Gordon Brown: Prime Minister. Tom Bower
upbringing reined in any temptation to boast. Privately, he nevertheless hoped that his achievement would ease the path to a nomination for a safe parliamentary seat.
Securing that nomination depended upon a successful apprenticeship. The party recognised Brown’s ability but wanted evidence of more than a commitment to the community and worship of the Bible, Burns and Keir Hardie. To prove his understanding of liberating working people, he was required to intone the religious code of the Scottish Labour movement – ‘socialism’ and ‘social justice’ – with suitable references to the fundamental morality established during the Scottish movement’s history. By 1976 he had established those ideological credentials, regurgitating endless facts to prove that Harold Wilson’s government and its technological revolution would create thousands of new businessmen and enterprises, revolutionising the nation’s wealth. As a party loyalist he qualified for nomination; but among many of Labour’s older generation his image grated. While the party faithful admired the impassioned man, some griped that he was too fast, too clever, and too interested in courting popularity. The picture of a disorganised twenty-three-year-old, wearing a dirty Burberry coat, carrying a plastic bag stuffed with newspaper clippings, pamphlets and notes, flitting between speeches and committee meetings, invariably late because he had forgotten his watch, hardly appealed to working-class stalwarts. They joked that while he held the plastic bag under his arm, the information seeped into Brown’s brain by osmosis through a sensor in his armpit.
Occasionally Brown returned to Marchmont Road close to tears. At political meetings he was shouted down by critics angry that he had acknowledged the SNP, a ghost the Labour Party preferred to ignore. The policies pursued by Harold Wilson’s Labour government antagonised many in Scotland, and Brown was among the casualties, blamed for deviation from true socialism. Some members of the Scottish Executive, especially Jimmy Allison, the party’s organiser, treated him roughly. In 1974 the party had opposed devolution, but subsequently, after receiving a report from the ‘Devolution Committee’ chaired by Brown, it supported partial home rule. The disagreements excited anger. ‘The older people hated him,’ Henry Drucker, a writer and friend, recalled. John Forsythe listened to his long-haired friend’s lament that the representatives of the working class criticised him as soft, self-indulgent and a dilettante. Brown was frustrated that those he consulted for advice were not as clever as himself, and could not offer better insights into Labour’s problems in Scotland. His family life had not equipped him to deal with calculated ruthlessness. Any achievement would have to be the result of unglamorous hard graft.
Eventually his perseverance was rewarded. In 1976 he was nominated as the prospective candidate for Edinburgh South, a Conservative seat. Considering the growing antagonism towards the Labour government his election to the Commons was doubtful, but the breakthrough was critical. After a good speech in favour of devolution at the Scottish party’s conference in 1977 Brown was elected to Labour’s Scottish Executive. Full of excitement, he telephoned Donald Dewar, a solicitor and an MP since 1966 with whom he watched football matches, to share his excitement. The older politician instinctively replied, ‘I can assure you it will be awful.’ John Smith, the thirty-nine-year-old minister responsible for devolution in Westminster, was more supportive. Brown had been flattered to be invited to Smith’s home shortly after Smith’s appointment as a cabinet minister, and had been surprised to find that Smith was more interested in listening than in talking. Smith, Brown would appreciate, ‘genuinely believed people were equal’. Like Donald Dewar, John Smith became another ‘friend and mentor’. Brown was content to have established himself close to the party’s possible future leaders.
His election to the party’s executive coincided with the earlier appointment of Helen Liddell, a bus driver’s daughter who would later be known as ‘Stalin’s Granny’, as the Scottish party’s general secretary, and George Robertson as chairman. His encounters with both did not improve his popularity. As BBC Scotland’s economics correspondent, Liddell had a high public profile, and was an attractive face for Labour. Her appointment did not interrupt her frequent appearances on television news. Self-promotion, carped her critics, seemed more important to Liddell than engaging in the grind of party work and leadership. Her supporters countered that her value was in forging good relations with people. That was no consolation for Brown. Generally he did not handle women well, and he particularly lacked affection for Liddell. At executive meetings he was humiliated as she launched criticisms of him, especially of the ‘Red Paper on Scotland’, whose neo-Marxism she regarded as a threat to the party, regularly beginning with the phrase ‘The national leadership says … ’ Those seemingly innocuous words could be fatal to Brown’s ambitions. His energy and politics were creating rivals and occasionally enemies, just as his need for friends and benevolent advisers had become greatest.
In 1978 his impatience to become an MP was damaging his relationship with Margarita. Repeatedly, planned visits to the cinema and parties were abandoned as he responded to a telephone call and rushed to yet another meeting. In desperation, one night she had telephoned Owen Dudley Edwards with a ruse, asking, ‘Can you come down? Gordon wants you.’ Dudley Edwards arrived to discover that Brown was still drinking in a pub with two friends. Leaving Margarita alone had caused him no concern. The three friends eventually returned, slightly merry. Normally Brown’s companions would crash out on the floor while he flopped in an armchair to read a serious book. But on this occasion, while Margarita loudly reproached him, he picked her up and laughingly carried her to their bedroom. ‘You can see how in love they are,’ sang Dudley Edwards.
In an attempt to restore their faltering relationship, Margarita organised a weekend trip to a country cottage, and disconnected the telephone. Brown exploded in a rage. Relationships with women were sideshows in his life. He had become disturbed by the uneasy contrast of living with a sophisticated woman who enjoyed good food and elegant clothes, and the plight of Scottish workers, striking in large numbers across the country. While the party was immersed in strife as it tried to resolve the turmoil, Margarita seemed merely to tolerate Scottish provincialism, being principally concerned about the arrangements to visit her family in Geneva and her royal friends in their palatial homes across Europe. After five years, she also wanted evidence that the relationship had a future. Regardless of his affection, Brown was uncertain whether he could commit himself to a woman who was not a socialist, or could risk appearing with a princess before a constituency committee.
This crossroads in his personal life coincided with a remarkable political opportunity. Alexander Wilson, the Labour MP for Hamilton, a town south of Glasgow, died, and the constituency was looking for a candidate for the by-election on 31 May 1978. Hamilton had many attractions for Brown. The seat was a Labour stronghold, several senior party members had offered him their support, and his parents had moved to a church in the town. The obstacles were the other aspiring candidates. Alf Young, a journalist, was among them, although his chance of success was nil. Brown telephoned Young and asked whether he would stand aside. Young politely refused, adding that George Robertson, the Scottish party’s former chairman, who was supported by a major trade union, appeared certain of success. Brown aggressively challenged Young’s obstinacy, but failed to persuade him to surrender. A decisive voice, Brown knew, would be Jimmy Allison’s, the party’s organiser and a mini-Godfather. ‘It’s tight,’ said Allison, who knew the area well, ‘but you can win if you fight.’ Crucially, Allison pledged his support if Brown mounted a challenge. There might be blood, warned Allison, but that was acceptable among brothers. Even George Robertson, the favourite, acknowledged that there would be ‘a big fight’ if Brown stood, and the outcome would be uncertain.
‘I don’t know,’ Brown told Allison a few days later. ‘I think I should be loyal to the people in Edinburgh South. I don’t want to be seen as a carpetbagger and offend the good people who have helped me.’ Allison dismissed that as an irrelevance. Brown grunted and agreed to contact the party activists in Hamilton. But they, Allison heard, were unimpressed by his eagerness to avoid a fight with Robertson. Brown spoke about not being disloyal to the electors of Edinburgh South, but in truth he lacked the courage to work the system with a killer instinct. His caution was unexpected. Six years earlier he had confidently challenged Michael Swann. Outsiders were puzzled why the same determination now seemed to be lacking. They failed