They obfuscate . . . they waffle . . . they prattle. Anything to avoid giving a clear, direct answer to a question.
Don’t you just love the way our politicians go to such extreme lengths with their well-rehearsed, well-practised techniques, in media land and the debating chamber?
How we could do with a blast of fresh verbal air the like of which was routinely supplied by one of Cornwall’s best-known MPs of yesteryear.
David Penhaligon, Truro MP from 1974-86, is fondly remembered in so many ways, not least for informing Michael Parkinson: “We Cornish are part of a special tribe . . . we are born in the centre of the civilised world.”
David, whose life and Parliamentary term were tragically cut short in a car accident, was variously described as “the best leader the Liberals never had” and “Cornwall’s greatest politician.”
As much as anything, he was liked and remembered for his down-to-earth personality and his no-nonsense, “proper Cornish” way of speaking.
Three years after his death, his widow, Annette, published a biography in which she wrote: “Florid parliamentary language was never his style. When he disagreed with parliamentary colleagues, he would say ‘That’s plain stupid; no-one outside this madhouse will understand what we are up to.’”
The “madhouse” was, of course, the House of Commons. Throughout his long career at Westminster, he never allowed himself to be seduced by it to the extent that he lost his rustic, no-nonsense manner – or the bluntness with which he expressed strongly-held views.
That was the essence of his appeal, the reason why he was able to turn Truro into his own Liberal domain.
SLD leader Paddy Ashdown is quoted in Annette’s book as saying: “I learnt my politics from David. What he had done in Truro was always a beacon for people like me who felt that was the way to go about politics.”
People did listen to him and it proved to be one of his greatest assets as a politician, but the gift did not come easily. As Annette recalled: “I have seen him deeply depressed when he got something wrong.
“Yet he always learnt from the experience. Being amusing on a platform does take planning and David would take immense trouble to discover how best to put across the argument.”
David himself argued: “I do believe that if you can think of an amusing way to make a serious point, you can make it far more effectively in that manner. I think one of the problems politicians have in Britain is that people never listen to what they are saying.”
At his roots, he remained very much a constituency man with a real commitment to his task and, consequently, an enviable parliamentary voting record.
David was born on D-Day and was a cousin of Susan Penhaligon, hailed as the “face of the decade” in the 1970s and “Britain’s answer to Brigitte Bardot.”
In Parliament, he regularly entertained his fellow MPs, and occasionally mystified them, with his delightful Cornish accent and turn of phrase.
Here are a few samples from a Hansard report of David talking about Concorde:--
“I know from walking around my constituency that the (sonic) booms are a regular subject of conversation. I am frequently approached along the lines of '"'Ere, Mr. Penhaligon, when are we going to stop these booms?".
“ . . . There are regular complaints of cracked tiles and of china falling off shelves, particularly in caravans. Mothers worry that the bump is baby falling out of bed and rush upstairs to find that, fortunately, that is not so.”
“ . . . In the Camborne area, which has a slight schizophrenia about
noise because of the earth movements as the old mineworkings fall in, many people are genuinely worried that the noise is their back garden dropping 40 or 50 feet.”
Just a few weeks before his death, David was Michael Parkinson’s guest on BBC Radio’s Desert Island Discs programme. (He also guest-presented The Jimmy Young Show for a week.)
Michael introduced him as “once described as a reforming radical oft performing as a Cornish comic.”
David agreed that we Cornish are “part of a special tribe,” but resisted Michael’s suggestion that we are “outcasts.”
He countered: “We Cornish are born in the centre of the civilized world; there are just enough people around for life to be pleasant. It’s when you get up in these great urban areas where you get fed up with people. The Cornish have got the balance just right.”
And not for nothing did David earn this tribute from Stephen Gilbert, then St Austell & Newquay Lib Dem MP, on the 25th anniversary of his death in 2001:
“He is still remembered and talked about to this day and his inspirational words and rhetoric were instrumental in my desire to become a politician. His passing was for many one of the saddest days in modern times throughout Cornwall.”
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