Among the Scottish Labour Party’s many divisions was one between the graduates of Glasgow University and those of other universities. Brown suffered a double deficiency. His humiliation of Edinburgh’s establishment denied him one source of support, while Glasgow’s clique, which included John Smith, Derry Irvine, Donald Dewar and Helen Liddell, shunned him as unworthy to join a group convinced of its right to govern the country. In the last months of 1973 many of those activists were searching for nominations to parliamentary constituencies in time for the next general election.
Edward Heath called an election for February 1974 in an attempt to turn the nation against the coalminers, who were engaged in a strike which the Conservatives interpreted as politically motivated. Dwindling coal supplies forced Heath to impose power cuts and to reduce British industry to a three-day week. That crisis hit particularly hard in Scotland, the home of many miners led by either communist or left-wing trade union officials. The miners’ cause was emotional as well as political. The communities whose menfolk dug coal in appalling conditions were part of the backbone of the country’s working-class culture, and their suffering evoked widespread sympathy. There was every reason for Brown to forge relationships with Mick McGahey, the engaging communist miners’ leader, and Lawrence Daly, a committed national official and a Labour Party member. Both particularly welcomed support from ambitious activists. Their endorsement, Brown knew, would help his chances of nomination as a Labour parliamentary candidate.
Another qualification for nomination was to have worked as a footsoldier for an existing candidate. Brown volunteered to help Robin Cook, a tutor at the Workers’ Education Offices Association and a leading member of Edinburgh council who was standing as the Labour candidate for Edinburgh Central. Their relationship, forged at the university, was built upon Cook’s acknowledged seniority. There was good reason for Brown to respect Cook, the son of a headmaster and grandson of a miner blacklisted for his activities during the General Strike of 1926. Cook, six years older than Brown, displayed forensic intelligence and remarkable debating skills. He had also secured Brown a teaching post at the WEA after Edinburgh University rejected his application.
Every night during the election campaign Brown recruited twenty friends, including his tenants, to knock on the doors of a working-class area in Edinburgh Central, a marginal constituency, urging support for the Labour candidate. On 28 February 1974, thanks to an unusually high swing, Cook won the seat with a small majority which many credited to Brown’s efforts. Yet, returning from the election night celebrations, Brown, Margarita and their friends expressed their surprise that Cook had not shown more gratitude for their hard work. Too often he had drunk whisky alone at one end of the Abbotsford’s bar while they drank beer at the other.
In the country as a whole Edward Heath won more votes than Labour, but not an overall majority of seats, and resigned. Few doubted that Harold Wilson, after forming a minority government, would call another election in the autumn. That was Brown’s opportunity. Edinburgh South, a marginal Conservative seat, was ideal territory. Securing the nomination required cut-throat tactics to elbow aside other applicants. ‘I was almost a candidate,’ he said years later. ‘I was invited by people to stand, but it just didn’t work out. It would probably have been better had I done that.’ The impression is of a man facing a critical test of courage and bloody-mindedness who meekly withdrew. In reality, he faced a selection conference against the favoured candidate, Martin O’Neill, a friend from the student movement, and was beaten. In the election of October 1974 O’Neill lost the seat by 3,226 votes, leaving Brown ruefully to reflect that more aggressive campaigning might have tipped the balance.
Labour’s overall majority in the new parliament was three seats. Recognising that the government, with the Liberals’ help, could survive for some years, Brown reconciled himself to establishing his own life while he waited for the next opportunity. For the first months he suffered a personal crisis. He entered hospital for an operation on his right eye, uncertain whether he would emerge completely blind. Other than Margarita, few were aware of his true feelings. Some of those sharing his house say that he emerged from hospital crying, and unexpectedly began smoking twenty cigarettes a day. Some suspected that his hectic schedule of teaching at the WEA, researching his PhD, writing a book on James Maxton based on the politician’s private papers, and his Labour Party activities placed him under unusual pressure. Others accepted his explanation that his tears were for the Labour Party.
The party’s internal affairs had become ugly. North Sea oil had increased the demand for Scotland’s independence, and in the October election the Scottish Nationalists had won seven seats, campaigning on the slogan ‘It’s Scotland’s oil’. The shock of the SNP’s success, and the crisis in Scotland’s shipyards, coalmines and manufacturing industries, posed a threat in Labour’s heartlands. Labour’s Scottish leaders decided to end their dialogue with the Nationalists. In that battle, there would be no help from Harold Wilson and the party’s headquarters in London. Brown joined the campaign, attempting to discredit the Nationalists’ call for independence by compiling an account of socialist policies to rebuild Scotland.
The ‘Red Paper on Scotland’ was proposed by Brown as twenty individual essays bound in a slim 180-page volume. Among those invited to contribute were journalists including Tom Nairn, the playwright John McGrath, lecturer in politics John Foster, and two MPs, Jim Sillars and Robin Cook. After eighteen essays had been commissioned, Brown decided his idea was too good to waste. At parties, meetings and in pubs, he invited eighteen other contributions about Scotland’s economy and politics, devolution, the ownership of the country’s land and oil. ‘We’ll have to increase the price from £1.20 to £1.80,’ his flatmate John Forsythe, who was responsible for the publication through the Edinburgh University board, announced. ‘Or could we reduce the number of commissions?’ ‘No,’ replied Brown, ‘and it’s got to be £1.20.’
Unwilling to offend any contributors, he fled to the Meadow Bar to meet Owen Dudley Edwards, his genial tutor. ‘A great bubbly baby,’ was how Dudley Edwards described Brown. ‘One of the sweetest people I know, with a wonderful smile. He knows how to say “Thank you,” and his body language is reproachful if someone declines his request.’ ‘All right,’ Brown announced to Forsythe on his return from the pub. ‘£1.80, but no reduction in the contributions.’ The book’s print was reduced to the minuscule size of a Biblical dictionary’s footnotes, but it was still a success, heading the Scottish bestseller list for two weeks, although few readers can have ploughed through all the tiny script.
In microscopic print, Brown’s well-written introduction, ‘The Socialist Challenge’, criticised the puerile debate indulged in by the country’s politicians, who ignored ‘Scotland’s real problems – our economy and unacceptable level of unemployment, chronic inequalities of wealth and power and inadequate social services’. He offered a rigid solution to the contradiction of managing a capitalist economy while providing the requirements of society, rejecting ‘incentives and local entrepreneurship’, and supporting state planning to orchestrate a national economic revival. He advocated more nationalisation of Britain’s industry, a planned economy and the destruction of the ruling classes. Scottish socialists, he wrote, could not support independence, but should control more of their own lives. Because capitalism had failed, and the private ownership of industry was hindering ‘the further unfolding of the social forces of production’, Brown’s cure was neo-Marxism. Young Labour activists were now hailing Brown as a celebrity. His dramatic appearance and good oratory, enhanced by his immersion in the history and tradition