My family took holidays fairly regularly at Criccieth where Lloyd George and his wife, Dame Margaret, lived. My parents would stay with the Lloyd Georges at Brynawelon, whilst we children were farmed out to various boarding houses nearby, usually with the Lloyd George grandchildren. We therefore saw a lot of the previous generation, namely Olwen, Megan and Gwilym, all of whom were our honorary aunts and uncle. The friendship between the Thorpe and Lloyd George families has spanned five generations. It originated with the friendship between my mother and Megan who, as young girls, were launched on the London scene. Megan was to become my mother’s bridesmaid, my sister’s godmother and, in a different context, a parliamentary colleague. As an economy measure my grandfather let his London house ‘one season’, so my mother used No. 10 Downing Street as her London base. This could involve responsibilities – one evening Lloyd George came up to see the girls and announced that Mr Albert Thomas, the French Minister of Defence, was coming to breakfast the next morning; the Foreign Office interpreter was ill; that the two girls had had an expensive education and therefore would they please report at eight o’clock the next morning to act as interpreters in the discussions.
Years later, Megan and my mother went to Downing Street when Harold and Mary Wilson were the incumbents. Photographs of former Prime Ministers had previously been placed on the staircase but Lady Dorothy Macmillan, disliking their positioning, had had them moved to a corridor leading to the reception rooms, where they remained throughout the Macmillan and Douglas-Home periods. Harold and Mary Wilson had tried to get the photographs reinstated on the staircase, but the Ministry of Works would not react. When Megan and my mother reached the staircase, Megan asked why the Prime Ministers were no longer there, and, in particular, why her father’s was behind the green baize door, hidden when it was hooked back. Mary Wilson welcomed this additional pressure and successfully had the Prime Ministers reinstated, where they now happily remain.
There was a family tradition of practical jokes involving much fun and laughter, which made the Lloyd George house in Wales such a delight to visit. My first meeting with Lloyd George took place on one such occasion in the summer of 1936 at the time of the Abyssinia crisis. Italy had annexed this country and the Emperor and Empress had fled into exile and were therefore in the news of the moment. My father, an eminent silk, and Gwilym, who subsequently became Home Secretary, decided to dress up as the Emperor and Empress of Abyssinia seeking political asylum. Lloyd George’s arrival from his farm at Churt was awaited. The families lined up and as the youngest person present, I was deputed to hold aloft the flag of Wales. I doubt whether the Emperor would have been pleased with the charade, but Lloyd George thought the joke hilarious. I remember Dame Margaret giving me a prize apple from the crate which Lloyd George had brought from his farm and I thought at the time how much it matched her beautiful rosy complexion.
On another occasion, when I was not present, my father dressed up in a red wig, red beard and clerical collar and, accompanied by Megan, who was togged out in her nanny’s bonnet and black ‘go-to-chapel dress’, called on Dame Margaret. The purpose of the visit was to invite her to open with prayers a series of children’s services which were to be held on the beach at Criccieth. Surprisingly, she did not recognise either of them and appeared somewhat flustered, apologising for the state of the room, and saying: ‘Papers, papers everywhere. That’s the worst of being married to a politician.’ At this point, Lloyd George, who was hiding behind the screen, exploded with laughter, in which Dame Margaret joined!
My father and Dame Margaret were great fishermen. Occasionally she would knock on my parents’ bedroom door early in the morning and say ‘Thorpey, shall we go mackerel fishing?’ They were both excellent sailors and impervious to rough seas. On one occasion, claiming the weather was very calm, they persuaded some family members to join them. However, the sea turned out to be much rougher than expected and everyone bar my father and Dame Margaret was beginning to feel very queasy, and exercised iron control not to be seasick! At that moment my father decided to put on a most awful, lurid green sweater. This was too much for the Lloyd George/Thorpe crew and they finally succumbed to an all-round bout of seasickness!
One Christmas the traditional game of charades was played. The subject matter is now forgotten, but the acting of the scene remains vivid. Sir Thomas Carey Evans, Lloyd George’s son in law and husband of Olwen, and a distinguished surgeon, ‘operated’ on his wife after much grunting and gesticulation triumphantly extracted from her an entire leg of lamb, which he held aloft!
The Carey Evans had moved into a house called Elsteddfa, a home which years before had belonged to the Carey Evans family. They had planned their first dinner party after moving in. Megan was miffed that she had not been included amongst the guests. My mother and I were staying with Megan, and she decided that we would make our displeasure known. Accordingly, our car was parked down the drive, and the three of us climbed into the house through an open window. We made for the room on the first floor directly above the dining room, where the dinner party was in full swing. On a signal from Megan, we jumped and jumped and jumped on the floor. Downstairs there was pandemonium; the chandelier in the dining room swung backwards and forwards; the floor sagged and the ceiling looked decidedly fragile. Uncle Tom Carey Evans rushed out with his two sons, Robin and Bengy, and dispersed in different directions on the first floor. Megan was hiding in a clothes cupboard and started to giggle. We hid ourselves as best we could, but Megan was discovered and the truth was out. The Carey Evans family was not best pleased, but the Lloyd George family sense of humour prevailed.
A slightly less dramatic dinner, but nevertheless one I shall not readily forget, was a dinner at Megan’s house, Brynawelon, with my mother and myself. We had been served Jerusalem artichokes in a thick white sauce. My first bite was incredibly bitter, and I spat it out. I felt reminded of Dr Johnson, who spat out a mouthful of hot potatoes and glared at his neighbouring diners, saying: ‘Yes, and any other fool would have swallowed it and ruined his digestion for life!’ The artichokes were abandoned. After dinner we went into the kitchen to investigate. Megan saw a brown paper bag, in which there was one artichoke left. To her horror, she discovered that they were not artichokes, but Amaryllis bulbs, priced £1 each. They had been a recent present to Megan, unbeknownst to the cook! Our leftovers were fed to the chickens, who, I regret to say, all died.
One of the most fascinating political discussions which I remember involving Lloyd George took place in my mother’s house at Limpsfield. Our guests were Field Marshal Viscount Slim, who had been Commander-in-Chief Burma, Major-General Fuller, who invented the tank, and Megan Lloyd George. Megan and Fuller, both of whom had met Hitler, compared their recollections of him.
The occasion when Megan met Hitler arose out of Lloyd George’s meeting with Hitler at Berchtesgaden in 1936. Lloyd George had been anxious to make an assessment of Hitler and for his part, Hitler had a great admiration for Lloyd George and had many of his speeches translated into German. At the end of the morning meeting, Lloyd George told Hitler that he had two of his children with him, both of whom were MPs, who very much wanted to meet him. Hitler replied: ‘Of course, let them come up for tea. Will they want music [which would have meant laying on a string quartet] or do they want to talk?’ Not surprisingly they opted for the latter. Megan well remembered the scene. The tea was not to be at the Eagle’s Nest, but at the Lower House. There were three large Mercedes, one of which was for Lloyd George, one for Megan and Gwilym and one for the guards. There was a long flight of stone steps from the house to the approach road and the sun was setting behind the mountain. Hitler started to walk down dressed in khaki uniform; Lloyd George advanced, cape and white hair flowing in the wind. They met halfway. At the end of tea Lloyd George turned to Schmidt, the interpreter, and said: ‘Would you remind the Führer that he has very kindly promised me his photograph’. This was duly passed on and three photographs in silver frames were produced. With an unmistakable twinkle in his eye, Lloyd George said: ‘I have a lot of photographs at Churt and have considerable difficulty in arranging them. Would you object if I were to place your photograph next to those of Clemenceau and Foch?’ Hitler replied, slowly at first, that he would have no objection, since they were both patriots who had fought for their country, but he would never tolerate his photograph’s being placed next to those of any of the German generals, who so basely surrendered in 1918. He then blew up about the future of Germany and ranted on for the next half hour.
Fuller recollected that he was on the reviewing stand at Nuremberg and watched the tanks go by. Hitler asked him: ‘What do you make of your children? ‘I am not worried about my children’, replied Fuller: ‘What concerns me is the use to which they will be put by their guardians’.
Megan raised with Slim the question of U Saw of Burma. U Saw was a controversial character, having formed the Myochit Party and Galon Tat, which was a private army, in 1938. He was regarded as having strong sympathies with the Japanese cause. He was Prime Minister from 1940 to 1942 and visited the UK and the USA in 1941, at which point he was thought to be sympathetic to the Western Allies. However, he contacted the Japanese ambassador in Lisbon, indicating another switch of loyalties. He was arrested by the British in Cairo and kept in internment in Uganda from 1942 to 1945. On returning to Burma after the war he reformed the Myochit Party and was wounded by a hireling suspected to be acting on behalf of Uang San, a prominent member of the government. However, in 1947 he travelled to London with Uang San and reached an agreement providing for the independence of Burma. On his return to Burma, he repudiated the agreement.
Megan asked Slim how he could be certain that U Saw wouldn’t rat again. Slim’s jaw tightened like a vice and he said: ‘I told U Saw that if lie defected again I would hunt him with the entire British army, and with his family present, in a clearing in the forest, would hang him upside down. He knew I meant it, as indeed I did.’
U Saw was heavily involved in the murder of a group of Burmese Cabinet ministers. He was arrested in 1947 and charged with murder, and was hanged in May 1948.
The last time I saw Lloyd George was in 1944 at Bron-y-de at Churt, where I had tea with him. He was anxious to listen to the German news in English being broadcast from Germany and was obviously still incredibly well informed. I told him I had ambitions to become a Liberal MP, and he said: ‘Always lean on your constituency’ By this he meant that before you took a highly unpopular line, as for example his own stance on behalf of the Boers in the South African War, your constituents should be taken into your confidence and made familiar with the arguments on an issue to which they may initially lie strongly opposed. You should always ensure that your constituents know the reason you support a cause, which may at the time be unpopular. After tea we toured the orchards, with Lloyd George in a flowing cloak and with a shepherd’s crook, looking every inch the Old Testament prophet.
Lord Hankey had been in both War Cabinets and lived in our village, Limpsfield. On the strength of his experiences, I asked him which of the two was the greater war leader, Lloyd George or Churchill. He replied that only fifty years after their deaths would a balanced objective view be possible. He, himself, had had a row with Churchill and therefore could be said to be prejudiced. They were both Olympian figures, but that in his opinion, Lloyd George would lead by a photo-finish. In support of Hankey’s view, it must be remembered that it was Lloyd George’s inspiration and drive which placed the country on a wartime footing, against the hostility from the Generals, and not without criticism from the House of Commons, as indeed was the case with Churchill. He transformed the output of munitions, created a general headquarters to coordinate the Allies and set up a war machine which had not existed before. It does not detract from Churchill’s superb leadership in the Second World War to point out that he adopted and adapted many of Lloyd George’s blueprints. Some time a book should be written comparing the methods and achievements of both war leaders.
I was privileged to give the address in Westminster Abbey on the occasion of the unveiling of Lloyd George’s memorial stone by the Prince of Wales in July 1970. The original plan was that Harold Wilson, as Prime Minister, would give the address, and that Ted Heath, as Leader of the Opposition, and I, as Leader of the Liberal Party, would each read a lesson. However, the June election brought about a change of government, and Heath was Prime Minister. Dingle Foot, coming from a radical background, coordinated the service. He said to me: ‘I’m damned if I am going to have a Tory Prime Minister delivering the tribute. You must do it, Jeremy.’ It was a matter of days after my wife Caroline’s fatal accident and although it was a colossal responsibility I saw merit in throwing myself into work; in any event Lloyd George has always been one of my heroes, so it was a labour of love.
The Rt Hon. Jeremy Thorpe, speaking at Westminster Abbey at 12 noon on Monday, 27 July1970, on the occasion of the unveiling of a memorial stone to:
David Lloyd George by his Royal Highness the Prince of Wales
Those of us who were present twenty-five years ago in this Abbey at Lloyd George’s memorial service will feel that this recognition has not come a moment too soon.
Lloyd George had none of the advantages of birth or fortune. His father died before he was two years of age, and one can never over-estimate the debt which he owed to his uncle, Richard Lloyd, the shoemaker at Llanystumdwy, whose cottage became a home for Lloyd George, his widowed mother and brother. Uncle Lloyd determined that Lloyd George should become an advocate, and finding that the examinations required a knowledge of Latin and French, the cobbler, at fifty years of age, taught himself these languages so that he could in turn instruct David, who was then fifteen years old. Lloyd George duly qualified and, like Abraham Lincoln, of whose career he was a very close student, he started as an advocate; went on to establish a reputation as a superb orator; and as with Lincoln, eventually held the highest office, in which, without any military training, he proved himself to be a supremely successful war leader. Throughout Richard Lloyd’s life, uncle and nephew would regularly correspond with each other on all the great issues of the day. And on one memorable occasion Richard Lloyd, by then an old man, was persuaded to leave Criccieth to make his first ever visit to London to hear a debate in the House of Commons and to spend the night at No. 11 Downing Street, where his nephew was ensconced as Chancellor of the Exchequer.
Lloyd George was a single-minded warrior. Before the First World War he was dedicated, in his own words, ‘To wage implacable warfare against poverty’. With his colleagues, led by Asquith, and in the face of bitter opposition, he was the chief advocate of old age pensions and the main architect of unemployment benefit and national insurance. He thereby helped to lay the foundations of the welfare state. The fact that this involved the introduction of the 1909 Budget and a massive constitutional struggle with the House of Lords, was, if anything, something which he relished. Had his career ended in 1914 he would still rank with Shaftesbury and Wilberforce as one of the great social reformers of this country.
But from 1914–18 he was literally at war with those who threatened the very existence of this country. As Minister of Munitions, as Chancellor of the Exchequer and finally as Prime Minister, he placed this country on a total war footing. The story is told how Kitchener, as Secretary of State for War, advised the Minister of Munitions that four machine guns per battalion was sufficient for the Army. Lloyd George’s reaction was typical: ‘Take Kitchener’s maximum: square it; multiply that by two; and when you are in sight of that, double it again for good luck.’ Accordingly, the British Army was provided with 250,000 machine guns. He overruled the First Sea Lord and introduced the convoy system; he created the concept of a War Cabinet and Allied Supreme Headquarters.
It is therefore particularly appropriate that his stone in the Abbey should lie near to the tomb of the Unknown Warrior. He was Prime Minister when the tomb was unveiled by King George V, and as Prime Minister was one of those responsible for its conception. Likewise it is right that his stone should lie hard by that of his friend and colleague of a lifetime, Winston Churchill. For these two men, as war leaders in the First and Second World Wars respectively, inspired this nation to resist the greatest dangers that it had faced since the days of Napoleon. Indeed, Churchill, Lloyd George and Chatham may be accounted the three greatest war leaders that this country has ever produced.
Churchill and Lloyd George were Cabinet colleagues over sixty years ago. For Churchill their relationship must have been an unusual one. When Churchill, who had rejoined the Conservative Party, became Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1924, the two men had already drifted apart. But Churchill soon after wanted to consult Lloyd George about a passage in the last volume of the World Crisis, Lord Boothby was requested to bring about a meeting. After Lloyd George had gone, Lord Boothby waited for a summons; none came; he went into the Chancellor’s room to find Churchill brooding before the fire. ‘How did it go?’ he asked. ‘It couldn’t have gone better’, Churchill replied. ‘It is a remarkable thing that within a few minutes the old relationship was completely re-established.’ He then looked up with a twinkle in his eye and added: The relationship of master and servant – and I was the servant.’
Both men had intense courage; both were the subject of bitter attacks throughout most of their careers. But their backgrounds could not differ more. Churchill was laid to rest at Bladon, within sight of Blenheim Palace, which for him must have symbolised the tradition and sense of history that inspired his life. Lloyd George was buried on the banks of the river Dwyfor, where he played as a child within sight of Snowdon: in the heart of the Welsh countryside from which he had drawn his strength and inspiration. Today the memory of both is intertwined in Westminster Abbey.
After the war Lloyd George was to leave office, never to return. But from 1928 to 1936 he waged his third war, this time against unemployment. He had a genius for gathering around him men of the calibre of Maynard Keynes, Philip Kerr, William Beveridge and Walter Layton – and although his schemes for curing unemployment were never accepted by his own fellow countrymen, they were successfully adopted by Franklin Roosevelt and formed the basis of the ‘New Deal’.
Lloyd George sat in Parliament for fifty-five years; a span in which he could count as colleagues his fellow Liberal, William Ewart Gladstone and fellow Celt, Aneurin Bevan.
As an orator he was without parallel. As a debater he was devastating. He was a brilliant conversationalist but equally a receptive listener. One of his most famous perorations is to be found in the speech which he made at the beginning of the war in which he described a valley in North Wales between the mountain and the sea and how the boys were in the habit of climbing the lull above the village. It was to be one of his first rallying cries to the nation: ‘We have been living in a sheltered valley for generations. We have been too comfortable and too indulgent – many, perhaps, too selfish – and the stern hand of fate has scourged us to an elevation where we can see the everlasting things that matter for a nation – the high peaks we had forgotten of honour, duty, patriotism, and, clad in glittering white, the great pinnacle of sacrifice, pointing like a rugged finger to heaven.’
‘We shall descend into the valleys again; but as long as the men and women of this generation last, they will carry in their hearts the image of those great mountain peaks whose foundations are not shaken, though Europe rock and sway in the convulsions of a great war.’
To me Lloyd George was ‘taid’, or grandfather. He loved children and I have memories of his white hair and flowing cloak, making a tour of his fruit trees at Churt or pointing out the names of the wild flowers in the hedgerows around Brynawelon at Criccieth. At his home there was laughter, brilliant conversation and he had an amazing ability, not always to be found with the great, to draw out each person there and make them feel they had something vital to contribute. Perhaps one of his greatest joys was when two of his children, Megan and Gwilym, joined him as Members of the House of Commons.
Baldwin said it would take ten men to write his life. But let Churchill’s tribute suffice. ‘He was the greatest Welshman which that unconquerable race has produced since the age of the Tudors.’ Today he could be granted no greater national recognition than that his memorial stone, fashioned by two of Wales’ greatest craftsmen, is to be unveiled by his Royal Highness the Prince of Wales here in the Abbey. Indeed Lloyd George, as a former Constable of Caernarvon Castle, was pre-eminent in recognising the historic significance of the Prince of Wales in the life of the Principality. But today we salute Lloyd George not only as a great Welshman but as a great statesman of Britain.
It was Churchill again who said: ‘When the British history of the first quarter of the twentieth century is written, it will be seen that the greater part of our fortunes in peace and in war were shaped by this one man’.
The Red Queen and the White Queen [Article written for Business and Professional Woman, Spring 1970]
Two women have exercised a profound influence on my political life. Both were brilliant orators; both were a living link with the most exciting and turbulent periods in the life of this country; both were fearless in defence of great causes; both were daughters of dynamic Liberal Prime Ministers and in their loyalty to the memory of their respective fathers each became the symbol of the bitter dynastic struggles which split the Liberal Party.
For historical reasons neither liked the other. I adored both!
I refer of course to Lady Violet Bonham Carter, latterly Lady Asquith, and Lady Megan Lloyd George. Had neither possessed qualities in their own right, the experiences which each had enjoyed during the political careers of their famous fathers would in themselves have been totally absorbing.
As a child of six, Violet Asquith was taken to No. 10 Downing Street to meet the formidable William Gladstone. Winston Churchill was one of her father’s junior ministers, and her life-long friendship with him is contained in her brilliant and penetrating book, Churchill as I Knew Him.
For her the triumphs of the 1906 government; the battle of the suffragettes; the bitter debates on House of Lords reform and the 1909 Budget were vivid memories. Indeed, she was in the Lords Gallery for most of the debates during the clash between the two Houses.
Lady Megan, like Lady Violet, spent part of her youth at No. 10. In 1916 Asquith fell from power and was succeeded by Lloyd George, so as a young girl Megan accompanied her father to the Peace Conference at Versailles and there met Woodrow Wilson, Clemenceau, Briand – in fact all the leading statesmen of Europe. In the ’30s, with her father and brother Gwilym, she met Hitler at Berchtesgaden. Like Violet, she had met and usually knew every leading political figure of the past fifty years!
Both of these remarkable women were politicians to their fingertips. Megan sat in the Commons for over thirty years. Violet twice fought unsuccessfully to gain a seat in the Commons, and in 1964, after inexcusable pettiness had prevented her from becoming a life peeress, the present Prime Minister [Harold Wilson] on taking office immediately recommended her for a life peerage.
In appearance and in character they were totally different, but both drew much of their strength from their immediate family.
Megan I knew from childhood, since she had been my mother’s bridesmaid. She was minute, with tiny but beautiful little hands and feet, and eyes that at once revealed her vivacity. She was a fierce Welsh patriot and was happiest in her garden in Criccieth which, in itself, was testimony to her good taste and extravagance! Her sense of fun was irrepressible.
Like Violet she was extraordinarily well read, an excellent broadcaster and a polished French speaker. Like Violet she would defend a colleague with whom she agreed like a tigress. In debate she could be formidable and would tear into her opponents with her left index finger crooked, jabbing the air – an identical gesture to that of her father.
Despite their antipathy, Violet and Megan agreed on countless radical issues – from opposition to appeasement in the ’30s to the implementation of the Beveridge Report.
Violet in many ways was more intense. Once roused by an issue she would ‘bear down’ (her own phrase) on those whom she generally admired but who on a particular issue she felt misguided. One of the last to receive this treatment was the present Archbishop of Canterbury, over abortion reform, which Violet supported! I doubt if she ever compromised on any major principle in her life.
Her profile, her lucidity, her wit and courage are still a recent memory to millions of television viewers. What is not so well known is her service to the arts: Glyndebourne, the Old Vic, the BBC.
In debate her tongue could lacerate. As a relentless politician, within weeks of her death she was leading a deputation to the Prime Minister on Biafra and attending a European conference in The Hague.
In such a brief summary I can do justice to neither of these dynamic women. Both gave me their affection and their loyalty, which was returned in full measure.
Alas, both of them have now left the battlefield.
Platform gems: Lady Violet Bonham Carter (Lady Asquith of Yarnbury)
Violet Bonham Carter, the formidable daughter of Prime Minister Herbert Henry Asquith, had, in common with Megan Lloyd George, a facility for worshipping her father on a Chinese scale, which led Philip Guedalla to comment: ‘In her youth, Violet Asquith over-indulged in mental incest’. In 1916, Lloyd George, then Chancellor of the Exchequer, displaced Asquith as Prime Minister. This created bitterness, the traces of which are still to be found.
One example of the Lloyd George/Asquith feud: in the 1951 general election, Violet, largely at the behest of Churchill, was not opposed by a Conservative candidate in the Colne Valley constituency, and actually had Churchill to speak in her support. Many Liberals felt that the straight fight was digestible, but the appearance of the Leader of the Conservative Party was not. At the meeting of the Liberal Party Council following the election, Frank Byers complained that Violet had made the task of Liberals fighting Conservatives more difficult and this was to be deplored. As far as Megan was concerned, she had been asked for messages of support for Labour candidates where no Liberal was standing. She steadfastly declined, and this was to be commended. Violet rose to reply: ‘If’, she said, ‘having the greatest European and architect of victory in the Second World War on my platform was a sin, then I glory in my sin’. This was too much for Megan, who rose: ‘Well, Colonel Byers, you are correct to say that certain Labour candidates did indeed ask me for messages of support, which I declined. If that be a virtue, then for my part, I glory in my virtue.’
I remember in particular two of Violet’s speeches. The first was at the Torrington by-election in 1958, when the local MP, sitting as a National Liberal Conservative succeeded to his father’s viscountcy, thereby causing a vacancy. Violet’s son, Mark Bonham Carter, who had already fought the Bideford end of the seat when he had contested the old Barnstaple constituency in 1945, was invited to stand as Liberal candidate for the Torrington by-election. There has been some suggestion that Ambrose Fulford, the then current prospective Liberal candidate, was pushed aside to make way for Mark. This is far from the truth. The previous year at his home, Ambrose took Jo Grimond and me aside to say that he would fight a general election, but a by-election should have a national figure, and that in any event he was suffering from diabetes and was fully aware of the additional strains involved in a by-election as opposed to a general election.
Violet had deliberately been kept back to enable Mark to establish himself on his own account. When she did arrive, I drove her in my pocket-size Austin A30 to a meeting in the Pannier Market at Okehampton. Violet was in sparkling form. Addressing the meeting, she said:
‘I have been straining at the leash and am delighted to be here. Not surprisingly I have known the Liberal candidate longer and better than any of you, and I shall say a word about him in a moment. But first, what is the line-up? There is a Mr Leonard Lamb, appropriately named for the slaughter. We have yet to discover whether his socialism is of the palest pink or flaming crimson. Then there is Mr Royle, standing – please correct me if I have it wrong – as a National Liberal Conservative. I have never seen an animal to compare with a National Liberal Conservative, except once, with a horse in a pantomime. The man playing the front legs had a wonderful time – he could actually see where he was going. The man playing the hind legs was crouched up and had to go where the front legs told him. In the Torrington Stakes on Thursday next you can vote for my son, a real live Derby winner, or you can vote for the hind legs of a Tory pantomime horse.’
This was devastating ridicule and the reaction of the audience was like the parting of the Red Sea. Liberals, who had been the underdogs, rocked with laughter, whilst the Tories present looked alternately sheepish and infuriated. In the end, the Liberals won by a majority of 219, only alas to lose the seat in 1959, but the Liberal Democrats regained it in 1997.
The second speech of Violet’s marking the Torrington by-election, and delivered at the National Liberal Club, lasted for a few moments, but moved many of its hearers to tears. She remarked that she had celebrated her father’s by-election victory in Paisley, and now celebrated that of her son with equal pride and joy. Then she turned to the attack: ‘When I went to Torrington, I had a strange feeling that I was a member of an army of liberation, setting out to free territory which had been held by Quislings and collaborators [this refers to the Liberal Nationals (subsequently renamed National Liberals) whom I deal with elsewhere], whose day was at an end. There are still thousands of Liberals living in occupied territory, whom we have yet to liberate. The message which goes out to them today is: “Hold on, hold out, we are coming, and we are!”’
In 1968 the National Liberal Club organised a dinner to mark the centenary of the formation of Mr Gladstone’s first administration. The speakers were Roger Fulford, who placed Gladstone in historical perspective; the Archbishop of Canterbury, Michael Ramsey, who spoke on his theological beliefs and the appointment of bishops; Violet Asquith, who had actually called on Gladstone at No. 10 Downing Street for tea, aged six, and described this; and I myself, who spoke of him qua his role as a politician. It was a glittering occasion.
Lady Violet told an engaging story about Mr Gladstone and his liability in seasickness. On one occasion prior to his crossing the Channel he consulted his physician who advised him that he should concentrate his mind totally on some great issue. In Mr Gladstone’s case this involved finding a suitable book to occupy his mind. He repaired to his library and took down a slim volume entitled Pickering on Adult Baptism, I had already arranged to take Lady Olwen Carey Evans, Lloyd George’s elder daughter, back to where she was staying and found no provision had been made for taking Lady Violet home – she accepted my invitation that I should do so. I realised at this point that I was about to transport Lloyd George’s and Asquith’s daughters whose families had been engaged in a feud since 1916, when Asquith was deposed as Prime Minister and was succeeded by Lloyd George, who had been Chancellor of the Exchequer. I said to Violet: ‘I believe you know my Aunt Olwen’. ‘Yes’, came the reply, ‘slightly’. It was a decidedly chilly beginning. After we had dropped Violet, Olwen turned to me and said: ‘I cannot think why Violet is always beastly to me. We were, after all, neighbours once.’ ‘Yes’, I replied. ‘But the addresses involved were No. 11 and No. 10 Downing Street, and the tenants of No. 11 evicted the tenants of No. 10 and moved in themselves. For that they have never been forgiven.’
In the autumn of 1961 I was with an I TV camera crew in Jamaica. We were addressing the likely economic effects of the new United Kingdom immigration laws on Jamaica. In the course of our enquiries we visited the Royal Jamaican cigar factory and there we saw the largest cigars I had ever seen – nearly eight inches long, taking approximately one hour forty-five minutes to smoke. It was decided that if he would accept them, we would give Churchill a box of these tobacco zeppelins. On returning home I asked Christopher Soames (Churchill’s son-in-law and himself a minister) whether he could make the necessary arrangements for a presentation. I could call on Churchill in his room in the House of Commons, his London home or Chartwell, where my mother lived a few miles away. Christopher suggested Hyde Park Gate, and on arrival at the appointed hour, before I could ring the doorbell, the door swung open and I was ushered into the hall. There, laid out, were what I could only describe as the great man’s props: the ebony cane with its silver top, the round/square bowler and the overcoat with its fur collar. Looking through the doorway I saw the old man sitting, brooding by the fire. He warmly welcomed me and gestured for me to sit in the chair next to him. He accepted the cigars and even he expressed surprise at their size. ‘They are vast’, he said and proceeded to offer me one of his cigars to smoke. I politely declined as I did not want him to feel under any obligation. ‘Very well’ he said, ‘You must take one of your own cigars as a souvenir.’ This I gladly agreed to do, and the cigar and a charming letter from him are both framed and hang in my study.
The second occasion on which I spoke to him was in the smoking room at the House of Commons. I had previously called in at Agnews, the picture dealers in Bond Street. Geoffrey Agnew asked me whether I was interested in Max Beerbohm’s work. He had a cartoon of the Liberal front bench in 1910, which included Asquith as Prime Minister, Lloyd George as Chancellor and Churchill as Home Secretary. Geoffrey expected that each of the three daughters of these men might want to buy the cartoon, thereby arousing the anger of the two unsuccessful ones. What should he do? I replied that he should sell it to me. It would be rather like the Peace of Amiens, of which no one was proud but everyone was relieved.
The picture was duly delivered to me at the Liberal Whips’ Room. As luck would have it, Willie Whitelaw was passing the door and I showed him the cartoon. I said that I had just seen Churchill making for the smoking room and I wondered whether he would be amused by the cartoon of himself and his colleagues. ‘He would be fascinated’, said Willie. ‘That is, if we got through to him.’ Churchill was seated surrounded by half a dozen MPs, who were acting as his acolytes. We propped the picture up in front of him and at first there was no reaction from him. Then suddenly he lit up and pointed to the first figure, and said: ‘It’s David’. ‘Yes sir. It is Lloyd George in 1910.’ And it is HH.’ ‘Yes sir, Asquith. And that’s you, sir.’ Churchill looked up and said: ‘Fine team, great team, none finer – ever’. Needless to say, I agreed, but I doubt whether his Tory entourage approved of these views! I felt that it was a pity that Campbell Bannerman had died before the cartoon was drawn, since the 1906 Cabinet had produced four Prime Ministers, of whom he was one. As luck would have it, Beerbohm had previously drawn a cartoon of Campbell Bannerman, which I discovered and bought a week later.
After the tributes were paid in the House of Commons to Winston Churchill on 25 January 1965, I returned to my flat and went down for dinner in the restaurant. In the corner was a distinguished elderly man. I asked him whether I was right in thinking that he was Sir Albert Gladstone, to which he assented. I told him I had just returned from the House of Commons from the Churchill tributes and that the lying-in-state plans for Churchill were based on those for his grandfather, who was the last commoner to lie in state. Did he have a picture from his parents describing the scene? ‘Oh’, he said, ‘I was there as a very young child’. I asked him if he had been to Churchill’s lying-in-state and he said he thought he was too old to queue. I told him that with great respect he should be there since he was a living link with history; MPs’ guests could reach Westminster Hall by a side door and that I would like to escort him there tomorrow. He could be in and out in fifteen minutes. I remember noting the shape of his head was like Gladstone’s! We duly arrived at Westminster Hall and he appeared wrapped in thought. I asked him how different Churchill’s lying-in-state was from that of his grandfather. He said that the atmosphere was the same but there were virtually no children, fewer women and for the most part the men were wearing frock coats or morning coats and took off their top hats as they went past the catafalque. He said: ‘There is something different. Yes, it’s the coffin. Mr Churchill is draped with the Union Jack. My grandfather’s coffin was draped with a grey silk pall given to the family by the Armenian community. It was a token of their gratitude to him for the way in which he had denounced the atrocities perpetrated by the Turks against the Armenian people. We still use the pall for family funerals.’
I had with me my nephew, then aged ten, and thought what an amazing link he will be in later years, having been to Churchill’s lying-in-state with Gladstone’s grandson, who in his turn had been to Gladstone’s lying-in-state.
One of the most dramatic occasions that I have experienced at a political meeting was provided by Isaac Foot, former Liberal MP for SE Cornwall and the venerable father of Dingle, Michael, John, Hugh and Christopher. Isaac was to be the main supporting speaker at a 1955 election meeting in the town hall in Liskeard. A leaflet had been given out by some freelance Tories in which the Sixth Earl of Rosebery advised Liberals in Devon and Cornwall to vote Conservative in the general election. This advice followed the pattern in which Conservative candidates called themselves Liberal Conservatives, Conservative Liberals, National Liberal and Conservatives and every other possible variant.
‘Leave Lord Rosebery to me’, said Isaac before the meeting. ‘I understand’, he told a packed meeting, ‘that Lord Rosebery has ventured to give advice to Liberals in Devon and Cornwall. I thought he was only a specialist of the Turf, but possibly he claims authority from the fact that his father was a minister in one of Mr Gladstone’s administrations.’ ‘Silence’, said Isaac, ‘I hear voices coming from over here’. He advanced towards an upright piano at the back of the platform, lifted the lid and the top of his head disappeared into the piano. ‘Yes, it’s Isaac Foot, good evening, sir, I am very well, thank you. I hope you are too. It is difficult to hear you, since there is background noise. Hush’, said Isaac, waving his hand towards the audience. Total silence ensued. ‘Yes, that’s very clear, thank you very much. I’ll certainly tell them that. Good day to you, sir.’
With that he extracted himself from the piano, closed the lid and advanced to the front of the platform. ‘I’ve just been talking to Mr Gladstone’, said Isaac, ‘and his advice is that all Liberals in Devon and Cornwall should vote Liberal. So much for Lord Rosebery.’
The audience was captivated. My reckoning was that 80 per cent regarded this intervention as a tour de force, 10 per cent thought it might possibly have happened, the other 10 per cent weren’t sure what to think.
Isaac Foot was a West Country institution. His house, Pencrebar in Callington, was bursting at the seams with books. He was unquestionably the best-read man I’ve ever known. The distillation of his reading was to be found in Commonplace Books: on the spine of each was the name of a statesman, historian, poet or author whose works or writings about them he had absorbed. Thus, for example, the Commonplace Book on Edmund Burke represented the cullings of twenty books or more. He took particular delight in getting telephone calls from his sons: Dingle, checking a quote for an article in The Observer, or a similar enquiry from Michael for Tribune or from John and Hugh, checking a historical allusion for a future speech. When his wife protested that there was no further space in the house for more books, he had some of his future purchases delivered to the gardener’s cottage, and smuggled them into the house in a wheelbarrow, covered in logs. He was almost always discovered.
A passionate orator and local preacher, he was a formidable campaigner for Liberalism and Methodism, which were the driving forces of his life.
By the time I Joined the Liberal Party in 1948, Lord Samuel was already the elder statesman of the party and sole surviving member of the Asquith government. As he got older, his quips become crisper and more effective. Seeking to maintain an equidistant position as between the Conservative and Labour Parties, he told the story of a bathing beauty competition at Brighton. The judges were unable to decide between two finalists and happened to see a Chinaman who had just got off the train. Here was a guarantee of an impartial judge! The Chinaman looked from one to the other, shook his head and said: ‘Both are worse!’
In the same context Lord Samuel said that when he was asked to vote Conservative in order to dislodge the Socialists, he was being asked ‘to jump out of the frying pan into the refrigerator!’
Liberals always regarded the National Liberals (previously known as Liberal Nationals) as anathema. They were formed to fight the 1931 general election, having broken away from the Liberal Party on the issue of tariff reform, pledging their total support to the Conservative Party, from whom they become indistinguishable. They thereby confused the electorate, until they were ultimately wound up as a party. It was not before the Conservative Party had postured as Liberal Nationals and Conservative Liberals, and every other variation, that the hybrid party ceased to exist in 1966.
As Sir Archibald Sinclair said: ‘The National Liberals are like a mule, in that they have no pride of ancestry and no hope of posterity’. Lord Samuel was to deal with them in a different way, but one that was equally devastating. When speaking in the House of Lords, he commended a measure which had the support of the three major parties. Listening intently, Lord Teviot, who had signed the post-war Teviot-Woolton agreement formalising the relationship between the National Liberals and the Conservative Party, rose to interrupt and said: ‘Surely the noble Viscount means that there are four major parties involved – the Conservatives, the Socialists, the Liberals and the National Liberals?’ Samuel eyed him quizzically and then replied: ‘I am grateful to the noble Lord for his interesting and useful observation, of which no doubt the House will take note. For my part, I shall endeavour to tie a knot in my handkerchief.’
On the eve of parliament in 1960, the Liberals in the Commons had a Joint dinner with the Lords for the first time. There was some doubt as to who should read out the Queen’s Speech – Jo Grimond as Leader of the Parliamentary Party, or Lord Rea, the Liberal leader in the Lords. With considerable finesse, Lord Samuel, who had been Liberal leader in both houses, was asked to read the speech. At the discussions which followed the dinner, Lord Samuel said that whilst he was flattered to read the Queen’s Speech, and with the Suez fiasco (which I deal with later) clearly in mind, he said: ‘When I was reading the gracious speech I was tempted to interpolate comment, and then thought it might be disrespectful to the monarch. When I came across the claim that: “My government will continue to support the United Nations”, I was tempted to say: “says you!”’
I was privileged to come into contact with Lord Beveridge as a result of the founding of a charity, with one or two colleagues in 1957, known as the National Benevolent Fund for the Aged. The purpose of the charity is to provide holidays for elderly people from inner cities who have never been away on holiday, or have not been away for decades. The charity started in a small bottom drawer of my desk in my chambers, when the holidays cost £7 per person. Lord Beveridge was invited to become the first president. Beveridge had always maintained that however advanced the welfare state, there would always be a role for voluntary action. This was one reason why he was disappointed at the minor role which was envisaged for Friendly Societies. He would have been delighted at the way in which this charity has developed. Thirty-seven thousand elderly people have been provided with a week’s holiday in a number of seaside resorts. The cost today is £100 per head, or £200 if special care is needed. The financial turnover is on average a quarter of a million pounds per annum. The charity also provides tens machines which relieve pain, to over 300 individuals and 400 hospitals.
Lord Beveridge had some very distinguished successors as presidents: Lady Spencer Churchill, Mary Soames (as Patron), the former Speaker of the House of Commons, Lord Tonypandy, and the current Speaker, Betty Boothroyd.
Working breakfasts are my idea of purgatory, but there are always exceptions. One of these was breakfasting with Lord Beveridge at the Reform Club, where we not infrequently stayed.
He was at the time heavily involved in writing a history of prices. He would, for example, refer to the terms and conditions of employment of a mason in the fourteenth century, or a cabinet-maker in the fifteenth century, and he would then draw fascinating conclusions as to their social status and economic significance.
He came into active party politics late in life, but as a senior civil servant he drafted the Labour Exchange Act in 1909. He also helped draft part of the National Insurance Act of 1911 in support of Asquith and Lloyd George. Beveridge then became, in 1919, the director of the London School of Economics, and thereafter Vice Chancellor of London University. But he will be most remembered for the Beveridge Report, which was adopted by Attlee and the post-war Labour government and earned Beveridge the title of Father of the Welfare State.
In 1944, he was adopted as Liberal candidate for the Berwick-upon-Tweed by-election. The constituency had been represented by the young George Grey (son of the late General W. H. Grey, one-time Liberal party treasurer). George Grey was killed in the Second World War and under the terms of the party truce during the war, any by-election would permit the party holding the seat to provide the replacement MP. Under these circumstances Beveridge became the MP for Berwick. The supreme irony of the 1945 election was that the campaign was fought by all parties on the basis of the Beveridge Report, and yet he himself was defeated at the polls. Thereafter he was created a peer. In the 1959 election he came to speak in support of my candidature in North Devon and drew large crowds.
Beveridge had a formidable wife. On one occasion Donald Wade (Liberal MP for Huddersfield West) arranged for the mayor to receive Beveridge. Beveridge had barely arrived in the mayor’s parlour when the telephone rang. It was Lady Beveridge wishing to speak to the mayor. Having established that she was talking to the mayor she said: ‘I want you to be personally responsible for seeing that my husband has a hot water bottle in his bed tonight!’
I only met Bevan when he, Megan Lloyd George and myself had tea on the terrace of the House of Commons. The two Celts sparked each other off and it wasn’t long before Bevan switched to a subject which always seemed to fascinate politicians, namely rubbishing some of their parliamentary colleagues. For some reason I cannot recall, the discussion involved Chuter Ede, the Home Secretary. ‘Chuter is a frightful bore’, said Nye. ‘He is suburban, which accounts for it. His speeches are a series of generalisations. They are rather like branches of a tree in that they sprout from a wizened trunk, spread in all directions and very seldom touch ground.’
On Morrison: ‘Herbert has a way of taking over other people’s brilliant plans, storing them up in perpetuity in case they should ever become useful’.
Nye asked the name of a Tory backbencher who he was eyeing quizzically. He was told the identity of the Member and Nye noticed that his head was connected to his shoulders without an apparent neck. ‘Ah’, said Nye a hangman’s puzzle!’
My own prize recollection of Herbert Morrison occurred when I was an undergraduate. Morrison was to make two speeches, one the day after the other. The first was to the Oxford University Labour Club and the second to the Ladies’ Co-operative Guild at High Wycombe. When he rose to address the audience he discovered that his press secretary had given as a press release the High Wycombe speech which he had in front of him and in view of the press release he felt honour-bound to deliver the address meant for the Ladies’ Guild! It was not a felicitous occasion. When he said: ‘Mr and Mrs Consumer, I want to discuss your weekly shopping pattern’, he was greeted with mock cheers and guffaws, both of which steadily increased in volume until finally Morrison was reduced to saying: ‘Either my sense of humour is rum, or yours is’. Ever since, for my part, I have always religiously checked any hand-out before it is distributed.
One of the more civilised customs of the House of Commons is the practice whereby one MP informs another – whether of his party or not – of his intention to visit the constituency of the MP concerned. This is based on the fact that the MP to be visited is the representative of all the electorate in the constituency.
One day, standing at the Bar of the House, lain Macleod turned to me and said: ‘I’ve just come back from your constituency’. ‘So I noticed’, I replied, ‘having read it in the press’. ‘Surely you are not suggesting’, he replied, ‘that one gives notice to MPs of a different persuasion?’ Attempting to and succeeding in sounding my most pompous, I rejoined: ‘When my father and grandfather took the Tory whip in the House, it was always done, and I am sorry to see that standards have deteriorated since my family left the Tory Party’.
Harold Wilson, observing the custom, and also as a friend, in the spring of 1962 gave me notice that he intended to visit the North Devon Labour Party. He said that he would not be dealing with the Liberals, but concentrating on the record of the Tory government. Having learnt the date, I told him that I, too, was going to North Devon that weekend and would be happy to give him a lift across Exmoor from the station at Taunton, where I kept the car. I would thereby save him between an hour and an hour and a half on his journey. ‘Do you mind?’ said Harold, to which I replied: ‘Of course I don’t mind. You are going down in any event, and I will have the pleasure of your company.’ ‘Will your supporters object?’ asked Harold. ‘I doubt it’, I replied, ‘but if they do, I shall tell them that an opponent should not be treated as a mortal enemy’. ‘Will the Labour Party mind?’ he asked, to which I said: ‘That concerns me even less!’
On the journey I filled him in as to what to expect: the North Devon Labour Party consisted of pockets in three places; at the next election the local party would be lucky to save their deposit; he would get an attendance of between fifteen and twenty; the chairman would be Dick Acland’s former Liberal agent, now a convert; and no arrangements would be made to feed him, so that I would expect him to come back for a late supper.
All went merrily along, until we rounded a corner in remotest Exmoor to find a hay wagon fully laden with bales of hay sideways on, blocking the lane.
I suppose this has been laid on’, said Harold jocularly. ‘Yes’, I said, ‘this is an ambush by the North Devon savages.’ It became clear that the shaft of the hay wagon had broken and the farmer was frantically moving hay bales into the neighbouring field. I became slightly worried and turned to Harold and said: ‘It is a point of honour for me to get you to your meeting on time. We must get out and help carry bales of hay, but please leave your pipe behind.’
Harold rolled up his sleeves and obliged. The farmer said: ‘Good evening, Mr Thorpe, I am sorry to delay you’. He kept looking quizzically at Harold, as if to ask: ‘Where did I last meet you?” Oh’, I said, ‘Let me introduce you. This is Mr Harold Wilson who has very kindly come down to help us with the hay harvest!’ ‘Very kind, I’m sure’, said the farmer.
We got to the Labour meeting on time. The Labour faithful were astonished to see their speaker driven to the door by the local Liberal MP. Harold got out, with wisps of hay clinging to him, and with total aplomb, went into the meeting.
Later that evening a Labour supporter brought Harold to the country hotel where I was living. Harold told me that the meeting was as prophesied, likewise the chairman, likewise the likely outcome in the next general election and most importantly, likewise the absence of supper. This was soon repaired.
When Harold Wilson died I paid him this short tribute:
‘Harold Wilson was a good friend and a formidable opponent. He was a great parliamentarian and a dedicated democrat. His belief in democracy was not limited to fine phrases but led to positive action. When in government he was convinced that opposition parties were not sufficiently well equipped to oppose the government in power. He therefore initiated the so-called “Short Money” to finance the parliamentary activities of the opposition parties. Although at the time attacked, it is now a generally accepted part of parliamentary life. He considered that the job of the Opposition Chief Whip was full time and therefore should be salaried. He also took the view that the Chief Opposition Whip and the leader of the third party should be Privy Councillors, which had been by no means automatic in the past.’
Harold Lever, who was Financial Secretary to the Treasury, was one of the great humorists in the House of Commons, and I particularly enjoyed his remark: ‘I am a fair-minded man and I would never accuse this government of dishonesty when a simple explanation of stupidity would suffice’.
I wrongly attributed this dictum to his brother, Leslie Lever, who was the MP for the Ardwick Division of Manchester. Leslie had many qualities but these did not include a ready wit. I am delighted to have this opportunity, albeit posthumously, to correct the record in Harold’s favour.
There are Liberal parties and Liberal parties. In Australia and Japan the Liberal parties are the equivalent of the Conservatives. In the Republic of Korea the Democratic Liberal Party is also Conservative. In Russia the Liberal Democrat Party is an anti-reform neo-fascist party. Canada stands out as having a liberal Liberal party in a three-party system, which certainly corresponds to the UK Liberal Party. We were loosely bound together by the Liberal International and I was determined to strengthen the links between the UK and Canada.
Trudeau made his first appearance as Prime Minister of Canada at the Commonwealth Conference in London in January 1969. I wrote to the high Commissioner of Canada asking whether it would be possible for him to fix up a meeting with Trudeau and was told that it was impossible. I therefore telephoned Trudeau’s private secretary to say that I understood he was dining at No. 10 that night and so was I; and he would be leaving Claridges for No. 10 and so was I; how would it be if my driver dropped me off at Claridges and I travelled to Downing Street in his car? It worked! I looked forward to our encounter.
By way of introduction I told Trudeau that the UK Liberal Party had a two-million vote behind it and regarded Liberal Canada as the political equivalent of Mecca. The two parties were linked by the Liberal International but it was a very tenuous connection. Lester Pearson had in fact taken part in a UK party political broadcast for the Liberals shortly after giving up the premiership. John Turner – one-time Minister of Justice and Attorney General, Minister of Finance and subsequently Prime Minister in the Canadian Liberal government, had been a college secretary of the Oxford University Liberal Club, of which at the time I was president. Trudeau might be warned by his advisers that some of the European Liberal parties were anti-clerical in nature. This could endanger the Roman Catholic vote in Quebec. Whilst this criticism was justified before the war, it no longer applied. I felt that getting to know people like Walter Scheel and Hans-Dietrich Genscher of Germany, and Gaston Thorn of Luxembourg, as fellow Liberals, could be invaluable.
Secondly, Trudeau might have started his premiership with reservations about the unity of the Commonwealth. In fact he would find within ranks people of the intellectual ability of Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore, Julius Nyerere of Tanzania and Indira Gandhi of India. It was not without significance that Canada had played a major part in preventing the break-up of the Commonwealth on the issues of Suez and Rhodesia. For my part, I felt that one of the most important factors of the Commonwealth was that it was about the only organisation in which men and women of all colours, creeds and ideologies sat down with complete equality and relative trust, based on shared history. Finally, he might have regarded the monarchy as something outdated. But he could well find the Queen, with her many years of experience, an invaluable source of knowledge and wisdom.
I felt we had established a rapport and so it was to prove to be. At this stage we reached Downing Street.
Canada under his leadership was to play a vital part in defusing the crisis over the shipment of arms by the UK to South Africa, which I deal with elsewhere. On two occasions Canada, on the issue of Rhodesia, probably averted the break-up of the Commonwealth. I have always thought that Canada felt overshadowed by her neighbour to the south. It was part of Trudeau’s success that Canadians recognised Canada as the world power which she had a right to claim to be.
Charisma is an overworked word, but it certainly applies to Trudeau: a man of infinite charm and negotiating skills which, allied to the fact that he is trilingual (English, French and French-Canadian), were all to play an invaluable part in dealing with the crisis of Quebec. The fundamental amendments which were made to the Canadian constitution during his premiership owed much of its success to the skills of the monarch and the Prime Minister of Canada. The Canadian Liberal Party has played a vital part in the recent history of the Liberal International, meeting on occasion in Ottawa. Now no Liberal International Congress is complete without the participation of Canadian Liberals.
One of my favourite stories involved Golda Meir, Prime Minister of Israel and President Nixon. Henry Kissinger was the American Secretary of State, whilst Abba Eban, Cambridge educated, was the Israeli Foreign Minister. Nixon remarked: ‘We both have a vital factor in common in our two administrations’. ‘My God’, said Golda, ‘What is it?’ to which Nixon replied: ‘We both have Jewish Foreign Secretaries!’ ‘Oh, yes’, replied Golda, ‘But mine speaks better English than yours!’
On one occasion in November 1972 I called on Golda in the Prime Minister’s office in Jerusalem. It was at the time when there had been several cases of hijacking of aeroplanes. She was anxious to make clear that Israel would never give in to the hijackers. And yet, she said, ‘We are vulnerable. I am a grandmother. Suppose my grandchildren, along with other children, were flying abroad and were hijacked. I hope I would be strong enough to resist the terrorists’ claims. And then again, one is only human, and the temptation would be very great to act in a way which might spare the lives of innocent children.’
Roy Thomson was an eminently approachable man, but was very close when it came to cash. At one Guildhall banquet which was part of a state visit, Roy approached me and said: ‘Have you got your car here?’ I replied: ‘Yes, are you in difficulties? Has yours broken down?’ ‘No’, replied Roy. ‘I just don’t pay overtime and sent the car away’. I duly gave him a lift home on this and several occasions. But the most dramatic manifestation of his economy was the 125th anniversary dinner at Claridges for the Illustrated London News. Prince Philip was the chief guest and I would guess that even Roy would have certain inhibitions about asking him for a lift. However, Harold Wilson, then Prime Minister, could be and was asked. I heard Roy say: ‘You just drive to Downing Street and I’ll tell your driver where to take me afterwards’. On the journey back, Harold Wilson apparently said: ‘I hear The Times is in difficulties’. ‘Is that so?’ said Roy. ‘What do they need to do?’ Wilson: ‘They need a first-class business brain, a man of wide experience in owning and administering newspapers. In fact, Roy, you would be the ideal man. Why don’t you take it over and thereby be a national benefactor?’ ‘Oh’, said Roy, rising to the challenge, ‘I’ll ring them up tomorrow’. This was precisely what he did and took over The Times into which he pumped millions. I always wonder whether, had he paid his chauffeur over time, he might not have taken over The Times. As it was, he was a benefactor and I like to feel that the experience of losing so much money was good for his soul.
One abortive exchange between us took place in October 1960 in connection with the News Chronicle. This was a national newspaper which spoke for the liberal conscience in Britain. Rumours were rife that it was about to go out of business; the Manchester Guardian, then printed in Manchester, was more a provincial than a national paper, and there was a need for a radical version, of the quality of the Daily Telegraph. I told Roy that I thought £2 million would be needed to buy the News Chronicle. Broken down, this figure provided for £½ million for pensions; £1 million for losses in the first two years and £½ million for promotion. I made strenuous efforts to contact Lawrence Cadbury, the owner of the News Chronicle, but he was ‘not available’, having already sold out to the Daily Mail. In the debate in the House of Commons I referred to him as the Butcher of Bouverie Street, where the News Chronicle was situated. As predicted at the time, the liberal influence of the Chronicle was submerged and obliterated.
After the war I visited Max in his spiritual home, Villino Chiaro, Rapallo. It was on the side of a hill overlooking the Mediterranean. Unfortunately ‘progress’ had cut a road at the foot of the property which was the main coastal road to the south. He was slightly protected against the noise by the fact that he lived on three levels. At the road level they had a reception room where they received their guests. Further up the garden path was Max’s studio-cum-study which opened on to a veranda giving a superb view of the sea without vision of the road. In his study he had a small, thin, waist-high shelf on which he kept a fabulous collection of cartoons by himself and others. Higher still was a small house where they entertained. When Lady Beerbohm wished to go from level one to level three, as it were, she would clap her hands and two retainers would appear to carry her up the garden to save her heart from being strained. It seemed a rather sensible arrangement. At tea-time she apologised for the fact that the cake had been bought. (‘No need to apologise’, said Max. ‘You always get that little something extra from shop cake that you don’t get with homemade cakes.’
We had driven through Viareggio the day before, down the coast from Rapallo. It was there that Shelley had drowned. I asked Max whether there was any permanent memorial to Shelley. The reply was unexpected: ‘Florence and I have never been to Viareggio.’ In spite of the fact that they had lived up the coast for many years, they had obviously regarded Viareggio as a vulgar seaside resort and given it a wide berth.
One delight of being with Max was that he would often indulge in drawing an instant cartoon. He had given a lecture on Lytton Strachey, and my great uncle asked him what Strachey really looked like. ‘Oh’, said Max, ‘I’ll show you’.
I mention the Beerbohms’ sojourn with my Wood relations elsewhere.
My friendship with Noel Coward dated from the ’60s. I went to have tea with him in Switzerland and found him as biting and stimulating as his writings were at their best. I asked him whether he liked living in Switzerland. ‘Not very much’, he said. ‘But when I look out of my bedroom window each morning, I see a positively beautiful tax advantage!’
Perhaps his best-known quip related to Queen Salote of Tonga at the Coronation. Anxious not to disappoint the crowd, and despite the fact that it was raining, this huge majestic lady insisted on having the roof of her carriage down so that she could see and be seen by the crowds. By the time she reached Westminster Abbey she was soaked through. Sitting opposite her in the carriage was an unfortunate little man who turned out to be the Sultan of Kelantan from Malaysia, who it was feared, would die of pneumonia. Somebody asked Noel: ‘Who is the little man in Queen Salote’s carriage?’ That’, said Noel, ‘is her lunch!’
On another occasion, Megan Lloyd George visited Noel in his house in Jamaica. Noticing a rather splendid picture over the chimney piece, she asked who painted it. ‘I did’, said Noel. ‘Is there any limit to your genius?’ she asked. ‘None’, replied Noel, ‘I call this picture Touch and Gaugin!’ Almost the last time I saw Noel, we had supper at the Grill at the Savoy.
Unfortunately our table was quite near the door and countless people would come up and say good evening to me, hoping it would lead to an introduction to Noel there and then. I found that this was slightly embarrassing and apologised. ‘Don’t apologise, dear boy’, was the reply. ‘I always wondered what it was like to be the station-master at Clapham Junction!’
Noel at his most Rabelaisian produced a classic on the occasion when his god-daughter came to have tea with him. To his dismay he saw two dogs copulating on the lawn. He was anxious to deflect the attention of the little girl from this basic scene and of course the inevitable happened. She saw the dogs and asked what was going on. Noel was only temporarily stumped, then replied: ‘The dog in the front is blind and the one behind is pushing her all the way to St Dunstan’s!’
It is difficult to sum up Edward Boyle. But I think I would say that he was the most knowledgeable man I have ever met. His knowledge was not only encyclopaedic but covered the widest possible spectrum of interests: race relations; education; literature; music, and the arts generally. When one was locked in conversation with him, he flattered one by assuming one’s knowledge was as great as his.
My first recollection of him as a speaker was at the Oxford Union, when he was defending the Conservative government in a no-confidence debate. His protagonist was George Brown, who made a rip-roaring, swashbuckling speech. Edward followed and with his usual courtesy thanked George Brown for his thoughtful speech which he proposed to answer. With breathtaking coolness, Edward said that he had heard what George had had to say in regard to the government’s general economic strategy but was bound to say that he, George, would come to a very different view if he had read the latest work of Professor K. R. Popper. ‘Christ,’ said George, and that was the end of the matter.
I remember seeing Edward shortly after a new gramophone record release of some slightly esoteric conductor’s interpretation of a new work. Edward was not only aware of three previous recordings but pointed out that in this new recording the conductor had taken liberties with the tempo of the piece half a dozen bars before the end of the third movement, which had spoilt the lead into the fourth movement!
He was deeply shocked by the state of race relations in Birmingham, where he was the Member of Parliament for Perry Bar. Suez had been the reason for his resignation as a minister, and his deep unhappiness over the trend of racial intolerance within the Tory Party, as he saw it, accounted for his retirement from membership of the House of Commons. He was to become totally fulfilled in his job as Vice-Chancellor of Leeds University and could often be found seated in the cafeteria surrounded by a posse of undergraduates engaged in lively discussion. He was the humane face of Conservatism. His death from cancer prematurely removed from the scene one of the civilising influences in our society.