FROM ANGRY YOUNG MAN Adrian Slade talks to TO Lord Tony Greaves SIMMERING OLD GURU here is something a little incongruous about the notion of the Liberal Democrats’ oldest angry young man donning the Termine of a peer of the realm. For those with long party memories, Tony Greaves has always seemed to be at the forefront of the vocif- erously democratic ant-establish- ment faction within the party, whether in the Young Liberal Movement attacking the tactics and policies of Jo Grimond and Jeremy Thorpe, opposing the Lib-Lab Pact, or fighting his cor- ner against the Liberal/SDP Alli- ance and the subsequent merger terms, not to mention aspects of today’s party that annoy him. On the other hand, he is also acknowledged for his shafts of political wisdom and for bringing about the Liberal Party’s key Assembly commitment to com- Greaves happily accepts the They have two, now both gradu- munity politics that transformed description ‘radical’, seeing him- ates. Party members may not Liberal (and later Alliance) cam- self as a ‘a radical Liberal, a left- have noticed this alleged calm, paigning methods so success- wing Liberal and a social Liberal, although in conversation there is fully after the near collapse of all of which are part of the main- an affable humour and likeability the party at the previous election. stream of British Liberalism over about him. He remains a consummate cam- the last hundred years.’ He is less Professionally he has been a paigner, nationally now as well certain whether he is as angry as teacher, but much of his work- as locally. Recently he has even he used to be – his wife Heather ing life has been in party jobs become a Pendle councillor once told me that, to his evident sur- – election agent, publications, the again. ‘I couldn’t keep away from prise, ‘he has been much calmer Association of Liberal (and then getting myself elected to some- since they had the children’. Liberal Democrat) Councillors, thing’, he says. 30 Journal of Liberal History 45 Winter 2004–05 FROM ANGRY YOUNG MAN TO SIMMERING OLD GURU etc. His wife’s comment prompted direct-grant grammar school, culture was more that of tradi- me to ask what, if anything, he Queen Elizabeth’s in Wakefield. tional liberal education. did with the spare time you sus- He went on to university at ‘I was not debating as a party pect he doesn’t have. Apparently Oxford, where he joined the Lib- Liberal but it was the end of the the answer is, or was until he was eral Party. I asked him why. fifties, and there was a general ill last year, rock-climbing. You do ‘I didn’t come from a Liberal view that the Labour Party was need calm and nerve for that. family. We lived in Bradford and split and was buggered, rather as As it turns out, Tony Greaves every now and then my father, it is now. We had the Tories who and I joined the Liberal Party who was a policeman, used to had been in power for seven or in the same year, , but we send half a crown to the local eight years, a Prime Minister had come through very differ- Tory party. My great-grandpar- who seemed to be an old fogey. ent routes. By then I had already ents, cockneys by birth, were There had been the whole crisis done two years’ National Serv- involved in the founding meeting of Suez. And then there was Jo. ice, three years at Cambridge of the Independent Labour Party Who knows what his appeal was? and nearly two years as a copy- in Bradford. My mother’s father He was just charismatic. And, for writer with J. Walter Thompson. was a rabid Tory and his father all his top-of-the-range Edin- At Cambridge my priorities was a schoolmaster in Bradford burgh accent, in those days he had been Footlights, cabaret, who organised a petition for came across as classless and very theatre and law, strictly in that the extension of the tramway to modern.’ order. Apart from demonstrat- Eccles Hill. So local campaigning Greaves So Tony Greaves joined the ing against Suez and the Soviet was in the blood. He was also a happily Liberal Party – for reasons very intervention in Hungary, I had member of the Orange Order’, similar to my own. But how does not taken much active interest in he adds apologetically. accepts the Jo’s classless party square with politics. Not until after did ‘But at school we debated eve- that ermine he is entitled to wear Jo Grimond fully impinge upon rything. The school was an inter- description today? my consciousness. I then found esting mix of fee-payers, one or ‘The concept of wearing myself helping two early ’s two others like myself who had ‘radical’. ermine is a nonsense. The fact that Young Liberals – Antonia Grey, got in because we were in the top He is less you have to be ennobled to sit in a fellow JWT copywriter, and per cent on the -plus, and a the Upper House is outdated, to Tony Bunyan – to write a ‘Votes third group who were bussed in certain put it mildly. I would like to see at ’ leaflet and the Young Lib- from mining villages in the West a separation of honours and the erals’ Charter for Youth (). Riding of Yorkshire where there whether he job that needs to be done here. I By contrast, Tony Greaves took was no grammar school. They don’t believe in the honours sys- to politics at a much earlier age. At were the ordinary grammar- is as angry tem. I once turned down an OBE seventeen he was busy debating school intake. The playground as he used offered by Paddy Ashdown but and absorbing issues in the sixth culture was dictated by the min- no, of course I didn’t turn down a form of his ‘very enlightened’ ing villages. The sixth-form to be. peerage – certainly not – because Journal of Liberal History 45 Winter 2004–05 31 FROM ANGRY YOUNG MAN TO SIMMERING OLD GURU He goes on to cite the exam- the so-called ‘Red Guard’, when ple of a new planned centre for George Kiloh, Tony Greaves, asylum-seekers in Worcester that Terry Lacey and a few other his wider remit as a peer enables equally impassioned Young Lib- him to speak against and help to erals attempted to commit the oppose locally. I get the feeling party to a non-nuclear UK and that he has not quite answered withdrawal from NATO. It was the question of Commons ‘cor- a spectacularly noisy occasion ruption’ but we move on to his in which Richard Moore, with preferred model for the House of similar passion, just succeeded Lords. in defending the platform and a ‘I would like to see the whole more traditional party policy. It House elected at a regional level was followed by a debate almost by STV, but we don’t want the as lively on ‘workers’ control’, led new House competing directly by Terry Lacey and, again, Tony with the Commons, or being Greaves. He recalls that highpoint seen as a stepping stone to it. So in what soon became the Young you prevent that by having a long Liberal Movement. tenure – twelve to fifteen years ‘It all came out of that gen- – and then a bar on subsequent eration of people who joined election to the Commons. The the party when it was advancing parties would decide who the hugely. There had been Orping- candidates would be.’ ton, followed by a number of near So there would be no non- misses, including a by-election in party or appointed members? Leicester. Then Harold Wilson ‘Well, yes there would. The had become leader of the Labour party says per cent appointed. Party and took over our ‘time for I would go further and say more a change’ message. The Liberal sitting in Parliament is a politi- than that but I wouldn’t give vote went up in the ’ election cal job on behalf of the party and them a vote. Let them give us but overall the result was disap- everything I believe in and stand their knowledge and exper- pointing and in the subsequent for. So I accepted the peerage that tise, but most of the appointed parliament the party pretended inevitably goes with it.’ independent members say they to have its teeth in the red meat Tony Greaves finds no discom- will only vote when they have of power when it didn’t. We won fort in blocking legislation passed listened to the debate. We can’t more seats in the ’ election, but by a democratically elected House have that. We haven’t the time by that time Jo was exhausted, the of Commons, because he believes for that.’ party was running out of ideas and that, due to the electoral system, He admits that this somewhat didn’t know where it was going. the current composition of the contradictory, not to say con- A small group of us younger party House of Lords actually reflects troversial, version of a second members felt something must be the way the country votes much chamber is not achievable and he done. We decided to get more more accurately than the Com- suspects that under the present involved in young people’s cam- mons. ‘That’s why I believe we government no version of an paigning with other groups, par- have a perfect democratic legiti- elected chamber is possible.