Peter Riddell of the Times had an interesting article recently, discussing explicitly that of which we were all probably subconsciously aware: there are far fewer by-elections now than was the case a couple of decades ago. He’s right. I’m sure many of us grew up as avid viewers of the Vincent Hanna by-election circus that seemed to swing into action at least twice a year. (Do you remember the Blackadder by-election special? Bliss.) In the most part, the reason for the decline of the by-election is a thing to be celebrated: modern medicine means that fewer members die in the course of a parliament.
The death of Gwyneth Dunwoody – a woman whose name was synonymous with “doughty”, "redoubtable" – indicative of “integrity” as well as “grit” – was a loss that was felt across the political divide. Even those of us who knew of her only by repute felt the loss of an independent-minded member of the legislature. The shock felt by her loss, however, transmuted swiftly to anger, when the Labour Party moved the writ to elect her successor before her body was laid to rest.
With undue haste the campaign to elect her successor began, and our distaste moved to other matters: the blatant racism of the Labour literature, the hysterical inanity of their campaign to portray Mr Timpson as a “toff”, the sheer gall of selecting the revered Mrs Dunwoody’s daughter as the Labour candidate, as though the seat was a possession of the party, to be passed on according to some bizarre system of matrilineal primogeniture. (The noisy incoherence of selecting the deceased member’s daughter to fight the seat, whilst simultaneously attacking the Tory candidate for being the representative of inherited privilege, has raised a few eyebrows on the Left).
All of the unpleasantness of the Labour campaign has probably served only to antagonise Conservative activists into fighting a more vigorous campaign than would otherwise have been the case. But as I watched the YouTube footage of a visibly depressed Tamsin Dunwoody, refusing to endorse Gordon Brown, my thoughts focused in on the woman herself, not on the campaign swirling about her. With a shock, I remembered, of course, that I was looking at a woman whose mother died only a few weeks ago.
Do you remember what you were doing when your mother or father died? I heard the news in an airport departure lounge, when I was two flights and two countries from home. I remember the days passing in a blur of activity, the frantic activity one enters into in the immediate prologue and aftermath of a funeral, the activity which serves to blunt the pain. (For a while. The pain has to be worked through, of course, and what’s more it never goes entirely. Thank goodness: I think the pain of loss is the spark to the machine of memory. It’s the pain which allows us to keep our parents alive, and to wind through the video footage of memories in our minds, whenever we need them with us.)
I hesitated to write this, because so much has already been expressed about the unpleasant nature of this campaign. But I thought it worth remembering that underneath the carapace of the professional politician, Tamsin Dunwoody must be embarking on a long and painful grieving process. And a by-election campaign was not, I think, a suitable machine to assist that grieving. Not the least-worst error of judgement, committed by whoever was responsible for the nastiest Labour campaign in memory, was to ask Tamsin Dunwoody to be its public face.
