By-Elections

Although I don't agree with him about Peter Tatchell, Peter Hitchens writes:

Long ago it was my job to write about by-elections. Two stick in my memory, because they - sort of - changed history. We used to have many more in those days - the mid-1980s - because MPs in general were older and had often come into Parliament after doing real jobs. So they died in office more often.

They were also, in that time of Thatcherite triumph which followed the Royal Navy's recapture of the Falklands, rare opportunities for political protest. They were also completely misleading because they got so much coverage that people stopped behaving normally. Something similar has just happened in the London mayoral election. I'll come back to it. The Tories would almost always be flattened, usually by the Liberals or the SDP. The Tories would then go on to win the next general election with a crushing majority.

Most political reporters and commentators in those days were used to this because there were so many such elections. And even if they weren't used to it, there was enough evidence around to rub in the point. But alas, not now. There have been so few important by-elections in the New Labour era that people inside and outside politics have forgotten all about them.

I suppose I'd better not identify the Labour shadow cabinet member who once confessed to me and a couple of others that he and almost all his colleagues had been hoping like mad for their party to lose the Darlington by-election back in 1983. The plan was that, devastated by the defeat, they would then go in a body to poor old Michael Foot, the party's endearing but hopeless leader, and tell him that in all conscience it was now his duty to step down. The idea was then to stampede the party into electing Denis Healey instead, so transforming Labour's hopes in the coming general election.

"And then" snarled the Shadow minister "our candidate went and won the bleeping by-election, and saved Michael Foot for the nation." Even funnier, in a way, Labour then lost the seat a few weeks later in the General Election.

I wonder if similar thoughts are circulating in the Cabinet, though of course it's far harder to unseat a Prime Minister, who has kissed hands with the Queen, than it is to get rid of a mere Opposition Leader who has none of the powers which office provides.

What happened, as I recall, was this. The SDP fielded a highly telegenic candidate in the shape of a popular local TV presenter. It seemed, from the start, as if this man was destined to ride the wave of mild anti-Thatcher disquiet that was then abroad. But - because it was a key by-election - he came under too much scrutiny, and made a public fool of himself in a televised debate which would never have happened in a normal contest.

People in a mainly Labour seat like Darlington weren't ready to vote Tory, so they switched back to the Labour man, who was commendably bland and safe, and might easily have been an SDP candidate himself. Kaboom. What did it mean for the 1983 general election? Nothing. Would it have happened without the harsh light of coverage? No. Did it have an effect? yes, but not the one intended by anybody, or discussed at the time by the commentators, none of them ( so far as I recall) got a hint of the plot t get rid of Michael Foot.

The other memorable contest was at Bermondsey where the old monster of the London Labour machine, Bob Mellish had stepped down and was determined to sabotage Peter Tatchell, the engaging and naive young Australian chosen to replace him by a party that had (like most urban Labour Parties) been taken over by dedicated far leftists as the old trade unionists had weakened or disappeared.

Amazing as it may now seem, Peter Tatchell was not in those days openly homosexual. He (quite reasonably) dodged questions on the subject which people asked him when they had no business to do so. He stuck to the main plank of his campaign which was an excellent one for Bermondsey "Houses with Gardens". I suspect the sheer nastiness of the experience changed Mr Tatchell's life. Looking back, I think his quiet dignity and guts under an unending hosing of innuendo are one of the most moving political performances I've ever seen. And Parliament is the poorer for his never having got there. He is a principled defender of freedom of speech, amongst other laudable things. I've publicly apologised to him for any part I may have played in the campaign against him, in anything I wrote at the time. Those of us who were there now mostly realise that the man we portrayed as the villain was in fact the hero of the occasion.

It was quite clear from early on that the anti-Tatchell campaign had worked, and that he was unlikely to win. Mellish himself had sponsored an alternative candidate(the first time the expression 'Real Labour' was used, I think), and made one or two ugly appearances. Things were further complicated by the fact that two of the other candidates were called Hughes.It may have been three. Quite how the disaffected Labour vote concentrated itself behind the Liberal Simon Hughes I have no idea. But somehow it did. And in the way of Liberals (whose professionalism at detailed street politics is unmatched) he has held it ever since.

What did it mean? In terms of national politics, nothing. Some might say that Peter Tatchell's defeat contributed to the creation of New Labour. If so, it's hard to see exactly how. Alas, the one Labour Party policy of those days which has genuinely been abandoned (instead of being dressed up or obscured or approached crabwise to avoid being spotted) is the only one that was any good, namely withdrawal from the European Monster. And Labour (and the Tories) are now wholly committed to a sexual radicalism unthinkable when Peter Tatchell stood for parliament.

This, I think, help to show that politics is often not what it seems to be, and also that the main direction of British politics in the last 25 years has been to adopt and pursue policies that politicians knew were unpopular, but somehow managed to persist with anyway.