I turned my attention to securing real change through the policy review, which was due to be published in the spring. At the end of January, I accompanied Gerald Kaufman on a trip to Moscow for the overseas equivalent of the ‘Freedom and Fairness’ launch. It was an intricately choreographed event, designed to pave the way for us to abandon one of our most entrenched, and electorally perverse, policies: unilateral nuclear disarmament. Gerald and I took with us the trade union leader Ron Todd, a long-time supporter of unilateralism whose presence would be important in making the shift credible.
As we had anticipated, Gerald was told in his meetings with Soviet officials that even the Kremlin saw Labour’s unilateral disarmament policy as an unhelpful distraction. They were also dismissive of the idea of bilateral arms talks, the halfway house favoured by some on the left. The Soviets wanted Britain involved in a multilateral disarmament process, alongside their talks with the Americans, a position they helpfully made clear to the travelling British press. Gerald held a press briefing in front of Lenin’s tomb in Red Square at which he took the first step towards abandoning unilateralism, by steering the reporters away from expecting separate arms talks between Moscow and a future Labour government. Gerald then left, for personal rather than political reasons: one of his more endearing quirks as Shadow Foreign Secretary was his ambition to sample the finest local ice cream on all his travels. For reasons that were never entirely clear, he had decided that Moscow’s best was to be found in the GUM department store, across Red Square. I followed up his remarks with further, off-the-record briefing that delivered the message more directly. Unilateralism, I said, was dead. When we finally released the policy review in May, it was. Labour would remain committed to disarmament, but ‘in concert with action taken by the superpowers’.
The policy review was called ‘Meet the Challenge, Make the Change’. With the exception of Gerald’s bold move on defence, it might more accurately have been entitled ‘Skirt the Challenge, Hint at Change’. There were a few significant changes, notably a retreat from the Bennite dream of reversing all Mrs Thatcher’s privatisations. But on finance, John Smith’s domain, we did not manage to jettison our high-tax, high-spending reputation. The booklet was glossy enough, the presentation sufficiently polished, to make some impact: for the first time since the run-up to the 1987 election, one of our internal polls even showed us leading the Tories. It also provided a platform for organising our campaign for the June European elections.
In the wake of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in April 1986, environmental issues would play a major role, leading to predictions that the Green Party might have a singificant effect on the outcome. Many in Labour were arguing for us to adopt a raft of new environmental policies, looking to the possibility of a longer-term ‘red–green’ alliance against the Tories if the Greens’ impact continued to grow. Though I was open to this, I came to believe that it should not be at the expense of a realistic energy policy, including a commitment to nuclear power. I was especially influenced in this by Jack Cunningham, a shadow cabinet minister whose constituency included the nuclear plant at Sellafield. He quite rightly feared that if we came out against nuclear energy he would lose his seat. In the event, I used my campaign briefings to make it clear that we would not close Sellafield, and left others, especially Robin Cook, to court the green vote by implying that we might well do so. With Colin Byrne and Philip Gould helping me plot the overall strategy of the campaign, I also played the policy review for all it was worth, which is to say I trumpeted the changes on defence and nationalisation, and skirted over the rest. I worked as hard as I had since 1987, coordinating campaign events, orchestrating media appearances and briefings.
Against resistance from most of the shadow cabinet, Neil and I insisted on retaining Bryan Gould as the main face of the campaign. Not only was he a proven performer, he was broadly Eurosceptic, and thus perfectly placed to play on the Tories’ internal divisions over the EU. As Bryan’s partner in presentation I chose Mo Mowlam, a young MP from the 1987 intake, a Political Science PhD with a sharp sense of humour and an in-your-face frankness about her. Mo was excited at being given her chance to shine. Afterwards, quite unnecessarily, she even went out and bought me a gift, a combination radio and television that would have pride of place in my constituency home throughout my period as an MP. Mo and I became good friends, and she and Bryan formed an effective team. Surpassing all expectations, Labour picked up fourteen seats in the European elections, while the Tories lost fourteen. It was the first election of any kind since 1974 in which we had defeated them. The Greens took about 15 per cent of the vote, though the first-past-the-post system meant they got no seats.
Despite media talk of a Labour revival, however, I suspected it was a false dawn. Judging by Neil’s mood, and Charles’s, so did they. In many ways, however, I was now enjoying my work at Walworth Road. The early fears that I wouldn’t be up to it were gone. I had assembled a talented, and committed, team, and the changes we had made to Labour’s public face – how our literature and launches looked, how we organised election campaigns – were now embedded. Our party and its policies may not yet have been modern in any real sense, but our communications were. I was even enjoying my role as the spokesman – or more often the stage manager, interpreter and spinner – for Labour in the media. Not everybody in the media enjoyed me quite so much, but I did build working relationships, even very friendly relations, with many journalists.
Ultimately, however, I saw my role as using any tool at my disposal to ensure that Labour, and Neil, were presented in the best possible light. I paid special attention to television coverage, because of its importance and immediacy, and because my time at LWT had given me first-hand experience of the mechanics of the medium. If that sometimes meant cold-shouldering those who made Labour look bad, I saw that too as part of my job. This stored up bad blood that would do me damage in the future.
I did sometimes have to use more direct measures. Before finalising the policy review, we had launched a nationwide publicity tour called ‘Labour Listens’. The idea was for a rotating cast of shadow cabinet ministers to hold meetings in which the audience would tell us what they wanted to see reflected in a future Labour manifesto. My touchingly naïve hope was that thousands of voters would take the opportunity to do so, and that their common-sense messages would prod the party towards changes in policy. In fact, it was a disaster. It began in Brighton, with Roy Hattersley chairing the panel. A Steve Bell cartoon in the Guardian captured the atmosphere perfectly: politicians rabbiting on in front of an audience that was snoring, or in some cases dying of boredom.
The nadir came in Birmingham, where, in front of a grand total of twenty people and a local television crew, the shadow ministers made their opening pitch and then asked for questions. A few hands went up. One belonged to an odd-looking woman who was wearing a very tall hat made of newspapers. I sent a note up to Ann Taylor, the senior shadow cabinet member on the platform, saying under no circumstances should she be called on. But before long, our lady of the newspapers was the only one with her hand up. As she began her incomprehensible question, I deliberately tripped over the wire linked to the TV crew’s sound system, apologising profusely to the cameraman as I regained my balance. ‘Labour Listens’ was not seen or heard from again. Still, despite the occasional rows and setbacks, and my frustration that we did not have a more attractive message to convey, I liked what I was doing. I felt it was important, and that I was good at it.
I did not, however, think that over the longer term I could best help promote a changed Labour Party from Walworth Road. I did not intend to leave soon. And not completely, since I still held out some hope of applying the experiences and lessons of 1987 to organising a ‘brilliantly successful’, yet victorious, campaign next time round. But I believed victory would be a tall order. Though my role had given me an increasingly prominent public profile, my ability to influence the change that mattered most – in Labour’s policies – was limited. I was certain that I would