The Written Word
for July 18, 2001

We are a very immature country politically and I’m damned if I know why. We are rich in tradition and next to a country that, for all the asperity of its politics, still manages to call its past presidents Mr President long after they have retired or been turfed from office.

I have just finished reading the last of three volumes of letters and memoirs of Lady Violet Bonham Carter who died in 1969 after a lifetime in British politics as a Liberal – no mean task. She was the daughter of H.H. Asquith the Liberal Prime Minister who was ousted as prime minister in 1916 by his fellow Liberal, David Lloyd George. She was the mother of long time Liberal and sometime MP Mark Bonham Carter and grandmother of the actress Helena Bonham Carter.

Her only book of consequence was a marvelous one, just recently reprinted, called Winston Churchill, An Intimate Portrait which only takes Churchill until 1916 but which is an absorbing account of the great man’s early career. An early dinner party Churchill turned to the then Miss Asquith and said "Violet … we are all worms but I do believe that I am a glow worm!" As it turned out to be.

Throughout Lady Bonham Carter’s life she remained true to the Liberalism of her father as opposed to that of Lloyd George. I tell you this because that shows you that her politics were not only loyal but wrapped in bitterness. The split between her father and Lloyd George in 1916 split the Liberal Party forever and is being played out now, nearly 90 years later. She despaired of Churchill returning to the Tories after having deserted them for the Liberals in 1905 and was no fan of the Labour Party. Yet her memoirs – for that’s what these wonderful readable volumes are – are full of intimate social relations with men and women of all parties. She does not like all her social contacts to be sure – Lord Beaverbrook was particularly forever on her shit list – but she has social and political relations with them all. She describes men like Attlee and Ernest Bevin, long foes, with great affection and deals both harshly and gently with men like Macmillan and Sir Alec Douglas Home. Her love for Winston Churchill, laced with occasional moment of despair for what he was up to at the moment, remains undiminished until the end of the great man’s life. Whether she and Churchill were ever lovers in her youth is doubtful but there is no doubt that she bore a special love for him – and for his Liberal wife Clementine – her entire life.

But through it all, they all worked, supped, drank and socialized with one another and all were modest enough to know that they had no right to assume, no matter how strong their views or how nasty the fight, that there weren’t other legitimate points of view than their own.

What’s this all in aid of?

The civility with which British politicians have always seemed to be able to maintain amongst one another regardless of, at times, vigorous and indeed violent disagreement. Though this is not in her books there is the picture of Clement Attlee, the Labour Prime Minister, standing in his eighties at St Pauls Cathedral in the bitter cold not only for his old colleague and political enemy Churchill’s funeral but the day before in even bitterer weather for the rehearsal.

What was so interesting to me was this long life of political activity unto the bitterest of struggles, defending her father, fighting to save the Liberal Party, standing with Churchill as he tried to warn Britain and when he stood against all public opinion at the time of Munich – with all that - Lady Violet Bonham Carter was always able to describe with genuine affection so many people who were her mortal enemies.

I think is can truly be termed political maturity – and the unseemly fuss over whether or not two measly NDP MLAs will be given the designation "Official Opposition" proves beyond doubt that we don’t have it.

Too bad.