The personal and the political
A small anecdotal footnote to Labour history. One of the great puzzles for those who followed the career of party leader Hugh Gaitskell was why, shortly before his death in 1963, he chose to oppose British entry to the then Common Market when his right-wing party colleagues and American friends expected that to be part of his agenda. Indeed, in a party political broadcast on 8 May 1962, Gaitskell himself said this:
‘You hear people speaking as though if we go into the Common Market, on the basis of the Treaty of Rome, that this is the end as far as an independent Britain is concerned. That we’re finished, we are going to be sucked up in a tunnel of giant capitalist, Catholic conspiracy, our lives dominated by Adenauer and De Gaulle, unable to conduct any indepedent foreign policy at all. Frankly, this is rubbish on the basis of the Treaty of Rome.’
From this mildly pro-EEC position Gaitskell, in his final conference speech on 3 October 1962, switched to saying membership would ‘mean the end of a thousand years of history’. The leader’s dramatic switch has usually been attributed to his attachment to the Commonwealth. But a long-retired political journalist and one-time Gaitskellite, recently offered an alternative explanation.
Gaitskell was known to the very discreet inner circle that was Westminster village in the 1960s, for his many affairs, including with Ann, the wife of James Bond creator, Ian Fleming. Lord Beaverbrook, a power in the press world on a par with Rupert Murdoch today, was in his eighties and determined to leave his mark on British politics. An Empire free trade man, he was fiercely opposed to British Common Market entry and feared the next election would settle the matter.
Shrewd enough to realise that Labour might win it, he let it be known to Gaitskell in the summer of 1962 that his Daily Express had in its possession compromising photographs of the Labour leader and Mrs Fleming. Beaverbrook made it clear that unless Gaitskell came out against the Common Market, the Express would publish them on the eve of the next election. Gaitskell made his conference speech and died shortly afterwards. Beaverbrook died in 1964, the year Harold Wilson became prime minister.
Twigged
There was scarcely a hiccup in the largely tax-funded career of Stephen Twigg after the junior education minister lost his Enfield Southgate seat at the general election. The famous victor over Michael Portillo in 1997 was within no time installed as director of the Foreign Policy Centre (FPC), which includes on its advisory council former senior M16 official Baroness Ramsay, Britain’s former permanent representative to the European Commission Sir Michael Butler, and the Prime Minister’s fundraiser and Middle East envoy Lord Levy.
The FPC, which is about to open an office in Washington DC, is heavily dependent on the British taxpayer. It receives funds from several government departments, including the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO), as well as the British Council (itself with a £180m budget from HMG), now headed by Lord Kinnock of Bedwelty. Its European director is Sarah Schaefer, serving in turn spells at the FCO, as political adviser to former European minister Denis McShane and as communication chief for ‘Britain in Europe’.
Twigg launched his political career with a tax-funded sabbatical spell as a National Union of Students politician before landing his bills at the door of Islington ratepayers as chief whip to the Labour group, a post he combined with that of parliamentary researcher to Margaret Hodge, herself a former Islington councillor. A brief spell running the Fabian Society preceded his own election to Parliament and his early promotion to a ministerial salary.
Twigg’s old friend at the FPC, Lord Levy, has announced his commitment to raising money for the Labour Party will end with the retirement of Tony Blair from No 10. This will come as small surprise to Lobster readers who will recall that Levy met Blair in 1994 through the good offices of the Israeli embassy in London. Levy was recently quoted by the Jewish Chronicle as saying: ‘I have been with him since he became leader and I will be at his side until the end.’
The strong Israel network in New Labour is likely to continue beyond the retirement of Blair and Levy. Gordon Brown has often spoken to his attachment to the Israel cause and regularly sees Irwin Stelzer, Rupert Murdoch’s neo-con point man on matters Middle Eastern and much else. Mike Gapes MP, a leading light in Labour Friends of Israel and the Westminster Foundation for Democracy (see Lobster 47), has been appointed chairman of the Commons Foreign Affairs Select Committee.
The mere mention of the characters above and Israel runs the danger of being accused of anti-Semitism, a charge columnist Nick Cohen seems to be making quite often of late. It’s nothing of the kind, of course, as several New Statesman readers – Jews among them – recently pointed out after Cohen had used his column there to again bang on about the alleged growth of anti-Semitism ‘on the Left’. While there are undoubtedly critics of both Israel and its influence on Western politics who don’t like Jews, very many others have no such prejudice and resent being put on the defensive so unfairly. Critics of US foreign policy have become inured to the smear ‘anti-American’ from all quarters. It’s sad that this talented writer, both in the New Statesman and in the Iraq war-supporting Observer that hosts his other column, should seek to make the same smearing generalisation about many of his readers.