Political Suicide

by Robert Barnard

  “Mrs Partridge was popular?”

  “No. But she was the member’s wife.”

  “She seems to have been disappointed and surprised when her husband was dropped from the government. Were you?”

  “Surprised, yes. We’d rather been under the impression that he was one of the coming men. We weren’t really disappointed, because a back-bencher who does his job is often a better member from the constituency’s point of view than a member of the government. And Partridge would certainly have done his job.”

  “Why do you think he was dropped from the government?”

  “That you’d have to ask the Prime Minister.”

  “I don’t think I’m likely to be given the opportunity. I thought you might have heard some rumours.”

  “Aye, well, I suppose I did. Don’t know how reliable they were. What one or two people were saying at the time was—well, it was two things, really. You know he was one of the juniors at Health? Yes, well, he was very much involved in those disputes over nurses’ pay, and the pay of people lower down in the Health Service. Now, James was all for efficiency and keeping pay settlements down, but there were people said he actually became convinced that the nurses especially had an unanswerable case.”

  “Convinced by their arguments?”

  “Yes. It was most unfortunate. He went around saying that the State had been capitalizing for years on their dedication. He was very unconvincing when answering parliamentary questions on the subject, because he really felt they’d been hard done by, and he would have liked to right it. Then there was the other thing . . .”

  “Yes?”

  “Well, I think it goes back to the Abbot business we’ve been talking about. He started straying outside his own territory. That’s not done in politics these days. You keep your nose down to your own particular grindstone. But he started bombarding the Ministry of Agriculture with questions about intensive farming, doing it more or less privately, as government members have to. He used to buttonhole the minister in the Commons bar, have the juniors round to dinner and press them with questions. It was this bee in his bonnet about there being cruelty involved, but taking it up in that way really wasn’t done, and people resented it. Now, in both these things there were questions of loyalty involved. Even in cabinet the PM doesn’t much like discussion. The relevant minister has his say, the PM backs him up, because they’ve thrashed it out in advance, and then the rest say ‘Yes.’ They’re not exactly a rubber stamp—”

  “No?”

  “No, no. But they’re certainly not a debating society. So there was a bit of a question-mark against his loyalty, his total commitment. And added to this there was the slight feeling that he was putting his conscience above his loyalty, and that that conscience was being paraded. There’s nothing the PM likes less. We’ve all got consciences, nobody more so, but we don’t parade them, that’s the line these days. So all this agonizing about animals really went against the grain, and against the whole government image that’s been built up. After all, the little buggers don’t have a vote!”

  “I see. That’s all very interesting. Look, I think I’ve got two or three minutes of your time left. Could I ask you about Oliver Worthing?”

  “Worthing?” Harold Fawcett perceptibly brightened up, as the discussion moved outside Tory circles. “I’m hardly the expert on the opposition.”

  “Specifically about rumours that surfaced during the last general election.”

  “Oh yes: those. Well, I wouldn’t say they surfaced. After all, they never got into the Press.”

  “But people were talking about them?”

  “Well, they were for a bit. We didn’t try to make anything of it, I can assure you.”

  “How did the rumours get about, then?”

  “Well, to tell you the truth, I think it was one of our members started them. Man called Peterson, came from Rotherham—that’s Oliver Worthing’s home town. He came up with this story that he’d done a term in Borstal for aggravated assault—don’t know how much there is in it. Didn’t check, because we wouldn’t have used it. He suggested we did, but it wasn’t our style at all. Wouldn’t touch it.”

  “But the rumour got around?”

  “The Labour people may have spread it. Or this Peterson may have talked. We’ve no control over our members talking, you know. But as a constituency party we had nothing to do with it, and that I can assure you.”

  “I see. Still, Worthing may have thought you had.”

  “Could be. But he’s the man to ask.”

  “Right. Well, I think that’s about all.” He stood up, and as he was about to go through the door, he turned: “Did you actually like James Partridge, Mr Fawcett?”

  “Yes. Yes, I think I can say I did. I didn’t know him, I don’t think many did, but what I saw I liked. And I’ll tell you one thing: there wasn’t a straighter man in politics. I suppose you might say ‘faint praise’ to that! It’s true there aren’t many even comparatively straight men in politics, but he was absolutely straight . . . Always, in everything, he did what he thought was right. Not expedient, but right . . . I’ll tell you another thing, strictly under your hat and off the record: I’d give fifty of young jackanapes out there for one James Partridge.”

  He jerked his thumb out in the direction of the twilit constituency, and Sutcliffe had no doubt that the jackanapes he was referring to was the Tory candidate for the seat of Bootham East. How little, Sutcliffe reflected, that young man had the gift of making himself loved.

  Chapter 12

  Meetings

  As the third week of February drew to a close, the pace of electioneering hotted up. On the day when Sue Snaithe paid her second visit to Bootham and the Labour Party campaign there was no question of Jerry getting away to meet her. The Leader of the Opposition was due that day, and everyone at Bootham Labour Party HQ was working all out to ensure maximum coverage for the visit—and to make sure that he met no members of the Workers for Revolutionary Action group, who deeply disapproved of him, and were liable to become abusive, or even violent in his presence, which would have been a gift for the greatly despised but assiduously courted media.

  It was a busy day for everyone, in fact. The Conservatives were fielding the Foreign Secretary, and the Social Democrats had no fewer than two members of the so-called Gang of Four, and were putting on a great cavalcade-cum-party around town. It was all tremendously exciting, or a bit of a giggle, depending on how you took it, and it was becoming possible for the ordinary citizen of Bootham to believe that he was, indeed, at the epicentre of some political earthquake.

  All this presented some logistical problems, especially as the various campaign managers of the main parties could hardly get together to arrange schedules, being rival impresarios. They worked, in fact, through the police, who were around in large numbers to protect the Foreign Secretary from his political opponents, and the Leader of the Opposition from his political supporters. Even then, there was very nearly an Encounter of Opposites. The Leader of the Opposition (a red-haired, smiling man, whom everybody seemed to like, but nobody much wanted to vote for) was in the Merrivale Centre, a shoddy shopping complex, five years old and already looking fifty. He was shaking hands and chatting amiably with shoppers, as if he himself had just dropped in for a packet of pork sausages. Just as his scheduled visit was ending, there appeared at the other end of one of the cavernous, litter-strewn passages the Foreign Secretary (a nervous, retiring man, who now and again gave off very faint whiffs of personality), trying himself to give the impression that he’d just dropped in for a lamb chop. The Labour Leader called cheerily, “Come to sit by the Tory deathbed?” but the Foreign Secretary scuttled rabbit-like into the nearest shop, which unfortunately happened to sell outré lingerie.

  When he came out, and as his oh-so-casual tour of the hideous, slum-like shopping precinct got under way, the attentive observer might have noted that, though the visiting party consisted of the Foreign Secretary, the Tory candidate, and
a variety of Tory officials and policemen, the Foreign Secretary was never to be seen close to the Tory candidate, and the more Antony Craybourne-Fisk edged his way familiarly in the direction of the Foreign Secretary, the more that gentleman dived nervously at luckless shoppers, shook their hands and asked them what they’d been buying. (Most of the shoppers, having no notion who he was, conceived he must be something to do with market research, and one or two told him to mind his own business.) As they finished their twenty-minute stint, the Press asked for photographs, and the Foreign Secretary obliged, making no attempt to bring into the picture the candidate he was supposed to be in Bootham to support. Antony only got in, in fact, by dint of pushing his way forward to the Foreign Secretary’s side and saying, “This will be one to show my grandchildren.” Though how much the Foreign Secretary would mean to those putative grandchildren, when he meant so little to today’s shoppers in Bootham, was anybody’s guess.

  All of which might have suggested, to the attentive observer, that the Foreign Secretary had been advised by someone at Conservative Central Office that there was, just possibly, something ever-so-slightly suspect about the Tory candidate for Bootham East, and that just in case anything came up in the future, it might be prudent to—well—to distance himself. Right?

  The party around the Labour Leader had meanwhile taken themselves off to Somertown. Somertown had been canvassed and re-canvassed so often already by the Labour Party that it was feeling like a pile of old deckchairs, but in its grime and decrepitude it was felt to offer a poignant image of what Tory freedom led to, and one the Labour Leader had to be photographed against. The party split up, Jerry breezing off with the Leader, affable and chatty to emphasize his respectable, mainline Socialist credentials. Sue went off in the other direction with the Leader’s wife. That lady was cheerful and friendly, but her clothes that February day were such dashing and splendid examples of sartorial radical chic that Sue felt drab by comparison. She was feeling pretty drab that day anyway, as it happened. Nor did she quite approve of the lady’s campaign style: to stand on doorsteps and lecture semi-slum housewives on nuclear disarmament and the heroism of the Greenham Common women and their anti-Cruise campaign was to invite bewilderment and mutterings of “Well, I dunno, really . . . I mean, well . . . Well, yes, I’ll think about it.” But she was the Leader’s wife, so Sue could do nothing about it but tag miserably along, feeling ever more inadequate with every doorstep. It didn’t help, she thought, as she stood silent by, that so many windows in this hideous council dystopia were displaying Social Democrat or even Conservative election posters.

  The Social Democrats themselves were having a splendid day. With a founding father and a founding mother of the movement in the town they were enjoying a wave of popular interest. Bread, circuses and not too much talk about politics was the Social Democrat formula. The leaders were wonderful in crowds, witty and friendly even when talking through a loud-hailer, and generally they made people feel good and well-disposed. Even Oliver Worthing felt good, and felt too that tiny spark of excitement and ambition without which nobody should enter politics. Oliver Worthing was wondering whether he might not, just possibly, make it.

  For Oliver Worthing had been noticing and making calculations, and his calculations went like this: a left-wing Labour candidate always gets fewer votes than a moderate one. Where would the votes that he didn’t get go? Not to the Tory candidate, assuredly. Again, that Tory candidate was clearly putting off wavering Tory voters rather than rallying them to his cause. He had obviously been the worst possible choice for a constituency like Bootham. In addition, the Bootham voters were apparently in a mood to tell the government that they expected them to do something more about unemployment than merely sitting on their well-padded backsides and saying: there is no alternative. Where were the votes of all these disaffected Tories to go? Not to a left-wing Labour candidate, assuredly.

  I am in with a chance, Oliver Worthing said to himself. Do I want to be in with a chance? Do I want to go to Westminster—to all that hot air and whisky-breath, that flatulent oratory and bar-room barracking?

  After his spot of canvassing the Labour Leader and the whole party went back to campaign headquarters. The Leader affected not to notice the slogan that had been spray-painted on the wall of the building, just by Jerry’s warning to the media: PARANOIA RULES—OK? He met local party workers, and he met Jerry’s team of keen young people from London. The two groups were as near literally as made no difference at daggers drawn, but for this encounter they smiled at the Leader and at each other, and they all said they were a great team, and in great heart. Then the Leader and the Leader’s wife and Jerry and Sue and a party of other Labour functionaries went off to the Labour Club for a meal. The Leader was to speak at a rally that evening, but he was speaking first, as he had to go back to London to film a guest appearance on Top of the Pops.

  Sue, from being vaguely unhappy about things, was beginning to feel disgruntled. As they all sat together at table, laughing and swapping stories, she felt dowdy and tongue-tied and inadequate, as she never felt on the doorsteps, talking to ordinary people. She had tried to ask Jerry what he wanted of her at the meeting tonight, but he’d just said, “Later, love,” and gone into a deep huddle with the Leader. Sue felt nervous about tonight. It would be a big, public meeting, because of the Leader. There would be television, too, though admittedly they would have dismantled all their gear as soon as the Leader had finished. Anyway, it was an ordeal very different from a token five minutes at a Press conference. She didn’t want to disturb Jerry, but . . . Oh, hell; he was the one who’d insisted that she come, wasn’t he?

  “Jerry.”

  “Not now, darling.”

  “Jerry. I want to know about tonight.”

  “Tonight?” (A male-complicity smile at the Leader as he disengaged himself, which the Leader was careful not to return, as his wife was watching.)

  “Tonight. I’m supposed to be speaking.”

  “Speaking? Oh—so you are, darling. Well, I’m sure you’ll do splendidly. You did last time.”

  “Last time was just Press. How long do you want me to speak for? When will I go on?”

  “Oh, ten minutes, a quarter of an hour. Our good friend here will be on first, so we can’t lay you on until—oh—nine, ten past or so.”

  “Just so long as I know. I think if you don’t mind I won’t come to the first part of the meeting. I’ll just sit there getting more and more nervous.”

  “As you like, sweetie. Be there by quarter to nine, though.”

  And Jerry turned back to his high-political huddle with the Leader.

  Sue boiled. That “sweetie” had been the last straw. She smiled a farewell to the Leader’s wife, and at Jerry’s hunched back, and excused herself from table. She walked out of the Labour Club, mouth set firmly, clutching the key of the hotel room. Really, Jerry was impossible. It wasn’t as if she had wanted to come. He had insisted that she did. He had insisted that she had a contribution to make, from her own experience, and that she should speak about it. And now she was here, he had totally forgotten. Because the Leader was here—that Leader, by the by, whose compromises and shilly-shallying Jerry had condemned at every WRA Committee meeting, at every GLC council meeting, almost since the man was elected leader. Why tell her to come on the day the Leader was here, anyway? It occurred to her that it had been a rare example of Jerry’s inefficiency. And it had happened because he didn’t give a damn when she came, only that she came. She wasn’t of use to him, politically; she was just there to be seen, as a wife. Just as any budding Tory candidate dragged his wife along to the selection committee, to have her looked over by the locals. An appendage. A decoration. Everything that Jerry had always affected to despise.

  She sat for an hour in her hotel room, gloomily brooding. Then she slapped on some make-up and went out. She was going for a drink.

  • • •

  Superintendent Sutcliffe was sampling election meetings. He had bee
n following up all day shadowy leads that had led nowhere, and he had toyed with the idea of driving back and dining at the Happy Dalesman. But their dinners had got progressively more disgusting as the election approached, for the landlord looked on the reporters as captive guests, quite unable to find anywhere else to stay as polling day loomed. The previous evening had been fish fingers and mashed potatoes, and the landlord’s wife hadn’t even had the grace to look apologetic. So Sutcliffe stayed in Bootham, had a pizza and a glass of wine, and went to the meetings on offer.

  He took in the Conservative meeting first, because he felt that Antony Craybourne-Fisk was at the centre of his interest. The Foreign Secretary was speaking, and the audience was minuscule, for the Foreign Secretary had as much charisma as an earwig with a heavy cold, so Sutcliffe sat among about twenty pensioners who had come out to save on heating bills, and they all listened to a disquisition on Common Market regulations concerning animal fodder—not a subject well chosen for an industrial community. After ten minutes of watching Craybourne-Fisk sitting complacently at the Great Man’s side, feigning intense absorption, Sutcliffe fled the meeting.

  The Social Democrats in the Corn Exchange seemed to be having a much jollier time. Lots of laughter and applause, and a general heady atmosphere of we-just-might-pull-it-off. On the platform with the celebrities Oliver Worthing seemed to cut a very slightly uneasy figure, as if he had a vague sense that politics ought to be a mite more serious than this. Or was it those rumours that, Sutcliffe had gathered from chatting to people around town, were beginning to be talked about more openly on the streets of Bootham? After twenty minutes of all this jolly-good-time, and before the speakers had actually got down to politics, Sutcliffe slipped out of the Corn Exchange.

  He did feel like a drink, like a long pint of beer. Politics made him feel like that. He could understand why so many MPs spent long hours propping up the bar in the Palace of Westminster, getting three parts pissed before going off to deliver their totally automatic votes. So on his way to the Town Hall, where the Labour Party meeting was being held, he turned into the Lord Byron.