The War We Never Fought: The British Establishment's Surrender to Drugs by Peter Hitchens

Author:Peter Hitchens
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: The British Establishment’s Surrender to Drugs, Political Science, General
ISBN: 9781441173317
Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
Published: 2013-01-03T00:00:00+00:00

18

Widdecombe unfair

I must begin this chapter with a tribute to my sometime colleague on the Mail on Sunday, Jonathan Oliver. Mr Oliver, by doing his job diligently and enthusiastically, helped to clarify once and for all that the Conservative Party was on the side of liberalising the drug laws. The events which he recorded took place in Bournemouth in October 2000, when the Tory Party was still seeking a response to the extraordinary hypnotic power of Anthony Blair. Many of its members and supporters still had strong socially and morally conservative instincts – not least because of the Blair government’s keen embrace of political correctness. The then party leader, William Hague, seemed ready to encourage such instincts, to rally his beaten party and perhaps – if successful – to provide it with a distinct response to Blairism. At that time his Shadow Home Secretary, the extraordinary figure of Ann Widdecombe, was widely recognised and admired by many for her uncompromising and unembarrassed readiness to be unfashionable.

But as well as being admired by some, she was despised by others. The Tory Party was at the time said to be divided between ‘Mods’, social liberals, supporters of the former Defence Secretary Michael Portillo, and ‘Rockers’, epitomised by Miss Widdecombe. This was a half-joking reference to youth gangs of the mid-1960s, motorcycle-riding, greasy haired, leather-jacketed rockers, and scooter-riding, fashionable mods, who used to battle with each other in beach-front resorts on summer afternoons.

Mr Portillo fought hard to make sure the ‘Mods’ were victorious. By doing so, he made the way straight for David Cameron, who would eventually stroll effortlessly on to the summit which Mr Portillo had striven so hard – yet so unsuccessfully – to reach, using the ropes and footholds which Mr Portillo had left for him.

Many thought they could detect Michael Portillo’s hand in the fate which befell Miss Widdecombe, and which destroyed social conservatism in the Tory Party for the foreseeable future. But of course it is impossible to prove such things, and I shall not try.

Miss Widdecombe, almost as broad as she was tall, her hair in those days unbleached and uncompromisingly sculpted into a black pudding bowl, stumped on the stage, and strode about, declaiming in her unlovable, grating voice a fierce speech she had learned by heart, proposing a fixed penalty for cannabis possession. In truth it was not that radical, involving only a fine of £100 – which fell well on the liberal side of the Wootton Report’s 1969 call for no further imprisonment of cannabis users. It did, however, mean a criminal record for those fined. And the pro-cannabis lobby was already hoping for an arrangement which would mean no fine and no criminal record – as we shall see in the next chapter.

She made the speech. It attracted much coverage, plenty of it favourable, and for many people it would probably have been the most memorable event of a rather bumpy conference, during which Mr Hague was spitefully dismissed as a ‘dead parrot’ by the Sun newspaper,1 then a slavish supporter of the Blair government.

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