I feel as if I first took part in a general election even before I was born. My father was the Liberal candidate in Tavistock in 1955 and 1959, and although I was alive only for the latter, featured reading Peter Rabbit in his election address, the two weaved into my infant consciousness. At that time, modernity had not reached rural Devon. Noticing that two neighbouring villages had extremely small Liberal clubs, my father proposed they join forces. ‘Oh no,’ he was told, ‘We were on different sides in the war.’ ‘The war?’ he replied. ‘Surely we were all against the Germans?’ ‘No, the Civil War.’
In all the nine parliamentary elections which he contested, my father had no hope of winning, but although we naturally wanted him to become a Member of Parliament, I do not remember us feeling downhearted. We were taught that the ‘first-past-the-post’ system, which disadvantaged Liberals, was a wicked thing, but we had faith in the integrity of the ballot and the efficacy of public speaking and door-to-door canvassing. It was not until the 1980s that the omnipresence of television finally killed off the political public meeting. Nowadays elections are, in one sense, much more participatory, because anyone can chip in on social media, but in another, less so, because one hardly ever hears a candidate make a proper speech. Ever since Neil Kinnock’s fatal Sheffield rally in 1992, great big meetings with national stars are shunned in case something terrible goes wrong when the world is watching. The art of public oratory, essential to electoral politics at least since 1832, has almost disappeared (though Boris had a last-minute go at it on Tuesday night). At elections, political leaders, notably Sir Ed Davey, are, as children used to be, seen but not heard.
Northern Ireland, where the Liberals were even more of a lost cause, felt quite different. My father, who had spotted that the Troubles were rebrewing well before Ulster politics hit the headlines in 1968, was the candidate in North Antrim in 1966, and again, this time against Ian Paisley, in 1970. It was a thing understood that the Unionists controlled the polling stations. My father foolishly turned down the generous offer of a man who said he had voted Unionist 92 times at the previous election and was happy to do a like service for him. Sectarianism which, under global scrutiny, withered in later years, or at least went underground, was overt. I photographed with my cheap Brownie two election posters near Ballymena. One was a painting of a beautiful blond boy and girl in attitudes of devotion as they gazed at a celestial light. ‘Watch and pray,’ it said, ‘Vote Unionist.’ The other, just like a Victorian Punch cartoon, showed a simian Irishman with a dirty green frock-coat, battered top hat, gaiters, and a shillelagh in his hand, being kicked over the border into an Irish bog by a stern and lovely Britannia.
In February 1974, my father, continuing what he saw as bigot-hunting, had been lined up to challenge Enoch Powell in Wolverhampton South West, attacking him for ‘racialism’, as it was then called. Enoch spoiled it all, however, by resigning from the Conservative party. He later said ‘Vote Labour’ (a manoeuvre not completely unlike that of Nigel Farage in this election). Instead my father fought both 1974 elections in Norfolk North. In those days, there was a strong Nonconformist teetotal streak in provincial Liberalism. This was a trial to my father, who was always seriously concerned for the health and sanity of total abstainers. Such people were often his kind hosts, and I remember his gloom when, after a hard day’s canvassing, he was offered ‘a good drink’ and was then presented with a mug of Ovaltine.
I couldn’t help much in Norfolk because I was a pupil at Eton, and both elections fell during term-time. For the October one, I organised Liberal campaigning among the boys and even an opinion poll which purported to show that we had 130 supporters whereas Labour had only 12 (four fewer than the SNP). The Conservatives had about 750. I canvassed Slough. The only popular Tory policy at that election was one advanced by Margaret Thatcher, the shadow environment spokesman. She promised a specific cut in the mortgage rate from 11 to 9.5 per cent, where it would then be fixed, and argued for it with gusto. On the Slough doorsteps, I found this had been favourably noticed. What did the Liberals think of Mrs Thatcher’s promise, I was asked by a housewife (a now allegedly extinct category of person, but then very influential). My difficulty was that, aged 17, I did not know what a mortgage rate was. I could tell from the woman’s demeanour that she preferred a low rate to a high one, but I dared not endorse a Tory policy. ‘Well,’ I guessed, ‘we very much want the rate to come down, but we think Mrs Thatcher’s policy is unrealistic.’ Many years later, by which time ‘lived experience’ had taught me what a mortgage rate was, I discovered that this had been Mrs Thatcher’s own view, on the typical grounds that ‘You cannot buck the markets’. She had been forced to adopt the policy by the man she then overthrew, Ted Heath.
In 1979, the occasion of Mrs Thatcher’s first victory, I cast my first general election vote (in Cambridge) for the Liberals. I have voted in all subsequent elections, at first for the SDP and later the Conservatives. The only mainstream party I have never voted for is Labour. I must say I enjoy the act of voting very much. It is a glorious mystery that out of the accumulation of millions of single crosses emerges a government which the nation is prepared to accept. I hate it, therefore, when the result is impugned (Donald Trump’s greatest single sin). This time, I (rightly) cannot vote, since I am a peer. I am surprised how much I miss democracy’s version of Holy Communion.
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