Tributes (Speaker Martin)

John Bercow Excerpts

Tuesday 1st May 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I informed the House yesterday that there would be an opportunity today for hon. and right hon. Members to pay tribute to the former Speaker of the House, my immediate predecessor, Michael Martin, latterly Lord Martin of Springburn. On behalf of all Members, I want to start by paying tribute to the memory of Michael Martin, and in doing so, I send my deepest sympathy to his wife Mary, to his daughter Mary, to his son Paul and to his grandchildren.

A Glaswegian former sheet metal worker, Michael was the son of a merchant seaman and a school cleaner. As some will know, he was born in a tenement in the nearby Anderston area on the north bank of the River Clyde in 1945. As I said yesterday—I make no apology for repeating it today—Michael Martin was passionate about and proud of his roots. Specifically, he was proud, and rightly proud, of the way in which he had overcome a difficult start in life to rise to one of the highest ceremonial offices in the land.

After leaving school at 15, he began his political journey as a shop steward for Rolls-Royce aero-engineers. In the 1970s, he became an organiser with the National Union of Public Employees, and after a period as a Labour councillor, he became Member of Parliament for Glasgow Springburn in 1979. He subsequently served for three decades as Member of Parliament for his people, to whose wellbeing and to whose advance he was throughout his career utterly dedicated.

As a Member of Parliament, Michael immersed himself in Commons life, and he eventually spent over a decade as a member of the Speaker’s Panel of Chairmen. He also became Chairman of the Scottish Grand Committee before devolution. After serving as Commons Speaker Betty Boothroyd’s Deputy from 1997, he was elected by Members of this House to succeed her in 2000. In doing so, he became the first Roman Catholic to serve in the role since the Reformation.

I think it is true to say, and I see around the House Members who recall Michael Martin—this is hugely to his credit—that he never forgot where he came from. In his coat of arms, which is still exhibited in Speaker’s House, he included a 12-inch steel rule, which signified his time as a sheet metal worker, and a chanter from a set of bagpipes, of which I must advise the House he was a keen and highly accomplished player. Indeed, he staged the first Burns night supper in the Palace of Westminster. The tradition has been continued since under various auspices, but his was the first.

As Mr Speaker, Michael quickly set about making his mark on the role by holding an unprecedented press conference, which provoked his critics into saying that he had broken the convention of keeping one’s distance from the media. He also dispensed with the traditional tights worn by his predecessors in favour of dark flannel trousers. If I may say so, he continued the precedent set by Lady Boothroyd of declining to wear the traditional wig. As colleagues will have noted, I have followed Betty and Michael in that regard.

Sadly, despite the many improvements Michael sought to make in the House of Commons to increase its diversity and his step of establishing an apprenticeship scheme, it was the MPs expenses scandal that led to his resignation from office in May 2009. Today, however, we remember Michael as our colleague and, to many, a friend. Fundamentally, he was a decent, public-spirited, hard-working, unpretentious person who sought to make life better for the people whom he was privileged and elected to represent.

Michael was well known across the House for his care and concern for Members, for their staff and for the staff of the House. He was a fine campaigner, and he was very protective of Back Benchers. If memory serves me correctly, he was not the favoured choice of the Front Benches when he became Speaker, but he garnered huge support—that says something about his effectiveness and his popularity—and, colleagues, he also had a great sense of humour. On a personal level, as I mentioned yesterday, he was always very kind to me, and I have met many Members who say the same from their own experience. To this day, I still remember the lovely letter of congratulation he sent to me after my election as Speaker.

Michael Martin was a good man, and he served people faithfully. Above all, as people who knew him well will know, he was devoted to his community and he loved his family. He loved his family, and he was loved by his family. I hope on behalf of each and every one of you that I can today extend our heartfelt sympathy to his family.

To lead the tributes from the Front Benches, I call the Leader of the House.

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[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Mr Speaker]

I will come to the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Mr Duncan Smith), who is an immensely senior Member, but we do not want to squander him too early. He is so senior, we will hold on for a moment. I call Nadine Dorries.

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[Mr Iain Duncan Smith (Chingford and Woodford Green) (Con)]

I rise, very briefly, to join your tribute, Mr Speaker, which I appreciated very much.

On two occasions in my time in the House, I had cause to work closely with Michael Martin. The first occasion was when, after my Maastricht rebellions, I was banished by the Whips Office—they were able to do that in those days, as Mr Speaker will know—to an in-House Committee which met but infrequently. They thought that would be a punishment, but it was an absolute pleasure because Michael was the Chair of the Committee. He greeted me and said, “I know why you are here and it is not because you are interested in the running of the House!” He then regaled me with tales of the pipe major and many of the pipers in the Scots Guards, with whom I had served, and their chequered careers; the number of times they had gone up in the ranks and down in the ranks due to too much post-piping whisky. He offered to give me an example of just how they maintained their rank while playing well and he did just that. We missed a number of committee hearings as a result of his piping—I do not know who chaired them, by the way, even to this day—but he seemed less than interested in that and more interested in the piping side of things. I got along with him famously and the Whips never knew what a pleasure it was to be banished to that Committee.

The second occasion was when I had the misfortune to be elected leader of the Conservative party. I was the first Catholic to be elected as leader. I know just how difficult being the Leader of the Opposition is, particularly if one’s party wants to have an argument in an empty room most of the time, which I have some sense of, if not a little pleasure in. Michael took me to his room and chatted away to me about the difficulties. During our conversations, we settled on the fact that both of us were the first Catholics to serve in our positions. He was very proud of that, as was I.

Our roles did not quite end in the way we might have wished and that is one thing that I am very sad about. This House was going through a very difficult time and it was inevitable that the Speaker would, to some degree, become a focus of that. I want to put on record my view that this decent man was taken to task in a way that I did not think were his just deserts. [Hon. Members: “Hear, hear.”] He took on his shoulders a lot of what had happened. I think his early departure is something the House may someday want to look at and ask whether it was fair to him in the way that he had been to it.

I am sad at Michael’s passing. He was a decent man and a good man. We did not necessarily treat him with the respect and decency he deserved, and I am sorry for that.

[Mr Speaker]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman very warmly for what he has said. I think the reaction of the House shows that colleagues feel the same.

[Sir Vince Cable (Twickenham) (LD)]

rose—

[Mr Speaker]

If the right hon. Gentleman understands, I would like to call the successor but one to Michael’s constituency. I will come to the leader of the Liberal Democrats in a moment.

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[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Mr Speaker]

Order. I am keen to accommodate remaining colleagues who feel that they need to speak, and there are no doubt several who do, but I just gently point out to the House that the subsequent business is likely to be of intense interest, and therefore there is a premium on brevity.

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[Stephen Pound (Ealing North) (Lab)]

Mr Speaker, I thought that your words combined warmth and dignity in a way that was a fitting tribute to a man of warmth and of dignity. I thank you for that.

As I listened to your words about Michael Martin, and about how he loved his family and how his family loved him, I thought immediately of how much he loved this place—how much he loved this Parliament—and it is with some melancholy that I say that this place did not reciprocate as it should have. He was not loved by Parliament as much as he loved Parliament. He was cruelly treated—very often, I have to say, on the basis of snobbery: of cruel, cruel snobbery. But if I have an abiding memory, it is of when he—and you, Mr Speaker, followed in this tradition—opened up Speaker’s House. On some occasions, the experience was slightly extraordinary. I once found myself sitting between Cardinal Keith O’Brien and the Reverend Dr Ian Paisley at dinner; I was something of a cordon sanitaire.

I shall never forget the time when Michael Martin invited Scouts and Guides from Maryhill and Springburn to Speaker’s House. He was the epitome of the avuncular. He delighted in the company of his ain fowk—his own people. He wanted to show them that it did not matter where they came from or what their background was, they too could be in Speaker’s House. I am sure those Scouts and Guides will always remember that.

May I say gently, Mr Speaker, that his great kindness to new Members, which has often been referred to, was not entirely altruistic? Twenty-one years ago my good friend Tony McNulty and I were both elected to this House, and we found ourselves in the Tea Room. Michael Martin, then a Deputy Speaker, came up and remarked to me that he and I shared the same birthday, and proceeded to talk about the similarities between us on that basis. He then mentioned that Tony McNulty had attended the Salvatorian College, and referred to some of the Salvatorian fathers he had known. He then advised both of us that if we wanted to know anything about modern politics, there was only one book that we should read. Tony, who was something of a nerd in these matters, asked “Would that be “Erskine May?” Michael Martin said, “No, no—“‘The Godfather’”. [Laughter.] He gave each of us a copy, and when he left Tony and I looked at each other and said, “If the rest of our parliamentary career is going to be as friendly as that, we shall be absolutely fine; we’ve found our feet.”

To our amazement, we discovered that Michael was at that time casting out the possibility of being elected as Speaker. This came as a considerable shock to us, but we both voted for him with enthusiasm. On 3 July each year, he would always make a point of calling me, as we were the birthday boys on that particular day.

Michael Martin was a man of extraordinary kindness and decency. He was not well treated by the House, but I think the words that his wife Mary, and his children Paul and Mary, will hear coming from the House today will be of some consolation. Michael Martin: may light eternal shine upon him, and may he rest in peace.

[Mr Speaker]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that magnificent tribute.

[Sir Desmond Swayne (New Forest West) (Con)]

Mr Speaker, I mean this genuinely as a compliment. Michael Martin was a fine man and a fine-looking man, not unlike yourself, and, as I have told you before, I have no doubt that both of you would have looked better in tights and wigs; but let that be.

I had several run-ins with Michael Martin. Indeed, he once told me in front of the whole House that I should go and sit in a dark room “until the feeling goes away”. But it was a bit like offending you, Mr Speaker: if a Member took his rebuke like a man, it was all over, and it was back to his ordinary, easy-going charm and his deep commitment and friendship within the House.

I particularly recall his summoning me when I was called up to serve in the Army in Iraq in May 2003. He was a former soldier himself, a former Territorial, and it was absolutely clear to me that he was genuinely concerned for my welfare and that of my family. He gave me some very good advice indeed. He was a thoroughly good man.

[Mr Speaker]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman. I am so glad that he said what he did.

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[David Linden (Glasgow East) (SNP)]

One of the great honours that the hon. Member for Glasgow North East (Mr Sweeney) and I have is sharing the community of Carntyne, where many of my family come from and where many of them still live today. I had the pleasure of spending some time at the weekend with the Labour Councillor Frank McAveety, discussing some memories of Michael Martin and his days in Springburn Labour party—some of which cannot be repeated in this House, I am afraid.

I think there is something hugely inspiring about the fact that this is a guy who was a sheet metal worker in Glasgow and was raised to his position in the House of Commons. He did not come here and pull the ladder up behind him, and he made sure that apprenticeships were available. That is something that chimes with me, as a former modern apprentice.

Let me return to the subject of Carntyne and the members of my family who live there. Not all of them will have been Labour voters, or Scottish National party voters, and I still do not know how some of them voted. What is left with me, however, is the memory of my gran, who lived in Michael Martin’s constituency, saying—this was probably the greatest tribute that could be paid to someone by a wee old lady in Glasgow—“He was an awfully kind man.” I think that that is how we in the House should remember him.

[Mr Speaker]

I am exceedingly grateful to the Leader of the House, to the shadow Leader of the House, and to all Members who have spoken with warmth and sincerity of our sadly departed colleague. We remember Michael today, and we remember him, as Members have said, with affection and respect.