efforts on behalf of maternity rights. When Margaret Thatcher was elected Conservative leader, she showed no interest in women’s issues, Michael observed with considerable dismay. After which he got on to one of his heroes, Lloyd George and Lloyd George’s affair with his secretary, Frances Stevenson, a strong supporter of women’s rights. Lloyd George said to her, “We can’t have another Parnell case, you know.” Michael mentioned that both he and Jill were interested in Frances Stevenson, whom Michael had met. He did not know that Jill had kept a diary with rather acerbic comments on the submissiveness of secretaries.
Talk of Lloyd George led to an aria about the poor record of Liberals on the subject of women’s suffrage. Michael deplored Gladstone’s opposition but saved most of his fire for Asquith, whose government force-fed the suffragettes. Jill, Michael noted, had given Roy Jenkins a hard time for not adequately dealing with Asquith’s hostility to votes for women in his biography of the politician. Although Jenkins had made certain government documents concerning the Liberal government’s treatment of the suffragettes available to Jill, she continued to hector him. “She would not let him off,” Michael chuckled, “every time she saw him.”
I seized my opportunity: “Do you think that’s part of what Crossman meant when he said Jill was not just a politician’s wife but she was a politician too?” “She wasn’t a politician’s wife at all,” Michael replied. “She was very good to me, but she had her own ... ” When Michael hesitated, I asked, “So a politician’s wife would not speak up, right?” Well, a politician’s wife might not put it the way Jill did, Michael conceded. “She was not doing anything to injure me,” he quickly pointed out. “She did not meekly follow what the males were saying.”
Hoping for further openings, I mentioned a passage in Barbara Castle’s autobiography describing Jill’s effort to corner Harold Wilson, then President of the Board of Trade, about more support for the British film industry. “Barbara said Jill became quite outspoken and she quotes you as saying, ‘Jill, come off it,’ perhaps because she was becoming a little aggressive.” Michael lowered his voice, “I don’t remember that.” I continued: “My impression is that Jill was outspoken and not particularly concerned about being tactful.” Michael seemed to agree that Jill was pursuing her cause “by the best available means.” Jill could be tactless, but Michael asserted that she dealt better with people than Barbara did. Wilson was one of Barbara’s heroes (he promoted and backed her), Michael reminded me, but Michael felt Jill was justly critical of Wilson’s lukewarm support for British filmmakers. For a Labour Party member, Wilson evinced a shocking want of support for leftwing filmmakers and in fact seemed to Jill, all too cosy with rightwing rogues like Alexander Korda.3
“I don’t think it would be much use, ever,” Michael said, referring to any effort to silence Jill. I laughed. “But that did not mean that she lacked subtlety,” Michael added. “I think she was both outspoken and charming,” I offered. “Yes, she was,” Michael agreed. “I also wonder if she had more latitude to be her own person. She wasn’t a member of Parliament representing somebody. She was just representing a point of view,” I suggested. “She wasn’t representing my views. She knew much more than I did about film,” he noted. According to Jill, the trouble started with Stafford Cripps, who seemed in the grip of reactionary filmmakers and then continued with Harold Wilson, Cripps’s protégé. Michael Balcon would have supported Jill in this regard, Michael emphasised.
Michael remembered other instances when Jill had gone after Labour leaders—even Robin Cook for the Party’s policy on the Balkans. This was before Tony Blair’s first election victory when both Jill and Michael thought New Labour had not condemned Serb aggression in stronger terms. James Callaghan himself had come up to Jill to quietly suggest that perhaps she should “lay off.” Callaghan and Michael had never been personal friends, Michael pointed out:
But after we had the election [for party leader, with Michael losing by only a few votes to Callaghan] I was doing everything I could in the House of Commons to keep that government in office. Also, I didn’t want Callaghan to resign. I thought there was still a chance of winning the next election—much better than I would have. I pleaded with him not to do it [resign]. He was very nice to Jill. After the election [for party leader] he invited us to Chequers and showed us around, saying, “Five more votes, Jill and you would have been here.”
When I asked him about it, Callaghan did not remember saying this, but he saw no reason to doubt Michael’s memory.
“How did you and Jill feel about coming so close—five votes?” I asked.
Michael said he never thought he would win:
I didn’t think I was going to come as close as that … he did that terrible thing about sacking Barbara and Barbara will never forgive me [because she thought Michael should have resigned from the Cabinet in protest over her dismissal]. She thought from that moment onwards the government made an awful hash of it. Not the truth. My opinion is that Callaghan ran that government better than Wilson.
“What happened to Wilson?” I asked. “Did he just get tired?” Michael thought so: “Yes. Nobody knows for sure.”
18
At the end of my London visit, I discussed with Michael the possibility of joining him in Dubrovnik in September. It was difficult for me to get away because of my teaching and my two Scotties, which I refused to put in a kennel. My wife could look after them, but more than a week of that became rather burdensome for her when alone. “I could never put Dizzy in a kennel,” Michael said. I said I’d have to find someone in the neighbourhood to take care of the dogs if my wife came with me (a doubtful possibility). “That’s what we did,” Michael said. “Dizzy was quite adventurous with other people. He was very frisky. When we said he was a Tibetan, some people laughed. They’re supposed to have a terrible reputation.” Indeed, Julie had told him that the breed “yapped” all the time. “During the first two years he was a bit hard to control,” Michael said, a massive understatement. “We got him just before the terrible election of 1983. On Sundays, I’d do seven or eight miles with him up to Kenwood [in Hampstead Heath] and all those other parts.”
“How did Dizzy get his name?” I asked. “I was writing a piece about Disraeli at the time. Greatly undervalued as a writer. A better novelist than that bloody Trollope. Better on politics. . . He was genuinely interested in the women ... in women’s rights.” Thus Michael rewound the spool of his recollections. Sometimes it seemed like an endless loop.
1 See my argument in A Higher Form of Cannibalism? Adventures in the Art and Politics of Biography (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2005).
2 I include the entire letter in To Be A Woman: The Life of Jill Craigie (London: Aurum Press, 2005).
3 Later, film historian Philip Kemp sent me a tape recording of an interview with Jill, who attacked Korda and remained unwilling to accept Michael’s defence of the producer when Michael joined the conversation.
September 2000
19
On my arrival, I found Michael and Julie sitting outdoors in the late afternoon at the Villa Dubrovnik—Michael’s and Jill’s favourite holiday spot in the last years of their life together. Michael wanted to give me the full history of his stays, so we adjourned to his balcony. It provided a wonderful view of Dubrovnik, a place so compact that Rebecca West, looking back on it as she departed, called it a “city on a coin.” Michael said, “Now to come to this place and how we got here. Jill came to see this place better than anybody else and to understand what they were up to here.” In 1980, after Michael was elected leader of the Labour Party, a Yugoslav diplomat asked him why the Communist Party in Belgrade had better relations with the Tories than with the Labour Party. “One reason,” Michael replied, “is the treatment you’ve meted out over the years to our friend Milovan Djilas.” Djilas had stayed with Michael in Hampstead, befriending Jill as well. In fact, after