by Tom Bower
At the national level, Maxwell was already known and admired. Merlyn Rees, subsequently to become Home Secretary, who had just been defeated for the third time and despaired of ever entering the Commons, recalls asking a senior party official in 1959 whether he knew of any suitable work for a failed candidate. ‘I was told that a brilliant chap, very similar to Stafford Cripps, had recently come into the party and taken it by storm. He planned an encyclopaedia on social sciences which seemed ideal for me.' Rees took the job after an interview with Maxwell and anticipated moving his family to Oxford. After the first day, he telephoned his wife and ordered, 'Halt. This isn't going to work.' Rees felt unable to work for someone with 'so many balls in the air who played God on five telephones'.
Richard Marsh, who would also become a Cabinet minister, recalls first meeting Maxwell after the election defeat at the party conference in Brighton. ‘I couldn't forget the first meeting. Outside was his red Rolls-Royce with personalised number plates which were my initials and he kept asking me, "How did you become a Labour candidate?" as if it was like a business transaction. It seemed to me very strange because he had no history in the party.' As the two became better acquainted Marsh concluded that 'they didn't come any tougher but he had limitless charm when necessary and he needed it because in the Labour Party there was a predisposition against wealth'.
There was also a strong hint of the messianic in Maxwell's first major appearance at a Labour Party rally in Vauxhall Gardens in 1962. Hugh Gaitskell was addressing the Festival of Labour when an aide whispered that 'Captain Robert Maxwell MC is arriving to deliver a message from the electors of North Bucks.' The leader nodded and then heard that the messenger was arriving by helicopter. 'He was', said another future minister who witnessed the arrival, 'like a Harrier jet: all power down to get upward thrust.'
But Tam Dalyell, like other young Labour politicians, 'liked him from the word go for his boundless energy' after they first met at the party conference in 1963. Maxwell had by then established his credentials as a specialist in science, an area which Harold Wilson, who had become the party leader after Gaitskell's sudden death, intended to emphasise in Labour's next election manifesto. With Dalyell, Maxwell was co-opted on to Labour's science committee, which was chaired by Richard Crossman, the brilliant and unpredictable academic who instinctively admired mavericks. For Crossman, 'any man of foreign birth who had fathered nine children and who was decorated in the field must be exceptional.' The senior politician was impressed by Maxwell's 'tremendous organising capacity . . . An explosive, enormously dynamic man'. Maxwell and Dalyell met regularly as they toured the country attending conferences arranged by Dalyell at which Crossman could meet scientists and university teachers. But Crossman, whom Maxwell occasionally described as his mentor, never thought of his prot6g£ as a socialist or even as a natural politician. 'You've got to understand the Labour Party, Bob, if you want to succeed inside it,' said Crossman in 1963, but he felt that his advice had fallen on deaf ears.
The proof of that obtuseness was a speech Maxwell delivered in 1967 to a party conference about Labour's education policy, during which he attempted to justify sending two of his children to public schools. ‘I only send those who are in need of going there' because of inadequate family circumstances or low aptitude. His views would be greeted with incredulity and catcalls by Labour party stalwarts who realised that he failed to understand the intellectual philosophy which required the complete comprehensivisation of British education. From the outset, his insensitivity plagued his relationship with the majority of the party. Even those, like Crossman, who might otherwise have been sympathetic admirers came away confounded by the sophistry. He was a millionaire who drove a Rolls-Royce and had moved into a lavish home having spent £350,000 on building works. Visitors to the aspiring socialist politician were met by peacocks strutting across the lawn and booming tannoys, summoning employees to the phone or to urgent meetings. Yet he apparently championed the cause of the underdogs against financiers like himself. Regularly, he attacked the Conservative government's proposals to remove Resale Price Maintenance which, he claimed, would cause the 'murder' of small traders. On one occasion he began his speech by disclosing that, only hours earlier, ‘I cancelled my flight to Miami to be with you tonight.' His audience, a group of poor farm workers, were told, ‘I know what it is like to go hungry because for over twenty years my father was on the dole.' Some in the party were enthralled by the singular power of an individual who could crush any expression of doubts about the contradictions. Others accepted that, while he was not an ideological socialist, these were the sentiments of a radical pledged to reform who was against inherited privilege and wanted the poor to have a fair chance.
To soften the edges and modify the image, in 1963 he presented his business activities more as philanthropic dedications. He bought and subsidised Isis, the Oxford University newspaper (of which his son Philip became an editor), he funded a scholarship at Balliol College and established a chain of bookshops on university campuses to be launched with the rousing flourish 'Books must replace bombs'. Yet all his bookshops eventually failed, the Isis subsidy was withdrawn, but four of his children did graduate from Balliol - 'The same as Asquith,' he would boast. Altogether, his multifarious activities created confusion about what he represented. But in 1964 his self-confidence knew no limits.
In July, Ansbachers, the merchant bank, floated Pergamon as a public company. Twenty years' work was capitalised by selling 1.1 million shares to the public for $3.5 million. Maxwell and his family trusts retained 2.9 million shares. The sale showed that Maxwell's stake in Pergamon was worth roughly £10 million. His other interests in America can be valued at several more millions but their true worth was hidden in the secrecy of Liechtenstein trusts.
With that money secured, Maxwell began looking for new business opportunities. His motives, he explained, were his altruism and his ambition for influence. In 1964, the Daily Herald, a staunchly pro-Labour Party newspaper, was suffering huge losses. Fifty-one per cent of its shares were owned by the International Publishing Corporation (IPC) and the remainder by the TUC. IPC's chairman Cecil King had announced that its shares were for sale since the company wanted to launch a new paper, the Sun. When no buyers appeared, King delivered an ultimatum that the newspaper would be handed to the TUC for nothing. The Labour movement, who deemed it vital that the party should enjoy the unequivocal support of at least one Fleet Street newspaper, was shocked. The problem was how to save the Herald. Maxwell produced a survival plan.
His proposal, which stood out as a sensible balance between capitalist reality and socialist principles, was his first attempt to break the costly stranglehold of the print unions over Fleet Street. He suggested that a new print plant should be established with a government subsidy in an area of high unemployment. During the day, when the presses were not printing the Herald, they would be used for general contracts, especially a slice of the £11 million which was spent annually by the trade unions. If his plan were accepted, he predicted, the TUC would earn £750,000 profits annually. Since the trade union movement had never managed to engage itself in business ventures, it was convenient to ignore his plan.
It was a passing rebuff in what was certain to be a momentous election year and an era of political and social upheaval exemplified in the Orpington by-election and Beatlemania. The Conservative government in autumn 1964 seemed worn out by office and shattered by a series of embarrassing scandals which had culminated in the resignations of John Profumo and Harold Macmillan. The new Prime Minister, Sir Alec Douglas-Home, who seemed as relevant to the Swinging Sixties as a penny-farthing bicycle, stubbornly refused to call an election. The Old World seemed to be dying while Wilson promised a Kennedyesque vision of technological revolution which he had called 'the conscious, planned, purposive use of scientific progress'. Maxwell felt that he epitomised that brave new world and his conviction was reinforced when George Brown, the deputy leader of the Labour Party, visited his cons
tituency. Party members were assured by Brown that Maxwell 'was bound to play a very major role indeed in a new Labour government' because he 'represented very much the kind of new look which we think has to be brought into the country'. Maxwell had every reason to believe that Brown spoke for the party leader and that his talents would soon be used for the nation's benefit. He felt, in Christopher Booker's phrase, that he would be part of 'the dream after the storm'.
When the election was finally announced, Maxwell was automatically nominated as the candidate. Over the previous five years, he had earned an impressive reputation in the constituency for his hard work, while nationally it was recognised that he had revamped Labour's National Fund Raising Organisation at Transport House to improve the party's finances. Even Tom Mitchinson was quoted as saying that he would vote Labour because Maxwell had proved himself worthwhile. The local association's coffers were full thanks to Barnard's regular lotteries, and the agent could report a record 90 per cent canvass of voters. In the biographical-profile material provided for the local papers Maxwell described his birthplace as Slovakia, mentioned that he had travelled two million miles to win export orders and to attend scientific meetings and listed his presidency of the National Labour Party working committee to improve productivity as evidence of his contribution to the party's manifesto.
At his adoption meeting on 25 September 1964, he made a long, rousing speech promising that the campaign would be fought on issues which he spelled out in the most patriotic terms. 'I cannot believe that the British people have become so content with their betting shops and bingo clubs that they are prepared to watch our once great nation slip into third-rate obscurity.' He appealed for the expansion of business and the 'zest for a fight' in a mixture of images evoking the buccaneer and Churchill: 'We were only recently the richest nation on the globe. During the last twenty years we have shrunk back in terms of world-power to our condition before Trafalgar and Waterloo, a small country with a smallish population among greater and more powerful nations. Now we are back with Drake and Nelson, with Cromwell, Marlborough and Wellington, living hard and dangerously and surviving as a nation only if, like them, we are tougher, more austere, better at our jobs than our competitors.' Maxwell believed that a Labour government would radically galvanise Britain's lethargic industrial performance.
Politically, he could not quite subscribe to every aspect of Labour's policy. There would be no 'foolish ^nationalisation', he promised, beyond steel, and he expressly excluded British Road Services from state ownership. 'We will not interfere with the right and liberty of the individual who can do a job that is vital to the community.' His promise that grammar schools would not be abolished similarly reflected Maxwell's own views rather than the party's. Yet on defence he was leftish: 'We are prepared to give up the pretence of an independent nuclear deterrent which is neither independent and doesn't deter.' Finally, he expressed the hope that personalities and smears would not feature because the 'constituency had a basinful of that type of campaign in the last election'. He beamed as his supporters stood and cheered, certain that the next of his ambitions would be realised within three weeks.
The major local issue was the survival of the Wolverton railway workshops which under the Beeching reorganisation plan to reduce the rail network's losses was threatened with closure. 'Now’ he bitterly complained, 'our prized workshops are going to Steptoe's Knacker's Yard for pennies.' Yet one of those benefiting was Maxwell himself, who had negotiated to buy a part of the very same Wolverton workshops.
His acquisition had only been discovered in September. A local newspaper confronted Maxwell and obtained an admission and a promise. Robert Maxwell and Co., he conceded, had bought workshops and land from British Rail with an option to buy more. He refused to confirm that the price was £360,000 but pledged that the buildings would be used to provide '1,200 jobs in twelve to eighteen months', mostly for engineering workers living in Wolverton, although 'the nature of the product is for the moment confidential'. It was the type of 'regeneration' which Labour was promising, but it looked surprisingly similar to a plan which he had announced six months earlier for a printing plant for 1,200 employees in Dundee which was not yet realised.
For sheer energy alone, Maxwell deserved to win the election. His daily whistle-stop dash around the villages of Buckinghamshire in a red Land Rover, and occasionally in a helicopter, delivering impromptu speeches, generated unprecedented enthusiasm. His organisation and self-presentation as plain 'Bob' (the 'Captain' had been dropped), demoralised his new Conservative opponent, Elaine Kellet. Even when his birthplace became an issue with the jibe 'You're not going to vote for a bloody foreigner, are you?' Maxwell had his rebuttal ready: 'I am as British as His Royal Highness Prince Philip and so far as I know the Queen seems to be very happy with his services and so is the country.' The cheers continued until long after the result was declared.
Despite the microphones, the returning officer's voice could barely be heard above the roar when the crowd realised that Maxwell was elected. His majority of 1,481 was a resounding victory, a 6 per cent swing, much higher than the national average to Labour and the first time that Labour had held the seat since 1951. The headlines in the local newspaper spelled out his great success. Under the headline, 'Party Workers' Tumultuous Welcome for Mr Maxwell', the report described 'scenes of great enthusiasm' as, engulfed by his supporters, he and Betty marched through the centre of Buckingham to the party headquarters. There he told the cheering crowd, 'Harold Wilson has watched the result with great care and it will be a great relief to him that Labour has kept its promise and won the seat.' The Labour government had won by the slender majority of four seats and one of those vital seats was his own. Robert Maxwell had little doubt, as he spoke, that the nation's collective attention was fixed upon him and was concluding that, as destiny had ordained, he was indeed the man of the hour. If he looked, according to the local newspaper editor, surprisingly calm, it was, he later admitted, because he felt 'humble, grateful and very tired'. To reaffirm that he would not forget why he was elected, he promised that he would fight to keep a local station open and that a maternity hospital would be built at Bletchley before the end of the following year.
The new MP arrived at Westminster on the first day of the new Parliament, determined to make his contribution to save the nation from bankruptcy. His relationship with the new Prime Minister encouraged his confident belief that he would be offered an appointment. Wilson had been 'stunned by Maxwell's formidable achievement of winning Buckingham'. But Maxwell mistook Wilson's respect for colourful, self-made risk-takers as indicating that he was being considered for ministerial office. He could not see that his pushy and flamboyant personality offended Wilson's natural bureaucratic caution, nor did he take into account the fact that among his fellow politicians were many Labour Members who had worked over the previous twenty years for the opportunity of office. Among them was Grossman. Only days after the election, Grossman had taken his friend aside at a bar in New College, Oxford and told him, on the basis of his knowledge of Wilson, 'You have no chance whatsoever of a job in this government.' Crossman explained that both as a newcomer and 'with your past and your temperament, you'll have to be satisfied with the backbenches'. According to Crossman, Maxwell was 'very, very crestfallen' but he was 'grateful' for the honesty. So Crossman gave his friend one short piece of advice: 'Look, Bob, whatever you do, when you get in there, lie low for six months.'
The first day of the new Parliament was a historic moment. Amid pomp and ceremony, the Queen, as was customary, declared that a new Parliament was in session and read the new government's legislative programme from the throne in the House of Lords. After she left, MPs filed back from the Lords into their own chamber. After thirteen years of Conservative rule, the House of Commons was filled with tense and excited politicians. Former Conservative ministers, suddenly shorn of the power and prestige of ministerial office, sat grimly in their new positions on the Opposition benches. Across the floo
r sat the nation's new masters, brimming with anticipation of exercising power. After a few courtesies, at precisely two minutes past five on that very first day of the new Parliament, Robert Maxwell stood up to make his maiden speech, the first maiden speech of all the new entrants and the first backbencher's speech of the new Parliament. The whole ministerial bench writhed in outrage. Sitting on the front bench, next to the new Prime Minister, Richard Crossman felt positively embarrassed: ‘It was absolutely disastrous. There he was trying to bash his way to fame in the first twenty-four hours.' Wilson's fury was worsened by the smiles of Rab Butler and Alec Douglas-Home. Throughout the Labour benches there was dismay at Maxwell's impetuousness. After a full twenty minutes he resumed his seat. Harold Thompson quipped to Dalyell that night, 'Let's just be thankful that Bob waited until the Queen sat down.'
Maxwell's solecism was not just that it was an inopportune moment for a maiden speech but that it had lasted three times too long. He boasted openly of having 'got in first' and was oblivious to the notion that he had 'left a bad taste in everyone's mouth'. It would take Maxwell many years before he recognised his folly and admitted, 'I thought I was the cleverest thing on two legs there.'
In content, Maxwell's speech was sound. After appealing on behalf of his constituency for improved civic amenities, help for the railway workshops, improved conditions in the brickworks (which were 'shocking') and a plea to keep a local railway line open, he introduced himself as the nation's foremost scientific publisher and launched into a critique of the failure of applying science in Britain. His financial success, he believed, gave him a special status among politicians to pontificate about the nation's salvation. British industry, he complained, was failing to apply the 'results of research faster' and the country's future productivity and profitability depended upon improvements. Attitudes had to be changed, he said, and wasteful government research contracts for defence and civil industry needed to be terminated. Concorde, especially, he insisted, should be cancelled because there was no 'real social or economic demand'. Having made the point, he then continued in the same vein despite the growing restlessness of those around him. The relief when he sat down was temporary. Over the next few days, he repeatedly stood up, interrupted speeches and shouted jibes to score political points until the Conservative Member Edward Du Cann castigated him bluntly: ‘I have never heard anybody make so many speeches as he has in the last two days.' According to Grossman, ‘I don't suppose there's anybody who is less aware of the impression he's created when he tries to create a good impression and it's no good trying to warn him. He wanted to shine.'
