Business of the House

David Winnick Excerpts

Thursday 2nd March 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lidington]

First, I salute the hon. Gentleman’s tribute to Sir Gerald Kaufman.

In response to the hon. Gentleman’s challenge about the police, I would say that the police—like all parts of the public sector—have, indeed, had to face up to the need for very difficult decisions about budget priorities. Those decisions were made necessary by the parlous state of the public finances that the Government inherited in 2010, but chief constables, and police and crime commissioners, have responded extraordinarily well. Testament to that is the fact that there has been a significant fall in crime despite the reductions in police funding described by the hon. Gentleman. I pay tribute to the work that the police are doing and the leadership they have shown in setting those priorities and getting on with the job successfully.

[Mr David Winnick (Walsall North) (Lab)]

May I apologise to the House and to you, Mr Speaker, for not being here earlier? It was just not possible for me to be here, as I indicated yesterday.

I would also like to say a few words about Gerald Kaufman. I pay tribute to him, as hon. Members on both sides of the House have done. If there ever was a one-off, it was Gerald—in the way he approached his job and in the way he had various enthusiasms, not least films. Apparently, he saw “Singin’ in the Rain” 70 times, but he was not entirely satisfied with that, so he made an appointment with Gene Kelly in Hollywood and wrote about it—it must have been one of the high moments in his life.

I knew of Gerald before I came to the House in the mid-60s, because he was quite a well-known journalist by then and wrote a regular column in the New Statesman. When I came here, he was what we now call the “spin doctor” for Harold Wilson. If you look at all the diaries about the kitchen Cabinet—the rows that went on, the difficulties about Harold Wilson’s private secretary and the rest of it—it is all very interesting, gossipy stuff, and it is perhaps politically interesting as well, but you will not find a single mention of any of that by Gerald. He never wrote about it, although he could easily have done so—he was a professional journalist, and he might have kept a diary, for all we know. The reason he did not write about it was that he was so dedicated to Harold Wilson as his employer, and he did not gossip about what went on in private proceedings. As I say, none of the exploits of the kitchen Cabinet at 10 Downing Street, which became so well known in political circles, was written about by Gerald.

I was once in the Members’ Lobby during the days when Gerald was a spin doctor. He said to me, “Come here a moment,” so I did. He said, “Look at those two”—they were two of my Labour colleagues. They were chatting together, and it was simply innocent, as far as I was concerned. He said, “You know, those two were hardly on speaking terms until recently, and look at them now.” What he was implying was that they were plotting against Harold. If Harold had paranoia, his spin doctor contributed to that, but he did so out of a dedication to the Labour Government.

Gerald spoke in the House when Harold Wilson died. He told us about his time as a junior Minister in the Environment Department dealing with transport matters. He said, “I received a memo from the Prime Minister saying, ‘Will you make provision for former Prime Ministers to have a car and a chauffeur?’” He said, “At that moment, I knew Harold Wilson was going to retire,” and he was probably right.

If I may, I will make two other points before I sit down. As has been mentioned by others, including Manchester colleagues of his, Gerald was dedicated to his casework. You will know, Mr Speaker, and you mentioned it yesterday, how he would rise in the Chamber and ask why he had not had a reply about so-and-so and so-and-so. It was not just occasionally—he did it quite frequently. That shows his dedication. Despite the fact that he did 46 years, he was as dedicated as a constituency Member of Parliament, by all accounts, as he was in his first week or his first year here, and that says a great deal about him. It also says a great deal about Members of Parliament in general, because there are very few now who do not take great care of their constituents in replying as promptly as possible and pursuing their cases.

The last point I want to make is perhaps controversial. Gerald was born in 1930. If ever there was a person of Jewish origin who understood the horrors of what was to take place by the time he was 15, it was Gerald. He knew from the very beginning, when the stories came out and the statements were made in the House of Commons, how Jews were being slaughtered in their hundreds of thousands—in the end, 6 million—not because of their politics or anything else, but for no other reason than that they shared the same origin as Gerald, and indeed myself for that matter. From early times, he was an ardent supporter of Israel. Before he was a Member of Parliament, during the 1967 war, I remember his eagerness that Israel should survive. His great fear, shared by many others who became critics, was that if it was otherwise, the Jewish population could be forced into the sea, as in the threats that were made at the time.

But later Gerald became a harsh critic of Israel, not because he ceased to be concerned about Jews—a false accusation that was made against him from time to time—but because he believed that the Israelis were showing a total lack of consideration for Palestinians, thought that they were treating Palestinians, in many instances, with contempt, and felt a strong urge to speak out in the way he did. In doing so, he antagonised a number of people in the Jewish community, but Gerald was not the sort of person who would feel intimidated because people did not like what he said. I happen to believe that he was right. One would expect me to say that, because I too have very strong feelings about the way in which Palestinians have been treated: the contempt for human rights and the fact that, as far as I can see, the Israeli authorities—the leading people—show no desire to bring about a sovereign, independent Palestine alongside Israel.

Gerald was not the easiest of people to get on with. I had my own rows with him occasionally, and then we made up and spoke about films. He was difficult in many instances, but how many people with such courage, determination and single-mindedness do we not find difficult when we assess their lives? He did good; he wanted to do good. He was dedicated to the Labour party and the Labour movement, and to this country. We shall miss him a great deal.

[Mr Lidington]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for what he has said.