Me, unusually shorn, presumably for PR purposes
Answer: They all strangely find their way into one week of my diary.
Quite a week, that first full week of March 1984. Once the decision was made that I’d run for Education & Welfare, the campaign went into overdrive. What could possibly go wrong?
Sunday 4 March 1984
Rose quite early – worked a little – spent afternoon in dark room with Annalisa [de Mercur] etc. Popped over to Bobbie’s in eve.
Monday, 5 March 1984
Busy working on manifesto today – got quite a bit done – constitutional committee in the evening – went over to Bobbies after.
Tuesday, 6 March 1984
Not feeling very well today – worked on manifesto today – almost done – went over to Bobbie’s – really felt ghastly!
Wednesday, 7 March 1984
Worked on manifesto today – covered in German Measles. today. Took it fairly easy.
The reason the manifesto was such a time consuming matter was a decision, taken jointly with my campaign manager, Malcolm Cornelius, to produce both the manifesto and leaflet (known as a supplementary manifesto) using digital technology. I wrote this up several years ago in the following piece, click here or the image link below:
Word processing on a University mainframe in 1984 was a non-trivial matter, believe me. Malcolm, who was pretty geeky back then and possibly remains so, could probably explain in excruciating detail what we had to go through to get that job done. Ask him. Go on, ask him.
I merely remember a lot of trial and error and also remember not feeling at all well throughout the process, probably because I had Rubella, commonly known as German Measles.
Younger readers, please do not berate my parents for failing to have me vaccinated – our generation didn’t have a vaccination for Rubella. What was supposed to happen was that you had the disease as a child and then never got it again because the instance of having the disease effectively vaccinated you. Some of us were careless enough to avoid the disease until the fourth year at University – or even longer in some cases – then get it at an inconvenient time…which for me this unquestionably was.
Thursday, 8 March 1984
Still not very well – spots disappearing – busyish, but took it fairly easy. Finished manifesto etc. Bobbie came over later.
Friday, 9 March 1984
Feeling a bit better today – Bobbie went away – manifesto’s in and supp’s out.– Social Sec election & big appeal over VP internal.
Saturday 10 March still quite tired – has an easy day today – went to Andrea’s party in eve – on to union briefly.
Right, so not only did Bobbie abandon me to run that election…the one I had hoped she’d be running for…but she went away for the weekend ahead of my campaign proper starting. In retrospect I don’t blame her at all, but I do remember feeling a bit miffed at the time.
Although I was a candidate for the following week’s election, I was still Chair of Election Appeals for that week’s election. I sense that the Social Secretary election went smoothly…
…whereas the VP Internal election had some element of hoo-ha attached to it, probably long-since forgotten by all concerned. Hayward Burt won that election and it is just possible that he remembers the hoo-ha.
Ironically, the challenge probably came from the Tories, as Hayward was, in those days, one of the “Liberals with infeasibly strange names”. Hayward now can be found through more Conservative channels. I wonder whether he remembers what the shenanigans were on this occasion. I’ll send this piece to him and ask him.
Update: Hayward Replies…
Thanks for the heads up and the photo (I used to be thin! who knew?)
The controversy rings no bells at all, the result was v close between me and the Labour Club chap and I remember being absolutely knacked with all the door knocking.
“Andrea’s party” on the Saturday will have been Andrea Collins’ (now Woodhouse’s) party. Strangely, a Facebook birthday reminder for Andrea popped up on my FB tab while I was in the process of producing this piece.
Malcolm might have been unusually geeky back then but in many ways we are all geeks now, forty years on.
I’ll send Andrea a “Happy Birthday” message by dint of a link to this piece – Happy Birthday Andrea!
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