Profile
A sailor for his times
Some people think that you can judge a man's character by the behaviour of his dogs. When he enters the room do they sit up and smile? Or do they slink into the corner and watch his boots? 'Jim' Callaghan has no dogs but he does have Roy Hattersley. Mr Hattersley is a quick-witted and amusing man with every reason to exude self-confidence. Why, then, when he is near his master does he become so obviously uncomfortable? Why do his soft, spaniel eyes start so from his eager face? People remember Callaghan's apoplectic treatment of Hattersley during the dark days of the Cod War, and the question is answered. Mr Hattersley considers that but for the grudge which Mr Callaghan has borne him ever since their joint naval debacle, he would now be the Foreign Secretary.
An evil temper, though handy, is not in itself enough to make a man prime minister. But its usefulness is greatly increased when its possessor has such a personal conception of politics. Len Garoghan, as he was nearly called, conceived of politics in entirely personal terms from the very first. He was born in Portsmouth 67 years ago, the only son of a naval petty officer who was to be wounded in the Battle of Jutland. His family seems to have a passion for changing its name. His father was an Irishman who anglicised Garoghan, changed his denomination from Catholic to Baptist, and died when Len was nine. Young Callaghan stuck to `Len' until some years after his marriage, when he attained his first prominence as a union official and switched to his more dignified second name, 'James'. This has now become 'Jim', in line with his chummy public persona. Mrs Callaghan, who has stuck to 'Audrey', must find it all rather confusing. Callaghan's mother was refused a widow's pension until the first (and minority) Labour government of 1924. Len's memories of his mother's battle with family poverty have lived on. He guards them jealously, and regularly revives them with a public airing; he needs them because they have become virtually his only political principle.
When Callaghan appeared before the selection committee for Cardiff South (now Cardiff South-East) in 1944, he wore his naval lieutenant's uniform. He now says that that was the reason why he beat the local boy, George Thomas, for the seat. It was the personal detail which he relied on. Callaghan had been recommended for his commission because the naval censor noticed that he was corresponding with Harold Laski. He knew Laski because they had sat together on a civil service tribunal when the pre-war Callaghan was assistant secretary of the Inland Revenue Staff Federation. Callaghan got that post with the personal backing of the general secretary, a Mr Douglas Houghton, over his fellow applicants, Stanley Raymond and Cyril Plant. He had become active in the union because it put him in touch with the great world of affairs which he might have known had he gone to university. He went to the Inland Revenue rather than university because his mother wanted him to have a safe job. Laski, civil service tribunals, Stanley Raymond, the Inland Revenue, Cyril Plant: it is extraordinary how the great drab world of administration which has grown up since the war was already familiar to the young Callaghan. He is, like Francis Drake or Horatio Nelson, a sailor for his times.
Callaghan's relationship with his constituency also illustrates his preference for personal relations. When he came to Cardiff South at the end of the war it was a heavily industrialised area. Now large parts of it, particularly around the docks, are almost derelict. Districts such as Splott he, literally, on the wrong side of the tracks, divided by the railway line from the centre of the city which has attracted most of th,e recent investment. The last heavy plant in Callaghan's constituency, the East Moors steel works, closed last year with the loss of 4,600 jobs. The milling equipment whtc.h was still in use was dated 1935. Callaghan IS not remembered in the area for his deter" mined efforts to prevent the closure. The popular judgment at the time was sturolleu up in a memorable graffiti, Loves Julian More Than Splott' — a reference, to Callaghan's friendship with Sir Julian Hodge, Cardiff's banking millionaire. All over the prosperous centre of this citY one sees Hodge's name displayed on the new office blocks erected by his companies, although Hodge himself has now left the Hodge Group and has transferred his inter.ests to the Commercial Bank of Wales t.n which Callaghan holds shares. Perhaps h1s disappearance accounted for the rather bemused expression on the Prime Minister's election poster, as it peered out from the windows of his campaign headquarters in the modest building of the General and Municipal Workers Union, which shelters under the towering headquarters of the Hodge Group.
. Reminders of the Callaghan-Hodge friendship spring out unexpectedly. In a gloomy corridor of the Town Hall there stands a pair of bronze busts, fine likenesses of Mr Speaker Thomas and of Jim himself. The inscription under Callaghan's reads: Presented by Sir Julian Hodge L.D.' — an unusual abbreviation for Doctor of Laws. Speaker Thomas's bust on the other hand was 'Presented by a group of Cardiff businessmen'. In times to come when they unearth these metal lumps they will read the inscriptions and compare them with our ideological election manifestos, and they Will wonder at the complexity of our political life.
Hodge's interests have sometimes coincided with those of the public on other Occasions. In 1967, in what Richard Crossman described as 'the first genuine Callaghan budget', there was a valuable tax concession to the makers of three-wheel cars, the production of which then formed a significant part of Hodge's interest. And in ,1971, when Callaghan was Treasurer of the Labour Party and Alderman Andrew Cunningham was chairman of the party's financial committee, Hodge put forward a scheme whereby Labour party workers would become car insurance salesmen for the Hodge Group.The financial committee duly approved this wheeze after a meeting Where one of the Hodge men produced the immortal words: 'A Labour voting strength in South Wales of 650,000 gives a premium income of L195,000'. Unfortunately for Hodge the idea was eventually thrown out by the party's Co-op lobby. None of this seems to have lowered the Callaghan vote to a serious extent. The only time he nearly lost the seat was in 1959. But he might have been in trouble again if the Hodge 'second-mortgage' scandal, which wreaked such havoc in Birmingham five Years ago, had spread to his own constituency. Callaghan seems to have avoided that problem partly because his constituents were so poor that even the Hodge loantouts were unable to dream up plausible collateral. Callaghan has also been remarkably successful in escaping criticism for his aSSoc iation with the unsavoury Labour parties of both South Wales and the North-East of England. This has not been entirely due to his own discretion; he took tea with Alderman Cunningham on the same day that the latter was released on parole from his prison sentence for corruption, a rare example of his natural altruism overruling his political sense. Tales of Callaghan's personal unpleasantness are legion. His rudeness even extends to members of his immediate family in Public. He himself seems to be quite proud of it, and he has claimed that he only employs it against the 'smooth people who . . . are quite capable of helping themselves', and that he is always patient with the inarticulate. But that was not the experience of a Foreign Office messenger who was unable to get an answer from the front door of the Callaghan farmhouse in Sussex and so, finally, entered the drawing room through the french windows bearing his urgent despatch. There Callaghan, feeling his official dignity had been affronted, completely lost his temper and severely upset the elderly gent, who was not accustomed to such behaviour in cabinet ministers. Similarly, just after he arrived at the Foreign Office he flew into a rage with his private secretary, the man most ministers rely on to act as their double agents within the ministry, and harmed the young man's career by breaking convention and firing him. It was shortly after that, that a more senior Foreign Office figure told Callaghan to stop treating him 'like a doormat'. This had a magical effect. Once confronted Callaghan tends to collapse; as the Foreign Office found to its own cost when the Foreign Secretary made a fool of himself for hours on end before the Select Committee on Cyprus in 1976.
The related form of behaviour, a pleasure in giving or receiving unctuous flattdry, is very clear when Callaghan is addressed on the public platform by subordinates such as John Morris or poor Hattersley. This characteristic gives some support to Callaghan's claim that it was David Owen who thought up the Peter Jay appointment. Flattery is just the sort of skill in which the crafty medicine man might be expected to excel. Peter Jay himself chanced to underline the impression by his own reaction to his stroke of luck. 'My father-in-law,' he announced on television. 'is a very, very big man indeed. As I've said before'.
Mr Callaghan's unexpectedly good relations with Henry Kissinger may have sprung from the same habit. He agreed with everything Kissinger said and they got on like a house on fire. At times this warm regard led Callaghan into making some quite original statements. One man who had been summoned to talk to the Foreign Secretary remembers being kept waiting in an anteroom while Callaghan bawled into the telephone: 'All right Henry, we'll go ahead. And as I've said, "You supply the muscle. I'll supply the brains".' His visitor is still not entirely certain whether this telephone conversation with 'Henry' was imaginary or not.
A very important ingredient of Callaghan's success has been his long-standing mastery of television. More than any other contemporary politician, he knows how to use it. The Road To Number Ten, a biogra phy by Peter Kellner and Christopher Hitchens, resurrected the fact that even in 1954 he had appeared On the bor,more frequently than any of his parliamentary colleagues. And in 1960, when he was feeling sorry for himself after losing the contest for the deputy-leadership, he took comfort in the company of television editors in the hopes of picking up some exposure. By the time of the Labour Government four years later he had perfected his present avuncular TV personality. But behind the cameras 'Uncle Jim' is known as a bit of a nightmare.
Interviewers have to be warned to watch out for his last-minute trick, usually about ten seconds before going on the air, when he will launch an aggressive and personal attack, or suddenly rule out the most obvious topic for discussion. And if, in a recorded interview, something does go wrong he will push and shove until it is altered. The viewers of course remain oblivious to these manoeuvres. Only once has the mask slipped, after the Guadeloupe summit when he was on the verge of another devaluation-type 'nervous crisis', and he suddenly turned on some inoffensive questioner and accused him of disloyalty to his country.
So what is left as a lesson for every infant politician in the qualities desirable in a prime minister? The case of Len Garoghan is mainly interesting for the light it throws on what the young hopeful will not need. No need to be a solid constituency member, even if you are a Labour MP and for 31 years you represent one of the most depressed industrial areas in the country. No need to be personally charming or polite to your family in public. No need to be a strong departmental minister, or even to bring a policy preference to Whitehall. You can be a failure in the three great departments of state and still make it. No need to keep aloof from all association with local wheeler dealers, or from unscrupulous and corrupt men like Alderman Cunningham: But do avoid making too many political enemies, develop a feeling for the acceptable short-term compromise; maintain a strong base among those who control the sectional interests which finance your party; work on those speeches, look and sound good on televi sion and hang on — whatever your degree of failure.
Above all hang on. History takes strange turns. If Michael Foot's story is correct, and the Queen does deny all knowledge of Sir Harold Wilson's claim to have told her that he was leaving months before he did so, then Wilson's resignation looks very much less calculated than he would wish us to think. If that is the case then Callaghan reached the top not even by Wilson's farewell design, but by some chance event which time alone will reveal. There he was, older than Wilson, but still hanging on. Conversely, if his father, Petty Officer iCallaghan, had agreed to go with Captain Scott to the South Pole when he was asked to, instead of serving out his time on the Victoria and Albert, King George V's royal yacht, he might have become a hero like Oates and quite resolved his son's sense of grievance. After all we cannot be sure that, like father like son, old Callaghan would never have walked out into that blizzard • alone.
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