Keeping election candidates in line

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By Giles Edwards Producer, Radio 4's The Election Agent

Even Lady Thatcher had to be reminded of campaign etiquette at times

On election day earlier this year, a small team from Radio 4 was out on the doorsteps of Woking and in the town's leisure centre to see democracy in action.

We weren't there to listen to the voters or wait for the result, though.

Instead, we were there to watch a rather select group of people going about their jobs: The election agents.

Political parties' election agents have been around in their current incarnation for more than 100 years.

Originally, they used to try and win elections by bribing, or "treating", voters.

Later, they became responsible for managing the finances and they are still legally responsible for the election campaign - no candidate is ever liable in that way.

That legal responsibility can give them enormous influence - and sometimes requires them to remind the candidate who is in charge.

Andrew Thomson, Margaret Thatcher's agent in the 1983 election, reminisces about a disastrous start to that campaign.

She was fuming when she returned to the constituency office but when her press aide asked who had selected the place to start, her agent had to tell the truth.

"I looked straight across the room and I said 'the candidate'," he said. "Not Mrs Thatcher, not the prime minister, that unfortunate legal necessity the candidate."

"What happened next," he added, "was magic".

"She smiled, stood up, came over, put her hand on my shoulder and said: 'I'm always like this on the first day Andrew, let's go and have lunch'."

Tools of the trade

If you weren't agent to the prime minister but instead hosting a visit from one, it could be equally nerve-wracking. Particularly if the opposition was determined to cause trouble.

In 1964 John Barrance was due to host a visit from then prime minister Alec Douglas-Home.

He heard that a group of young socialists would come to heckle, so in his words "it so happened that on that morning a tractor happened to tip its lorry load of manure" over the only road between them and the prime minister.

By the time the road was clear, the visit had ended and the prime minister was on his way.

The role of the agent has diminished as parties centralised their operations

"Don't ask me how the manure came to get in the road," John Barrance says. "But it does so happen that our young Conservatives at that time and the young farmers at that time were quite friendly."

If agents have had to turn manure into a tool of the trade, they also reveal they have found uses for pink cadillacs and superglue over the years too.

Even more impressive is their knowledge of their local patch. In Fulham, Labour agent June McMahon once won an election by just four votes, after several recounts.

The victory must have been particularly sweet since they had somehow managed to persuade the Conservative candidate's parents to vote Labour.

That story reveals a key part of all party agents' jobs: keeping the party in touch with local voters.

The period after 1945 was a golden one for party agents. Their numbers grew enormously and they wielded great influence in all three parties.

They were responsible for all constituency campaigning and built impressive organisations.

Jean Lucas, one of the most celebrated Conservative agents, helped the party turn the London Borough of Wandsworth into a stronghold for the party, and discovered and promoted the young John Major.

Local eyes and ears

In constituencies far from Parliament, agents helped connect MPs and their constituents, and had an important status in their local communities.

Elsewhere, local parties sometimes boasted as many as 4,000 members. Agents were responsible for staying in touch with these people, and raising money from them.

This "golden age" had passed by the 1990s, when parties began to centralise their operations.

Labour and the Conservatives both moved to strip agents of some of the autonomy they had enjoyed until that point.

With a sharp drop in membership and income, felt the party bosses, they wanted to send their professional campaigners to the political hotspots, not leave them in safer territory.

But it prompted a great deal of angst amongst agents, some of whom felt their profession was being killed off.

Now, as politicians agonise over how to they can restore trust, perhaps they need their local eyes and ears - the local election agents - even more.

The first part of The Election Agent is on BBC Radio 4 on 2 August at 2245, and repeated on 5 August at 2045.