Interview
Made from girders 26 April 2010 After more than four decades of high-profile political involvement, The Rt Hon Helen Liddell, Scotland’s own iron lady is back in Scotland from her stint as British High Commissioner to Australia and campaigning for Labour’s fourth term Alastair Campbell, Tony Blair’s acerbic spin doctor once famously described Helen Liddell as having balls of steel. And certainly as a woman in a man’s world, she has made her own distinctive mark whether it be the ignominy of following her former newspaper boss Robert Maxwell into the gents at Edinburgh City Chambers as he continued to bark instructions or as the first female Secretary of State for Scotland, who was later dubbed Helen Do-Little because of claims that she had time on her hands, or as the first woman British High Commissioner to Australia who, Boudicca-like, managed to overturn a centuries-old tradition and have women invited to the prestigious and previously all-male bastion of the Melbourne Scots annual St Andrew’s Day dinner. Helen Liddell, economist, journalist, politician, wife, mother and dog owner has done more to close the gender gap than a whole raft of well meaning equality diktats as she has smashed her way through the glass ceiling like Superwoman on speed. But she would be embarrassed to be seen as a pioneer of women’s rights and almost dismisses the worthiness of former fellow Cabinet colleagues, like Harriet Harman, and their unrelenting pursuit of wimmin’s issues. She is who she is and has got where she has despite being a woman rather than because of it. But it’s not been an easy ride. She can tell you that she drove Maxwell mad, that he sacked her nine times only to cave in; that George Sinclair, as her boss at BBC Scotland where she was economics editor, threw a telephone at her more than once but remains a friend; that both Tony Blair and Gordon Brown got ‘irritated’ by her and she ‘annoyed the hell out’ of big bankers and businessmen as she locked horns with them following the pensions misselling debacle and her subsequent quest for transparency and regulation – she was the Treasury minister who helped establish the FSA. She has lived through the tough times in essentially a man’s world in both the media and politics and has not only survived but thrived and because of that, is unsure of what her feminist narrative should be. She is so-so about all-women shortlists, is not sure about positive discrimination, says people who can’t take the febrile nature of politics need to grow up and while she takes an active role in mentoring women returners, says you can be a ‘mammy in the kitchen’ but a professional when in a suit and her advice would be to put your jacket on as you walk out the door so it’s not covered in baby sick. She has been the rottweiler at the forefront of major industrial strife and affectionately has the name of her dog, Sal, a Scottish border collie which she took to Australia where she was known as ‘Her Excellency Sal, included in her email address. She can be as hard as nails and then send a shiver down your spine as she describes her relationship with the late John Smith for whom she was campaign manager as well as close friend. She may not see herself as a poster girl for gender politics but frankly, if the scriptwriters of Rab C Nesbitt were ever to write a feminist character into their plot, it would be based on Helen Liddell; a straight talking, wee wifie frae Lanarkshire who calls a spade a shovel and hasn’t allowed any man to haud her back. Unreconstructed, she is almost the final expression of feminism; prepared to compete on any level without the need for special treatment just because she is a woman. She is, however, completely aware of the power of her sex and willing to exploit it and the frailties of men’s to her own ends. She’s like the Mae West of politics who when once asked about splits in the Labour Party quipped, ‘the only split in the party, is the split in my skirt’. Her plain speaking and no-nonsense approach helped earn her a string of pejorative nicknames over the years, from Dragon Lady to Stalin’s Granny. Nasty labels that would undoubtedly not have been applied to men tackling the same problems but she refuses to recognise the sexism and sees it as part and parcel of the rough and tumble of politics. She’s a tough cookie, and no mistake. “I think that a lot of women operate in the way that there is a private face and a public face and at the time I was coming through the political ranks, it was tough for a woman and I just got on with it. But yes, I hope to God it is easier for them now. “I have never been a great fan of all women shortlists but having seen the way the number of women in Parliament has gone back the way since 1997, I do think something needs to be done but I’m not sure what. Although I think some of the younger men coming through will not be as narrow minded as the men of my generation were, which has to be a benefit.  “Women do bring something different to the table and there was a change in the House of Commons when 101 Labour women came in in ‘97 even in terms of the very rudeness that had gone on. I remember Bridget Prentice, a Scot who represented Lewisham, got so fed up of some of the catcalls from the Tory benches when Labour women were making speeches that she spliced together all the tapes of film that recorded proceedings and handed it to the Tory whips office and said sort that out or I give it to the BBC. Things changed after that.” Liddell would probably not see herself as a trailblazer for working-class Scottish women, more a run-of-the-mill example of what is possible. Despite her own upbringing, she is unlikely to see herself as a class warrior, more a product of circumstance and the benefits of a Labour Government. Born in 1950, Helen Lawrie Reilly was the only child of a Catholic father and a Protestant mother. She was educated at St Patrick’s Catholic High School on Muiryhall Street in Coatbridge at the same time as John Reid, who she later succeeded as Secretary of State for Scotland. Liddell was named after her maternal grandmother who died when Helen’s mother was just 14 forcing Liddell’s mother, as the only girl in the family, to leave school and look after her father and three brothers. She contracted rheumatic fever but with four men and a house to look after, the disease went undetected until she gave birth to Helen and heart disease was diagnosed. She had a stroke when Helen was 11 and was an invalid for most of her daughter’s school years forcing Liddell to look after the home from her early teens while her mother was in hospital which, she says, explains her own obsession with order, if not her control freakery. Her bus-driver father was also an active trade unionist and trailed his young daughter along to union meetings because with her mother in and out of hospital, there was no one at home to care for her. He was the youngest of 13 in a mining family and was the only child not allowed to go down the pit following a deathbed promise to his own father that the family would not let the next generation go down a mine. Later in life, Liddell was the only UK Energy Minister never to have gone down a pit. Arthur Scargill sharply criticised her for it at the time even though she explained the reason, which he dismissed. Some redemption came when Mick McGahey later made her an honorary member of the National Union of Mineworkers. Whether it was her early induction to political awakening via her father’s trade union activities or her mother’s early discharge from education for lack of a comprehensive welfare system which meant her biggest regret in life was that she never had the opportunity to handle her own pay packet, Liddell joined the Labour Party in Coatbridge at 15, with the express aim of ensuring that life would always be better for subsequent generations. It was there that she met Alistair Liddell whom she married seven years later. Ask her to explain why she is so driven and she will simply say it was the way she was brought up. As a veteran of Scottish politics – her cv, which a friend once jokingly described as a ‘man’s cv’ – reads like a history of the Labour Party, from her early days rooted in the hairyarsed macho politics of North Lanarkshire through the shiny days of New Labour – she was one of the Blair Babes – to what it has become today – potentially on the verge of defeat at the polls and desperately in need of a new incarnation. Liddell was the first in her family to go to university and studied economics at Strathclyde before joining the economics department of the Scottish Trades Union Congress where she rose to become assistant secretary. Her first day with the STUC was the day that the Upper Clydeside Shipbuilders went into liquidation and later when Kvaerner took over Govan shipyards, it was her job to go and talk to the men. “I had to basically say to them that they would have to accept this or ‘it’ll be ball on the tiles time’, as they say. There were thousands of us at this mass meeting and we were all waiting and I was terrified and up to high doh but eventually, at about six in the morning, the lights went on and the shop stewards came out wearing Viking helmets and that was it, we knew they had agreed. It’s unique to that kind of environment, that sort of humour, and those men and women were a privilege to represent – it’s the ones that get above themselves that are harder to deal with,” she says with a glint. She spent a year with BBC Scotland as an economics correspondent and then 11 years at the helm of the Scottish Labour Party. At just 26, Liddell became the first woman General Secretary of the SLP when it was not a party known for its political correctness. She appeared feisty but says that it was an act because she couldn’t afford to show any vulnerability. Indeed, she remembers vividly having a breast-cancer scare in the very early days of the job and having to tell the party executive that she would require to go into hospital for an operation – they had a debate about whether she could take the time off. She says, ‘that was the way things were then’. During the 1980s she switched careers, working in various executive roles with the Scottish Daily Record and Sunday Mail until its controversial proprietor, Robert Maxwell, disappeared off a yacht along with the mystery of the missing millions from the Mirror Group’s pension fund. It was not a time she remembers with affection. In 1990 her first novel of a three-book deal was published. ‘Elite’ told the sexfuelled tale of a female politician and in an interview, Liddell said it “was written with great amusement with four of my girlfriends and a bottle of wine. It’s the best way to get waiter service in a restaurant, discussing sex scenes with girlfriends.” The book never received great critical acclaim and was even nominated for a prize for containing some of the worst sex scenes written – an accolade also incidentally visited on the first novel of her New Labour colleague Alastair Campbell.  The second or third Liddell books were not to be. In 1994 with the sudden death of John Smith came an unexpected move into elected politics when she contested the Lanarkshire constituency of Monkland’s East. She beat the SNP with a majority of less than 2000 votes but in 1997 was re-elected to a re-drawn constituency with a massive majority. When Labour swept to power in May that year, she was appointed economic secretary under Chancellor Gordon Brown. Not only was she the minister used to identify, name and shame a raft of financial institutions accused of fraudulently overselling pension schemes but she was also responsible for signing off Labour’s first foray into PPP arrangements and set up the FSA. Other high-profile ministerial positions followed in the Scottish Office, the transport department, in energy and competitiveness in Europe before becoming the first woman Secretary of State for Scotland in 2001. In 2005 she decided not to stand for re-election – at the time she cited personal reasons but many assume that it was because her early ascension appeared thwarted – she instead became Britain’s first woman High Commissioner to Australia. She retuned to Scotland a couple of months ago and is back where she started; a footsoldier for the party she still passionately believes in. So how have things changed in the intervening years? “I see a nastiness now in politics that I don’t like. I always remember the whips in the House of Commons telling me that on the day John Smith died, the Tories and the Lib Dems knew that was the day to stay out of the tea room and let Labour mourn and Scotland came together that day and I remember watching Ian Lang at the Tory party conference with tears in his eyes. I just don’t get the sense that that kind of respect for each other is going on now. I hope I am wrong but for all that we would engage in vigorous debate, there was respect and democracy hinges on that respect for each other’s opinions. If I had my time again, I wouldn’t go into politics now.” Reflecting on the buzz of the 1997 General Election, how does she compare this election to those of the past? “It’s a different atmosphere to 1997 and that’s inevitable, 13 years have gone on and all of us have written things off and say, ‘oh, well, we have achieved that’, and we have forgotten the struggle that went on to get there. We would not have a minimum wage if it was not for a Labour Government. I remember the days that Kevin Rudd apologised to the Aborigines in Australia and as we moved from the House to the Parliament, there was this slow throng of people, black, white, young and old and children just slowly walking towards the Parliament and it reminded me of something and I realised it was the morning that we passed the legislation for the national minimum wage. We had all gone home because the whips told us to and they would page us when to come back because we all wanted to vote on the final reading and the pagers went at about 4am in the morning and I threw on tracksuit bottoms and a coat; I remember walking up the Embankment and was just conscious that word had gone out and people were just quietly walking towards the Parliament as the sun came up because word had got out that Britain was going to have a national minimum wage. We have forgotten all of that – 13 years on, we take an awful lot for granted. I heard Nick Clegg the other day saying that Britain hadn’t really changed since Thatcher’s Day, where on earth was he during Thatcher’s days? “It is a very sobering time; we are coming out of recession and we need to make sure that we continue with that gradual recovery, we still have troops in conflict in Afghanistan and we have had this terrible scandal of the MPs’ expenses and yes, people are browned off, I’m browned off…but would it be a better country on the 7 May if David Cameron was PM? I don’t think so… “I don’t think it is a crisis of democracy. You see real crises of democracy in places like Zimbabwe so you have to get some perspective but it has been a big blow to the parliamentary system but what we have to watch is that we don’t turn the House into a haven for rich men, and I use the word men advisedly. “I think turnout will be a critical issue, it’s key, and if it drops to a certain level, anything could happen. I never like to see turnout hovering around 50 because anything can happen. Having watched the Australian system, I am becoming a fan of compulsory voting but I think it would take a generation before it would work properly because it is so imbued in the Australian psyche that you go out and vote and it does mean the campaign is very dull – more fun watching paint dry – because the messages all go out at the very end so that people can retain them in their minds. It is dead easy to vote; you can vote on a Saturday and in a lot of states polls open two weeks beforehand, you can register your vote two weeks beforehand. I went through Sydney Airport on the day of the New South Wales vote and had I been able to vote I could have voted, or in a supermarket or in the library. It just makes it easier. “I think in Scotland we have always been used to tactical voting but there is no doubt that it will only be Gordon Brown or David Cameron that is Prime Minister; the others may wish a walk-on part but there will only be one of two men PM. “Without doubt, Gordon should be PM. At the height of the financial crisis, he and Kevin Rudd in Australia worked incredibly hard together to bring the G20 together to get the debate away from just the G7/ G8 so the developing nations of the world had a place and some of the heavy hitters, like China and India together. The role that GB played in that was astonishing and I would have ambassadors that are not usually sympathetic to Britain, like the French, for example, saying, ‘some guy you’ve got there’. There is no doubt that he pulled the world together. I have known Gordon since I was 19 and we have had our differences and if you work closely with someone, you do have differences but this is Gordon in his element; this is where his strength is dealing with this kind of financial and economic upheaval. “Banking needs to get boring again and there are opportunities for Scotland in that. I believe quite passionately that we need to get back to some first principles in terms of financial services. The financial services sector is a huge contributor to the Scottish economy and not just in Edinburgh but in places like Glasgow and Cumbernauld, it really does put a lot of wealth into the economy and we have a good reputation as workers in the financial services and it would not be good for us to rubbish it and not in our interests but guys, you need to wise up. Although I don’t necessarily always agree with Harriet Harman but I think she did have something when she said it would have been a different scenario had it been Lehman Sisters, it would have been a different kettle of fish. Females are not frightened to say sorry or asking for something to be gone over again because we are used to people assuming we are dumb…” On that note; what does she make of the allegations of bullying in No 10? “It is hard for me to tell but I don’t have a lot of sympathy for people that want to work in a hot-house environment like No 10 and then go boo, hoo…it’s tough there. It’s long hours and people lose their tempers and shout but it’s a high-pressure environment and a privilege to be in there and if you can’t handle it then get out. It’s a very rarefied atmosphere and some of it, if you have not done the time in the foothills, then it is a shock and I used to say that to young women candidates that if you can’t handle the toughness and the guilt then is it worth it to put yourself into that situation? “There is no doubt that you have to be robust with Gordon but if you are not robust then you shouldn’t be around him. Prime Ministers are not pussycats, you have to lead from the front and frankly, if you can’t stand the heat, you shouldn’t go in the kitchen, sweetheart… “Look, maybe I would have done better if I had kept my mouth shut in certain situations,” she says. “I irritate people, I irritated Gordon, I know I irritated Tony and used to drive Maxwell mad but at the end of the day, I go home and shut the door and I am a mum and a wife, a daughter and the owner of a dog and that’s what matters. Sometimes you engage in the conspiracies that fly around and you wonder about things that could have been, you know, I was walking up to meet you today and a bloke shouted at me, ‘Oi, you hen, you need to get out of retirement’ and I thought, ‘I’m not retired yet’. Related articles: Moore of the same 5 September 2010 Taking power 5 September 2010 What Labour did next 25 June 2010 A liberal view of life 11 June 2010 The Alexander Technique 28 May 2010 See all articles in this category Submit a comment |
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