Across the pond

The strapline of this morning’s Guardian on the Jubilee finale was: ‘Without her husband, the essential loneliness of the Queen’s role was movingly evinced.’ This is a classic example of what psychologists call projection. The only lonely people over the last few days have been the British republicans, who only managed to muster a hundred or so is their demo near the former County Hall building on the South Bank. And, of course, the Guardian which is the only British national newspaper to come out for republicanism. This weekend the Guardian  did not flaunt its republicanism; it carried all the pictures of the hundreds of thousands around the Mall, though it did not produce a souvenir Jubilee edition. Instead it dutifully reported that The Times had put 125,000 onto its circulation with its Jubilee special. (In fact, the present owner of The Times was a republican long before the Guardian. But he is far too canny a businessman it insist that his newspapers wave the tricolour flag.)

The Queen was visibly moved at the climax of the Monday night concert, when she was called by Paul McCartney (All my loving) to join the stars and address the thousands in the Mall and the millions watching on television screens. Amongst them was Sir Elton John who composed the elegy to Princess Di in the most horrible year of her reign. But on Monday Di was forgotten and the Queen was supported by Charles and his new spouse. The royal box was full of her children and grand-children and on the back row was her present Prime Minister. No sign of Tony Blair who took to television screens and whipped up emotions after Diana’s sudden death.

Far from being lonely Elisabeth II has more support than even Queen Victoria at her prime, and still has a husband to support her. She may outlive Charles and even if she  does not Charles, judging by his speech on Monday may not be the disaster that has been predicted. Since we live in the age of opinion polls, he knows how unpopular he is, and just how many of his  subjects think he should do the decent thing and abdicate in favour of his eldest son and the woman in the designer red dress.

But republicans should not lose heart. The jubilee events are a triumph for royal public relations but they are rooted in the past. The royal barge, the Spirit of Chartwell, Churchill’s country home, reminds us of past achievments. And should also remind us that Winston was a card carrying member of the British aristocracy, who did his best to get Edward VIII to keep the throne. (If he had succeeded he might have done for the monarchy years ago.) Far from being a Commoner Princess Di was a member of the same family.

Prince Charles in his Monday night speech spoke out for those suffering the effects of the recession, much as his uncle the Duke of Winsor spoke out for the Welsh miners. He still spoke with a plum in his mouth.

But then so do most of the cabinet. Posh boys mostly, apart from Baroness Warsi, who is due for the high jump. The case against the monarchy is that it helps to perpetuate the existing elites. But this holiday weekend it is the elected Prime Minister who looks more out of touch with the people than the monarch.

David Cameron is backing his health minister on the proposed reforms to the NHS.  These reforms mean that the profit motive irs going to affect decisions that should be made on medical grounds. and they undermine the essence of the NHS. Which was to make health care available to all, rich or poor.

The NHS is not perfect. Never was, never can be. But it is the jewel in Britain’s crown. It is the best health service in the world and the envy of other countries. I owe my life to the NHS, because in 1954 I contacted a fatal illness, tubercular meningitis. My life was saved by my mother’s doctor, Dr Pitman, a scion of the Quaker shorthand family. She came to to see me when I arrived home one Friday evening at the end of the university term with a terrible headache. She came to see me severa9l times that weekend. She came to see me several times that weekend.

Because she cared. The Cameron reforms turn GPs into businessmen.

TB meningitis was incurable until a new drug, izonasid was discovered by an American scientist. I was one of the first to benefit from it in this country.

I could equally say that the NHS nearly killed me. Because the university doctor had told me, that I was suffering from exam stress and should take a couple of aspirins.

Since then I have nearly died three times.

First in the 1970s, when I got pneumonia, treated at home by my GP, Donald Grant, of the Caversham Practice. Because he visited me regularly he realised that I had a nasty disease called strepocochous. and whisked me off to UCH hospital one Sunday afternoon.  Donald apologised for nearly killing me.

I told him that he had saved my life.

Second time was in the US in 1980 when I was employed by City University. I had a terribly irritating rash by the time I got to New York. I went to accident and emergency at the hospital, but was refused treatment on the grounds that my insurance did not cover the costs of hospital treatment. My life then was saved by the GP of the friend with whom I was staying. Who correctly diagnosed anphlactic shock. He pumped me with adrenilin.

And I lived to tell this tale.

Third time was a few years later. When I realised that something was terribly wrong. My breathing was very slow and I was thinkly about Keats’ ‘Now more than ever seems it rich to die.’

Instead of dying, I rang the Caversham Practice. And at 2 AM their duty doctor, one Rachael Miller got out of the bed she shared with Jonathan, and came to see me.

She immediately dosed me with adrenalin. She also told me that I should have an emergency pack, in case I was hit by this again.

So that’s why I think Cameron is wrong.

We need GPs who are motivated by their professional concerns.

Not by the profit motive.

 

Rupert Murdoch and his son James appeared before the House of Commons select committee to answer the allegations of phone hacking. Continually they claimed they knew nothing about what had been taking place at the News of the World. Murdoch said that he had been let down by people he had trusted.

This from a man who was born into the newspaper industry. Hhis father  Keith Murdoch ran Australian newspapers and he was interduced to the best of popular newspapers when he went as in intern to the Daily Express tutored by Ted Pickering on Fleet Street tactics.

He worsted Robert Maxwell in 1969 in his bid for the News of the World because he convinced British opinion, including myself and my colleagues at The Times that he understood newspapers.

Then he was an unknown factor in Fleet Street. But he appealed to many because he was critical of the British establishment.  He was bidding nfor the News of the World, whose editor had delivered a disgraceful attack on Maxwell with an editorial which described the News of the world as ‘British as roast beef’.

In fact the News of the World owes its popularity to appealing to the public appetite for the juicy court reports of those cases which detailed sexual misdemeanors and the like. Rupert Murdoch carried on that tradition.

His second acquisition was quite different. The Sun was a rebadging of the Daily Herald, a celebrated Labour supporting paper. It was an attempt by Hugh Cudlipp, the Mirror newspaper boss to provide a popular newspaper similar  to the News Chronicle.

Murdoch transformed it into a down market tabloid, boosted by Page Three unclothed babes and good sports coverage. Combined with trenchant political coverage at election times.

Thus the famous front page when Neil Kninnock was fighting an election as leader of the Labour Party – ‘Will the last person leaving Britain turn off the lights.’

Subsequently Murdoch supported New Labour under Tony Blair. Since those days Murdoch has enjoyed access to whoever occupied Downing Street.

Under cross examination today Murdoch was asked by his visits to David Cameron via the Downing Street back door. He declared that he had many such visits when Gordon Brown was Prime Minister.

But both he, and his son, James, claimed they knew nothing of the phone hacking by the News of the World. They said that they had turned over to the police evidence when they found it.

Their stance was that it was the job of the police to conduct enquiries.

Meanwhile the police were being interviewed by another House of Commons select committee. John Yates, the assistant commissoner whose job it was to look again at the hacking allegations, was blaming Rupert Murdoch’s men for not coming clean with what they knew.

Yates revealed that he had asked David Cameron’s chief of staff whether he should talk to the Prime Minister about these matters. The reply from the Downing Street offical was that he should not raise the matter.

So David Cameron became one of those who knew nothing.

The performance in the House of Commons has been totally transparent. The popular press will no doubt focus on the shaving foam comedian, demolished, not by the police, but by Murdoch’s third wife Wendy, who felled him with a right hook.

Perhaps she should be made chief executive of the Murdoch empire. Rupert is clearly long past retirement. James Murdoch was squirming claiming he knew nothing.

Neither is capable of managing such a large company, where control is held by the Murdoch’s though a devious arrangement whereby some shares have votes and others don’t.

A practice which should be outlawed.

Today’s performances demonstrate that the Murdoch era is over. And that the Met Police has much to answer for.

So the sooner we get a new head of the Met the better.

Since, I’m fixing  a jolly party

In late April or in May

In Marriott’s pad in London,

I thought I’d better tell him

To make sure he could be there.

So I rang his house in Yorkshire

In case he hadn’t yet left,

For his first ever world cruise

On oceans far and wide.

The voice that answered told me

Was sure he’d already gone

But he did not know for certain

Which ocean he was on.

But he did know, that Oliver

Had his mobile phone

In one of the huge pockets,

Of his coat, so long and thick.

I could text him, he told me

At little cost to me.

And then he told me politely,

That I had rung his number old

And my dear friend, Ollie

Now lived in the house next door.

It was of course his son-in-law

Whose wife I had first met,

When I held her in my arms,

Just outside the ward’s big door.

So I rang off in shame.

And I heard a booming voice

Inside my very head.

‘Now, surely, you must admit

You always get it wrong.

You stupid twit.’

The voice, I’m sure was Captain Bob’s

Because it was followed by a chortle,

Louder, longer and more chortle like

Than ever I had heard before.

It took me back many years

To when I had lunches three

With the disgraced tycoon and would-be MP.

Always when we parted at the door

He warmly shook my hand, and said.

‘Now, Bob, I’m sure you must agree.

You got it wrong in chasing me.’

Speechless,  I would pat

His shoulder big and broad.

A friendly pat.

‘Cause, he was quite the most amazing bloke

I had ever  met, before, or since.

I am still not sure what made him tick.

But to know the facts, you must read

The book by Bower, Tom to me.

The world will  never ever see anyone,

Just like him.

Which makes me less fearful for my grand kids two.

I could have said three, which rhymes.

But decent journalists don’t lie, even if it makes a better story.

(This is a Maxwell anecdote never told before because it happened on 23 Feb 2011. Yes, 2011.)

I rang my bank early this evening and got  through to a man, not in India.

To pass the time of day I asked him if he had heard of Robert Maxwell.

Oh yes, he said, I had to wade through a 90,000 word Ph D thesis on Maxwell’s accounting fiddles when I was at uni.

So I told him he could learn much more about Maxwell’s many and various skills, by reading Bower’s book, which he could buy for a couple of quid from Amason. No need to plough; it reads like a thriller. He would stay up all night reading it in bed.

But, I told him, that if Bower had got any vital fact wrong he would have been bankrupt years ago.

I waited while he slowly wrote down the details:

Maxwell. The Final Verdict by Tom Bower.

He checked to make sure he had got it down right.

I was so gob-smacked that my bank employed such an intelligent man, who was still to learn the possible pitfalls ahead in his trade, that I quite forgot what I had rung about.

So I told him I would have to call back in an hour or so.

His ghost has bewitched Bob Jones and made him think he is a poet. See below. Read it aloud to yourself trying to fit the metre which is a bit uneven.

A Hack’s Lament

Maxwell watchers go on watching

Til their dying day.

‘Cause that Czech so very bouncing

Made their lives seem quite like Hell.

Writing to Lord Thomson,

Pearson, and O’Reilly too.

Blackening their reputations.

‘Conducting their own vendettas

Obsessed and full of spite’.

But most of those Maxwell watchers

Did not hate at all.

Like Bob Clark his merchant banker

They knew Bob’s personal fate.

Exiled by the Nazis

From his native mountains so far away

To the Oxford plains where the people spoke so posh.

Bob Clark he most wanted

To reform and train the Czech

How to prosper without cheating

And reign in his nasty bullying.

Poor Bob, he failed, not once, but twice.

But if there was a more decent merchant banker

Him I did not know.

And better to have tried and failed

Than never to have tried at all.

The watchers, like the bankers, did not want

To put Bob Maxwell in to Wandsworth Jail.

They only wished to stop, his very rouguish ways.

Like stealing from the pockets

Of the Mirror workers’ fund.

All the watchers loved him

When his empire twice collapsed.

Because it got them front page headlines

And brought them passing fame.

Now he is not buried

But certainly drowned and dead

They have no longer

A vendetta to pursue.

But they want all young tycoons now living

To know that, yes, though, sometimes charming,

He really was a crook.

And if they try to use

His very clever tricks

Though they may fool the bankers.

They will have to face the watchers of today

Who are learning the journo trade

The old watchers are quite busy doing other things.

But they do have time to tell

Wikipedia.

That they must not change

What is clearly

A  tale, so very, very black

To one a lightish shade of grey,

Where the wily Czech is just  ‘alleged ‘

To have stolen five hundred million quid.

And the watchers do have time to tell

Their jolly Maxwell stories

To young journos in the pub.

With many years to learn just

How to stop, those would-be Robert Maxwell’s

Robbing pensioners today.

They’ll tell the youngsters

That they must learn to be ready for

Attacks on  characters and skills

By those super rich and holding power.

Paying thousands to PRs

To make their lies look just like facts.

If they really learn our humble trade

They’ll get some passing fame.

But better far than fame or wealth

Will be the welcome they receive

When they go into journo pubs.

Because all the blokes around them

Will know what they have done.

And though our trade is often grubby.

When we sometimes get it right.

Chaps like Richard Nixon have to

Leave that house so White.

And journos world wide over

Raise a jar to Bernstein and his buddy

And old Ben Bradlee too.

And any journo who does journalism

Even near as good as that.

Will have what is most worth having

Not praise from Rupert or Lord Rothermere

But smiles on the faces of the journos

Drinking in the pub.

Which is just what academics call.

‘The esteem of one’s colleagues’.

It does not rhyme.

Nor fit the metre.

But that’s academics, folks.

Hurrah, for journalists.

Another round, anyone?

You think he can’t accuse us any more of conducting a personal vendetta.

But maybe Mossad rescued him, filled him with rejuvenation medicine, winged him away to a hideout in Argentina.

I can imagine him sitting there in front of 50 computers, altering web sites and emails and of course milking bank accounts.

All the time chortling and smiling that smile of his, which you all know.

They thought they’d got me. And,  they don’t even suspect I am richer than ever and and don’t have to borrow from bankers ever again.

I hope I’m joking, not suddenly possessed of telepathic powers.

Captain Bob is still up to his tricks, folks. His ghost is rewriting the first draft of history. Just look at his entry in Wikipedia. He is ‘alleged’ to have stolen money from the Daily Mirror pension fund.  Mr Justice Forbes criticised some aspects of the first Board of Trade Inquiry. No  mention of the second BoT inquiry or the Hartley Shawcross Takeover Panel. No mention of the fact that even his wife,  Betty Maxwell, in her book written after his death, admitted he was a crook.

Wikipedia says the share price of his company collapsed after his death. Implication that it was because the brilliant Maxwell was no longer at the helm.

No mention of the FACT that the share price collapsed on the second day because there was no money left to repay the huge loans to the bankers. And worse there was no money to repay the £500 million borrowed from the Daily Mirror pension fund.

Then the conspiracy theories. Was he pushed off his yacht by the one of the secret services?

Reading this you would never realise that there is absolutely no doubt that Maxwell was one of the biggest swindlers in British financial history.

And sadly no mention of the facts uncovered over the years by a few journalists. We were not a conspiracy.

I was first on the trail, driven by curiosity. When I first met him in 1964, I thought he was brilliant and was writing what I expected to be a profile of new star of publishing. I followed him for about seven years, then went into teaching.

Before that I wrote my first really big story on him in 1966, when I was working for a weekly, called The Statist, I had been doing some quiet digging and realised I was dealing with an unusual and possibly dangerous. So I rang my deputy on The Statist, who had moved to the Sunday Times, who I was the only man I knew, who I could trust to join with me on this story.

We ventured out together, one Saturday afternoon to face the Captain in his lair, in the by far the biggest council house, near Oxford Town.

The result was a long profile by me in The Statist on the Friday. And a shorter crisp story by story by Oliver, which, contained some rather interesting facts, which even Maxwell had great difficulty in explaining.

Shortly after that the story was picked up in a big way by Godfrey Hodgson and Bruce Page of the Sunday Times Insight team with a team of forty scouring the globe.

Between us, we did a pretty good job. But it the reason he fell so heavily in 1967, was that he had run out of tricks, to disguise the emptiness in his house of cards.

We all thought that after the devastating report of the BoT enquiry he would never again be trusted with a public company.

But in a few years he was the boss of an even bigger empire.  In those years the only journalist following him was Tom Bower, an ex-BBC man who first met Maxwell when he was doing a Panorama profile. In the final phase Andreas Whittam Smith and Jeremy Warner at The Independent joined in. And in the final weeks just before his death a young woman from The Financial Times joined in. (probably Bronwen Maddox). She did some notable digging.

All of us were experienced business journalists. For another view of Maxwell turn to Stephen Bates, Guardian journalist, who has made his name mostly by writing about religion and the Royal Family.  There is a very funny and revealing story by him on  the gentlemanranters website. It is about the day he was sent in his first job, as a cub reporter on the Oxford Mail, to interview Maxwell.

The biggest omission on the Wikipedia web site, is a paragraph referring readers to the latest edition of Bower’s book, Maxwell: The Final Verdict. It tells the full story of Maxwell is can be bought from Amazon for peanuts.

Oh, gosh, horrible thought, perhaps the big man will be after me from the grave. Is their any lawyer out there who can tell me whether ghosts can sue for libel!

Captain Bob is still up to his tricks, folks. His ghost is rewriting the first draft of history. Just look at his entry in Wikipedia. He is ‘alleged’ to have stolen money from the Daily Mirror pension fund.  Mr Justice Forbes criticised some aspects of the first Board of Trade Inquiry. No  mention of the second BoT inquiry or the Hartley Shawcross Takeover Panel. No mention of the fact that even his wife,  Betty Maxwell, in her book written after his death, admitted he was a crook.

Wikipedia says the share price of his company collapsed after his death. Implication that it was because the brilliant Maxwell was no longer at the helm.

No mention of the FACT that the share price collapsed on the second day because there was no money left to repay the huge loans to the bankers. And worse there was no money to repay the £500 million borrowed from the Daily Mirror pension fund.

Then the conspiracy theories. Was he pushed off his yacht by the one of the secret services?

Reading this you would never realise that there is absolutely no doubt that Maxwell was one of the biggest swindlers in British financial history.

And sadly no mention of the facts uncovered over the years by a few journalists. We were not a conspiracy.

I was first on the trail, driven by curiosity. When I first met him in 1964, I thought he was brilliant and was writing what I expected to be a profile of new star of publishing. I followed him for about seven years, then went into teaching. Godfrey Hodgson and Bruce Page of the Sunday Times Insight team joined in on that phase. And then went on to other things.

We all thought that after the devastating report of the BoT enquiry he would never again be trusted with a public company.

But in a few years he was the boss of an even bigger empire.  In those years the only journalist following him was Tom Bower, an ex-BBC man who first met Maxwell when he was doing a Panorama profile. In the final phase Andreas Whittam Smith and his men at The Independent joined in. And in the final weeks just before his death a young woman from The Financial Times joined in. (probably Bronwen Maddox). She did some notable digging.

All of us were experienced business journalists. For another view of Maxwell turn to Stephen Bates, Guardian journalist, who has made his name mostly by writing about religion and the Royal Family.  There is a very funny and revealing story by him on  the gentlemanranters website. It is about the day he was sent in his first job, as a cub reporter on the Oxford Mail, to interview Maxwell.

The biggest omission on the Wikipedia web site, is a paragraph referring readers to the latest edition of Bower’s book, Maxwell: The Final Verdict. It tells the full story of Maxwell is can be bought from Amazon for peanuts.

Oh, gosh, horrible thought, perhaps the big man will be after me from the grave. Is their any lawyer out there who can tell me whether ghosts can sue for libel!

Captain Bob is still up to his tricks, folks. His ghost is rewriting the first draft of history. Just look at his entry in Wikipedia. He is ‘alleged’ to have stolen money from the Daily Mirror pension fund.  Mr Justice Forbes criticised some aspects of the first Board of Trade Inquiry. No  mention of the second BoT inquiry or the Hartley Shawcross Takeover Panel. No mention of the fact that even his wife,  Betty Maxwell, in her book written after his death, admitted he was a crook.

Wikipedia says the share price of his company collapsed after his death. Implication that it was because the brilliant Maxwell was no longer at the helm.

No mention of the FACT that the share price collapsed on the second day because there was no money left to repay the huge loans to the bankers. And worse there was no money to repay the £500 million borrowed from the Daily Mirror pension fund.

Then the conspiracy theories. Was he pushed off his yacht by the one of the secret services?

Reading this you would never realise that there is absolutely no doubt that Maxwell was one of the biggest swindlers in British financial history.

And sadly no mention of the facts uncovered over the years by a few journalists. We were not a conspiracy.

I was first on the trail, driven by curiosity. When I first met him in 1964, I thought he was brilliant and was writing what I expected to be a profile of new star of publishing. I followed him for about seven years, then went into teaching. Godfrey Hodgson and Bruce Page of the Sunday Times Insight team joined in on that phase. And then went on to other things.

We all thought that after the devastating report of the BoT enquiry he would never again be trusted with a public company.

But in a few years he was the boss of an even bigger empire.  In those years the only journalist following him was Tom Bower, an ex-BBC man who first met Maxwell when he was doing a Panorama profile. In the final phase Andreas Whittam Smith and his men at The Independent joined in. And in the final weeks just before his death a young woman from The Financial Times joined in. (probably Bronwen Maddox). She did some notable digging.

All of us were experienced business journalists. For another view of Maxwell turn to Stephen Bates, Guardian journalist, who has made his name mostly by writing about religion and the Royal Family.  There is a very funny and revealing story by him on  the gentlemanranters website. It is about the day he was sent in his first job, as a cub reporter on the Oxford Mail, to interview Maxwell.

The biggest omission on the Wikipedia web site, is a paragraph referring readers to the latest edition of Bower’s book, Maxwell: The Final Verdict. It tells the full story of Maxwell is can be bought from Amazon for peanuts.

Oh, gosh, horrible thought, perhaps the big man will be after me from the grave. Is their any lawyer out there who can tell me whether ghosts can sue for libel!

Ed Miliband does not stutter. But he has still not learnt to speak to the hearts of the people. And never was there a time in recent British history when it was a better time for an opposition leader to demonstrate that he cares for the thousands who are protesting on the streets. And the millions who are passionate Labour supporters.

His brother David is no better on this scale.  As I said, in my last blog, if only he could speak like Billy Bragg.

Both Ed and Dave have inherited the reforming zeal of their reformist father. They have also inherited his academic qualities. Although he sent them to Haverstock School, where they made friends with some of the mostly working class pupils, when they stand on the hustings they talk as if they were addressing an Oxbridge seminar.

Oratorical skills can be learnt. Winston Churchill was not a born orator. He learnt the skills. And learnt them late at life. He spent hours rehearsing all those speeches, which still echo down the centuries.

All it needs is a lot of hard work and a gifted teacher. As we all now, because we have watched The King’s Speech, and seen how a stutterer leant how to speak to the people in their hour of need.

The best man to teach him would be Eric Stadlen the best radio tutor I have come across. I have watched him in the studio using very similar tactics to those employed by King George VI’s speech therapist with many students, including not a few Oxbridge educated public schoolboys and girls. What they had to learn to do was to speak heart to heart, not to make a speech, or read a speech, which is a mode most get into when given a microphone.

Eric is, alas, dead.

And, as I write, I remember that even Eric had a few failures. Only a few days ago I came across a very amusing account of one of them on the blog of one of BBC secretaries who was in the studio at the time.

Winston Churchill Jnr, me and ‘The World at One’ « Magnificent Ageing

His name was Winston Churchill, the grandson of the Winston mentioned above. He had been sent to Eric, because he was being considered for radio and tv presenting jobs. Time and time again, Eric sat the secretary down in front of him, and said, ‘Don’t talk to the nation, talk to Penny’.

But Winston just didn’t get it.

But he did get the jobs he wanted. But he was always dropped after a few programmes. He got the job because he had the right name and a good track record as a print journalist. And he was much better looking than his granddad. A blue-eyed blonde god without a weight problem.

But in front of the microphone he was as wooden as when he first sat down in Eric’s BBC studio.

Give it a try, Ed. Don’t rely on the party machine to find experts to coach you. Ring Billy Bragg for starters and get him to sit in when you are next rehearsing an important speech.

The people’s protest movement came to Charmouth this morning. Nobody threw any stones or fire extinguishers. The Dorset police did not even turn up, so no-one was injured by kettleing tactics. True, there were not thousands on The Street, but the library was full to overflowing.

Attendance was helped by the presence of Billy Bragg, who lives in the neighbouring village of Burton Bradstock. He came along with his guitar and sang a few of his songs, including the Battle for Barking, which  celebrates, amongst other events, that day in Cable Street in the 1930’s when London’s east enders took to the streets  to protest against fascism.

He also made a rousing speech, which captivated his audience, quite as much as his songs. If only Ed Miliband, our shadow prime minister, could speak half as well, the national campaign to save public libraries would be un-stoppable.

In his speech, Bragg linked the library protest with the American civil rights movement of the 1950s and with the current student protests over tuition fees.

‘When the government steps back from the brink and our libraries are saved, don’t forget the students, who will still be fighting tuition fees.’

He proclaimed his commitment to a caring society, which enabled poor boys like him, to gain free access to the rich diversity of our culture, books as well as music. And he thanked the post-war Attlee government for providing them, along with free health care via the National Health Act.

In fact, we owe our public libraries, to one William Ewart, a Liberal MP, who introduced the Public Libraries Act in 1850. The Act was only passed after two years of acrimonious debate in committee and on the floor of the House of Commons. Ewart had to face opposition from the Conservatives, but also from several in his own party. The main argument against was that it was taxation without consent.

But for the poor boys of the 1850s libraries were useless, because the vast majority of them could not read and write properly. That was not rectified for another thirty years and it was rectified by the education reforms of Disraeli’s Conservative government, ushering in free schooling.

Both David Cameron and our local MP here, Oliver Letwin profess to be great admirers of Disraeli. Letwin wrote the Conservative manifesto, which spelt out their commitment to a modern day version of compassionate Conservatism, termed the Big Society. But the way they are implementing these cuts is angering, not only non-Conservatives, but bed-rock supporters of their own party. (Most of the crowd this morning were Conservative voters, although the organiser was a Liberal Democrat.)

William Ewart, was not a poor boy, like Nye Bevan. He was educated, like Cameron, Letwin and that other great compassionate Conservative they admire, Harold Macmillan, at Eton and Oxford.

So they should both pop into their local libraries this weekend, take out decent biogs of Disreali and Macmillan, and refresh their memories on what compassionate Conservatism is all about.