A leading Liberal: my part in his ascent

It must have been 1985.

One of the issues of the day was whether American cruise missiles should be stationed at Greenham Common, ostensibly a Royal Air Force base, in reality entirely under the control of the US. By then, the base had been under siege from a women’s camp for three years, to protest the stationing of cruise missiles, potentially nuclear armed.

The women’s camp was a curious phenomenon. A year or two earlier, Danielle and I visited it with our eldest son, then around ten. She wanted to stay the night but the women at the first gate we visited had to gather in conclave to vote on whether he could stay or not. Was he a boy or a man? A man, you see, couldn’t possibly stay. Obviously, there was no question of my being allowed to.

I didn’t point out that neither age nor gender would be respected by a nuclear exchange if one happened, that I would be just as dead as they would, and that I took as dim a view of that prospect as they did. But I certainly thought it.

At the time we were living in Witney, in Oxfordshire. It had an active peace group. It may have been my unsatisfactory experience at Greenham that spurred me to get involved with the group for a little while. Only a little while, because I was soon going to have to move to another town following the first of three redundancies that have peppered my career (I was also fired on a separate occasion for extreme tactlessness). On this occasion, the redundancy was caused by the company going broke. A year or two later, I rang the ex-owner and asked him how he was doing.

‘I’m managing to keep my nose just below water,’ he assured me, ‘it doesn’t hurt as long as I don’t try to breathe.’

In the short time I could work with the Witney Peace Group, I became heavily involved in organising a public meeting to be addressed by the leaders of the three main British parties. This didn’t go down well with the local Labour Party, an organisation that has difficulties enough in a constituency where Conservative majorities tend to be over 20,000. Since Witney Labour had been a key player in setting up the Peace Group, they understandably resented this interloper turning up and providing a platform for the Tories and Liberal Democrats.

Oddly, far being put off by their anger, it clearly impressed me by its firm stand on principle, because I joined the Labour within weeks of moving from Witney.

In the meantime, Witney Labour somewhat grudgingly agreed to go along with the public meeting. It was, in the end, quite a success. A couple of hundred people showed up. They heard three speakers.

Olive Gibbs during her stint as Lord Mayor
Charm. Humour. Passion

Olive Gibbs spoke for Labour. A former Lord Mayor of Oxford – just ten miles away – one particular action of hers had particularly impressed me: she adopted a Japanese orphan soon after the end of the Second World War, at a time when Japanese people in general were not particularly popular in the West. Of course, it was the war waged between Japan and the West that had produced the most orphans.

Olive spoke with extraordinary passion, as she always did. She came across as highly principled but also hugely likeable – and admirable.

For the Conservatives, we had Ray Mawby, MP for Banbury. He was an obscure politician and rather deservedly so. That makes it appropriate that I can’t remember a word he said. Indeed, the only really significant fact that I know about him is that, after his death, it was revealed that he’d spied for a long time for Czechoslovakia when it was under Communist control. I suppose that only further confirms my long-held belief that, with their powerful state and rigid application of inhumane law, the Communists were a lot closer to Conservative thinking than some imagine.

Ray Mawby.
Conservative MP. And Communist Spy

And then there was the Liberal.

I saw him before I realised I had. Driving home from work in Oxford, I saw a car drawn up on the roadside. A fit and good-looking man was changing a tyre while a sylph-like and attractive woman was leaning against the car, as though her role was purely decorative and she was good at it.

It was only when he showed up at the house of our friends the Wilskers – whom I’ve mentioned before – that I realised that the person I’d seen was the rising star of what was then the Liberal Party, Paddy Ashdown, MP for Yeovil. Ex-military, ex-diplomat, ex-spy. A great background to talk about cruise missiles.

The Wilskers didn’t particularly like mirrors, so they didn’t have one in the house. That created a problem for Ashdown, after he’d washed the grime of the tyre-change off. It was amusing to watch him trying to find a window in which he could see his reflection. He wanted to comb his hair and check his tie. Which was ironic, because as soon as he started to speak at the meeting, he took off his jacket, loosened his tie and tousled his hair.

Paddy Ashdown
Pyrotechnics as a speaker. Highly entertaining

But that was his style. Excellent contact with the audience. He smiled where Olive had been earnest and Mawby simply solemn. He sparkled and amused and entertained. It was pure pyrotechnics and it was extraordinary.

As it happens, I don’t remember what he actually said, but I do remember how he said it. It was impressive and the impression has stayed with me. That’s how you deliver a political message if you want to take your audience with you. Well, that or Olive’s way. Her way was just as remarkable.

It nearly didn’t happen. Paddy Ashdown tried to get out of the meeting so that he could go on the TV programme Any Questions which wanted him for that evening; I was grateful to him for having turned them down – as I imagine he was grateful to the programme for inviting him back the following week.

Four years later, the Liberals merged with the Social Democrats to become today’s Liberal Democrats, and Ashdown became their first leader. I’m not convinced that his appearance at the Witney Peace Group public meeting did much to help him on his way. But, hey, who knows?

As for the sylph-like woman who couldn’t change a tyre, she would shortly be named as the other figure in a scandal that would engulf Ashdown and earn him the nickname Pantsdown. Which stuck with him until his death a couple of days ago. Apparently, at the height of the scandal, his voicemail message invited callers to leave a message ‘after the high moral tone’.

Well, I didn’t really know him. But I enjoyed the brief contact between his life and mine. And I was sorry to hear that his had ended.