The Labour party has too often lost major figures at the peak of their careers – from Hugh Gaitskell and Tony Crosland to John Smith and Donald Dewar. Ten years ago, on 20 September 2003, added to their number was Gareth Williams, Lord Williams of Mostyn, Labour’s leader in the House of Lords, who died suddenly at the age of 62. He was only the third cabinet minister to die in office in the last 60 years, following Iain Macleod in 1970 and Crosland in 1977.
At the time, Gareth’s death came as a great shock to all those who knew him. Tony Blair noted that he had ‘played as always a full role in cabinet discussions on Thursday. It will be hard for his cabinet colleagues and his many friends within and outside politics to accept that we will not see him again.’ In tributes the following month, the then leader of the opposition in the Lords, Lord Strathclyde, spoke of his ‘shock and incredulity’ and described ‘how unbelievable it is that Lord Williams of Mostyn is not in his place today.’
Gareth Williams was born in a taxi on the way to the hospital in north Wales in 1941, the son of teacher. He alluded to his modest background in 1998 during a debate in the House of Lords. Following protestations from the hereditary peers faced with expulsion from the House, and quoting Yeats, he recalled:
‘My own father was a village schoolteacher. His father was gassed in the first world war and could not, therefore, work properly thereafter. His father, my father’s grandfather, remembered the evictions in west Wales of tenant farmers because they voted according to their consciences in parliamentary elections before the secret ballot Act of 1870 was passed. They were evicted from their homes and their farms and many of them had to emigrate. They were back country people. They lived unremarked, though not unremarkable, lives, and I take up the noble Lord’s words, of duty and service. There are millions like them in our country today. All I would say is this: “they are no petty people”.’
Gareth achieved a place at Rhyl grammar school and won a scholarship to Cambridge, where as a law student he was a direct contemporary of Ken Clarke, John Gummer and Michael Howard – the last of these defeated him in a contest for president of the Cambridge Union in 1962. After qualifying as a barrister, his first experience in the national public eye was acting for George Deakin, a co-defendant in the Jeremy Thorpe case in 1979. He went on to be one of the country’s top barristers, with particular specialisation in libel and defamation cases involving personalities as varied as Elton John, Graeme Souness and Michael Jackson; in 1992 he became chair of the Bar Council.
He left this successful career to join Labour’s frontbench in the Lords in 1992. Working as a minister in the Home Office and attorney general (the first to sit in the Lords) in Labour’s first term, he joined the cabinet as leader of the House of Lords after the 2001 election, also taking on responsibility for Northern Ireland matters in the House. The reforms to the Lords’ working practices that Gareth initiated helped ultimately lead to the creation of the role of Lord Speaker and the greater use of committees for the consideration of bills.
He lived to see action taken on two causes personally important to him – the creation of a separate Supreme Court and Judicial Appointments Commission. Others he favoured, such as the creation of a Ministry of Justice and equal rights for royal daughters to succeed to the throne, have followed later. A good deal of his time in government was consumed by House of Lords reform, and, while he was clearly in favour of an elected second chamber, I suspect he would not be entirely surprised to see 10 years on that no further reform has yet been enacted.
In 2008, to mark the 50th anniversary of the Life Peerages Act, the House Magazine held a poll among members of the House of Lords to decide which life peer had made the most significant impact on parliament and national life. Lord Williams was the winner from a shortlist of 12 which included a former prime minister and a former chief of the defence staff. Today his memory also lives on in a Memorial Lecture on a legal theme held each year.
In her tribute to her former deputy, former Lords leader Margaret Jay quoted a contribution of Gareth’s during debates on the House of Lords Act in 1999. Having made clear his objection to the principle of the hereditary peers’ presence in the House, but also his understanding of the hurt and disappointment that they might feel, he finished by remarking:
‘I mentioned that I worked in Wales for a time. When I was there I tried to guess at the hurt, disappointment and bewilderment of miners who were dispossessed of their daily work, their loyal communities, friendships, homes and prospects. Disappointment and enforced change come to us all, and those I know and care for in those mining communities are certainly not strangers to them. That is not to oppose ignobly the disappointment of one class of our fellow citizens against the disappointment of another. It is stating, I hope gently and with understanding, the fact that change must come to every one of us. The noble Earl, Lord Arran, spoke of the continuous service over centuries. I accept that. But continuous service over the centuries grants in our world no eternal freehold on a particular position. It grants no wand to wave to give power, position, influence and privilege to the sons and daughters.’
Gareth Williams achieved a rare feat in embarking upon two careers, and reaching the pinnacle of both. A radical with great integrity, he was personally entertaining and witty and those who knew and worked with him miss him to this day. At the time Charlie Falconer said, in the context of the House of Lords, ‘His death deprives us all. Losing Gareth takes away a piece of everyone here’ – and it was a loss also felt by the Labour party.
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Matthew Seward was Lord Williams’ special adviser and is vice-chair of the Labour History Group
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Photo: rhylgrammarschool.org