Written by Peter Bingle, Chairman, Bell Pottinger Public AffairsI spent a very pleasant few hours on Saturday afternoon at a barbeque at the offices of Battersea Labour Party in Lavender Hill. I was there to say a few words to celebrate Cllr Tony Belton’s forty years of service on Wandsworth. I have mused before about Tony Belton. It is one of life’s mysteries why he never moved onto the national political stage. Westminster’s loss has been Wandsworth’s gain.
I was uncertain how my attendance would be received by members of Battersea Labour Party. It is fair to say that in my youth I was not as loved or as lovable as is nowadays the case. Wandsworth in the 1980s was a battle-ground between the forces of the right and the left. It was bloody. There were death threats and I had to receive on a few occasions police protection. It is also the case that you do and say things when you are in your early twenties that you would not in your fifties!
I therefore descended the steps at 177 Lavender Hill with some trepidation. I need not have worried. Everybody was very friendly and I was made to feel very much at home. Let me repeat that – I was made to feel very much at home. I left three hours later having had a really good time.
There were three speeches. I went first followed by Shadow Justice Secretary and Tooting MP Sadiq Khan. I reminded the younger members of what Wandsworth was like in the 1980s. Wandsworth was a marginal council and the Labour Party should have won back control in 1986. The party is now condemned to eternal opposition. Most of my speech, however, was a paean of praise to Tony. This is a man of exceptional political talent who was once an opponent and who is now a friend. Judging by the comments afterwards the speech went down well. Lots of the younger members wanted to know what Wandsworth was like in the 1980s. I am not sure they entirely believed when I told them.
Tony and I have one political trait in common. We have often been more popular with our political opponents than with our own party. Perhaps we find the constraints of party loyalty a little too difficult to bear. As Tony said in his speech he makes no apologies (and never has) for always trying to be constructive. As I have mused before he has played a huge role in making Wandsworth what it is today.
It was also a treat to see another good friend at the barbeque. I am now very fond of Fiona Mactaggart. It was not always so. From 1986 to 1990 when we had a majority of just one Fiona and I clashed many times. Yet now we are friends. How can you not like somebody who loves Elgar’s great choral works The Kingdom and The Apostles?
One of the great things about my job is that my political friends come from across the spectrum. Nick Brown and Nigel Griffiths are godfathers to my children. I am equally happy having lunch with Chris Fox, Jonny Oates or John Sharkey as with senior Tory friends. As a youngster I never really believed that Labour and Tory MPs could be close personal friends. How wrong I was. It is one of the joys of politics that my politics have never been a barrier to becoming friends with political opponents. How wonderful …
In 1982 if somebody had told me that I would one day be speaking at a Battersea Labour Party tribute to Tony Belton I would have given them the number to The Priory. Yet I had a really good time on Saturday afternoon in sunny Battersea. I wonder why? Perhaps we all become cuddly and soft as the years advance. Or perhaps we start to understand people’s strengths, attributes and gifts. We are attracted by their positive features. Their politics become less important. Referring to a recent musing it is triumph for being nice.
Does friendship transcend party politics? Does age mellow all of us? Are Sir Edward Elgar’s The Kingdom and The Apostles greater works than The Dream of Gerontius?
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