John Major - John Major - The Autobiography

‘Here,’ he said, puzzled.

‘No,’ I pressed him, ‘which room?’

‘I don’t have a room,’ he replied. ‘I live here.’

And he did, on the landing.

It was problems like that that encouraged us to open the first Housing Advice Centre in London. The concept was simple. Anyone with a housing problem, of any sort, could go to the Advice Centre for help and advice, free of charge. Soon it was so popular it was packed.

There was another aspect of life in Lambeth that struck me forcibly. Some people in need were aggressive; but very few. Most were frightened of bureaucracy, of government, of their powers to tax, to put up rents, to give or withhold planning consent and, above all, to house them in council flats or not. Moreover, councillors and council officials were too often hidden away. To the public they could be anonymous figures, but nonetheless figures whose decisions could blight or improve their lives. This was particularly true of the decisions to rehouse following slum clearance and new building, and the often artificial restrictions on council tenants even if they were rehoused. At tenants’ meetings the resentments voiced against these anonymous figures were fierce.

I decided to take the Housing Advice Centre on tour, with the main council officials accompanying councillors at public meetings, to face the people directly, answer their questions and explain our policies. There was, at first, a lot of resistance to this revolutionary idea, but with strong backing from Bernard Perkins and – among the officers – Harry Simpson, it was soon agreed. The meetings were a huge success, often attracting audiences of many hundreds that overflowed the halls we had booked. I chaired the meetings, with the Chairman of Planning and Social Services invariably in attendance as well as the local councillors for the ward. More importantly to the public, the Directors of Housing and Planning were there, with other officers, and especially the Lettings Officer, who allocated council houses and flats.

These meetings were generally good-natured, but with the occasional rowdy and angry intervention. I loved them, and thought they were a valuable safety valve. I regretted then – and still do – the fact that such meetings were not a regular practice for all councils. I believe they should be.

Some incidents still stick in the mind. Once, a man held up a rat he’d found in his house. What was I going to do about it? he demanded. I asked where he lived. He told me, and after a whispered consultation I was able to tell him that he lived over the border in Southwark. It was a Southwark rat – and he should take it to Alderman Ron Brown, brother of the former deputy leader of the Labour Party George Brown, and a leading member of Southwark Council. For my pains, he threw the rat at me – happily he was a very poor shot.

At a meeting in Kennington a young, strikingly attractive woman dressed from top to toe in shiny black leather rose to ask a question. The audience looked at her with more than passing interest.

‘I am the wife of the Vicar of …’ she began, but got no further, as the unlikelihood of this registered and the hall erupted in raucous amusement. We did get her question eventually, but I can’t recall what it was. Later she became a Labour councillor.

At the end of these meetings I would hang around, usually with Harry Simpson, who had given me a lift to the hall, to gauge reaction. Even those members of the public who hadn’t liked the answers they’d received enjoyed the meetings. It was politics made real, and not hidden away in committee rooms. These meetings made a profound impression on me: politics seemed so far removed from electors, and they rarely expected to meet the decision-takers. They were accustomed to poor service, remote officials and a system run for government and not for the public. I promised myself that, if I ever had the chance, I would try to open up government and make it more accountable.

I spent every spare moment I could with Norma. She learned about politics, while I began to understand opera. Norma’s mother Dee set herself to planning a big wedding. Then, in mid-September, just over two weeks before the wedding, the phone rang at four o’clock in the morning. I picked it up with foreboding. It was my brother Terry, very upset.

‘Mum’s dead,’ he said, ‘a few minutes ago. In Mayday.’

I had not expected this. My mother’s ill-health had been a constant feature of my life ever since I was a child, but she always battled through. She had been determined to come out of hospital for my wedding. Now she would not, and my heart broke for her. She had lost her last fight with just sixteen days to go.

I lay in bed after Terry’s call, reliving memories of the woman whose fondest hopes had always been for others: firstly my father, and then her children. As the youngest, more hopes had been poured into me, and I had always taken it so much for granted. The smallest gesture cheered and lifted her; the greatest blow would never crush her. My father may have dominated our family, but my mother was its heart. When she died, lame ducks lost a saint. Strangers found in her an instant friendliness. An hour’s acquaintance made a friend for ever. All her life she had been gregarious and, even in her last illness, had become so friendly with everyone at the local corner shop that it closed on the day of her funeral. She was open-hearted and open-handed. But her generosity of spirit was to her family and those in need. She could be an implacable foe when she chose, but in those near to her she inspired the same love she gave so generously. A few days after her death, Mum was cremated at Streatham Vale crematorium, and her ashes were laid beside Dad’s.

I wondered whether we should postpone the wedding, but I knew that my mother would have thoroughly disapproved of such a gesture. Besides, Pat and Terry insisted that we go ahead. The day before the wedding I slipped and fell in a corridor in Lambeth Town Hall, when my suspect left knee gave way. It swelled up like a balloon, and Clive Jones helped me home, where I lay in the bath with an ice-pack wrapped around my knee.

‘Eat your heart out, young Lochinvar,’ grinned Clive as he sipped a whisky beside the bath. ‘I suppose you could always hop down the aisle.’

Saturday, 3 October 1970 was crisp, clear and sunny, and in the morning I could hobble pretty well. My main worry was that the wretched knee would collapse under me as Norma and I walked back down the aisle. But the whole day went perfectly. Norma was acceptably late, and looked lovely. St Matthew’s Church in Brixton was packed. Clive had the ring. June Bronhill – the petite and lovely Australian soprano who had sung Lucia at Covent Garden and starred as Elizabeth Barrett Browning in the West End production of Ronald Millar’s Robert and Elizabeth – sang ‘Ave Maria’, and her wonderful voice echoed around the church. Norma had known June for years, made dresses for her, lived with her as temporary nanny to her daughter, Biddy, and they were close friends. I clutched Norma’s arm as we walked back down the aisle, and we made it safely to the door. ‘I thought you were supposed to support her ,’ was Clive’s comment.

After a honeymoon in Ibiza we returned to Primrose Court, and Norma turned it from a bachelor flat into a home. Writing in the late nineties, it is hard to remember how life was in 1970. Our combined income was around £3,000 a year, and £8 a week sufficed for the housekeeping. But week by week our flat took on a new face. Corners were filled, rooms were painted, books and records appeared, and astonished friends marvelled at the transformation of my spartan pad.

Life and politics resumed in Lambeth. In January 1971 I was shortlisted for the vacant parliamentary candidacy at Norwood, but this was Bernard Perkins’s fortress, and he was selected. We prepared for the council elections in May, and I was selected for Thornton Ward in Clapham, which was thought to be a much safer bet than Ferndale. On 28 March, the day before my twenty-eighth birthday, Norma told me she was pregnant, and in May, despite all our efforts, the Conservatives were soundly defeated in Lambeth as Labour regained its fiefdom. Ken Livingstone succeeded me as Housing Chairman, and Tony Banks also became a councillor.