A Seat In The House By Patrick Henry (3/3)

(1/3), (2/3), (3/3).

Albert claimed his greatest moments at Westminster were his interruption of Churchill's victory speech, and then his condemnation of the Labour Budget of Stafford Cripps that heavily taxed tobacco. The Speaker allowed his point of order, though not strictly justified, as Albert rose to complain that Winston did not stress enough the role of the plain worker and soldier in winning the war. This implied the very factor why Albert's side now held power and the Great Man lost out.

Upon Cripps's announcement of a shilling on tobacco, Albert rose in the chamber and broke his pipe spectacularly to say I will never smoke again. Nor did he, although his long-time snuff habit would keep him going just as well. I clashed with him when I got the vote, but Gaitskell at the Scarborough Conference had just pledged Labour now in opposition, to back Nuclear Arms Deterrent, which I deeply opposed, and Hugh was not my idea of a socialist leader anyway, so I abstained. Albert had long since lost his seat back to the Eden and Macmillan eras of Tory power, but he was a notable figure in Cambridge.

Alderman Stubbs, the fiery old Red wobbling about now on a bicycle; like a cross between an eager, aged student and a Biblical prophet, his wispy white hair and Stentorian voice sweeping through the town. Home alone now a widower, his bare gloomy house held almost nothing but high piles of Hansard, as if Surrealist furniture, or else scrolls discovered in the cave of a hermit scholar. Snuff stained his string vest and old cords, his only garments that minute. Don't think much of your get-up, lad, he said, eyeing my dark, bohemian clothes. He always got the first and last word.

I was in jail when his daughter wrote to say he had died. I supported Bertrand Russell's sit-down campaign against the H-Bomb, and after a few times being locked-up by police for the night and fined, I then got two months in Brixton and Stafford jails for serious obstruction at a Nuclear Bomber Base. After I got out, Labour had lost one outstanding figure, the late Albert, and gained an obscure one in myself.

Wilson showed how good Labour Government can be. Later I heard Michael Foot speak live leading The Party unsuccessfully campaigning against Thatcher. His words thrilled me in the way talk from my father and Albert had made Labour aims sound a passionate creed. Albert characterful in contradictions of self-important pomposity mixed with classless zeal, never dimmed in resolve to the cause in those earlier decades.

Now Party adherents I know dislike Blair and Lawrie Quinn so much they might forswear that vote next time, and turn Lib-ish or Green. Ever called a broad church, the movement that can hold content both Cripps and Bevan, Skinner and Dalyell, and Albert and myself, must be the mainstream to carry us forward. None other will.

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