N.Z. friend in Commons

Press, 24 May 1977, Page 16

N.Z. friend in Commons

By

JOHN ROSS London

Austin Mitchell is not, as he says he might have been, “a pompous, rotund, burnt-out case of 42.” Instead, he is a cheerful, chunky, virile case of 42 — glad that he did not accept the chair of political studies at the University of Canterbury (which would, be asserts, have produced the former state) — and looking forward to consolidating himself as the House of Commons’ newest member. He looked a little out of place in the austere surroundings of Westminster — wearing workaday denim jeans, well-worn suede shoes, maroon socks, casual windbreaker, and gaudy tartan tie. Grinning broadly at the recollection, he admitted there had been some confusion about who had actually won the Grimsby seat at the end of last month. In fact, Mr Mitchell congratulated his Conservative opponent, Mr R. Blair, before the result was declared. “Independent Television News had done an opinion poll which indicated the Tories had won,” he said. “These polls have usually been accurate in the past — but on this occasion the pollsters left early, and most of the late votes were for Labour.” When it became clear that the late returns would swing the seat Labour’s way, he stopped giving news interviews based on the assumption that he had lost, and won the seat by 520 votes. Many of the congratulatory messages received in the next few days came from New Zealand, and Mr Mitchell freely acknowledges that his eight years there were largely instrumental in launching him into his

dual careers of television and politics. A “rushed one-and-a-half minutes of hectic gabble” on New Zealand television in July, 1964, when the N.Z.B.C. asked him to comment on the Commonwealth Prime Ministers’ Conference, was the first of many television appearances. In the early 1960 s he first became actively involved in politics, joined the Roslyn branch of the Labour Party in Dunedin, helped to form the Castle Street branch, and was elected a conference delegate. In his book “The HalfGallon, Quarter-Acre, Pavlova Paradise,” Mr Mitchell said New Zealand was “as near to a people’s paradise as fallible humanity is likely to get.” He still subscribed to that view. Although he returned to Britain in 1967 to take up a fellowship at Nuffield College, Oxford, he had recently applied for two jobs in New Zealand, in both of which “negotiations broke down.” His original intention has always been to return to New Zealand. (His wife Linda comes from Dunedin. Their nine-year-old twins, Jonathan and Hannah, were born in Oxford). After 18 months at Oxford, Mr Mitchell joined Yorkshire Television, following a chance meeting with a New Zealander Sir Geoffrey Cox, who was then deputy chairman. Since that time he has been involved in regional current affairs and documentaries, and was recalled from the' United States to interview Lady Falkender for Independent Television News during the controversy over the Wilson honours list. As a member of Parliament of a few days’ standing, Mr Mitchell said he

was quickly finding that being in the thick of the action was a lot less exciting than having the over-all political view of a commentator. “In some senses, you know less being here at the centre of things,” he said. “In the newsroom you were pretty much in touch; the news comes pell mell, and you feel a surge of excitement — but in Parliament you don’t feel that, funnily enough, because you are actually debating the legislation instead of getting the minute-to-minute news as it comes in. “Much of the information about what is happening goes to journalists rather than to M.P.s. They are concerned with the basic issues but they are a bit out of it, and the excitement is missing.” His success at Grimsby ended a “distinguished record of failing to get selected” because he had attempted to gain selection as the Labour candidate in Sowerby, where he lives, and in West Leeds. “I was beginning to feel like the .Leeds United of the political scene — constantly trying, but never really getting anywhere. But now I have,” he said. Was it a good thing that a politician’s success sometimes seemed to relate to the image he projected on television? “I tihnk it’s a help for a prime minister, for example, to have a good television manner,” he said, “but I don’t see anything artificial about that. Television allows people to see politicians for what they are — people these days know Jim Callaghan, Margaret Thatcher and Rob Muldoon for what they are.” Was his familiar television face a factor in his election victory? “It certainly helped. I

am a shy person in many ways, and if you are already known to people, you don’t have to leap up to people in the street and say who you are. I would have been terrified to have had to do that. So being well known was a factor which helped to break the ice with voters, and they might have been more prepared to make the effort to vote because they knew who I was.” Mr Mitchell does not feel that a political commentator’s objectivity should be questioned simply because he aligns himself with a particular political party. “The commentator’s job is really to take a negative role, and to question whatever point of view is being put,” he said. “It comes naturally to question anybody — whether he is from the party one belongs to, or the party one opposes — it’s not at all difficult.” He keeps in close touch with events in /New Zealand, particularly in the political sphere, and still hopes to return one day. He is determined also to do what he can to help protect New Zealand’s interests at Westminster, and regards Britain’s entry into Europe as a disaster. A major reason why he has consistently opposed British membership of the E.E.C. is what he describes as “the lunacy of the Common Agricultural Policy. “We had a very adequate arrangement where New Zealand provided — and it is a very efficient producer — low-cost foodstuffs for the British market. Why chuck that away for the benefit of subsidising inefficient Continental farmers, and paying high prices? The Common Agricultural Policy is a total folly.” Whether the redoubtable Mr Mitchell will remain in Westminster for very long is an open question, he admits. But he hopes the Government survives until well into 1979, when the economic climate should have improved considerably in Britain. Labour should stay in office for the good of the country, he said —- “not because that avoids me fighting another election; I quite enjoy fighting elections now; I have become addicted to it.”