The Political Terrance Dicks
Terrance Dicks was an "elder statesman" of Doctor Who, and my tribute can be seen here.
http://tonymusings.blogspot.com/2019/09/rip-terrance-dicks.html
In this blog, however, I'd like to tease out his politics, which he kept very much to himself.
Paul Cornell describes Terrance Dicks, in the latest edition of Doctor Who Magazine, as being probably giving the impression of being “a particular kind of liberal / small “c”, conservative”, but he doubted if that was wholly true, as Dicks was close friends with Malcolm Hulke, who had been at times a member of the Communist Party, and certainly had a strong feeling for social justice in his Doctor Who scripts.
But perhaps we can do better! In his book “Uproar in the House”, he takes a historical romp through 700 hundred years of history, followed by nice pen sketches of how Parliament works behind the scenes of the House of Commons.
It’s a great book, and also boasts an introduction by the Right Honourable Bernard Weatherill,
Speaker of the House of Commons 1983-1992! Lord Weatherill says:
“There is no shortage of learned books on Parliamentary procedure and many politicians some famous and others less so have written about their personal experiences. What I like about this book is that it gives the facts in a light-hearted and accessible manner. It explains the passage of a Bill through both Houses until it receives royal assent (still given in Norman French "La Refine le veult"!) and becomes an Act of Parliament. It outlines the duties of the Party Whips and what a Three Line Whip actually means. It defines the role and the responsibilities of the Speaker and, incidentally, it clearly demonstrates that behaviour in the House of Commons today is infinitely better than it was in days gone by!”
He commends it, saying that “The sprinkling of Richard Robinson's illuminating and amusing cartoons and sketches, plus Terrance Dicks's easy to read style, make this a most enjoyable book to read - I thoroughly recommend it.”
So let’s dip into it, and see what we make of the political Terrance Dicks!
The Politics of the Victorian Age
Looking at Waterloo and its aftermath, Terrance notes:
“After the victory at Waterloo, Britain became the leading power in Europe. With her growing Empire, she was soon to dominate the world. Back home however, there were problems, not solved by the war but simply postponed, which just had to be faced. With the Industrial Revolution came the emergence of a powerful new middle class. The lives of the poor were affected too. People were moving from country villages to big towns. Factory workers' living conditions, both at work and at home, were often shockingly bad.”
And he has this to say about the push back against reform:
“Britain had been at war, on and off, for 22 years. As always in war-time, authoritarian attitudes had hardened. Reformers had been treated like revolutionaries, and any opposition to the Government was seen as treason.”
He points out the need for reform – note the “ordinary man” and his place in the scheme of things:
“Both Whigs and Tories still only represented people with money and land - neither side was in favour of anything so extreme as giving the ordinary man a vote and as for women ... Nevertherless, the Reform Bill had huge symbolic importance. By responding, even in a limited way, to public pressure, the king, Parliament and the Lords had given the reformers enough hope to prevent a violent revolution. The pot was still bubbling away - but at least the Government had stopped trying to sit on the lid. (They'd seen what that led to in France.)”
I think the passage on Parliamentary reform and the acts that followed is very telling. Terrance has no sympathy for the industrialists who ran things, and the poor way they treated their workers:
“The new Parliament began a series of much-needed reforms. Slavery was finally abolished in British colonies, not before time. A number of Factory Acts were passed. Children weren't allowed to work in factories until they were at least nine years old, and even then they weren't allowed to work more than nine hours a day.
These and other liberal regulations annoyed the newly-rich manufacturing magnates no end. How could they be expected to make a decent profit if they weren't allowed to grind the faces of the poor?”
And tellingly, he adds: “It's an attitude that hasn't entirely disappeared ...”
Again he makes a comparison between the present day – when this was written, Margaret Thatcher had fallen from grace, and John Major had just secured a general election:
“The Chartists were an early working class movement that had grown up out of hard times. They complained that they were bowed down under taxes and that workmen were starving. 'Capital brings no reward, the workhouse is full and the factory deserted.' (Sounds all too familiar, doesn't it?) The Chartists had over 100 branches and their meetings drew huge crowds. They took their name from their demand for a `People's Charter'. (Must be where John Major got the idea.) They demanded votes for everyone (well, men anyway), a secret ballot, equal-sized electoral districts, wages for MPs, the abolition of the property qualifications for MPs and voters, and general elections every year.
Today all these rights, except for the last one, are taken for granted. At the time they were seen as madly revolutionary ideas.”
But he sees extreme movements to force change using violent ends as bad:
“The Chartists presented giant petitions to Parliament, all of which were turned down. Most Chartists were moderates who wanted to work through Parliament. When all their attempts failed, certain extremists began talking about `wading to freedom through rivers of blood'.”
Robert Peel comes across as a reforming Prime Minister:
“Although the Chartists didn't get far with their petitions, Peel's government did put through a number of important reforms. These included the Mines Act, another Factory Act, and the first Public Health Act. Most important of all, in 1846 Peel reformed the Corn Laws, which had penalised the poor by keeping the price of wheat, and therefore bread, artificially high.”
And he explains how the repeal of the Corn Laws had split the Tory party into `Peelites', Peel's loyal supporters, and Protectionists, led by the up and coming Disraeli”, so that the Protectionist Tories became the Conservatiove pary, while the mixture of Peelites and Whigs became Liberals.
A Victorian Titan or Rascal?
Lord Palmerston, who is cited as one of the “The Victorians: Twelve Titans who Forged Britain” in Jacob Rees-Mogg’s book published this year, does not get such a good press by Terrances, described as “Bold Bad Pam”, and he notes that:
“Palmerston was a sort of hangover from the more dashing days of the eighteenth century. Although a Liberal, Pam believed in an aggressive foreign policy, vigorously defending British interests all over the world.
Any hint of trouble from stroppy foreigners and Pam would bellow, 'Send a gunboat!' If the crafty foreigners were unsporting enough to be land-locked, he would send a military expeditionary force instead.”
I cannot help thinking about the bombastic Marshall and his "shoot to kill" attitude in the Dr Who story "The Mutants", one which portrays the downside of Empire, and how ill-treated the stroppy foreigners are in that story.
Clearly, although Dicks notes that “all this red-blooded John Bull patriotism went down a bomb with the Great British Public”, he does not approve of those tactics! He also notices Palmerston’s fondness for wine, women and song.”
“What really put the lid on it was his alleged attack on one of her Ladies in waiting, carried out, shock, horror, in the royal residence of Windsor Castle itself. Pam's version of events was that one of the ladies in waiting was eagerly awaiting his late-night visit. Slightly fuddled by the after-dinner port, he'd found himself in the wrong bedroom. Could have happened to anybody but as far as Victoria was concerned it was attempted rape. Prince Albert didn't believe Palmerston's story either. According to him, Palmerston 'would have consummated his fiendish scheme by violence, had not the miraculous efforts of his victim and such assistance attracted by her screams saved her”
It was all “hushed up”!
There’s also a wonderful pen sketch of him in later life:
“Pam was still making passes at the ladies well into his eighties. His other appetites were pretty powerful as well. At a Parliamentary dinner the amazed Speaker of the House watched Pam tuck into turtle soup, cod with oyster sauce, pate, two entrees, roast mutton, ham and pheasant .
..Today's tabloids would have really loved Pam.”
The Politics of the Early Post-War Years
Moving ahead, and I am skipping lots of very nice and vivid pen-sketches of politicians and happenings in Parliament, I come to the early post war years. The Attlee government went for nationalisation of industries, but Terrance Dicks takes a more sceptical view of the outcome:
“No doubt about it, nationalisation was a noble ideal. From now on, vital industries and services would be run not just for commercial profit but by, and for the benefit of, the people. At least, that was the idea. In practice it didn't always work out. For some strange reason, people with a job for life in a massive state-owned organisation didn't seem to work quite as hard as people running their own businesses and hoping to get rich on the proceeds.”
So while he may be enthusiastic for social reforms, he’s less keen on bureaucratic reforms. And clearly, as the strikes in nationalised industries showed, it didn’t make a lot of difference. A nationalised industry, after all, is not like a Co-Operative, where everyone in the business has a share in the business and its proceeds. He doesn’t mention British Leland, but it was probably not far from his mind!
However he does have fulsome praise for the NHS:
“One Labour idea that really was worthwhile was the provision of free medical care for everyone. Attlee's Health Minister was Aneurin Bevan, known as Nye, a Welsh orator in the Lloyd George tradition. His 1946 National Health Act made medical treatment, drugs, dentures, spectacles and hospitalisation completely free. Financial considerations eventually interfered with this high ideal. A completely free service proved too expensive to run, and over the years charges were introduced for drug prescriptions, spectacles and dental treatment.
But the important concept of free medical treatment no doctor's bills remains to this day.”
He covers the good points of the Attlee government - increased benefits in old age and sickness, and the replacement of the Poor Law with State Assistance, and he has some interesting things to say about the Tory establishment.
“The Tory establishment reeled under the impact of all this left-wing legislation and made dire prophecies about a Russian-style Communist dictatorship though the mild-mannered pipe-smoking Clem Attlee made an unlikely tyrant.”
But he’s not against all Conservatives. When we come to Harold Macmillan, it is very clear this is a kind of Conservatism that Terrance likes:
“
Macmillan was a Tory moderate with a genuine concern for the welfare of ordinary people. He hated unemployment, and fought hard for full employment throughout his career. Attlee once described him as 'the most radical man I've known in politics. If it hadn't been for the war he'd have joined the Labour Party. If that had happened, Macmillan would have been Labour's Prime Minister, not me.'”
Notice the language – “Tory moderate”. And he also has some rather harsh things to say about the Labour party:
“
The Labour Party meanwhile were fighting each other instead of the Tories. When Attlee retired, there was a bitter struggle for the premiership. The main contenders were Aneurin Bevan from the old working-class Labour left and Hugh Gaitskell, a university lecturer, who represented the more moderate middle-class elements in the party. Gaitskell won, becoming party leader in 1955.... Some people said the Labour Party was modernising, becoming a party of government. Others, on the far left, said it was selling out and losing its soul.”
It’s not clear at this point where his own political sympathies lay, although the ready by now probably thinks it would probably be Gaitskell, as the next section, on Wilson and Heath, is called “Middle of the Road”:
“It's interesting to note that by now the policies of the two parties weren't really all that different. Labour was less keen on nationalising everything in sight, and its links with the trade unions were weakening. The Tories had accepted most of Labour's `welfare state' policies, and accepted the need for at least some Government control of the economy.”
I imagine he’d see Tony Blair and David Cameron very much a repeat of that.
The Age of Thatcher
While he mentions Margaret Thatcher’s legislation against the Unions, he says very little in praise of it, and notes simply that: “She forced the trade unions to accept secret ballots to elect officials and to authorise strikes, and she banned secondary picketing one union picketing in support of another.” It is notable how little is said of what he thinks of all this.
But this passage on “The Price of Success” is very telling:
“Government determination to hold down inflation and to cut expenditure was not without painful consequences. Inflation fell to 8 per cent but unemployment rose to over three million – the highest figure since the Great Depression of the '30s.
The gap between rich and poor widened and there were riots in London, Liverpool and other cities. On the other hand productivity rose faster than in any other country in Europe. Mrs Thatcher's insistence on freezing social service expenditure and increasing defence spending came near to causing revolt in her own Cabinet but no one dared to speak out.”
That’s hardly enthusiasm for Maggie’s policies, and his description of “Tebbit the Terrible” clearly shows he was not at all in favour of Thatcherite policies:
“Tebbit enjoyed intimidating the opposition,
a task in which he was aided by fierce, skull-like features which gave him a rather frightening look like Dracula on a bad day. Since his constituency was in Essex, he was also referred to as 'The Ching ford Skinhead'. A Thatcherite to the core, Tebbit advised anyone who was unemployed to 'Get on your bike' - and look for another job. He opposed the trade union principle of the closed shop, calling his opponents 'red fascists!'”
He also gives a typical piece of Tebbit rhetoric to illustrate this:
“In 1990 he supported Maggie's BBC-bashing with a typical piece of Tebbit oratory. The word "Conservative" is now used by the BBC as a portmanteau word of abuse for anyone whose political views differ from the insufferable, smug, sanctimonious, naive, guilt-ridden, wet, pink orthodoxy of that sunset home of that third-rate decade the 1960s.' The old polecat could still snap. Tebbit stayed on to support the Tories in the 1992 election before retiring leaving the Commons a duller, if politer and quieter, place.”
It’s interesting to reflect on the discussion about the need to moderate language in Parliament, when back in the 1980s, Norman Tebbit was certainly not holding back!
The Failure of Labour
It is interesting when we come to look at what was happening during this time with the Labour Party, that the language is again telling – “moderates” against “left wing militants”:
“Under Michael Foot's leadership, the Labour Party was still divided in defeat.
There was a continuing struggle between moderates and such left-wing militants as Tony Benn. Four former Labour Cabinet members, Roy Jenkins, David Owen, William Rodgers and Shirley Williams, resigned to form a new centrist party, the Social Democrats or SDP, hoping to appeal to middle-of-the-road voters disenchanted with both Labour and Conservatives. The new party gained an impressive number of seats in by-elections, eventually achieving 28 MPs. They later formed an alliance with David Steel's 12-strong Liberal Party.”
It is clear where his sympathies lie – notice how the new party gained “an impressive number of seats”. It really wasn’t that much, but if you supported the SDP, and wanted something more moderate, it would have seemed that way.
The Falklands gave Margaret Thatcher the boost she needed, and the Labour party was clearly down in the doldrums:
“The Labour Party seemed completely demoralised. Its 1983 election manifesto was described as 'the longest suicide note in history' - by Gerald Kaufman, who was on their own side!”
The Miners' Fight
In the miners’ fight, Maggie is “unyielding” but it is not clear how much “militant” Scargill is also to blame for the suffering caused. The note that “the unions were tamed at last” seems to suggest that they had been out of control – not a good thing.
“When the Government planned to cut subsidies to the still-struggling coal industry, militant miners' leader Arthur Scargill ordered a strike. It dragged on for 11 weary months, causing great suffering to miners and their families. Maggie was unyielding - and she'd taken care that there were ample stocks of coal. The miners surrendered, going back to work with nothing to show for the strike. It seemed that the trade unions were tamed at last. 1985 showed the lowest number of strikes for 50 years, and trade union membership has been falling year by year ever since 1979 ...”
Neil Kinnock
When it comes to Labour, and again a “more centrist” leader against “Loony lefties”, it is clear that Terrance is very much in favour of a centre-left kind of politics:
“The Labour Party had been in opposition for so long now it was starting to look permanent. In a desperate attempt to buck themselves up they changed leaders once again, replacing the leftist Michael Foot with the more centrist Neil Kinnock, an eloquent (some said windy) Welshman in the Lloyd George tradition. Engaging and affable, Kinnock worked hard to pull things together, striving for a modern middle-of-the-road Labour Party, led by men in respectable dark suits. (So much for Keir Hardie's cloth cap and brass band ...)”
“Likeable as he was, Kinnock knew how to be ruthless. He cracked down hard on the `Loony Lefties' in the party, whom he saw as making the party unelectable. Meanwhile the SDP-Liberal Alliance trundled on. After a surprisingly promising start its members were already squabbling amongst themselves. The Alliance was eventually to split up.”
Thatcher’s Downfall.
One of the key elements in Margaret Thatcher’s downfall was the “poll tax”, which Terrance describes as “as being easy on the rich and hard on the poor.” The way in which it was introduced also suggests it did not have widespread support.
“Suddenly Maggie ran into an unexpected setback. The 1988 Local Government Finance Act was intended to replace the old `rates' the local government tax paid by all property owners. The plan was to substitute a `poll tax' paid by everyone, property-owning or not, between the ages of 18 and 65. (Maggie is said to have bulldozed this scheme through her extremely unenthusiastic Cabinet.) The whole thing sounds fair enough in theory but in practice it was a political time bomb. People saw the new law as being easy on the rich and hard on the poor. There was a storm of civil - and sometimes very uncivil protest.”
But the other fact was world recession, and here we have a very bleak picture of the early 1990s, a country which is in a mess, and I think the most telling sentence is the last one:
“By now a world recession was beginning to bite. People who'd bought their own homes could no longer afford to pay the mortgage. Lots of those small businesses people had been encouraged to start were collapsing into bankruptcy. Crime statistics were rising all the time. Inflation was down but unemployment was way, way up. Hospital wards and even hospitals were closing. The rich might be getting richer but the poor were definitely getting poorer. Homeless people were living in cardboard boxes and for the first time in 100 years beggars became a common sight on the streets of London and other big cities.”
And in conclusion....
There’s a strong sense in the way Terrance Dicks interprets British politics in seeing that we live in an unjust world, but the best politicians are those who strive to make it a fairer place. In that respect, his political heroes seem to be politicians like Sir Robert Peel, Clement Attlee, Harold Macmillan, Neil Kinnock – these are what might be described as “moderate centrists”.
Reforms that improve the lot of ordinary people, whether electoral or social, are very much praised, but the more top down managerial nationalisation is not. Of course Doctor Who was always coming up against managerial bureaucrats during the Letts / Dicks era of Doctor Who, and they are almost always pilloried in one way or another!
There’s certainly a dislike of extremism, whether it comes from Thatcher’s Conservatism and the right, or the “Militant Left” in Labour. Norman Tebbit is probably the only politician in the post-war era to really be attacked, it has to be said, rather ruthlessly, although to great comic effect.
Hulke's own "Invasion of the Dinosaurs" is all about extremist destroying good ends, and in the DVD commentary, Dick's comments on how there is something wrong about people who know they are always right, and how Hulke was almost criticising some of his old Communist roots.
But the militant left kept Labour out of power for over a decade, so there are rather more comments on Thatcher’s Conservative policies, and how they were bad for poor people. I couldn’t help thinking of the Peladon stories, that changes in a society need to be the kind that everyone benefits from, not just a privileged few.
And that brings us to that justifiably condemnatory sentence: “. Homeless people were living in cardboard boxes and for the first time in 100 years beggars became a common sight on the streets of London and other big cities”
So there’s no hard and fast left / right, but as with Charles Dickens, there is a keen sense of where injustice is in society, and how it is wrong and needs reforms. There’s a way in which the present becomes a lens for the past, so that we see how the demands of “ordinary people” which were thought to be exceptional, actually now have come to pass, but there is also a reflection back on how some of those improvements have been lost, and can so easily be lost.
Postscript:
There's a lot of wry humour, and I seem to detect something of the influence of "Yes Minister". Nowhere is this clearer than the very wide ranging look at why people go into politics:
"When you consider that many MPs hold down other jobs as well, it's a wonder they survive not to mention their marriages. Cabinet Ministers and the PM, of course, work even harder. Enormous stamina is needed."
"Why do people do it? Power? Ambition? Publicity? Or even a selfless desire to serve their country? Who knows? Maybe it's all these things - and the sheer thrill of it as well. Lord Randolph Churchill, Winston Churchill's father, an eminent politician and a life-long Parliamentarian, once said, '1 have tried all forms of excitement, from tip-cat to tiger shooting, all degrees of gambling from beggar-my-neighbour to Monte Carlo, but have found no gambling like politics, and no excitement like a big division in the House of Commons. . .'So perhaps that's the answer. Politics is the greatest game and the greatest gamble of them all..."
And one of my favourite pieces has to be about constituency work:
"Friday finishes early so the more far-flung MPs can whizz off to look after their constituencies. An MP's constituency is the place that put him in Parliament, and he'd better not forget it. He will do well to live there, at least some of the time, and he and his wife must make frequent appearances at village fetes and jumble sales. He'll be expected to hold `Constituency Surgeries' where he can meet the public, listen to their grumbles - and try to do something about them. (Even in the House, he must be alert for constituency issues. Voters will expect to read reports of such speeches as: `If this motorway goes ahead, the village green in Little Tittering, in my constituency, will be totally ruined!'"
It's that example about "Little Tittering" that always causes me to chuckle!
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