First Among Equals (12 page)

As he opened
the box for the last time he reflected that his department was answering
questions on employment in the House that Monday. He wondered who would be
chosen to take his place.

Because of the red tape surrounding devaluation, the Prime Minister
did not get around to reading Raymond”s letter until late Sunday morning.
The Goulds’ phone was still off the hook when an anxious Fred Padgett was heard
knocking on the front door later that day.

“Don’t answer
it,” said Raymond. “It’s bound to be another journalist.”

“No, it’s not,
it’s only Fred,” said Joyce, peeping through an opening in the curtain.

She opened the
door. “Where the hell’s Raymond?” were Fred’s first words.

“Right here,”
said Raymond, appearing from the kitchen holding the Sunday newspapers.

“The Prime
Minister has been trying to contact you all morning.”

Raymond turned
around and replaced the phone on the hook, picked it up a few seconds later and
checked the tone before dialing London WHI 4433. The Prime Minister was on the
line in moments. He sounded calm enough, thought Raymond.

“Have you
issued any statement to the press, Raymond?”

“No, I wanted
to be sure you had received my letter first.”

“Good. Please
don’t mention your resignation to anyone until we’ve met.

Could you be at
Downing Street by eight o’clock?”

“Yes, Prime
Minister.”

“Remember, not
a word to the press.”

Raymond heard
the phone click.

Within the hour
he was on his way to London, and he arrived at his house in Lansdowne Road a
little after seven. The phone was ringing again. He wanted to ignore the
insistent burr-burr but thought it might be Downing Street.

He picked the
phone up. “Hello.”

“Is that
Raymond Gould?” said a voice.

“Who’s
speaking?” asked Raymond.

“Walter Terry, Daily Mail. “

“I am not going
to say anything,” said Raymond.

“Do you feel
the Prime Minister was right to devalue?”

“I said
nothing, Walter.”

“Does that mean
you are going to resign?”

“Walter, nothing.”

“Is it true you
have already handed in your resignation?”

Raymond
hesitated.

“I thought so,”
said Terry.

“I said
nothing,” spluttered Raymond and slammed down the phone-before lifting it back
off the hook.

He quickly
washed and changed his shirt before leaving the house. He nearly missed the
note that was lying on the doormat, and he wouldn’t have stopped to open it had
the envelope not been embossed with large black letters across the left hand
comer...”Prime Minister.” Raymond ripped it open. The handwritten note from a
secretary asked him on his arrival to enter by the rear entrance of Downing
Street, not by the front door. A small map was enclosed. Raymond was becoming
weary of the whole exercise.

Two more
journalists were waiting by the gate. They followed him to his car.

“Have you
resigned, Minister?” asked the first.

“No comment.”

“Are you on your
way to see the Prime Minister?”

Raymond did not
reply and leaped into his car. He drove off so quickly that the pursuing
journalists were left with no chance of catching him.

Twelve minutes
later, at five to eight, he was seated in the anteroom of Number 10 Downing
Street. As eight struck he was taken through to Harold Wilson’s study. He was
surprised to find the senior minister in his own Department, the Secretary of
State for Employment, seated in a comer of the room.

“Ray,” said the
Prime Minister. “How are you?”

“I’m well,
thank you, Prime Minister.”

“I was sorry to
receive your letter and thoroughly understand the position you are in, but I
hope perhaps we can work something out.”

“Work something
out?” Raymond repeated, puzzled.

“Well, we all
realize devaluation is a problem for you after 1
,V1

Employment at any cost?
but
I felt
perhaps a move to the Foreign Office as Minister of State might be a palatable
way out of the dilemma. It’s a promotion you’ve well earned.”

Raymond
hesitated. The Prime Minister continued, “It may interest you to know that the
Chancellor of the Exchequer has also resigned, but will be moving to the Home
Office.”

“I am
surprised,” said Raymond. “But in my case, I do not consider it would be the
honorable thing to...’

The Prime
Minister waved his hand.

“What with the
problems we are about to tackle in Rhodesia and Europe, your legal skills would
come in very useful.”

For the first
time in his life Raymond detested politics.

Mondays usually
get off to a quiet start in the Commons. The Whips never plan for any
contentious business to be debated, remembering that members are still arriving
back from their constituencies all over the country.

The House is
seldom full before the early evening. But the knowledge that the Chancellor of the
Exchequer would be making a statement on devaluation at three-thirty insured
that the Commons would be packed long before that hour.

The Commons
filled up quickly, and by two forty-five there was not a seat to be found. The
green benches accommodating just four hundred and twenty-seven members had
deliberately been restored as they were before the Germans had bombed the
Palace of Westminster on May 10, 194 1. The intimate theatrical atmosphere of
the House had remained intact. Sir Giles Gilbert Scott could not resist
highlighting some of the Gothic decor of Barry, but he concurred with
Churchills
view that to enlarge the chamber would only
destroy the packed atmosphere of great occasions.

Some members
huddled were even up on the steps by the Speaker’s canopied chair and around
the legs of the chairs of the clerks at the table. One or two perched like 99
unfed sparrows on the empty petition bay behind the Speaker’s chair.

Raymond Gould
rose to answer Question Number 7 on the agenda, an innocent enough inquiry
concerning unemployment benefits for women. As soon as he reached the dispatch
box, the first cries of “Resign” came from the Tory benches. Raymond couldn’t
hide his embarrassment. Even those on the back benches could see he’d gone
scarlet. It didn’t help that he hadn’t slept the previous night following the
agreement he had come to with the Prime Minister. He answered the question, but
the calls for his resignation did not subside. The Opposition fell silent as he
sat down, only waiting for him to rise for a further question. The next
question on the agenda for Raymond to answer was from Simon Kerslake; it came a
few minutes after three. “What analysis has been made by your department of the
special factors contributing to increasing unemployment in the Midlands?”

Raymond checked
his brief before replying. “The closure of two large factories in the area, one
in the Honorable Member’s constituency, has exacerbated local unemployment.
Both of these factories specialized in car components, which have suffered from
the Leyland strike.”

Simon Kerslake
rose slowly from his place to ask his supplementary question. The Opposition
benches waited in eager anticipation. “But surely the Minister remembers
informing the House, in reply to my adjournment debate last
April,
that
devaluation would drastically increase unemployment in the
Midlands, indeed in the whole country. If the honorable gentleman’s words are
to carry any conviction, why hasn’t he resigned?” Simon sat down as the Tory
benches demanded, “Why, why, why?”

“My speech to
the House on that occasion is being quoted out of context, and the
circumstances have since changed.”

“They certainly
have,” shouted a number of Conservatives, and the benches opposite Raymond
exploded with demands that he give up his office.

“Order, order,”
shouted the Speaker into the tide of noise.

Simon rose
again, while everyone on the Conservative benches remained seated to insure
that no one else was called. They were now hunting as a pack.

Everyone’s eyes
switched back and forth between the two men, watching the dark, assured figure
of Kerslake once again jabbing his forefinger at the bowed head of Raymond
Gould, who was now only praying for the clock to reach 3:30.

“Mr. Speaker, during
that debate, which he now seems happy to orphan, the Honorable Gentleman was
only echoing the views he so lucidly expressed in his book Fi4ll Employment at
Any Cost?

Can those views
have altered so radically in three years, or is his desire to remain in office
so great that he now realizes his employment can be achieved at any cost?”

The Opposition
benches chanted, “Resign,
resign
.”

“This question
has nothing to do with what I said to the House on that occasion,” retorted
Raymond angrily.

Simon was up in
a flash and the Speaker called him for a third time.

“Is the
Honorable Gentleman telling the House that he has one set of moral standards
when he speaks, and yet another when he writes?”

The House was
now in total uproar and few members heard Raymond say, “No, sir, I try to be
consistent.”

The Speaker
rose and the noise subsided slightly. He looked about him with an aggrieved
frown. “I realize the House feels strongly on these matters, but I must ask the
Honorable Member for Coventry Central to withdraw his remark suggesting that
the Minister has behaved dishonorably.”

Simon rose and
retracted his statement at once, but the damage had been done. Nor did it stop
members from calling “Resign” until Raymond left the chamber a few minutes
later.

Simon sat back
smugly as Gould left the chamber. Conservative members turned to nod their
acknowledgment of his complete annihilation of the Government’s Under Secretary
of State.

The Chancellor
of the Exchequer rose to deliver his prepared statement on devaluation. Simon
listened with horror to the Chancellor’s opening words:

“The Honorable
Member for Leeds North handed in his resignation to the Prime Minister on
Saturday evening but graciously agreed not to make this public until I had had
an opportunity to address the House.”

The Chancellor
went on to praise Raymond for his work in the Department of Employment and to
wish him well on the back benches.

Jamie Sinclair
visited Raymond in his room immediately after the Chancellor had finished
answering questions. He found him slumped at his desk, a vacant look on his
face. Sinclair had come to express his admiration for the way Raymond had
conducted himself.

“It’s kind of
you,” said Raymond, who was still shaking from the experience.

“I wouldn’t
like to be in Kerslake’s shoes at this moment,” said Jamie.

“Simon must
feel the biggest shit in town.”‘

“There’s no way
he could have known,” said Raymond. “He’d certainly done his homework and the
questions were right on target. I suspect we would have approached the
situation in the same way given the circumstances.”

Several other
members dropped in to commiserate with Raymond, after which he stopped by his
old department to say farewell to his team before he went home to spend a quiet
evening with Joyce.

There was a
long silence before the Permanent Secretary ventured an opinion: “I hope, sir,
it will not be long before you return to Government. You have certainly made
our lives hard, but for those you ultimately serve you have undoubtedly made
life easier.” The sincerity of the statement touched Raymond, especially as the
civil servant was already serving a new master.

As the days
passed, it felt strange to be able to sit down and watch television, read a
book, even go for a walk and not be perpetually surrounded by red boxes and
ringing phones.

He was to
receive over a hundred letters from colleagues, in the House but he kept only
one:

Vt1v 2rrrm
$Effih 8”T”W

Monday,
November 20
,1967

Dear Gould, I
owe you a profound apology.

Weallinourpolitical
1
!ft
make monumental mistakes about people and I
certainly made one today.

I believe that
most members of the House have a genuine desire to serve the country, and there
can be no more honorable way ofproving it than by resigning when one feels
one’s party has taken a wrong course.

I envy the
respect in which the whole House now holds you.

Yours
sincerely, SIMON KERSLAKE

When Raymond
returned to the Commons that afternoon, he was cheered by the members of both
sides from the moment he entered the chamber. The minister who had been addressing
the House at the time had no choice but to wait until Raymond had taken a seat
on the back benches.

S
IMON HAD ALREADY LEFT when Edward Heath called his home. It was
another hour before Elizabeth was able to pass on tile message that the Party Leader
wanted to see him at two-thirty.

Charles was at
the bank when the Chief Whip called, asking if they could meet at two-thirty
that afternoon before Commons business began.

Charles felt
like a schoolboy who had been told the headmaster expected him to be in his
study after lunch. The last time the Chief Whip had phoned was to ask him to
make his unfortunate winding-up speech, and they had hardly spoken since.
Charles was apprehensive; he always preferred to be told what a problem was
immediately. He decided to leave the bank early and catch lunch at the House to
be sure he was not late for his afternoon appointment.

Charles joined
some of his colleagues at the large table in the center of the members’ dining
room and took the only seat available, next to Simon Kerslake. The two men had
not really been on good terms since the Heath-Maudling Leadership contest.