Letters from London (19 page)

The film was an excellent piece of agitprop, making its point economically while shamelessly playing on our emotions. Conservatives had known before the election that they were vulnerable on health; William Waldegrave, the Health Secretary, had written to national newspaper editors pointing out that “the exploitation of individual cases where the NHS is alleged to have failed a patient is the preferred method of campaigning by Labour.” He further expressed the hope that the press would not “allow this new and ruthless form of
health campaigning to pass unchallenged,” adding, “It would be another ratchet down in electoral standards if it did.” Such heavy-handed advice betokened high anxiety. Newspapers like to be ethically outraged on their own behalf, without ministerial prompting; and in the event, their interpretations of the need to “challenge” the Labour broadcast varied. How, indeed, might you “challenge” it if you wished to do so? You might, for instance, condemn the exploitative use of children, even if only child actors, in political commercials—the Conservative Party chairman, Chris Patten, for instance, called the film “tacky” (he hadn’t seen it at the time, but that was neither here nor there). Or you might assess the narrative plausibility of the commercial—investigate the frequency of glue ear, the average waiting time for an operation, the effects of such a wait on the child’s psychological condition, the cost of private treatment—and then decide whether or not to challenge the broadcast. This is, of course, fairly pedantic, though some newspapers followed such a line, and seemed to establish the general truth of the film, except that the cost of the operation was more likely to be between £500 and £750 (the £200 check probably being just for the surgeon’s fee), thus making Labour’s point even better. But newspapers do not, on the whole, operate in this fashion. The question they asked in response to a political row about a fictionalized infant was depressingly basic: Who is she? And “she” turned out (very quickly, with the help of a leak) to be five-year-old Jennifer Bennett of Faversham in Kent, whose father had written to the Shadow Minister for Health, Robin Cook, to complain about his daughter’s laggardly treatment. But the newspapers also discovered that reality is messier than a TV commercial. For if Jennifer’s father was a disgruntled floating voter, his wife was a Conservative, and
her
father turned out to be a former Tory mayor of Faversham and friend of the sitting MP. Worse, he had faxed the Conservative Central Office more than a week before the broadcast warning them of Labour’s plans and disagreeing with his son-in-law’s interpretation of events.

The War of Jennifer’s Ear, as it swiftly became known, dominated the election coverage for several days. Jennifer Bennett was on the
front page of every paper, even
The Times;
the family was endlessly doorstepped; the grandfather, in a moment of pure soap, even burst in on a TV interview with his son-in-law. “Is it true?” had quickly lost out to “Who is she?” which in turn gave way to “Who leaked what?” Did Kinnock’s press secretary divulge the girl’s name? Did Waldegrave’s office put the surgeon who conducted the operation in touch with the
Daily Express?
And was Jennifer’s case just a simple administrative error, as was now claimed, rather than a direct result of under-funding? And so on. Waldegrave stupidly compared Newell’s film to a piece of prewar Nazi propaganda. Patten claimed the film showed a “colossal error of judgment” on Kinnock’s part and questioned Kinnock’s “fitness to hold any public office.” Cook naturally called for Waldegrave’s resignation on the ground that the Tories had led the press to “the door of the Bennett family and caused them that distress.”

The Liberal Democrats watched the scuffle from a high moral stool. Labour cursed itself for not having researched the Bennett family more carefully in the first place. The Tories screamed and shouted and threw bagfuls of dust in an attempt to obscure the film’s original campaigning point. But their pained yelps indicated how vulnerable they felt. The British are proud of their National Health Service and react proprietorially if they think it is being messed around with. No one would claim that under Labour waiting lists would be abolished or politically embarrassing cases would never arise. But Newell’s film and the subsequent War of Jennifer’s Ear did successfully illuminate one fundamental question. Given that two patients suffering from the same condition may within the existing health system be treated at different speeds, and that the determining factor in that speed is the patient’s bank account, does this differentiation indicate, as the Tories would maintain, that the citizen has a philosophically desirable freedom of choice in medical treatment as in so many other spheres of life under the liberty-loving Conservatives, or is it, as the Labour Party claims, straightforward proof of a two-tier system in which priority of treatment is based not on medical but on financial factors? And which party is more content that this should be so? The British
do not, on the whole, like the intrusion of morality into politics, but when Labour’s deputy leader, Roy Hattersley, declared the whole case a “moral” one, and when Neil Kinnock cried, “A sin, a sin,” they were on the safest political ground.

A
WEEK BEFORE
E
LECTION
D
AY
, I went canvassing with my friend and neighbor Lisanne, a political scientist and resolute Labour supporter. Badged with our red-and-yellow Glenda Jackson lapel stickers, we addressed ourselves to nearby Chetwynd Road, NW5, a narrow, hilly street from whose highest point you look across to Hampstead Heath (or at least to the big NHS hospital beside it). Originally, Chetwynd Road must have had a certain terraced elegance, but since its discovery by motorists as one of the few east-west cross routes in this part of town, it has become a clogged rat run. Traffic used to barrel along here as fast as it could go, until a couple of years ago Camden Council decided to put speed bumps in the road. This measure is known in planning jargon as “traffic-calming,” but it is, of course, also tremendously traffic-irritating, as drivers roar between the bumps, then stamp on the brakes so as not to lose the underside of their chassis.

As Lisanne and I plunged hip-deep into the carbon monoxide, I remembered Oliver Letwin’s observation about canvassing. From the moment he approaches a house, he says, he can usually judge whether its inhabitants vote Tory or Labour. “You can tell the Tories from the neatly clipped hedge, the little pots of geraniums, from the fact that the front porch is tidily swept” It has nothing to do with grandeur—indeed, if a large house isn’t neat on the outside, its inhabitants will never be Tories—or with the beauty or value of the property. It has purely to do with tidiness. (The Letwin front-garden principle, by the way, applies only in the South of England, he says. In the North, they’re all tidier, regardless of politics.)

There are about 120 houses in Chetwynd Road, some owner-occupied, many divided into flats. The object of canvassing is not (as I had imagined when I stood on my front step with Glenda) to convert people, or to indulge in far-ranging discussions of foreign policy, but
simply to identify your own supporters. A printout of the electoral roll gives you a list of all registered voters. This, you quickly realize, does not tally with the people who actually live in the street.

“I’m just over from Hong Kong,” replies the first man whose electoral intentions we inquire about, “and I
can’t wait
to get back there.” An elderly woman opens the door, peers at our red-and-yellow lapel stickers, and wordlessly closes the door again. “Not one of us,” hazards Lisanne, annotating her printout accordingly:
T
for Tory,
S
for Liberal Democrat,
L
for Labour,
P
for Possible Labour,
M
for Moved Away or Dead. We are in a demographically Macedonic area: there are Greek and Irish names, Italians and Indians, a girl whose unfamiliar Christian name turns out to be Maori. The Letwin front-garden test seems generally to hold up well: extreme tidiness in the face of this traffic-wrecked, fume-ridden street where cars are parked all over the pavement is often topped off by a neat Letwin advertisement. But mainly the posters are red-and-yellow ones; we mark
L
on the printout and move on to the next house without knocking. A fair number of voters are wary of opening their doors as the light fades on an April evening; some lie doggo, others throw up top-floor windows. Nowadays, holding a conversation through the entry phone is a key political street skill. “I’m a Liberal Democrat,” squawks one metal box in reply to our ring.

“Well, let me tell you,” Lisanne bellows back, “that we have very good friends in Richmond who are Labour and who will be gritting their tiny teeth and voting Liberal Democrat to get the Tory out, so why don’t you return the favor?”

“I’ll think about it,” squawks the box.

“We don’t want Mr. Letwin, do we? Not the man who invented the poll tax?” Lizzie eyes the box fiercely.

“You may have a point,” it answers, rather cravenly. Is this a P or just an
S
being polite? It’s hard to tell. One house worryingly displays both Labour and Tory posters side by side; only when we get close do we see that Oliver Letwin’s youthful features have been disimproved with a burlesque Biro mustache, while a large arrow penetrates his skull; we mark
L
and move on. An Indian paterfamilias with
sticker-free windows mutters, “Yes, Labour, all four of us,” and Lizzie triumphantly marks four Ls. I am less sure; he replied with dubious speed, and his front garden is suspiciously tidy.

We start down the other side of the street. “I’m still making up my mind,” answers a gentleman in slippers, dressing gown, and pince-nez. “But not for us, I think,” Lisanne adds quietly after the door is closed. Then we meet “I’m deciding on polling day,” and “I’m a Liberal Democrat, but I’ll be voting for Glenda Jackson unless it looks as if she’s going to win easily, in which case I’ll vote Liberal Democrat,” and again, “I’m making up my mind on polling day.” (What is it with these people? Thirteen years of Tory rule and they still haven’t decided whether more of it is a good or a bad idea?) According to the electoral register, several voters live over the launderette, but, if so, they must come and go by rope ladder. A large West Indian at a top-floor window gives us a thumbs-up sign, then yells, “But I haven’t paid my poll tax.” “Doesn’t matter!” we yell back. “It’s not connected!” Most of the exchanges are perfectly friendly. “I’m not going to vote for you,” says a young man, “but anyway I vote in Islington.” “Good,” mutters Lizzie as we walk off
“That
won’t make any difference either way.” We get a friendly hello from a pair of blue-rosetted Tory canvassers, and are briefly abused with shouts of “Tory, Tory, Tory, we’re gonna win” from three teenage girls, fortunately below the age of electoral consent.

At almost the last house in the street, we come across the first positive evidence of a changed electoral intention. “I always vote Tory, but I’m probably going to vote Labour this time,” a young woman says. “What’s your party’s position on blood sports?”

Lisanne rises splendidly to this request. “As part of our program to outlaw cruelty to wild mammals,” she recites, straight from the manifesto, “there will be a free vote in the House of Commons on a proposal to ban the hunting of live quarry with hounds.”

“But what does your candidate think? How is she going to vote?”

“I think you’ll find Glenda
very sound
on blood sports,” answers Lisanne, crisply guessing.

Overall, she is cheered by the canvass: one almost certain switch
to Labour, one probable, plus the guy at the end of the entry phone who might do a tit-for-tat tactical vote with someone in Richmond he hasn’t met. Not a bad evening’s work. Yet what made the strongest impression on me was the number of people living in Chetwynd Road who weren’t on the electoral roll. One house was almost certainly empty, but several more, all in multiple occupation, contained not a single resident authorized to vote. Here were members of that missing five thousand. Some were no doubt just passing through the borough, or were, in any case, apolitical, but what if, say, a quarter of them were natural low-income Labour supporters who failed to register because of a desire to avoid the poll tax? Would their significant silence thwart Glenda and ease Letwin home?

I
N THE LAST WEEK
of the national campaign, to everyone’s surprise, a genuine issue emerged, one on which all three main parties had differing opinions: electoral reform, and, specifically, the issue of proportional representation. When Paddy Ashdown first tried to get the question of PR rolling in the campaign, John Major had mockingly dismissed the initials as standing for “Paddy’s Roundabout.” But with some help from the pressure group Charter 88, and more from opinion polls that still pointed firmly to a hung Parliament, Ashdown managed to get PR discussed. What, he demanded twice daily, did the other main parties intend to do when Parliament was deadlocked after April 9? And on every occasion he repeated the Lib Dem message: stability for a full term, a five-year partnership, with PR the price of the deal.

Despite the questionable logic (is there anything inherently stable about coalition government?), Mr. Ashdown’s cheek and verve in making strong demands from a weak position drew other parties into the argument. The Conservative position was explained by the Prime Minister without ambiguity: we do not believe in PR, there will be no PR under the Tories, the present system works perfectly well, thank you very much and good night. Ergo, the voter deduced, there could be no Tory pact with the Liberals unless Ashdown retreated utterly. So what about the Labour Party, still tipped to be the largest grouping
in the new Parliament, if without an overall majority? Labour was, in any case, a more natural ally for the Lib Dems. The official Labour answer, as given in St. Andrew’s, Frognal, by Glenda Jackson, was “Well, there won’t be a hung Parliament.” Labour’s fallback position was that no one could say what the Party’s position on PR was because it hadn’t yet been decided. The leadership had commissioned a report on the matter two and a half years previously, and was still waiting for the outcome. Some Labour candidates, like Glenda Jackson, were in favor of PR; some were against it; Neil Kinnock, when quizzed, said it wasn’t very easy to say where in particular he stood, while emphasizing that his was of course the party that was always open to discussing new ideas. The cynical or politically realistic interpretation of all this was that the Tories were against PR because it would mean an end to their ability to form a majority government on a minority of the votes, and that Labour, while also hoping to pull the same trick this time round, was keeping open the option of being principled in case of failure. The issue of Paddy’s Roundabout made the Tories seem hostile to new constitutional thinking, Labour fuzzy-minded if not actively shifty on it, and the Liberal Democrats clearsighted, pragmatic, and committed to electoral justice. They were also, no less than the other parties, committed to their own self-interest—a permanently hung Parliament, permanent third-party influence, and a permanent job for the increasingly statesmanlike Paddy Ashdown.