Lord Bonkers' Diary: "Hooson, we have a problem"

I never know how much of Lord Bonkers' reminiscences to believe. In this case, I suspect he should have gone back for his Panama.

Thursday

The orphans and Cook have taken to the cool of the caves for which Trescothick Bay is noted, but I am happy here on the beach even though I have left my sun hat back at the boarding house. 

Today I have been thinking of Emlyn Hooson, an inspirational leader of our party in Wales and a source of wise counsel on any matter touching upon the Principality. His phone would ring at all hours and, more often than not, when he had answered the thing he would hear the words “Hooson, we have a problem.” 

Later in life he revealed an unexpected talent for Association football, captaining Liverpool to three league titles and two European Cups. This led to his being invited to be a team captain on the moving television show A Question of Sport, where his duels with Binkie Beaumont kept the nation on the edge of its seat.

Lord Bonkers was Liberal MP for Rutland South West 1906-10.

Earlier this week...

• Searching the rock pools for "sea anomalies"
• Wandering Bodmin Moor at full moon and devouring constituents
• The arid south of Rutland

Brecon and Radnorshire and Nigel Tufnell

With a by-election taking place Brecon and Radnorshire, I have naturally been thinking of the 1985 by-election in Brecon and Radnor, as it was then called.

That contest was caused by the death of the sitting Conservative Tom Hooson, who was a cousin of Emlyn Hooson, the former Liberal MP for neighbouring Montgomery.

Tom Hooson had gained the seat at the 1979 general election, but for 40 years before that it had been held by Labour.

So, in contrast to the contest taking place there at the moment, the 1985 by-was a fight between Labour and the Liberals.

I was between engagement sat the time and so was able to spent several days in Brecon and Radnor. On polling day I was in Cwmtwrch near Ystradgynlais.

Situated at the very north of the Valleys, it was a strongly Labour area. One of my memories of the day is having a gang of small boys practically fighting each other for the honour of delivering my Liberal leaflets in a close where every house had a Labour poster.

Elsewhere in the constituency the demographics were different and the landscape was stunning.
I have heard that Lloyd George got a mention in some of our leaflets, which reminds me of a story I have told here before:

A young Liberal activist was telling at a polling station out in the wilds somewhere, when an elderly farmer turned up. 

"What are you doing?" he asked. "I always take the numbers for the Liberals."
It turned out that for years the farmer had come along on polling day, collected numbers for a couple of hours and then taken them home with him. 

It represented a folk memory of Lloyd George's day. Any Liberal organisation in the area had long since disappeared. All the was left was the ancestral knowledge that taking numbers somehow helped the party.

Labour had held Brecon and Radnor for the 40 years up to 1979 because they had won a by-election there in 1939. It took place on 1 August, just as this year’s contest will.

At the 1935 general election Labour lost to a National Government supporting Conservative. It’s candidate was Leslie Haden-Guest, the father of the diplomat, dance and choreographer Peter Haden-Guest.

And Peter was the father of the actor Christopher Guest, best known for playing Nigel Tufnell in Spinal Tap.

As Leslie Haden-Guest had been made a hereditary peer in 1950 and the title had passed down to Christopher, Nigel Tufnell was a member of the House of Lords for three years before Tony Blair’s reforms removed most of the hereditaries in 1999.

Alan Turing and Emlyn Hooson

Embed from Getty Images

On Friday BBC News reported that court files recording details of Alan Turing's convictions for homosexual acts have been put on display at Chester Town Hall.

As Helen Pickin-Jones, chair of Chester Pride, says in the BBC report:

"Just a few simple lines of text reveal the appalling treatment of one of our national heroes."

One of the documents displayed in Chester shows the mathematician admitted "acts of gross indecency" at a trial there in 1952.

Turing was working at the University of Manchester when he was arrested for having a relationship with 19-year-old Arnold Murray at a time when homosexuality was illegal in the UK.

The version of it on the BBC site has been cropped, but if you look at the full version on the Alan Turing: The Enigma website an interesting fact emerges.

Arnold Murray's defence counsel was E. Hooson. That was Emlyn Hooson, who went on to be Liberal MP for Montgomery between 1962 and 1979.

He appears to have defended his man by trying to place the blame on Turing. Dark days.

Former MP for Montgomeryshire is a fruitcake

I know what you are thinking and it's not worthy of you.

Because the County Times is reporting that the former Conservative MP for Montgomeryshire, Delwyn Williams, has been backing the UKIP candidate Des Parkinson’s election campaign in the constituency.

Williams won Montgomeryshire from Emlyn Hooson in 1979, only to lose it to Alex Carlile in 1983.

Lord Mackie of Benshie has flown his last mission

Sad news today. Lord Mackie of Benshie - farmer, war hero, Liberal MP and peer - has died at the age of 95.

As his Guardian obituary says:

The whole of his life had been coloured by the war, and like many other participants in that terrible conflict, the experience made him a passionate believer in European unity. 

Much of his political life was devoted to that idealistic concept, including membership of the Council of Europe and a brief spell in the European parliament before it became a directly elected body. He spent many years on House of Lords committees charged with examining EU legislation.

As George Mackie he sat for Caithness and Sutherland between 1964 and 1966. At the time of his death, he was the longest surviving former Liberal MP.

Who holds that crown today?

George Mackie held the crown even when I blogged about it back in 2009. And the silver and bronze medalists then - Clement Freud and Emlyn Hooson - have both died too.

So by my reckoning the three oldest former Liberal MPs are now

1. James Davidson (b. 10 January 1927)
2. Elizabeth Shields (b. 27 February 1928)
3. Eric Avebury (b. 29 September 1928)

James Davidson was MP for West Aberdeenshire between 1966 and 1970. Elizabeth Shields was MP for Ryedale between 1986 and 1987. Eric Avebury, as Eric Lubbock, was MP for Orpington between his famous by-election victory in 1962 and 1970.

Unless, of course, you know better.

Later. Thanks to Greg Stone for pointing me to Elizabeth Shields' date of birth.

Six of the Best 231

Richard Kemp shares my doubts about the idea of elected mayors, but here he explains why he has put himself forward as the Liberal Democrat candidate for the role in Liverpool.

"Emlyn Hooson who died last week was my first parliamentary boss." Sandy Walkington remembers his days as a chocolate soldier.

"Occupy will have to find another way forward. It isn’t the kind of protest in which an achievable goal is linked to a symbolic nuisance, so that when the authorities see reason everyone can go home. Its demands have been much bigger, and they’ve been backed by the continuing physical presence of people obstinately taking up space. In this respect it’s much more like the Greenham Common peace camps, or Brian Haw’s one-man encampment in Parliament Square, than a traditional demonstration or sit-in." Writing on the London Review of Books blog, Phil Edwards discusses the dissolution Occupy London Stock Exchange protesters' camp.

The Gunnersbury Triangle ought to be an area where District Line trains disappear without trace. In reality, it is an area of ancient woodland that was cut off by railway lines in the 19th century and has been undisturbed ever since. When I lived in West London in the 1980s the battle to save it was fought and won. Now Councillor Gary Malcolm from Ealing writes on the latest threat to it.

James Fenton, writing for the New York Review of Books, looks at the world of Downton Abbey.

English Buildings visits Much Marcle in Herefordshire and a roadside garage that began life as a World War I aircraft hangar.

Emlyn Hooson 1925-2012

Lord Hooson, who died yesterday, was leader of the Welsh Liberal Party from its inception in 1966 until 1979, and MP for Montgomery from 1962 to 1979.

He won the seat at a by-election following the death of the former Liberal leader Clement Davies and retained it through five general elections. The Shropshire Star has a photograph of him being carried through the streets of Welshpool after the constituency's result was declared in October 1974 election.

As his Daily Telegraph obituary makes clear, he was not afraid of controversy:

After Liberal losses in the 1970 election, Hooson told the Liberal Assembly that the public wanted a middle-of-the-road party, blaming Jo Grimond and Jeremy Thorpe for trying to take it Leftward. When the Liberals merged with the SDP in 1988, he backed Alan Beith for the leadership against the less cautious Paddy Ashdown. 

Hooson attracted abuse from party activists, particularly the Young Liberals who at one conference waved sticks of rhubarb at him when he opposed sanctions on South Africa. Yet they were allies in opposing the Vietnam War, and the Young Liberals’ leader, Peter Hain, relied on Hooson’s advice when forced to apologise to Edward Short, Leader of the Commons, for suggesting he was implicated in the Poulson affair. 

Hooson opposed both Grimond’s readiness to keep the 1964 Labour government in power, and the Lib-Lab Pact concluded with James Callaghan by Steel. But the leader he trusted least was Jeremy Thorpe. When Grimond retired in 1967, Hooson stood against Thorpe partly on policy grounds but also because of a deep and, as events would prove, shrewd distrust of Thorpe’s character.

He also enjoyed a distinguished legal career. The Telegraph says:

Hooson also enjoyed a distinguished legal career At the Bar, Hooson earned a reputation as a cool, clear thinker and lucid advocate. In 1960, at 35, he became the youngest Silk for many years.

Hooson defended Ian Brady in the Moors Murder trial and, so Disgruntled Radical always tells me, prosecuted Alan Turing when he was tried for 'indecency'.

Liberals retain Montgomery

The Shropshire Star has a photograph of Emlyn Hooson being carried through the streets of Welshpool after retaining the seat at the October 1974 general election.

The oldest surviving former Liberal MP

The death of Bert Hazell the other day made we wonder who the oldest surviving Liberal MP is (leaving aside a certain peer from Rutland).

Having looked up the obvious candidates, my oldest three - in reverse order - is:

• Emlyn Hooson (born 26 March 1925)
• Clement Freud (born 24 April 1924)
• George Mackie (born 10 July 1919)

Unless, of course, you know better.

Jeremy Thorpe, Eric Avebury and Cyril Smith are all younger than this trio, but there may be others I have forgotten. I was surprised to discover that Roderic Bowen had still been alive when he died a few years ago.