ANOTHER VOICE
The problem of a female MP who will not pay her restaurant bills
AUBERON WAUGH
Asound rule in political journalism, taught me by the great Alan Watkins, is never to become worried by developments. Things are seldom as bad as they seem. Life continues as usual, for the most part. But I confess I have become very worried by the apparent refusal of Mrs Gwyneth Dunwoody, Labour MP for Crewe and Nantwich, and a member of Labour's National Executive Committee, to pay her bills in the House of Commons restaurants. If the Sunday Times's chief investigative reporter, Mr Barrie Penrose, is to be believed, her unpaid Commons restaurant bills now amount to almost £2,000, run up over the past 12 months. After repeated requests from the Commons catering com- mittee, she was reported to the Labour Whips and her credit facilities were with- drawn, but still nothing happened. Now the committee has no alternative but to take her to court. When Mr Penrose telephoned to ask her about her intentions, she slammed down her telephone. If Mr Penrose has got his facts right, this seems to me a very serious reflection on the declining standards in public life. It is not as if Mrs Dunwoody is some roughneck new member whose views are so extreme as to be inarticulate without demonstra- tions of this sort. She has been in the House of Commons for as long as I can remember, representing Exeter first in 1966. It is hard to understand how she can be in any financial distress, despite further stories of a distraint order on her furniture for refusal to pay the rates. Parliamentary salaries, which stood at £3,250 a year in 1966, are now £17,702 plus innumerable lax-free 'allowances' — for secretarial assis- tance, for living in London, for travelling there, for postage, etc — which bring the total receipts for an MP well above the E3, 5 MO mark. As if this was not enough, she apparently receives a £4,000 retainer to act. as parliamentary consultant to the British Fur Trade Association, an admir- able body and one which no doubt derives considerable benefit from her parliamen- tary consultations. _ Of course it is quite possible that Mrs Dunwoody is making the sort of principled stand which we should all applaud. Perhaps a year ago she was served with some cabbage which was watery, or some cod fillets which were 'off, and has re- solved never to pay another bill in the restaurant until she receives an apology. But she adds nothing to her case, whatever it is, by refusing to tell anyone what she is up to.
Mrs Dunwoody, I should explain, comes from the very bowels of the Labour estab- lishment. Her late father, Morgan Phillips, a man of the most awe-inspiring sobriety, was General Secretary of the Labour Party for 18 years, from 1944 until the year before his death in 1963. Her mother, the Baroness Phillips, was Lord Lieutenant of Greater London from 1978 to 1985, and still has a finger in more pies than might be considered healthy at her age, from the National Association of Women's Clubs and the Association for Research into Restricted Growth, the Keep Fit Associa- tion and the Pre-Retirement Association to the Industrial Catering Association and Small Electrical Appliance Marketing Association, over all of which, with fine impartiality, she is President.
Mrs Dunwoody's former husband, Dr John Dunwoody, whom I knew quite well at one time, was another Labour MP, a campaigner against the evil habit of smok- ing and joint author of A Birth Control Plan for Britain (1972). I do not know whether he is any relation to the rider who won the Grand National on West Tip last Saturday, but he might easily be. My point is that Mrs Dunwoody is no arriviste of the Militant Tendency, no brutal, half-witted, token proletarian like Mr Dennis Skinner, of Bolsover, who describes himself in Who's Who as being of 'good working-class mining stock' in order to explain his farouche manners and general rudeness. She is the essence of the Labour Britain which everyone of my age took in with our half-pint bottles of free milk at school. If she, of all people, is refusing to pay her bills in the House of Commons restaurant, how can the House of Commons continue to function?
Brooding about Mrs Dunwoody, I began to remember that the last time I met her - at an Any Questions beano in Devon — she struck me as being quite exceptionally rude and unpleasant. It seems possible that her behaviour in refusing to pay her bills in the House of Commons restaurant should be discussed under some heading other than the decline and collapse of the Labour Party. Without losing sight of the central truth, that when people stop paying their bills in restaurants all civilisation as we know it is at an end, we might discuss Mrs Dunwoody's behaviour under the more general heading of the problem of women.
Once again it was Alan Watkins who, in a memorable piece published about ten years ago in the Standard, remarked that many women in our society are going mad. This is obviously not true of Mrs Dun- woody, since there is nothing remotely irrational in neglecting to pay bills for a year or so, if you can get away with it; but a part of Mr Watkins's important percep- tion, as I remember it, was that women or many of them, anyway — were in- creasingly infected by a spirit of bloody- mindedness which made them suppose that they need no longer observe any of the rules of civilised behaviour. Having turned their backs on domestic duties in the new spirit of 'liberation', they are increasingly tempted to suppose they do not have to dress prettily, talk intelligently or make any effort to please. From there it is a small step to supposing that they do not have to pay for whatever they buy in shops. Or in restaurants.
Last week I read of a local Conservative club which had voted to continue excluding women despite a reminder that this meant they were excluding their beloved Leader. It was a private decision taken on a private matter, said the club secretary, and not one which he wished to enlarge upon. At the time I thought it extraordinarily brave. The matter was being reported so that we should feel indignant that Conservative women in the neighbourhood were being denied a chance to practise their sexual opportunities, or whatever they are called. In the same way, we were all supposed to rejoice at a ruling of the European Court, that women have the right to continue in their jobs until the age of 65, despite being eligible for a retirement pension five years earlier than men. I suppose this may be a good idea, but I am not sure.
Mrs Dunwoody, of course, is only 55, but I have the feeling she has already made her best contribution. I do not know whether she refuses to pay her restaurant bills because she can't pay them or because she won't. In either case, I feel she should withdraw from public life and cultivate the domestic arts of cooking, sewing and flow- er arrangement in preparation for a long and happy retirement.
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