Although Britain gave a distinctive gloss to these trends, the affluent consumer society to which they catered was above all to be found in the United States. I had made my first visit to the USA in 1967 on one of the ‘Leadership’ programmes run by the American Government to bring rising young leaders from politics and business over to the US. For six weeks I travelled the length and breadth of the United States. The excitement which I felt has never really subsided. At each stop-over I was met and accommodated by friendly, open, generous people who took me into their homes and lives and showed me their cities and townships with evident pride. The high point was my visit to the NASA Space Center at Houston. I saw the astronaut training programme which would just two years later help put a man on the moon. As a living example of the ‘brain drain’ from which over-regulated, high-taxed Britain was suffering, I met someone from my constituency of Finchley who had gone to NASA to make full use of his talents. I saw nothing wrong with that, and indeed was glad that a British scientist was making such an important contribution. But there was no way Britain could hope to compete even in more modest areas of technology if we did not learn the lessons of an enterprise economy.
Two years after that I went on a week-long visit to the Soviet Union. I had already come up against the obstinate contempt for human rights which was so characteristic of the USSR in the case of the detention of my constituent, the lecturer Gerald Brooke, for alleged ‘subversive criminal activities’ (i.e. smuggling in anti-Soviet pamphlets). I repeatedly raised the case both with the Government and in the House of Commons, though to no avail. Mr Brooke had become a pawn in the game the Soviets were trying to play to have their spies, the Krogers, released to them. (Eventually an exchange took place in 1969.) One good thing which came out of my work on Gerald Brooke’s behalf was that I made contact with the AngloSoviet Parliamentary Group. To my great surprise, when I went along to it I found MPs with equally strong anti-communist instincts as mine, but who unlike me were real experts in the field. In particular, Cyril Osborne began my education in assessing and countering Soviet tactics. It was he who before I went to the Soviet Union advised me that first of all I should not allow the Soviets to pay for my fare, and second that I should insist on visiting some churches. I took his advice. He also told me that the only way to win any respect from them was to make it clear that one was no soft touch. This entirely accorded with my own inclinations.
I travelled to Moscow with the amiable Paul Channon and his wife. We had a full schedule including not just the sights of Moscow but also Leningrad (formerly, and now once again, St Petersburg) and Stalingrad (Volgograd). But though the names might vary, the propaganda was the same. It was relentless, an endless flow of statistics proving the industrial and social superiority of the Soviet Union over the West. At least to the visitor, the sheer unimaginative humourlessness of it was an open invitation to satire. Outside an art gallery I visited there was a sculpture of a blacksmith beating a sword with a hammer. ‘That represents communism,’ my guide proudly observed. ‘Actually, it doesn’t,’ I replied. ‘It’s from the Old Testament — “And they shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning-hooks”.’ Collapse of stout aesthete. Methodist Sunday School has its uses. I reflected, however, that at least it was a better work of art than the usual lantern-jawed, muscle-bound Stakhanovite outside the factories.
On another occasion I was asked rhetorically whether since it must be the aim of all peoples to live together in peace and harmony, surely NATO, that symbol of Cold War hostility, could be dispensed with. ‘Certainly not,’ I said. ‘NATO has kept the peace and we have to keep it strong.’ A similar line was taken with me at Stalingrad where the local politicians complained that Coventry had severed its connections with them since the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia the previous year. I was not going to apologize for that either. Indeed, as sanctions went, it was hardly such as to strike terror into the Kremlin.
Yet, behind the official propaganda, the grey streets, all but empty shops and badly maintained workers’ housing blocks, Russian humanity peeped out. There was no doubt about the genuineness of the tears when the older people at Leningrad and Stalingrad told me about their terrible sufferings in the War. The young people I talked to from Moscow University, though extremely cautious about what they said in the full knowledge that they were under KGB scrutiny, were clearly fascinated to learn all they could about the West. And even bureaucracy can prove human. When I visited the manager of the Moscow passenger transport system he explained to me at great length how decisions about new development had to go from committee to committee in what seemed — as I said — an endless chain of non-decision-making. I caught the eye of a young man, perhaps the chairman’s assistant, standing behind him and he could not repress a broad smile.
The other abiding impression I had of Russia, which would be strengthened on my subsequent visits, was of the contrast between the exquisite cultural achievement, admittedly stemming from the old Russia but excellently conserved by the communists, on the one hand and the hardness of life for ordinary people on the other. Leningrad housed the extraordinary Hermitage collection and the Kirov Ballet, both of which I visited. And it was in Leningrad, from the window of my hotel bedroom, that at six thirty on a cold, dark morning I would see all the working mothers crossing the square with their children hanging on to them to place them all day in the state crèche whence they would be collected some twelve hours later. At Moscow airport while waiting for my delayed flight home I bought an exquisite coral-green porcelain tea service, the pride of my collection. Whenever I see it I also think of the grinding, hopeless toil which the system that produced it exacted. There could be no more poignant demonstration that communism was the regime for the privileged élite, capitalism the creed for the common man.
SELSDON WOMAN
On my return to London I was moved to the Education portfolio in the Shadow Cabinet. Edward Boyle was leaving politics to become Vice-Chancellor of the University of Leeds. There was by now a good deal of grassroots opposition at Party Conferences to what was seen as his weakness in defence of the grammar schools. Although our views had diverged, I was sorry to see him go. He was my oldest friend in politics and I knew I would miss his intellect, sensitivity and integrity. But for me this was definitely a promotion, even though, as I have since learned, I was in fact the reserve candidate, after Keith Joseph who was the first choice to succeed Edward: I got the job because Reggie Maudling refused to take over Keith’s job as Trade and Industry Shadow.
I was delighted with my new role. I knew that I had risen to my present position as a result of free (or nearly free) good education, and I wanted others to have the same chance. Socialist education policies, by equalizing downwards and denying gifted children the opportunity to get on, were a major obstacle to that. I was also fascinated by the scientific side — the portfolio in those days being to shadow the Department of Education and Science. Moreover, I suspect that women, or at least mothers, have an instinctive interest in the education of children.
Education was by now one of the main battlegrounds of politics. Since their election in 1964 Labour had been increasingly committed to making the whole secondary school system comprehensive, and had introduced a series of measures to make local education authorities (LEAs) submit plans for such a change. (The process culminated in legislation, introduced a few months after I took over as Education Shadow.) The difficulties Edward had faced in formulating and explaining our response soon became clear to me.