Despite lazy stereotypes, Major is entitled to a much better hearing
EVEN some of those who responded approvingly to John Major’s devastating attack on the British government’s lamentable Brexit non-management still could not resist doing down the man.
During seven strife-torn years leading the British Conservative Party and government, he was often the victim of very lazy stereotyping. He did sporadically get grudging credit for boxing off the political ropes with huge skill, but the overwhelming British media image portrayed him as “grey man” and a “patron of political mediocrity”.
Well, he is entitled to a much better hearing. In fact, he took over a waning and riven British Conservative Party at the end of the Maggie Thatcher era which had run for a decade and a half.
He surprised many by winning, and many more by defying the odds and staying seven years in charge of the British government. During that time, he did box brilliantly off the political ropes as the parliamentary arithmetic was always against him.
But he did far more than that: notably, he guided Britain through the most divisive period of EU developments which prompted huge divisions inside his own party. He also advanced the cause of peace in Northern Ireland in collaboration with another undervalued politician, Albert Reynolds.
The Reynolds-Major relationship is particularly interesting.
They first came into contact when they were attending EU finance ministers’ meetings.
They had a good rapport from the start and each had very similar characters. In his memoir, published in 2009, Mr Reynolds recalled first meeting Mr Major at lunch during a finance ministers meeting.
Mr Major, as an EU newcomer, asked for Mr Reynolds’s assessment. As a sports fan, the Longford mansaid that when the then-12 EU member states met, the score was usually 11:1, with Britain always opposed to all the others.
“The best I can do for you is to make it 10:2,” Mr Reynolds summed up, in a quiet offer of friendship and support. That was one of Ireland’s roles for over 40 years, trying to quietly broker a better EU-UK relationship. The warmth of the relationship between Mr Reynolds and Mr Major also paid much richer dividends. Though he was seriously short of House of Commons numbers after a surprise win in the April 1992 general election, Mr Major seriously engaged with Mr Reynolds in the quest to break the awful spiral of killing and mayhem in Northern Ireland.
The most tangible evidence of this was the milestone ‘Downing Street Declaration’ signed by both leaders on December 15, 1993. This affirmed the right of the majority in Northern Ireland to determine the entity’s constitutional status; reaffirmed nationalist civil rights and liberties; and stated that Britain no longer
had colonial designs upon the North.
It was a milestone on the road to the Good Friday Agreement which came less than five years later.
When it came to his management of having the British parliament ratify the 1992 EU Maastricht Treaty, Mr Major showed patience, skill and courage.
A vocal minority within his own party, viscerally opposed to the EU generally and Maastricht in particular, were very well placed to cause difficulty. Labour, not opposed to Maastricht, sought to maximise Mr Major’s discomfiture.
Eventually, he got it over the line by threatening a general election.