Feature: What shaped our politicians?
After the hammer blows of the expenses scandal it’s hard to remember that ‘politician’ has always been one of the least trusted professions. And yet there’s no shortage of candidates standing at the general election. What on earth was it that got them sucked into the strange world of British politics in the first place?
In the latest of a series of features following detailed questionnaires to prospective parliamentary candidates, politics.co.uk can offer you an insight into the embryo stages of politicians’ careers – the first moments in their lives when they began to think politically.
All the answers quoted here were in answer to one of two questions: ‘what was your first political experience?’ And: ‘why did you join your party?’
In the blood
Some aspiring MPs seem to have taken to politics from the word go. They’ve either learned it from their parents or simply been natural activists from very early on. Andy Merryfield, standing for Labour in Wells, says his first memory was “scraping a Tory sticker off my dad’s car window”. Others, like Jackie Radford (Ogmore, Liberal Democrats) who was protesting against the withdrawal of school buses with her mother, were dragged to the doorstep from a very early age. “She taught me that you have to fight for what is fair.”
Bruce Hogan, the Labour candidate for Forest of Dean, was delivering Labour leaflets as part of his paper round during the 1964 general election. “Part of my paper round included the officers’ married quarters where I lived with my mother and brother,” he writes. “The reaction of the Colonel’s wife to receiving the leaflet was to give an ear-bashing to my poor mother and to complain to the newsagent. I very nearly lost my paper round, but it strengthened my convictions.”
Jo Shaw, the Lib Dem candidate for Holborn and St Pancras, was just eight years old when two policeman stopped her while she was leafleting with her mother. “They asked me what I was delivering – when I said I didn’t know, they took a leaflet off me, read it and handed it back to me saying ‘Know what you’re delivering next time’. I finished the deliveries and then went home and cried all over my Mum, who felt very guilty!”
Delivering leaflets as a child has proved memorable for others. Eluned Parrott, another Lib Dem standing in Vale of Glamorgan, says: “One of my earliest memories is of running away from a dog in a quiet leafy street somewhere, delivering leaflets for my Dad. Luckily it was a small dog and I was quick!”
Converts
The problem with getting involved in politics at such an early age is one can often make rash judgements, like joining a political party, before your own views are properly developed. Labour’s Greg Williams (West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine) backed the Conservatives in the 1992 election, at the age of eight, simply because his favourite colour happened to be blue.
In fact converts come in all shapes and sizes; it’s never too late to switch sides. George Lee, standing in Holborn and St Pancras for the Tories, will be voting for his party for the first time ever in 2010. He says the party has “undergone modernisation”. Now, he adds, “it is the party of the ladder and the net – encouraging people to climb that ladder as fast and as high as luck and talent would take them but also the net to catch those who fall off the ladder from time to time”.
Politics might be in the blood for some, but it doesn’t mean you always have to support the party of your elders. Diana Coad, who is standing in Slough, grew up in London’s East End in “a strong Labour household”. She was “brought up to always question – which is why I joined the Young Conservatives at 15”. Her father and grandfather, in the docks and on the barges respectively, were strong union men.
“Unions were needed but then became so powerful and self-serving that they ceased to serve the people they were set up for and became money making enterprises for the men at the top – that is when I saw that they were destroying the very people they were supposed to help.”
It’s no surprise the Liberal Democrats have attracted former members of both the Tories and Labour. Chris Bowers, standing in Wealden, says he was “torn” between Labour and the Liberals in his teens. “You make more sense of these things post-hoc, but I think I was more attracted to something different (Lib) than the more socially progressive form of the largely two-party system (Lab).” Lorely Burt, the Lib Dem MP for Solihull, was originally a Tory – but “switched sides after realising… [the Liberal Democrats] had the best policies to create a fairer and better Britain”.
It’s not all one-way traffic, of course; Eric Goodyer, Labour PPC for Charnwood, joined the Liberals in 1972 and left three years later. He couldn’t see how the Liberals could ensure “a more equal share of the nation’s wealth” was more fairly distributed. “Labour offered me a party that was able to deliver social change and equality.”
At school
You don’t have to be a school swot to make a good politician; Suzy Davies, the Conservative candidate in Brecon and Radnorshire, remembers “having a row” with her teacher in junior school after she made an anti-Plaid Cymru general election poster in class.
And John Gossage, taking on Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire for the Lib Dems, remembers that the headmistress of the school he went to in Richmond was a Tory. “Since I cordially detested her I think it was then that I decided I was a Liberal!”
Nor do you have to be successful, either. Labour’s Darren Jones (Torridge and West Devon) says he fought to save his community school’s sixth form, but lost. “The entire school has been knocked down now,” he muses. “Perhaps the council were right after all.”
Labour’s Sue Woodward, standing in Cannock Chase, may have got the taste for politics after winning her first election in the final year of primary school though. Let’s hope she’s realised being a May Queen and being an MP are very different jobs.
Here’s an educational footnote: a brush with the student union by Hove’s Tory candidate Mike Weatherley put him off the left for life. They had called for a boycott of the canteen due to prices, he notes. Fair enough – the only problem was their own canteen was selling the same products at a higher price.
“It was a cover for the left-wing parties to have an ‘anti establishment’ day just for the sake of disruption,” he says. “A group of us broke the boycott and started a political group to challenge the dominance of the student union far left.” Weatherley doesn’t state whether or not they were successful.
The head, shoulders, knees and toes of history
In 1998 Tony Blair said he felt the “hand of history” on his shoulder. Perhaps future Labour leaders will remember that moment as the first time they became aware of politics. For the present generation, it’s the big events of the 1970s and 1980s which dominate their first recollections.
To finish, here’s a summary of the different ways in which the same big news stories have influenced politicians from both left and right.
1950s/60s
“My parents were working all hours in their business and I saw how they were taxed to the hilt to fund a Labour government under Harold Wilson.” – Victoria Ayling, Great Grimsby, Conservative
“My first political experience was at the age of three, when I watched my father open an envelope which contained an offer of a council house. Of course I didn’t actually know that this was the result of a political decision and my first realisation of the world of politics was in 1964 when the phrase ’13 years of Tory misrule’ was to become lodged in my consciousness.” – Peter Thornton, Penrith and the Border, Liberal Democrat
Winter of discontent
“I grew up in the 70s and yes, there were people lying un-buried, rats running over the mounting rubbish, I had to do my homework by candlelight and all because of the unchecked power of the unions. I saw the chaos under Labour and history is now repeating itself. We put the pride back into Britain in the 1980s from being the basket case of Europe. I write this from the perspective of someone who was a trade union member and campaigned for secret ballots – something that would be unheard of now.” – Janice Small, Batley and Spen, Conservative
Stuart King – standing for Putney in Labour, remembers “my dustman dad on strike during the winter of discontent”, while Labour’s John MacKay – standing in Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross – recalls political discussions with his “staunch, lifelong Labour” grandparents. “The angry atmosphere in the house after the formation of the SDP, and the defection of our local Labour MP to the new party, is a still vivid memory. Even though I was only four-years-old.”
Thatcher’s election
“Listening to my parents and their friends discussing the general election in May 1979. I was only 11 at the time but remember vividly their talking about the prospect of Britain getting its first ever female prime minister. My parents, and our local community at the time we’re all very left wing, die hard Labour supporters. Despite that, I remember my Mum being a little bit proud of our country having elected Margaret Thatcher, for the symbolism more than the party politics. Recent events in America with Barack Obama felt eerily similar in many ways.” – Stephen Mold, Derby North, Conservative
“Watching Margaret Thatcher enter Downing Street in 1979 on our black and white telly with my grandma. I was eight. I can still remember her saying ‘And they’re only interested in throwing people out of work!’ Grandma was never wrong.” – Jayne Innes, Nuneaton, Labour
Miners’ strike
“I can vividly recall walking to school as a small child and having to pass by the miners’ picket line. I remember also the mountains of coal I could see from my bedroom window and asking my father how they were there when the miners weren’t working.” – Karen Allen, South Shields, Conservative
“Collecting money for striking miners in the 1980s. I was very young, idealistic and perhaps naïve but that was where I first got direct experience of challenging social injustice and standing up for others.” – Paul Penlington, Vale of Clwyd, Liberal Democrats
John Major’s recession
Perhaps unsurprisingly, it’s Labour candidates who have the strongest memories of this period.
“I really remember my teenage years during the 1992 recession, the pressure it put on my dad trying to set up a small business, the pressure it put on the family… Then there was the people working for less than a £1 an hour – which I thought was just disgusting, the shambles that was the NHS at the time, and the crumbling fabric of our schools. All these things added up to a need for change, and am proud that all these things are if not perfect better than they used to be.” – Joe Goldberg, Witney, Labour
