Gordon Brown: Prime Minister. Tom Bower
he believed, had been faulty. While he could confidently repudiate intellectual arguments, he lacked the resilience to withstand emotional pressure. He needed reassurance, but he had no one he could rely on. Some of his friends would dispute that he lacked courage. Others would say he feared failure. His consolation was hard work. Diligence, he believed, merited reward, and without hard work there should be no reward. That credo may be commendable for normal life, but not for ambitious politicians. Brown withdrew. Without a serious challenger, Robertson was nominated, and won the by-election by a margin of more than 6,000 votes. If Brown had arrived in Westminster in 1978, his own life, and possibly the Labour Party’s, would have been markedly different.
Similar indecisiveness plagued Brown’s relationship with Margarita. For weeks he hardly spent any time in Marchmont Road. James Callaghan had succeeded Harold Wilson as Labour prime minister, and increasingly Brown was preoccupied by the erosion of Callaghan’s authority – the government’s dependence on other parties at Westminster for a parliamentary majority had become unreliable – and the slide towards industrial chaos. In Scotland the party’s problems were compounded by disagreement about devolution. A referendum was to be held in March 1979, and the party was divided.
Excluded from those preoccupations, Margarita decided to end the relationship and leave Marchmont Road. ‘I never stopped loving him,’ she said in 1992, ‘but one day it didn’t seem right any more. It was politics, politics, politics, and I needed nurturing.’ Brown’s friends would say that he terminated the relationship. ‘She took it badly,’ they said, ‘that she was less important than meetings.’ But in truth Margarita simply was fed up, and walked out. A few weeks later she met Jim Keddie, a handsome fireman, with whom she started an affair that would last for six years. During the first months Brown telephoned her frequently to arrange meetings, but despite his entreaties that she return, she refused. Over a long session of drinks with Owen Dudley Edwards, Brown repeatedly said, ‘It’s the greatest mistake of my life. I should have married Margarita.’ If he had been elected to Westminster in 1974 or 1978 they might have married, but the uncertainty created irreconcilable pressures. Jim Keddie was convinced that Brown remained haunted by Margarita. Although Margarita never mentioned any regret about leaving Brown, for several months after her departure she would turn up without Keddie at parties in Marchmont Road, or would see Brown at dinner parties held by Wilf Stevenson, a man convinced of his own glorious destiny. Keddie sensed that she hoped the relationship might be rekindled, but there was no reunion. ‘It just hasn’t happened,’ Brown would say thereafter about love and marriage. In the space of a few months he had lost the chance of both an early arrival in Westminster and marriage to a woman he loved. Whether he was influenced by his research into James Maxton’s life, with all its failures and disappointments, to avoid similar distress himself is possible, but he had failed to overcome his caution and indecisiveness.
Beyond a tight circle of friends, Brown concealed his emotions and re-immersed himself in politics. For an aspiring realist, the prognosis could not have been worse. The trade unions were organising constant strikes, public services were disintegrating and inflation was soaring. The ‘winter of discontent’ began. Rubbish lay uncollected on the streets, the dead remained unburied and hospital porters refused to push the sick into operating theatres. The middle classes and many working-class Labour voters switched to the Conservatives to save them from what they felt had become a socialist hell. The opinion polls predicted Margaret Thatcher’s victory whenever James Callaghan dared to call the election. Brown’s prospects in Edinburgh South looked dismal, but once again he was offered an attractive alternative.
Martin O’Neill, who would himself be elected to parliament in 1979, called Brown with an offer. O’Neill was chairman of the Labour Party in Leith, and he explained, ‘There isn’t a strong candidate here, and you could win a safe seat.’ Brown hesitated. ‘I don’t know,’ he replied. ‘I don’t think I can let the people in Edinburgh down.’ He expressed his fear of bad publicity after his failure to stand in Hamilton, and the probability of being tarred as an opportunist. The impression again was of indecision and fear of a competition whose outcome was, despite O’Neill’s assurances, uncertain. He sought refuge in hard work.
The first battle was to persuade the Scottish people to support devolution in the forthcoming referendum. Without uttering any overtly nationalist sentiments, he campaigned in favour of the ‘yes’ vote, speaking at dozens of meetings. Despite campaigning in the midst of widespread strikes, Brown believed he could deliver victory. Scotland, he argued, did not share England’s disenchantment with the Callaghan government. Fighting against the odds brought the best out of him. During one debate against Tam Dalyell in York Place, Edinburgh, Brown arrived after a last-minute invitation. ‘He stood up to me better than anyone else,’ Dalyell told a friend afterwards. ‘I was pretty formidable, but he had thought about it better than anyone I had met.’ Among his other opponents was Robin Cook, praised by some but damned by more, especially the former Labour MP Jim Sillars, who would later join the SNP: ‘Cook believed that he was intellectually superior to God.’ Dalyell watched the two sparring with each other. ‘They were two strong young men who knew that one of them would get in the way.’
On election day, 1 March 1979, Scotland’s airports were closed and there were food shortages. Productivity had fallen since 1974, annual wage increases were about 15 per cent and inflation was 15.5 per cent. The ‘yes’ and ‘no’ votes were evenly divided, but under the rules of the referendum the ‘yes’ vote could only be successful if it received not just a simple majority, but a majority of all those who were entitled to vote. Brown, like many in his party, deluded himself about the reasons for failure. Scotland’s new oil wealth had encouraged the belief that while England was dying, their country was being revitalised. Scottish voters, Brown failed to understand, were disenchanted by Labour. He was nevertheless optimistic about victory in the general election, which was finally called for May 1979.
Energetically he began campaigning in Edinburgh South against Michael Ancram, the Conservative candidate. His speeches were notable for their use of repetition as an oratorical strategy, and for their tidal wave of minutiae. Watching Brown’s campaign, Alf Young spotted its flaws: ‘He was always surrounded by a blitz of paper and a million bullet points. He exuded the belief that everything could be reduced to micro-targets and micro-meddling.’ His campaign ignored the widespread disgust with the strikers, and specifically rejected any increased control over trade unions, especially over picketing and unofficial strikes. Despite dozens of friends and supporters, including Margarita, working on his behalf, Brown was defeated by 2,460 votes. Later, in the party headquarters with a group including Robin Cook and Nigel Griffiths, a local activist, he confessed his devastation. Politically, Margaret Thatcher’s victory with a majority of forty-three seats was shattering. Brown was baffled by the national mood and the unexpected end of the Labour era.
The following morning, while television pictures showed Thatcher standing on the steps of 10 Downing Street quoting Francis of Assisi, Brown was slumped in a tattered armchair in Marchmont Road, surrounded by the debris of his campaign, contemplating his life until the next election. He had made a terrible mistake in refusing Martin O’Neill’s offer of a safe seat. No one congratulated him for fighting and losing. He would continue lecturing at the Glasgow College of Technology and the WEA, and would secure a junior researcher’s job on Ways and Means, a political programme produced by Scottish Television. After some complaints about the lack of political balance in his contributions he was moved to What’s Your Problem?, a weekly consumer programme exposing ripoffs by shops and local authorities. His productions were renowned less for their artistic qualities than for the efforts he took to rectify ills.
His new companion was a feisty former student at Edinburgh University, Sheena McDonald, born in Dunfermline, Fife. A brief introduction at one of his university parties by his brother Andrew had been remembered when they met again while working at Scottish Television. Dark, intelligent and fun, McDonald bore some physical resemblance to Margarita, but their characters differed sharply. She was an ambitious journalist, and prized her personal independence. Unlike Margarita, she had no intention of marrying Brown, although they had much in common. Like Brown, she was a child of the manse; her father was a former moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland.
Brown’s