Now! Then! 2024! - Yorkshire On This Day

Excerpt

Along with the representatives of the other organisations we were transported from Leeds to the television studios in Manchester. On arrival we were directed into a room next to the broadcasting studio. There were drinks and eats laid out on a table and we were told to tuck in. While we were doing this, John Beavan was moving round explaining just what type of questions he would like. He wanted questions that would make it appear that the two MPs were really in opposition to one another. We knew exactly what he meant and we had prepared some questions that would do just that. We were expected to play the game of kidding the viewer. Beavan was really impressed with our suggested questions, which would make it easier for him to engineer a right old ding-dong. What Beavan did not know was that the questions we were going to ask were in our other pocket. When it came to planning to get certain results from a meeting we were a match for him. After a while we were asked to finish our food and to make our way into the studio. We all had to walk past the platform where the two would-be protagonists were already sitting. Healey looked at us and said: “Lord save me from my friends.” I turned and looked him straight in the eyes and replied, “Forgive them, father, for they know exactly what they’re doing.”

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Comment

The BBC provides the date:

On Fridays the House of Commons rises early for the weekend. This gives Members of Parliament a chance to visit their constituencies and to meet the people they represent, to hear their problems, and to answer their questions.
Tonight:
Denis Healey, M.B.E., M.P., Member (Labour) for Leeds, East and Sir Keith Joseph, Bt., M.P., Member (Conservative) for Leeds, North-East answer questions put to them without notice by some of their constituents.
John Beavan is in the chair.

Beavan only became editor of the Herald in 1960: “Beavan was reporter of the Manchester Evening News, becoming its editor in 1943. Between 1946 and 1955, he was London editor of The Guardian. For two years, 1960 to 1962, he was editor of the Daily Herald, then becoming political advisor to the Mirror Group, a post he retained until 1976.”

Harding has another great Denis Healey story:

Later when I was in London working full-time in our print shop one of my jobs was to collect the Sunday papers as soon as they became available. In exceptional cases when I could not get round Fleet Street one place I used to get the papers was at a paper stall in Victoria Station. I had just put my hand on a copy of the Times when another hand tried to take the same paper. We looked at each other; it was Dennis Healey. ‘Ah, Norman Harding, East Leeds Labour Party,’ he said. I knew just what to do. I looked at him for about three or four seconds and then replied: ‘Yes, but who are you?’ The girl on the stall had been waiting to see who would be taking that copy of the Times and to get her money. I got the paper and said goodnight.

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Original

There was a TV programme called Who Goes Home? (which has some kind of significance with the House of Commons: after a session the Speaker calls out, ‘Who goes home?’). The programme was chaired by Bevins who, I think, was the editor of the Daily Herald at the time. It was always clearly stated in the introduction to the programme that it was live and spontaneous. The idea was to have a Labour and a Tory MP from the same area. The audience was made up of representatives from organisations in their constituencies.

One of the series was to come from Leeds; the two MPs were Dennis Healey and Sir Keith Joseph. Just in case any reader does not know who is who, Joseph was the Tory and Healey was Labour, the Rt Hon MP for East Leeds. So obviously East Leeds Constituency Labour Party was invited and we were allocated ten tickets. Councillor Douglas Gabb was the secretary of the East Leeds Labour Party. In his infinite wisdom he distributed all ten tickets to known Trotskyites and supporters. Whether he would have done this if he had known that in the future it might jeopardise his chance to be ‘his most worshipful’ we will never know, but he did it. Ten Trots, asking questions to Dennis Healey, on a live TV programme! We did not have the heart to refuse the invitation.

When it became known in my factory that I was to appear on the television in Who Goes Home? Hives and company told everyone that this was my chance to prove that I was a socialist and supporter of the Soviet Union. To do this I had to ask Joseph and Healey if they were prepared to support the call for a summit conference in the name of world peace. I refused. This call for a world summit conference was all part of the Stalinist policies of ‘peaceful coexistence’ and ‘socialism in one country’ which worked something like this: to safeguard his position in the USSR (where ‘socialism’ was supposedly being built in one country) Stalin was prepared to maintain ‘good relations’ with the capitalist world (peaceful coexistence) by betraying workers’ struggles in the rest of the world, using the various national Communist parties to bring this about. This was the ‘Moscow Line’. So I told them I would support a summit conference if they would have it on the summit of Mount Everest in a snowstorm.

Along with the representatives of the other organisations we were transported from Leeds to the television studios in Manchester. On arrival we were directed into a room next to the broadcasting studio. There were drinks and eats laid out on a table and we were told to tuck in. While we were doing this, Bevins was moving round explaining just what type of questions he would like. He wanted questions that would make it appear that the two MPs were really in opposition to one another. We knew exactly what he meant and we had prepared some questions that would do just that. We were expected to play the game of kidding the viewer. Bevins was really impressed with our suggested questions, which would make it easier for him to engineer a right old ding-dong. What Bevins did not know was that the questions we were going to ask were in our other pocket. When it came to planning to get certain results from a meeting we were a match for him. After a while we were asked to finish our food and to make our way into the studio. We all had to walk past the platform where the two would-be protagonists were already sitting. Healey looked at us and said: ‘Lord save me from my friends’. I turned and looked him straight in the eyes and replied: ‘Forgive them, father, for they know exactly what they’re doing.’ I really do enjoy moments like that. I have been told that I have a sense of humour and eye for the moment. I hope I never lose it.

693 words.

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• Harding, Norman (1929-2013) (3), trade unionist and tenants' leader who worked for the Workers Revolutionary Party whilst in London ·
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