Too damn decent for the lot of them
Integrity, modesty and a passion to make the world a better place have dominated tributes to Sir David Amess. His own memoirs give an unaffected insight into those values – and contain a chilling foreboding of his death
IWILL never forget the expression on the East Enders’ faces when I rode past in a chariot while canvassing for their votes during my first attempt to become an MP. I was behind a group of supporters in Egyptian clothing. One was dressed as Queen Cleopatra and we even had a camel. (This was because the local council offices in East London were built like pyramids.) Miss Bluebell, a beauty queen, followed me on a float.
During that campaign in the Labour stronghold of Newham in 1979, I often attached a loudspeaker to my car and drove through the streets blaring out Rod Stewart’s hit Maggie May.
It was in honour of our then party leader, Maggie Thatcher. How times have since changed. I didn’t win Newham, but 1979 was the year of Mrs Thatcher’s first triumph.
Without question, she was the greatest and most thought-provoking politician I have ever known. It’s difficult to think of anyone else who has changed our country and the world as much.
She understood the hopes and aspirations of ordinary people. I’m often asked how she would view modern politics if she were alive today. In some senses, she would be in utter despair and disbelief. She would have
Mrs Thatcher would view modern politics with utter despair
been delighted about the result of the EU referendum. She would be incredulous at the rise of Jeremy Corbyn to Labour Party leader and likewise would be astonished and appalled at the revival of the far Left.
I’ve no doubt she would be saddened by the decline of Parliament, with its reduced working hours and the rise of the unelected power of bureaucrats.
At the risk of sounding like Victor Meldrew, Parliament has changed since I was eventually first elected in 1983, and not always for the better. I find it hard to compare any of the new recruits to those who defined the 20th Century.
Love them or hate them, the likes of Michael Foot, Enoch Powell, Tony Benn and many others had distinctive personalities. They could be unpredictable, but fiery, impassioned and willing to put everything on the line for what they believed.
They also had the ability to make a real difference. Too often I now find myself telling constituents that I am unable to create change in the same way that politicians had done back in the 1980s.
This is mainly because unelected individuals increasingly pull the levers of power. In the 20th Century, the public elected orators and debaters. They were people with powers of persuasion who could fill a room and leave you with a sense of awe and amazement.
With today’s crop, interactions are via third-party social-media platforms and often debates are held with very few MPs in the Chamber. The eccentrics have, on the whole, disappeared.
One was Sir Nicholas Fairbairn, the Tory MP for Perth and Kinross. Meeting him was quite a shock. He dressed in a flamboyant tartan uniform like Rupert Bear with a working revolver on a chain attached to his belt.
Back then, of course, no one had use of emails or text messages. My secretary sat at what would now be regarded as an old-fashioned golf-ball typewriter, churning out responses to constituents’ individual handwritten letters. The process of receiving and sending a reply through the post would, in itself, take at least a week.
Today, the effect of Twitter, Facebook, WhatsApp and other depersonalised communication is obviously different, and has greatly affected the quality of debate. That is not to say it is without its benefits. My ability to communicate effectively and efficiently with constituents has increased three-fold. Constituents know what I am doing at all hours of the day.
I DECIDED at the age of 11 to become an MP. Terribly sad and unhealthy, I know. The boy who sat next to me at St Bonaventure’s Grammar School in Forest Gate, East London, wanted to become a meteorologist, and we both achieved our ultimate ambitions.
I was born on March 26, 1952, at Howard’s Road Hospital, Plaistow. My mother was one of 11 children and was raised within earshot of Bow Bells. My father left school at an early age and for most of his life worked as an electrician for the London Electricity Board.
My children laugh in disbelief, but we lacked many of the modern amenities that people today take for granted. We had no bathroom, no inside toilet, no refrigerator, no telephone and
certainly no car. We had a tin bath hanging on the outside wall, an outside toilet and a larder.
During my secondary school years, I’d become aware of the physical deterioration of our East London neighbourhood. The roads were neglected, the housing shabby and the environment changing for the worse. I decided to find out who was responsible. Surprise, surprise! It was Labour!
The local MP, who had been there for 40 years, did not live in the constituency nor did he hold any surgeries. At this point, it was simple: I had big ideas and I would oppose the current Labour regime.
It was during the spring of 1968, when I was 16, that a newsletter from the Forest Gate Ward Conservative Association dropped through our letterbox, appealing for new members. I duly joined the party and have never looked back since nor regretted my decision.
After school, I went to Bournemouth College of Technology and took a degree in economics, then briefly became a special-needs teacher at a junior school in Bethnal Green.
I stood as a candidate in the Greater London Council elections in 1977 but lost and was then adopted as the prospective parliamentary candidate for Newham North West. Despite the help of Queen Cleopatra and Miss Bluebell, I lost that election, too.
Nevertheless, I was privileged to be chosen to represent Basildon at the next General Election in 1983.
Standing on a podium in a building that had once been a zoo, I never expected to win – but I did. My childhood dream came true. I was the first MP ever to be elected with no county or district councillors of his own party in the constituency. In the local elections four weeks previously, the Conservatives had attracted only 28 per cent of the votes. I had pulled off the most unlikely victory.
When I first arrived at Westminster, there was a fearsome woman in the Whips’ Office called Mary Frampton. She was physically large and everyone seemed to be afraid of her. She was known by many as ‘Bomber Command’.
I had no hopes of what kind of office I might be given. I’m not sure I had even considered it – I was just happy to have been elected.
During my 15 or so years as MP for Basildon – before switching to Southend West because of boundary changes – I believe I was able to make a huge difference to people’s lives. For instance, I stopped three school closures, I prevented a silver birch forest being razed, I persuaded the then Housing Minister to repurchase 10,000 properties that had been sold to tenants under Right-to-Buy, but had been found to be uninsurable because of the movement of underground clay.
With two days to go before Basildon Hospital A&E was to be closed, on the advice of a completely misguided health bureaucrat, I was able to stop the closure. Today, I would struggle to repeat any of those successes
as a constituency MP. Real power lies with unelected bodies.
Underpinning all of this has been the inexorable rise in the power, and interference, of the EU and its impact on parliamentary legislation. I remain optimistic that as a result of the Brexit vote, in time the sovereignty of Parliament will be restored and, with it, that of our Ministers and of MPs.
Much of Parliament’s power had already been undermined by the endless quangos introduced by Tony Blair. These unaccountable and unelected organisations, often with highly paid senior staff, increasingly have become the real sources of power of so many things that affect our everyday lives. These bodies are more than happy for politicians to take the blame when things go wrong.
I look back on the Blair years with
I was advised of a death threat against me, apparently by the IRA
complete and utter disdain. Many others regarded Blair as the biggest charlatan and con artist of the time. He was the biggest egotistical maniac I’ve ever met.
I always got the impression he found Parliament to be a nuisance.
The claim that he was actually another Margaret Thatcher dressed up as New Labour was totally disingenuous. He was a very clever PR guy. After being elected PM in 1997, for the cameras, he quickly invited Mrs Thatcher to No10 – after which she made the statement that he wouldn’t damage our country.
How wrong she was.
During the 1992 Election, Labour launched their campaign with Blair arriving in a cavalcade at Vange & Pitsea Working Men’s Social Club in Essex. The very idea that Blair, given his background, had anything in common with a working men’s club was truly laughable, yet the media bought into the lie.
Blair would claim he was the saviour of the Labour Party and did enormous good, but I totally disapproved of many of his decisions.
For instance, he broke up the United Kingdom and I blame him for many of the difficulties that we now experience in Scotland. He interfered with the House of Lords by removing the hereditaries, yet fundamentally failed to reform the foundations on which the revising chamber was based.
I blame him for the way he dealt with immigration generally and for changing the face of London with no regard for social cohesion.
Above all, I blame him for the way he misled Parliament over the war with Iraq.
He really does have blood on his hands. He brought terrorism to these shores much more quickly than would otherwise have been the case, and ultimately world order was destabilised. I much preferred Gordon Brown, even if he was so utterly miserable.
THE security threats we face now are unrecognisable from my first days in Parliament. The IRA bomb that killed the Tory MP Airey Neave in the underground Commons car park 1979 [the INLA in fact claimed responsibility], and the 1984 Brighton bombing, precipitated a period of change.
MPs have been given advice about personal security ever since Neave’s death. As an MP with a young family, I was informed of a death threat made against me, apparently by the IRA, to coincide with the 1990 visit of Princess Diana to our local hospice, St Luke’s. The police gave me appropriate suggestions, including having an emergency button next to our bed. Mercifully nothing happened. Still, we regularly check our locks at home and many others have CCTV cameras installed, but probably the most significant change has been with constituency surgeries. The advice is to be more careful when accepting appointments, never to see people alone, to be extra-careful when opening post and to ensure that our offices are properly safe and secure.
But these increasing attacks have rather spoilt the great British tradition of the people openly meeting their elected politicians.
Life passes by so quickly and it’s easy to forget how you saw the world when you were young.
Nevertheless, the pace of change in Parliament, the place I love, is happening far too quickly, without enough careful thought, let alone rigorous scrutiny. We’ve lost too much experience, too much of our connection with the past. And I feel that wiser and experienced voices have not been there to say: ‘Hang on, let’s think again.’
I feel as if I’m on a journey, yet I’m not entirely sure when it’s going to end. Whether I have mellowed or not is for others to decide, but I now understand what is meant by the expression ‘politics is the art of the possible’.
It’s been frustrating and at times sad to be watching Parliament slowly diminish, but my work is not yet complete. I want to still be able to make a difference, to change people’s lives for the better.
After so many years of wanting us to leave the EU, I’d like to be around for a while to ensure that the benefits of our departure are felt by everyone. I do not want this to be my last book.
© David Amess, 2020
Tony Blair was the biggest egotistical maniac I’ve ever met
• Ayes & Ears, by David Amess, is published by Luath Press at £14.99. To order a copy for £13.49, go to mailshop.co.uk/books or call 020 3176 2937 before November 7. Free UK delivery on orders over £20. Proceeds from this serialisation will go to David Amess’s chosen charities and the Jo Cox Foundation.