02 February 2017
Sir Thomas Dalyell of the Binns, Bart.
One of the greatest of the awkward squad
by J.R.Thomas
If you were wondering to whom we could be possibly referring, try “Tam Dalyell”, hero, or villain, depending on perspective and taste, of the Belgrano incident and many other Parliamentary controversies. Sir Thomas – never, always Tam, died last week aged 84 and he should not be allowed to pass without a modest tribute to a man remarkably well connected and regarded in political life, not just by politicians on his own side, but also on the opposite benches, and by journalists, civil servants and academics.
The Dalyells are an ancient Scottish family from the minor aristocracy; The Binns, if you were wondering, is their Scottish castle, in West Lothian. The Dalyells ran more to careers as soldiers and colonial administrators than as courtiers or politicians, as did many Scottish families of their rank. Tam had one especially distinguished ancestor in his namesake General Tam Dalyell, who served with the Tsarist army in the C17th. The family home and many possessions were given to the National Trust for Scotland in 1944, but the Dalyells have continued to live there.
Tam, the Tam of our times, was born in 1932 and went, as one does from such a background, to Eton and Kings College Cambridge. He was sent for his national service to his distinguished ancestor’s regiment, the Royal Scots Greys. Here things started to diverge from the normal and expected path – he failed his officer training (he lost a tank on Salisbury Plain is the story) and was reduced to the ranks. In 1956 he joined the Labour Party – he said principally because of what he saw of poverty and unemployment in Scotland – and in 1962 became an MP, in a by-election for his home constituency of West Lothian. He held that seat, and its successor after boundary changes, until he retired from the House in 2005.
Tam was no lobby fodder for his party though. He was an independent and intelligent man, who read and researched deeply, who made up his own mind and then went his own way. Yet, he also wanted to progress to ministerial jobs and at an early stage became a Parliamentary Private Secretary (to Richard Crossman, a Labour grandee) but was sacked after leaking the minutes of a Parliamentary Committee on biological warfare (he said there was nothing in them that could possibly regarded as secret). He never held office again, though Michael Foot briefly appointed him as science spokesman – he resigned over the Falkland war and Labour’s approach to it, which left him free for a whole series of tenaciously fought campaigns – against Scottish nationalism, for closer integration of Britain in Europe, for many a minor cause of injustice, and, most famously, for an enquiry into the sinking of the General Belgrano, an Argentinian battleship sunk by the British Task Force during the Falklands War whilst (alleged by Tam) steaming away from the islands. (Much later, Argentinian records proved that she was steaming away – but so as to attack from a different position.)
But his most important campaign, constitutionally, revolved around what came to be known as the West Lothian question, part of Tam’s long running campaign against Scottish devolution and independence. Why, asked Tam, should the MP for West Lothian be able to vote on English matters, but an English MP not be able to vote on Scottish matters? It was a conundrum the finding of an answer to which shaped much of the subsequent approach to devolution and the long slow drag in the direction of Scottish independence.
Until the end of his life, in and out of Parliament, living in his ancestral castle, one Tam working under a portrait of the other Tam, he continued to campaign noisily and tirelessly for mostly left wing, generally unpopular, and frequently forgotten causes, often with considerable, if unappreciated, success; and to be a thorn of clarity and conscience in the politics of the Labour Party. He was also thorough, courteous, (though often tenacious to the point of irritating both his opponents and his supporters) and personally very thoughtful and kind.
Obituaries often say that “he (or she) was the last of their kind”. In the sense that Tam was a public school educated minor grandee maverick of truly undisciplinable independence in the Labour Party, that may unfortunately may well be true; he joined a party in which similar types, such as Stafford Cripps, Michael Foot, and Anthony Wedgwood Benn, were able to flourish yet able to fail to toe the party line when conscience dictated. Things have changed; even with Jeremy Corbyn in charge, a man in some smaller ways not unlike Tam, it is hard to imagine that such free and independent spirits could flourish now.
Nor is independence encouraged behind Mrs May. Zak Goldsmith, it is true, was allowed to fight his quixotic by-election against the Heathrow Airport extension without having a Central Office approved Conservative stand against him, but was defeated by irritated Remainers (a stark reminder that if you are a rebel against your Westminster party, it is absolutely vital to have your constituency party on side at all times). But with Zak’s demise it is hard to see who the Tory rebels are, where lurk those who embody the spirit of Nigel Nicholson, Enoch Powell, Richard Body, William Cash. Conservative Central Office has much more control over the candidates list at constituency level than it has ever had before; the ranks of Tory MPs, cherished by their constituents, often local, with the benefit of wealth and a certain originality of thinking, who, if not vociferous harriers of the front bench are at least well connected grumblers who fight unpopular causes, seem much diminished, if not extinct. Where indeed, is the Churchill of our days, a man prepared to fight for years for a hugely unpopular cause that he profoundly believes in? (We note the shouts from the back of “Boris”, but are not convinced that the candidate’s sub-Winstonian behaviour is not more about short term gains than long term principle.)
But politics needs rebels, the awkward squad, irritating and pursuing the ministerial bench, picking up unpopular but also overlooked causes, doing research into matters where the establishment is busy lifting the carpet and sweeping under it things that should be unswept. We need men and women without ambition for office but who see their elective jobs as ensuring that all strands of thought and opinion get a hearing. We need them making notes in some dusty constituency office or being briefed by a journalist in a back street caff, researching in dusty libraries (even those of The Binns or Stansgate Abbey), then rising from the back benches, shabby sheaf of documents in hand, to bring to the attention of the House some person, cause, condition, previously ignored, not caring how much they irritate their fellow backbenchers or incur the disapproval of the front. Some folk, Mr Corbyn, are much more valuable as irritants than leaders, let’s face it.
We live in a time when we can all become protestors by virtue of Twitter or mass digital petition, but that is a format which is rapidly becoming not the liberator of the unregarded, but the oppressor of the unfashionable or minority opinion, the equivalent to the Georgian mob that surged about the streets breaking minister’s windows. And in a parliamentary democracy, whatever noise goes on outside Westminster, it is of no use if it does not become a cause picked up and fought for by some independent awkward sod. It is ever more vital that some irritating backbencher, a Dalyell or Cash or Benn, gets up and argues cogently and tirelessly against the popular fashion until common sense calms things down. That is truly one of our great defences against oppression.
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