14/02/07 - Ann Widdecombe
Being a writer doesn’t necessarily make one a great public speaker. A politician doesn’t have that luxury. As Ann Widdecombe will say later on, as an MP on an opposition party you wake up and ask yourself, ‘What am I going to say today?’ Speaking is her mantra, and as the night progresses the 100 plus audience will really feel the power of Ann’s voice.
She began the night by relating how her standing ideals had often been criticised by opposition parties who were scathing in their attacks on her “Christian Principles”. One day on her way to present for her party she was caught short without a script. A colleague had already departed for other business and Ann chased him down the street shouting: ‘I haven’t got any Christian principles!’ To which the general public responded positively.
Ann warned the audience that she would be accepting questions after her talk, but she might not necessarily choose to answer them. Until 6 or 7 months ago, she’d respond to any question posed, but then she was asked a difficult one to which she had no answer. As a politician she’s no stranger to avoiding answers that potentially look beneath what the question is in order to duck responsibility in answering. However, the day she was asked: ‘Could you please explain why anyone would want an affair with John Prescott,’ she realised there was only so much she did have understanding of.
Having wanted to write, like most, since a child, her first book (aged 9) was called Forest Trek, in which survivors of a plane crash had to escape a jungle. She wrote it in two exercise books stuck together. And to those who have told her they found her first published novel, The Clematis Tree, difficult to read, she suggests they try Forest Trek.
At eighteen she thought that she could write in her spare time; that she’d be published by her late 20s. However, her other great love, Politics, got in the way. Her career rocketed from Runnymede Council via Burnley then Devonport to her current constituency of Maidstone (all whilst working full time) her writing fell by the way side. She says that there is a profound cynicism towards any celebrity wanting to become published, and certainly questions were asked of her. She did not write anything between 1987 and 1997.
Where would she have found the time? In Politics an early night was midnight, and the usual bed time was around 3am. By 1997 she was Home Secretary, in charge of prisons and immigration, attending the House of Commons; her diary booked out in 20 minute sections. Suddenly, overnight she went from all of that to a back bencher on the opposition party. Of this change she says, in the first week you find yourself with lots of time on your hands, but by the second week you wonder how you ever had time to work at all.
Ann chose to start writing again. She announced her intention to the press, fearing that if she didn’t she’d never get round to writing anything. Self pressure, she says, is nothing like that imposed by journalists. If the press know, then you have to follow through. That made sense when she wanted to lose weight, the only way to make sure she did was to announce that too… and it worked.
Ann didn't want to write her The Clematis Tree first, but that was the first one that came out. As life had progressed in her 10 years away from writing, more and more ideas had begun to circulate. The most insistent of which was An Act of Treachery (set in occupied France). The problem was that she’d have to invest a lot of time into mammoth amounts of research. She was worried that the research would side-track her from the actual task of writing and she’d get nowhere. With enormous reluctance she started her first book (exploring family reaction to mental and physical handicap) and Treachery was put on hold.
When questioned on the fact she can’t write a story about a family having no experience of one herself, Ann replies, ‘If that’s the case, Ruth Rendell has committed an awful lot of murders.’ Writing, she says, is not about regurgitating what you know. That would be restrictive, and boring.
When Ann began writing she knew her opening and ending, but let her characters write the book, giving them free reign through the middle. At which point Ann realised she’d been an awful fool – the characters' paths were somewhat obvious to some readers, who worked out halfway through what the characters would do. Nevertheless, Ann builds her characters from scratch so that they write the book, and she isn’t setting her characters in the mould of a real person she’s met, and thus limiting their potential for creativity. Ann suggests writers of detective fiction must know what their characters are going to do, where the plot is ultimately headed, but she would lose interest if she wrote that way.
Having published her first novel she set to researching An Act of Treachery. Historical research, she says, is easy-peasy. You just read. It is the detail of everyday life that is more important. When she writes she always has in mind a chiming clock. When Shakespeare wrote Julius Caesar, there is a scene with a chiming clock, which, Ann points out, wasn’t around in Caesar’s day. She offers up the moment in Ben Hur when one of the centurions reveals he’s wearing a wristwatch. When writeing Ann tries to make sure she steers clear of any Dan Quayle gaffs (the US Vice President famously corrected a child’s spelling of potato by adding an “e” at the end).
To avoid any errors Ann advertised in the national press for French Nationals who were in occupied France during the war, living in England, and spoke fluent English. Two people responded and gave her wonderful everyday detail. When they didn’t agree on something, Ann knew she had a choice about what she preferred. After completion she sent the book to three ladies and a German military historian, who all convinced her there was no chiming clock in the book. That was until, three weeks before release, a military expert was in the publishing house and happened to see the dust jacket of the hardcover release, depicting a French girl with a German officer. The expert pointed out that the German insignia was on the wrong side of his uniform, and duly the publishers quickly mirrored the picture to put the insignia on the correct arm.
Ann told this story at an evening in 2000 when a reader took her to one side and pointed out that the military expert had been wrong and Ann had been right the first time. Her chiming clock had been enshrined on the cover by no less than the expert!
When developing her theme – a naïve French girl falls in love with a German officer – Ann read All Quiet on the Western Front, which she believes is a brilliant book and one of the most neglected. Referring to the scene when the German soldier shoots a French soldier and they both spend the night in a trench; by morning the Frenchman is dead by the morning and the German is reluctant to pick out his identity papers because as soon as he does, his enemy becomes a human being. He discovers the Frenchman was a printer before wartime, and ultimately he ends up asking himself why he killed him.
For An Act of Peace, Ann had read an article about American GI’s and their Vietnamese partners. After the GI’s go home their relationships are broken up. Staying or taking their partners home with them leads to these different cultures trying to coexist. Ann wanted to investigate the experience of a child trying to reconcile two very different families.
For Father Figure, Ann's publishers had no interest in publishing a novel about a father who wasn’t allowed to see his child after a divorce. Then the Batman and Robin fiasco kicked off, with the pair shimmying up Buckingham Palace to advertise Fathers for Justice. Ann's book had come at the right time. Though she was shocked to discover that for her first signings Batman and Robin were there. What did they want? What were they going to do now? The pair had the first signed copies.
Writing is one of the only hobbies that fits in with politics. Long train journeys, late nights waiting for votes; Ann found she was writing as and when, picking her novels up and putting them down. She likened it to knitting a jersey, writing each bit and then joining it to the main body. On train journeys in particular Ann likes to be cut off from the world, to disappear into this other world she creates.
Ann wishes that she could write like Anthony Trollope, who wrote for 3 hours every morning. Even Jeffrey Archer writes 2 hours on, 2 hours off, 2 hours on (he carried this through his stay as guest of Her Majesty). As soon as Ann retires to Dartmoor (not the prison), hopefully by the end of the year, she’ll be able to devote a similar amount of time to her own writing.
Ann went on to answer questions from the audience, who were just as interested in her politics as her writing. Relaying a story in which she was invited to speak at a political dinner, which seemed more like a liquid lunch than a meal. The room was very warm and the audience had drunk enough to become happy. Ann was onto her second sentence: ‘We must wake up to the dangers of Blair,’ when someone from the audience snored. Her entire speech regarded the dangers of the labour party, and every other sentence began with: ‘We must wake up…’ and after each one, the sleepy gent in the middle of the audience, snored on. He slept through the entire speech, and even though people stared, he just wouldn’t wake up. The chair lady thanked Ann and loudly called to the gentleman: ‘I now call upon Mr so-and-so to give a vote of thanks to Ann.’ He shot to his feet, with the aid of a dig in the ribs from those sitting beside him. Realising all at once that he’d been asleep, everybody knew, that he was to thank Ann, and didn’t know what her speech was about. After a 2 second pause he said: ‘Thank you very much for that dream of a speech.’
Answering questions on her retirement she says that in Parliament you can’t choose when very easily as you don’t know hoe long Parliament will run for or when it will end. (It could be 2010). Although Ann might not yet be ready she’s asking herself how she will feel by then. If there are elections this year then she’ll stay for another 5 years. However, she’s started to prefer the countryside to the metropolis and Countdown to Question Time.
It is a myth, she says, propagated by Edwina Currie, that the two of them were friends as far back as 40 years ago. Giles Brandreth has been little help in dispelling the myth. He tells a tale about Oxford and there being 4 rooms. In the first was Michelle Brown, in the second was Ann Widdecombe, in the third was Edwina Currie and in the fourth, the future Mary Archer. Giles always claims that he stopped at the first room and married Michelle. It’s funny, but not true. Ann says Edwina and her were never contemporaries and though Edwina says she remembers Ann, Ann says she doesn’t! Edwina was leaving Oxford when Ann was arriving.
Also, though Edwina began writing first, Ann isn’t following in her footsteps. For a start, she says, Edwina didn’t have a choice about leaving parliament. Further to that, Ann won’t write about her political career, and even if she did, it wouldn’t be like Edwina’s.
Ann spent a long time turning down the offer to go on Have I Got News For You. They have a very quick wit and it’s a very heavily edited show that really cuts to that quick. Despite William Hague and Boris Johnson going on several times and urging her to have some fun. Ann took a lot of convincing. Right up until the last minute of going on she didn’t want to do it, and when Paul Merton asked her how she was doing, she could only reply: ‘Terrified.’ In the end she chose to do her School Marm impression which they loved and went down well as an antithesis to those who go on and try to be funny but just don’t manage it.
Being shrewd with her celebrity status she said yes to Parkinson, but no to Ruby Wax. Yes to Basil Brush but no to the Kumars. Yes to Celebrity Fit club but no to Big Brother (she’s sure George Galloway wishes he hadn’t). No also went to I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here and Strictly Come Dancing (though the audience might have kept her in to see her waddle across the floor). Ann’s never raised so much money for charity than when she did Celebrity Fit Club, and though she says, ‘I looked a Charley,’ she loved it. They had 8 million viewers.
The last set of questions turned to the political environment, so, please do look away now if you don’t wish to get into the nitty-gritty of Ann’s views.
If Ann were in John Reid’s shoes, she says, we wouldn’t be in the present situation. It’s not as if the problem with prisons has only just happened – it’s been growing over the past 20 years. Sometimes there can be a surge but when Ann was in office she bought a US prison ship (and despite being lambasted by Labour, they continued to use it). Ann bought Porta Cabins from the Netherlands and proposed the use of a disused holiday camp (for medium security). Reid could do all of these but hasn’t and it is frustrating for her to see this as the opposition party. When in Government, she says, you wake up and ask yourself, ‘What will I do today?’ In opposition, you wake up and ask, ‘What will I say today?’ In opposition you have no power to make changes.
70% of young offenders in prison are illiterate, Ann says. They are from broken homes, and the lucky ones are those whose father hasn’t been replaced. The unlucky ones have a stepdad they don’t get on with, who has kicked them out of the house before they’re even 16. They then truant, develop no skills and copy a pattern that doesn’t help them develop. Ann has a plan of what she believes should be done. Short term, a Guilianni style no-tolerance approach should be taken whereby offenders clean up their own graffiti. People are forced to take responsibility. Medium term, early intervention is required. Ann says reception teachers can immediately spot children who are at risk. Without putting the onus on them, she says that any 4 year old should have conversational skills. Those that don’t are being neglected. Long term, inner city council estates should be replaced with mixed race communities. In young offender institutions where they are taught parenting skills, she has seen the young men teaching their girlfriends during visits.
Ann had a tremendous response to her program about hoodies. 5 million viewers tuned in, and the program makers had great, immediate feedback from the public. Unfortunately the fallout is that the family with whom she stayed have had to leave the estate, and there was a knife incident. It wasn’t a story about Ann, but about the estate. Somehow it has blown back on the estate in a bad way. Ann says that of the immediate response, if there was a way to harness that tangibility (like with the Jamie Bulger case, the Philip Lawrence, or the Diana cases) before it goes, great good could be done.
How will Blair be remembered she was asked. ‘Gordon Brown has done the most damage,’ she replies. His work on the pensions has been awful, on a far worse scale than Maxwell ever managed. Blair however is the man who made Labour electable, but is also the Master of Spin. Blair has enormous charisma, but Brown, she says, is the most miserable- and her words were drowned out in laughter.
Ann talked briefly on Cameron, who, she points out, is very clever. He’s talked about everything except immigration and Europe (unlike his processors). He has, she says, set clever mood music by not making the mistake of making policy too early. If it’s good the Government steal it, if it’s bad it weighs heavily on the party, and sometimes it can outdate. Kinnock did this, making claim after claim, policy after policy until after 5 years he was locked in an expensive and irrelevant set of policies. The key is not to have to do a u-turn or have it stolen. The opposition party has to look at the future not at the environment in which it lost the last election.
Ann says she’ll never publish an autobiography… at least she’d only do it posthumously. Hating the idea of an old age without friends, because they don’t like what she’s written.
Ann ended the night by talking about political conventions and the sales of her books to fellow MPs. The bookstalls are run by a company called Politco, and Ann will stand by the bookseller and yell like a barrow boy: ‘Get your clean novel here,’ she will shout to the ears of delegates. ‘No sex, no violence, a nice gift for your granny for Christmas.’ The bookseller, never missing an opportunity, stashed a pile of Edwina’s diaries amongst Ann’s books. Ann, quickly changed her routine, ‘Very clean novel… Very dirty diaries!’
Ann sold 500 books that day. Edwina sold 15.
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