Usually I knew what disturbing bit of Labour news was coming, because a reporter would have phoned for a comment earlier in the day. It was often an assault on Neil’s moves to expel Militant members from the party, or an alleged split on some policy or another. Occasionally I would be asked what the party thought about the latest far-left pronouncement by Ken Livingstone, or even Ted Knight. Every week, for hours on end, I had to hose down stories or stop the forest fires spreading to other papers or broadcasters. It was relentless, lonely and dispiriting work, and almost always involved arguing hard with whoever was on the line. I constantly had to make snap judgements, in an unremittingly hostile environment.
I was on the way back from Foy in a driving rainstorm one Sunday afternoon, six weeks before our ‘Freedom and Fairness’ launch, when all the pressures of the job – working out what to do, the antagonism of the press, the sheer scale of the task of somehow making Labour credible again, the expectations of Neil and Patricia, and myself – finally came to a head. As the rain beat against the windscreen, I was alarmed to feel tears starting to roll down my cheeks. For weeks, I had been finding it hard to sleep through the night. I would get off to sleep all right, but always awoke long before dawn, feeling very anxious. Unable to get back to sleep, I would arrive very early at the office. By nine o’clock I would feel completely worn out, and my head would be aching; I seemed to live on paracetamol. I would somehow force myself through the day, trying to focus on meetings, campaign planning, dealing with the press, just to get through to the evening. I would reach home late, and go to bed feeling simultaneously washed out and tightly wound up.
I believed passionately in what I was doing in my new job, but as the weeks passed, I just could not see how I would handle all the obstacles, anticipate everything that might go wrong. I could not see light at the end of the tunnel. As I drove towards London that Sunday afternoon through heavy traffic, anticipating another week of struggle and sleeplessness, I suddenly felt unable to cope. I was just not sure I could stay the course. I was due to attend a concert that evening at the Royal Festival Hall with an old London Labour friend, Illtyd Harrington, deputy head of the GLC before he and the rest of the sane tendency were pushed out by Ken Livingstone. When I arrived, visibly stressed and out of breath, on the terrace outside the Festival Hall, Illtyd took one look at me and said, ‘Peter, what’s wrong?’ All the pent-up worries came rushing out. Illtyd told me that if I wanted to see my efforts at Walworth Road succeed, the first thing I had to do was take care of myself. He made me promise to see his doctor, Denis Cowan, the following day.
Dr Cowan was reassuring. There was nothing seriously wrong with me, he said. It was just the inevitable result of steadily building pressure, the demands of the job and the demands I was putting on myself. He prescribed three weeks of self-discipline, and sleep. I must arrive at Walworth Road no earlier than 9.30 a.m., leave at 5 p.m. sharp, take no work home with me, and be in bed by ten. He also prescribed sleeping pills for several weeks. I was very reluctant to take them. When I was growing up, medicine was rather frowned upon at Bigwood Road: getting my mother to dispense as much as an aspirin took some persuasion. But I followed Dr Cowan’s advice to the letter. Within a few weeks I dispensed with the tablets, and the crisis passed.
My recovery, and Labour’s too, really began ten days before the grand policy launch, with a campaign of another sort. It was the first by-election on my watch, in Fulham, caused by the death of the sitting Conservative MP. At least in this battle I had some handson experience, from Brecon and Radnor. But I knew it would be the first test of the kind of modern campaigning machinery I had put in place with Philip and the SCA, and that sceptics and critics on the NEC would be keenly eyeing both the campaign and the result. There seemed to be little realistic prospect that we would win. Worse, with the Tory government growing increasingly unpopular, many pundits seemed to think the likeliest winner was the SDP, whose candidate was none other than my old south London friend Roger Liddle.
I think that only a few weeks earlier I could not have faced the challenge. But I knew we had to make every effort to at least make the election close. With Philip’s constant encouragement, we organised a campaign for our candidate, Nick Raynsford, that was eye-catching, simple and, it turned out, extraordinarily effective. Both the Conservative, Matthew Carrington, and Roger lived outside the constituency – to be fair, in Roger’s case this was only by a matter of a few miles – but all our campaign literature was dominated by an engaging photograph of our prospective MP framed by one, strikingly presented slogan: ‘Nick Raynsford Lives Here’. The fact that local Labour supporters throughout the constituency began taping the image to their front windows made the effect especially powerful and amusing.
On the night of the election, 10 April 1986, Labour took the seat from the Tories. Roger finished a fairly distant third. This personal embarrassment for me was made even more difficult by the fact that Roger’s wife, Caroline, was also a good friend from my days in youth politics. When she spotted me at the election count, she gave me what my mother would have called ‘an old-fashioned look’. I could hardly blame her. I was sad that Roger had lost, and resigned to the likelihood that it would be some time before my friendship with him and Caroline could be repaired. At the same time, I was elated that our revamped campaigning team had met its first obstacle, and convincingly and unexpectedly cleared it.
Then came the ‘Freedom and Fairness’ launch. We had been working for months to make it unmistakably new, and it was. The result was a campaign document that not only included the kind of policy pledges expected of Labour, like increased child benefit, educational subsidies for young people and new housing opportunities, but was also about making individuals freer in their day-to-day lives. We promised a greater say for patients in the NHS, and set out measures against vandalism and crime. The design, too, was sleeker, friendlier on the eye. The SCA had given the brief to Trevor Beattie, whose talent for finding eye-catching, if sometimes controversial, ways to grab the public’s attention would later produce Wonderbra’s ‘Hello Boys’ ads. Instead of our old-style Labour stickers, we minted metal badges in edgy black, grey and silver.
In what would become a pattern for many of the changes we went on to make, I had a brief moment of drama with Neil as the posters and media packs were going to the printers. Three days before the launch, he called me in and exclaimed, ‘Where does it say “Labour’s Freedom and Fairness Campaign”? What’s this “Putting People First”? Where’s the title?’ Feeling much better, more confident – and more rested – than I had for some time, I assured him that both freedom and fairness were still at the centre of the campaign. What we had done was to bring together real policy ideas to put those values into practice. Just like the imagery and artwork, the point was to move beyond talking in a political language that would pass most people by, and, yes, to say directly that we were ‘putting people first’. As delicately as I could, I reminded Neil that he had signed off on every creative stage of the campaign along the way. Besides, I said, not quite truthfully, it was almost surely too late to change. But Neil was adamant. In the end, literally almost as the presses were beginning to roll, I arranged for the printers to include the words ‘Labour’s Freedom and Fairness Campaign’, in small letters, along the side of each poster and pamphlet.
The most striking change was the site of the launch. It was not in a scruffy room at Walworth Road, but in the International Press Centre near Fleet Street. By the time we got there, Neil had been won over to the idea, and the design, of the campaign. He was typically fluent and forceful in tying together the policy prospectus with the themes of freedom and fairness. A small girl whose parents had agreed for her to be featured as the main image in our publicity material had come to the launch, and Neil – wonderfully, spontaneously – lifted her aloft. The photographers loved it.
Less enthusiastic was Eric Heffer, who had turned up unexpectedly and stood scowling at me from the back of the room. ‘It’s disgraceful,’ he muttered. When I failed to reply, he continued: ‘It’s more than disgraceful. It’s disgusting! The NEC never approved this. Where’s the Red Flag? What is “Putting People First”?’ Stalking out, he delivered a parting shot. This was