John Major: The Autobiography

I did suspect that Cardus stretched the truth a little as he fleshed out his affectionate portraits. Were cricketers really such characters, or was their charm enhanced in the poetic eye of a besotted beholder? Even if it was, it didn’t diminish my enjoyment. Cardus, again on Compton, illustrated the point. He once asked two boys why they were not watching the cricket. ‘Because there are no more Denis Comptons,’ he reports them as saying. It is a marvellous tribute to the unique charm of Compton’s batting, but would a small boy really have said that? I doubt it, but when I read it I loved it. And it may have been true.

C.L.R. James’s masterpiece Beyond a Boundary sets out better than anyone before or since how cricket affects character and illustrates the better virtues; it undermined all my prejudices that such a lyrical love of the game should flow from the pen of a committed Marxist

Jim Swanton is the doyen of modern writers although, for reporting the game, he would give the palm to his good friend John Woodcock. Both men have seen much of the greatest cricket played in the last three-quarters of a century. Jonathan Aitken, a great admirer of Swanton, once gave me a set of all the Swanton books I did not already possess, and they are a prized part of my collection.

I have often sat watching cricket with Jim Swanton, and it is an education. His memory is phenomenal: he once said to me of Donald Bradman’s 234 at Lords in 1930, which the Don thought was his greatest innings, ‘He hit the first two balls he received for four; they went …’ Jim stretched out his arm to point ‘towards that advertisement hoarding over there.’

I have found that other old cricketers and cricket watchers have the facility for total recall as well. Alf Gover, the old Surrey and England fast bowler, brought to life a tour of India in the 1930s under the captaincy of Lord Tennyson. Alf was running up to bowl the first ball of the match when a vengeful curry from the night before began to make its presence known. Sensing disaster, he did not deliver the ball when he reached the wicket but, to general astonishment, sprinted past the stumps and straight off the pitch into the pavilion. A few minutes later, as he sat wretchedly in the washroom, Lord Tennyson knocked on the door. ‘Alf,’ he enquired, ‘can we have the ball back please?’

It is difficult to capture the special fascination of cricket. It is unique. It has grace and charm and athleticism. It is unpredictable. It can change the mood of a spectator from lazy contentment to excitement within moments. A game can last up to five days, but the outcome may be uncertain until the end; changing weather conditions can up-end the state of a game. Above all, with occasional lapses, cricket is played with a generosity of spirit that is as refreshing as it is unfashionable. It is, I think, a very English game, that still encapsulates old values.

From the very start, cricket bred characters that the literature of the game has kept alive. Cricket lovers can talk for hours about the virtues of players they never saw, and the greatness of matches long ago. If I ever get to the Elysian Fields I intend to watch Trumper, and Grace, and Ranji, and so many others.

Cricketers are often very modest about their achievements, never realising the admiration they provoke among cricket lovers who do not have their skills. A few years ago, when Harold Larwood, the great old English fast bowler, was awarded his MBE, which was too little for all he did, and too late by several decades, I phoned him up in Australia, where he had lived for many years, to congratulate him. His granddaughter answered the phone but within moments the old man, now blind and frail, was speaking to me. I congratulated him and he thanked me for the award. And then he began to talk not of his exploits, but of his hero, Jack Hobbs, and innings he had played on sticky, treacherous wickets. Harold’s memory was of seventy years earlier, but was as vivid to him as any contemporary event. This was no vainglory, just admiration of another man’s great skill.

Nor is this bashfulness unique to Harold Larwood. I remember being with some former England and Australian international players discussing Bradman’s last Test innings when, to general astonishment, he was bowled for nought second ball by Eric Hollies. Only later when I looked up the match in Wisden, the cricket lover’s bible, did I recall that Arthur Morris, who had taken part in that conversation, scored 196 in that innings. Arthur had not mentioned it.

I would have loved to have been good enough to play cricket at the top level, but the basic skills were never there. I would have improved with practice, but never enough. It often seems to me that top-class sportsmen live their lives upside down. They are at their most famous when young, and end their playing careers at an age when most people in other professions are just beginning to reach positions of influence. Their reward though can be the bliss of fame and fortune and youth together, and the joy of doing something they love supremely well. It is an unbeatable combination, which is why few cricketers I have met ever regret their playing days, even if, for some, life must seem mundane ever after.

Politics is almost a mirror-image of cricket, in that fame and fortune often come with age, and it always surprises me that so few sportsmen carry their fame into public service. Chris Chataway did became a Conservative Minister, Sebastian Coe was a Member of Parliament while I was prime minister, and Colin Cowdrey serves in the House of Lords, but they are comparative rarities.

At school, I found that little was memorable in the classroom. If you worked hard at Rutlish you were encouraged. If you did not, you were ignored, unless you were disruptive; so I retreated to the shadows and stayed there, inconspicuous. Only once was there a price to be paid for not working. At about the age of thirteen or fourteen an opportunity arose for me to sit an entrance examination for Charterhouse. I was keen, but my school was not – only their top academic pupils would sit; they wanted no failures. Nor were my parents happy with the idea: what was wrong with Rutlish? And probably – though they never said so – they were worried about the extra cost a place at a leading public school would entail. I understood this, and the opportunity drifted away.

The years passed forgettably, and I have only sketchy recollections of them. GCE ‘O’ levels in 1959 approached without drama. My parents’ struggle to hide their bad health and poor finances absorbed all their strength, and they did not push me at all. They assumed I would pass my exams as easily as my academic sister had passed her school certificate a decade before. But I had not worked, and I passed only three ‘O’ levels – History, English Language and English Literature.

Although this was self-inflicted failure, there was little reproach from my sick parents. They were, as ever, stoical, but I knew they were hurt and disappointed. They had hoped for so much, and I had achieved so little. I had let them down. And in their hurt I saw with sudden clarity the pleasure it would have brought them if I had produced the results for which they had hoped. It was a moment of deep shame.

I knew I would now have to work harder, but I saw no likelihood of doing this at Rutlish, and went to the headmaster to tell him I was leaving school. He seemed to bear my impending departure with fortitude, and did not object. Nor did he ask whether my parents approved – which was fortunate, since I had not informed them. When I told them later that the headmaster was content for me to leave they did not protest. They had too much else to worry them.

And so Rutlish and I parted around my sixteenth birthday, and I took stock. I had wasted my time at school, and had rarely been happy there. I left with no ambitions, other than a vague wish to go into politics. This had been heightened when I met our local Labour Member of Parliament, Colonel Marcus Lipton, at a church fête. He had talked to me about politics and, seeing my interest, kindly arranged for me to hear a debate in the House of Commons (he probably did not imagine I would turn out to be a Tory).

I fell in love with the House of Commons the first time I saw it, sitting in the gallery watching the committee stage of the 1956 budget. Harold Macmillan, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, briefly came into the Chamber, and after that I knew I wanted to get into the House of Commons, and that I wanted to be chancellor. I could not bear to have other people telling me what would happen to my life – I wanted to make the decisions for myself. I came from a background where you were dependent so much on other people. I wanted to be self-dependent – not just within my own family, my own lifestyle, but self-dependent in helping to determine the sort of life I lived and the sort of country I lived in. That feeling is still there.

My ambition to enter Parliament never wavered, although at the time it seemed an impossible dream. I wrote around for a job, and found one as a clerk at an insurance-broking firm, Price Forbes, near London Bridge. When the interview ended I wasn’t certain of the salary they had offered: was it £250 a year, or £150? Fortunately it was the higher sum, and I was launched into working life.

I bought a suit and opened a bank account. I paid one pound ten shillings a week into the family kitty, and the rest was taken up by travelling expenses, clothes and other routine expenditure. There was nothing left for frivolity. I sallied forth into the world as my father retreated from it.

I can see him now. Thick, overlong grey hair swept back, stern features, shirt and Fair Isle sweater under a tweed jacket, stepping out for the post office as fast as he could, without hesitation, using his walking stick to lever himself upright. He did not stroll – he marched. Near-blind he may have been, but he was devoid of self-pity. He taught me so much: not to be deterred by obstacles, not to give in to fate. For him, triumph and disaster were passing moments, to be enjoyed or endured. When they had gone, he moved on without regret. All this he taught me.

CHAPTER TWO From Brixton to Westminster

THE WORLD OF WORK was a new experience, but I soon realised that insurance broking was not life-enhancing. The rudiments of the profession, however, were simple enough, and I was prepared to accept the boredom of the routine, if there were opportunities to claw my way up the ladder to some serious responsibilities.

It was not to be. Several incidents pointed the way to a new career. When I overhead a senior manager extravagantly praise a thoroughly idle colleague because ‘he comes from a good family’, I wondered whether Price Forbes promoted on merit. If not, I had no chance. That day I was put under the tutelage of a man with a face like a fish and brilliantined blond hair. This was another mark against the company. Finally, on a day when I’d risen at 5 a.m. to study, far from being given worthwhile work to do, I was despatched to the store room to search for files, because ‘You can climb like a monkey, I’m sure!’ It was time to move on, and in any case a new opportunity beckoned, at the mouth-watering salary of £8 a week.

Terry was still making garden ornaments, but he needed capital. When one of his customers, a retired naval officer, Commander David, offered to buy the business, Terry accepted. Commander David wanted a second member of staff, and I joined Terry. I knew very little about garden ornaments, but Terry soon taught me.

In August 1959 we moved from Coldharbour Lane to a flat in a house on the Minet Estate at 80 Burton Road, Brixton. The only other tenants in the house, Bob and Enid, were a newly-married couple in their thirties. We had the basement, the ground floor and a bathroom on the first-floor landing. There was even a small front garden, and life was much improved. As ever, my mother attracted friends with the speed of light.

Working with Terry was fun. We left home early in the morning and cycled to Caldew Street, near Walworth Road, where we had a small workshop. After two hours building up an appetite, a local transport café provided the best breakfasts I’ve ever had. I was the labourer and Terry the craftsman. Years later he wrote a book and, with tongue in cheek, described how garden ornaments were made. It amused the sneering classes no end that a future prime minister had made gnomes, but it was honest, manual work, and I have never been ashamed of it or regretted it.

In 1959 I joined the Young Conservatives after a plump young man named Neville Wallace knocked on my door one evening canvassing for members. My mother had already met Marion Standing, the Brixton Conservative agent, and was all in favour of my joining – but, as politics fascinated me, I needed no urging. It’s entirely probable that my mother asked Marion Standing to send Neville around – but she never admitted it.

The Brixton YCs were then a merry and growing band, and as I had a few friends, I began to bring them in as new members. We took our politics seriously, and worked hard – but we played harder. One of the side effects of enjoying ourselves so much was that we found we had attracted to our number two members of the Dulwich Young Socialists. When this was discovered they admitted their (not very strong) allegiance to socialism, but charmed us by saying our social life was better. As one of them could drive and the other played the guitar quite well, no one cared very much.

We were a very mixed bunch. Tim Bidmead, who was addicted to Nat ‘King’ Cole’s music; Maria, whose father spent the weekends fortifying himself for slating roofs throughout the week; Maureen the artist, who went to Liverpool Art College and married there; Sonia and Ann, two cousins; red-haired Jean, who married her boss; Derek Stone, Clive Jones, the two Alans, Penny, Malcolm, Delphine, Carol, Geoffrey, Margaret – and so many more. At the end of most evenings we adjourned to local pubs and plotted how to change the world. We didn’t fancy being spoon-fed by the state and having our lives directed for us; we wanted doors to be opened so that we could make our own future. We were natural Conservatives.

It was Derek Stone who encouraged me to stand on a soapbox and speak to the passing public outside our association offices and in Brixton marketplace. Derek was married, a little older, and rather more worldly-wise than the rest of us. Engaging and fun, he played the devil’s advocate. ‘Go on, do it. Why not?’ was his creed, and he lived it as well as preached it. He turned up one day with a microphone and a soapbox, and we were off and running. It was fun. No one paid much attention, but no one complained either. It was good training, and taught me a lot about the tolerance of the British.

We canvassed, enrolled new members, helped in political campaigns, held dances and tennis mornings, went on outings, published our own magazine, heckled local Labour MPs and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. An elderly association member was scandalised when she found one of our members straining printers’ ink through her stockings. Girls took off their stockings for one reason only, she thought. She was right: we needed the ink strained.

Meanwhile, in early 1960 Terry married his girlfriend Shirley – a marriage still going strong thirty-nine years later – and moved a few miles south to Thornton Heath; but we continued to work together. My mother’s health was still poor, but she battled on. The YCs were wonderful to her. She loved them all, especially Derek Stone and Clive Jones, later to be my best man, and made our house an open house.

But my father’s body was wearing out and he rarely left his bed, though his mind was clear and active to the very end. He died at home in bed at Burton Road, early in the morning of 27 March 1962. I was eighteen and he was eighty-three, and the bond between youth and age was very strong. He went as the sun rose. I was with him when he died. We knew he was dying and the family had been sitting up, in rota, overnight. I was sitting by his bed holding his hand. It was very peaceful. He was drowsy, half asleep and, I think, his mind had gone on ahead of his body. I did not know the exact moment he died. He was breathing so shallowly I wasn’t sure. I felt the warmth leave his hand. For a man of the theatre, who loved the dramatic, it was a peaceful end. There was no collapse. No last words.

My father, the man who had given me life and love, was dead.

There were family tears and comforting words for my mother, who sat there with her cheeks wet, reliving a lifetime of memories. When I held her she clung on to me as though she would never let go. Then the dreadful rituals began. The doctor came to sign the death certificate. The vicar, J. Franklin Cheyne, a lovely old boy who had interviewed Dad for the parish magazine as ‘one of the characters of the parish’ only days earlier, came to offer solace. Neighbours came and went, the kettle boiled, tea was offered and the surreal atmosphere that follows death settled on the house.

I went for a walk, and to this day I do not know where I went. Life would not be the same, but there was much to do.

I found it hard to come to terms with the finality of death. Dad’s death was the first time in my life that something had happened which I didn’t believe I could put right in the future. It made a reality of what he had often said to me: make of life what you can, and take your chances, because they may never come again.

So far, I had not made much of my life. School – a failure; career – I had none; sport – not good enough; politics – I was only playing at it. I needed a career and qualifications.

I began studying more ‘O’ levels by correspondence course, and left my brother and Commander David to seek out something more promising to do. No sooner had I done so than Mother fell quite ill and, as Terry and Pat were earning more than I would be able to, it was economically sensible for me to be the one to stay at home and care for her.

This I did, but when she was well enough to be left, I found I couldn’t get a job. I was unemployed – unemployable, I feared – from July to December 1963. Years later, when I was prime minister, some Labour Members of Parliament mistakenly claimed that I had never been unemployed. I think it was the Daily Mail which found corroborative evidence to prove that in fact I had. I was young and single, and had a brother and sister who were both in work, but I did get a glimpse of what it must be like as an adult with family responsibilities, unable to find a job. The Labour Party’s intention was to suggest that Conservatives had no experience of unemployment, and didn’t care about the unemployed. I should have taken more note of their tactics; Labour were to do this kind of thing again later, on a much wider front.

I found my situation degrading. I had ambition, but no prospects. I applied for jobs, signed on at the employment exchange, collected the dole, but could find nothing worthwhile. I was willing to lower my sights until I’d passed more examinations, but even that failed: I was turned down as a bus conductor because I was too tall. Eventually, just before Christmas 1963, I gratefully accepted a job offer from the London Electricity Board, and went to work at their offices at the Elephant and Castle.

It was a cheerful, happy place, with a cosmopolitan staff, but the routine was mind-numbing, and I was only to remain there for eighteen months. I asked if I could work four days a week and study on the fifth (with an appropriate pay reduction), but this was refused. The LEB did not provide me with a career, but it was an important staging post in building up my self-belief that I could do better.

Politics continued to fascinate me, and in the spring of 1964, when I had just turned twenty-one, I contested my first election for Lambeth Council. Larkhall was a hopeless ward for the Conservatives, but I fought it as if it were a marginal, canvassing for support at every spare moment. I lost heavily – they might as well have counted my votes and weighed the Labour votes – but the experience whetted my appetite. The count at Lambeth Town Hall was hugely exciting, crammed with joyful people in red rosettes and resigned good losers in blue. Labour seemed impregnable in Lambeth in 1964, but that was soon to change. Not, however, at the general election in October that year, when Harold Wilson narrowly defeated Sir Alec Douglas-Home and Labour squeaked back into government after thirteen years in opposition. In Brixton, Marcus Lipton, the sitting Labour Member, comfortably saw off Ken Payne, the Conservative candidate. I worked hard for Ken, who warmly encouraged my own ambitions and offered to help me find a better job, but the result was never in doubt. Ken would have made a good Member of Parliament, but sadly he was never to get there, and comforted himself with a distinguished career in local government.

After my own diversion into local elections, I thought long and hard about my future. Politics beckoned more each day, but I knew that if I were to have a good chance of being selected as a Conservative candidate for Parliament, I had to obtain a professional qualification as well as a political profile. The profile was coming along quite nicely, but the career not at all. I could not now go to university, since I had no entry qualifications and no means of support even if I got there. I could not become articled to the law or chartered accountancy, since neither would provide any income for years.

It was going to have to be evening classes – which would wreck political activities – or a correspondence course which would wreck my sleep. That choice was easy. I could not give up politics. But what to study? Accountancy? Possibly. Insurance? No. Banking? Yes. I settled for banking, because it offered more choices of employment, the chance of travel, promotion (I hoped) on merit, and I could study at home.

I joined District Bank in May 1965, at the magnificent salary of £790 a year. I began studying immediately, rising each morning at 4.30 or 5 a.m., when the mind is uncluttered and the brain fresh. To this day I follow that pattern if I have something taxing to get through. For the first time in my life I enjoyed the process of learning, and I widened my reading as well. I studied in the morning, worked at the bank by day, enjoyed my politics in the evening, and read late into the night. Within sixteen months I comfortably passed the five papers of Part One of the Banking Diploma. It was tremendously exhilarating to feel I was getting somewhere.

I began to receive invitations to speak at Conservative meetings in and around London, and accepted every one I could. The audience was often small, but the experience was invaluable. The Young Conservatives in Lambeth used to play a game, challenging each other to speak for a minute on a subject suggested at random. I acquired habits then which remain with me still. I would go to the Minet Library in Brixton and research the subject, then scribble the facts I wanted to use on a piece of paper, jumbling them up in little circles until an argument developed in my mind.

I have always been able to soak up a lot of detail and recall it without difficulty – show me a page of figures and I can remember them. While I have never found it easy to win an unexpected argument, I discovered very early on that when I was buttressed by knowledge I didn’t lose. I operate by knowing the facts better than the other person, so that I am confident in what I say. I felt uneasy with flowery froth and idle oratory. I couldn’t deliver a speech that, when looked at in the cold light of early morning, meant nothing. I needed to have my feet on firmer ground. I can overcome this instinctive caution if I have direct contact with an audience, such as I got speaking on the soapbox or – on occasion – in the House of Commons. But often I needed to be provoked, to have my back against the wall, to give my best performances.

The hardest parts of a speech are the first and last paragraphs. When writing a speech you can start anywhere – even with the conclusion. I used to turn over the points I wanted to make until they formed a pattern, and then the rest would fall into place. That’s why I find it hard to read speeches written by others. As those who have worked with me know, I could be hell to be with before a big speech, marching around and overreacting – mental preparation for the event. When I was prime minister my staff would often be in despair because they had produced a beautifully written speech that I would move all around because they weren’t my words.