Understanding defeats is vital if we are to avoid repeating them

The Paul Richards column

When the 9th April came along this week, I had a nagging feeling the date had some significance. It struck me that instead of forgetting a birthday or wedding anniversary, it was the date of polling day in the 1992 general election.

The 1992 election was a searing experience for anyone who was directly involved. I was the Labour Party’s researcher on environmental policy. Once the election had been called the shadow cabinet’s advisers were relocated to election HQ in Walworth Road. We were placed in a basement room which had been used to store boxes of policy documents and rolls of posters. The desks and chairs still had plastic wrappers on them. Walworth Road was a warren of corridors and offices, entirely unsuited to running an election campaign, but great for plots, cabals and miscommunication. You could smoke cigarettes on window ledges and in stairwells, and the carpets were covered in cigarette burns. John Smith’s economics team was in the building next door. There was no internet, no email, and few mobile phones.

The glamorous end of the campaign was on the leader’s tour, or taking part in the daily news conferences with Neil Kinnock, Bryan Gould, Robin Cook, or the other stars of the campaign. This was not my election. My election was spent in the basement, smoking endless fags, watching other teams rolling out their clever election press stunts. Labour had one press event planned on the environment. It was removed from the grid during the fiasco of Jennifer’s Ear, and never reappeared. I seem to remember taking the odd call from Patricia Hewitt from the leader’s office, and doing a briefing note on the environmental quality of Britain’s beaches for Kinnock ahead of a trip to Blackpool. Other than that, my policy area was the dog that failed to bark in 1992.

We were let out for treats. A video link-up at 4 Millbank was arranged to allow London campaign staff to watch the Sheffield Rally live. I can remember the sound of people sucking their teeth when Kinnock did his now-famous ‘We’re Alright’ call and response with the crowd. But I also remember John Cole comparing it to the Kennedy rallies in 1960, and Barbara Castle comparing Kinnock to Nye Bevan, and everyone agreeing the event was a triumph.

On the Tuesday of polling week, they let us out to campaign. I headed for Baron’s Court in West London and met the voters for the first time in the election; it was obvious they weren’t going to vote Labour. They considered us too extreme, too in thrall to the unions, too likely to raise their taxes and curb their freedoms. They didn’t like Neil Kinnock or Roy Hattersley. They still admired Margaret Thatcher.

The Labour election night party was at 4 Millbank, with a room full of unopened champagne and Ben Elton. It was clear very early that Labour had lost. We were dispatched to the steps of Walworth Road in the early hours to wait for Neil and Glenys Kinnock to return from South Wales and throw in the towel. I got a taxi home in the early morning sunshine, dropping off a friend Liza Vizard on the way, and went to my flat and cried my eyes out.

I don’t think it was merely my youth and inexperience that made that defeat so searing. It was the solid belief that after the recessions, the miners’ strike, the three million unemployed, the poll tax, and Margaret Thatcher, people would want to vote for something else. A young generation of Labour activists believed we would win this time, and to lose was so much more difficult to understand. I stood in the shadow cabinet room in Parliament a few days later to watch Neil Kinnock resign as Leader of the party. He walked past me on the way out, and all I could think of to say was ‘well done’ which seems barely adequate.

I re-read The Absence of War by David Hare recently. It’s his dramatic take on the 1992 campaign, and starred John Thaw at the National as the Kinnock-like character. Hare was allowed access to the inner sanctum of the Labour campaign. He also published a companion book Asking Around which includes his notes of conversations during the campaign with the likes of Neil Stewart. Both books are worth reading if you want to understand the mechanics of that election.

Five years later, Labour won a staggering landslide election with a popular young leader and a credible political programme. From defeat came the realisation that Labour must become New to stand a chance of winning the support of those who voted Tory. New Labour was born on the steps of Walworth Road in the early hours of 10th April 21 years ago, in the minds of those of us who recognised that modernisation of the Labour Party must be fundamental and lasting, not cosmetic. We should always celebrate our victories, as we will when 1st May comes round. But understanding the defeats is vital if we are to avoid repeating them.