‘I’d sooner vote for the devil’: the lost art of election heckling
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Version 0 of 1. The fun has gone out of elections. Maybe that is why there’s so little interaction between politicians and the people whom they hope will elect them. Not least, we’ve lost the art of dealing with a heckler. People such as the man who answered Harold Wilson’s rhetorical question about the glorious Royal Navy during a speech in the shipbuilding town of Chatham, Kent. “Why am I saying this?” asked the then prime minister. “Because you’re in Chatham,” came the response, quicker than it would take to put a cross on a ballot paper. Outwitting a heckler is an old, respected tradition – going back at least to the 18th century, when John Wilkes heard a man say, “Vote for you? I’d sooner vote for the devil,” and replied: “And why is your friend not standing?” I saw the art of the great heckle putdown first hand as a junior reporter on the Luton News 60 years ago, when, in the 1955 election campaign, there wasn’t a street without party posters in nearly all the windows and kids went around singing songs such as “Vote, vote for Billy Bloggs, chuck old Charlie down the stairs.” Charlie was Charles Hill and he knew all about heckling. Doctor Charles Hill he was, the man who had led the opposition to the NHS when he was boss of the BMA and later became head of both the BBC and what was then called the Independent Television Authority. As far as the electorate was concerned, he had also given some idea of his talents when he was the Radio Doctor on the Home Service. First elected as MP for Luton four years earlier, he was a one-man coalition, who called himself a “United Liberal and Conservative”, although nobody believed in the “Liberal” part. He was Tory all the way. He was also the master of the art of the public meeting and, in particular, responding to hecklers. In his hands, that was always a combination of a revivalist gathering and a variety show – with Hill as principal comedian. You didn’t have to be a Tory to enjoy his showmanship. I remember one virtuoso performance, from the platform at the town’s Winter Assembly Hall, a cavernous place with just a green baize tablecloth and the inevitable union jack, to relieve the drabness of what was a covered indoor swimming pool. There were still those who, in that year before Suez, recalled the British intervention that threatened to unseat the shah of what was then called Persia. Someone shouted, “Not a single mother should have to lose her son in Persia.” “As if,” said Hill, hardly taking time to catch his breath “an election was a time to talk about the morality of single mothers having sons.” And then there was the row over nuclear tests. “What’s all the fuss about testing a bomb? If we have to have a bomb, let’s make sure it’s a good ’un.” His audience, not then too worried about what testing meant, loved every minute of it. “You’re sitting over a swimming pool,” he shouted to one man. “If you go on like that, I’ll turn on the taps and forget to pull out the plug.” The classic moment came when an obvious Labour supporter, in a voice that got more and more hoarse, called out a list of demands: “What we want,” he said, “is more Marshall Aid ... what we want is a better health service ... what we want are bigger pensions ...” “What you want, chum,” the candidate answered, “is a cough drop.” I can hear the laughs still. The Grand theatre on the other side of the road could have signed him up there and then. |