Free David Waddington Memoirs by David Waddington

with a gleam in her eye. Harrods, I thought and ‘Harrods!’ I cried to the taxi driver, ‘as fast as you can make it!’ I rushed through the doors and there she was, caught red-handed at the very first counter. ‘Come on, dear. If we rush we can get the twelve noon train to Manchester’; and we did rush and we did catch it. I was very popular with my clerk, less so with my wife.
    But to talk of wives is to jump a long way ahead and to introduce my wife to this narrative I must go back to 1954 or 1955 when I met Hilary Green, daughter of the Alan Green for whom I had campaigned as an undergraduate. I took her out on a few occasions and then one night she asked me to stop the car on the way home because she had something important to tell me. She looked ratherembarrassed so to help her I said: ‘Don’t worry. Let the best man win. Tony’s a very nice chap and I am sure if you marry him he’ll make you very happy.’ She said: ‘It’s not Tony. It’s Norman.’
    When all this became known to the family there were many prophecies of doom, but Hilary would not be told and she duly married Norman, I being best man for no other reason than he didn’t seem to have many friends. Then I had a stroke of luck. One of the bridesmaids was Hilary’s younger sister Gilly. After the reception we went to a show and after the show to a night club – and with one or two ups and downs that was that.

CHAPTER SIX
Marriage and
Nelson & Colne
    G illy was just about to go to Brighton College of Art, and half way through her first term there I went to see her. I had a peacock blue Morris Minor, easily recognisable at a considerable distance; and as I drove towards the front of the college still dressed in the black striped trousers I had been wearing in court that morning I saw Gilly run across the road and beckon me into a nearby side street. I assumed that she was trying to find me a convenient parking space and not the horrible truth that she was scared stiff that her bohemian college friends would see me in all my squareness. In spite of this somewhat inauspicious happening we soon became engaged. I have to confess that this was after Gilly had raised the subject of politics. ‘I could not possibly marry a politician,’ she said. ‘One in the family, my father, is quite enough. I hope you are not thinking of standing again.’ And I told her what I think I then honestly believed – that I had got politics out of my system.
    A month or two later we paid a visit to St Helens which I imagine strengthened Gilly’s views about politics. Mark Carlisle, who was to be my best man, was fighting a by-election there and we went to support him. In the morning we did a bit of desultory canvassing and in the afternoon Mark and his recently acquiredfiancée, Sandra, and Gilly and I set off in a loudspeaker van to look for a crowd. There was nobody about when we got to the St Helens Rugby Club but we parked and awaited events. We heard a distant whistle and a few people began to appear. Mark addressed a few remarks in their general direction which one or two acknowledged with a genial shake of the fist or obscene gesture. Rather more people began to debouch on to the vast concrete area in the middle of which stood our minuscule van; and then the gates were opened and we were engulfed in a veritable tide of humanity. The girls leapt into the van, just in time for it to be picked up off the ground and shaken like a child’s rattle. This was all done in great good humour while somewhere beside, or perhaps in part beneath, the vehicle Mark’s voice could be heard battling against the uproar – ‘Vote Conservative. Vote Carlisle for a better future.’
    Gilly and I were married in Preston Parish Church on 20 December 1958. The venue was chosen for political reasons (Preston South being my father-in-law’s seat). The date was chosen for legal reasons. A honeymoon over the Christmas holiday would lose me the least work. We went to Sicily and