| Product: |
Diaries: into Politics - Alan Clark |
| Date: |
26/03/08 (166 review reads) |
| Rating: |
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Advantages: A great diarist
Disadvantages: You need an interest in politics
"Isn't Blackpool loathsome?" writes Alan Clark in his diary entry for the 1973 Tory conference. "On the Promenade - vulgar, common primitives drifting about in groups or standing, loitering, prominently." And if you think he was a bit harsh on the general public there wait until you read what he thinks of some of his fellow politicians. Welcome to the second volume of the late Alan Clark's candid and sometimes eye-opening diaries. This time around we travel back to the early seventies when the eminently quotable 'maverick' has just been elected to parliament as a Conservative MP and go through to the Falklands War, taking in along the way the emergence of a certain Margaret Thatcher. With his usual conspiratorial charm, Clark takes us on a fascinating and revealing journey through this era via the random diary entries he scribbled during these years (but never intended to publish).
Soon into the diaries Clark is chosen to be MP for Plymouth Sutton after much wheeling and dealing and various interviews. Clark is elated to have finally made it to the commons. Becoming an MP we soon learn to be an obsession of Clark with his firm belief that greater things will follow. As an unashamed member of the 'privelliged' class and ardent nationalist, Clark has no doubt that his destiny is to lead. Later, when Thatcher (or 'The Lady') becomes PM, Clark (as his star rises very modestly) is invited to a Downing Street function. He later wonders in his diary how Thatcher or any PM for that matter could possibly stand the tedium of the numerous functions and dinners they have to host. 'My God,' writes Clark. 'when I am PM I will never go to these receptions.' Did Clark honestly believe he would be Prime Minister one day? He probably did and it makes you wonder how many MPs sit on the back-benches in obscurity with similar delusions.
Early on though his dreams are dented when he arrives in Parliament and is pratically ignored by everyone. This peek inside the Commons is very interesting and makes you picture it like going to a new school where you don't know anyone or how anything works. It's fun to picture the urbane, cocky Clark wandering around the House Of Commons as an outsider wondering how to boost his profile. Clark soon suspects he has made an error in taking the Plymouth seat. His father, the historian Kenneth Clark, has just given him Saltwood Castle in Kent and the younger Clark is attempting to juggle his neverending tasks and jobs there with his new political career. Saltwood is his haven and he describes idyllic snatched weekends and days there, swimming in the moat on sunny afternoons and writing alone in the old Library. Clark begins to dread the long train journey down to Plymouth away from his beloved Saltwood and, with shades of Alan B'Stad, travels to Plymouth less and less. Soon his local Tory team and the general public in Plymouth start to grumble that he's never there! Clark makes light of his actions (grilled on his prolonged absence by a Plymouth party worker, Clark reveals that 'all I wanted to do was scream "F**k off you little runt" and leave Plymouth never to return') and starts fishing around for a seat in Kent! The diaries provide an interesting insight into how politics works, especially in entries where Clark talks about the frantic musical chairs MP's play when they get wind that their seat is vulnerable in a future election across the horizon. You get a strong impression that many (though I'm sure not all) MPs are more interested in their own welfare than loyal to any specific town or region.
If you are interested in British politics and history you will find much of interest in the book, with Clark's candid views on the figures of the day (Michael Heseltine cops a bit of stick!) and the battle for the soul of the Conservative Party. I enjoy books where you meet a person before they were that famous and there are several enjoyable examples in the diaries. Clark comments on sharing a taxi with Neil Kinnock in 1978 and mentions how kinnock had a dream to change the Labour Party but was 'non-specific' on policy. We know of course that several years later this actually came to pass with Kinnock himself. I also found it quite amusing that Clark seemed to have a degree of respect and fondness for left-wing Labour MP's like Dennis Skinner, proving the old adage that opposites attract. Two huge policy debates of the era were import controls and the Common Market. Right and Left were more in tune with each other on this than they were with their own parties.
I found the day to day details of Clark's life as interesting as the political revelations. You'll feel like you know Saltwood Castle after reading the book and Clark's feelings towards it are palpable. His famous historian father is still alive when the book begins and living in a cottage on the grounds. The younger Clark doesn't display a huge amount of warmth towards him in the diaries. Clark is living with his wife Jane at Saltwood although there are several mentions of the 'coven', a family of blondes that Clark was apparently, erm, 'friendly' with. Clark comments on his appearance a lot in the diaries and usually details any attempt to chat up a woman. In his own mind he apparently thought he was Warren Beatty or something. Despite his reputation there is nothing too lurid in the diaries, although he does get very obsessed by Margaret Thatcher at times; 'But goodness, she is so beautiful,' he writes in 1980. 'Made up to the nines of course, for the television programme, but still quite bewitching, as Eva Peron must have been. I could not take my eyes off her.' Aware that he is making her uncomfortable with eye-contact he excuses himself on the grounds that he has to go and heckle a Michael Foot speech!
Clark's two sons are growing up fast in the diaries and soon to leave home. He dwells on this a lot and writes about them much more than his wife or father. He worries about their future in a Britain that is changing fast. A genuine fear runs through the book that the days of claret swilling toffs with a moat to swim in and sons in Swiss Private Schools might be drawing to a close in an ever more class conscious society. Money worries also feature a lot although you probably won't summon up much sympathy for a man who lives in a castle grumbling about his finances. Clark often loses hundreds of pounds a week in Backgammon games with John Aspinall and chums but seems to be able to flog a vintage car or painting whenever things are really tight.
There is an entry in the book where Clark confesses to Frank Johnson that he is a Nazi and believes in that system. Johnson presses him and eventually draws the conclusion that Clark says these things as a joke and just wants to shock people. It's an interesting entry because it illustrates that Clark, while on the face of it a right-wing git who you wouldn't want making any major decisions involving 'real' people, at least had the grace to do everything with a sense of humour. It's very difficult not to end up having a little bit of affection for a man who wasn't afraid to speak his mind and left behind such a readable and enjoyable set of diaries. He writes very well and is always inventive with a good turn of phrase and a great sense of humour. As you flip through you can almost see Clark munching on a cake in the Commons and putting together a betting school based around which MP will die next!
Like him or loathe him, politics in Britain is a duller place without characters like Alan Clark.
Summary: Great fun
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