- guardian.co.uk, Thursday November 16 2000 11.53 GMT
- The Guardian, Thursday November 16 2000
The last time I went canvassing here was with my boss, Donald Dewar, then shadow secretary of state for Scotland, and these are the privately owned former council houses he once feared would turn his constituency against him.
Now my adorable wife, Dorothy, the Conservative candidate hoping to replace Dewar at Westminster, is working on the same assumption. You can tell a lot from doors, windows and neat flowerbeds. The cared-for homes are more likely to contain Tories. But it doesn't always work. Three semis in a row matched the stereotype. Little expressions of individuality in the external appearance, two new cars between them. But no support for Dorothy. This is Glasgow. Glasgow always backs Labour. "It's aye bin that way, luv."
And so she tries to persuade, never hectoring or aggressive. It's not her way. Just the simple questions to which Conservatives truly believe they are the answer: "What has Labour ever done for Glasgow?"
I'm getting confused here. I love her. She's dynamite on the doorstep. Plucky, youthful, convincing even. I find myself wanting people to support her, to like her. And some do. The former soldier on Chaplet Avenue is a classic. He doesn't know I'm her husband. I'm just the hack with a notebook following the candidate and fishing for quotes. That's why he flirts when he declares: "I've been a Labour voter all my life. But not now. There are two things I really don't agree with. Releasing terrorists and the Scottish parliament. If you told me you'd abolish that ... thing ... I'd give you my vote now."
Crunch time. I know what Dot thinks - but it isn't policy any more. Tories are supposed to be contrite about their principled hostility to devolution. They are supposed to have learned the errors of their ways. And she has. She promises him leaflets, policy documents, but not abolition. He's flattered by the attention. He'll think about it.
We press on. Alan, the trainee agent, knows there's no point in long doorstep debates. He's efficient. Cover the ground, identify support, move on. And we do, in the shadow of the vast 60s high-rises, shabby monuments to the decades of social- engineering which have left Glasgow at the bottom of every league. Health? Employment? Education? Forget it. That stuff's only available in the west end. Even there they vote Labour - in case the neighbours find out.
Georgia remains an asset - but an increasingly impatient one. "Come on Mummy. Come on. Georgie no like it ..."
Mrs Miller on Archerhill Road is charmed. Candidate and child are invited in for a chat. She shouldn't accept. But Dot does. The poor dear obviously can't stand for long - and she might be worth a postal vote.
But it is cold. The rain is coming down in needles. And even here most people are at work in the middle of a November morning. So it's back to headquarters - a redundant travel-agency just off Anniesland Cross. It's like any temporary campaign office anywhere in Europe. Freezing, damp, shambolic and full of good humour, leaflets and trailing modem cables.
Dot is smiling for the troops. Her enthusiasm is infectious. The smile sincere not strained. I remember the policeman's cafeteria off Westminster Hall in the Palace of Westminster. It was the late summer of 1986. I'd have talked to Dot even if I'd known she was a Tory. But I didn't. She didn't look like the enemy. I thought she was an American intern. So did my colleagues.
I abandoned the security of the shadow cabinet table, the grotty Formica item at which those fortunate enough to work for shadow ministers (and thus to receive approximations of real salaries courtesy of the Rowntree Trust) had gathered. Her friend had gone. She had been looking back at me. It looked like a potential boy-girl thing to me.
And to Dot too. I offered her a cigarette. She lit mine. We've been inseparable ever since. Three children, a fourth on the way, time spent working in Washington DC, Jerusalem and eastern Europe. Washington was best - we could both support Bill Clinton.
But politics never threatened to come between us - even when, in 1987, we both fought parliamentary seats at the general election, me in Roxburgh and Berwickshire for Labour, Dot in Paisley South for the Conservatives. She invented a name so she could call my constituency office without attracting unwanted attention. I still think fondly of Anne Williams (her maiden name was Dorothy Anne Williamson).
She knew Donald Dewar. He used to visit us at home. Did he like her? Donald found women incomprehensible whatever their politics. He was no ruder to her than to any other female. And she has a lot of Labour friends, even Labour ex-boyfriends. One of them is quite famous now - but that would be telling.
Anniesland is not going to elect a Conservative. Not even the only Tory in Britain who drives a Lada Niva while listening to the Red Army choir on the stereo. Not even one who hates coffee mornings, who can't see why Tory activists spend so much time talking to each other and shielding themselves from the electorate, who hates racism, abhors prejudice, cares about women; a practical feminist who insists on chairman not chair, detests the Society for the Protection of the Unborn Child and loathes politicians who criticise single mothers.
So why the dilemma now? Well, here she is fighting to obliterate the legacy of the man I worked for when I met her. The man whose job paid my half of the mortgage on the Brixton flat we lived in before we got married. The man I hurried to escape from every evening so I could meet her in the Vitello d'Oro restaurant behind Church House in Westminster.
Next morning it's back to The Boulevard. The Labour and nationalist candidates are getting all the press and Dot is angry. "Why won't they bloody listen? I'm fed up of apologising for John Major. Labour is the establishment here and establishments need a good shake-up."
On Pikeman Road there are faint murmurings of agreement. "This is a byelection. Who do we want to give a fright to this time?" asks the retired bloke outside number 59. As Georgia attacks the flowerbed with her Bob the Builder truck another constituent says, "I'll be voting Greenpeace." Her neighbour is even more disllusioned: "I'm no voting at all. It's all rubbish. I'm no voting for anybody." But number 17 is more encouraging. "I'm not right intae politics," he announces, "but Blair doesn't seem to have done anything. We need a change."
"Damn right," says Dot. "Why not give the girls a chance? Me and my colleague Kate Pickering [Conservative candidate for the Holyrood seat in Anniesland]. Try Girl Power for once."
Next door is a Donald Dewar fan: "I always voted for Mr Dewar." "I had a soft-spot for him too," says Dot. But Georgia needs a clean nappy. And there isn't time for a lot of personal history on the doorstep.
Can our marriage survive the Anniesland byelection? Definitely. Whenever we doubt it we just join hands and think of Anne Widdecombe.
• Tim Luckhurst is a former editor of the Scotsman. Between 1985 and 1988 he was parliamentary research assistant and press officer to the late Donald Dewar.
