I should begin by declaring that, for 24 years, John Biffen was my pair in the House of Commons. Pairing is the informal parliamentary arrangement whereby an MP of one party agrees with an MP of an opposing party not to vote in a particular division. This normally happens on the less important votes, so that MPs can go to engagements outside parliament. As you might imagine, pairing depends on trust. And in my experience, no MP was more trustworthy than John Biffen.
Biffen’s posthumously published autobiography (prepared for publication by his wife Sarah and enlivened by extensive extracts from his diary) reveals a highly intelligent, witty and honourable man. An MP for 36 years (and in the House of Lords for a further 10 until his death in 2007), John was also, for eight years, a member of Margaret Thatcher’s cabinets.
He was brought up on a farm (without mains water, electricity, or indoor lavatory) deep in rural Somerset. Some of his forbears were agricultural labourers; none were ever squires. His father was a tenant farmer. A clever boy, he progressed from the village school via grammar school to an open scholarship at Jesus College, Cambridge where he got a first class degree in history. In 1961, he won the Oswestry by-election and from then onwards he devoted himself to the House of Commons, though his political advancement was held back by bouts of bipolar disorder, well described in the book.
Initially a Bow Grouper, he became an admirer of Enoch Powell though he was not impressed by Powell’s ‘rivers of blood’ speech. The Biffen I knew was an independently minded Tory radical, with a belief in ‘sound money’ and with a genuine social conscience. Thatcher mistook him for one of her own (in fact he had voted for Willie Whitelaw) and made him chief secretary. She was disappointed when he proved a less enthusiastic cutter of public spending than she had hoped, and moved him first to trade and then appointed him as leader of the House of Commons.
He proved to be one of the best leaders of the house in the 20th century, winning warm approval from government and opposition members alike. However Thatcher was furious when Biffen, in a TV interview, said that the Conservatives needed to fight the next election on ‘balanced ticket’ and predicted (accurately as it turned out) that her premiership would not last throughout the entire period of the next parliament. In his diary, he quoted me as advising him that her position was not so strong that she would sack him and that he should keep going. In the event, she did sack him but not until she had won the 1987 election a year later.
In the forward to the book, Matthew Parris quotes Thatcher’s press secretary Bernard Ingham referring to Biffen as ‘semi-detached’. Ingham meant his remark to be an insult. In fact it was a compliment; his detachment helps explain why John Biffen was such a good floor leader and why he was so admired by MPs of different parties. With considerable courage, he carried the torch in parliament for democratic pluralism. I for one treasure his memory.
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Giles Radice is a member of the House of Lords
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John Biffen: Semi-Detached
BiteBack Publishing | 480pp | £30