‘Goodnight Adam.’
‘Goodnight Charlie.’
The catchphrase of the late autumn owed an obvious debt to a previous prime minister: a half-hour is a long time in politics. Harold Wilson’s original ‘week’ seemed too long for this parliament. One afternoon it looked like there was going to be a leadership challenge. By the next morning there were insufficient signatures – the fainthearts had prevailed. Soon after, the government survived by one vote a motion of no confidence in the House of Commons. Certain senior Tories rebelled or abstained. Mrs Thatcher, insulted, furious, stubborn, deaf to good advice, called a snap election to be held in three weeks. She was, in the general view, pulling the temple down on her party, most of which now believed she was an electoral liability. She didn’t see it that way, but she was wrong. The Tories could hardly match the momentum of Tony Benn’s campaign, not in the TV and radio studios, not on the stump, certainly not in the industrial and university towns. The Falklands Catastrophe, as it was now called, came back to destroy her. This time, no popular inclination to forgiveness in the cause of national unity. The televised testimony of grieving widows and their children was fatal. The Labour campaign let no one forget how eloquently Benn had spoken out against the Task Force. The poll tax rankled. As predicted, it was difficult and expensive to collect. More than a hundred celebrity non-payers, many of them actresses, were in prison and became martyrs.
A million voters under the age of thirty had recently joined the Labour Party. Many of them were active on the nation’s doorsteps. On the eve of polling day, Benn gave a rousing speech at a rally in Wembley stadium. The landslide was greater than predicted, exceeding the Labour victory of 1945. It was a sad moment when Mrs Thatcher decided to leave Number 10 on foot, hand in hand with her husband and two children. She walked towards Whitehall, upright and defiant, but her tears were visible and for a couple of days, the country suffered pangs of remorse.
Labour had a majority of 162 MPs, many of whom were newly selected Bennites. When the new prime minister returned from Buckingham Palace, where the Queen had invited him to form a government, he gave an important speech from outside Number 10. The country would disengage unilaterally from its nuclear weaponry – that was no surprise. Also, the government would set about withdrawing from what was now called the European Union – that was a shock. The party’s manifesto had alluded to the idea in a single vague line which people had barely noticed. From his new front door, Benn told the nation that there would be no rerun of the 1975 referendum. Parliament would make the decision. Only the Third Reich and other tyrannies decided policy by plebiscites and generally no good came from them. Europe was not simply a union that chiefly benefited large corporations. The history of the continental member states was vastly different from our own. They had suffered violent revolutions, invasions, occupations and dictatorships. They were therefore only too willing to submerge their identities in a common cause directed from Brussels. We, on the other hand, had lived unconquered for nearly a thousand years. Soon, we would live freely again.
Benn gave an extended version of that speech a month later in the Manchester Free Trade Hall. At his side sat the historian, E. P. Thompson. When it was his turn, he said that patriotism had always been the terrain of the political right. Now it was the turn of the left to claim it for all. Once nuclear weapons were banished, Thompson predicted, the government would raise a standing citizen’s army that would make these islands impossible to invade and dominate. He didn’t specify an enemy. President Carter sent Benn a message of support, using words that caused a scandal on the right in the USA and haunted his second term: ‘The word “socialist” doesn’t bother me.’ A poll later suggested that a half of registered Democrats wished they had voted for the defeated candidate, Ronald Reagan.
To me, psychologically confined to the city state of north Clapham, all this – the events, the dissent, the grave analysis – was a busy hum, dipping and swelling from day to day, a matter of interest and concern, but nothing to compare with the turbulence of my domestic life, which came to a head in late October. By then, on the surface, all looked well. We had modified our accommodation as Miranda had proposed, ready for Mark’s arrival. Our doors were removed and stored, the gloomy hall and its large fitted cupboard were brightly decorated, the gas and electricity meters concealed, a piece of carpet laid down. Miranda’s kitchen became a child’s bedroom, with a blue sleigh bed and many books and toys, and transfers on the walls of fairy-tale castles, boats and winged horses. I removed the bed from my study and disposed of it – a signpost on the road to full maturity. I installed a desk for Miranda and bought two new computers. Mark would be allowed to visit us for a few hours twice a week. The adoption agency was pleased by the news of our imminent wedding. I still had moments of unease, which I couldn’t bring myself to share. I joined in all the preparations, feeling guilty, even shocked sometimes, that I could keep up the pretence. On other occasions, fatherhood seemed an inevitability, and I was more or less content.
Miranda’s tutor was impressed by the first three chapters of her dissertation. Adam had still not submitted his material to the police and was reluctant to talk about it. But he continued to work on it, and we weren’t troubled. I paid a five per cent deposit in cash on the Notting Hill house. After that, the fund stood at £97,000. The larger it became, the faster it grew, and faster still on the new computer. My own work during this time consisted mostly of decorating and carpentry.
What marked the beginning of the turbulence began innocuously. On the eve of Mark’s first visit, Miranda and I were drinking a late-night cup of tea in the kitchen when Adam came in with a carrier bag in his hand and announced that he was going for a walk. He had been for long solo walks before and we thought nothing of it.
I woke early the following morning with a clearer head than usual. I slipped out of bed, careful not to wake Miranda, and went downstairs to make coffee. Adam had not returned from his night walk. I was surprised but I decided not to worry about him. I was anxious to make use of my unusual state to catch up on dull administrative tasks, including the payment of household bills. If I didn’t exploit this mood now, I would have had to drag myself to the business within the week and hate it. Now I could breeze through.
I carried my cup into the study. There was £30 on the desk. I put it in my pocket and thought no more of it. As usual, I glanced at the news first. Nothing much. The Labour Party Conference in Brighton had been delayed by six weeks because of internal disputes over policy and was only now just beginning. There was increased police activity around the seafront. Some sites were reporting a news blackout.
Benn was already in trouble with his left for accepting an official invitation to the White House in place of greeting a Palestinian delegation. He had also failed to secure, as promised, the immediate release of the poll-tax martyrs. It was not so easy for the executive to instruct the judiciary. He should have known that, many said, when he made his pledge. Also, the tax itself was not about to be repealed because there were so many other more important bills going through Parliament. There was also anger on his right. Nuclear disarmament would cost 10,000 jobs. Leaving Europe, abolishing private education, renationalising the energy sector and doubling social security would mean a big rise in income tax. The City was seething over the reversal of deregulation and the half of one per cent tax on all trades in shares.