William Rodgers

Parliaments divide, with surprising neatness, into distinct phases. A first phase reflects the initial euphoria of a party winning power (or retaining it). A sober middle period is spent getting to grips with real problems. There follows, finally, a collapse into electioneering. The transition from the middle to the final phase is usually the most clearly defined. There is a rush of Members of Parliament declaring their intention to retire. In the House of Commons the Queen’s Speech takes on a subtle edge: the New Legislation Committee has been beavering away for months producing a package of proposals either popular enough to win votes or so prosaic as to be dropped without penalty if Parliament runs out of time. On the direct and specific instructions of Number 10, ministers are preparing executive decisions (money to be spent, promises to be made) that will win friends among the discontented.

Seven miles high above the Bay of Biscay and bound for Madrid, reading the daily papers is the alternative to a British Airways breakfast at noon. What is news? A kiss, it seems. England has won a Test Match and Emburey is conveying his congratulations to Ian Botham. It is front-page news for the Guardian but back-page for the Daily Express. The popular papers have a problem. Myra Hindley and the Moors Murders is a rich story on which to lead, as full of purple prose today as it was twenty years ago. It should be a good day for sales.

Thirteen years ago, in the late afternoon of an April day, I was summoned across Whitehall from my office in the Ministry of Defence to see the Home Secretary. Roy Jenkins rose from his chair and said: ‘Well, it’s all over, Callaghan is appointing Crosland.’ He nodded to a handwritten envelope addressed to the President of the French Republic. I knew that it contained a letter declaring his willingness to become President of the European community. We talked for a while, and I sadly conceded that my resistance to his departure from British politics was at an end. A little before six o’clock we watched the television news for public confirmation of events. There it was. Anthony Crosland had become Foreign Secretary – the only job that would have kept Roy Jenkins away from Brussels and the Berlaymont.’

On 28 October 1971 the House of Commons voted, at the end of a six-day debate, on Britain’s entry to the Common Market. There was a majority of 112 in favour, but 131 MPs rebelled against their party leadership, the most dramatic occasion of its kind since the prelude to Chamberlain’s resignation in 1940. On the Opposition benches, 69 Labour MPs defied a heavy three-line whip to vote for entry, and another 20 abstained. Of Conservatives, 39 voted against entry and two abstained. There was also one Liberal rebel.

In the General Elections of 1951 and 1955, the Liberal Party won less than 3 per cent of the vote and ended up with six MPs. The party of Gladstone, Asquith and Lloyd George had joined the political fringe. But by 1974, despite the electoral system and an absence of credibility as a candidate for government, the Party had raised its share of the vote to 19.3 per cent and the number of its MPs to 14. It was clear that the death of Liberal England had been prematurely foretold.