Rachel Reevesearch: bringing home Alice Bacon
As of last Friday I now have an Erdos number of 1 with the Chancellor of the Exchequer. In many ways this is complete happenstance — I’ve had no influence over the wise career moves and stellar work of Rachel Reeves, nor over the Conservatives tanking any lingering claims to high office. But it’s a cool thing to say and, to be fair, involved a bit of work from me.
In early 2011 I answered an advert on w4mp for a research internship working with Rachel. At the time I was doing a Postdoctoral fellowship at the University of East Anglia, had just finished a short term By-fellowship at the Churchill Archives and was, I suspect, scrabbling around for stuff to provide some career thrust. Academic history was a potential avenue, but so was politics. I’d worked for a parliamentary candidate for about eight months prior to the 2010 election (Cambridge’s Daniel Zeichner — for whom congratulations for ministerial appointment are also due!), done some think tank interning, and so Westminster was also a route. Since the advert was slightly opaque — no mystery here, many such ones are — I was taking a bit of a punt. In so much as I thought about Rachel beforehand it was in a general — ok, impressive background, going places sort of way — but in the first days of the Ed Miliband era, or really throughout, I can’t pretend I thought Labour occupying 11 Downing Street was an imminent prospect.
After an interview at Portcullis House and some back and forth, it became clear that the project was to do something on Alice Bacon — the first (and pre-Rachel, only) female MP to have been elected to a Leeds seat. I was no doubt completely busking any knowledge in the interview. Despite serving as a minister of state in two crucial departments in the 1960s Wilson governments — education during the move towards comprehensive education, and home affairs, at a time where the Jenkins socially liberal reforms were being pushed through — Alice had almost completely escaped historians’ attention. This was no doubt in part due her being a figure of the Labour right — less attended to in general by academics. Her gender may also have played a role. And there was the logistical issue that, barring a few letters in family hands, she had no archive of which to speak.
The timeline is a bit hazy in my memory, but at some early point the plan morphed from doing something in general on Alice to a fully blown biography. I was happy to do the archival end of the research and tagged along to some of the interviews when in London — I remember Jack Straw, who was a student activist and something of a scourge of Alice’s in 1960s Leeds, being good value. Rachel knew way more than me during the early stages, and we got closer to equilibrium as the project progressed.
The archival side was tougher. As someone in the room but not always making the decisions Alice was almost literally at the margins of history. Material in Leeds to/from her great friend Hugh Gaitskell was illuminating, and there were bits and bobs at the People’s History Museum, Manchester. But it became clear that this was a challenging project. Alice was there and thereabouts — she had clear causes like comprehensive education which were dear to her, but her views, in so far as they made the record, were often expressed through mass platforms or agreeing with resolutions moved by others.
All props to Rachel therefore. Geographic working proximity to members of parliament obviously helped, but, whilst a frontbencher, she essentially generated the vast majority of primary (and new) material for the book from those interviews, and wrote to others. Bernard Atha. Betty Boothroyd. Shirley Williams. Denis Healey. Even Tony Benn. Memories from figures now lost were put on the record because a busy and rising political star made it happen. That’s a great thing. There would absolutely have been no book without it — there was just not enough written material.
I remember at one stage Rachel and I were chatting over why Alice — a figure of the Labour right — did not join the SDP in the early 1980s. Her advancing age may have played a part, certainly. But ultimately Alice, like Rachel, was tribally Labour. I remember talking this over with some mates about the time the Independent Group sprung up. There was, I confidently (and, rarely, accurately) predicted, “zero chance” that Rachel would jump ship. This is also where the Blairite accusation of Rachel always fell down a bit for me. Tony Blair was someone who barely liked the Labour Party, and viewed its history, whenever he thought about it all, as purely a vehicle for whatever he wanted to do. I don’t necessarily even knock that as a governing philosophy. But in neither sense is/was this Rachel.
As for the process, there was drafting by us both. Scribbling on said drafts. Archives. Interviews. Questions and queries. General book stuff. She and her office were driving the project. I kept my part in it ticking over whilst passing through four jobs — academia, think tank, NGO, back to academia — and it was a nice background project, even if getting to 80,000+ words was a a struggle given the above constraints. Working in Westminster for the first couple of years definitely helped logistically.
The book took a while because of Rachel’s meteoric rise, impending 2015 election, and children (hers, not mine — though now in the same two children boat I have even more admiration for jumping on a project like this alongside shadow ministerial duties etc). There were times when I was plodding along as Rachel tried, forlornly, to get Labour over the electoral line. One benefit of the Corbyn rise was the book was then re-prioritised. As one of the 4.5% who voted for Liz Kendall I can’t claim anything there, either.
It was scooped up by I.B. Tauris — who were later great to work with on my Blair-Clinton book, March of the Moderates. Rachel’s name appears on the book cover for what became Alice in Westminster (no issue with me, as I said at the time, ‘nobody knows who I am’, and the majority of the new material in the book was generated by her). Generously, I did end up with a co-author credit, which I’ll no doubt use to parlay the direction of the British economy after 2024 into winning the next REF impact contest. In fact, short of those legal scholars with a credit alongside Sir Keir, this should be sewn up, surely. A new beer appeared at the House of Commons named after Alice — case closed.
More seriously, the book appeared at the end of 2016 to pleasingly strong reviews. Rachel has parlayed it into a lecture series at the University of Leeds amongst other things. I was glad to play a supporting role in the original research that made it possible — it kept a foot in Westminster as I was broadly dipping out. It was fun.
I probably should chuck in some scoop here, but I can only really say positive things. I found/find her a focused and sharp person. She’s both serious and warm — the odd amusing text about ongoing political shenanigans here or there (lost to the record as I’ve lost the phone). She evidently cares about history, and is able to juggle a billion things at once. An all-round decent and impressive individual. Her office to a fault were great. I can’t knock it as an experience. I guess this is a recommendation to any twenty-something academic/policy interlopers seeing a similar ad to jump in. It’ll be hard work. But a future REF submission may thank you, and you’ll meet some interesting people.
