had ‘charismatic qualities as a speaker unrivalled by most post-war politicians’.7 The Daily Telegraph said that he flouted while being unable quite to disprove Disraeli’s dictum about the preference of the British for ‘grave statesmen’.8 The journalist Norman Shrapnel judged that ‘no politician of his day had a more civilising influence on our affairs.’9 When the House of Lords reassembled the day a�er his death, Roy Jenkins referred to his ‘exceptional, unforced dignity and distinction’.10 Leader of the Labour peers Lord (Ivor) Richard said quite simply that Jo was ‘a man who gave politics a good name’.11 David Steel noted that among his gi�s had been an ability to reach out beyond the ranks of Liberals.12 Indeed it was clear that he had a place in the affections of those outside as well as within his own party – in both cases even among those who did not always share his outlook. His long-standing Labour adversary Tam Dalyell, while highlighting what he saw as Jo’s shortcomings, acknowledged his achievements in representing the far-flung islands of Orkney and Shetland, sustaining the ‘very real affection and respect’ of the discerning islanders.13 Russell Johnston, a fellow Liberal with whom Jo had not always seen eye to eye, said that he and other party figures had been ‘captivated and proud’ to have been led by him.14 Jo, he said, had had an influence that was ‘more lasting than power and, in a profound way, more real’. The then Liberal Democrat leader, Paddy Ashdown, best summed up his life’s work when he described Jo as having been a ‘lion of the liberal cause’.15 Closer to home, one local newspaper described him as ‘the elder statesman – with the common touch’.16 Six years earlier, he and Laura had been granted the freedom of Orkney. The first to receive such an honour, it was presented by Edwin Eunson, the convener for the Orkney Islands Council and one of Jo’s earliest associates in Orkney. The funeral was held in Kirkwall’s St Magnus Cathedral on Friday 29 October. Many local people remained outside on the pavement, disinclined to intrude into a private grief.17 Inside, the service was conducted by the Rev. Ron Ferguson. Johnny Grimond read the first lesson, David Steel the second and an address was given by Jo’s long-standing former election agent, Jackie Robertson. Jo was buried in the cemetery at Finstown, less than one hundred yards from the shore, separated by the coastal road. The nearby residential area Grimond Place stands as a memorial both to Jo and Laura. In other places the Grimond name bears its imprint: a plaque in St Andrews to commemorate Jo’s birthplace; the Grimond

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Room in Portcullis House, Westminster; and the Grimond Lecture Theatre in the University of Kent. Laura did not long survive, passing away less than four months later on 15 February 1994. She was laid to rest alongside her husband. Fi�ingly a joint memorial service was held at St James’s Church, Piccadilly. Addresses were given by Roy Jenkins and Mark Bonham Carter.18 Mark had been a member of the congregation at the Grimonds’ wedding fi�y-six years earlier, as was Lionel Bre� (now Lord Esher), also present at St James’s. If Jo Grimond was a lion of the liberal cause, then what sort of a liberal was he? And what is his legacy – as a thinker, as a politician and as a person? John Gray says that certain characteristics are common to all varieties of liberalism – namely individualism; an egalitarianism that denies any a priori claim to privilege; a universalist belief in the ‘moral unity of the human species’; and what he calls a ‘meliorist’ belief in human design as an agent of change, for be�er or worse.19 The la�er entails the application of reason upon which many liberals have pinned their hopes as a vehicle for progress though which almost as many – not least Jo Grimond – have acknowledged as a potential source of misdeeds. If human beings enjoy at least some modicum of free will, then that implies a freedom to err as well as to follow the path of virtue. If the fruit of reason is usually progress, the possibility of regress and decay are ever present. This point connects with a distinction that Gray makes elsewhere between toleration in the pursuit of an ideal form of life; and the search for peace among different ways of life.20 The one, having its roots in the ancient world and in Christianity, finding expression in the philosophies of John Locke and Immanuel Kant, assumes some notion of an ideal ‘good life’ built upon common values. Locke’s defence of toleration was precisely that different prescriptions should be allowed free expression for the possibility that they held of leading to the ‘good life’. The same could be said of John Stuart Mill and T.H. Green. Practical obstacles may impede and perhaps forever obscure its apprehension but some notion of an ideal is upheld. To those who believe in heaven, heaven exists – though the faithful may be unable to offer a description. Value judgements are not to be shirked. At variance with this view, the search for peace among different ways of life implies a denial of preference for any one form, a kind of moral relativism. There can be no universal ideal. Instead there is what has been called an incommensurability of values in which there exists no final court of appeal and in which toleration prevails. In turn, meaningful toleration, even in the name of a Locke or a Mill may, if pressed to any degree, shade off into some form of value neutrality if not abject relativism. Yet value pluralism need not lead inescapably to relativism;21 nor are the two faces of liberalism quite the polar opposites that at first they appear. Inasmuch as there is a meaningful distinction and inasmuch as Jo Grimond fell into one or other of these two varieties of liberalism, he tended

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toward the former rather than the la�er. Like many though not all liberals, he accepted what one writer describes as the quest for a ‘reasonable consensus among diversity’ that ‘seeks to shape our deepest and most personal values’ while not shirking controversy.22 Historically liberalism had a strong ethical commitment to a particular conception of the good.23 Such an interpretation would place a value upon the individual as an intrinsic ‘end’ not just a means to some end or to the ends of others.24 But in the hands of the ‘new liberals’ of the late nineteenth century – pace T.H. Green – an earlier tradition was revived in which the good of the individual is a social good, realisable only in a certain kind of society.25 As suggested in Chapter 1, Green’s type of liberalism provides a template for that of Jo Grimond. Jo saw rights as entailing duties, as did Green. Why? Because, as Martin shows, Green employed a moral psychology based upon the notion that others are not mere vehicles to one’s own good but fellow citizens in which ‘the good of each contains within it the good of all others’.26 Clearly the notions of citizenship and community are tricky ones, by no means exclusive to the liberal genre. Indeed one school of thought sees liberalism and communitarianism as contradictory, while others have sought to achieve reconciliation.27 Simhony sees Green as having defended what he calls a ‘complex common good’ in which the right is derivative from the good (à la Aristotle and Hegel) while at the same time being (in the Kantian tradition) a necessary element in its realisation.28 For Green, the good is not something that is imposed upon the individual but something that emerges through the process of active citizenship – in fact through a process that Jo championed as the Quaker style ‘sense of the meeting’. It is part of that earlier, pre-enlightenment liberal tradition which upheld the entitlement to a voice in collective decision-making. The idea of ‘entitlement to voice’ connects with a number of other aspects of liberalism – and of the variety of liberalism to which Jo Grimond generally subscribed. First and most obviously, it gels with his sustained passion for participation, share ownership and workers’ control. For him that was the ultimate ‘entitlement to voice’. Ideally, though, it should be the product of non-state institutions. Second, then, is the Tocquevillian notion of civil society – intermediate institutions that are at once both a bulwark against tyranny and an agent of human development. The la�er leads to a third aspect, that of active citizenship striving for moral improvement. In his later years, Jo lamented the insular passivity of the modern citizen. He shared with John Stuart Mill and T.H. Green the idea of involvement in civic affairs as itself a potential source of enrichment. He feared not so much that people would demand too much freedom but that they would be satisfied with too li�le. What sort of freedom did he hope they would demand? Fourth, and in concert with Green, he generally upheld the virtues of ‘positive’ over ‘negative’ freedom alone – the need for some sort of enabling agent, not simply the absence from coercion. Consistent with this

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last point, freedom from constraint need not mean much if, for whatever reason, desires remain limited. That was not good enough for Jo. He acknowledged the tyrannical implications of a more positive conception of freedom (the freedom or practical capacity to do certain things) where the enabling agent, the state, takes upon itself coercive powers of, say, redistribution in order to achieve its objectives. But for Jo and liberals of his ilk that only underlined the need for a democratic constitution and rule of law to which even the state must submit and by which its potential abuses could be curbed. At the same time, he took issue with those – usually of the le� – who tended to homogenise the character of tyranny. Thus he did not equate the tyranny of economic privation, sometimes experienced by the underclasses in western capitalist systems, with the wanton physical coercion and denial of basic freedoms characteristic of many totalitarian regimes.29 The la�er he considered to be by far the more serious cases. A fi�h point to emerge from this discussion of ‘entitlement to voice’ is therefore that of rights. Rights are one of the defining features of ‘modern’ liberalism, though no less so – albeit more conditionally – in certain varieties of socialism, even conservatism. For most liberals, rights – individual ‘human’ rights – are inalienable, non-negotiable. Adherents realise that such a position can of course become untenable where the exercise of a right by one infringes that of another, be they different persons exercising the same rights or where different classes of rights are involved. Thus Jo usually accepted that rights were contingent upon wider social arrangements, a view quite consistent with his ‘social’ brand of liberalism. It is this social dimension – the glue of common values – that brings liberalism close to certain varieties of conservatism as well as socialism. Perhaps it is not surprising that at various times in his career he was seen as a conservative and as some sort of liberal socialist. But Jo’s idea of ‘common values’ always allowed for plurality, never embracing any narrow notion of ‘top down’ imperialism. His anti-racism, his support for immigrants and his championing of celebrated cases of injustice from that of Seretse Khama onwards, not to mention his long-standing involvement in the Minority Rights Group – all are testimony to the importance that he a�ached to the protection and promotion of human rights. If rights could not be accorded untrammelled dominion nor should they be casually laid aside or le� to the mercy of the executive. He found himself comfortable with the New Right project for redefining the role of the state from the 1970s but did not subscribe to what Vincent describes as its non-rights based notion of citizenship.30 Further definition may be given to Jo’s brand of liberalism by considering what kind of liberal he was not. He was not a utilitarian liberal, certainly not a utilitarian consequentialist. He did not subscribe to the view that results were everything: he was also concerned about the way the team played, so to speak – preferably with civilised style. Ends could not justify the means if the

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means were shabby, ignoble or barely above board. The need for a sheet anchor of morality was, as we have seen, one of his consistent themes. Of course, he would ask by ‘what means’ and to ‘what end’. Pragmatism was by no means foreign to him. Thus he never endorsed unbridled free trade between nations or an unfe�ered market economy. He thought that these conditions were, other things being equal, the most conducive to the common good and to the be�er society but must yield where the evidence suggested otherwise. His calculus was that of wholes, expressed qualitatively rather than the quantitative aggregation of individual gratifications that typify the crude utilitarian. His penchant for ‘quality’ in life was not itself elitist, though his Whiggish bearing sometimes gave that impression. In the tradition of Mill and Green what he wanted was be�er quality for all, an idealist notion that he never abandoned, though which he came to see as an increasingly distant prospect. In particular he came more and more to see the state as an agent of mild oppression or at any rate of inhibition, rather than as an instrument of progress. His anti-statism should not be confused with non-statism or with any prospectus for dissolution. He understood that liberal values would be threatened by a weak or impotent state as well as by a despotic one.31 He wanted the state to do less but still to do something – and to be effective in what it did. A precondition for that is the rule of law, the importance of which he was always at pains to uphold. To this classic liberal tenet, Jo’s brand of liberalism was calibrated in two ways. First it was important that the state should never be seized by sectional interests or held hostage to transitory fashion or base populism. Second – and in Gladstonian fashion – he believed passionately that all sections of the community should be and feel themselves to be within the pale of the constitution. During his so-called ‘dile�ante revolutionary’ phase, he invited criticism when he endorsed the use of direct, unconstitutional action by those who had good reason to feel excluded. Full inclusion meant more than the minimalist forms of legal equality seen as sufficient by some traditional liberals; for Jo there had to be a deeper, more qualitative dimension to democracy in which all citizens could feel engaged. Exclusion never justified violence, though he saw it as symptomatic of shortcomings in the body politic to which a�ention should be given and remedial action considered, whether the problems were those of Africa, Palestine or Northern Ireland. It should not be assumed that Jo Grimond held a set of seamless, rigorously coherent positions; still less that his u�erances sprang from a single philosophical tap-root. He was a�er all a workaday politician. More than most politicians, he reflected upon the deeper underpinnings that informed his views. Aside from his parliamentary and platform speeches, he wrote more extensively than almost any other politician of his age. He was his party’s most fertile ideas man at Westminster since David Lloyd George, perhaps since Gladstone. That is what he was – an ideas man, not a political philosopher or even the careful cra�er of detailed policy lines. His medium was less the hard face of the philosopher’s stone than the more porous

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texture of the political analyst, stretching himself across a wide canvas of practical issues as occasion demanded. In Isaiah Berlin’s terms (borrowed from the Greek poet Archilochus) he was a fox not a hedgehog – that is one who has a lot of ideas rather than one big idea.32 That is perhaps unfortunate. One big idea is memorable – for example, the revisionist thesis developed by Anthony Crosland in The Future of Socialism (1956). A lot of smaller ideas leave less of an impression though their cumulative effects may be considerable. And Jo did have a considerable effect upon liberals of his own and succeeding generations. Shortly before the Liberal Party voted to merge with the SDP in 1988 Paddy Ashdown said, ‘we have been living for too long off the intellectual capital of the Jo Grimond era.’33 That others failed to invest the intellectual capital that he provided is something for which Jo Grimond cannot be held responsible. He spat out more than enough ideas, from which others could and did find inspiration. Still, he might have done be�er to produce a major work, synthesising different elements of his thinking to produce a more sustained, coherent, finely grained treatise. He would then have been obliged to show where exactly he would draw the line between, say, the individual and the community, consumers and citizens, free markets and regulation, pluralism and social cohesion; between striking against the cake of custom and resisting what Walter Lippmann called the corrosive ‘acid of modernity’.34 He understood that a liberal society could be undone by abuse of some of the freedoms that it upheld, though he never explored precisely the outer limit of toleration consistent with the integrity of the values he cherished. It is a further cause for regret that he never developed a critical theory of human nature. He had the intellectual equipment, though perhaps lacked the sustained, single-minded application. Needless to say, these are tall orders for anyone, not least a busy politician. In any case, maybe Isaiah Berlin conveyed an element of truth in saying that ‘successful statesmen behave like artists who understand their medium’ but who ‘undertake courses of action or avoid others on grounds which they find difficult if not impossible to explain in clear theoretical terms.’35 Then again, Jo’s full-length volumes can scarcely be dismissed as journalistic cameos; they contained much from which a magnum opus might have been developed. What, then, of Jo Grimond’s achievements as a politician and as a figure on the stage of British politics over four decades? At the memorial service, Mark Bonham Carter said that Jo considered his career to have been a failure; that he was not quite the happy warrior that he appeared.36 Perhaps he had been suborned by Enoch Powell’s o�-quoted line that all political careers end in failure. Certainly he had his share of disappointments, while his achievements, if substantial, are less easily evaluated. Upon becoming leader in 1956, he did not save the Liberal Party from extinction, as has sometimes been said or implied. That task had been accomplished, partly by his predecessor Clement Davies, partly on account of no one in particular but by dint of an organisation that, however rickety, took the

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parties he was able to flex the more powerful political muscles, though in some ways Jo had sown where Wilson was to reap. In other ways Jo’s efforts bore fruit for others where he had seemed to have failed. His bid for a realignment of the radical, non-socialist le� was a bold and imaginative call, made by Jo at a time when the two main parties had a vice-like grip that showed li�le immediate sign of relenting. Harold Wilson skilfully used the small majority by which he was elected in October 1964 to marshal his troops, so thwarting any possibility of realignment. In the longer run, there were dividends in the shape of the Alliance and then the creation of the Liberal Democrats. Later still, a�er Jo’s death, the Liberal Democrats were to enjoy a numerical presence in Parliament – over fi�y – that would have been heralded with joy untold in Jo’s days as party leader. A succession of Liberal revivals during his leadership years failed to produce the decisive breakthrough. Never did he lead a group of more than twelve Liberal MPs; never did the party gain more than one eighth of the votes cast or more than 18.5 per cent of the votes per opposed candidate. For all the fanfare, the party made only three by-election gains during his ten years of leadership. Again, greater success was enjoyed by his immediate successor, Jeremy Thorpe, under whose leadership the Liberals went on to gain nearly a fi�h of the poll in February 1974 (23.6 per cent of the votes per opposed candidate) and six by-election victories. By then the party was in be�er shape to the extent that it was able to field candidates in most constituencies. To what extent the foundation for that success was laid during Jo’s leadership years is difficult to determine, as is the extent to which he as leader can be accorded credit. As with realignment, such is the difficulty of assessing the contribution upon subsequent events of one who was ahead of his time. The same could be said about broader policies such as devolution. Here was a cause for which Jo campaigned with unstinting tenacity throughout his career, though his enthusiasm was tempered in the end by the counter-demands of some of his constituents and by what he saw as the shortcomings of the proposals put forward by the Callaghan government. Again, devolution was achieved – but only a�er his death. It is difficult to claim that he had more than an indirect influence in the longer term – and then mainly by helping to keep a flame flickering when it might otherwise have been extinguished. Over realignment, devolution and Britain’s role in Europe, he advocated policies that were taken up by others. That he never laid his hand upon the tiller of ministerial office was largely a function of his having joined a party that had li�le realistic prospect of forming a government or, save for a fleeting moment of hope, any part of a coalition government. When first he pledged himself to the Liberal cause before the war he did so knowing that such would be the likely outcome, though naturally he hoped otherwise and worked to that end. In terms of career opportunity he might subsequently have transferred his allegiance to one or other of the two main parties. He did not do so because he was and remained a liberal, not a conservative or in any sense a socialist. That he was and

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It has been suggested that Jo was in some sense one of the intellectual progenitors of the Third Way project associated with Labour premier Tony Blair.40 As early as 1981, he had talked about the need for a third way between ‘capitalism and state socialism of the traditional kind’.41 It was implicit in many of the statements he had been making since first he had raised the prospect of realignment in the late 1950s. It is difficult to say how influential he was in tilling the intellectual soil from which Third Way thinking emerged as a central plank of ‘New Labour’ during the 1990s. He has received no such credit in statements made either by Blair or by the likes of Anthony Giddens (director of the London School of Economics, widely seen as Tony Blair’s academic guru and architect of the Third Way). The association between Jo and the Third Way is not in any case wholly compelling. The Third Way project has been described as providing a ‘safe passage between the Scylla of failed market liberalism and the Charibdis of failed socialism’.42 But that leaves a wide highway, embracing many and varied spirits. If, as the same author suggests, it is also an escape from drawing distinctions, then it would not have met Jo Grimond’s approval.43 The emphasis upon civil society, the moral fervour and the encouragement of a more active citizenry replete with ‘stakeholding’ he would have endorsed. He would have given a qualified welcome to the Blair government’s programme of constitutional reform and its willingness to challenge traditional modes in the delivery of public services. But he would have recoiled from its centralist tendencies, its regulatory proclivities and the consequential proliferation of bureaucracy. He would have been no less horrified by the so called ‘compensation culture’ and the ‘tick-box mentality’ of many state, semi-state and non-state agencies, though such characteristics are by no means exclusive to and may not be strictly necessary to the Third Way project. It has been said that power, while corrupting, can also be revealing.44 The man or woman possessed of power has no reason to fake: the naked self, the inner traits may be allowed expression with impunity. The opposite may also be true. The one who has no power, who never came close to power has no need for pretence, either. The charades, the machinations, the deceits that are demanded in the pursuit of power become redundant. It is going too far to say, as did Charles Moore, that Jo Grimond was too good to be prime minister.45 But, for all his regrets, it was in a way his good fortune never to have held ministerial office. Thus he was spared entanglement in the grubby realities of power politics that are an inevitable feature of office – realities that he would have found uncomfortable if not demeaning. Instead he was able to rise above the smoke-filled rooms to remain a man of integrity, so giving politics a good name. That he gave politics a good name is not simply a consequence of his never having held ministerial office or wielded political power. It is a testimony to his persona – those qualities that were so amply expressed in the obituary notices following his death. It is partly upon those qualities and the inspiration that

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others drew from those qualities that his legacy rests. If he never held office and lacked power, he had influence, more so than he knew and across a broader range than is usual for a party politician. He was much more than a party politician. Party politics was only one aspect of his life’s work as a public figure, albeit the one that gave him the vital public platform. It is within the skein of liberalism that his legacy will endure – mainly though by no means exclusively among the ranks of the Liberal Democrats. He was a�er all a liberal lion.

Notes

Preface and Acknowledgements 1. 2. 3. 4.

5. 6.

7.

Benjamin Disraeli, Contarini Fleming: A Psychological Romance (London: Peter Davies, 1927; first published 1832), 110. Jo Grimond, Memoirs (London: Heinemann, 1979), 90. Ivor Crewe and Anthony King, SDP: The Birth, Life and Death of the Social Democratic Party (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995) 288. Two of his successors as leaders of the Liberal Party/Liberal Democrats have testified to his having brought them into liberal politics; see David Steel, The Guardian, 25 October 1993; Paddy Ashdown, The Ashdown Diaries, Vol. I (1988–97) (London: Allen Lane, 2000), 12. Jean Anderson et al, Jo and Laura Grimond: A Selection of Memories and Photographs, 1945–94 (Kirkwall: Orkney Liberal Democrats, 2000). At the meeting, which took place on 28 February 2000, Jo Grimond received 15 votes, CampbellBannerman, Asquith and Lloyd George five each with six further votes spread among three other leaders. Lloyd George may have been handicapped by his not having become the official leader until 1926, four years a�er his last days in Downing Street. See David Cloke, ‘Leaders good and bad’, Journal of Liberal Democrat History, Issue 27 (Summer 2000), 20–2. Michael McManus, Jo Grimond: Towards the Sound of Gunfire (Edinburgh: Birlinn, 2001).

Chapter 1: First Light 1. 2. 3. 4.

5. 6. 7.

Lecture at St Michael’s, Linlithgow, 2 February 1972. He objected to the term devolution, since it implied something handed down from above. See HC Debs, 3 February 1975, Col. 983. HC Debs, 15 February 1989, Col. 196. His birth was initially registered as Joseph David, which was amended a few months later. For this information and other recorded details of the Grimond family, I am indebted to Margeorie Mekie and Diane Baptie. National Monuments Record of Scotland, Dundee on Record: Images of the Past (London: HMSO, 1992), 25–6. Jo Grimond, Memoirs (London: Heinemann, 1979), 25. A.M. Carstairs, ‘The nature and diversification of employment in Dundee in the twentieth century’, in S.J. Jones (ed.), Dundee and District (Dundee: Dundee Local Executive Commi�ee of the British Association, 1968), 319.

218 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33.

34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47.

Liberal Lion B. Lenman, C. Lythe and E. Gauldie, Dundee and its Textile Industry (Dundee: Abertary Historical Society, 1969), 33–40. The Times, 4 June 1929. Grimond, Memoirs, 24. National Monuments Record of Scotland, Dundee on Record, 27. Grimond interviewed by Keith Kyle for the TV programme The Twentieth Century Remembered, Part 1, BBC1, 10 September 1984. HL Debs, 16 February 1986, Col. 1322. Johnny Grimond interview with author, 6 March 2003. ‘Men who breakfast out’, Times Education Supplement, 8 February 1980, 25. Grimond, The St Andrews of Jo Grimond (Stroud: Alan Su�on, 1992), 55. Shortly a�er entering Parliament, Corbe� became a Liberal Unionist but later resigned the Unionist whip in defence of free trade, rejoining the Liberal Party in 1910. Grimond, Memoirs, 60. Preparatory Schools’ Yearbook, 1934, 129. Grimond, Memoirs, 31. Ibid. 41. Tim Card, Eton Renewed: A History From 1860 To The Present Day (London: John Murray, 1994), 181. William Douglas-Home, Mr Home, Pronounced Hume (Newton Abbot: Readers’ Union, 1980), 46. Brian Johnston, It’s A Funny Game (London: W.H. Allen, 1978), 25–6. The programme was recorded in Manchester in September 1974 and screened for BBC1 (North) on 1 April 1975. Geoffrey Frost, Anthony Fisher: Champion of Liberty (London: Profile Books, 2002), 14–15. H.G. Nicholas, The British General Election of 1950 (London: Macmillan, 1951), 46. The Times Guide to the House of Commons 1979. Michael Astor, Tribal Feeling (London: John Murray, 1963), 92. Card, Eton Renewed, 177. Grimond, Memoirs, 46–7. Card, Eton Renewed, 166. Oxford University, Oxford University Calendar (1934), 290. Peter Hinchliff, ‘Benjamin Jowe� and the Church of England: or “why really great men are never clergymen”’, in John Prest (ed.), Balliol Studies (London: Leopard’s Head Press, 1982), 125–58. See J.A. Spender and Cyril Asquith, Life of Henry Herbert Asquith, Lord Oxford and Asquith, 2 vols. (London: Hutchinson, 1932), i. 31–6. Michael Freeden, The New Liberalism: An Ideology of Social Reform (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978), 55–60, 66–75. T.H. Green, ‘Popular philosophy in its relation to life’, in Works of Thomas Hill Green, ed. Peter Nicholson (Bristol: Thoemmes Press, 1997), iii. 122. Green, ‘Lectures on the philosophy of Kant’, in Works of Thomas Hill Green, ii, esp. 110–55. Ibid. 153. Green, ‘The philosophy of Aristotle’, in Works of Thomas Hill Green, iii, 86–7. Green, ‘The sense of freedom in morality’, in Works of Thomas Hill Green, ii, 329. See Grimond, ‘Liberalism and empiricism’, World Liberalism, Vol. 2, No. 3 (Autumn 1952), 1–8. Grimond, ‘Principles of liberalism’, Political Quarterly, Vol. 24 (1953), 237. Richard Bellamy, Rethinking Liberalism (London: Pinter, 2000), 3–21. Green, ‘The witness of God’, in Works of Thomas Hill Green, iii, 230–52. Isaiah Berlin, Two Concepts of Liberty, Inaugural lecture (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1958). Green, ‘The sense of freedom in morality’, 317. Green, ‘Liberal legislation and freedom of contract’, in Works of Thomas Hill Green, iii, 372.

Notes to Chapter 2 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71. 72. 73. 74. 75.

219

L.T. Hobhouse, Liberalism (London: Williams and Norgate, 1911), 48. Green, ‘Liberal legislation and freedom of contract’, 372. George H. Sabine, A History of Political Theory (3rd edn., London: George H. Harrap, 1963), 736–9. Peter Clarke, Liberals and Social Democrats (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978), 14–27. See Ma� Carter, T.H. Green and the Development of Ethical Socialism (Exeter: Imperial Academic, 2003). Melvin Richter, The Politics of Conscience: T.H. Green and his Age (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1964). Grimond, ‘A book in my life’, The Spectator, 16 January 1982, 23. Conrad Russell, The Intelligent Person’s Guide to Liberalism (London: Duckworth, 1999), 83. Geoffrey Sell, ‘Liberal revival: Jo Grimond and the politics of British liberalism 1956–67’, unpublished Ph.D. thesis (University of London, 1996), 45. See James Meadowcro�, ‘The origins of community politics: new liberalism, Grimond and the counter-culture’, Journal of Liberal Democrat History, Issue 28 (Autumn 2000), 3–9. Roy Jenkins, A Life at the Centre (London: Macmillan, 1991), 29. T.H. Green, Lectures on the Principles of Political Obligation, ed. A.D. Lindsay (London: Longmans, 1941). Grimond, ‘My Oxford’, in Ann Thwaite (ed.), My Oxford (London: Robson Books, 1977), 111. Grimond, ‘A book in my life’. Grimond, ‘My Oxford’, 124. Grimond, ‘My idea of a university’, The Spectator, 6 August 1983, 13–15. Grimond, ‘My Oxford’, 123. Bernard Fergusson, The Trumpet in the Hall, 1930–58 (London: Collins, 1970), 12. Grimond, ‘My Oxford’, 121. Philip Toynbee, Friends Apart: A Memoir of Esmond Romiley and Jasper Ridley in the Thirties (2nd edn., London: Sidgwick and Jackson, 1980), 50. Ibid. 51. Ibid. 48. Lionel Bre�, Our Selves Unknown: An Autobiography (London: Victor Gollancz, 1985), 55. See Andrew Billen and Mark Skipworth (eds.), Oxford Type: The Best of Isis (London: Robson, 1984), 11. The quote is probably from the Isis ‘idol’, one of the humorous pen-portraits typically wri�en by new editors about their predecessors; see Billen and Skipworth, Oxford Type, 12. Grimond, ‘My Oxford’, 116. Grimond, Memoirs, 64. Edward Heath, The Course of My Life: My Autobiography (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1998), 28. Heath was at Balliol between 1935 and 1938.

Chapter 2: Into Parliament 1.

2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

Forty-nine were Conservatives, twenty-seven Labour, five Liberal and five Ulster Unionists – figures derived from The Times Guide to the House of Commons 1950; M. Stenton and S. Lees (eds.), Who’s Who of British MPs, Vol. IV: 1945–79 (Brighton: Harvester, 1981). Middle Temple, Register of Admissions, Vol. 3: 1910–44, 947. Grimond, Memoirs, 67. Grimond interviewed by Keith Kyle for the TV programme The Twentieth Century Remembered, Part 1, BBC1, 10 September 1984. Grimond, Memoirs, 66. B. Johnston, Le�ers Home, 1926–45, ed. Harry Johnston (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1998), 231.

220 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14.

15. 16. 17.

18.

19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36.

37. 38.

Liberal Lion Manchester Guardian, 16 November 1935. Grimond, ‘Asquith’, in Herbert van Thal (ed.), The Prime Ministers: Volume the Second: From Lord John Russell to Edward Heath (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1975), 198. Ibid. Colin Clifford, The Asquiths (London: John Murray, 2002), 477. Victor Bonham-Carter, In a Liberal Tradition: A Social Biography, 1700–1950 (London: Constable, 1960). Violet Bonham Carter, Winston Churchill As I Knew Him (London: Eyre and Spo�iswoode/ Collins, 1965). Grimond, Memoirs, 86–7. Le�er dated 17 February 1920 to Gilbert Murray. See Champion Redoubtable: The Diaries and Le�ers of Violet Bonham Carter 1914–45, ed. Mark Po�le (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1998), 115. Sinclair was secretary of state for Scotland from August 1931 to September 1932, for the last ten months of which he was a member of the cabinet. Gerard de Groot, Liberal Crusader: The Life of Sir Archibald Sinclair (London: Hurst, 1993). Sinclair was secretary of state for air from May 1940 until May 1945. Having made one unsuccessful a�empt (1950) to recapture the seat he lost a�er the war, he was elevated to the peerage in 1952, becoming Viscount Thurso. The Bonham Carters were resident in Gloucester Square from the autumn of 1935 and, a�er a short interruption, continued to live there even a�er it had been converted into flats in 1952, then becoming 21 Hyde Park Square. Le�er dated 27 November 1937 to her elder brother Beb Asquith – see Champion Redoubtable, 389; original underlining. Ibid. Toynbee, Friends Apart, 37–46. See Elizabeth Sidney’s obituary for Laura in The Independent, 17 February 1994. For a full list of guests, see The Times, 1 June 1938. The Journals of Woodrow Wya�, ed. Sarah Curtis (London: Macmillan, 1998), i. 576. John Stevenson and Chris Cook, The Slump: Politics and Society During the Depression (London: Jonathan Cape, 1977), chapters 1–3. Richard S. Grayson, Liberals, International Relations and Appeasement: The Liberal Party, 1919–39 (London: Frank Cass, 2001), 142. Ibid. 143. Le�er to Sinclair, undated, c. 20 October 1937, Thurso papers, THRS II, Box 34/2. Sinclair to Grimond, 25 October 1937, Thurso papers, THRS II, Box 34/2. Sell, ‘Liberal revival’, 40. For this piece of information I am indebted to Edward Wheeler (interviewed 15 July 2003). Grimond, Memoirs, 90. Lord (Emlyn) Hooson, interview with author, 29 April 2003. Hooson was recounting an impression conveyed to him by one of Jo’s former army colleagues. Le�er dated 25 April 1943 to Violet Bonham Carter; see Champion Redoubtable, 268. Bre�, Our Selves Unknown, 91. It was represented by a Conservative (T. Balfour) between 1835 and 1837; and from 1900 to 1906 by a Liberal Unionist/Independent, J.C. Wason who then accepted the official Liberal whip and continued to represent the constituency until his death in 1921. Robert Rhodes James, Bob Boothby: A Portrait (London: John Curtis/Hodder and Stoughton, 1991), 50. Sir Percy Harris, Forty Years In and Out of Parliament (London: Andrew Melrose, n.d., c. 1947), 183. Since 1935, Harris had been the chief whip and, from 1940, deputy chairman of the party, taking in the responsibility for the Liberal Central Organisation.

222 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19.

20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45.

46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51.

Liberal Lion Ibid., Cols. 615–19. HC Debs, 7 March 1950, Col. 164. The Times, 11 March 1950. Manchester Guardian, 11 March 1950. Bill Rodgers, Fourth Among Equals (London: Politico’s, 2000), 228. Nigel Nicolson, le�er to author, 8 February 2003. Nicolson was MP for East Bournemouth and Christchurch, 1952–1959. There was nothing exceptional about there being only two MPs present at such meetings; see Jorgen Sco� Rasmussen, The Liberal Party: A Study of Retrenchment and Revival (London: Constable, 1965), 82. Daily Telegraph, 10 March 1950. Home, Mr Home, Pronounced Hume, 16–17. Colin R. Coote, The Other Club (London: Sidgwick and Jackson, 1971), 20. Ibid. 104. Patrick Gordon Walker: Political Diaries, 1932–71, ed. Robert Pearce (London: Historians’ Press, 1991), 27. Ronald Hyam, ‘The political consequences of Seretse Khama: Britain, the Bangwato and South Africa, 1948–52’, Historical Journal, Vol. 29 (1986), 946. David Goldsworthy, Colonial Issues in British Politics, 1945–61 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971), 275. E. Dell, The Schuman Plan and the British Abdication of Leadership in Europe (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), 13–16. G.W. Jones and B. Donoughue, Herbert Morrison: Portrait of a Politician (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1973), 481. HC Debs, 26 June 1950, Col. 1928. Ibid., Col. 1931. Ibid., Col. 1930. Ibid., Col. 1909. Ibid., Col. 1940. Ibid., Col. 1941. HC Debs, 27 June 1950, Cols. 2944–5. John Lewis Gaddis, We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 75. N. Friedman, The Fi�y Year War: Conflict and Strategy in the Cold War (London: Chatham, 2000), 154–5. HC Debs, 12 February 1951, Col. 75. HC Debs, 25 June 1952, Col. 2284. HC Debs, 26 February 1952, Cols. 1016–17. HC Debs, 12 February 1951, Cols. 73–4. Ibid., Col. 74. Ibid., Col. 76. Ibid., Col. 75. Not until 1970 was the Maoist regime admi�ed to the Security Council as representing China. Even then, the USA sought, unsuccessfully, to retain Taiwan’s presence in a twin-track arrangement. Noel Annan, Our Age: Portrait of a Generation (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1990), 224. Robert Cecil, A Divided Life: A Biography of Donald Maclean (London: Bodley Head, 1988), 41. Andrew Boyle, Climate of Treason: Five Who Spied for Russia (London: Hutchinson, 1979), 339. HC Debs, 31 July 1952, Cols. 1670–1. HC Debs, 28 November 1952, Col. 976. Ibid., Col. 974.

Notes to Chapter 4 52.

53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71. 72. 73. 74. 75. 76. 77. 78. 79. 80. 81. 82. 83. 84. 85.

223

Laypersons were introduced in 1964, along with the first independent chairman, Lord Devlin. For the genesis and early history, see H. Phillip Levy, The Press Council: History, Procedure and Cases (London: Macmillan, 1967). Town and Country, BBC Sco�ish Home Service, 23 February 1960; tape held in Orkney County Library archive, D31/TR/70. ‘Islands and highlands’, in J. Critchley (ed.), Britain: A View From Westminster (London: Blandford, 1986), 17. HC Debs, 28 July 1952, Col. 1152. Ibid. HC Debs, 23 March 1953, Col. 553. ‘Orkney and Shetland v. the PIB’, New Society, 23 May 1968, 757. Liv Kjorsvik Schei, The Islands of Orkney (Grantown on Sprey, Moray: Colin Baxter Photography, 2000), 12. HC Debs, 27 October 1953, Cols. 2679–80. HC Debs, 15 November 1954, Col. 48. HC Debs, 28 July 1952, Col. 1152. Ibid., Col. 1150. HC Debs, 14 December 1953, Col. 59. Hugh Marwick, Orkney (London: Robert Hale, 1951), 218. Eric Linklater, Orkney and Shetland: An Historical, Social and Scenic Survey, revised by James R. Nicolson (4th edn., London: Robert Hale, 1984), 266. Douglas Willis, The Story of Cro�ing in Scotland (Edinburgh: John Donald, 1991), 130. HC Debs, 28 April 1952, Col. 1184. Ibid., Col. 1189. Liv Kjorsvik Schei and Gunnie Moberg, The Shetland Story (London: Batsford, 1988), 253. Linklater, Orkney and Shetland, 248. Willis, The Story of Cro�ing, 122–3. HC Debs, 27 January 1955, Col. 458. Ibid., Col. 459. HC Debs, 20 May 1954, Cols. 2237–42. Ibid., Col. 2238. Hamish Haswell-Smith, The Sco�ish Islands: A Comprehensive Guide to Every Sco�ish Island (Edinburgh: Canongate, 2001), 381. Schei, The Islands of Orkney, 9. Gerry Meyer, interview with author, 14 May 2003. Meyer was editor of The Orcadian between 1947 and 1983. Marwick, Orkney, 247. F.T. Wainwright (ed.), The Northern Isles (Edinburgh: Thomas Nelson, 1962), 1. David Partner, interview with author, 13 May 2003. Linklater, Orkney and Shetland, 184. Jackie Robertson, interview with author, 14 May 2003. Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust, Trusting in Change: A Story of Reform (www.jrrt.org.uk/history. htm), 4.

Chapter 4: Whip Hand 1. 2. 3. 4.

L. Lipson, ‘The two party system in British politics’, American Political Science Review, Vol. 47 (1953), 353. Davies le�er to Gilbert Murray, 15 November 1951, Clement Davies papers, J/3/67. Grimond, Memoirs, 148. ‘Grimond’s modesty’, The Listener, 18 October 1979, 532.

224 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28.

29. 30. 31. 32.

33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46.

Liberal Lion Mervyn Jones, A Radical Life: The Biography of Megan Lloyd George, 1902–66 (London: Hutchinson, 1991), 213–14. Alun Wyburn-Powell, Clement Davies: Liberal Leader (London: Politico’s, 2003), 195. The Times, 15 April 1950. Davies le�er to Gilbert Murray, 11 May 1950, Clement Davies papers, J/3/26. Grimond to Lord Moynihan, 28 April 1950, Samuel papers, A/130 (19). Ibid. Daily Telegraph, 13 February 1950. HC Debs, 9 March 1950, Col. 592. Manchester Guardian, 1 May 1950. The Times, 12 June 1950. Anthony Howard, RAB: The Life of R.A. Butler (London: Jonathan Cape, 1987), 169–71. Diary entry for 18 April 1950, Daring to Hope, ed. Mark Po�le, 88. Ibid. 104. Violet Bonham Carter le�ers to Clement Davies, 10 and 12 January 1951; Davies to Bonham Carter, 11 January 1951, Davies papers, J/3/51, 53 and 54. J. Graham Jones, ‘Churchill, Clement Davies and the Ministry of Education’, Journal of Liberal Democrat History, No. 27 (Summer 2000), 6–14. Violet Bonham Carter to Clement Davies, 2 October 1956, Davies papers, J/3/83. Jones, A Radical Life, 235–50. P. Self and H. Storing, The State and the Farmer (London: Allen and Unwin, 1962), 193–207. Manchester Guardian, 11 April 1953. Ibid. Manchester Guardian, 23 April 1954. Edward Wheeler, interview with author, 15 July 2003. Manchester Guardian, 17 May 1952. For a discussion of Dodds’ philosophy and of the party ba�les over co-ownership, see Donald Wade and Desmond Banks, The Political Insight of Ellio� Dodds (Leeds: Ellio� Dodds Trust, 1977), 36–9. Manchester Guardian, 24 April 1954. Paul Derrick, ‘The debate on co-ownership’, Contemporary Review, No. 216 (June 1970), 314–20. The Guardian, 31 July 1971. HC Debs, 7 November 1950, Cols. 894–9 (Division 30). The other five Liberals, including party leader Clement Davies, voted with the Conservatives. See also Rasmussen, The Liberal Party, 155–6. HC Debs, 11 June 1951, Cols. 1814–18 (Division 110). HC Debs, 12 June 1951, Cols. 2058–62 (Division 123); and 13 June 1951, Cols. 2347–51 (Division 130). Catherine Fisher, interview with author, 26 March 2003. Roger Fulford, The Liberal Case (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1959), 10. Emlyn Hooson, ‘An underestimated Welshman and politician’, Journal of Liberal Democrat History, Issue 24 (Autumn 1999), 9. HC Debs, 3 December 1953, Col. 1350. Ibid., Col. 1351. Ibid. HC Debs, 8 May 1952, Col. 674. HC Debs, 26 June 1952, Col. 2501. HC Debs, 28 July 1953, Col. 1073. HC Debs, 3 May 1954, Col. 69. Ibid., Cols. 69–71. HC Debs, 26 June 1952, Col. 2502.

Notes to Chapter 5 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71. 72. 73. 74. 75. 76. 77.

225

Ibid., Cols. 2502–03. HC Debs, 25 May 1954, Col. 318. HC Debs, 27 April 1953, Col. 1850. HC Debs, 12 July 1954, Col. 69. HC Debs, 23 June 1953, Col. 1714. Speech at Newton Liberal Hall, Poole, Dorset, 25 November 1955. HC Debs, 23 March 1955, Col. 2143. Ibid. HC Debs, 10 November 1952, Col. 648. HC Debs, 23 February 1955, Col. 1299. HC Debs, 11 March 1953, Col. 1391. HC Debs, 10 November 1952, Col. 647. Robert Bacon and Walter Eltis, Britain’s Economic Problem: Too Few Producers (London: Macmillan, 1976). HC Debs, 7 December 1954, Col. 838. HC Debs, 25 March 1955, Col. 2468. Speech at Rochdale Town Hall, 26 May 1955. Speech at a Baptist school in Oldham, 21 April 1951. HC Debs, 12 July 1954, Col. 67. See H.H. Wilson, Pressure Group: The Campaign for Commercial Television (London: Secker and Warburg, 1961). HC Debs, 14 December 1953, Col. 148. HC Debs, 1 June 1954, Col. 1152. HC Debs, 27 May 1954, Col. 654. HC Debs, 14 December 1953, Col. 150. Ibid., Col. 149. Ibid., Col. 152. On both occasions, Arlo� unsuccessfully contested the constituency of Epping, Essex. Patrick Gordon Walker, ed. Robert Pearce, 202–11. Hopkin Morris faced opposition from a Welsh nationalist as well as a Labour candidate in Carmarthen. Orkney Herald, 31 May 1955. Speech to Liberal Party Assembly, Pier Pavilion, Llandudno, 16 April 1955. Manchester Guardian, 18 May 1955.

Chapter 5: Leader 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.

Eden succeeded Churchill in April 1955. For details of his early tribulations, see David Du�on, Anthony Eden: A Life and Reputation (London: Arnold, 1997), 273–5. Stephen Haseler, The Gaitskellites: Revisionism in the Labour Party, 1951–64 (London: Macmillan, 1969). Nicholas Henderson, Old Friends and Modern Instances (London: Profile, 2001), 91. Dick Leonard, email to author, 12 June 2003. Leonard was Crosland’s PPS between 1970 and 1974, having had some connections with him during the 1950s and 1960s. G. Lichtheim, ‘New right’, New Statesman, 30 November 1962, 790–2. David Reisman, Anthony Crosland: The Mixed Economy (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1997), 77. For the background and conduct of the crisis, see Keith Kyle, Suez: Britain’s End of Empire in the Middle East (London: I.B.Tauris, 2003). HC Debs, 29 July 1954, Col. 785. Ibid., Cols. 782–4. HC Debs, 25 July 1956, Col. 412.

Notes to Chapter 5 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62.

63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71. 72. 73. 74. 75. 76. 77. 78. 79. 80.

81. 82. 83. 84. 85. 86. 87. 88. 89. 90.

227

Ibid. 4–5. Ibid. 8. George Watson, interview with author, 2 May 2000. Grimond, ‘The Reform of Parliament’, in G. Watson (ed.), The Unservile State (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1957), 51. Ibid. 52. Ibid. 50. See Herbert Morrison, Government and Parliament: A Survey From the Inside (3rd edn., London: Oxford University Press, 1964), 199–205. HC Debs, 13 February 1958, Cols. 703–8 (Division 40). HC Debs, 25 March 1958, Cols. 324–25. Ibid., Col. 324. HC Debs, 6 February 1957, Col. 498. Ibid., Cols. 497–9. Labour abolitionists who voted against the Bill included Roy Jenkins, Tony Benn, Sidney Silverman, Hugh Gaitskell and Patrick Gordon Walker. Ironically, a number of Conservative abolitionists crucially gave their support to the compromise, so ensuring that the proposals reached the statute book; see J.B. Christoph, Capital Punishment and British Politics: The British Movement to Abolish the Death Penalty, 1945–57 (London: Allen and Unwin, 1962), 162–4. HC Debs, 29 January 1959, Col. 1313. Ibid., Col. 1312. Ibid., Col. 1315. Ibid., Col. 1271. Ibid., Col. 1314. See le�er dated 6 March 1958 to Grimond from Charles Monteith of Faber and Faber, Grimond papers, Box 12, File 1. Grimond, The Liberal Future (London: Faber and Faber, 1959), 181. Ibid. 182. Ibid. Ibid. 32, 24. Ibid. 13. Ibid. 34. Ibid. 35. Ibid. 15. Ibid. 100. It had been brought into common use by Labour’s Douglas Jay in his classic The Socialist Case, first published in 1937. Grimond, The Liberal Future, 31. Ibid. 15. Ibid. 184. The highly influential late nineteenth and early twentieth-century Liberal Unionist constitutional lawyer A.V. Dicey had emphasised the absolute, exclusive sovereignty of Parliament. Grimond, The Liberal Future, 120–8. Ibid. 131. Ibid. 132. Ibid. 133. Ibid. 55. Ibid. 29. Ibid. 43. Ibid. 184. Ibid. 19–20. Ibid. 88.

228 91. 92.

Liberal Lion The Times, 10 April 1959. ‘London diary’, New Statesman, 18 April 1959, 535.

Chapter 6: Internationalist 1. 2.

3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38.

Anthony King (ed.), British Political Opinion, 1937–2000: The Gallup Polls (London: Politico’s, 2001), 186. Macmillan made the speech to a Conservative rally at Bedford on 21 July 1957. For his own account and excerpts, see Harold Macmillan, Riding the Storm, 1956–59 (London: Macmillan, 1971), 320–21. Grimond, Liberal Future, 107–9. The Sun, 23 February 1967. J. Trenaman and B. McQuail, Television and the Political Image (London: Methuen, 1961), 13. HC Debs, 25 October 1955, Col. 26; 2 November 1955, Col. 1007; 30 November 1955, Cols. 2382– 8. Kennedy, On My Way to the Club, 246–9. Robin Day, Grand Inquisitor: Memoirs (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1989), 181. ‘Westminster commentary’ by ‘Taper’ (Bernard Levin), The Spectator, 28 August 1959, 245–6. People Count (London: Liberal Publications Department, 1959). The Times, 16 September 1959. D.E. Butler and Richard Rose, The British General Election of 1959 (London: Frank Cass, 1960), 55. The Orcadian, 15 October 1959. Diary entry for 16 September 1959, Daring to Hope, ed. Po�le, 211–12. Butler and Rose, The British General Election of 1959, 89. It was transmi�ed on 22 September 1959. Ibid. 91. The Guardian, 6 October 1959. Butler and Rose, The British General Election of 1959, 89. Norman Shrapnel, The Performers (London: Constable, 1978), 201. The Guardian, 6 October 1959. Ibid. Lord (Trevor) Smith, interview with author, 24 June 2003. The Times, 16 September 1959. The Times, 6 October 1959. Ibid. The Times Guide to the House of Commons, 1959, 23. ‘Liberals rise in the west’, The Economist, 3 October 1959, 24. Butler and Rose, The British General Election of 1959, 233–4. Ibid. 33. The Times, 12 October 1959. Ibid. David Green, Liberal agent for High Peak, le�er to The Times, 16 October 1959. Grimond, The New Liberal Democracy (London: Liberal Publications Department, 1958), 16. The Times, 6 June 1958. Peter Joyce, Realignment of the Le�?: A History of Relationships Between the Liberal Democrat and Labour Parties (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1999), 129. See Mark Abrams, Richard Rose and Rita Hinden, Must Labour Lose? (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1960). The Times, 12 October 1959. Ibid.

Notes to Chapter 6 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71. 72. 73. 74. 75. 76. 77. 78. 79.

80.

229

The Times, 19 October 1959. ‘Liberalism and nationalisation’, New Statesman, 24 October 1959, 530. Ibid. ‘Liberal revival?’, New Statesman, 17 October 1959, 494. Alastair Hetherington, notes from a meeting with Grimond, 12 November 1959, Hetherington transcripts, 1/2. Roy Jenkins, ‘British Labor divided’, Foreign Affairs, Vol. 38 (1959–1960), 488–9. Adrian Slade interview with Jenkins; see Journal of Liberal Democrat History, Issue 38 (Spring 2003), 7. Grimond, Liberal Future, 154. HC Debs, 14 December 1961, Col. 680. Speech to the Liberal Summer School, Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, 2 August 1959. Ibid. HC Debs, 13 December 1960, Col. 277. Grimond, Liberal Future, 174. Executive minute, 18 February 1957, Movement for Colonial Freedom papers, Box 1, File T2. HC Debs, 14 March 1957, Col. 1391. Robert Holland, Britain and the Revolt in Cyprus, 1954–59 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998), 330. HC Debs, 25 June 1957, Col. 22. Speech at the Shire Hall, Chelmsford, 16 May 1958. HC Debs, 8 December 1958, Col. 1309. Grimond, Liberal Future, 173. R. Hyam, ‘The geopolitical origins of the Central African Federation’, Historical Journal, Vol. 30 (1) (1987), 145. D. Judd, Empire (London: Fontana, 1997), 356. Since 1923, Southern Rhodesia had enjoyed special status as a self-governing colony, in preference to membership of the Union of South Africa. Manchester Guardian, 17 May 1952. HC Debs, 3 March 1959, Col. 319. Ibid., Col. 321. HC Debs, 28 January 1960, Col. 370. For the full text, see Harold Macmillan, Pointing the Way, 1959–61 (London: Macmillan, 1972), 473–82. HC Debs, 22 February 1961, Cols. 534–7. Le�er dated 8 November 1960 to Grimond from Jane Symonds, secretary to the Africa Bureau, Africa Bureau papers, Box 18, File 2 (55). HC Debs, 16 February 1960, Col. 1140. Ibid. HC Debs, 28 March 1960, Col. 955. HC Debs, 6 April 1960, Col. 375. HC Debs, 8 April 1960, Col. 790. Ibid. Col. 792. The Guardian, 3 October 1960. The march took place on 19 March 1961. HC Debs, 21 March 1961, Col. 205. Manchester Guardian, 29 September 1956. For a detailed discussion on the development of the Liberal Party’s position on European integration, see Muriel Burton, ‘The making of Liberal Party policy, 1945–80’, unpublished Ph.D. thesis (University of Reading, 1983), 230–322. Martin Schaad, ‘Plan G – a “counterblast”? British policy towards the Messina countries, 1956’, Contemporary European History, Vol. 7 (1998), 39–60.

230 81.

82. 83. 84. 85. 86. 87.

88. 89. 90. 91. 92. 93. 94. 95. 96. 97. 98. 99. 100. 101. 102. 103. 104. 105. 106.

Liberal Lion The seven EFTA countries were the UK, Austria, Denmark, Norway, Portugal, Sweden and Switzerland; those of the EEC comprised France, Germany and Italy, together with the ‘Benelux’ countries (Belgium, Holland and Luxembourg). Liberal News, 1 February 1957. Alan Bu� Philip, ‘The Liberals and Europe’, in V. Bogdanor (ed.), Liberal Party Politics (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983), 221. HC Debs, 9 June 1959, Col. 801. HC Debs, 29 October 1959, Col. 477. HC Debs, 30 May 1960, Col. 1083. Sco� Clarke and John Curtis, ‘The Liberal Democrats and European integration’, in David Baker and David Seawright (eds.), Britain For and Against Europe: British Politics and the Question of European Integration (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998), 106. D. Butler and U. Kitzinger, The 1975 Referendum (2nd edn., Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1996), 271. HC Debs, 14 April 1960, Cols. 1524–8. HC Debs, 29 October 1959, Col. 475. Ibid. Ibid., Col. 471. Ibid. Ibid., Col. 476. HC Debs, 14 April 1960, Col. 1522. HC Debs, 30 June 1961, Col. 882. Speech at Brae, 26 May 1961. HC Debs, 10 April 1962, Col. 1194. HC Debs, 6 June 1962, Col. 561. HC Debs, 20 December 1957, Col. 835. Grimond, Liberal Future, 169. Ibid. 159. Ibid. Ibid. 157–8. Ibid. 165. Ibid. 162.

Chapter 7: Orpington Man 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12.

Grimond, The Liberal Future, 158. Alastair Horne, Macmillan, Vol. 2: 1957–86 (London: Macmillan, 1989), 55–7. HC Debs, 30 May 1960, Cols. 1081–2. HC Debs, 29 October 1959, Col. 473. Ibid. HC Debs, 13 December 1960, Col. 275. Malcolm Baines, ‘The survival of the British Liberal Party, 1932–59’, unpublished Ph.D. thesis (University of Oxford, 1989), 118. Rasmussen, The Liberal Party, 123–8. Pardoe, interview with author, 18 March 2003. Pardoe was Liberal MP for North Cornwall 1966–1979. The Guardian, 29 December 1960. The accident occurred the previous Friday evening, 23 December. See Lorna Arnold, Britain and the H-Bomb (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2001), Chapter 10. Rasmussen, The Liberal Party, 152. Earlier in the year, Lort-Phillips resigned the position he had held for three years as party treasurer, later joining the Labour Party.

Notes to Chapter 7 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34.

35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54.

55.

231

William Wallace, ‘Survival and Revival’, in V. Bogdanor (ed.), Liberal Party Politics (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983), 49. HC Debs, 28 February 1961, Col. 1444. HC Debs, 13 December 1960, Col. 272. Speech at Kerriemuir, 4 July 1959. Speech at Chippenham, 13 November 1962. The Guardian, 1 October 1960. HC Debs, 4 November 1960, Col. 571. HC Debs, 30 January 1963, Col. 998. HC Debs, 13 April 1960, Col. 1271. HC Debs, 22 June 1960, Col. 400. See his question in the House to Macmillan: HC Debs, 8 November 1960, Col. 830. Lorna Arnold, Windscale 1957: Anatomy of a Nuclear Accident (London: Macmillan, 1992). HC Debs, 8 November 1957, Col. 467. HC Debs, 12 May 1959, Col. 131. HC Debs, 30 January 1963, Col. 1001. HC Debs, 28 February 1961, Col. 1447. HC Debs, 9 March 1960, Col. 514. HC Debs, 5 July 1961, Col. 1476. Speech at Central Hall, Westminster, 2 March 1961. Speech in Bolton, 14 November 1960. Michael Shanks, The Stagnant Society: A Warning (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1961), 175. Ibid. Frank Cousins, former leader of the Transport and General Workers’ Union and by then a Labour MP, was Gaitskell’s bête noire over unilateralism. He later resigned from Wilson’s cabinet in 1966. Le�er to The Guardian, 23 November 1961. The Times, 27 November 1961. Philip Williams, Hugh Gaitskell: A Political Biography (London: Jonathan Cape, 1979), 696. Wya�, ‘My plan for a Lib-Lab pact’, New Statesman, 26 January 1962, 110–12. ‘No thanks, Woodrow’, Time and Tide, February 1962, 16. Ibid. Jenkins, ‘Bleak house’, The Spectator, 12 January 1962, 34. Le�er dated 10 February 2003 from Lord (Ian) Gilmour to the author. See HC Debs, 13 April 1961, Cols. 533–6; and 8 May 1961, Cols. 54–6. Jad Adams, Tony Benn: A Biography (London: Macmillan, 1992), 108. Tony Benn, Years of Hope: Diaries, Papers and Le�ers, 1940–62 (London: Macmillan, 1994), 362. LPO Executive minute, 13 April 1957. See Peter Joyce, ‘The electoral strategy and tactics of the British Liberal Party 1945–70’, unpublished Ph.D. thesis (University of London, 1989), 179–87. LPO Executive minute, 25 October 1963. LPO Executive minute, 11 March 1961; see also Arthur Cyr, Liberal Party Politics in Britain (London: John Calder, 1977), 122–4. LPO Executive minute, 1 September 1962. Daily Express, 7 September 1962. Baines, ‘The Survival of the British Liberal Party’, 116. LPO Executive minute 11(c), 8 September 1961. Dr Timothy Joyce was in charge of the membership campaign. In 2002, the Liberal Democrats claimed a membership of 76,000, compared with 330,000 and 280,000 for the Conservative and Labour parties respectively; see The Guardian, 29 January 2002. LPO Executive minute, 27 January 1962.

232 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71. 72. 73. 74. 75. 76. 77. 78. 79. 80. 81. 82. 83. 84. 85.

86. 87. 88. 89. 90. 91. 92. 93. 94. 95. 96.

Liberal Lion William Wallace, ‘The Liberal Revival: The Liberal Party in Britain, 1955–66’, unpublished Ph.D. thesis (University of Cornell, 1968), 234. The Guardian, 9 April 1965. Wheeler was speaking at a meeting of the Union of Liberal Students. Interview with author, 1 May 2003. Cowie was director of research, 1959–1965. ‘Why Jo Grimond was too good to be prime minister’, The Spectator, 30 October 1993, 8. The Guardian, 31 October 1961. HC Debs, 2 February 1961, Col. 148. Ludovic Kennedy, Ten Rillington Place (London: Victor Gollancz, 1961). HC Debs, 16 November 1960, Col. 401. HC Debs, 2 November 1961, Cols. 368–69. HC Debs, 5 December 1961, Col. 1192. Ibid., Col. 1193. See HC Debs, 7 February 1962, Col. 491. HC Debs, 22 February 1962, Col. 768. Ken Young, ‘Orpington and the “Liberal revival”’, in Chris Cook and John Ramsden (eds.), ByElections in British Politics (London: UCL Press, 1997), 159. Le�er dated 6 May 2003 to author from Christine Parker, whose husband John was chairman of the Orpington Liberal Association. Lord Avebury, ‘Fighting Orpington’, Journal of Liberal Democrat History, No. 14 (March 1997), 8–9. Young, ‘Orpington and the “Liberal revival”’, 166. Ibid. 170. Daily Mirror, 28 March 1962. ‘Triumphs and disasters’, BBC Radio 4, 29 May 2002. Young, ‘Orpington and the “Liberal revival”’, 164. The Times, 8 April 1962. Speech in Richmond-on-Thames, 13 May 1962. The Times, 4 June 1962. The Observer, 10 June 1962. Sunday Times, 16 June 1962. HC Debs, 26 July 1962, Col. 1787. Ibid. Ibid., Col. 1790. Diary entry for 26 July 1962, Daring to Hope, ed. Po�le, 260. Four days earlier, she recorded having to stiffen his resolve to speak in the debate, finding him ‘less exhilarated by the rumpus’ than she had expected: diary entry for 22 July 1962, 259. Daily Express, 17 July 1962. The Times, 4 June 1962. Daily Telegraph, 2 June 1962. Sunday Express, 29 April 1962. ‘Appointment with Jo Grimond’, Granada Television, 18 May 1962. Daily Herald, 24 September 1962. Daily Express, 12 June 1962. Sunday Express, 28 October 1962. HC Debs, 31 October 1962, Col. 181. Ibid., Col. 182. Ibid., Col. 183.

Notes to Chapter 8

233

Chapter 8: High Noon 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31.

32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42.

The Times, 21 January 1963. The itinerary for the tour is contained in the Grimond papers, Box 15, File 1. Alan Milward, The United Kingdom and the European Community, Vol. I: The Rise and Fall of a National Strategy, 1945–63 (London: Frank Cass, 2002). HC Debs, 22 January 1963, Col. 48. ‘The end of a dream’, The Economist, 21 January 1967, 201. From Larkin’s poem ‘Annus Mirabilis’ (1967). Humphrey Carpenter, The Angry Young Men: A Literary Comedy of the 1950s (London: Allen Lane, 2002). Paul Barker, One for Sorrow, Two for Joy: Ten Years of New Society (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1972). HC Debs, 14 January 1964, Col. 71. Ibid., Col. 69. TW3 was halted by the BBC in the light of the impending general election. ‘Community politics’, Government and Opposition, No. 7 (Spring 1972), 138. HC Debs, 10 March 1960, Col. 643. British Railways Board, The Reshaping of British Railways, Part 1: Report (London: HMSO, 1963), 57–60. Speech at Huddersfield Town Hall, 5 April 1963. Charles Lo�, ‘Reappraisal and reshaping: government and the railways problem, 1951–64’, Contemporary British History, Vol. 15, No. 4 (2000), 71–92. HC Debs, 18 June 1963, Col. 35 (wri�en answer). Lord Carrington, Reflect on Things Past (London: Collins, 1988), 173. HC Debs, 7 May 1963, Col. 280 (italics added). Rebecca West, The Vassall Affair (London: Sunday Telegraph, 1963), 2. HC Debs, 22 March 1963, Col. 810. Lord Denning’s Report (Cmnd 2152) (London: HMSO, 1963), para. 298. HC Debs, 20 June 1963, Cols. 656–7. HC Debs, 17 June 1963, Col. 82. Ibid., Cols. 79 and 81. Ibid., Cols. 77–8. HC Debs, 16 December 1963, Col. 887. Ibid., Col. 888. Ibid., Col. 893. HC Debs, 3 February 1964, Col. 794. Ludovic Kennedy, The Trial of Stephen Ward (London: Victor Gollancz, 1964). The Conservative MP for Kinross and West Perthshire had died over the summer, so creating a vacancy. For the first time since 1950 the Liberals contested the seat, finishing second in a field of six. Speech in Kirkwall, 13 October 1963. Speech in Luton, 1 November 1963. Speech in Birmingham, 8 November 1963. Labour Party, Report of the 62nd Annual Conference (1963), 140. Speech to the Liberal Party assembly, Brighton, 14 September 1963. The Guardian, 16 September 1963. Speech to the Liberal Party assembly, Brighton, 14 September 1963. Michael Meadowcro�, ‘Jo Grimond: An appreciation’, Liberator, No. 217 (December 1993), 12. The Guardian, 16 September 1963. The Times, 16 September 1963. Robert Shepherd, Iain Macleod: A Biography (London: Hutchinson, 1994), 311.

234 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71. 72. 73. 74. 75. 76. 77. 78. 79. 80. 81. 82.

Liberal Lion Sunday Times, 15 September 1963. Grimond, The Liberal Challenge (London: Hollis and Carter, 1963), 14. Ibid. 53. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. 73. The Times, 25 November 1963. HC Debs, 31 October 1962, Col. 181. The Guardian, 28 March 1967. HC Debs, 22 July 1964, Col. 490. In the by-election he received 13.4 per cent of the votes, against fourteen per cent in the 1959 general election. Financial Times, 11 September 1963. Report from Sidney Hope, Executive minute, 22 June 1963, 7–8. Ibid. 7. Executive minute, 19 July 1963, 7. Lord (Emlyn) Hooson, interview with author, 29 April 2003. Catherine Fisher, interview with author, 26 March 2003. Interview with author, 9 May 2000. Jo did make television appearances during the week 21–25 October 1963. The Guardian, 31 July 1963. HC Debs, 15 March 1963, Col. 1770. HC Debs, 14 May 1963, Col. 1132. The other was that of 1992–97. Speech in Carlisle, Saturday 20 June 1964. Speech in Finchley, 16 September 1964. Speech in Maidenhead, 10 September 1964. Speech in Kirkwall, 29 September 1964. Speech in Orpington, 21 September 1964. Speech in Richmond-on-Thames, 20 March 1964. Speech in Beckenham, 20 March 1964. Speech in Kirkwall, 24 April 1964. Speech in Clarkstown, Glasgow, 18 April 1964. Ibid. The Observer, 24 May 1964. D.E. Butler and Anthony King, The British General Election of 1964 (London: Macmillan, 1965), 101. Speech at Paisley Town Hall, 23 September 1964. The programme was transmi�ed simultaneously on BBC1 and on radio. The other two programmes were of thirty minutes’ duration. The Times, 23 September 1964. Ibid. J.D. Lees, ‘Aspects of third party campaigning in the 1964 general election’, Parliamentary Affairs, Vol. 19 (1965–1966), 89.

Chapter 9: A’Whoring 1. 2. 3. 4.

Birmingham Planet, 22 October 1964. ‘A search for a new party?’, The Spectator, 23 October 1964, 532. The Times, 2 November 1964. The Times, 20 October 1964.

Notes to Chapter 9 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27.

28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45.

46.

235

Liberal Party Commi�ee, 31 October 1964; see The Times, 2 November 1964. John Kerr, ‘Governors and the governed’, in A. Hetherington (ed.), Highlands and Islands: A Generation of Progress (Aberdeen: Aberdeen University Press, 1990), 165–7. HC Debs, 4 November 1964, Cols. 251–2. HC Debs, 17 June 1965, Cols. 912–14. Speech in Edinburgh, 7 November 1964. HC Debs, 4 November 1964, Col. 251. HC Debs, 19 November 1964, Col. 681. Speech at the National Liberal Club, 23 July 1966. Ibid. Speech at Eastbourne, 1 April 1965. HC Debs, 7 April 1965, Col. 544. HC Debs, 2 August 1965, Col. 1113. Speech at Chippenham, 11 December 1965. HC Debs, 30 July 1965, Col. 908. The Times, 6 October 1965; 26 November 1965. The first was wri�en together with Hugh Tinker and Richard Moore, the second with Thomas Kellock, Richard Moore and Nancy Seear. Speech at the National Liberal Club, 27 November 1965. HC Debs, 12 November 1965, Col. 554. HC Debs, 9 December 1965, Col. 603. Speech in Central Hall, Westminster, 1 November 1965. Speech at Chippenham, 11 December 1965. HC Debs, 9 March 1965, Col. 240. HC Debs, 1 April 1965, Col. 1893. Sylvia Ellis, ‘Lyndon B. Johnson, Harold Wilson and the Vietnam War: A Not So Special Relationship?’, in Jonathan Hollowell (ed.), Twentieth Century Anglo-American Relations (London: Palgrave, 2001), 180–204. Speech at Wadebridge Town Hall, 15 May 1965. HC Debs, 1 April 1965, Col. 1900. HC Debs, 19 July 1965, Col. 1171. Speech at Paisley, 17 March 1966. Speech at Wadebridge, 15 May 1965. HC Debs, 3 May 1965, Cols. 1049–54 (Division 99). Speech to the Institute of Public Relations, Savoy Place, London, 12 November 1965. HC Debs, 21 April 1966, Cols. 121–2. HC Debs, 10 November 1964, Col. 829. She became Baroness Asquith of Yarnbury. David Steel, A House Divided: The Lib-Lab Pact and the Future of British Politics (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1980), 8. The Times, 13 September 1965. J. Graham Jones, ‘Grimond’s rival’, Journal of Liberal Democrat History, Nos. 34/35 (Spring/ Summer 2002), 32. The Times, 8 March 1965. The Guardian, 24 June 1965. The Guardian, 9 August 1965. Cecil King, diary entry for 20 September 1965, The Cecil King Diary, 1965–70 (London: Jonathan Cape, 1972), 34. Jo’s engagement diaries show meetings scheduled on 30 October 1964, 25 January 1965 and 3 August 1965. Strangely, Kaufman has no recollection of his contacts with Jo, le�er to author, 9 June 2003. Philip Ziegler, Wilson (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1993), 207.

236 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71. 72. 73. 74. 75. 76. 77. 78. 79. 80. 81. 82. 83. 84.

85. 86. 87.

Liberal Lion Hetherington transcripts, Liberal Party archive 10/6, 6. K. Burgess, Dr R. Douglas and D. Mills, le�er to The Guardian, 26 June 1965. The Guardian, 28 June 1965. The Times, 23 September 1965. The Guardian, 23 September 1965. The Guardian, 27 September 1965. The Guardian, 23 September 1965. Alan Watkins, The Liberal Dilemma (London: MacGibbon and Kee, 1966), 29. Alan Watkins, ‘Jo’s influential children’, The Spectator, 8 June 2001, 47. Giles Radice, Friends and Rivals: Crosland, Jenkins and Healey (London: Li�le Brown, 2002). Joyce, Realignment of the Le�?, 155–6. Gaitskell in conversation with Alistair Hetherington, 10 April 1962, Hetherington transcripts, Liberal Party archive 3/31, 4. Wilson in conversation with Alistair Hetherington, 11 October 1965, Hetherington transcripts 10/3, 7/8. Michael Meadowcro�, interview with author, 20 February 2003. BBC radio broadcast, 23 June 1965, see The Times, 24 June 1965. The Times, 3 January 1966. The Times, 11 March 1966. Ibid. Speech in Lerwick, 23 March 1966. Johnny Grimond, interview with author, 6 March 2003. Richard Lamb, ‘1962–66 – The Liberal lost opportunity’, New Outlook, No. 53 (April 1966), 3–8. ‘Stop the slump’, New Outlook, No. 59 (November 1966), 3–6. The Times, 21 November 1966. Alexei Kosygin was o�en described in the British press as the Soviet prime minister, though his formal position was chair of the Council of Ministers. Eastern Europe Today (Manchester: Manchester and Evening News Ltd, 1966). See le�er dated 9 March 1966, from Grimond to Astor, Grimond papers, Box 15, File 3. Fisher, interview with author, 26 March 2003. ‘The end of a dream’, The Economist, 21 January 1967, 201. The Observer, 22 January 1967. The Guardian, 18 January 1967. Western Morning News, 18 January 1967. Eastern Daily Press, 18 January 1967. Yorkshire Post, 18 January 1967. Newcastle Journal, 18 January 1967. The Scotsman, 18 January 1967. The Guardian, 19 January 1967. Hooson, le�er to author, 24 April 2003. Executive commi�ee minutes, 26 November 1966. It was a compromise following a suggestion from northern constituencies representative Dr A. Robson that all Liberal MPs submit their engagement diaries. Alastair Hetherington, Guardian Years (London: Cha�o and Windus, 1981), 157. Interview with Alastair Burnet and George Ffitch, Rediffusion Television, 17 January 1967. The Sun, 19 January 1967.

Chapter 10: Dilettante Revolutionary 1.

For this and certain other pieces of information in this paragraph I am indebted to Lord (David) Shu�, interview with author, 24 June 2003.

Notes to Chapter 10 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12.

13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47.

237

The Times, 13 March 1969. Not until 1973 were MPs obliged to declare such interests. The Times, 7 June 1968. The programme, subtitled ‘The dead hand of democracy’, was transmi�ed on 21 October 1967. For the itinerary, see Grimond papers, Box 15, File 5. Catherine Fisher, le�er to author, 12 August 2003. Speech at York University, 21 November 1968. See his speech in the House of Commons, HC Debs, 6 July 1967, Cols. 2031–5. See Geoffrey Wheatcro�, The Controversy of Zion, or, How Zionism Tried to Resolve the Jewish Question (London: Sinclair-Stevenson, 1996). The Guardian, 30 December 1969. HC Debs, 9 December 1969, Col. 285. In 1919, Cameroon was divided into two protectorates, French and British. In 1961, the southern part of the British protectorate voted to join the French Cameroon, its northern region becoming part of Nigeria. HC Debs, 18 July 1968, Col. 1711. HC Debs, 3 December 1968, Col. 1241. HC Debs, 9 December 1969, Col. 284. Le�er dated 19 June 1969, Movement for Colonial Freedom papers, Box 88, File 1. See Eric Hobsbawm, Interesting Times: A Twentieth Century Life (London: Allen Lane, 2002), 246–62. Grimond, Memoirs, 84. HC Debs, 29 January 1969, Col. 1375. Ibid., Col. 1376. Speech at the University of Birmingham, 18 June 1968. Grimond, ‘Principles of liberalism’, 238. The Times, 1 December 1967. ‘Grimond on the le�’, Synic papers, No. 1 (London: Synic Publications, 1968), 7. Ibid. 9. Ibid. 10–11. Ibid. 11. Ibid. 13. Hans Reiss (ed.), Kant: Political Writings (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 86. The Times, 12 September 1968. Thorpe, interview with author, 9 May 2000. David Wood in The Times, 17 September 1968. The Times, 12 September 1968. The Guardian, 21 September 1968. HC Debs, 10 February 1975, Col. 68. ‘A few Sco�ish painters’, The Spectator, 5 March 1983, 33–4. Heath, The Course of My Life, 294–6. The Times, 23 January 1968. The Times, 17 January 1968 The Times, 9 April 1968. The Times, 19 September 1968. Laura Grimond, ‘Let Scotland rule itself’, New Outlook, No. 70 (April 1968), 12. Speech at Galashiels, 21 January 1969. Speech at Dingwall, 24 January 1969. Speech at Inverurie, 22 January 1969. The Guardian, 25 January 1969. HC Debs, 14 February 1969, Cols. 1829–30 (Division 71).

238 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58.

59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66.

67. 68. 69. 70. 71. 72. 73. 74. 75. 76. 77. 78. 79. 80. 81.

Liberal Lion The Times, 17 September 1969. Confidential le�er dated 16 December 1968, from Grimond to Eric Lubbock, David Steel, James Davidson and Alasdair Mackenzie, Grimond papers, additional MSS. Lord Avebury (Eric Lubbock), email to author, 8 March 2003. The Times, 30 October 1969. Speech at Swindon, 6 December 1968. Janet Morgan, The House of Lords and the Labour Government, 1964–70 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975), 194. HC Debs, 20 June 1968, Cols. 1323–4. Peter Jenkins, The Ba�le of Downing Street (London: Charles Knight, 1970). Speech at Birmingham Town Hall, 22 April 1969. Speech at Jesus College, Oxford, 1 July 1969. Ivor Crewe, ‘Party identification theory and political change in Britain’, in Ian Budge, Ivor Crewe and Dennis Farlie (eds.), Party Identification and Beyond (London: John Wiley, 1976), 33– 61. John H. Goldthorpe et al., The Affluent Worker in the Class Structure (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969). Speech to Church of Scotland General Assembly, 22 May 1968. ‘One peoples’ talk given at Westminster Abbey, June 1969. Speech at the IMTA Conference, University of Bristol, 28 February 1969. The Times, 4 July 1970. Speech to the Rotary International Conference, Blackpool, 17 April 1970. The Times, 22 April 1968. The university had withdrawn its invitation to Powell, declaring that they were unable to guarantee his safety. In the event they relented and Powell delivered his address with only minor disruption. James Callaghan, Time and Chance (London: Collins, 1987), 266. HC Debs, 28 February 1968, Col. 1452. Ibid. Ibid., Cols. 1449–50. Ibid., Col. 1451. HC Debs, 26 November 1969, Col. 430. The voting was 49 to 32 against, HC Debs, 6 February 1970, Cols. 851–2 (Division 60). Jack Williams, Cricket and Race (Oxford: Berg, 2001), 53–86. The Times, 26 May 1970. The Times, 7 March 1970. Gerald Howat, Learie Constantine (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1975), 199–201. D.E. Butler and Michael Pinto-Duschinsky, The British General Election of 1970 (London: Macmillan, 1971), 219–20. The Times, 30 April 1970. Johnny Grimond, interview with author, 6 March 2003. Success in the Ladywood by-election of June 1969 had li�ed the number of Liberal MPs from twelve to thirteen, at that time their strongest post-war parliamentary presence.

Chapter 11: Second Wind 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

Emlyn Hooson, ‘What next for the Liberals?’, New Outlook, No. 85 (September 1970), 3–7. See his article in The Times, 22 September 1970. She was thirty-two and had married Jeremy Thorpe in May 1968. They had one son, Rupert. HC Debs, 2 July 1970, Cols. 96–97. Ibid., Col. 98.

Notes to Chapter 11 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46.

239

For a balanced account, see M. Moran, The Politics of Industrial Relations (London: Macmillan, 1977). HC Debs, 15 December 1970, Cols. 1245–50 (Division 45). Speech in Kirkwall, 29 November 1970. HC Debs, 23 March 1972, Col. 1724. Grimond, ‘Community politics’, Government and Opposition, No. 7 (Spring 1972), 136. See Anthony King (ed.), Why Is Britain Becoming Harder To Govern? (London: BBC, 1976). HC Debs, 18 February 1971, Col. 2186. Ibid., Col. 2184. HC Debs, 23 November 1971, Col. 1174. Ibid., Col. 1175. Ibid., Col. 1177. HC Debs, 23 March 1972, Col. 1722. Ibid. HC Debs, 8 March 1973, Col. 647. Ibid., Col. 648. HC Debs, 4 November 1974, Col. 736. Con O’Neill, Britain’s Entry into the European Community: Report of the Negotiations, 1970–72 (London: Frank Cass, 2000), 9–19. Hugo Young, This Blessed Plot: Britain and Europe from Churchill to Blair (London: Macmillan, 1998), 214–56. Speech to a British Council of the European Movement rally, Albert Hall, 22 February 1967. Grimond discussion with Sir Alec Douglas-Home and Frank Gates, Sunday Times, 28 January 1968. The Guardian, 29 January 1969. Cabinet Office, The UK and the European Communities (Cmnd. 4715) (London: HMSO, 1971), paragraph 29. The Guardian, 5 April 1971. O’Neill, Britain’s Entry into the Economic Community, 245. Ibid. 263. HC Debs, 25 October 1971, Col. 1308. Beveridge Memorial lecture, 4 November 1971: ‘Community politics’, Government and Opposition, No. 7 (Spring 1972), 138. HC Debs, 28 October 1971, Cols. 2211–18 (Division 480). HC Debs, 26 June 1973, Col. 1351. The Orcadian, 21 February 1974. Peter H. Lemieux, ‘Political issues and Liberal support in the February 1974 British general election’, Political Studies, Vol. 25 (1977), 337. Ibid. David Steel, Against Goliath: David Steel’s Story (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1989), 79. Thorpe, interview with author, 9 May 2000. See Philip Goodhart, Referendum (London: Stacey, 1971). HC Debs, 10 December 1969, Cols. 447–50 (Division 31). The other two Liberals were James Davidson and Alasdair Mackenzie. Jenkins, A Life at the Centre, 403. The Times, 27 March 1975. The launch took place at St Ermine’s Hotel, Westminster on Wednesday 26 March. The Times, 22 May 1975. Le�er from Grimond to Smith 19 February 1975; Smith to Grimond, 25 February. See Grimond papers, Box 12, File 7. The Referendum (London: Rex Collins, 1975), 25.

240 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71.

72. 73. 74. 75. 76. 77. 78. 79. 80. 81. 82. 83. 84. 85.

Liberal Lion Butler and Kitzinger, The 1975 Referendum, 263–72. Shetland Times, 30 May 1975. Le�er from Victor Church to Shetland Times, 13 June 1975. HC Debs, 7 May 1974, Cols. 337–42 (Division 19). HC Debs, 5 August 1975, Cols. 289–90. HC Debs, 4 November 1974, Col. 740. HC Debs, 15 June 1971, Cols. 275–76. Sunday Times, 3 March 1974. The Times, 28 October 1974. Speech to the Solicitors’ European Group of the Law Society, 28 October 1975. Hailsham’s Richard Dimbleby lecture was broadcast on 14 October 1976. HC Debs, 22 January 1973, Col. 42. HC Debs, 25 January 1973, Col. 1678. The voting was 354 to 182 in favour of radio, HC Debs, 24 February 1975, Cols. 169–74 (Division 101); and 275 to 263 against television, Cols. 174–78 (Division 102). The Guardian, 23 September 1970. For a popular, contemporary expression of this thesis, see R.E. Pahl and J.T. Winkler, ‘The coming corporatism’, New Society, 10 October 1974, 72–6. Daily Telegraph, 5 November 1971. This passage was excised from the version of the Beveridge lecture subsequently published. David Dimbleby, le�er to author, 18 June 2003. Jonathan Dimbleby, Richard Dimbleby: A Biography (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1975), 35–6. Sunday Times, 24 August 1975. The Times, 18 September 1975. The Guardian, 22 September 1972. HC Debs, 1 November 1955, Col. 869, in a debate on Sco�ish education. HC Debs, 25 October 1971, Col. 1310. Speech in Saddleworth, 11 March 1976. There are a number of accounts of the affair, mostly hostile to Thorpe: for example, Simon Freeman with Barrie Penrose, Rinkagate: The Rise and Fall of Jeremy Thorpe (London: Bloomsbury, 1996). For a more sympathetic treatment, from the perspective of Thorpe’s barrister during the trial, see Dominic Carman, No Ordinary Man: A Life of George Carman (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 2002). Financial Times, 30 January 1976. The Times, 5 February 1976. The Times, 6 March 1976. Interview on ITN’s First Report, 8 March 1976. The Times, 15 March 1976. Liberal News, 23 March 1976. Interview on Radio Leeds, Saturday 8 May; see ‘The Liberal leadership’, The Listener, 13 May 1976, 594. The Times, 10 May 1976. ‘The Liberal leadership’, The Listener, 13 May 1976, 595. Bernard Levin in The Times, 9 March 1976. The Times, 12 March 1976. Tyler was MP for Bodmin between February and October 1974. The Times, 12 May 1976. Smith, le�er to author, 6 June 2003. ‘A temporary fortinbras’, New Statesman, 14 May 1976, 632.

Notes to Chapter 12

241

Chapter 12: Father of the Alliance 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45.

John Pardoe, interview with author, 18 March 2003. HC Debs, 20 May 1976, Col. 1714. The Guardian, 19 December 1976. Grimond, The Bureaucratic Blight, Unservile State Paper no. 22 (London: Liberal Publications Department, n.d., c. 1976), 5. See Gordon Tullock, Arthur Seldon and Gordon Body, Government: Whose Servant? A Primer in Public Choice (London: Institute of Economic Affairs, 2000). Grimond, The Bureaucratic Blight, 4, 10. Ibid. 6. Ibid. 12–13. Ibid. 23. Ibid. 22. Ibid. 9. Ibid. 5. Ibid. 11. Ibid. 21–2. Ibid. 14. Ibid. 15. The Times, 2 June 1976. HC Debs, 28 November 1973, Col. 412. The Times, 9 February 1976. HC Debs, 24 November 1976, Col. 50. HC Debs, 3 February 1975, Col. 984. The Times, 3 February 1976. HC Debs, 3 February 1975, Col. 983. Grimond, A Roar for the Lion (London: Liberal Publications Department, 1976), 12. HC Debs, 7 December 1976, Cols. 249–50. HC Debs, 24 February 1977, Col. 1735. HC Debs, 16 December 1976, Cols. 1871–6 (Division 22). HC Debs, 22 February 1977, Cols. 1361–6 (Division 79). HC Debs, 17 March 1977, Cols. 763–6 (Division 88). HC Debs, 23 March 1977, Cols. 1411–18 (Division 94). The government prevailed by 322 votes to 298. Alastair Michie and Simon Hoggart, The Pact: The Inside Story of the Lib-Lab Government of 1977– 78 (London: Quartet, 1978), 98. Geoff Davison, ‘Liberals on the Lib-Labs’, New Society, 22 September 1977, 606–7. Conducted in the spring of 1977, the survey covered 855 Liberal Party officers. HC Debs, 28 March 1977, Cols. 163–70 (Division 97). The Times, 19 September 1976. The Guardian, 27 September 1977. Steel, A House Divided, 39. Ibid. 154. Tony Benn, Conflicts of Interests: Diaries, 1977–80 (London: Hutchinson, 1990), 119. Ibid. Smith, le�er to author, 6 June 2003. Daily Mail, 26 July 1977. The Guardian, 19 December 1977. Liberal News, 17 January 1978. The Times, 23 January 1978.

242 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71. 72. 73. 74. 75. 76. 77. 78. 79. 80. 81. 82. 83. 84. 85. 86. 87. 88. 89. 90. 91. 92. 93.

Liberal Lion Alan Beith, interview with author, 20 March 2003. Michie and Hoggart, The Pact, 67. The Times, 3 December 1976. HC Debs, 13 January 1977, Col. 1739. HC Debs, 19 January 1977, Col. 359. Ibid., Col. 361. Speech at Lerwick, 26 April 1973. Speech at Kirkwall, 20 February 1974. HC Debs, 29 November 1973, Col. 636. HC Debs, 20 March 1974, Col. 1208. HC Debs, 3 December 1973, Col. 941. HC Debs, 17 April 1975, Col. 816. The Times, 9 December 1976. HC Debs, 10 January 1978, Col. 1466. HC Debs, 26 March 1980, Cols. 1499–1500. HC Debs, 25 January 1978, Cols. 1457–60 (Division 77). Ibid., Cols. 1541–4 (Division 78). Ibid., Cols. 1547–52 (Division 80). Ibid., Col. 1548. Sunday Times, 1 October 1978. The inaugural meeting was held on Saturday 30 September 1978. ‘The Sco�ish assembly: why it will not work’, The Spectator, 10 February 1979, 14. The Orcadian, 8 March 1979. Shetland Times, 9 March 1979. The turnout for the whole of Scotland was nearly sixty-four per cent. HC Debs, 28 March 1979, Cols. 583–8 (Division 109). In October 1974, the SNP candidate in Orkney and Shetland received 17.2 per cent of the poll. David Butler and Dennis Kavanagh, The British General Election of 1979 (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1980), 209. Lord Shu�, interview with author, 24 June 2003. HC Debs, 1 June 1981, Cols. 664–7. Speech at Heriot-Wa� University, Edinburgh, 19 October 1976. ‘Comment’, Social Work Today, Vol. 8, No. 5 (2 November 1976), 1. Maurice Temple Smith to Grimond, 5 November 1976, Grimond papers, Box 12, File 9. Grimond, The Common Welfare (London: Temple Smith, 1978), 53. Ibid. 112, 106–7. Ibid. 105. Ibid. 195. Ibid. 14, 17. Ibid. 72. Ibid. 200. Ibid. 67. Ibid. 153. The Guardian, 27 September 1977. Grimond, le�er to Lady Frances Berendt, 4 November 1979, Grimond papers, Box 12, File 10. The Scotsman, 15 October 1979. Maurice Greer, Daily Telegraph, 18 October 1979. ‘Grimond’s modesty’, The Listener, 18 October 1979, 532. Graham Lord, Sunday Express, 14 October 1979. The Guardian, 15 October 1979. Roy Jenkins, ‘Home thoughts from abroad’, The Listener, 29 November 1979, 733.

Notes to Chapter 13 94. 95. 96. 97. 98. 99. 100. 101. 102. 103. 104. 105. 106. 107. 108. 109. 110. 111.

243

Ibid. 736. Ibid. 737–8. The Guardian, 28 November 1979. ‘Roy Jenkins’s Dimbleby lecture: a symposium of views and reactions’, The Listener, 13 December 1979, 802. ‘Liberals must not compromise’, London Illustrated News, September 1980, 26. Ibid. ‘The future of liberalism’, inaugural Eighty Club lecture, 29 October 1980 (London: Association of Liberal Lawyers, 1980), 3. Ibid. 4. Ibid. 12. John Campbell, Roy Jenkins: A Biography (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1983), 208–9. The Times, 16 July 1987. Jenkins, A Life at the Centre, 543. The Guardian, 12 September 1981. All former Labour cabinet ministers, the SDP ‘gang of four’ and effective creators of the party were Roy Jenkins, David Owen, Bill Rodgers and Shirley Williams. The Times, 16 September 1981. Crewe and King, SDP: The Birth, Life and Death of the Social Democratic Party (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 140. Steel, le�er to author, 26 February 2003. Jeremy Josephs, Inside the Alliance (London: John Martin, 1983), 57.

Chapter 13: Autumn in the Soul 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23.

Woman’s Journal, September 1979. Calculations derived from The Times Guide to the House of Commons 1979. Hans Wiener with Robert Oakesho�, Worker-Owners: Mondragon Revisited (London: AngloGerman Foundation, 1987), 9–19. Grimond television interview with Malcolm Muggeridge for Granada TV, transmi�ed 18 May 1962. Grimond interview with Keith Kyle, Twentieth Century Remembered, Part 3, BBC 1, 24 September 1984. ‘Does Parliament ma�er?’, The Spectator, 18 December 1982, 24. The Times, 17 November 1982. Wallace, le�er to author, 10 July 2003. Daily Telegraph, 23 May 1983. The Times, 22 July 1983. HL Debs, 29 November 1983, Col. 569. Daily Telegraph, 20 August 1984. ‘Lords of misrule’, The Spectator, 1 June 1985, 13–14. The Times, 9 June 1983. Rachel Pitchford and Tony Greaves, Merger: The Inside Story (Colne: Liberal Renewal, 1989). The Times, 24 January 1988. See Ian Bradley’s review in The Times, 9 June 1983. Grimond, A Personal Manifesto (London: Martin Robertson, 1983), 23. The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Adam Smith’s first book, published in 1759. Grimond, A Personal Manifesto, 35–7. Ibid. 30. Ibid. 167. Ian Bradley, The Strange Rebirth of Liberal Britain (London: Cha�o and Windus, 1985), 2.

Notes to Chapter 14 65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71. 72. 73. 74. 75. 76. 77. 78. 79. 80. 81. 82. 83. 84. 85. 86. 87. 88. 89. 90. 91. 92.

HC Debs, 9 March 1982, Col. 767. HL Debs, 2 May 1984, Col. 547. HL Debs, 10 March 1986, Col. 395. HL Debs, 25 November 1987, Cols. 611–12. HL Debs, 29 June 1984, Col. 1201. HL Debs, 18 July 1985, Cols. 865–7. HL Debs, 27 November 1985, Col. 917. See David Butler, Andrew Adonis and Tony Travers, Failure in British Government: The Politics of the Poll Tax (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994). HL Debs, 16 June 1988, Col. 385. HL Debs, 30 March 1987, Col. 381. The Times, 20 July 1971. HL Debs, 12 April 1989, Col. 282. HL Debs, 27 February 1990, Cols. 646–9. HL Debs, 26 October 1987, Cols. 342–3 (Division 1). HL Debs, 2 February 1988, Cols. 1002–3. HL Debs, 22 March 1988, Col. 94. The UN had agreed the convention in 1984. HL Debs, 28 February 1990, Col. 730. ‘The Falklands: What next?’, The Spectator, 22 May 1982, 8. ‘Thoughts for the summer’, The Spectator, 21 August 1982, 4. HL Debs, 17 December 1984, Col. 427. Grimond, A Personal Manifesto, 152. HL Debs, 6 June 1990, Col. 1368. Britain entered the ERM on 6 October 1990 and withdrew in September 1992. Grimond, A Personal Manifesto, 153. Daily Telegraph, 23 July 1990. ‘Notebook’, The Spectator, 22 January 1983, 5. HL Debs, 24 February 1988, Col. 1237. Grimond, A Personal Manifesto, 15. ‘Widening the agenda’, The Spectator, 27 June 1981, 12.

Chapter 14: Liberal Lion 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18.

245

HL Debs, 31 March 1987, Cols. 466–7. Daily Telegraph, 7 October 1989. For this story, I am grateful to Johnny Grimond, interview with author, 6 March 2003. The Observer, 16 May 1976. HL Debs, 21 October 1993, Col. 678. Ibid. The Times, 26 October 1993. Daily Telegraph, 26 October 1993. The Guardian, 26 October 1993. HL Debs, 25 October 1993, Col. 708. Ibid. The Guardian, 25 October 1993. The Independent, 26 October 1993. House Magazine, 8 November 1993. The Times, 25 October 1993. The Orcadian, 28 October 1993. Clement Freud, The Times, 30 October 1993. The Times, 11 May 1994.

Bibliography

A. Collections, private papers and other material from the following archives: Aberdeen University (Dr Mary Esslemont papers) British Film Institute, London (footage from various television programmes) British Library, Colindale (various newspapers, periodicals) Churchill College, Cambridge (Thurso [Archibald Sinclair] papers) House of Lords Records Office (Herbert Samuel papers) London School of Economics (post-1945 Liberal Party archives, incorporating the Sir Hubert Henderson file and the Alastair Hetherington interview transcripts) National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh (Jo Grimond papers) National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth (Clement Davies papers) Orkney County Library, Kirkwall (Grimond ephemera, sound and photographic archives) Rhodes House, Oxford (Africa Bureau papers) School of Oriental and African Studies, London (Movement for Colonial Freedom and related papers)

B. Newspapers, periodicals etc Birmingham Planet, Daily Express, Daily Herald, Daily Mirror, Daily Telegraph, Eastern Daily Press, Financial Times, The Guardian (Manchester Guardian until August 1959), House Magazine, The Independent, Liberator, Newcastle Journal, New Outlook, New Society, New Statesman, The Observer, The Orcadian, Orkney Herald, The Scotsman, Shetland Times, The Spectator, Sunday Times, The Times, Western Morning News, Woman’s Journal, Yorkshire Post

C. Jo Grimond’s main published works i. Books The Liberal Future (London: Faber and Faber, 1959) The Liberal Challenge: Democracy Through Participation (London: Hollis and Carter, 1963) (with Brian Neve) The Referendum (London: Rex Collins, 1975) The Common Welfare (London: Maurice Temple Smith, 1978) Memoirs (London: Heinemann, 1979) A Personal Manifesto (London: Martin Robertson, 1983) The St Andrews of Jo Grimond (Stroud, Gloucestershire: Alan Su�on, 1992)

248

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ii. Contributions to other volumes etc ‘The reform of Parliament’, in George Watson (ed.), The Unservile State: Essays in Liberty and Welfare (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1957), 27–53 ‘In conversation with Norman Hunt’, in N.C. Hunt (ed.), Whitehall and Beyond (London: BBC, 1964), 29–44 ‘Asquith’, in H. Van Thal (ed.), The Prime Ministers – Volume the Second: From Lord John Russell to Edward Heath (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1975), 195–208 ‘My Oxford’, in Ann Thwaite (ed.), My Oxford (London: Robson Books, 1977), 110–24 ‘Liberal democracy in Britain’, in W.S. Livingston (ed.), A Prospect of Liberal Democracy (Austin, Texas: University of Texas Bicentennial Commi�ee, 1979), 73–91 ‘The value of minorities’, in B. Whitaker (ed.), Minorities: A Question of Human Rights? (London: Pergamon, 1984), 55–62 ‘Highlands and Islands’, in J. Critchley (ed.), Britain: A View From Westminster (Poole, Dorset: Blandford Press), 9–26 iii. Pamphlets The New Liberalism (London: Liberal Publications Department, 1957), 16 pp. The New Liberal Democracy (London: Liberal Publications Department, 1958), 20pp. Industry, Profits and People (London: Industrial Co-Partnership Association, 1960), 25 pp. Let’s Get On With It! (London: Liberal Publications Department, n.d., c.1960), 42 pp. Be�er Buys, New Directions No. 2 – Shopping (London: Liberal Publications Department, 1960), 13 pp. Growth Not Grandeur, New Directions No. 3 – Economic Reforms (London: Liberal Publications Department, n.d., c.1961), 20 pp. Eastern Europe Today (Manchester: Guardian and Manchester Evening News Ltd., 1966), 26 pp. (reprint of articles that appeared in The Guardian during October and November 1966) Political Reform, Acton Paper No. 4 (London: Acton Society Trust, 1967), 16 pp. (text of lecture given on 17 May 1967) The Nature of Politics (London: Friends of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, n.d., c.1967), 9 pp. (Herbert Samuel lecture, delivered on 13 November 1967) Literacy (Oxford: Oxford University Press/ The English Association, 1972), 8 pp. (presidential address to the English Association) A Roar For the Lion (London: Liberal Publications Department, 1976), 22 pp. The Bureaucratic Blight, Unservile State Paper No. 22 (London: Liberal Publications Department, 1976), 26 pp. The Future of Our Society (London: Royal Society of Medicine, 1978), 28 pp. (Edwin Stevens lectures for the laity, 1977) Is Political Philosophy Based on a Mistake? (London: Poland Street Publications, n.d., c.1980), 15 pp. (Romanes Lecture 1980) The Future of Liberalism (London: Association of Liberal Lawyers, 1980), 15 pp. (inaugural Eighty Club lecture, given at the National Liberal Club, 29 October 1980) iv. Miscellaneous publications ‘Liberalism and empiricism’, World Liberalism (Liberal International), Vol. 2, No. 3 (Autumn 1952), 1–8, 12 ‘Principles of liberalism’, Political Quarterly, Vol. 24 (1953), 236–42 ‘Beyond Robbins’, Contemporary Review, No. 205 (May 1964), 223–7 ‘Grimond on the le�’, Synic Papers No. 1 (London: Synic Publications, 1968), 13 pp. ‘Europa’, Twentieth Century Studies Vol. 1 (1969), 95–100 ‘Oration’, Occasional paper No. 22 (London: Westminster Abbey, 1969), 1–8 (talk delivered at Westminster Abbey on 9 June 1969 as part of a series titled ‘One people’)

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249

‘Community politics’, Government and Opposition, No. 7 (Spring 1972), 135–44 (Beveridge Memorial Lecture, University of London, November 1971) ‘Power to the people’ (London: Young Liberals, 1973), 13 pp (Sixth Sir Norman Angell Memorial Lecture, Ball State University, Muncia, Indiana, 23 October 1973) ‘The future of individual liberty’, Journal of the Royal College of Physicians, Vol. 12, No. 1 (October 1977), 53–60. (Lloyd Roberts Lecture, 1977) ‘The future of our society’, Proceedings of the Royal Society of Medicine, Vol. 70 (1977), 602–10 (Edwin Stephens lecture, June 1977) ‘The point of no return?’, in The Coming Confrontation: Will the Open Society Survive to 1989? (London: Institute of Economic Affairs, 1978), 161–80 ‘Trade unions harm the poor’, in Trade Unions: Public Goods or Public ‘Bads’? (London: Institute of Economic Affairs, 1978), 129–32 ‘Two wasted years: or too li�le too late?’, in Could Do Be�er (London: Institute of Economic Affairs, 1982), 19–25 v. Newspapers, weekly periodicals For varying periods, Jo Grimond had regular features in Daily Mail, Daily Telegraph, The Field, The Guardian, The Spectator, The Sun, Time and Tide, The Times He also wrote in other national papers and periodicals, including Evening Standard, Geographical Magazine, Illustrated London News, Irish Times, New Outlook, New Society, New Statesman, The Scotsman, Times Educational Supplement, Times Higher Education Supplement, Times Literary Supplement

D. Books, journal articles etc (excluding newspapers and weekly periodicals) Abrams, Mark, Richard Rose and Rita Hinden, Must Labour Lose? (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1960) Adams, Jad, Tony Benn: A Biography (London: Macmillan, 1992) Annan, Noel, Our Age: Portrait of a Generation (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1990) Arnold, Lorna, Windscale 1957: Anatomy of a Nuclear Accident (London: Macmillan, 1992) Arnold, Lorna, Britain and the H-Bomb (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2001) Astor, Michael, Tribal Feeling (London: John Murray, 1963) Avebury, Lord, ‘Fighting Orpington’, Journal of Liberal Democrat History, Issue 14 (March 1997), 8–9 Bacon, Robert and Walter Eltis, Britain’s Economic Problem: Too Few Producers (London: Macmillan, 1976) Baines, Malcolm, ‘The survival of the British Liberal Party 1932–59’, unpublished Ph.D. thesis (University of Oxford, 1989) Baines, Malcolm, ‘The Liberal Party and the 1945 general election’, Contemporary Record, Vol. 9 No. 1 (1995), 48–61 Barker, Paul, One for Sorrow, Two for Joy: Ten Years of New Society (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1972) Beer, Samuel, ‘New labour: old liberalism’, in S. White (ed.), New Labour: The Progressive Future? (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2001), 18–31 Bellamy, Richard, Rethinking Liberalism (London: Pinter, 2000) Benn, Tony, Conflicts of Interests: Diaries, 1977–80 (London: Hutchinson, 1990) Benn, Tony, Years of Hope: Diaries and Le�ers, 1940–62 (London: Macmillan, 1994) Berlin, Isaiah, Two Concepts of Liberty (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1958) Berlin, Isaiah, Russian Thinkers (London: Hogarth Press, 1978) Berlin, Isaiah, The Power of Ideas (London: Cha�o and Windus, 1999) Billen, Andrew and Mark Skipworth (eds.), Oxford Type: The Best of Isis (London: Robson Books, 1984) Bonham-Carter, Victor, In a Liberal Tradition: A Social Biography 1700–1950 (London: Constable, 1960)

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Bonham Carter, Violet, Winston Churchill As I Knew Him (London: Eyre and Spo�iswoode/Collins, 1965) Boyle, Andrew, The Climate of Treason: Five Who Spied for Russia (London: Hutchinson, 1979) Bradley, Ian, The Strange Rebirth of Liberal England (London: Cha�o and Windus, 1985) Bre�, Lionel, Our Selves Unknown: An Autobiography (London: Victor Gollancz, 1985) British Railways Board, The Reshaping of British Railways, Part 1: Report (Beeching report) (London: HMSO, 1963) Burton, Muriel, ‘The making of Liberal Party policy, 1945–80’, unpublished Ph.D. thesis (University of Reading, 1983) Butler, David, Andrew Adonis and Tony Travers, Failure in British Government: The Politics of the Poll Tax (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994) Butler, David and Dennis Kavanagh, The British General Election of 1979 (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1980) Butler, D.E. and Anthony King, The British General Election of 1964 (London: Macmillan, 1965) Butler, D.E. and Uwe Kitzinger, The 1975 Referendum (2nd edition, Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1996) Butler, David and Michael Pinto-Duschinsky, The British General Election of 1970 (London: Macmillan, 1971) Butler, D.E. and Richard Rose, The British General Election of 1959 (London: Frank Cass, 1960) Cabinet Office, The UK and the European Communities, Cmnd. 4715 (London: HMSO, 1971) Callaghan, James, Time and Chance (London: Collins, 1987) Campbell, John, Roy Jenkins: A Biography (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1983) Card, Tim, Eton Renewed: A History From 1860 to the Present Day (London: John Murray, 1994) Carman, Dominic, No Ordinary Man: A Life of George Carman (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 2002) Caro, Robert, The Years of Lyndon Johnson, Vol. 3: Master of the Senate (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2002) Carpenter, Humphrey, The Angry Young Men: A Literary Chronicle of the 1950s (London: Allen Lane, 2002) Carrington, Lord, Reflect on Things Past (London: Collins, 1988) Carstairs, A.M., ‘The nature and diversification of employment in Dundee in the twentieth century’, in S.J. Jones (ed.), Dundee and District (Dundee: Dundee Local Executive Commi�ee of the British Association, 1968), 318–36 Carter, Ma�, T.H. Green and the Development of Ethical Socialism (Exeter: Imprint Academic, 2003) Cecil, Robert, A Divided Life: A Biography of Donald Maclean (London: Bodley Head, 1988) Christoph, J.B., Capital Punishment and British Politics: The British Movement to Abolish the Death Penalty, 1945–57 (London: Allen and Unwin, 1962) Clarke, Peter, Liberals and Social Democrats (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978) Clarke, Sco� and John Curtice, ‘The Liberal Democrats and European integration’, in David Baker and David Seawright (eds.), Britain For and Against Europe: British Politics and the Question of European Integration (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998), 88–107 Clifford, Colin, The Asquiths (London: John Murray, 2002) Cocke�, Richard, Thinking the Unthinkable: Think Tanks and the Economic Counter-Revolution, 1931–81 (London: HarperCollins, 1994) Coote, Colin R., The Other Club (London: Sidgwick and Jackson, 1971) Crewe, Ivor, ‘Party identification theory and political change’, in Ian Budge, Ivor Crewe and Dennis Farlie (eds.), Party Identification and Beyond (London: John Wiley, 1976), 33–61 Crewe, Ivor and Anthony King, SDP: The Birth, Life and Death of the Social Democratic Party (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995) Curtis, Sarah (ed.), The Journals of Woodrow Wya�, Vol. 1 (London: Macmillan, 1998) Cyr, Arthur, Liberal Party Politics in Britain (London: John Calder, 1977) Day, Robin, Grand Inquisitor: Memoirs (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1989) Deedes, William F., Dear Bill: W.F. Deedes Reports (London: Macmillan, 1997) Dell, Edmund, The Schuman Plan and the British Abdication of Leadership in Europe (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995)

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Index

Abbotsford Crescent, St Andrews, 5–6, 25–6 Aberdeen, 42, 48 Aberdeen University, 156 Acton Society, 143 Adam Smith Club, 191–2 Africa Bureau, 90–1, 143 Alchin, Mr, 18 Alington, Dr Cyril A., 8 Alington, Giles, 8 Alliance (Liberal-SDP), 185–6, 189, 191 Alton, David, 182 Anderson, Arthur, 46 Angola, 100 Apartheid, 37, 91, 155–6, 170 Arlo�, John, 60, 155 Ashdown, Paddy, 205, 210–1 Asquith, H. H. (Herbert Henry), 10, 16, 19–20, 31, 169 Astor, David, 138, 193 Astor, Michael, 8 A�lee, Clement (Lord), 35, 38, 48, 51, 67, 74, 86, 92, 102 Austick, David, 164 Avebury, Lord see Lubbock, Eric Ayer, A.J. (Freddie), 8, 14 Bagehot, Walter, 102 Baldwin, Stanley, 18 Balfour, A.J., 175 Ballantrae, Lord see Fergusson, Bernard Balliol College, Oxford, 9–10, 14–5, 16, 19, 37, 61–2, 138, 162, 194 Balliol, John, 9 Bannerman, Lord, 151 Barber, Anthony, 160 Barclay-Harvey, C.M., 18 Bartle�, Vernon, 23 Beatles, The, 113, 146

Beaufort-Palmer, F.W., 71 Beaumont Street, Oxford, 14–5, 24 Beaumont, Tim (Lord), 138, 146–7 Bechuanaland (Botswana), 37–8 Beeching, Dr Richard (Beeching Plan), 59, 114 Beer, Samuel, 62, 111 Beith, Alan, 164, 171 Beloff, Nora, 123 Benn, Tony, 38, 91, 102–3, 167, 178 Bentham, Jeremy (Benthamism), 11, 153 Berkeley, Humphrey, 154 Berlin – blockade, 39; wall, 93 Berlin, Sir Isaiah, 12, 210 Bessell, Peter, 133–4 Bevan Aneurin (Bevanite), 98, 102, 109 Beveridge, Sir William (Lord), 10, 26, 27, 53, 121, 185, 190 Bevin, Ernest, 38, 48 Biafra, 145–6 Birkenhead, Lord see Smith, F.E. Birley, Robert, 8, 165 Birmingham University, 154, 169 Black, Nancie (nee Grimond), 6–7 Black, Willie, 7, 24 Blackman, Honor, 123 Blackwell, James, 192 Blair, Tony, 214 Blake, Lord (Robert), 192 Blue Streak Missile, 99–100 Bogotá, Columbia, 144 Bonham Carter, Cressida, 21 Bonham Carter, Laura see Grimond Bonham Carter, Mark, 19, 21, 27, 72–3, 83, 85, 93, 104, 118, 156, 188, 206, 210–1 Bonham Carter, Sir Maurice, 18–9 Bonham Carter, Raymond, 19 Bonham Carter, Lady Violet, 24, 35–6, 40, 83, 118; activities, 20; Biafra campaign, 146; Benn, Tony,

258

Liberal Lion

renunciation of peerage, 102–3; character, 22–3; Churchill, Winston, friendship with, 19–20, 31, 52; Grimond, Jo, assistance for and relationship with, 21, 23, 31, 91, 108; parliamentary candidature, 19, 27, 52; peerage, 133 Boothby, Robert (Lord), 6, 25–6, 34, 163 Boothby, Sir Robert (Tom), 5–6 Bosanquet, Bernard, 10, 12, 77 Bough, Frank, 171 Bowbridge Works, Dundee, 4 Bowen, Roderic, 36, 69, 132–3 Bow Group, 79 Boyd, Francis, 60, 118, 184 Boyd-Carpenter, John, 10, 22 Boyd-Carpenter, Mrs Margaret, 22 Bradley, F.H., 13 Branch, Guy, 14, 22, 24 Bre�, Lionel, 14–5, 25, 206 Brightwell, Robbie, 144 Britain in Europe campaign, 166 British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), 20, 43, 60, 82, 121, 124, 137, 144, 147–8, 168–9, 183, 193 British Rail Board, 59 British National Oil Corporation, 167 Bri�an, Leon, 192 Bri�an, Samuel, 191 Broadcasting, 42, 82, 120–1, 168 Brockway, Fenner, 38, 146 Brooke, Henry, 10 Brooke, Peter, 10 Bruray, Isle of, 45 Buchan, Alastair, 99 Buchanan-Smith, Alick, 157 Bundy, McGeorge, 111 Burke, Edmund, 77–8 Burgess, Guy, 8, 40 Burn, Mickey, 15 Butler, David, 103, 108 Butler, R.A. (Richard Austen), 52, 75–6, 90 By-elections: Berwick-on-Tweed (1944) 26, (1973) 164; Bridgewater (1938) 23; Bristol S.E. (1961, 1963) 102–3; Carmarthen (1957) 71, 98–99 (1966) 149; Chester (1956) 71; Colne Valley (1963) 120; Coventry West (1976) 170; Ebbw Vale (1960) 98–99, 109; Edge Hill (1979) 182; Edinburgh South (1957) 72; Glamorgan (1957) 72; Glasgow Govan (1973) 164; Glasgow Hillhead (1982) 186, 204; Hamilton (1967) 149;Isle of Ely (1972) 164; Leyton (1965) 133; Orpington (1962) 107–9, 135; Oxford (1938) 14; Rochdale (1958) 72–3, 81–2, (1972) 164; Roxburgh, Selkirk and Peebles (1965) 136; Sudbury and Woodbridge (1963) 120; Su�on, Carshalton (1976) 171; Su�on and

Cheam (1972) 164; Torrington (1958) 72–3, 81, 107; Walsall North (1976) 175; Warrington (1981) 186, 204; Wirral (1976) 170 Byers, Frank (Lord), 35–6, 86, 118, 120, 133, 137, 165, 170, 188–9 Callaghan, James, 151, 154–5, 170, 174–5, 177–9, 181 Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), 98–9 Campbell, Bruce, 166 Carr, Robert, 33 Carrington, Lord (Peter), 115 Castle, Barbara, 152 Castro, Fidel, 120 Cazalet, Victor, 22 Cecil, Lord David, 22 Central African Federation (CAF), 90–1, 130 Chamberlain, Neville, 14–5, 24, 38, 175 Chapple, Lord (Frank), 193 China, 39, 138, 197 Chitnis, Pratap (Lord), 103, 107, 138, 144, 188–9 Churchill, Sir Winston, 6, 8, 10, 19–20, 26, 31, 36, 51–2, 62, 75, 83, 89–90, 93 Churchill, Mrs Winston (Clementine), 22 Cobden, Richard, 72 Cold War, 39–40 (See also: Cuba; nuclear weapons) Cole, G.D.H. (Douglas), 14 Collins, Canon John, 98–9 Collingwood, R.G., 14 Collins, Rex, 166 Commi�ee for Peace in Nigeria, 146 Common Market see European integration Commonwealth, 38, 70, 88–91, 93–4, 106 Commonwealth Parliamentary Association, 61 Conquest, Robert, 192 Conservative Party, 18, 81–2, 85, 107–9, 116–7, 149; Europe, 38–9, 92–3, 161; Heath-Thorpe talks, 165; Liberal defections to, 50; new right elements within, 191, 193–5; overtures to Liberals, 50–2; resignations from, 154; Suez, 69–73 (See also: Churchill, Winston; Eden, Anthony; Heath, Edward; Macmillan, Harold; Thatcher, Margaret) Constantine, Sir Learie (Lord), 156 Constituencies, Parliamentary (see also: byelections; Orkney and Shetland parliamentary constituency): Aberdeenshire Central, 23, 86; Aberdeenshire West, 156–7; Anglesey, 52–3, 55; Bethnal Green SE, 27; Bolton West, 72, 82; Carmarthen, 27; Colne Valley, 52; Dundee, 27; Eye (Suffolk), 55; Huddersfield West, 72, 133; Isle of Ely, 27; Merionethshire, 55; Montgomery, 182; North Angus and Mearns, 157; North Cornwall, 85, 182; North Devon, 85,

Index 172, 182; Torrington, 85; West Lewisham, 84; Wolverhampton East, 27 Consumer Council, 114 Co-ownership, 54, 183, 207 Corbe�, Archibald Cameron, 6–7 Corbe�, Billy, 6–7 Corbe�, Gwyn (nee Grimond), 6–7 Council for Social Democracy, 185 Council for the Defence of Seretse Khama, 38 Council of Europe, 35 Cousins, Frank, 88, 101 Cowie, Harry, 105 Cozens-Henry, Lord, 50 Creasey, John, 71 Cripps, Sir Stafford, 38 Crisp, Gertrude, 18 Crisp, T.L., 18 Cro�ing Commission, 44 Crosland, Anthony, 33, 67–8, 133, 210, 213 Crossman, Richard, 38, 87, 101, 132, 168 Cuba, 120; missile crisis, 109–10 Cunningham, George, 181 Curzon, Lord, 10 Cyprus, 89–90, 100, 174 Czechoslovakia, 144–5 Dahrendorf, Ralf, 104 Daily Express, 104 Daily Mail, 178 Daily Mirror, 60 Daily Telegraph, 143, 194, 204 Dalai Lama, 197 Dalnawillan, Caithness, 20 Dalyell, Tam, 8, 29–30, 176, 182, 205 Davidson, James, 150, 156 Davies, Clement, 30, 76, 105, 210; Churchill, rejects overtures from, 31, 52; Grimond, relationship with, 35–6, 55; Grimond tribute to, 62–3, 69– 70; party leader, 30, 38, 49–50; resigns party leadership, 69 Davies, John, 161 Davies, Morgan, 71 Day, Robin, 83, 124, 193, 204 De Gaulle, Charles, 8, 100, 111–2, 132, 151, 161 Denmark, 162 Denning, Lord (Denning Report), 116, 121 Department of Economic Affairs (DEA), 105, 128, 199–200 Devlin, Lord (Patrick), 91 Devolution, 3, 33–5, 75, 140, 149–51, 175–7, 179–82, 212 Devonshire, Duke and Duchess of, 120 Dicey, A. V. (Alfred Venn), 78

259

Dimbleby family (Fred, Richard, David and Jonathan), 168–9 Djilis, Milovan, 193 Dodds, Ellio�, 13, 54 D’Oliveira, Basil, 155–6 Donaldson, Arthur, 150 Donnelly, Desmond, 127, 132, 135, 154 Douglas-Home, Sir Alec, 36, 72, 116–7, 119–20, 137, 175 Douglas-Home, Lady Elizabeth, 120 Douglas Home, William, 7, 14, 18, 72 Dryden, John, 169 Dubcek, Alexander, 144 Dundee, 4–5, 48 Eaks, Louis, 147, 156 Economist, The, 61, 71, 104, 112, 138 Eden, Sir Anthony, 38, 62, 67, 70, 73, 76 Edinburgh, 24, 30–1, 48 Edinburgh, Duke of, 120 Edinburgh University, 98, 165–6 Egg Marketing Board, 54 Egypt, 68, 70 Eight-Thirty Club, 23 Eisenhower, Dwight D, 97 Election Forum (BBC TV), 124, 137 Electoral Reform, 75, 132, 178–9 Ellio�, Nicholas, 8 English Speaking Union, 61 EOKA see National Organisation of Cypriot Fighters Esslemont, Dr Mary, 18 Eton College, 7–9, 14–5, 18, 25, 40, 72, 81, 84, 138, 193 Eton Society (‘Pop’), 9 Eunson, Edwin, 26–7, 30–1, 205 European integration: 140; EEC, 33, 38–9, 44, 92–4, 100, 111–2, 132, 137, 151, 159, 161–4; European Parliament, 177–9; Exchange Rate Mechanism, 197; referendum (1975), 166–7 European Fisheries Convention, 1964, 162–3 European Free Trade Association (EFTA), 92 Evans, Gruffydd, 147 Evans, Timothy, 106 Evelyn’s school, 7 Ewing, Winifred, 149–50, 155 Faber and Faber, 79 Fabian Society, 143 Fair Isle, 26, 41, 45 Fairnie, Magnus, 48 Farouk, King of Egypt, 68 Federal Union (Federal Trust), 61, 87 Fenton, James, 172 Ferguson, Rev. Ron, 205

260

Liberal Lion

Fergusson, Bernard, 8, 14–5 Field, The, 143, 194 Fife and Forfar Yeomanry, 24–5, 29 Financial Times, 120 Firth, John, 165 Fisher, Anthony, 8 Fisher, Catherine, 55–6, 120, 138, 144 Fletcher, Ray, 192 Fogarty, Michael, 103–4, 118 Foot, Dingle, 27, 50, 53, 90, 101 Foot, Michael, 177, 183 Fothergill, Philip. 30, 69 France, 61–2, 70, 97, 111–2, 131, 138 Freedmann, Max, 111 Freedom Association see National Association for Freedom (NAFF) Freud, Clement, 73, 164, 171 Friedman, Milton, 191 Friends of the Atlantic Union, 61 Fulton, John, 14 Gaitskell, Hugh, 67, 82–3, 88, 92, 101, 109, 112, 135, 185, 199 Galbraith, Tam, 115 Galloway, Jack, 107 Gandhi, Mahatma, 8–9, 13–4 Gash, Norman, 192 General elections: (1935) 16, 18; (1945) 26–8; (1950) 30–2; (1951) 48, 51–2; (1955) 62; (1959) 82–5, 105; (1964) 121–5; (1966) 137–8; (1970) 156–7;(Feb. 1974) 164–5, 180; (Oct,. 1974) 182–3; (1979) 182– 3; (1983) 189; (1987) 189 Geographical Magazine, 143 Germany, 61, 93 Ghana, 88–9 Gibbs, C.H. (Gibbs School), 7 Giddens, Anthony, 214 Gilmore, Ian, 10, 102 Gladstone, William, 11, 19, 44, 68, 79, 87, 145, 209 Glasgow, 42–3, 48, 60, 71 Glen-Coats, Lady Louise, 25 Gloucester Square, No. 40, 21, 52 Gold Coast see Ghana Goodlad, Peter, 27 Goodman Lord (Arnold), 193 Goodman Peter, 107 Gordon Walker, Patrick, 37–8, 61 Gowan, General Yakubu, 145 Granada TV, 82 Grand, Elaine, 191 Granville, Edgar, 50, 52, 55 Gray, John, 206 Greater London Council, 123

Greaves, Tony, 156 Greece, 89–90 Green, T.H. (Thomas Hill), 10–13, 19, 41, 74, 154, 184, 206–7, 209 Grey, Sir Edward, 10 Grey, Maj. Gen., 69 Grierson, Tim, 123 Grimble, Ian, 41 Grimond, A.D., 4–5 Grimond, Andrew (eldest son), 22, 81, 137 Grimond, Grizelda (daughter) 22, 24, 46, 81, 98, 137 Grimond, Gwyn (sister) see Corbe� Grimond, John (Johnny) (son), 22, 46, 81, 84, 111, 205 Grimond, Jo (Joseph) – A) Life, general: arts, liking for, 78–9,148; birth, 3; call to bar, 17–8; character, 7, 84, 103, 144, 148–9, 202–3, 213–4; chief whip, Liberal Party, 36, 49–56; childhood/upbringing, 5–7; critics of, 138–9, 147–51, 159–73, 183, 191, 209, 213; deafness, 22, 157, 203; death, 205–6; disillusionment, 152–4, 198–9; father’s death, 4– 5; foreign travel, 15, 41, 61–2, 70, 111–2, 119–20, 138, 144, 187–8; journalism, 143, 173, 194, 203; leader, Liberal Party, (elected as) 69–70, (resigns as) 136, 138–40, (returns as caretaker) 171–3; legacy and achievements, 206–15; marriage, 18–23, 157; MP for Orkney and Shetland, 32, 33–4, 40–8, 54, 83, 85, 125, 140, 165, 179–83, 188; peerage, 188–9; religion, 6, 12, 79; schools, 7–9; son’s death, 137; sport, 7; tributes, xii-xiii, 138–9, 205–6; university, 9–16; war service, 24–5 B) Politics, opinions on: agriculture and farming, 31, 53–4; broadcasting, 60–1, 120–1, 193–4; bureaucracy, aversion to, 30, 73, 103–5, 120, 173–5, 190; capital punishment, 75–6, 106; citizenship, civil society, 41, 78, 151, 184, 190, 198–9, 207, 214; Commonwealth, 37–8, 88–91, 93; conservation and heritage, 29–30, 169–70; co- ownership, 54, 183, 207; defence, 97–100, 131–2, 197; devolution, 33–5, 75, 149–51, 175–7, 179–82, 198–202; economy, 56–60, 105, 128–9, 160–1, 169–70, 190, 199–200; electoral reform, 75, 132, 178–9; establishment, anti-, 73–4, 169; Europe, 33–4, 38–9, 61, 92–5, 159, 161–4, 166–7, 192; Foreign affairs, 88, 145–6, 197–8; House of Lords reform, 73–5, 102, 151–2, 188–9; human rights, 193, 196–7, 208; immigration, 106, 154–5, 208; incomes policy, 129, 159, 199; Israel, 29, 145; Lib-Lab pact, 177–9; nationalisation, 58–9, 132; nuclear weapons, 97–100, 109–10; Parliament, reform of, 75, 78, 132; political philosophy, 12– 4, 19, 41, 56–62, 75–9, 119, 147–9, 194–8, 206–10; privatisation, 58–9, 195–6; radicalism, 74, 79, 117–8, 122–3, 167–70; realignment, 67–8, 85–7,

Index 100–2, 127–8, 159, 168, 184–6; regionalism, 128, 133–6, 148; Rhodesia, 90–1; 130–1, 173; South Africa, 91, 155–6, 159; sovereignty, national, 94–6, 97–8, 162, 197; statism, aversion to, 59–60, 167, 173–5, 183–4, 190–1; Thatcher government, 194–8, 204–5; trade unions, industrial relations, 58, 152, 159–60, 167, 174, 191–2; USA, 39, 61, 99; utilitarianism, aversion to, 78, 201, 208–9; Wilson governments, 128–36, 151–3, 199–200; youth, 146, 156 C) Writings (main published works): Be�er Buys (1960), 105; Common Welfare (1978), 183–4; ‘Grimond on the le�’ (Synic pamphlet) (1968), 147–8; Growth Not Grandeur (1961), 105; Liberal Challenge (1963), 119; Liberal Future (1959), 77–9, 81, 87–8, 94; Memoirs (1979), 184, 187; New Liberalism (1957), 77; Personal Manifesto (1983), 189–90; Referendum (1975), 166; Roar for the Lion (1976), 176; St Andrews (1992), 203 (See also list of publications, 247–9) Grimond, Joseph (great grandfather), 4–5 Grimond, Joseph Bowman (father), 3–5 Grimond, Laura (nee Bonham Carter, wife), 40, 48, 55, 102, 205; Africa Bureau, active member of, 90–1; assistance to Jo, 31, 125, 130, 157; causes championed, 30, 130, 153; character, personal qualities, 22–3, 204; courtship with Jo, 18–21; death of son, 137; Hooson, Emlyn, opposes candidature for leadership, 139; illness and death, 204, 206; Liberal Party, activities, 22–3, 104, 204; marriage, 21–2, 46, 157; parliamentary candidature, 156–7 Grimond, Lydia (nee Richardson) (mother), 3, 5 Grimond, Magnus (youngest son), 22, 46, 81 Grimond, Nancie (sister) see Black Grivas, Col. George, 89 Grunwick dispute, 191 Guardian The, 18, 35, 53–4, 60, 63, 84, 105, 138, 143–4 Guest, Revel, 55 Gulf War (1990–91), 197 Hailsham, Lord see Hogg, Quintin Hamilton, Sir Robert, 26 Hain, Peter, 156, 173 Hamilton, Willie, 181 Hannay, Canon J.O., 21 Harmsworth, Arthur, 17 Harris, Kenneth, 124 Harris, Sir Percy, 27 Harris, Ralph, 191 Harrod, Roy, 15 Hartington, Lord, 70 Haseler, Stephen, 192–3

261

Hayek, F. A. von, 78, 191–3, 199 Headlam, Geoffrey, 8, 22 Healey, Denis, 10, 97, 132 Heath, Edward, 10, 16, 33, 94, 132, 137, 149, 154, 157, 159–60, 162, 164–8, 170 Hegel, G.W.F., 11–2, 77, 207 Hemingford, Lord, 88 Herbert, Aubrey, 120 Heseltine, Michael, 183 Hetherington, Alastair, 87, 143 Hewart, Lord, 18 Hey, John, 192 Highlands Development Board, 128 Highlands Panel, 48 Hill, Charles (Lord), 82 Hitler, Adolf, 15, 24, 39, 109 Hobbes, Thomas, 174 Hobbs, Julian, 191 Hobhouse, L. T., 12 Hogg, John, 18 Hogg, Quintin (Lord Hailsham), 14, 17, 82, 168 Hogg, Mrs Quintin (Natalie), 22 Hollis, Christopher, 73 Holt, Arthur, 55, 69–70, 76, 93, 104, 211 Home Rule see devolution Homicide Act, 1957, 75–6, 106 Hooson, Emlyn, 132. 134, 139, 159, 170, 174–6, 182 Hopkin Morris, Rhys, 27, 30, 36, 50, 55, 71 Hopkinson, Henry, 89 Horabin, Thomas, 30 Houghton, Douglas, 144 Hughes, Cledwyn, 166 Hughes, Dr Glyn, 83 Human rights, 196, 208 (see also Minority Rights Group) Hume, David, 77–8, 95, 153 Hungary, 68, 138, 145 Hutchinson, Jeremy, 15 Hylton-Foster, Sir Harry, 133 Immigration, 106, 154–5 (see also race relations) Incomes policy, 129, 159, 167, 199 Independent television (ITV), 43, 60–1 India, 144 Industrial relations see trade unions Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), 8, 192–3 Iron and Steel Industry Act, 1949, 48 Inter-Parliamentary Union, 61 Ireland, Republic of, 148, 162, 174 Irvine, Arthur, 18, 22 Isis, The, 15 Israel, 61, 70, 138, 145 Ivanhov, Capt., 115

262

Liberal Lion

Ivens, Michael, 191 Jacques, Martin, 191 James, M.R. (Monty), 8 Jay, Douglas, 67 Jenkins, Roy, 10, 33, 67, 87, 102, 106, 135, 151, 166, 175, 185–6, 204–6, 213 Job Ownership Ltd., 183 Johnson, Lyndon B., 131 Johnston, Brian, 7, 18 Johnston, Russell, 128, 146, 148–51, 168, 171, 175, 205 Jones, Sir Roderick, 22 Joseph, Sir Keith, 135, 174, 185, 213 Joseph Rowntree Social Service Trust (JRSST) 143–4 Joseph Rowntree Trust, 48 Jowe�, Benjamin, 9 Joyce, Peter, 135 Jute manufacture, 4–5 Kant, Immanuel, 11, 77–8, 147, 153, 206–7 Kaufman, Gerald, 134 Kaunda, Kenneth, 130 Keeler, Christine, 115–6 Keith-Lucas, Prof. Bryan, 104 Kennedy, John F., 100–1, 111, 119–20, 131 Kennedy, Ludovic, 72–3, 83, 106, 116, 123, 149 Kent University, 156, 194, 206 Kenya, 154–5 Kenya�a, Jomo, 154–5 Kessler, David, 193 Kew Green, Richmond, 55, 187 Keynes, J.M. (Keynesianism), 15, 23, 57–8, 67, 86–7, 185, 190, 199 Khama, Seretse, 37–8, 208 Khama, Tshekedi, 37 Khrushchev, Nikita, 109 Kilbrandon Report on the Constitution, 175 King, Horace, 133 Koningswinter conference, 165–6 Korean War, 39 Kosygin, Alexei, 138 Kretzmer, Herbert, 109 Kuwait, 100, 197 Kyle, Keith, 6, 194 Labour Party, 16, 18, 69–70, 72–3, 75, 81, 99–100, 112, 154, 165, 214; Europe, 38–9, 92–3, 161–2; expulsions from, 154; Liberal defections to, 50, 52–3; popular front, 23; realignment, Lib-Lab pact, 85–7, 100–2, 127–8, 133–6, 177–9, 185–6; revisionist elements within, 67–8 (see also A�lee, Clement; Callaghan, James; Wilson, Harold) Lamb, Richard, 138

Land Commission, 128 Larkin, Philip, 113 Laski, Harold, 60 Lawson, Nigel, 192 Layton, Christopher, 104 League of Nations (LN Union), 20, 87 Leith-Ross, Sir Frederick, 29 Lennon, John, 146 Leslie, Harold, 31–2 Lever Brothers, 60 Levin, Bernard, 72–3 Lewis, Mr Justice, 18 Liberal International, 62, 144 Liberal National Party see National Liberals Liberal News, 92, 104 Liberal Orkney, 31 Liberal Party: general, 16, 18, 20–1, 23, 38–9, 48, 67–9, 79, 92–3, 121–5, 146–51, 171–2, 210–1; annual assemblies, 1945 (London), 26; 1946 (London), 30; 1952 (Hastings), 90; 1955 (Llandudno), 62–3; 1956 (Folkestone), 69–70; 1957 (Southport), 72, 98; 1958 (Torquay), 73, 98; 1960 (Eastbourne), 99; 1962 (Llandudno), 93; 1963 (Brighton), 117–9, 121; 1965 (Scarborough), 134–5; 1968 (Edinburgh), 150; 1969 (Brighton), 150–1; 1976(Manchester), 172; 1978 (Blackpool), 178– 9; 1981 (Llandudno), 186; 1988(Blackpool), 189: at low ebb, 49–53, 71; Candidates’ Commi�ee, 62; Conservative Party, relations with, 50–2, 165; divisions within, 35–6, 49–56, 69–71, 166; Executive Commi�ee, 35–6, 50–1, 62, 104, 120, 127; Foreign Affairs Group, 62; Labour Party, relations with, 67–8, 86–7, 100–2, 132, 179; Liberal Party Organisation (LPO), 20, 103, 139–40; membership of, 104; organisation and finance of, 103–4, 120, 123, 138; revival of, 72–3, 81–2, 104–5, 164–5; Social Democratic Party, alliance and merger with, 185–6, 189 (see also by-elections; general elections) Liberal Publications Department, 104 Liberal Summer School, 62 Liberalism, 10–13, 41, 87, 200–1, 206–10 Lib-Lab pact, 127, 133, 138, 177–79 Lindsay, A.D. (Sandy), 13–4 Linklater, Eric, 48 Lippmann, Walter, 210 Listener, The, 185 Lloyd, Selwyn, 144 Lloyd George, David, 10, 16, 20, 36, 73–4, 105, 169, 209 Lloyd George, Gwilym, 26, 30 Lloyd George, Lady Megan, 35–6, 50, 52–3, 55, 71, 101, 149

264

Liberal Lion

New Zealand, 41 Newton, Andrew, 170 Nicolson, Harold, 22 Nicolson, Nigel, 22 Nigeria, 145–6 Noel-Baker, Philip, 37, 98 North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), 61, 71, 89, 93, 98–100, 163 North Sea Oil, 41, 44, 179–81 Northern Ireland, 150 Norway, 162–3, 167 Nuclear weapons, 97–100 Oakesho�, Robert, 183 Observer, The, 108, 123, 138, 143 Old Manse House, Firth, 46–8, 187 Oliver, Richard, 193 O’Neill, (Sir) Con, 7–8, 14–5, 162, 166 One Pair of Eyes (BBC TV), 144 Opinion polls, 107, 123; Gallup, 81; NOP, 108 Orcadian The, 32, 41, 182 Organisation for European Economic Co-Operation (OEEC), 38 Orkney, 26–7, 31, 34, 42–6, 94, 163–4, 167, 180–1, 205 (See also Orkney and Shetland parliamentary constituency) Orkney Blide Trust, 204 Orkney Herald, 62 Orkney Islands Council, 204–5 Orkney Liberal Association, 30–1, 46 Orkney and Shetland parliamentary constituency, 3, 25–6, 31–2, 40–6, 83, 85, 109, 125, 156–7, 165, 179–82, 188 Osborne, John, 113 Other Club, 36–7 Oxford Idealists, 12 Oxford Liberal Club, 23 Oxford Union, 15–6 Oxford University, 18, 25, 72 (See also Balliol College) Owen, David, 191 Paish, Frank, 104 Palestine, 89 Palmerston, Lord, 189 Pardoe, John, 98, 148, 171–2 Parker, Rev. R.B., 21 Parkinson, Michael, 184 Parliamentarians, The (BBC TV), 193 Partner, Mrs, 46 Paton, John, 14 Pa�en, Chris, 10 Pa�en, John, 192

Peacock, Alan, 104, 191–2 Penhaligon, David, 178 Penney Report, 100 People’s League for the Defence of Freedom, 53 Phillips, Morgan, 86 Pilkington, Mark, 15, 24 Plaid Cymru, 149 Poland, 138 Polaris submarine, 100 Political Society (Eton College), 8–9 Poll Tax, 196 Pompidou, Georges, 161 ‘Pop’ see Eton Society Pope-Hennessy, John, 15 Popper, Karl, 77 Popular Front, 23 Poujadist, 87, 109 Powell, Enoch, 33, 154, 161, 210 Press Council, 40 Prior, James, 168, 194 Priory Avenue, Chiswick, 187 Private Eye, 113 Privatisation, 195–6 Privileges Commi�ee, House of Commons, 102 Privy Council, 105 Profumo, John (Profumo affair), 33, 115–6 Protection of Birds Act, 1954, 45 Question Time (BBC TV), 193–4, 204 Race relations, 132, 155–6 (See also immigration) Radcliffe, Lord, 115 Radical Action Group, 173 Radical Society, 193 Raison, Timothy, 192 Ramsey, Michael, 131 Reading, Lord, 50–1 Readman, Alison, 28 Realignment, 67–8, 85–7, 100–2, 127–8, 133–6, 159, 184–6, 212 Redhead, Brian, 7 Redwood, John, 192 Rees-Mogg, 49, 108, 184 Referendum: EEC (1975), 166–7; devolution (1979), 181–2 Rennell, Lord, 50–1 Resale Prices Act, 1964, 114 Reunion (BBC TV), 7 Rhodesia, 90–1, 130–1, 173 Richard, Lord (Ivor), 205 Richards Press, 61 Richards, Steve, 107–8 Richardson, Foster (uncle), 5

Index Richardson, Lydia see Grimond Ridley, Jasper, 8, 14–5, 17, 21, 24 Ridley, Nicholas, 10 Ri�ind, Malcolm, 180 Rippon, Geoffrey, 163 Roberts, Emrys, 36, 50, 53, 55 Robertson, Jackie, 31, 205 Robertson, John, 175 Robertson Justice, James, 98 Robson, Lawrence, 137 Rochdale Reform Association, 73 Rodgers, William, 191 Romania, 138 Roosevelt, Franklin D., 62 Ross, Stephen, 171, 177 Rothermere, Lord, 17 Rousseau, Jean Jacques, 153 Rowallan, 1st. Baron see Corbe�, Archibald Cameron Rowallan, 2nd Baron see Corbe�, Billy Russell, Bertrand, 98 Russell, Lord, 71 St Andrews, Fifeshire, 3–6, 20, 24, 205 St Andrews University, 156 St Clair, Malcolm, 102 St Paul’s School, 81 Salter, Sir Arthur, 14 Samuel, Herbert (Viscount), 10, 16, 20–1, 50–2 Samuel, Viscountess (Beatrice), 22 Sandelson, Neville, 193 Sandys, Duncan, 33 Satire, political, 113 Schlesinger, Arthur, 111 Schumacher, E.F., 169 Schuman Plan, 38–9, 92 Scotland and Wales Bill, 1976, 176 Scotsman The, 139, 184 Sco�, Norman, 170–2 Sco�ish Ancient Monument Board, 204 Sco�ish Labour Party, 175 Sco�ish Liberal Party, 62, 123, 149–50 Sco�ish National Party (SNP), 30, 149–51, 164–6, 175, 181–3 Seear, Nancy, 134, 136 Seldon, Arthur, 191 Sellafield, 100 Shanks, Michael, 101 Sharpeville massacre, 91 Shearer, Moira, 73 Shetland, 27, 30–1, 34, 43–5, 62, 94, 162–4, 167, 179– 81(See also North Sea oil; Orkney and Shetland parliamentary constituency) Shetland Movement, 181

265

Shetland Times, 27, 31, 41, 167 Shore, Peter, 194 Shrapnel, Norman, 84, 205 Sillars, Jim, 175 Simmons, Charles, 40 Simon, Sir John, 16 Sinclair, Sir Archibald (Lord Thurso), 20–1, 23, 27, 30 Sinclair, Marigold, 20–1 Skybolt missile, 99–100 Smedley, Oliver, 53, 92 Smith, Adam, 77–8, 190 Smith, Cyril, 164, 170–1, 178–9 Smith, F.E. (Lord Birkenhead), 36 Smith, Ian, 130 Smith, John, 179, 181 Smith, Maurice Temple, 183 Smith, Prophet, 27 Smith, Trevor, 84 Soames, Christopher, 33 Social Democratic Party (SDP), 185–6, 189, 191 Social Work Today, 183 Soskice, Frank, 10 Soskin, Renee, 83 South Africa, 37, 90–1, 130, 155–6, 159, 170, 173 South Eaton Place, Belgravia, 18, 21 Southern Rhodesia see Rhodesia Southern TV, 121 Sovereignty, 94–6, 97–8,162, 197 Soviet Union, 39–40, 97,99, 109, 138, 144–5 Spanish Civil War, 146 Spectator, The, 14, 60, 102, 143, 188, 194 Stalin, Josef, 39 Steed, Michael, 28 Steel, David, 136, 146, 165, 168, 175, 211; alliance with SDP, 185–6; Grimond, support for, 134, 148; Grimond, tribute to, 205, Lib-Lab pact, 177–9; Thorpe affair, 170–2 Stewart, Donald, 175 Stirling University, 194 Straboli, Lord, 70–1 Strachey, John, 87 Stromness Academy, 81 Suez, 68–71, 88–90, 100, 131–2, 137, 145 Suez Group, 71 Sun, The, 143 Sunday Express, 109 Sunday Times, 119, 143 Synic, 147–8, 156 Tame, Chris, 192 Tawney, R.H., 79, 190 Tebbit, Norman, 174, 193–5

266

Liberal Lion

Tennant, Archibald, 48 Tennant, Margo, 48 That Was The Week That Was (BBC TV), 113 Thatcher, Margaret (Thatcherism), 19, 56, 121, 135, 153, 191; Conservative leader, 170; Grimond views on, 180, 182, 189, 194–8; prime minister, 182; 170, 180, 182, 185, 193–7 Third Way, 214 This Is Your Life (ITV), 194 Thomas, Dr Russell, 23 Thorpe, Caroline, 159 Thorpe, Jeremy, 85, 103, 105, 108, 134, 182; contribution to party management, 103, 120–1; death of wife, 159; Heath, Edward, talks with, 165, 168; Liberal leader, 139, 147–8, 150, 212; resigns party leadership, 170–2 Time and Tide, 101–2 Times, The, 35, 60, 79, 86, 108, 119, 124, 134, 137, 143, 169, 173, 205 Titley, Simon, 191 Titmuss, Richard, 104 Tocqueville, Alexis de, 78, 207 Tolkein, J.R.R., 14 Toynbee, Philip, 21 Toynbee, Polly, 204 Trade unions, industrial relations, 58, 159–60, 167, 174, 191–2 Trethowan, Ian, 124 Trident missile, 197 Turkey, 89–90 Tweedsmuir, Lady, 45–6 Twentieth Century Remembered (BBC TV), 194 Tyler, Paul, 171 Uganda, 156 Union of Liberal Students see Young Liberals United Europe Movement, 20, 61 United Nations (UN), 39, 69–70, 87–9, 91, 93, 97–8, 109 United Nations Association, 61 United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA), 29, 91 United States of America (USA), 38–9, 62, 68–70, 93, 97, 99–101, 109, 111, 131, 138, 144 Unservile State Group, 74–5, 173 Upper Clydeside Shipbuilders (UCS), 167 Urquhart, F.F., 14 Van den Berg, Freddie, 17 Vassall, John (Vassall affair), 114–5

Vietnam, 131, 146 Vincent, Andrew, 208 Wade, Donald (Lord), 36, 55, 69–70, 76, 83, 104, 107, 133, 139, 147 Wainwright, Richard, 120, 171 Walden, Brian, 193 Wales, 149–50 Wallace, Jim, 188–9, 204 Wallace, William, 105 Walls, Cecil, 26, 31 Ward, George, 191 Ward, Dr Stephen, 115–6 Warnock, Mary, 192 Watkins, Alan, 108 Watson, George, 74 Welensky, Sir Roy, 90 Welsh Liberal Assembly, 86 Western Morning News, 139 Wheatcro�, Prof. George, 118 Wheeler, Edward, 103, 105 Whitelaw, William, 166 Williams, Ruth, 37 Williams, Shirley, 186, 191 Willingdon, Lord, 50 Wilson, Des, 144 Wilson, Harold, 19, 104–5, 120, 157, 159; Grimond criticisms of, 145–6, 151–2, 199–200; Grimond, similarities of political language, 117, 122–3; Labour Party leader, 112–3, 211–3; prime minister, 125, 127–38, 165–71, 175; realignment, 127–8, 133–6 (See also general elections) Wilson, Woodrow, 145 Windscale, 100 Wishart, Basil, 31 Wolfenden Commi�ee, 76 Woman’s Hour (BBC Radio), 204 Women’s Liberal Federation, 20, 22, 204 Woolton, Lord, 51–2 World At One (BBC Radio), 147–8 Wya�, Woodrow, 101–2, 127, 132, 135 Yorkshire Post, 139 Young Liberals, 104, 146–50, 155–6, 168, 173 Young Volunteer Force Foundation, 144 Yugoslavia, 144, 204 Zambia, 90–1, 130 Zander, Michael, 104 Zionism, 145 (See also Israel)