The newly deceased former Chancellor of the University of Northumbria at Newcastle fully lived up to its motto. Ted Short, Lord Glenamara of Glenridding, was the father-in-law of my outstanding Head of Sixth Form, who also superbly brought The Winter's Tale and Coriolanus to life in terms that will never leave me.
And he was the Deputy Leader of the Labour Party who went on to become the oldest living member of the House of Lords, in between which he was made Companion of Honour by the Queen and he served as Vice-President of the Prayer Book Society, campaigning for the traditional doctrine and liturgy of the Church of England.
As a former Education Secretary, he rose to denounce the Blair Government's imposition of student payment of undergraduate tuition fees, telling the House of Lords that it had tested his party loyalty to the limit. As Postmaster-General, he had held the line against the union-busting criminality of the pirate radio stations, whose sources of funding went on to bankroll the think tank side of Thatcherism.
One has to explain that it was for his work with the Inter-Parliamentary Union, and not during the Spanish Civil War, that he was decorated by Franco. But he was decorated by Franco. And how the Hard Left hated him for it, while lionising those who had actually fought to make Spain a Soviet satellite state which, like the Soviet Union, would have begun the Second World War as a de facto member of the Axis.
Will we ever see the like again? That is up to us.
That's quite sad to hear. There's a truly excellent alternate history thread you may be interested in going on about the 'unlikely premiership of Ted Short' in instalments here, written well and with affection;
ReplyDelete"http://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showthread.php?t=196319"
When you think back to the Cabinets before 1983 or so, you realise--as in so many walks of life--how many people there were in them, left and right, who were ordinary or sub-par then and who would be outstanding in our age of media-driven professional child-politicians. Ted Short, for instance, would be 'premiership material now' and not, as I first came across his name in an aside muttered in 'A Very British Coup', and then in diaries and articles, second division. He seems to have been a modest and able man; Head teachers like him, and the Polytechnics he created, are sorely missed. RIP