Standing Down (24 page)
Authors: Rosa Prince
He says:
Over the years I’ve done an awful lot on science issues, on IT, on things like remote working, what was in its crude days called teleworking; everyone does it now.
This parliament, with the new rules, I was elected chair of the Science Committee. Because of the work I’ve done in science, it’s obviously helped me tremendously. The Science Council named me as one of the top most influential scientists in the UK.
On election night in May, Mr Miller will be ‘busy helping my successor’, and although he will feel some sadness, he is looking forward to spending more time with his family, having been conscious throughout his time in Parliament of how much he missed out on:
I seldom went to my daughter’s plays at school, or parents’ evenings.
When I got elected in ’92, we all got a letter, I’m not going to tell you from whom – [it was] the adult son of an ex-Tory MP who was clearly mentally ill – and he poured his heart out about the pain he went through because of the disjointed life he had led.
I understand it, because it does put pressure on families.
***
CV
Born in Isleworth, Middlesex; raised in Malta; attended the London School of Economics; became a university laboratory technician and active in the trade union movement.
1992: Elected MP for Ellesmere Port & Neston
1997: Begins campaign to free constituent Louise Woodward
2001: Takes on roving brief supporting ministers at the Department for Trade and Industry
2005: Returns to back benches
2010: Becomes chairman of the Commons Science and Technology Committee
2013: Announces he will stand down at 2015 general election
Andrew Miller is married to Fran and has three grown-up children.
Frank Doran
, sixty-five, was Labour MP for Aberdeen South (1987–92), Aberdeen Central (1997–2005) and Aberdeen North (2005–15).
‘I’m old and decrepit. I don’t want to be wandering around here as a skeleton.’
***
I got here mainly by accident. I stood in a seat that I never expected to win, because it had been a relatively safe Tory seat.
I joined the Labour Party in 1976, I joined … because I believed in its principles, and I still do.
It was strange. Practical things are what stuck in my mind. It took me three months to get an office. We had a large number of new Labour MPs, I think there were nineteen new Labour MPs in that election in ’87, so we formed a solid group and we learned together.
The profile I had from Piper Alpha was the highest level it ever got. It’s not the kind of thing you enjoy, 167 men were killed, [but] it was a high point in terms of exposure.
The minimum wage, that was the first priority [during his time as PPS to then Trade Minister, Ian McCartney]. Social chapter, working time regulation, agency working.
We also had legislation to prepare for what became the ’99 Employment Rights Act. We wanted to take the law and lawyers out of industrial relations. All of that was a tremendously exciting time.
One of my highs was becoming chair of the Art Committee [the Speaker’s Advisory Committee on Works of Art]. I’ve loved the art job, it’s much better than the day job.
Losing your seat is about as low as it gets. I was prepared for it so I was ready for it, I prepared everyone around me for it. It hurts, of course it hurts.
I’m old and decrepit. I don’t want to be wandering around here as a skeleton, being here and not working at full pelt doing all the things that you need to do. I think that we need to allow younger people to come through.
I haven’t got anything lined up.
I’m not the sort of person who feels they’re qualified to give too much advice.
One of the things I think is crucial is look after your family. A lot of people just dive in and you get drunk on what’s opened up in front of you, and family gets left out.
The rest of it’s down to them – be yourself.
***
the full story
A lawyer by trade, Frank Doran’s family had been involved in the Labour and trade union movement, and he joined the party himself as a young man.
When it was suggested that he stand as a candidate in the European elections of 1984 in the then Conservative stronghold of Scotland North East, he thought it would be interesting but not life-changing, given he had no expectation of winning:
My background is a working-class boy, trade unionism, and the Labour Party runs in the blood.
I was a solicitor and I did a lot of work for trade unions and the Labour Party. Most lawyers will tell you the same thing; you can win an individual case, you can’t change the system.
I ran as a Euro candidate in 1984, and I thought that was going to be it. I had a good [solicitor’s] practice at that time and a reasonable standard of living.
Mr Doran had ‘a good result’, cutting into the Tory majority substantially, and as a consequence coming to the attention of the wider party.
He says:
I was asked by one of the constituency parties in Aberdeen if I was interested in standing for Parliament. I thought: ‘Why not? It’s not going to disrupt my life, I’m not going to win.’ But I did.
It was a very middle-class area. [With the exception of 1966–70] it had always been a Conservative seat. It was a real surprise to win it, I have to tell you.
When I say I didn’t expect to win, there was a point when I thought it was possible. I was fighting Gerry Malone [the sitting Conservative MP], who at that time was on the bottom rung of the ladder, he was Leon Brittan’s PPS.
Aberdeen is very different from the rest of Scotland. People are very Aberdonian. It’s difficult to explain; it operates very differently.
On the day my agent and I were putting in my nomination papers for the seat, we came out and there were lots of people standing by the pavement. Obviously something was happening. Gerry Malone came up Union Street on a 1930s Rolls-Royce, waving and shaking his hand, and that is not very Aberdonian.
I turned to my agent and said: ‘I can win this.’
Election night was ‘incredible’, but the unexpected victory was not without its downsides, not least the effect on his family:
It was very difficult in some respects. I had a family. I think I had assured my wife that there was no chance I was going to be elected. That created a problem.
Of course it’s great to win something like that, at the same time there was huge disappointment that we weren’t in government.
Although he had been to Parliament on a few occasions, Westminster was not familiar to the new MP:
The things that stick in my mind were just the scale of the place, the uncertainty that you always have about going somewhere new, particularly on [that] scale and [given how] I’d previously viewed Westminster from newspapers and books.
Experiencing it first hand, the biggest irritation was I didn’t have an office. I shared a room with three other MPs. It was very difficult to work. You put your arms out and you hit everybody in the room. We all knew each other and if we didn’t we got to know each other quite quickly.
The architecture was wonderful, it was believed it was where Charles I’s death warrant was signed – I’m told by other people that it’s not true but it didn’t stop me telling people about it.
With the physical distance putting a strain on his relationship with his wife, Mr Doran also found settling into the ways of the Commons not entirely straightforward, particularly when it came to dealing with his new colleagues:
Because I had friends already it was easy but in other respects it took time. You always felt you were being judged by colleagues – these are the people you’ve got to be the most wary of.
People are sat in here, they want to know who you are, they want to know all about you: ‘Are you somebody who thinks the way I do?’
Initially, I was put in the same pot as my friends. One of my colleagues from Dundee, which was where I was based before I became an MP, was [the left-wing Labour and future Respect MP] George Galloway, so I was seen as in that camp.
George was a friend, I knew him very well, we worked together on lots of things in Dundee, but I didn’t share all of his political views. That was a little bit difficult. I had to make my own way.
Initially, Mr Doran found the Commons chamber ‘scary’, and is still kicking himself about his maiden speech: ‘It was a pretty poor maiden speech, because I thought I could just put a few things together and just hoof it basically, and that taught me something, that I need to be more meticulous in my preparation.’
He soon got used to speaking in the chamber, and found his background as a solicitor came in handy:
Because I was a lawyer, quite quickly I was in demand by the party to get involved in legislation and I spent my first two years on bill committees. That was a huge, huge learning opportunity. Whenever there was a call for a Scottish lawyer, I was called for. It was the best place to learn how this place operates.
He played a leading role in opposing David (later Lord) Alton’s unsuccessful Private Members’ Bill, which would have limited late-term abortions, and began working with a young high flyer called Tony Blair, who had become the party’s spokesman on the City.
Mr Doran also worked hard for his constituency, helping to save the local shipyard by lobbying for it to win a Royal Mail contract.
But just over a year after he became an MP came the incident that would define much of the rest of his career: the Piper Alpha disaster. It occurred as his own star was rising.
He says:
I spent several years fighting the case mainly for the victims and their families but also for the survivors. It virtually took over my life.
At the same time, Neil Kinnock put me on the front bench and gave me the oil brief, so that just played exactly into where I was.
Tony Blair was elected shadow energy secretary so I was in Tony’s team and worked very closely with him. I’ve never been somebody who was that ambitious. I did lobby a little bit, I lobbied Tony. I was ambitious to a certain extent.
I had got so immersed in the oil and gas industry that it was a great job to have. I was allowed a great deal of latitude because I knew more than most other people, including Tony at the time.
I remember months after Piper Alpha, bumping into George Galloway, and he said: ‘Bloody hell, I’ve just been in Palestine and I’ve been watching you on the telly.’ That was unique.
Being on the front bench was great, but the biggest thing was to get things properly sorted for the people who had been most affected. Since then I’ve never moved away from the health and safety aspect of the oil and gas industry.
Trouble was around the corner in the form of the 1992 general election. Although Labour was widely expected to win, Mr Doran sensed that things might not be straightforward for him, saying ‘I’ve got quite a good antenna for that.’
Alarm bells began ringing in particular when John Smith, the shadow Chancellor, unveiled plans to increase taxes for higher earners.
Soon afterwards, Mr Doran held a meeting with workers on an oil platform:
I went there with my normal health and safety brief [telling them] all the things we were going to do to make it safer, and I could see they were restless.
What they wanted to talk to me about was John Smith’s tax plan. It was fascinating. This was about six months before the election and they went through it.
The biggest gaffe I made was [to say], ‘But it doesn’t come in until, I think, £21,000.’ The place went into uproar: ‘There’s nobody on this platform earning anything as small as that.’
The second incident was when I was with John [Smith]. We had a by-election … and I was the minder for the candidate. This was in November I think, just six months before the election.
John came up and we had a great day. We trotted around Carmarthenshire and I forced him to hold up a lobster. He said to me: ‘Have I got to do this?’
I said, ‘Of course you have, there’s all the press there, show them you’re not afraid of a lobster.’
We took the candidate and we took John round, and everyone we spoke to in Scotland was moaning at John about his tax.
I said to John away from everybody else: ‘John, this is killing me, I’m going to lose my seat because I’m getting this everywhere.’
I remember he put his arm on my shoulder and he said, ‘Frank, I see that this is wrong for Aberdeen but it’s right for the rest of the country.’
Mr Doran would go on to become the only Labour MP not elected at a by-election to lose his seat.
Was he disappointed?
Of course I was but I think I can handle these things. In any account I was prepared for it. I knew that it was going to happen.
I had to make a big decision about whether I wanted to stay in politics or if I wanted to go back to law.
I decided I didn’t want to go back to law. I worked to see what I could do to come back, to become a retread. I was very focused.
Mr Doran sat out the next parliament but kept his hand in by producing a bulletin for the oil and gas industry.
He was comforted by his future wife, Joan Ruddock, a fellow Labour MP who had entered Parliament at the same time, representing Lewisham Deptford:
One of the consequences of getting elected the first time around was my [first] wife and I separated. She couldn’t quite handle everything that was involved.
It’s one of these things that happened. We still keep good relations. It was an incredibly difficult time when my marriage broke up. Far too many politicians go through that.
[Joan and I] were together when I lost my seat. We’ve been together now for about twenty years and we married about four years ago.
Because we’re both so experienced, we’ve been here such a long time, we understand all the pressures.
Ahead of the 1997 Labour landslide, fate smiled on Mr Doran when boundary changes meant the two seats of Aberdeen were expanded into three, with the creation of a new constituency of Aberdeen Central.
Unfortunately, a neighbouring veteran Labour MP also threw his hat into the ring. ‘We fought for it, we both played it clean, and I won,’ Mr Doran says.
On his return to Parliament, Mr Doran might have expected to return to the front line but he says:
I came in with completely the opposite view.
I thought long and hard about it. I loved doing the front-bench job [but] it was incredibly onerous and came with all sorts of responsibilities placed on you.
I didn’t think I was very bad at it, I think I did OK, I had a reasonable record, but I just looked at the people who were coming in. There were hundreds, a massive number of new people with skills.
A lot of people had come in in ’92 who were already on the track to the front bench, a lot of them were on the front bench by then, and I thought, ‘I’ve lost five years, I’ve got a hell of a lot of ground to make up and I don’t think I’m going to be able to do that because I’m one of several hundred new people coming into a party with a majority of 163.’
So I deliberately decided that I wanted to go another route. I was just delighted to be back. You can’t be greedy about that sort of thing.