John Major: The Autobiography. John Major
pay reduction), but this was refused. The LEB did not provide me with a career, but it was an important staging post in building up my self-belief that I could do better.
Politics continued to fascinate me, and in the spring of 1964, when I had just turned twenty-one, I contested my first election for Lambeth Council. Larkhall was a hopeless ward for the Conservatives, but I fought it as if it were a marginal, canvassing for support at every spare moment. I lost heavily – they might as well have counted my votes and weighed the Labour votes – but the experience whetted my appetite. The count at Lambeth Town Hall was hugely exciting, crammed with joyful people in red rosettes and resigned good losers in blue. Labour seemed impregnable in Lambeth in 1964, but that was soon to change. Not, however, at the general election in October that year, when Harold Wilson narrowly defeated Sir Alec Douglas-Home and Labour squeaked back into government after thirteen years in opposition. In Brixton, Marcus Lipton, the sitting Labour Member, comfortably saw off Ken Payne, the Conservative candidate. I worked hard for Ken, who warmly encouraged my own ambitions and offered to help me find a better job, but the result was never in doubt. Ken would have made a good Member of Parliament, but sadly he was never to get there, and comforted himself with a distinguished career in local government.
After my own diversion into local elections, I thought long and hard about my future. Politics beckoned more each day, but I knew that if I were to have a good chance of being selected as a Conservative candidate for Parliament, I had to obtain a professional qualification as well as a political profile. The profile was coming along quite nicely, but the career not at all. I could not now go to university, since I had no entry qualifications and no means of support even if I got there. I could not become articled to the law or chartered accountancy, since neither would provide any income for years.
It was going to have to be evening classes – which would wreck political activities – or a correspondence course which would wreck my sleep. That choice was easy. I could not give up politics. But what to study? Accountancy? Possibly. Insurance? No. Banking? Yes. I settled for banking, because it offered more choices of employment, the chance of travel, promotion (I hoped) on merit, and I could study at home.
I joined District Bank in May 1965, at the magnificent salary of £790 a year. I began studying immediately, rising each morning at 4.30 or 5 a.m., when the mind is uncluttered and the brain fresh. To this day I follow that pattern if I have something taxing to get through. For the first time in my life I enjoyed the process of learning, and I widened my reading as well. I studied in the morning, worked at the bank by day, enjoyed my politics in the evening, and read late into the night. Within sixteen months I comfortably passed the five papers of Part One of the Banking Diploma. It was tremendously exhilarating to feel I was getting somewhere.
I began to receive invitations to speak at Conservative meetings in and around London, and accepted every one I could. The audience was often small, but the experience was invaluable. The Young Conservatives in Lambeth used to play a game, challenging each other to speak for a minute on a subject suggested at random. I acquired habits then which remain with me still. I would go to the Minet Library in Brixton and research the subject, then scribble the facts I wanted to use on a piece of paper, jumbling them up in little circles until an argument developed in my mind.
I have always been able to soak up a lot of detail and recall it without difficulty – show me a page of figures and I can remember them. While I have never found it easy to win an unexpected argument, I discovered very early on that when I was buttressed by knowledge I didn’t lose. I operate by knowing the facts better than the other person, so that I am confident in what I say. I felt uneasy with flowery froth and idle oratory. I couldn’t deliver a speech that, when looked at in the cold light of early morning, meant nothing. I needed to have my feet on firmer ground. I can overcome this instinctive caution if I have direct contact with an audience, such as I got speaking on the soapbox or – on occasion – in the House of Commons. But often I needed to be provoked, to have my back against the wall, to give my best performances.
The hardest parts of a speech are the first and last paragraphs. When writing a speech you can start anywhere – even with the conclusion. I used to turn over the points I wanted to make until they formed a pattern, and then the rest would fall into place. That’s why I find it hard to read speeches written by others. As those who have worked with me know, I could be hell to be with before a big speech, marching around and overreacting – mental preparation for the event. When I was prime minister my staff would often be in despair because they had produced a beautifully written speech that I would move all around because they weren’t my words.
In the mid-1960s my sister Pat, her husband Peter and my mother left Burton Road and moved to Thornton Heath, within a few streets of where Terry and Shirley lived. I did not go with them. Some time earlier, at a church fête, I had met Jean Kierans, a teacher who lived opposite us in Burton Road. Jean was dark-haired, attractive and fun, and we had taken to one another immediately. My mother liked her – it was impossible not to – until it registered with her that Jean, despite her youthful looks, was twelve years older than me, was divorced, and had two young children, Siobhan and Kevin. My mother did not approve. Nevertheless, I moved in with Jean, who did all she could to earn my mother’s approval, although it was a doomed enterprise from the start. She thought our age gap too wide, and never shifted her view. Jean encouraged my studying, and shared my politics.
In early 1966 I noticed an advertisement from the Standard Bank Group offering the chance of banking abroad, with large overseas allowances to supplement the salary. I applied, was accepted, and joined their home staff with the intention of applying for overseas service as soon as possible. I had not given up my political ambitions, but I saw the chance to travel, broaden my experience, save some money, improve my CV – and I had itchy feet. I was bored.
My chance to travel soon came. The Standard Bank of West Africa was one of the largest banks in Nigeria, and when fighting broke out in Biafra – a bitter and cruel conflict that was to become a full-scale war – they invited single men to volunteer for service there on a temporary basis. It was perfect. I applied immediately, and flew on secondment to Nigeria in December 1966.
I was lucky in my posting. I was sent to Jos, a plateau in the north of Nigeria, the scene of hard fighting some months earlier, but by then well away from the real privations of the war. Jos was thousands of feet above sea level, and had a glorious climate. I shared a flat with a Liverpudlian about my own age, Richard Cockeram, a member of the bank’s permanent overseas staff. A young Hausa, Moses, was employed as steward/cook/valet and general factotum.
The Jos branch of the bank was managed by another Liverpudlian, Burt Butler, although much of the office revolved around a Ghanaian accountant, who reputedly had several wives. Certainly the wife who attended bank cocktail parties was not the same lady we met elsewhere. He helped me settle in, knew the routine of the office backwards, and let me master the extra responsibilities I was given.
Nigeria was a world away from all my previous experience. The glorious dawns, the high sky, the feeling of immense space, the remoteness, were all new to me. It was easy to see how Africa gained such a hold over people. The centre of social activity for the expatriate community was the Jos Club. It introduced me to curry (served with a vast array of side-plates of nuts and fruits), to outdoor film-shows beamed against white walls, to snooker, to lazy Sundays by the swimming pool, to a calmer, more comfortable and more reflective way of life than I had known. I enjoyed the privacy and peace, but perversely missed the bustle and speed of London life. Nigeria was an enjoyable interlude, but I was homesick within weeks.
Cameo memories of my time there are very strong. Reading Papillon and Michael Foot’s biography of Nye Bevan, listening to the few records I could buy in Jos (most memorably Elvis Presley’s Blue Hawaii), travelling to outlying branches of the bank in the cash wagon, getting to know the grave and respectful Nigerians and exchanging banter with the expatriate miners, bankers and administrators.
At Christmas, when I had been in Nigeria for less than three weeks, Richard asked Moses to buy a chicken from the market for our lunch. That morning we sat on the balcony of our flat like lords of the universe. But Moses didn’t appear, and neither did the chicken.
We were not concerned. The power supply was unreliable