Books
Premier in low profile
George Hutchinson
Callaghan: The Road to Number Ten Peter Kellner and Christopher Hitchens (Cassell £3.95) Dislike or disapproval of one's subject is seldom a good foundation for biography. A modicum of sympathy—if no more—is normally conducive to a fuller understanding of character. Not that Messrs Kellner and Hitchens have written what could properly be called a biography. Acknowledging this themselves, they admit at the outset : 'The chapters which follow do not constitute an exhaustive biography of the Prime Minister; our intention has been to write a political profile, and we only discuss his life outside politics where we feel this helps to explain his career'. In the result, they have produced something in the nature of a Polemic—a polemic informed by a rather nagging antipathy towards Mr Callaghan.
For my part. I would have preferred to read a well-authenticated biography. Not everyone is familiar with Mr Callaghan's Personal history, his private tastes and leanings, his domestic life. It would have been interesting to learn more about them. What little the authors do tell us is worth reproducing. For example the family name Was Garoghan: his father changed it.
Leonard James Callaghan was born in Portsmouth in March 1912, the son of a ehiet petty officer in the Royal Navy who served aboard the royal yacht Victoria and Albert after declining (prudently, as things turned out, and at his wife's behest) an invitation to sail with Captain Scott's III-starred expedition to the South Pole. James Callaghan (then and for many years afterwards called Leonard) was four years Old when his father was wounded at the Rattle of Jutland and invalided out of the service. The family subsequently settled at Brixham in Devon, where Callaghan senior—like many another retired sailor— became a coastguard, only to die in 1921 at the age of forty-four. Mrs Callaghan received 'a small lump sum (unspecified) on her husband's death, but there was no widow's pension. Her son !vas nine, and as he recalled many years 1.(1ter 'I was conscious we were very poor'. In their ensuing struggle against poverty, t,he family turned to the Labour Party: MY mother decided to vote Labour for a verY simple reason. It was that the Minister Pensions in the first Labour Government L.of 1924] gave her a pension of ten shillings bb ring me up. As it had been turned down aY the previous Tory Government, that was
gclocl enough reason to start voting L4bour: In the second general election of that year, which Labour lost, the young James (as I shall call him throughout) ran messages for one of the ILP candidates.
Although James Callaghan was brought up as a Baptist (which he remains) his parents had been married in the Church of England and his father was, in fact, of Irish Catholic roots, as might be inferred from the family's original name. The present authors make much of the Catholic (and Irish) link, so long severed—too much. I should say. 'Throughout his life Callaghan has been discreet about his Catholic ancestry.' they write. Perhaps he has: but since he has never been of the Catholic faith himself this is scarcely sul prising; much less is it disingenuous, as they suggest.
At sixteen. James Callaghan left Portsmouth North Secondary School, where he had done well in English and history, badly in mathematics and was by his own confession 'a rather lazy pupil', to become a clerk with the Inland Revenue, lodging in Maidstone and earning 33s 6d a week—the 'absolutely safe job' of his mother's hopes. Joining the Association of Officers of Taxes, later the Inland Revenue Staff Federation, he was soon active in its affairs, though they were apparently of a somewhat parochial character in those days. He gained local office as a member of the Kent Centre Committee and at the Union's annual conference in 1933 —his first—called for a more militant attitude towards the government's recruitment and organisation of Revenue staff.
Presently (and by then predictably) he was elected to the national executive committee. Before long (and less predictably) he was the union's salaried assistant general secretary under Douglas Houghton, later a Labour minister and today a peer. He was now set, although he may not have recognised it himself, on the road to political power—a more romantic journey than Messrs Kellner and Hitchens are able to allow in their undeniably grudging recital. For two young writers, they seem strangely solemn, like reproachful elders. What I suspect is that they became oppressed by their subject--needlessly so.
Through the Civil Service Arbitration Tribunal, at which both appeared from time to t ime in the late 'thirties, although in different capacities. James Callaghan met Harold Laski (some of whose work he had read): 'Laski was impressed by the young man's ability and fluency and encouraged him to study more widely'. He had meanwhile married Miss Audrey Moulton, a lady of 'unambiguously middle-class background' of whom regrettably we learn nothing else. Early in the war, with other members of the union's staff, he was evacuated to Llan
dudno, where he formed a Fabian group: Harold Laski went up to speak to them, and so did the Fabian Society's well known general secretary, John Parker. Patronage indeed for a young union official with political ambition.
Although he had volunteered at the outbreak of war and was originally earmarked for the Army (much to his disgust, since he wanted to join his father's old service), he was not called up until the spring of 1943. Fortunately, it was for the Navy, in which he was promoted to lieutenant. He was in Naval Intelligence, a comfortable billet, so it seems, and 'heard few shots fired in anger'.
Before the war was over, John Parker had recommended him, as an aspiring parliamentary candidate, to the Cardiff South Labour Party. 'The constituency had a small Catholic population and a larger antiCatholic one. By stressing his Baptist faith, rather than his Catholic roots, Callaghan defeated George Thomas, now Speaker of the House of Commons, by one vote for the nomination'. It was a piece of great good fortune, for the Tories held the seat with a majority of only 541. He was duly returned in the landslide of 1945—but not before being accused of upsetting the applecart at Labour's annual conference the previous December.
He was supporting Ian Mikardo in a plea for an explicit commitment to nationalisation, from which the executive, in its report to the conference, had shied away. Thus the young firebrand: 'I think we are entitled to an explanation from the executive committee as to why the issue of public ownership was not included in the report . . there are millions of men in the Forces who do not understand that public ownership is a part of Labour Party policy ... I want this word to go out to the men in the Forces that unless the Labour Party is returned to power to bring in a planned system, a planned economy, and public ownership, then they will come back to unemployment.' Messrs Mikardo and Callaghan (improbable allies today) had their way: the party was committed to a programme which included 'the transfer to public ownership of the land, large scale building, heavy industry, and all forms of banking and fuel and power'. Herbert Morrison went up to them afterwards and said: 'Do you realise you have just lost us the next general election?'
That, then, is something of the record of the lesser known James Callaghan. His subsequent political history is, of course, better known, and in many respects well known. Mr Kellner and Mr Hitchens examine its development through the three ensuing decades up to his appointment as Prime Minister and conclude that his performance in successive offices 'contains more failures than triumphs'. No doubt it does: on a severe calculation, issue by issue, policy by policy, some more important, some less important, this is true of most ministers. It is not an unarguably good basis for judging (or rather pre-judging) a Prime Minister when he has scarcely settled in.
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