Dr Owen's fight to survive
Neil Sinclair
Down in the sleepy south-west, political voyeurs head for north Devon. Whatever happens in north Devon is fascinating. In ITN's election briefing to stations it is listed under 'potential shock' and merits the presence after the count of an Outside Broadcast unit. But there is another 'potential shock' south-west constituency in the briefing which also merits such a unit, and which may be more significant than the personal fortunes of Jeremy Thorpe.
Labour's only seat in the south-west, Plymouth Devonport, is held by the foreign secretary, Dr David Owen, with a 2,259 majority. A Tory swing of just over 3 per cent will put Owen back into medical practice: 'I would not mind going back into medicine.' muses Dr Owen unconvincingly. Or. perhaps, to a safe Labour seat arranged by his benefactor Mr Callaghan.
The defeat of David Owen would clearly please many people, even Labour voters. In some London circles he is regarded with scarcely less odium than that other medical figure. Dr Crippen. It is hard to find any press cuttings which are favourable to him. This, he says. is a great trial to his mother. 'She was very hurst last week when a Tory MP called me Dr Who. He should come down to Devonport and see what people here think of that .
As it happened we were at that moment canvassing Labour supporters on the communal balcony of a council block in Devonport. Owen's hound-faced sub-agent Reg, an engagingly cynical figure carrying a battered briefcase containing the voters' registration list, had just roused a lorry driver from his late-afternoon slumbers. 'I've brought Dr Owen to see you. cried Reg at the red-eyed figure in white singlet who answered the knocking. It was one of those awful moments when you see exactly what is going to happen and are powerless to intervene. 'Dr Who?' asked the lorry driver.
In fairness it should be reported that once Dr Owen's identity had been established the man affirmed that his vote was with Labour. He would even accept a windowsticker from Owen's eight-year-old son Tristan. 'I'll stick it on my lorry — it will be seen all over the country,' said the man in a burst of enthusiasm. Reg feigned collapse. Tor Gawd's sake, don't do that — there's no votes for us up in Newcastle.'
Walking the streets with Owen it was hard to see why he is so hated in London. There is his vanity, of course. He has been witnessed spraying his hair in the back of his official limousine. He is suspected of getting on, and indeed getting his job, because of his friendship with Mr Callaghan's influential daughter Margaret and her husband Peter Jay. But that sort of thing is not new, even in the Conservative Party. He is happily married and the father of three young children, but seems to exploit this unattractively in newspapers and magazine articles. But then you do not have to look far in Conservative circles to unearth evidence of this practice. Peter Walker once answered the door of his home weighed down by three squalling, babes.
Recently the Daily Mirror sent its resident gossip Paul Callan to see the Owens. 'Doctor In The House — And He Has That Bedside Manner' was obviously seen as a tribute to Owen. But I wonder how many Labour voters would have been impressed by their 'Foreign Secretary with sex appeal'? The article displayed Owen's talent for bitchery. He told Callan that he had seen Mrs Thatcher an evening or two before and, for the first time, found her attractive. Then the sting: 'She'd had a couple of whiskies and was glowing in the nicest possible way. She came over smiling that special smile of hers and wafted a combination of expensive scent and alcohol over me'. Just in case Callan had missed the point Owen added: `As I say, she glowed'. That was a rather nasty story, I suggested to Owen last week. He was clearly implying to Mirror readers that Mrs Thatcher was drunk. 'Not at all — just a bit of fun.' he replied with his famous crooked grin.
Mrs Thatcher's name came up frequently during our door-to-door canvass. Owen and Reg enjoyed tapping an evident well of animosity which exists against Mrs Thatcher among some working class women. 'She'd better not come around here or I'll sort her out,' cried one Devonport harridan as Reg and the doctor rocked on her doorstep. Owen's main argument at Devonport is that of Mr Callaghan: we have got things running well, looking after the needy rather than the greedy, and we are creating jobs. Surely it would be mad to chuck it away to the mad radicals of the Tory Party? But the Tories' promise to spend more on defence, and their 'we'll put more money in your pockets' line, is getting through to many of Owen's younger constituents among the dockyard workers. One `dockyardee' who confronted our party told Owen: 'I reckon a lot of my mates will vote Tory. Well, they're goin' to give us more money to spend, aren't they?' Owen seems rather insipid in such situations, but Reg was on hand to cry: 'If you believe that you'll believe anything!'
Of course, there is Dr Owen's charisma, a word we are not hearing much of in this election. He is a star of the international stage and, more importantly, of television news. He is accorded the respect that kind of celebrity always enjoys. He is also a local-boy-made-good, whose family have been political activists in Plymouth for years.
It has also to be said that the Conservatives, this time with a real chance of winning this seat, have not chosen a particularily attractive candidate to fight Owen. It is said that Ken Hughes—yes, he calls himself Ken. not Kenneth — is not the unanimous choice of Plymouth Tories, and one can believe that. He says rather obliquely that he works in 'the building industry', and comes from a long-established Devonport family with both naval and dockyard associations.' What moves him in these momentous times? Well, lie has always taken a keen interest in local affairs. That is fortunate. Plymouth folk might not be too sophisticated, but it is hard to see them warming to a man who professed that he took no interest in local affairs.
He is also involved 'in the problems of the blind and the disabled'. Why do politicians always have to play this card? Owen does it. too. Do they really suppose that there is a body of opinion which is heavily against the blind and the disabled? It is really rather shoddy, and just as questionable as Owen pushing his son Tristan around tfw constituency with an armful of window-stickers. You would have to be pretty heartless to refuse one.
When I saw Hughes he was angry about Labour 'dirty tricks'. He had announced in the local press that 'it might be a dirty election although I'll do everything possible from allowing it to happen in Devonport'. But he was not averse to being rude about Dr Owen when I questioned him. Hughes has the personal vanity of Owen but none of the charisma; and in spite of the odds being against Owen in Devonport — his own estimate of the Tory lead is about 5 per cent — I would not be surprised if he holds the seat, if only by Tory default and the lack of any real threat from the Liberals.
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