A Problem Like Maria: A Woman's Eye View of Life as an MP

MARIA FYFE was the only female Labour MP from Scotland when she was first elected in 1987. She was an MP for 14 years for Glasgow Maryhill. In that time, she campaigned for poverty-stricken areas of the city in Parliament before stepping down in 2001. She has always been strongly politically active, campaigning for the equal representation of women in government.

A Problem Like Maria

A woman’s eye view of life as an MP

MARIA FYFE

Luath Press Limited

EDINBURGH

www.luath.co.uk

First published 2014

eBook 2014

ISBN: 978-1-910021-04-0

ISBN (eBook): 978-1-909912-88-5

The publishers acknowledge the support of Creative Scotland towards the publication of this volume.

The author’s right to be identified as author of this work under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 has been asserted.

© Maria Fyfe 2014

For my sons, Stephen and Chris

Acknowledgements

My thanks to Michael Palmer and David Hendry, and the staff at Gartnavel Hospital, without whom I would not have been around to write this book.

Also Janet Andrews, Tom Brown, Catriona Burness, Malcolm Burns, Jim Cassidy, Anna Dyer, Liz Kristiansen, Jim Mearns and my brother, Joe O’Neill, for their useful comments, suggestions and encouragement.

I have tried my utmost to avoid errors: if any are present, they are mine and mine alone, and none the fault of those mentioned above. Any factual corrections will be welcomed, especially since a significant aim of writing this book was to set the record straight on that period in our UK Parliament.

Another aim was to encourage interest in a political life when widespread cynicism discourages good people from thinking about it. My third and final aim was to reveal the funny side of a Parliamentary career. Every walk of life has its jokes at its own expense and its absurdities, and Parliament could often be the best show in town.

Contents

Acknowledgements

Chronology

Chapter 1 I Could Have Danced All Night

Chapter 2 This Old House

Chapter 3 The Poll Tax

Chapter 4 Changing the Recipe

Chapter 5 Blacklists: A Blot on British Democracy

Chapter 6 Babies and Bars

Chapter 7 The First Gulf War

Chapter 8 On the Scottish Front Bench

Chapter 9 ‘New.’ But is it Labour?

Chapter 10 Clause Four – A Battle Royal

Chapter 11 1997: A New Dawn?

Chapter 12 Steps on the Road to Devolution

Chapter 13 The Fight for 50:50

Chapter 14 The Mike Tyson Battle

Chapter 15 Time to Go Home

Chapter 16 Ding Dong

Chapter 17 Where do we go from here?

Picture Section

Chronology

1987

General Election. Share of votes in Scotland: Labour 42.38 per cent, Conservative 24.03, Alliance 19.2 per cent, SNP 14.04 per cent, Others 0.3 per cent. First female MP in Glasgow Maryhill.

7,861 out of work in Maryhill, fifth highest in the country.

Poll Tax for England and Wales debated in Commons.

1988

January: Fight Alton Bill rally in Glasgow.

March: four months after start of Intifada against Israeli occupation, delegation sent to West Bank and Gaza.

Nigel Lawson’s budget reducing corporation tax for small businesses introduced.

April: Bill against Blacklisting introduced.

May: Glasgow May Day Rally.

24 May: Section 28 enacted.

May: visit to Nicaragua, invited by Sandinista women.

July: Campaign for a Scottish Assembly publishes ‘Claim of Right for Scotland’.

September: Tribune Rally at Labour Party Conference in Blackpool.

Conference votes to have a woman on every parliamentary shortlist.

10 November: Glasgow Govan by-election. Jim Sillars overturns 19,500 Labour majority.

21 November: Committees of 100 against Poll Tax launched.

24 November: first meeting of the Anti-Blacklisting Campaign.

1989

3 March: Scottish Constitutional Convention meets for first time.

Canon Kenyon Wright makes famous ‘We say Yes’ speech.

Numerous calls for gender balance in future Scottish Assembly.

14 April: SCC working group on women’s issues set up.

7 June: John Smith, Shadow Chancellor of Exchequer, sings theme from Neighbours, mocking Thatcher/Lawson disagreement on Exchange Rate Mechanism.

9 June: Nigel Lawson, Chancellor of Exchequer, resigns.

18 June: Women’s Claim of Right published.

September: appointed front bench spokesperson on women by Neil Kinnock.

December: STUC Women’s Committee publish ‘Equal Voice for Women’. Call for 50:50 from Day One of Scottish Assembly.

1990

10 February: British-Irish Parliamentary Body founded.

March: riot in London against Poll Tax.

March: Labour Scottish Conference at Dunoon supports equal male/female outcome for seats in Scottish Assembly.

April: Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill.

August: Saddam Hussein invades Kuwait.

22 November: Margaret Thatcher stands down.

1991

15 January: vote in Commons to support war in Iraq (Maria resigns from front bench).

17 January: Allied commanders launch military offensive.

21 January: John Cryer tables amendment calling for peaceful settlement, but is not selected by the Speaker.

9 February: Labour Party Scottish Executive calls for a ceasefire.

15 February: Iraqi Revolutionary Council sues for peace, Britain and America reject proposals.

Harry Ewing, MP for Falkirk East, co-chairs with Maria new organisation, ‘Scottish Labour Against War in the Gulf.’

March: Labour Party Scottish Conference welcomes end of hostilities and liberation of Kuwait, calls for democracy in Kuwait, regrets action before sanctions exhausted.

September, Paul Foot in Mirror tells about Economic League’s blacklisting.

Elected convener of Scottish Group of Labour MPs.

1992

April: Poll Tax abolished by John Major’s Government, Council Tax substituted.

April: General Election. Results in Scotland: Labour 39 per cent, Conservative 25.6 per cent, Liberal Democrat 13.1 per cent, SNP 21.5 per cent, Others 0.8 per cent.

SNP says its top political priority is destruction of Labour Party. Wins three seats.

27 April: Betty Boothroyd elected Speaker – first woman.

July: John Smith elected Labour leader with 91 per cent support.

10 July: ‘away day’ meeting of Scottish Group of Labour MPs discusses way forward.

Scotland United makes common cause with SNP.

July: appointed to Scottish front bench.

16 September: Black Wednesday. Britain forced to withdraw Sterling from European Exchange Rate Mechanism.

Interest rates up to 13 per cent.

November: Tory Government abolishes Wages Councils.

December: NHS Trusts to run Scottish hospitals announced to media but not Parliament.

Only three GPs in Glasgow choose to be fund-holding.

1993

Government announces plans to privatise water. Ten thousand at Labour/STUC rally.

August: White Paper for Children’s Bill (Scotland) published, 25 years since last legislation for children.

September: Labour Conference decides 50 per cent of selection conferences for new candidates in safe and marginal seats will have women-only shortlists. Still only three Labour women MPs in Scotland out of 49.

Scottish Homes survey reveals 95,000 houses below tolerable standard. Glasgow Director of Public Health reports half of households with children have dampness and condensation.

1994

Tribune proclaims end of the Economic League.

March: Strathclyde Regional Council holds referendum on water privatisation. 70 per cent turnout, 97 per cent against. Government abandons plan.

12 May: John Smith dies.

October: Tony Blair makes his Clause 4 speech at Labour Conference. Jim Mearns, Maryhill delegate, calls for card vote.

November: given Scottish Education brief.

1995

March, Scottish Labour Conference approves Report, ‘A Parliament for Scotland’, calls for equal representation of men and women.

April: Government admits Poll Tax in Scotland cost £1.5 billion.

29 April: Special Conference of Labour Party on Clause 4.

October, resigned from front bench.

November: formal contract between Liberal Democrats and Labour on achieving gender equality in Scottish Parliament.

30 November: Scottish Constitutional Convention publishes ‘Scotland’s Parliament: Scotland’s Right’.

1996

February: William Duff, dentist, struck off. Later pleads guilty to fraud.

13 March: Dunblane massacre. Gunman kills 16 children and their class teacher.

September: TUC Conference. Stephen Byers says Labour planning to dump Unions. Neither Cabinet nor National Policy Forum has discussed it.

Kim Howells calls for humanely getting rid of word ‘Socialism’.

November: elected chair of Labour delegation to Council of Europe.

Elected chair of Scottish all-party group on children.

1997

May: New Labour wins General Election with over 13,500,000 votes and 179 seat majority. 418 Labour MPs, of which 101 are women. There are now eight Labour women MPs in Scotland.

In Maryhill, Labour wins 19,301 votes, SNP second with 5,037. Scottish parties’ support: Labour 45.6 per cent, Liberal Democrat 13.0 per cent, SNP 22.1 per cent, Conservative 17.5 per cent, Others 2.0 per cent.

Donald Dewar becomes Secretary of State for Scotland.

25 June: Tony Blair proposes two questions on Scottish Parliament, the second one on tax varying powers.

July: White Paper on Scotland’s Parliament published.

Backbench Labour committee on International Development created, self as convener.

8 July: debate on Glasgow housing – result £26 million to refurbish city housing.

Gordon Brown pays off £900 million Glasgow housing debt. Glasgow Housing Association formed.

11 September: Referendum on Scottish Parliament. Both questions win handsomely.

11 December: Lone Parent Benefit cut. Forty-seven Labour MPs vote against, 100 abstain.

17 December: Scotland Bill presented to House of Commons.

1998

Scotland Act: first line, ‘There shall be a Scottish Parliament’.

January: Labour women’s caucus set up in Commons and Lords.

National Minimum Wage Act passed.

October: Augusto Pinochet in London Clinic.

24 November: Queen’s Speech: Bill to remove right of hereditary peers to sit and Vote in House of Lords.

1999

25 January: vote on equal age of consent defeated.

30 March: Labour Government Employment Relations Bill makes blacklisting illegal.

April: Child Benefit for first child up 20 per cent.

12 April: Friends of Ireland, Friends of Good Friday Agreement launched.

Agreed Ireland Forum, elected Secretary.

First elections to Scottish Parliament. Labour 28 men, 28 women. Only party to deliver on 50:50. Women form 37.2 per cent of total elected.

12 May: Scottish Parliament meets for first time.

2 December: Good Friday Agreement came into force.

2000

Mike Tyson boxing match in Glasgow.

Clare Short publishes White Paper on World Poverty.

11 October: Donald Dewar dies.

23 October: Betty Boothroyd resigns as MP, Michael Martin elected Speaker.

21 December: Maryhill man, Ian Gordon, cleared of murder conviction following five-year campaign.

2001

January: after long campaign, VAT on feminine hygiene reduced from 17.5 per cent to five per cent.

March: International Development Bill, establishes in legislation reduction of poverty as aim of UK development assistance.

Unemployment in Scotland lowest since 1976, highest employment since 1960. Long-term unemployment down by 60 per cent since 1997.

May: General Election. Scottish results: Labour 43.9 per cent, SNP 20.1 per cent, Liberal Democrat 16.4 per cent, Conservative 15.6 per cent, Scottish Socialists 3.1 per cent.

11 September: Twin Towers attacked.

7 October: Afghan War declared.

2003

15 February: Marches against war in Iraq.

26 February:122 Labour backbenchers vote against support for USA again in Iraq.

17 March: Robin Cook resigns.

April: Tax Credits introduced.

2007

May: SNP form minority Government with Conservative support in Scottish Parliament.

30 June: attack on Glasgow Airport foiled by John Smeaton and others.

2008

Global economic crisis. National debt less than inherited from John Major in 1997.

2010

Regulations on blacklisting added by Gordon Brown Government.

2011

SNP forms majority Government in Scottish Parliament. Women MSPs now down to 34.8 per cent.

July onwards: hacking scandal begins to be exposed.

December: Johann Lamont elected first Leader of Labour Party in Scotland.

2013

April: ‘Bedroom Tax’ hits.

8 April: Margaret Thatcher dies.

CHAPTER ONE

I Could Have Danced All Night

1987

IN THE 1987 GENERAL ELECTION only one female Labour MP was elected in Scotland. Me. It seems hard to believe now, but back then female MPs were rare creatures indeed. Of course everyone knew there was a Queen Bee at Westminster, frequently spotted in her Downing Street habitat. If there were precious few other women in Parliament, that didn’t matter a jot – to many, across all political parties. Women belonged in the home, not the House. Let the best man win. This opinion was widely held by the frequent fliers to Westminster, where they gathered together and drank at their watering holes. How could their favourite son succeed them if uppity women could have a go?

Now here I was, newly elected for Glasgow Maryhill, one of Labour’s safest seats.

That day, Britain elected a record number of women MPs, a 78 per cent increase over the previous General Election in 1983. That meant a total of 41, compared to 23 at the previous election. The 41 consisted of 21 Labour, 17 Conservative, two Liberal-SDP Alliance and one Scottish Nationalist. Despite that upswing, women still only accounted for 6.3 per cent of total MPs. Scotland was even worse, with only 4.16 per cent. That amounted to three women out of a total 72 MPs: Margaret Ewing for the Scottish Nationalists, Ray Michie for the Alliance and myself. I knew before the election was even called I would be the only Labour woman in Scotland, because the few other female party members who had been selected to fight a seat were doing so in constituencies they were highly unlikely to win. I vowed I would do everything in my power to get more Labour women into Westminster.

In the run up to the election, The Scotsman ran brief commentaries on all the seats. For my own constituency it said:

Glasgow Maryhill has returned a Labour MP in every General Election since the Second World War, and it would probably need a comparable cataclysm to unsettle political allegiance to any significant degree in this Socialist citadel.

Amen to that. So why couldn’t my sisters enjoy their share when it came to winning similarly committed constituencies? I will never forget the tiny old lady, who looked about 90 but had a firm step, approaching me outside a polling station in 1987 to tell me what a great pleasure it was to be able to vote for a woman for the first time in her life.

For the first time in my life I had found myself under attack in the press. Previous media attention had, if anything, been complimentary about my activities as a councillor. Now the News of the World was claiming that I opposed the expulsion of Militant Tendency supporters from the Labour Party, when in fact I was entirely hostile to their activities and aims. They were using the Labour Party for their own ends, and fellow left wingers who defended them were profoundly mistaken. This was not a point of view I had been shy to express, especially in my years as a Glasgow councillor, fighting Tory cuts as well as seeing off the Trots.

Not that the Murdoch press had it in for me alone. Similar claims were made against Clare Short and Neil Kinnock, of all people – remember his attack on Derek Hatton for the mess he made of Liverpool? – as well as many others. The Sunday Times ran a headline, ‘Kinnock’s Hard Left Nightmare’, and listed me along with Tommy McAvoy, who went on to be a senior Labour whip and member of the House of Lords. Scottish Secretary Malcolm Rifkind, not to be outdone by Rupert Murdoch’s distortions, disgraced himself when he named eight Scottish Labour candidates, including myself, as ‘infected with the same left wing virus as the Loony Left in London, and well to the left of those retiring’. I was indeed to the left of my own predecessor, but the excesses of some in the Party in a few of the London boroughs were not for me (although I must put it on record that many of the stories told about them were exaggerated or simply not true).

Going by their future careers, if Tommy, Adam Ingram (Defence Minister), John McFall (Treasury Select Committee Chair), Henry McLeish (First Minister in the Scottish Parliament), and John Reid (arch Blairite and holder of several posts at Secretary of State level) were indeed hard left, how would they describe the rest of us? Another edition had several of us listed as ‘Kinnock’s 101 Damnations’. Beneath an unflattering picture of each candidate was a description of our views that upset the Sunday Times. This went down well with Maryhill Constituency Labour Party. Other Labour candidates jokingly claimed that they were jealous, wondering why they too had not been attacked. Why, they demanded, were they being denied this useful dose of street cred?

While some in the leadership were concerned about such attacks, my own view was that I would start to worry the day the Murdoch press praised me. I have kept a copy of my election address as a keepsake, and I see that I questioned ‘why financial skulduggery should earn more than a lifetime’s honest work’. Can’t have left wing stuff like that, can we?

Though I was the Labour candidate for super-safe Maryhill, I was nervous of letting down the Party in any way. Considering the treatment I had been receiving from Murdoch’s minions, I felt anxious when a reporter from The Sun phoned to ask me for an interview. I lay awake worrying about what this portended. Was he running some anti-Labour story? Was some scandal about to unfold? I was confident my sons were neither drug addicts nor pushers, neither drink drivers nor hooligans, or advocates of any ultra-left idiocy, so could it be something to do with the local Labour Party? I had no reason to think so… Helen Liddell, now a member of the House of Lords, at that time secretary of the Labour Party in Scotland, had told all of the new candidates to phone her if we had any problems. So I did, and she advised me not to worry.

‘Put on your best dress and have some flowers around the house. Hide away your more left wing books in case he notices them. Oh, and have something baking in the oven.’

‘But’, I protested, ‘no-one bakes wearing their best dress. They’ll think I’m an idiot.’

‘Not at all’, said Helen. ‘They’re men. They won’t know any better.’

Nevertheless, I was nervous enough that I asked the reporter to meet me at my campaign rooms, rather than my house. That way my agent, John Gray, would be a witness if I needed one. John himself was a much respected and well known councillor. When the reporter showed up he was all joviality, but I still did not feel reassured. Just at that point, a woman with a problem she wanted me to look into turned up on the doorstep, so John took her into the back room for a cup of tea until I could make myself available. That was my attempt at precaution fallen apart.

I turned reluctantly to the reporter. What he wanted to do, he explained, was a piece contrasting me with Anna McCurley, the well known Tory MP seeking re-election in Renfrewshire. So, what issues did he have in mind, I asked.

‘No,’ he replied, ‘nothing as heavy as that. It’s because she’s a blonde and you’re a brunette.’ Ye Gods! My late husband Jim, a reporter himself, had a way with that kind of thing. He once submitted a piece which described the local Fire Master as blonde and petite. When the editor said, ‘You can’t write that!’ Jim replied that the paper described women like that all the time, even when her height and colour of hair had absolutely nothing to do with the story.

The man from The Sun took down some personal details while the photographer readied himself. When he pulled a long-stemmed red rose out of a bag and asked me to put it between my teeth, I politely declined. I wasn’t about to burst into Carmen’s ‘Habanera’.

‘Then how about in your hair? No?’

‘No. Definitely not.’

At least these guys are drawing the line at asking me to do a Page Three, I thought. They seemed to mean well, even if they were reducing politics to a level of triviality I had never before encountered. I suggested cutting the stem and fastening it to my dress, to which they reluctantly agreed. The subsequent piece did neither Anna nor me any harm, but Anna lost her seat to Tommy Graham in that year when Labour won 50 seats in Scotland.

Maryhill Labour Party was not the first to publish a leaflet addressed to women voters – all the parties had done that during the inter-war years, just after the franchise was extended – but it had never been done, as far as I know, in my own years of involvement in politics. In it, I took up issues such as equal pay, elimination of low pay, and much greater provision of nurseries for the under-fives in their own localities. Cosmopolitan did something unusual for a woman’s magazine until then: it asked readers to identify the three issues that were of most concern to them, then asked all candidates, male and female, where they stood on such matters. I was happy to support married women being taxed as individuals, sufficient money for a national programme of screening for cervical and breast cancer, and better services provided for those least able to look after themselves, thus creating more help for carers. Eventually the first two were won, but carers are still without the level of help they need. We hear of elderly and infirm people who have no-one living with them to help with their daily needs, getting no more than 15 minutes of a paid worker’s time. There is no time for conversation, as she hurries on, unpaid for the travelling time between jobs. This is a national scandal, and nothing to boast about.

That year, at the behest of Jo Richardson, our Shadow Minister for Women, Labour promoted a Charter for Women and Work, and undertook to create a Minister for Women in a future Labour Government. The Tories scoffed at such notions. They evidently could not foresee the day when David Cameron would appoint his own Women’s Minister, and now national screening for breast cancer is so taken for granted that I doubt that any Chancellor, however cutbacks crazy he is, would dare to end it.

And so, as the weeks went on in the run up to polling day, I went around Maryhill, knocking on as many doors as possible, morning, noon and night. One afternoon, having sent party workers away to help in a marginal seat, I decided to go on my own to The Botany, an area of Maryhill since transformed, but at that time very run down and its tenement flats far from des res. It was called The Botany because back when even the theft of a loaf for your starving family could have you deported to Botany Bay, you would start your journey on board a vessel moored nearby on the Forth and Clyde canal. Then you would sail to where the canal met the River Clyde, and transfer to an ocean-going bound for Australia.

I rang a doorbell and was invited in. The man who answered went on to tell me how difficult it was finding a job: not an unusual problem in Maryhill at that time. I asked him sympathetically if he was getting interviews. He said, ‘Not even that. As soon as they read I’ve been in prison that’s the end of it.’ So I asked him what his sentence had been for. ‘Arson’, he replied. ‘I don’t even know why I did it.’ I retreated step by step towards the door and made my exit. Back in the campaign rooms, I told John Gray about it. ‘You stupid besom,’ he scolded me. ‘Don’t you ever go out knocking doors on your own again – and for God’s sake don’t go into anyone’s house when there’s nobody around to see where you’ve got to.’ And so he went on to put his foot down and protect me from myself for the next 14 years.

I plodded on without further mishap until, at last, the day of the General Election arrived. More than two thirds of the Maryhill electorate voted. That was a typical turnout of the time, but it has been falling since. The highest results, other candidates having a few hundred or less, were:

Elspeth Attwool, Lib/SDP Alliance 4,118

Maria Fyfe, Labour 23,482

Simon Kirk, Conservative 3,307

Gavin Roberts, SNP 3,895

David Spaven, Scottish Greens 529

Labour’s share of the vote was 64.6 per cent. Elspeth Attwool came second, but her percentage share of the vote was halved from 22.1 per cent in 1983 to 11.7 per cent. The SNP came third with 11.0 per cent, the Tories fourth with 9.4 per cent, and the Greens took 1.5 per cent. The SNP were still suffering from having brought down the Callaghan Government and let in Margaret Thatcher, and the Tories always did very poorly in a seat like Maryhill.

So Labour’s majority in Maryhill was a thumping, joyful, unbelievable and glorious 19,364 – about 8,000 more than our previous result. All over the city, similar results for Labour candidates were announced. Many a previous majority, including my own constituency, had been doubled. But then, not many copies of the Sunday Times are sold in Maryhill. I felt a sense of awe that all those people voted Labour, and few had even heard of me before I became the candidate. They had trusted Labour again and again, and I told myself I must never let them down.

The Glasgow Evening Times wrote:

Throughout a night of high drama, the picture was constantly repeated. In Scotland and the North, Labour increased majorities, snatched seats, the Alliance was smashed, and the Tories were lucky to scrape home in some seats they have held for generations.

The SNP didn’t warrant a mention. The share of votes in Scotland was:

Conservative 24 per cent

Labour 43.3 per cent

Alliance 18.4 per cent

SNP 14 per cent

Others 0.3 per cent

I felt a joy on election night that was unique amongst the successful Scottish Labour candidates. As I stood on the platform with my sons, Stephen and Chris, nearby, I reflected that I had just become Labour’s tenth ever woman to be elected in a Scottish constituency.

But I didn’t want to settle for being a Queen Bee amongst all the men. My task now was to make things better for women. At the following year’s Scottish party conference, I made a comment that seems to have stuck in a lot of minds, as I have had it repeated back to me many times: ‘Labour likes having women MPs, but it likes them one at a time.’

You have probably noticed, when watching Parliament on television, jugs of water and glasses sitting on the table close to the despatch box. They are meant for the use of frontbenchers. On the night I was to make my maiden speech, I was so nervous that my throat had gone completely dry. Some kindly soul handed me up a glass, and I drank it down hurriedly in case I were called by the Speaker, nearly giving myself hiccups in my haste. But then I thought to myself, the people of Maryhill sent me here to speak up for them, and I’m going to do that to the best of my ability.

I began by commenting on Labour’s huge success in my home city, saying Glasgow was the city that had everything – except a Tory MP. I went on to attack the Government on the continuing high levels of unemployment in Maryhill: 29 per cent of adult males, and in Woodlands ward, where I lived, 34.4 per cent. Half the youths in that ward were unemployed.

I drew attention to something I learned while studying for my Economic History degree: when the Forth and Clyde canal which runs through Maryhill was completed in 1784, it was made possible by a cash grant of £50,000 (£25 million at 1987 prices) from William Pitt’s Tory Government. The private company that had started up work on the canal had become ‘a lame duck’ in the Conservative parlance of Margaret Thatcher’s day. It had run out of money and could not raise enough cash on its own. Back then, all those years ago, the Government did not shrug their shoulders and let it fail. They had the wisdom and foresight to put serious money into the scheme, and in doing so created jobs all the way along the canal. Maryhill prospered. Mining, glass-making, chemical, engineering and other industries flourished, but by now were mostly gone. Would that present-day Conservatives, I went on to say, had anything like as much sense as their predecessors of some 200 years before.

The Speaker, Jack Weatherill, was thoughtful enough to send me a ‘well done’ note, but the kind man probably did likewise with everyone. When walking down the Ways and Means corridor later that night, I was stopped by a Tory backbencher I had never met before, but came to know as a decent bloke. He said I sounded as if I hated the Conservatives. Considering what they were doing to my city, to working people’s rights, and the massive unemployment they had deliberately created as a means to weaken the trade unions, it would be surprising if I did not hate them, and I told him so. He was quite taken