Tributes to Nelson Mandela

Tom Clarke Excerpts

Monday 9th December 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Tom Clarke (Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill) (Lab)]

One of the joys and privileges of being a Member of this House—apart from speaking for constituents, which I hope to do this evening—is that we have a front seat as history unfolds. I shall respond to your request for brevity, Mr Speaker, not least because one of my recollections of Nelson Mandela was of the day he was released from prison. Like most people, I was overjoyed. Then I suddenly remembered that I had the first question for Mrs Thatcher at Prime Minister’s questions that Tuesday. I thought a lot about that question and I delivered it as best I could. At one point, the formidable Dame Elaine Kellett-Bowman, sitting on the second row of Benches on the Government side, called out, “Too long.” The then Speaker, Mr Bernard Weatherill, was forced to intervene, saying, “I remind the hon. Gentleman that this is a question, not a speech.”

In that spirit, I hope to be brief in giving my recollections of a great life that will be remembered for a very long time—that of Nelson Mandela. Shortly after his release, he came to Glasgow. As hon. Members have said, he had been given the freedom of the city of Glasgow—the first city to do so—after the work of people such as Janey Buchan, the Rev. Ian White, who was a minister in a church in my constituency in Coatbridge, and my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow South West (Mr Davidson), who was a member of the Glasgow city council that agreed the bestowing of the freedom of the city, to the chagrin of the Glasgow Herald, which said that it could not see any link between that man and Glasgow except perhaps in the minds of a few Labour councillors. Now we know better.

Nelson Mandela charmed the people of Glasgow and reminded us that he was a person of principle and a man with deep values and a great vision for the future. When he was elected President in 1994, I had the privilege of being one of the observers at that election. I was in the company of David Steel, my right hon. Friend the Member for Cynon Valley (Ann Clwyd) and Bob Hughes—I am delighted that my hon. Friend the Member for Aberdeen North (Mr Doran) recognised Bob Hughes and his role in the campaign to end apartheid and bring freedom in South Africa and elsewhere. The president was duly elected and the world waited to see what would follow. He had defeated what most people thought could not be defeated, and I remember his slogan in that election, “Jobs, Freedom, Peace”. Even today in this Parliament that remains our call for Britain and the rest of the world.

On that election day, I recall the remarkable reaction to the fact that people had the right to vote. I remember speaking with people—I am delighted to have photographs of some of them on the wall of my bedroom—including one woman who walked for seven hours and waited three hours in the hot sunshine to exercise that right to vote. One man—a small business person—said to me, “I am 58. If I die today, I will die a happy man because I have cast a vote.”

My right hon. Friend the Member for Cynon Valley and I recall that one of the things we were asked to do was to visit a prison. I do not wish to be controversial, but prisoners there had votes. Ironically, after they had voted they came to us and said, “We’re free, we’re free.” Perhaps there is a message there for all of us.

Time went on and in due course, as right hon. and hon. Members have said, the President of South Africa came to this Parliament. That was a wonderful event, with—rightly—much pomp and circumstance, as we would have expected and which the President of South Africa deserved. One thing stands out in my mind, and it coincides with the references that have been made throughout today to Nelson Mandela’s humility. After he had delivered a wonderful speech in the Palace of Westminster, he made his way down the aisle accompanied by the then Speaker, Baroness Boothroyd. He stopped at the fourth or fifth row where a frail, elderly little man was sitting and embraced him, expressing his gratitude. It was Jeremy Thorpe. Mandela was non-judgmental, a man of vision, compassion, forgiveness and understanding.

On the eve of the Third Reading of the Bill that became the International Development (Reporting and Transparency) Act 2006, which I had the privilege of sponsoring, the then Chancellor of the Exchequer, my right hon. Friend the Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown), said at a reception that he had been speaking to Nelson Mandela that day, and Nelson Mandela sent his very best wishes for the success of the Bill. For me, that was very humbling and makes me very proud.

Remembering his commitment to the millennium development goals and the progress that can follow—to human equality, to human rights, to gender recognition, to the need for everybody to enjoy an equality that gives them the very best of the health service in every part of the world—Nelson Mandela can never be forgotten.

In Scotland, very often when we run out of superlatives we look at the words of Robert Burns. I do not know whether during his prison reading Nelson Mandela read anything of Robert Burns, but I suspect that he did, and before I sit down I would like to put on record Burns’s words in writing to a friend in recognition of his father’s life:

“A friend of man, the friend of truth,

The friend of age and guide of youth;

Few hearts like his-with virtue warm’d,

Few heads with knowledge so informed:

If there’s another world, he lives in bliss;

If there is none, he made the best of this.”

[Several hon. Members]

rose—