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A Longer Biography :-
Frank joined the Labour Party (League of Youth) in Hartlepool in 1950, partly because his mother offered him a good bicycle if he did so. Moving to Billingham with his young and growing family in the early 1960s, he found himself – rather bizarrely it seems now, on present parliamentary boundaries – in the Sedgefield constituency until the creation for the 1974 general elections of Teesside Stockton with its giant electorate of over 85,000.
It was as the M.P. for this seat, with a big majority of 11,127 even in the poll which brought Mrs Thatcher’s Conservatives to power, that William Rodgers defected in March 1981 from Labour to the new Social Democratic Party (S.D.P.) which he had helped to found. Long active both in his union A.U.E.W. (T.A.S.S.) and the constituency Labour Party (C.L.P.), Frank was by then Chairman of the latter. Rodgers had identified him as a potential threat in a Financial Times Article and Frank duly took the hint and put his name forward for Labour’s replacement.
Under the old system of constituency General Management Committees (G.M.C.) selecting the candidate, Frank was chosen in a fairly close contest. Normally he would have been able to prepare for the next general election while continuing as Senior Construction Manager and Field Engineer for Capper-Neill International (a post which actually carried a higher salary than that of an M.P. at the time) but constituencies were due to be amended again by the Boundary Commission and Teesside Stockton was abolished! Frank had to seek selection again, this time for the new Stockton North Constituency. There were several unsuccessful applicants for the shortlist. Frank was selected once more, in another close contest.
The smaller Stockton North seat, with 70,211 electors, should have been even safer for Labour than Teesside Stockton but came under a real and twofold threat. Firstly, the Party was in the doldrums nationally and Mrs Thatcher was on her way to a crushing 143 majority. Secondly, Rodgers had the prestige of a sitting M.P. and previous Co-Leader of the S.D.P. and although only a handful of local Labour activists had defected with him, he was still a serious contender. Stockton North campaigns – with the exception of 1992 when Frank had one sustained and nasty clash with the Tory candidate and his agent – have tended to be short on personal acrimony but this was not the case in 1983, with some bad blood between the S.D.P. and Labour. The Conservatives selected a highly regarded local councilor and headmaster – Harry Davies, and the ‘safe’ seat became a 3-way marginal.
On June 6th 1983, Frank was elected as the M.P. for Stockton North with a majority of just 1,870. He received 18,339 votes: 37.1% of the total. Davies got 16,469 (33.3%) and Rodgers 14,630 (29.6%). Frank therefore had the long-term job of helping make the seat safe again for Labour as well as establishing his own political profile as an initially obscure backbencher.
As a member of both the Tribune and the harder line Campaign Group, he was generally seen as a leftwinger and co-sponsored Eric Heffer for Leader and Michael Meacher for Deputy Leader in September 1983 after the retirement of Michael Foot. In July 1983 he expressed concern about U.S. forces’ threat to Nicaragua and in December flew to Moscow with other M.Ps. in Labour Action for Peace but his ‘breakthrough’ issue concerned his own home town.
Learning that Nirex, the nuclear waste disposal executive, were contemplating the use of a disused I.C.I. anhydrite mine extending under much of Billingham to bury intermediate level material, Frank tried in October 1983 for an emergency debate on this issue and succeeded in getting an Adjournment debate on it in May 1984. During this period a dynamic local pressure group, Billingham Against Nuclear Dumping (B.A.N.D.) was formed, uniting the town – the largest wholly within Stockton North – in a way never seen since. Members of all parties and none contributed greatly to the momentum, with Frank benefitting as their active figurehead.
Eventually the government capitulated and the threat was removed, to great satisfaction in Billingham.
A longstanding supporter of mandatory reselection for Labour M.P.s, Frank underwent the process himself in 1985 and, though again faced by credible challengers, obtained a bigger majority on the G.M.C. than in 1981 and 82. He had by then resigned from the Tribune and Campaign Groups but was still seen as a leftwinger.
He was also seen by many in the media and elsewhere as ‘anti-nuclear’, having enquired into safety at Hartlepool Nuclear Power Station after one of his many contacts in industry tipped him off that control rods were becoming stuck in the reactor. In fact, he had begun to develop a much more sophisticated and holistic interest in energy and waste disposal. In February 1986 he introduced a Bill to establish an independent commission to promote “clean, renewable alternative sources of energy.” In December he urged further research into Norwegian-style wave-power research. Earlier in 1986 he had attacked the ‘incompetence, dishonesty and treachery’ of Nirex and called for Hartlepool’s nuclear reactor to be shut down until made safe. In February 1987 Frank publicly insisted that nuclear waste should be kept only in isolated, engineered storage remote from inhabited communities and opposed the Sizewell because of its pressurised water reactor. Another key domestic issue for Frank then came out of the blue.
In 1987-8, the sub-region and then to a major extent the whole country became preoccupied with the so-called Cleveland Child Sex Abuse Crisis. The Social Services Department of Cleveland County Council – covering the area of the now unitary boroughs of Stockton, Middlesbrough, Hartlepool and Langbaurgh (later Redcar and Cleveland) – experienced a sharp rise in referrals for suspected child sexual abuse. This in turn shed light on the diagnostic technique of two paediatricians who were to be vilified by elements of the national press. All responsible Cleveland politicians, local and national, had to take an interest in and to an extent a line on this upsetting issue and Frank began to take a keen and careful interest in it.
Prior to the 1987 General Election, Frank had briefly pursued his erstwhile adversary Bill Rodgers to Milton Keynes, which he hoped to take for the S.D.P., in order to support the Labour candidate. The motif of her leaflets was that she “would not need a map” to find the constituency and Frank adopted this for his own campaign publicity (as did the new candidate for Redcar, the then unknown Dr Marjorie Mowlam, whose biography mentioned Frank only in relation to that leaflet). In the 1987 election he faced a bright young Conservative, David Faber and S.D.P. academic, Nick Bosanquet and emphasised his local connections in contrast to these newcomers. Frank increased his vote to 26,043 (49.1%) and his majority to 8,801 over Faber.
The 1987 campaign was run from a building on Norton Road, towards the Stockton High Street end, acquired by Frank as a base for the local Labour Party and for himself. He was conscious of the need for local provision to supplement the advice bureaux (or ‘surgeries’) he held most months at the weekend with part-time secretarial support and which commonly lasted more than three hours (sometimes much more). The building was named Chetwynd after the M.P. for Stockton-on-Tees from 1945 to 1962, George Chetwynd. Unfortunately, plans for its use almost immediately came to nothing as it was compulsorily purchased and demolished to make way for the Durham Road bypass! This same site became associated with real tragedy in 1994.
From 1989, Frank began to make alternative provision, with an assistant operating from a small office in his family home but this proved unworkable and he commenced a search for other premises in Billingham. The only organisation to help was the then North Tees Health Authority who offered offices on reasonable terms in the Billingham Health Centre and it was there that the new constituency office opened in April 1991 and remains to this day.
Having urged the establishment of a Royal Commission into Child Abuse in May 1987, Frank joined in July with new Redcar M.P. Mo Mowlam and the veteran Member for Hartlepool Ted Leadbitter in urging a judicial review. By now it was apparent that an opposing view on the Cleveland ‘crisis’ was taken by Stuart Bell (Middlesbrough, Labour) and Tim Devlin (Stockton South, Conservative). As noted above, this hugely controversial subject continued to command national attention into 1988 when Judge Butler-Sloss published her Report on it. The House of Commons debate in July included this chilling example provided by Frank in his speech of a: “58 year old woman who is visited three times a week by her 82 year old father. That might be funny in a music hall but it is not funny in real life.”
Abortion, an issue with which all M.P.s must engage at some point, also came to prominence as an issue at this time as a result of a Bill introduced by David Alton M.P. The main proposal of the Alton Bill was to bring down the maximum period permitted after conception for a foetus to be terminated from the then 28 weeks. Although the Catholic Alton openly declared his hope of going much further in reducing abortions, there was sound recent medical evidence to support his main proposal and in October 1987 Frank declared that he was in favour of a reduction in the permitted period for termination from 28 weeks to 24 – a proposal forming an amendment to the Bill – but not to 18 as Alton first proposed, as that would be “unrealistic”.
In January 1988 Frank voted for the Alton Bill on its second reading so as to allow it to go into committee. The reaction of Stockton North C.L.P. was to pass a resolution regretting his action and calling for him to explain it. The motion, tabled by the North Tees Hospital branch of the health union C.O.H.S.E. was carried by the G.M.C. with no votes against and few abstentions and although it was not one of censure, the discussion contained some sharp criticisms of Frank who, though not present, used a report of the meeting to defend himself at the A.G.M. in March. Greatly emphasized both times was what Labour Party policy was at the time as a resolution carried at the 1985 Conference had attempted to remove the ‘conscience’ provision always afforded to M.P.s on this subject. Frank denied that this was the Party’s current position, citing the more recent 1987 Labour N.E.C. statement on abortion reform which acknowledged the right of individual conscience of Party members. In the light of the criticisms from his C.L.P. it was ironic that Frank would later be denounced as an uncritical supporter of abortion on demand in inaccurate propaganda produced by the local Society for the Protection of the Unborn Child for the next three General Election campaigns and distributed by some of the Catholic churches in the constituency at Mass.
More trouble with his local Party followed Frank’s action in October 1987 in applying to buy – with the benefit of the generous discount available to all local authority tenants under the 1980 Housing Act – the council house in Billingham in which he and his family had lived for twenty four years. This transaction ought to have been a private one between himself and Stockton-on-Tees Borough Council but was leaked to the media by someone (possibly a Labour councillor, though the person’s identity never came to light) denounced in December 1988 by Frank as a coward. The St. Cuthberts ward submitted a critical resolution to the January 1989 meeting of Stockton North G.M.C., suggesting that Frank should have purchased in the private sector instead. The C.L.P., however, decided not to pass it and formally to take no action.
Legal action was taken by Frank against the Northern Echo and its journalist Chris Brayshay who, in common with other local media, had accurately reported the criticism of Frank’s council house purchase by some prominent members of his local Party and the effect of the discount in bringing down the price of his home from £15,550 to £7,153. Brayshay however had gone further and stated that by this transaction Frank had contravened Labour Party policy. Once again, therefore, discussion centered on just what that policy was and it was established that opposition to the ‘Right to Buy’ had been dropped back in 1984 when Jeff Rooker was Neil Kinnock’s spokesperson on housing. Unlike that of 1983, the 1987 General Election had not been fought by Labour on opposition to council house sales and it was decided in civil court that Brayshay and the Echo were wrong to accuse Frank of breaching Party policy on this.
In July 1987, Frank enquired about a nuclear-contaminated railway wagon at Hartlepool nuclear power station. The following month he insisted in The Guardian that the phasing out of nuclear power need not mean net job losses. In February 1988, in an adjournment debate, he raised the inadequate reward paid to Jim Cormack who had blown the whistle on a “fraud of gigantic proportions” in stealing diesel fuel from the nuclear base at Faslane. In March, he asked for assurances that new and tighter controls of nuclear effluent would be applied. In January 1988 Frank signaled his active interest, which had begun some time before and was to continue, in the possible cancerous effects of overhead power lines, calling for an investigation. He repeated this demand in March. In June 1988 Frank introduced a Bill to set up a Renewable Energy Development Agency as he continued to look constructively at energy-related issues. As Vice-Chairman of the all-party Alternative Energy Group, Frank urged in August 1988 an independent review on wave power after it emerged that a consultant’s report on the Salter ‘nodding duck’ proposals had been doctored. He also scored a telling point off the Thatcher Government after her Environment Secretary Nicholas Ridley misleadingly wrote to him in July 1988 that his P.P.S. Nicholas Soames had not attended a meeting of CET, a nuclear waste disposal company. In fact, Soames had attended the meeting, as Ridley admitted in August.
In April 1988, Frank was among the first group of M.P.s to deplore publicly Saddam Hussein’s poison gas attack on his own citizens in the Kurdish part of Iraq. He had begun to take a much more systematic and time-consuming interest in international affairs. From 1987 was one of the U.K. Parliament’s representatives on the North Atlantic Assembly, the debating arm of N.A.T.O. (North Atlantic Treaty Organisation) and slowly gained greater seniority and subject specialisation. He also began to represent the British Parliament on the O.S.C.E. (Organisation for Security and Co-Operation in Europe) from its inception under that name in 1990.
At Westminster, Frank joined the Opposition Whips’ team in 1987, remaining until 1992 and becoming Northern Whip under Derek Foster M.P. Frank’s Select Committee memberships included Employment 1986-7 and Procedure 1987-92. He was still active on domestic issues.
In July 1988 he introduced a Bill to enable cabbies to ban smoking in their cabs and in October co-urged decent rail links to the North for the next Channel Tunnel. In November 1988 Frank introduced a Bill to establish a National Cervical Cancer Foundation and in the same month came one of his more idiosyncratic initiatives, earning widespread media coverage. He had his head shaved on television and thereby succeeded in raising £4,300 for Children in Need.
In October 1988 Frank disclosed that he had joined the Parliamentary Armed Services Trust and an increasing proportion of his public pronouncements in the second half of that year were defence-related. He deplored job losses resulting from Swan Hunter’s failure to win Royal Naval Orders and later co-urge a full-scale military review, since the current commitment to a five day war could not be sustained if munitions were to run out after two days. He highlighted an aspect of their troops’ daily experience which many people preferred not to think about when he described the “degree of real, vile hostility” shown to British servicemen in parts of Northern Ireland. In October 1988 he attended a seminar at N.A.T.O. Defence College, Rome.
There were contests for the Leadership and Deputy Leadership of the Labour Party in 1988 in which Frank backed the incumbent Neil Kinnock against the hard left ‘ticket’ of Tony Benn and Eric Heffer but voted for John Prescott who was also challenging for Deputy Leader. His own reselection in 1989 was by far the least difficult of Frank’s whole parliamentary career, despite the two bones of contention with some of his local party, detailed above. This was an uncontested reselection, in marked contrast to the last one in 1985 – and the next one in 1994.
Frank remained very active on nuclear and waste disposal issues. In November 1988 he helped elicit the figure that disposing of nuclear waste might cost the Government £4.35 billion and the next month co-sponsored Joan Ruddock’s Control of Pollution (Amendment) Bill to register carriers of controlled wastes. He also asked about costs to the C.E.G.B. as a consequence of having to close down poorly designed AGR nuclear reactors before refuelling.
In December, Frank co-sponsored Tory M.P. John Browne’s Protection of Privacy Bill. In January 1989 he lambasted the Freedom Association for their support of rebel cricketers, under former captain Mike Gatting, who accepted a lucrative offer to tour apartheid South Africa.
Frank saw no contradiction between his long-held and unswerving belief in nuclear disarmament for Britain and his very active membership of the North Atlantic Assembly – a view apparently validated by his growing circle of friendly international contacts including many Americans, some of them ‘hawks’. He was one of the M.P.s who in May 1989 expressed dismay at Neil Kinnock’s reported conversion from unilateralism to multilateralism during the Policy Review which followed the post-1987 ‘Labour Listens’ exercise.
Frank’s interventions on defence and security matters included his revelation in October 1989, in the aftermath of the Deal bombing, that wives of serving personnel at three British Army units in (the then) West Germany were canvassed for jobs as security guards. In November, he claimed that security was too casual at the Guards’ Wellington Barracks off Birdcage Walk in London, where a helicopter carrying Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher had landed.
Frank was revealed as the most assiduous signer of Early Day Motions in 1988-89, as well as tabling some of his own or putting down amendments. In March 1989 when 30 M.P.s put down a motion urging the abolition of hare coursing, he added the succinct amendment “forthwith”. In June, Frank led a motion expressing concern that food irradiation could cause illness, partly because it could not prevent botulism.
In April 1990, as Vice-Chairman of the All-Party Alternative Energy Group, Frank backed Conservative M.P. Tony Spellar’s demand for more serious backing for “alternative cheaper, safer and more efficient forms of renewable energy.” In May, Frank introduced his own 10 Minute Rule Bill on the Control of Toxic Waste Residues. This was a carefully thought out and entirely serious attempt to make areas and regions more responsible for disposing of their own waste and to achieve other desirable ends but, recognising the limits of the system on such bills, he himself commented that his chances of getting it enacted were “about as rare as rocking horse droppings!” So indeed it proved but measures proposed in the Bill remained advisable.
Continuing to make interventions on topics nuclear, Frank complained in July 1990 that there had been “an unscheduled, uncontrolled and hitherto undisclosed release into the atmosphere of large quantities of irradiated material from the nuclear establishment at Harwell”. Nuclear Electric admitted to him in a letter to him that they had been unable to correct a design fault on their recently completed AGRs which would cost £500m a year in lost electricity revenue and £50 million a year in extra research and modifications, making them less competitive than coal.
Aware since 1985 that he suffered from a diabetes-related condition, Frank had had to make amendments to his diet and lifestyle and gave up both smoking and alcohol in November that year. Nevertheless, his hectic schedule caught up with him in April 1990 when he collapsed suffering from low blood pressure and exhaustion. This episode soon paled into insignificance when it became apparent that he had bowel cancer. Frank had to undergo prolonged and drastic surgery on September 25th at the hands of Professor Wastell of Westminster who had to remove much of his colon. Further surgery and associated measures followed and Frank, incapacitated for several weeks, needed all his physical resilience to recover from this near-death experience.
Following Saddam Hussain’s invasion of Kuwait in August 1990, preparations for the first Gulf War were undertaken by President George Bush senior and Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher – then, after her fall, continued by her successor John Major. In December 1990 Frank intervened to help constituency wives fly to see their husbands in Iraq. On the substantive issue of military intervention, he did not feel able to vote with the majority of the Parliamentary Labour Party, in favour of the military action against Iraq which began in January 1991.
At this time, I.C.I. – who were later to sell off all their local plant to other firms – were still the largest employer in Stockton North and in July 1991 Frank led a delegation to Strasbourg to protest against the attempted takeover of the company by Lord Hanson. In December Frank complained that Trade and Industry Secretary Michael Heseltine had blocked a cartel agreement between I.C.I. and Kimera, which included the running of the Billingham plant. In another industry intervention, in October, he complained that the U.K. Government were not supporting a bid from Stockton-based Davy Engineering for the refurbishment of an Indian steel plant in the way that the German government were evidently supporting their bidders.
Local councillors are, often unfairly, assumed to be deriving significant financial benefit from their elected status but Frank discovered the truth to be that those who were unemployed or semi-retired were being made to jump through frequent bureaucratic hoops by the Departments of Social Security and The Environment and often ended up financially worse off. Having made numerous attempts, both verbal and written, to have this concealed problem addressed – using illustrative examples from Stockton-on-Tees district council and Cleveland County Council – he complained in March 1992 that he had been denied the opportunity to meet an Environment minister with an all-party delegation of local members.
The big local government issue in the 1987-92 Parliament had been the Community Charge or (as almost everyone called it) Poll Tax. In Stockton as elsewhere, members of the Militant Tendency were prominent in organizing a non-payment campaign and taking contributions from the public on the promise of helping with their legal bills. Whilst applauding those who were prepared to defy the law and accept in full the consequences, Frank and his office were careful to stress to constituents that the law should be obeyed and that they would receive no support or encouragement in breaking it. Convinced that people had been exposed by the Militants’ advice, Frank reluctantly reversed his opposition to the Labour Party expelling them.
In the April 1992 General Election, which Labour expected to win, Frank came under attack from his Stockton North Tory opponent Simon Brocklebank Fowler for, amongst other things, encouraging non-payment of the Poll Tax! Strong local Social and Liberal Democrat candidate Suzanne Fletcher and Independent Ken McGarvey were sidelined as Brocklebank Fowler, with a united team and an experienced agent behind him, made the running with an aggressive personal campaign against Frank whose agent, by contrast, was inexperienced and did not receive some of the support from the local Party he had been promised when taking on the role. Despite this, Frank’s vote increased to 27,918 and his majority over the Conservatives to 10,474. Nationally, however, John Major unexpectedly achieved a Tory majority of 21.
Neil Kinnock resigned in despair and the contest for his successor as Labour Leader lasted from May to July. Frank backed John Smith who overwhelmingly defeated Bryan Gould but his Deputy Leadership choice, John Prescott, lost in the ballot for that position to Margaret Beckett.
In the post-Election allocation of committee positions, Frank joined a third body dealing with international affairs when we was voted onto the prestigious House of Commons Defence Select Committee when other members had to come off under new time-limited tenure rules.
Domestically, Frank joined Chris Joseph in his legal and publicity battle against Barclays Bank, Shell U.K.. Phillips Electronics and Hutchinson Telecom who, as the short-lived BYPS consortium, had commissioned Joseph’s London advertising agency Hook in 1989 to promote a plug-in mobile phone system which he had named Rabbit. Hook was ruined when the consortium dissolved itself and, as one of many interventions, Frank demanded in May 1992 a royal commission to investigate the multinationals’ expropriation of the firm’s intellectual property. Barclays were also Hook’s bankers and in that capacity took further steps which threatened to drive it out of business altogether. With further interventions from Frank and Tory M.P. William Powell, the campaign increasingly set out to embarrass Barclays and other big banks which had allegedly discriminated against small businesses and became the Struggle Against Financial Exploitation (S.A.F.E.) which quickly attracted 5,000 members.
Areas hit by urban riots in 1991 and ‘92 included New Blue Hall and particularly Ragworth in Stockton North. Following the disturbances of August 1992, which caused Trafalgar House to suspend a £1 million contract to renovate Ragworth, Frank engaged directly with discontented local youths, holding two face-to-face meetings with them then instigating a discussion forum in September involving Cleveland Constabulary and County Council, Stockton Borough Council and other local agencies. Whereas the face-to-face sessions were well-attended and momentum seemed to be generated, the forum sessions, from September, received negligible participation from residents and Frank expressed himself dismayed as the initiative petered out.
One effort which bore fruit in 1992 was Frank’s plea to John Major for clemency on behalf of former Middlesbrough pub landlady Maureen Paleschi who had been sentenced in 1987 in Egypt to 25 years’ imprisonment for drug smuggling. Mrs Paleschi had naively agreed to carry an ornamental elephant to Pakistan for her Egyptian lover but it was discovered at Cairo Airport to contain £3 million worth of heroin and she was incarcerated in the highly unpleasant Kanater Women’s Prison. Frank’s efforts were criticised by Tim Devlin, M.P. for the Stockton South constituency in which Mrs Paleschi had been most recently resident, but they succeeded when President Mubarak approved her release as a humanitarian gesture and she was flown home.
Anticipating problems which later became all too clear, in February 1993 Frank co-signed a Times letter complaining that the United Nations lacked “a structure and the staff to make contingency plans and meet the Security Council’s calls for emergency actions; its financial resources are depleted; too many nations are in arrears with their payments and its communications cannot cope with the increasingly complex tasks it has to discharge.”
March 1993 saw further disturbances in Ragworth but on a smaller scale; the local press called it a “mini-riot” and police took measures to stop ‘boy racers’ congregating on the estate. Frank naturally regretted these and some further trouble later in the year, inadvertently causing some offence with some apparently dismissive language but he explained himself to the aggrieved residents face-to-face in November. This did not prevent the Roseworth ward of Stockton North Labour Party submitting a censure motion to the C.L.P., which the press got hold of. The initiative Frank had begun in 1992 did bear some fruit, with a package of measures produced by a multi-agency team – aimed largely at disaffected young people – and partly implemented. Full implementation would have required more resources from central Government and in July 1993 Frank presented the package to the then Home Secretary with a plea for extra funding.
The longest running and most contentious domestic issue of 1993 followed on from John Major’s speech to the Conservative Party Conference the previous year, in which be ridiculed some of the new counties created under the Heath Government. Recommendations for local government reorganisation were the responsibility of a Commission under Sir John Banham who rather gave the game away in a letter referring to early and “easy kills, such as Cleveland, Humberside and Avon”. His recommendation for the four district councils within Cleveland to become unitary authorities and absorb the powers of the County Council, which would be abolished, divided local M.P.s, with Mo Mowlam and Frank (who, accepting that opinion in Hartlepool was clearly in favour of breaking away, advocated an all-Teesside authority) ranged not only against Tories Michael Bates and Tim Devlin but also Stuart Bell and the new Member for Hartlepool, Peter Mandelson. Frank’s revelation that 90% of his postbag supported either the Teesside option or the retention of Cleveland also attracted hostility from Bob Gibson, the Leader of Stockton Council whose survey showed 95% of respondents in favour of a unitary Stockton. Clr. Gibson warned Frank: “It is at his peril that he should ignore such weight of opinion and the cross-party backing for the district solution.” The debate raged for months in the local and national media, in the Commons and over the fax machines before Commissioner Ann Levick’s November recommendation that Cleveland be replaced by unitary councils for Stockton, Hartlepool, Middlesbrough and the then Langbaurgh. They came into being in 1996.
In the great Maastricht debate of July 1993, Frank admitted that he was a convert to the E.C., having opposed staying in the Common Market in the referendum of 1975. He insisted that the Social Chapter would not be a threat to I.C.I. in his constituency and when Tory M.P.s told him that I.C.I. Chief Sir Denys Henderson was opposed to the Social Chapter, Frank telephoned him to argue the case. Foreign and defence matters continued, though to occupy much of his time.
Some of the trips involved, particularly to the war-torn Balkans, were not only unglamorous but occasionally dangerous. Frank was in a Defence Select Committee party threatened by gunfire near Mostar in February 1993, the same month in which he urged a probe into reported orders to British troops to hand over their weapons on demand to Serb or Croat guerillas. In July he complained that service families in Tidworth and Cyprus had to live in “hovels”. In November, he represented Westminster in Washington on the Scientific and Technical Committee of the North Atlantic Assembly where he received disturbing information on nuclear waste in the U.S.
Frank voted, as ever, against the restoration of capital punishment when the debate on it for this parliament was held in February 1994. In the same month, he supported the successful bid to lower the age of homosexual consent from 21 to 18 – in spite of criticism from The Sun.
Frank continued to champion S.A.F.E. and particularly Chris Joseph and Hook Advertising in 1994. In January he again condemned Barclays Bank for exploiting a customer and the Bank of England for failing to supervise the bank properly. In May, he and William Powell M.P. stood for election to the Barclays Board then attended their A.G.M., in one of Mr Joseph’s stunts.
Frank and the Labour Party were devastated in May 1994 by the death of their Leader, John Smith who was much respected even by those who did not share his policy positions. In the leadership election which followed, Frank supported John Prescott for both Leader and Deputy Leader but Tony Blair won the former post, overwhelmingly, and Margaret Beckett the latter.
Two issues centred on Eaglescliffe in Stockton South erupted in 1994. Frank involved himself very actively in both as they affected the whole Teesside area and many of his constituents. One was the closure, proposed by the Ministry of Defence, of the Royal Navy Spares Depot in Eaglescliffe, with the transfer of its functions and 170 of its 650 staff to Bath. Frank worked with local and national officers of the relevant unions, including the T.G.W.U.’s Jack Dromey who visited in October, wrote to Secretary of State for Defence Malcolm Rifkind to urge that site assessments be given adequate time and attention and also prepared a report to the Defence Select Committee of which he was a member. In an open letter to Tim Devlin, M.P. for Stockton South, Frank wrote that: “(The Depot) has modified itself so rapidly and so effectively that its potential is quite staggering and with such a progressive scheme I am confident that it will continue as an industry-supporting centre and with any luck remain as the last inland naval supply depot in the U.K.” Sadly, the Depot’s luck ran out and it was later closed. The other Eaglescliffe issue was the demise of the Livera Foods plc cake factory, with the loss of another 400 jobs. This was, as Frank highlighted in the Commons on February 28th, no ordinary case of an adverse market decision as Chris Liveras had received a large grant in public money – widely reported as £2.36 million – through the Teesside Development Corporation, despite being jailed in 1976 for fraud and deception and banned for five years from being a company director. Not for the last time, this brought Frank into conflict with the T.D.C. and Tim Devlin, whom he reminded that the factory’s opening in his marginal constituency had been announced with a fanfare by Environment Minister Michael Portillo just before the 1992 General Election.
Frank’s own position as M.P. for Stockton North came under threat in late 1994/early 1995 in the mandatory reselection round, with a challenge from County Councillor and Party Chair Alex Cunningham. Two district councillors joined the contest: Derek Cooke quickly dropped out after making little effort and John Kerridge was thought to have far less chance of winning the Labour nomination than Cunningham, though he stayed the course. The three active candidates addressed meetings of most of the 16 wards through January and February 1995 and Frank received exactly two thirds of Party and Union branch nominations which was just enough to prevent an all-member vote from being triggered in the tetchiest contest Frank faced.
Despite the Banham Commission’s firm recommendations, the future of local government in Cleveland remained formally undecided as 1995 began. In January Frank condemned the abolition of the County Council as a “Tory vendetta” and a “fragmentation of the Teesside conurbation”. In February he asked the Audit Commission and the Commons Public Accounts and Environment Select Committees to launch investigations into the real cost of transferring services to the four unitary councils. Contrary to what those authorities and the Government were saying publicly, that cost could be as much as £30 million, which Frank labelled “a scandal”. In the actual vote in Parliament on The Cleveland Order (for abolition), the PLP imposed a two line whip which allowed its M.P.s to vote with the Government, though Bell and Mandelson abstained. Frank and Mo Mowlam voted against, on the losing side: 310 to 223.
In March 1995, Frank criticised the £227 million remote-controlled ‘Phoenix’ spy aircraft which was eight years behind schedule and known to its GEC-Marconi manufacturers as the “Bugger Off” because of its habit of not returning after its launch. In July, he condemned the French for resuming nuclear tests in the Pacific and, after his third trip to Bosnia with the Defence Select Committee, described the situation as “fraught with mendacity”. He opposed the easing of sanctions on Serbia. In October, after accepting the responsibility of highlighting the effects of anti-personnel landmines, he presented a report and put down a resolution at the North Atlantic Assembly’s session in Turin, stating that, “We are fighting a losing battle. Mines are being laid faster than they can be cleared and the numbers are increasing.”
With the Conservatives in freefall and heavily losing every by-election, the focus at Littleborough and Saddleworth was on the acrimonious contest between Labour and the Liberal Democrats to take the seat. Frank criticised the by-election team led by Peter Mandelson for having “gone overboard in quite a disgraceful manner” in strongly attacking the LibDem candidate from the right, principally on the issue of cannabis legalisation. He backed Clare Short’s call for a judicial enquiry as a much more sensible way of addressing the issue.
Hartlepool Nuclear Power Station was again the focus of attention in November 1995 when a leak from a cracked pipe led to the shutdown of Reactor Two. Reactor One had already been closed down in October after an explosion and fire in a transformer. Nuclear Electric claimed that the leak of carbon dioxide coolant gas posed no danger to the public and was ‘nothing to get excited about’. Reminding people that the facility is ‘only two fields’ removed from his constituency, Frank demanded a proper explanation of the incidents and commissioned his regular collaborators John Large and Co. to compile a report. When Nuclear Electric did come clean, however, Frank praised them for their greater openness, while warning of the potentially harmful effects of privatising the nuclear industry, which the Government were considering.
The year ended with a success in persuading the Tees Health Authority to reverse its plans to withdraw provision of In Vitro Fertilisation Services for infertile couples to save money. One of many successful collaborations with the North Tees Community Health Council saw Mr John Tuckett, the Authority’s Chief Executive, attend an exceptionally well attended public meeting in the constituency where users of the service argued with passion but also restraint.
The four new unitary authorities in Cleveland became fully operational in April 1996 and the controversial circumstances in which they were created soon came back to haunt them when Middlesbrough, the council given the responsibility for winding up the finances of the former Cleveland County Council, revealed that expected closing balances of £10 million actually amounted to less than £2 million. The new councils, especially Redcar and Cleveland, found some of their promises on service delivery undermined by this smaller shareout and the two Teesside Tory M.P.s, Michael Bates and Tim Devlin, vigorous supporters of the change, demanded that the Audit Commission look into the matter. Frank did not disagree but did point out the irony of people complaining about the consequences of their own actions and that the very abolition of the County Council was the root cause of the problem, commenting that: “Hundreds of jobs have been lost, many services have been adversely affected and now some money has gone missing”. Frank and Mo Mowlam had previously expressed outrage at the apparent blocking by Secretary of State John Selwyn Gummer of the application for the job of Chairman of the North East Regional Environment Protection Advisory Committee by the highly respected former Chief Executive of Cleveland, Bruce Stevenson. Frank welcomed a statement from Clr. Coppinger, Chair of the newly formed Tees Valley Development Company that the area would be marketed under the “Teesside” brand name. He said: “Throughout the debate over local government reorganisation, the message from all those involved in trying to attract new jobs and new investment to Teesside was that it could not afford division – it had to market itself with a united voice and a clear identity.” He campaigned for organisations to use ‘Teesside’ as part of their address – which remains the practice for his own constituency office.
Frank had at least had a substantial minority of his parliamentary colleagues and local party on his side over the abolition of Cleveland County but he found himself almost completely isolated over the most emotive issue of 1996 in British politics: gun control. The nation had rightly been shocked to the core by the massacre of sixteen primary school children and their teacher in the Scottish town of Dunblane by Thomas Hamilton, an unbalanced youth club leader who was reported to hold guns quite legitimately under existing legislation. The pressure to introduce much more restrictive laws on the ownership and use of certain types of weapons came down very heavily both on the Conservative Government, which promised legislation in the Queen’s Speech, and the Labour Opposition which promised its own legislation when it came to power.
Frank, who had seen just how strictly Cleveland Police were enforcing firearm licence restrictions on his own constituents, discovered and helped publicise the fact that Strathclyde Police had not enforced them properly on Hamilton. Existing legislation, if properly carried out, was therefore not so deficient as was being claimed but people generally were not prepared to listen to this or Frank’s argument that knee-jerk legislation could devastate legitimate target shooting whilst not reducing the availability of firearms to criminals planning to use them. His view, after subsequent events, enjoys more support now but then he was subject to hostile press coverage, focusing on his position as pistol captain of the Palace of Westminster Rifle Club.
Publicly criticised by, amongst others, the Mayor and Leader of Stockton-on-Tees borough council, Frank was one of only four Labour M.P.s to vote against the Firearms Restrictions Bill in November 1996. He painstakingly explained his objections throughout the second half of the year and argued for practical alternatives to an outright ban on handguns, including the idea of disabling by the owners themselves – recommended by Lord Cullen in his report on Dunblane but rejected by the Government and Opposition in pursuit of more populist measures. Frank accused them of engaging in a ‘Dutch auction’ over who could ban the most guns: “Politicians have been trying to outbid each other. First, they asked for firearms over .22 calibre to be banned and then suddenly they are saying it should be all handguns.” Addressing 1,000 gun owners from the newly formed Sportsman’s Association in December, he reiterated that he:
“opposed ignoring real criminals and penalising the law-abiding.”
Other causes championed by Frank in 1996 attracted less flak. He was prominent in the campaign for less flammable nightware for children after a young constituent from Delaval Road suffered burns to his chest, arms and back. Certain nightware garments had to conform to British Standard 5722 on low flammability – but not pyjamas. Frank helped persuade John Taylor, the Consumer Affairs Minister, to review the rules governing flammable materials.
‘Rave clubs’ were a mid-1990s obsession and one had opened in Stockton North in 1995 on the site of the former prestige Fiesta nightclub. Supported by the two Norton ward councillors, Frank submitted to the Home Office a residents’ petition calling for a change in the law to allow local authorities and police to close rave clubs where they suspect drugs were being sold.
Frank had been even more central to the campaign to uncover the truth about the sinking in 1980 of the Tees-built bulk carrier MV Derbyshire. Constituent Gordon Finlayson, formerly a seaman on a sister ship, had been encouraged to operate occasionally out of the constituency office and proved a dogged advocate of the Government and maritime authorities revisiting the verdict that bad weather alone sank the ship. Face to face talks with Shipping Minister Viscount Goschen were one of a number of initiatives by Frank over the Derbyshire in 1996.
In June 1996 Frank urged the sale of unused Ministry of Defence housing to local authorities for allocation to those in need. The following month he was yet again widely criticised, for voting against a 3% cap on M.P.s’ pay rise, for a pension based on £43,000 and for an expenses package which mostly comprised increases but also a big cut in mileage allowance for cars.
Frank continued to campaign against firearms legislation which he predicted would be unfair and unenforceable, causing a minor sensation in February when, speaking in support of a Lords amendment to allow temporary retention of weapons if dismantled, when he reported a dead Tory M.P. as having held a machine gun and 1,000 rounds of ammunition in his home. Some of the Lords amendments were passed but so was the Act which Frank opposed. Addressing a rally of 22,000 shooters in Trafalgar Square on February 21st, he assured them that the battle to safeguard their interests would continue. The Labour Party hierarchy clearly did not approve.
Frank’s foreign and defence-related commitments, from the three bodies on which he then sat, continued, including a March 1997 visit to Laos to introduce British solar developers. After the Election in May, Frank was not re-elected to the Commons Defence Select Committee.
Not only was the 1997 General Election campaign a triumph for Labour nationally, sweeping them to a landslide after 18 years in opposition, but a much happier experience for the Stockton North Party than that of 1992. A better campaign was delivered for less money by an agent who learned and applied the lessons of being left badly exposed five years earlier and the Conservative candidate, amiable ex-Army officer Bryan Johnston, stooped to none of the misrepresentations and vicious personal attacks of Brocklebank-Fowler in 1992. Suzanne Fletcher again stood for the Liberal Democrats and, once more, a fourth candidate with Kevin McConnell representing the U.K. Independence Party. The small, affluent Elm Tree ward had transferred to Stockton South, leaving 16 in the North. The result was: Cook 29,726 (66.8%), Johnston 8,369 (18.8%), Fletcher 4,816 (10.8%), McConnell 1,563 (3.5%) on a 69.1% turnout.
As they had promised, the new Labour Government introduced another Firearms (Amendment) Bill and in June Frank was one of only four Labour M.P.s. to vote against it, again highlighting the “unforgiveable negligence” by the Police in Dunblane in dealing with Hamilton before the tragedy. He challenged new Home Secretary Jack Straw on how, under the terms of his own Act, he expected to train new police marksmen and whether he wanted to do away with target shooting altogether. The two pieces of 1997 legislation both provided for the compensation of target shooters for loss of their legitimately purchased property and Frank predicted that the real cost of this would come to about £300 million – double the optimistic official estimates given.
One foreign-affairs related area in which Frank was able to remain very actively involved was that of landmines – indeed, as founding Chairman in 1995 of the Parliamentary All-Party Land Mines Eradication Group, he could be described as a prime mover. The most prominent person to take an interest in this issue of growing public concern was Diana, Princess of Wales. She was due to address a meeting of the Group in the Grand Committee Room on June 24th and Frank put out a statement that: “We need the high profile support of people like the Princess to force other Governments to follow the British example and ban this disgusting trade in landmines. Each year, landmines kill a staggering 25,000 people and maim many more. The Red Cross believe that there are 120 million mines laid across the world, often in some of the World’s poorest countries.” Despite having the sanction of Downing Street to attend the meeting, Diana was pressured by someone into pulling out, much to Frank’s annoyance. This was probably a group of mainly Tory backbenchers who claimed she would get dragged into party politics; a claim Frank refuted: “Most M.P.s are happy about her involvement; it is a very small rump of backbenchers who are short of an issue to get the media attention they want.”
Frank praised the Princess for helping highlight the problem, and the particularly heavy proliferation in the Balkans, by flying to Bosnia and being filmed visiting a rehabilitation centre run by the charity Landmines Survivors Network – an exercise entailing some degree of risk, given the vengeful climate in the sub-region. Only weeks later, it was of course a tragic accident in Paris which brought Diana’s life to a premature end and Frank was among those who had a genuine reason for paying public tribute to her which he did particularly in a tribute piece in the Evening Gazette on September 5th; he summarised her involvement in the anti-landmines cause and the impetus it gave to the forthcoming Ottawa agreement on a limited ban.
Although supportive of the new Labour Government’s economic policy, including Gordon Brown’s tough spending discipline, Frank decided that he could not vote in December for their implementation of Conservative cuts in benefits for single parents. He took no pleasure in voting against the Government but was one of 47 Labour M.P.s to do so in December 1997.
As a former trade union official and M.S.F.-sponsored M.P., Frank also criticised the Government for setting too high a threshold for compulsory workplace recognition in the May 1998 White Paper preceding legislation which was, Mr Blair said, meant to ‘draw a line under this issue’. While welcoming this measure to create greater fairness, Frank pointed out that if the requirement for 40% of an entire workforce to vote for recognition before it was granted were to be applied to M.P.s and their total electorate, relatively few would be taking their seats.
March 1998 saw the end of the decade-long life of the Teesside Development Corporation, the lavishly financed quango established by Mrs Thatcher after her famous ‘walk in the wilderness’ in Thornaby in 1997. Frank acknowledged that much of what they did – with capital funding beyond the wildest dreams of Cleveland’s local authorities – had been good and had co-operated with them on the Tees Barrage which the Queen officially opened in early 1995. Along with Ashok Kumar M.P., he demonstrated his intention to keep a close eye on the closing finances and the career paths of some key players. Those included Chief Executive Duncan Hall who, it was revealed, would become an executive of the Tall Ships Centre intended for Middlesbrough’s Middlehaven Docks, a key piece of unfinished TDC business.
The T.D.C. finances were to remain a controversial issue for years to come, as was that of a shared control room for Cleveland’s three emergency services. Once convinced that it was technically and organizationally feasible, Frank discussed the proposal in August 1998 with Health Secretary Frank Dobson and Home Secretary Jack Straw, commenting that: “Ministers have made clear that the opportunity is there, if we are prepared to take it. Nobody is suggesting the emergency services must not change to make effective use of resources and the latest communications technology for the benefit of the community. However I believe that it makes much more sense to share expertise and facilities. Of course it will require new thinking and new approaches from all those involved.” He was to find that not always forthcoming.
In April 1998 Frank had again visited Laos, to study a renewable-energy project, as a guest of the International Renewable Energy Group. He continued to advance in seniority within the NATO PA, having been elected Vice Chair of the Defence & Security Committee in October 1997. He continued to produce reports and attend Rose Roth Seminars on a regular basis.
Other overseas visits in 1998 included one to Finland in August to address a Convention of the National Federation of Building Contractors, for whom he became a parliamentary consultant, and Chicago in September with the All-Party Rail Freight Group to study rail freight facilities.
In October, Frank complained that the size of Britain’s reserve forces, whose corner he often fought, was only 35% of the regular army and sought as proper a review of the incidence of cancer amongst British nuclear test veterans as there had been on Gulf War Syndrome. The national secretary of the B.N.T.V.A. lived in Stockton North and in May 1999, Frank was to unveil a memorial to them in Billingham’s Garden of Remembrance.
Frank’s most controversial suggestion in the defence and foreign affairs field, made during a December 17th Commons debate on Iraq, was that if it were necessary to take pre-emptive action on the stockpiles, which Saddam Hussain was then assumed to possess, of biological and chemical weapons, it would also be necessary to go beyond using conventional bombs which might only succeed in dispersing the deadly toxins. He said: “If we are to continue the attack and to target those kinds of weapons, I believe that the only means of averting such a colossal dispersal of germs and nerve gas – my plan has a fairly remote chance of success but it is the best chance – would be to employ the precise placement of laser-guided, bunker-penetrating bombs of a low-yield tactical thermo-nuclear character. The immediate searing temperatures caused by such weapons on explosion would provide the best chance of obliterating the germs and dismantling the chemical compounds. I know that it is a hideous thought, but is there not a huge irony in the possible employment of one weapon of mass destruction as a means of destroying another two of an even more hideous character?”
The focus in 1999 switched to the Balkans where NATO, for which Frank had by now become a Vice President of its Parliamentary Assembly, intervened against Serbian warlord Slobodan Milosevic whose forces were behaving barbarically in the new, smaller Yugoslavia’s province of Kosovo. Resolutely pursued by Prime Minister Blair and President Clinton amongst others, this intervention was heavily criticised by some on the left but defended by Frank who said in March that he: “gets a bit sick of M.P.s wringing their hands and parading their consciences while people are being shot in the back of the head.” He returned even more vigorously to this line in May after he was publicly attacked by two members of his C.L.P. – one of whom had worked on certain projects out of the constituency office. Frank used the Party newsletter he occasionally produced and the local press to defend the Government and himself. In the Commons, he declared that, “anyone who tries to convince me that what Mr Milosevice is trying to achieve in Kosovo bears no relation to genocide will have a serious argument on his hands”, defended N.A.T.O. bombing and low casualty rates compared to the “many tens of thousands who have been displaced, raped and assassinated.”
In June, Frank again asked about Gulf War Syndrome and visited Cyprus to discuss investment in the North East as a guest of the Gulf Group.
During the campaign for the June 1999 European Parliament elections, Frank challenged the British National Party, in a Commons motion, to prove that addresses they had given for their four candidates in the North East region were genuine. A spokesman for the fascist party angrily said that Frank, “should get his facts right; he is just mouthing off.” The facts as revealed by journalistic investigation were that several of the candidates were not registered at the London addresses they gave and their north east connections were tenuous, to say the least.
Whilst not objecting to proportional representation in principle, Frank had objected strongly to the Government’s adoption of the ‘closed list’ system for the four Labour Party candidates. When there had been a single M.E.P. for the seat of Cleveland and North Yorkshire, David Bowe, elected in 1989, had established a high profile and respect for the work of the M.E.P. not seen before or since. One baleful result of the new system was to force him out of the North East to Humberside. Frank’s predictions of voter apathy and alienation proved all too accurate as the awful 29% national turnout figure was eclipsed by a pitiful 16% in Stockton North.
Another point of disagreement with the Government had come in May and June, over proposals to cut quite severely some benefits payable to disabled people and, in a separate but linked move, to restrict their access to legal aid to contest reductions in their entitlement. As on the single parent benefits issue in 1997, Frank reluctantly voted against his own Party Whips.
In the runup to mandatory reselection, there had been various rumblings of discontent from within Stockton North C.L.P., some from a senior level, suggesting that Frank might face an even tougher contest than in 1994/5. In the event this failed to materialize as he was given an unexpectedly easy ride in an uncontested reselection in the autumn. More good news came in October when he was given the prestigious position of Deputy Speaker in Parliament, one of four new appointments to help ensure new operational systems are introduced as smoothly as possible and with specific responsibility for chairing debates in Westminster Hall, a new second chamber to stage less combative debates than the main one.
In February 2000, Frank cautioned that U.S. national missile defence system could make Fylingdales early warning station on the North Yorkshire Moors a target for ‘rogue states’. In March he raised the case of a suspected terrorist detained without charge and, with 12 other Labour M.P.s, rebelled against the Terrorism Bill on the grounds of definition. In another reluctant rebellion in April, Frank voted to restore the pensions link to average earnings.
As noted above, Frank and Ashok Kumar M.P. were determined to see full disclosure of the actions and finances of the former Teesside Development Corporation which received major local publicity in May and June 2000. A Government auditors’ report, published under the full protection of parliamentary privilege, seemed to leave important questions unanswered. Hilary Armstrong, Minister for the Regions, did not release publicly details of an internal audit and Frank and Ashok, who were allowed to see it, were bound by confidentiality. Their calls for an independent enquiry were rubbished by former T.D.C. Chairman Sir Ron Norman and other Board members , despite the auditors admitting that they could not find enough evidence to prove or disprove some key allegations. Ashok, Frank and other M.P.s continued to press and in November the National Audit Office agreed to make further enquiries into the T.D.C.
An equally longrunning issue pursued by Frank was reform or abolition of the antiquated Double Jeopardy law, in support of Mrs Ann Ming of Billingham and her daughter Julie Hogg who had been murdered in 1989. After the second of two sensational trials, Billy Dunlop had been acquitted of the crime but later admitted his guilt when in prison for an unrelated crime and received an additional six year sentence for perjury in April – but could not be touched for the murder itself under the law as it stood. Although it was to be another three years before a conclusion was reached, Mr and Mrs Ming and Frank made significant progress with this matter in 2000, meeting Home Secretary Jack Straw on June 14th and receiving support both from him and Home Affairs Select Committee, although real progress would have to await the publication of a Law Commission report the next year. In November, Home Office Minister Paul Boateng said in a Westminster Hall debate that there was a groundswell of opinion among M.P.s for change and Frank welcomed his comments, saying that “now we have to made the target amended legislation.”
Another cause celebre promoted by Frank – though he was not so much the leader on it as the key players were not his constituents – was open investigation of and appropriate action against disgraced gynaecologist Richard Neale, whose brutal operations at The Friarage Hospital in Northallerton had left numerous women permanently damaged and contributed to the death of Graham Maloney, a regular contact at this time. Neale was finally struck off the medical register in July for serious professional misconduct by the General Medical Council. Frank launched a parliamentary campaign to replace the system of self-regulation with a powerful independent agency. He tabled an Early Day Motion to that effect.
Questions related to air travel preoccupied Frank considerably in 2000. Andrew Smith M.P. had famously declared at the 1996 Labour Party Conference that “our air is not for sale” but three and a half years later, the new Labour Government was itself ready to part-privatise air traffic control. This time the whips applied significant pressure but Frank, wholly unconvinced of the case on financial or safety grounds, was one of 30 Labour M.P.s who abstained in a Commons vote on May 9th whilst 46 voted with the Opposition. He commented that: “Though many people appreciate the measures this Government has brought in, there has also been an overbearing arrogance which is damaging on occasions.” Locally, Frank publicly challenged proposals for the four local authorities who were the shareholders of Teesside International Airport giving way to private operators. He wrote in the Gazette: “Apart from seeing its assets and control handed over to an organisation with no direct commitment or accountability to the community, there is the very real danger that it could end up in the hands of the same people running rival airports, perhaps even Newcastle”. Things rumbled on from January, when consultants Ernst and Young came up with the proposals, until August 26th when a meeting of the interested parties convened by Frank was held in the Commons. Though the situation remained fluid, the transfer as proposed did not occur. On a happier note, Frank was among M.P.s to intervene successfully to keep British Midland Services from Teesside to London.
The sourest note of 2000 for Frank came when Parliamentary Ombudsman was forced to consider a formal complaint against him from the chairman of the charity Prosthetics and Orthotics Worldwide Education and Relief (Power). Having broken his links with that organisation several years earlier, Frank was accused of intervening unethically with the Department for Overseas Development to block Power’s applications for grants, in revenge for not having some of his expenses met by them when travelling on landmines eradication business. He was cleared not only by the Ombudsman but by the powerful Commons Standards and Privileges Committee and the charity rather sulkily dropped the matter.
The issue of foxhunting had become a running sore for the Labour Government which found itself unable to facilitate a ban without unacceptable commitments of parliamentary time and effort to overcome objectors, especially in the House of Lords. Frank had voted for an outright ban on hunting with dogs whenever the opportunity arose and was frustrated when illness stopped him doing so again in January 2001 when that was one of the options on offer in the Hunting Bill, along with self-regulation or statutory regulation through a Hunting Authority.
Labour had enjoyed much more success on managing the economy and tackling some of the causes of social deprivation including unemployment. In March 2001, the official dole queue fell to below a million for the first time since 1975, with long term unemployment in the Middlesbrough and Stockton districts down by 57% and youth unemployment by 66% since 1997. Frank warmly welcomed this news: “Yes, I’m surprised by the scale of what has been achieved. I expected to see an improvement but I didn’t expect it to be quite so dramatic”. He had already begun commenting that fewer distressing cases came to his surgeries or his office.
With the OSCE and particularly the NATO PA, Frank had taken on increasing responsibilities for aspects of the situation in the former Soviet Union; for example, he was responsible for the 1999 report: “Ukraine and its forces: a new actor on the European Stage”. He went on to help monitor elections in Russia and in April 2001 he commented that he took pride as Vice President of the PA for having “managed to re-establish an effective working relationship between the Russian Duma and NATO Parliamentarians.”
In June 2001 Frank had his own election to fight. The pattern of fringe candidates in Stockton North continued with Bill Wennington. Standing for the Green Party, he rented offices in Billingham and fought a more determined campaign than his predecessors. By contrast, the Liberal Democrat Mary Wallace was an absentee candidate, literally never seen either during the campaign or even at the count! Frank’s main opponent was another up-and-coming young Conservative, senior tax consultant Amanda Vigar. Though she conducted herself impeccably, the campaign was slightly more acrimonious than that of 1997 and Frank had a new agent but she got far more support than the 1992 newcomer had and did well. The result was: Cook 22,470 (63.4%), Vigar 7,823 (22.1%), Wallace 4,208 (11.9%), Wennington 926 (2.6%), losing his deposit despite the Libdem’s absence. As nationally, the Tory gain on their last result was miniscule but Frank was dismayed by the turnout, tumbling from 69.1% in 1997 to 54.3%. He soon learned that this was not exceptional as the national figure, at 59.4%, was also pathetic. Frank was particularly pleased with one aspect of the Queen’s Speech produced on June 20th by the newly re-elected Labour Government. As previously noted, he had been prominent in the campaign by bereaved mother Ann Ming to have amended the ancient law of double jeopardy. Now the Criminal Justice Bill contained just such a proposed change, with the dramatic possibility that it could be made retrospective and thereby ensnare the self-confessed killer of Mrs Ming’s daughter Julie. Frank said: “my understanding is it will be retrospective and I’m pleased to have played some small part in achieving this.” The road to reform, however, had some way to run and was strewn with obstacles including reservations about backdating the law, expressed in July by numerous backbench M.P.s including Chris Mullin (Sunderland South) of “Birmingham Six” fame and newly elected Vera Baird (Redcar), a QC who had represented miners during the 1984-5 strike.
The election over, Frank resumed his positions as a member of the Speaker’s Panel and as a Deputy Speaker in Westminster Hall. These time-consuming responsibilities very rarely make the media and so tend to be less appreciated by constituents and party activists – due to lack of awareness – than by other M.P.s and the Ways and Means Department in Parliament who have to fill slots in the second chamber and in committees. The latter require particularly close attention to detail and often firm chairmanship as sessions are often complex and sometimes combative. What did attract publicity in July, as it contributed to the heaviest defeat so far for the Blair
Government, was Frank joining a backbench revolt against its plans to remove two independently minded select committee chairmen and change the composition of committees to make them less critical of the executive. Along with fellow Teesside M.P. Ashok Kumar, Frank backed Gwyneth Dunwoody (Transport) and Donald Anderson (Foreign Affairs) in what was in theory a free vote but in practice a piece of Government manipulation which Frank criticised as an example of ruling party arrogance, adding that: “Thankfully there are still some people in the House of Commons who place interests of the House and interests of the Parliamentary system above their own ambitions and their own career development.”
On another theoretically free vote, Frank suffered a blow in November 2001. As previously mentioned, he had devoted much time and effort to his position as one of the Commons’ representatives on the N.A.T.O. Parliamentary Assembly (formerly the North Atlantic Assembly) and had become Rapporteur General of its Defence and Security Committee as well as a Vice President. Frank’s office produced letters to the 412 Labour M.P.s who controlled 12 of the 18 positions earmarked for U.K. parliamentarians, putting a detailed and persuasive case for his re-election but this availed nothing as he was humiliatingly voted off. Frank commented bitterly: “I just don’t know what I did to deserve this kind of treatment. But once I discover what it was that upset (the Labour Whips), well then, I’ll do it again several times.” This change cost Frank his place as delegate on the Parliamentary Assembly of the Organisation for Security and Co-Operation in Europe (O.S.C.E.) in a position he had held consistently from the very formation of the body.
The biggest issue in Stockton North in the second half of 2001 was the proposed reorganisation of services at North Tees General Hospital and particularly a plan, revealed in a leaked memo from the Clinical Director for Orthopaedics, to transfer the orthopaedics unit to Hartlepool General Hospital. Frank’s mid-August public statement on this referred to a “catalogue of despair” at North Tees which had contributed to the departure of 22 consultants in two years. After recent assurances that no departments within North Tees were at risk, he called upon the provider Trust to be open with the public and its elected representatives – something which Chairman Bryan Hanson insisted they were already being – and on Secretary of State Alan Milburn to intervene. His Minister Jacqui Smith quickly offered to meet Frank.
In September a separate meeting took place between senior doctors, healthcare managers and Stockton-on-Tees Borough Council. Despite assurances from the Trust that no other provision was at risk, local authority leader Councillor Gibson said that he and Frank “remained concerned that services could be lost from North Tees”. Later that month, as the Board of North Tees and Hartlepool NHS Trust prepared to meet, Frank made a public plea for senior management to put more options up for consideration that just the loss of the orthopaedic unit: “This is a vital service for the local community. Many of the patients who require it are elderly and infirm and would face enormous difficulties, as would their families, if they found themselves having to travel to Hartlepool for treatment”, he said. In the event the board voted unanimously in favour of plans which would entail cancer patients from Hartlepool travelling to Stockton for treatment as well as those from Stockton needing hip or knee replacements going in the opposite direction, though they gave assurances that Orthopaedics would not close. The row rumbled on for months in the public gaze. Later in 2001 Frank and Clr Hanson clashed again, on the issue of “bed-blocking”.
As Tony Blair memorably said, the Millennium was a mere theoretical milestone but what really changed the world and ushered in a new era were the horrific events of September 11th 2001 when Al Qaeda terrorists hijacked planes on four domestic U.S. flights to use as manned bombs, flying two of them into the World Trade Centre in New York City and one into The Pentagon. Frank awaited with particular anxiety the casualty details of the latter as he had friends and acquaintances working within America’s Defence Department and was more generally able to share the profound shock to that country of this attack on their homeland as he was visiting the West Coast at the time. He said: “Initially there was an air of disbelief; it was as though we were watching some video movie. Then people began realising this was for real; someone had taken a really serious blow at the United States and had struck home. What the long term results of that will be, we can’t yet calculate, but it will be big.”
Frank and Dari Taylor, M.P. for Stockton South, supported Stockton Council’s Cabinet Member for Housing, Clr. Steve Nelson, in lobbying for the creation of an Arms Length Housing Management Organisation for Stockton. The local authority could not access the capital needed to bring all its stock of 14,000 properties up to accepted modern standards but the creation of an ALMO could make £44 million available for that purpose while retaining the house and flats in public control and allocating them on the basis of objective need. One of Frank’s opportunities to lobby for what would become Tristar Homes had been when then Housing Minister Lord Falconer visited his constituency in September to look at another initiative, Warm Zones. When in November the Government named Stockton as one of eight areas in the country to pilot the ALMOs, Frank commented: “It’s wonderful news that it has been a success and I am very pleased that I have had some hand in its outcome.”
Another local body Frank supported was Teesside Airport. Hit by the crisis in air travel, British Midland laid off 600 staff, reduced its fleet by 13% and was looking to axe services. One likely victim was the link, crucial to the airport, between Teesside and London Heathrow. Knowing nearest rivals Newcastle and Leeds had received government support, Frank lobbied for Teesside: “These are extraordinary circumstances and the Government should now be considering what support it can provide and what form that should take”, he said in an October 8th article in The Evening Gazette. Four days later he clarified his position in a letter to the same newspaper, praising the efficiency of British Midland and adding that: “I firmly believe that a vibrant and expanding airport must be at the heart of the regeneration of the Tees Valley and surrounding areas – a message underlined, for example, in the recent Tees Valley Vision study and in the recent Partnership agreed with One North East”. In the event, bmi British Midland decided to retain the link, to Frank’s relief.
To paraphrase a well-known advertising slogan, M.P.s are “not just here for the nasty things” and whilst 2002 was to prove as politically acrimonious a year as any for Frank, he could derive some compensatory pleasure from visiting local schools to applaud their successes and encourage children and young people, as he has always loved doing. He opened the new computer room at Roseberry Primary and made several visits to another Billingham school with which he has close family ties (and helped to save from closure in the 1980s), St. Michaels R.C. Comprehensive. That school has a striking record of success in the National Youth Parliament Competition but in January hosted pupils from elsewhere in a Put It To Your M.P. session, partly a UNICEF initiative. Frank attended similar sessions several years running at Abbey Hill Special School and was both there and at ‘St. Mick’s’ again in December 2002.
One of Frank’s efforts for constituents was to help raise funds to send cancer victim Lenny Kirk travel to America for treatment. He even sang at Lenny’s karaoke night!
One of the most bizarre problems brought to Frank, not only for 2002 but for his whole parliamentary career, by a constituent was that of Billingham man Kevin Pitt. His successful police career had taken him to the rank of Chief Superintendent by the time he was seconded to Lithuania to advise the force in that recently democratised country on matters including anti-corruption measures. In the space of a week in February, he and another seconded officer had apparently been caught late at night urinating against the wall of the royal palace in Vilnius, convicted immediately by a Lithuanian district court, expelled from the country and compelled to resign in disgrace from Cleveland Constabulary. At a time when that force was not only mired in the Operation Lancet misconduct enquiry (which Mr Pitt had at one point headed) but the subject of a whole series of damaging stories about bad and self-serving behaviour by particular policeman, this looked like another example of disreputable conduct by an officer. Frank found, however, that the truth was significantly different and murkier than the grainy CCTV footage which the Lithuanians had made a point of releasing. Having accepted his resignation, Cleveland Constabulary exonerated Mr Pitt in an internal enquiry but the actions of the Lithuanian police were even more questionable. Frank took up the matter with, amongst others, Foreign and Commonwealth Office Minister of State Peter Hain and later Gediminas Kirkilas, chairman of the Lithuanian foreign affairs committee. Two of the objectives were to ascertain what the precise charges had been against Mr Pitt and to provide him with proper legal representation in Lithuania. The latter achieved, the case was to drag on for several years more, Frank maintaining support for Mr Pitt.
As noted, Cleveland Constabulary had for four years, at a cost of millions of pounds, been conducting an internal enquiry, Operation Lancet, into alleged misconduct by some serving officers of whom one was nationally prominent: former Superintendent ‘Robocop’ Ray Mallon. Frank always maintained that, as it was objective evidence which had given rise to the enquiry, there could not justifiably be an arbitrary cutoff point, in respect either of time or expense and that the issue was by definition sub judice and pro tem. Some parliamentary colleagues had taken an opposing view.
Post 9/11, the most pressing political question of the era became; against whom would the U.S.A. take military action and to what extent would the U.K. actively support its superpower ally? The invasion in late 2001 of Afghanistan, where the highly repressive Taliban regime had undoubted links to the Al Qaeda terror network, was taken under the umbrella of N.A.T.O. and supported with reservations by Frank. Far more controversial was the issue of whether Iraq, where the regime of Saddam Hussein had no such links but was the object of unremitting hostility from President George W. Bush and his administration, should be invaded next. This time the Government was to allow a full debate, with parliament recalled from its summer recess for the purpose. In the runup to it, Frank was quoted as agreeing that Saddam should comply with United Nations resolutions, particularly on unimpeded access for weapons inspectors, which had been passed since his defeat in the 1991 Gulf War, but said that invasion should take place “only in the most unusual circumstances”, adding that: “If we continue down this avenue in this crazy myopic way, then it could cost us our membership of the North Atlantic Alliance and could cost Blair his premiership.” On September 20th there was a good debate in his C.L.P., devoid of acrimony, which ended in a vote, by a three to one margin, to rule out any invasion.
The big House of Commons debate took place on September 24th 2002, entitled ‘Iraq and Weapons of Mass Destruction’ (which Saddam was widely, though erroneously, assumed to possess). Frank spoke in it, referring to a bellicose mood in the U.S.A. fuelled by irresponsible media coverage and concluding: “The simple truth is that Iraq poses no risk to the United Kingdom, or to the United States. If, as is stated on the front page of today’s Evening Standard, Iraq has the capacity to strike within 45 minutes, as soon as we launch an attack it can launch a reactive rather than a pre-emptive attack on us – and then the whole world will go crazy. Is there any sense at all in this? I suggest that there is not.”
With the dispersal to the North East, including Stockton, of significant numbers of asylum seekers, this area of activity began to impact on Frank’s Constituency Office and by 2004 would be occupying about 30% of the time of one of the two full time staff members. On November 5th 2002, drawing not on his still limited constituency experience of the issue but on his long period as a schoolteacher, Frank voted against a clause of the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Bill, one of 42 Labour M.P.s to do so. The effect of the clause could be to confine the children of asylum seekers to special schools and prevent them participating in regular education, the rationale being that they would require special help to master the English language. Frank told the local newspaper that he had long experience of special schooling and before entering parliament had been involved in remedial education. However, he believed it was entirely wrong to cut off the children of newcomers from mainstream schools where they would have the chance to mix, interact and learn from their peer group.
2002-3 mandatory reselection for Frank as a Labour Party candidate was similar to the 1999 round in that he anticipated a contest but none occurred and he enjoyed a smooth passage through the ‘trigger mechanism’ which required a majority of Labour Party wards and affiliated (mostly trade union) branches to vote for or against an all-member ballot being held. While confirming that he was now over pensionable age, Frank said in November: “But anybody who wants to try to take my seat, be it on the part of the Labour Party or any other party, will have to fight me for it.” In the event, no such effort was necessary as the special C.L.P. meeting on February 28th 2003 declared that the affirmative vote for the incumbent was 23 branches whereas only 6 had voted for a full selection contest. Frank commented in a press release: “It is always rewarding and reassuring to receive strong support from party colleagues and I am proud we have all worked together over the past 20 years to make Stockton North one of Labour’s strongest seats in the North-east.”
Stockton-on-Tees Borough Council had been under majority or minority (1991-5) Labour control throughout Frank’s two decades as an M.P. In the runup to the May 2003 elections – the last on the 1973 boundaries before a radical revision of the wards – this came under threat from a defection in January 2003 by Labour councillors in Thornaby, a town within Stockton South constituency with a proud history and sense of identity. This posed more of a problem for Stockton South Labour M.P. Dari Taylor but Frank waded into the row, saying that “the campaign these are running has been based on very scurrilous statements about individuals” and accusing them of “dubious motives” including an attempt to influence a simultaneous campaign in Norton (in Stockton North) to establish a parish council. He and the belligerent leader of the now Thornaby Independents, Councillor Steve Walmsley, were drawn into an exchange of hostile letters in the columns of the local newspaper.
Logistical preparations for war in Iraq were at an advanced stage by the time of the second big House of Commons vote on the issue on March 18th 2003. There was an enormous demonstration in London on February 14th, organised by the Stop The War Coalition. Announcing to a regional newspaper his intention to take part, Frank said: “This is not a war but a straightforward attack on Iraq – and I’ve seen nothing to justify that. I’ve absolutely no sympathy for the Iraqi regime or for Saddam Hussain and I was warning about him 25 years ago but Mr Bush seems determined that many innocent people will lose their lives. The real danger is that this will provide a fertile source of recruitment for any terrorist organisation.”
The March 18th debate, unlike the previous one of September 24th 2002, ended with a series of parliamentary votes. On what can be described as an anti-war amendment, Frank was one of 217 M.P.s of all parties to vote Aye, with the Government and supporters of its line, including most but not all of the Conservatives, mustering 396 Noes. Explaining to his local paper why he had been one of the 138 Labour M.Ps. backing the amendment, Frank said that: “I believed international law and democracy should have been allowed to come to its proper fruition, rather than for us to have withdrawn the second U.N. resolution on which so much importance was placed.”
We have noted at several previous points Frank’s heavy involvement with the campaign of indefatigible Billingham mother Ann Ming to overturn the 800 year old law of Double Jeopardy. In 2003 this moved towards its climax when on May 19th M.P.s voted through the requisite changes to the Criminal Justice Bill already going through parliament. Predictably with such a sensitive matter, further complications and delays followed, not least in the House of Lords. Frank helped reduce these by accompanying Ann and husband Charlie to see Attorney General Lord Goldsmith on July 9th. She commented afterwards: “The meeting went very well. My points were listened to and it is another step closer to justice for Julie.” In November, Frank was exasperated by Lords delays on unrelated aspects of the Bill but on the 20th of that month it finally received the Royal Assent to become the Criminal Justice Act and Ann Ming’s triumph was almost complete; all that remained was for the Crown Prosecution to decide whether it could apply the new law retrospectively to Dunlop.
Most M.P.s become, if not expert on, then at least specialists in, subjects which would never have occurred to them prior to being elected. We have already seen several of those for Frank and another began in 2003: regulation of the increasingly popular practice of laser eye surgery. This began when he himself underwent a corrective procedure at the London Vision Clinic on July 9th 2003, carried out by Professor Dan Reinstein. The Clinic’s fee was significantly higher than that of many alternative providers but Frank had become conscious that some of them were prepared to cut corners and take unacceptable risks. Mindful to do something about that, he put down an E.D.M., signalling the start of his involvement with the Laser Eye campaign which was to involve initiatives in future years, including a Private Members Bill.
In late 2003 Frank found himself on the same side of a dispute as Hartlepool M.P. Peter Mandelson and under attack from an organisation he had often supported over the years, Friends of the Earth. The geographical focus of the issue was just over the constituency boundary into Hartlepool, at Graythorp near the Tees estuary where the yard of Able U.K. was to receive and dismantle some decommissioned U.S. Navy vessels which for years had been moored and rotting on the James River, Virginia. Able has its offices in Stockton North, further up the tidal Tees. This constituency connection and the soundness of his case persuaded Frank to back Able’s M.D., Peter Stephenson in pressing for the dismantling to be done in controlled conditions rather than by unprotected workers, on some third world beach where no protection is available from dangerous components including asbestos and PCBs. Along with some Hartlepool councillors, Friends of the Earth seemed to be suggesting that these deadly materials might be released and imperil the local population if the ships came to Graythorp and that Frank was putting the prospect of local jobs – with the order to take apart four initial ships and possibly more later initially estimated as worth £11 million – before the safety of workers and the public.
In fact, Frank had satisfied himself that the two were in no way incompatible, an objective opinion reinforced on a November 27th visit to see the Canopus – the third of the vessels now irreversibly dubbed ‘The Ghost Ships’ – towed in to Graythorp and examine the precautionary and decontamination facilities already in place for those who would be working on them. Previously, on the 19th, Frank had explained his position on the Ghost Ships to the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Select Committee, and why he was severing his links with Friends of the Earth: “F.o.E.’s statements and behaviour over these ships are discrediting the environmental cause. The claims that the ships are packed with toxic waste and pose an environmental disaster are mendacious. I feel I have to end my association with it in order to maintatin my own credibility.” Sadly, the four Ghost Ships have not to this day been dismantled as the issue became mired in Planning as wells a environmental wrangles.
The main national dispute into which Frank was drawn in 2003 was that over changes in funding for English and Welsh universities. The replacement of student grants with repayable loans and the imposition of tuition fees had been introduced under the Labour Government and already made it the focus of some hostility from students and their parents. Now some universities inadequately financed by the existing fees were lobbying hard to be allowed to vary them upwards, soon known as ‘top-ups.’ The Labour Party general election manifesto for 2001 had ruled out imposing such additional fees during the lifetime of this parliament but was compelled to reconsider.
Frank first became identified as a ‘rebel’ on the issue when he abstained in the Commons on June 23rd on an opposition motion critical of the Government’s plans to allow higher education institutions to raise annual fees from £1,100 to £3,000. With education experts estimating that this could in turn push up the debt burden for graduates from a typical to £12,000 to £21,000, Frank was seriously concerned that aspiring students would be deterred from going to university and his abstention helped cut the Government’s majority from its then usual 164 to just 74. Frank was one of over 100 Labour M.P.s to sign an Early Day Motion against top-up fees before the proposal was included in the Queen’s Speech on November 26th. At that point he revealed that the Labour Whips had been putting pressure on him and other possible rebels to come back into line but said he would not contemplate doing so unless the Government made “major changes” to its proposals. As the Second Reading of the relevant bill was postponed until early 2004, Frank reiterated his concerns in December, saying that he himself would have been deterred from going into higher education in Manchester and Leeds had he been faced with the size of debt proposed.
What the Government now faced was almost as serious as a Vote of Confidence.
As the crucial vote approached, Frank was heavily influenced towards modifying or even reversing his opposition to the Education Bill’s clauses on top up fees by two individuals. One was Secretary of State for Education for Education and Skills Charles Clarke, with whom he had several highly constructive face-to-face meetings and who made significant concessions to Labour critics of the original proposals, including enhanced measures to help students from low income backgrounds. The other influential person was Professor Graham Henderson, Vice Chancellor of the University of Teesside. He and his board of governors had been opposed to the Bill in 2003 but, in the light of Clarke’s changes, reversed their stance in January 2004. Professor Henderson was quoted on the 20th as saying that: “The Bill now represents a more reasonable and workable way forward for the (higher education) sector and we are withdrawing our opposition.” Remaining implacably opposed to the Bill were the National Union of Students including their representatives at the University of Teesside and Durham University, which has a campus in Stockton. Frank agreed in principle to meet with the latter.
On January 27th Mr Blair did win the vote on Second Reading of the Higher Education Bill – but only by 316 votes to 311 with 72 Labour M.P.s rebelling. Frank was not the only potential rebel persuaded to go into the Government lobby; their perceived leader, Nick Brown did likewise. Frank told the Northern Echo that they would continue to scrutinise the Bill in Committee, adding that, “We can win even more concessions this way which is better than targeting the P.M.” What became the Higher Education Act 2004 finally received the Royal Assent on July 1st.
He prepared to take flack from both sides on February 20th. That was the date finally set for a meeting with Mr Craig Jones, President of Durham University Students’ Union who was indignant that Frank had finally voted for the Bill. Indignation that he had threatened to vote against was expressed in a resolution to be debated that night by Stockton North C.L.P. The irregular provenance was the January 29th meeting of the Stockton Local Government Committee, of which Frank got wind although he was not given formal notice or advance sight of the text of the motion. In the event, Mr Jones pulled out but Frank did not escape the C.L.P.’s flack which was heavy and general, encompassing allegations about his availability and general performance as well as those of risking the survival of the Labour Government. A disgruntled employee, resident in Stockton South, sat with those leading the attack.
A rare spat with a local political opponent also occurred in early 2004, this being James Wharton, the highly confident and assertive young Chairman of the Stockton-on-Tees Conservative Association. He seized on carefully considered comments in the Evening Gazette from Frank and Dari Taylor M.P. as, for the first time in living memory, Stockton began to develop a visible prostitution problem, around Mandale. Both were quoted as saying that legalisation should not be ruled out as it was proven elsewhere to reduce the worst aspects of what Frank called “this damnable trade” such as very young adult women or even children being sent shivering onto the streets and nuisance to residents from working girls and their predatory clients. Mr Wharton chose in a letter to the Gazette to ignore the clear disapproval expressed by the M.P.s of prostitution per see and accused them of legitimising it in the eyes of its unscrupulous customers and suggesting that it is “all right”. In his own letter to the same paper, Frank sought to counter Mr Wharton’s cynical misrepresentation of his view and Mrs Taylor’s, reiterating his moral objection to prostitution, agreeing that the eradication of trade would be the ideal solution but pointing out that no free society in human history has achieved that, whereas legalisation and licensing in countries like Germany offers more protection to vulnerable women and residents.
Awful news for Stockton and Hartlepool was the closure of the Wynyard Samsung plant. Frank called for the generous start-up grants they had received to be repaid.
On a happier note for early 2004, Frank was present when Middlesbrough F.C. won the first major trophy in their 128 year history, the Carling Cup, beating a strong Bolton Wanderers team 2-1 in Cardiff. Frank was accompanied to the Millennium Stadium by son Andrew and grandson Daniel on a historic day for Teesside.
Asylum, immigration and visa cases continued to take up an increasing share of time in Frank’s office and he personally took up some cases with the Minister of State’s Private Office: in writing, verbally or both. One such intervention (the constituent had a strong case) succeeded with Beverley Hughes M.P. for a Zimbabwean lady whose husband already had Leave to Remain in the U.K. as he was a clear target for the ruling Zanu PF party of Robert Mugabe. Ms Hughes, apparently more amenable to persuasion that her successors as Minister of State would prove, wrote to Frank that, “I have not taken this decision lightly as I do not normally depart from findings made by independent Adjudicators and higher courts. However, in light of the compassionate nature of her case, your letter and persuasive plea you have made on (the lady’s) behalf, I have decided to exercise my discretion in this case.” In April, though, Ms Hughes was hounded out of office by The Daily Mail, vocally supported by Leader of the Opposition Michael Howard and his Home Affairs Spokesman David Davis. One charge was of departmental complicity in nodding through visa applications from Rumania and Bulgaria but Frank knew from a protracted struggle on behalf of a lady from the former that this was not universal practice and he wrote to Ms Hughes to express sympathy and the hope she would return to government.
The growth in this area of work meant that Frank could no longer spare the office time for one of his tiny team of office staff to attend meetings of The Clarences Community Partnership, as those evening sessions often lasted over three hours. Frank continued, however, to take a keen interest in that isolated and deprived area of his constituency. A major initiative he had supported, including arguments with HM Treasury over the Landfill Tax Credits Scheme, was the creation of an International Nature Reserve, covering a large area of marshy land just north of The Clarence and set to open fully in 2007. Ironically, he then found himself arguing with Teesside Environmental Trust for a well established group of wildfowlers, the Saltholme Shooters, being allowed to remain active on the land becoming the Reserve. From convening a meeting in March of the parties in Stockton Town Hall to approaching DEFRA Minister of State Elliott Morley in September, Frank was unable to broker an agreement and the scheme, welcome in itself, proceeded without the Shooters.
Frank’s health received some media attention in mid-2004 when he underwent heart surgery at Middlesbrough’s James Cook University Hospital. Though he maintained a high activity level, he had been suffering from a form of angina due to constriction in one of his coronary arteries. To remove the blockage, surgeons carried out an angioplasty, a procedure to re-open a narrowed artery by inflating a tiny balloon in the narrowed segments. The treatment also involved inserting three drug-eluding stents into one of his arteries, an increasingly common procedure. It was a success and Frank commented: “I am looking forward, please God and with the magic of the NHS on Teesside, to re-invigoration and returning to my old troublesome self again.”
Indeed, less than three weeks later he joined 150 other M.P.s and peers in ‘power walking’ the Westminster Mile to fundraise for Sport Relief. Although pictures taken at the event with his rolled-up trousers showed Frank in good health, they destroyed the already remote chance that he might ever be regarded as a fashion icon!
We have seen how, ten years earlier than this point, Frank was unconvinced by the arguments for the creation of four unitary authorities to administer the area of the former Cleveland County, terminated in April 1996. A broad review of regional government overseen by John Prescott in 2004 raised the possibility of ‘city regions. Entrepreneur Sir John Hall – shortly thereafter a prominent ‘pro’ supporter in the unsuccessful campaign to get the people’s backing for a North East Assembly – focussed the debate by suggesting that Newcastle and Gateshead should come together in a new Tyneside City. That could leave Tees Valley trailing economically.
Frank took up the gauntlet in an Evening Gazette article on June 24th in which he put the case for a City of Teesside: “It does not take a genius to work out where the power is likely to rest as we move towards the establishment of regional government for the North East…and it certainly won’t be on Teesside so long as we remain with our current divisions.” He referred to the admission of a member of the Local Government Commission which had overseen the abolition of Cleveland, Professor Michael Chisholm, that the costs of change had been at least double those envisaged. Frank continued: “The very fact that we have seen the creation of so many quangoes to co-ordinate services across the whole of the area once again underlines the weakness of the current system and means that we currently live in quango land.”
Immediate opposition was expressed by elected Independent Mayors Ray Mallon in Middlesbrough (although he did not dismiss the notion of city status out of hand) and Stuart Drummond in Hartlepool, by Councillor Glynn Nightingale for the anti-Labour coalition running Redcar and Cleveland Borough and by Bob Gibson, Labour leader of Stockton Council. Support came from knowledgeable veterans of previous reorganisations such as Franklin Medhurst and David Simon. Overall, the debate was on and Frank kept it going in further press articles into late October, releasing some of the arguments he put to Mr Prescott’s Northern Way Strategy for Growth, a review which suggested the creation of eight city regions. He wrote to the Deputy Prime Minister that, whichever way the imminent vote on a regional elected assembly went, “the only way in which my constituents and rest of the Tees Valley can earn their rightful place at the ‘top table’ within the Northern Way is to give our central urban core the status it properly deserves – as the new City of Teesside.” The decisive rejection of an elected assembly by the voters of the North East effectively ended this public debate for the moment – but the issues it raised would certainly not go away.
Apart from the north east plebiscite, another dramatic vote in late 2004 was that at the Hartlepool by-election which followed the resignation of Peter Mandelson M.P. to take up an E.U. Commissioner’s post in Brussels. Widespread media predictions of another ‘parachutist’ as Labour candidate proved to be inaccurate as young local accountant and councillor Iain Wright was selected. Frank made a trip over to support his fellow Hartlepudlian who had to withstand a ferocious challenge, especially from a high-profile Liberal Democrat candidate. The campaign was partly treated by the media and political parties as a national referendum on the Labour Government but the heaviest pressure on Iain Wright and Labour came from the defining local issue: the survival of Hartlepool Hospital. Personal assurances on this were given by Secretary of State for Health John Reid and Prime Minister Tony Blair and Labour held the seat by a majority of 1,806 but this issue too would resurface.
Frank joined other North M.P.s in calling for direct Government intervention in sorting out the rail franchises, due to be combined into one, previously operated by Arriva Trains Northern and First North Western which Anglo-Dutch group Serco NED had been due to take over. Having seen virtual renationalisation applied to South East Trains, the M.P.s considered that taking back into public ownership the franchise including the vulnerable Esk Valley line could be equally successful.
The branch of the media most hostile to Frank, as to other Labour M.P.s, this decade is the Mail Group. On January 17th 2005 The Daily Mail ran a story calculated to do him serious political damage: “M.P. claims £1,500 expenses for landscaping his garden”. Complete with photographs of the Camberwell home into which Frank had moved in late 2004, the article was tendentious in its general thrust but accurately stated that his submission had been made under the additional costs allowance which can be used by M.P.s to cover the cost of running a second home in London and that it is meant to cover ‘necessary non-capital expenses’ – in other words repairs rather than work meant to add value to a property. Although the Mail described this category of expenses as ‘controversial’, the truth was that it was very little known amongst the general public – but that was about to change, certainly on Teesside where the controversy stirred up quickly became known as ‘Gardengate’.
An important secondary issue – unresolved to this day – was who had accessed and leaked information from the famously discreet House of Commons Fees Office. A letter from payments officer Myla Kelly came into the public domain, advising Frank: “I write with regard to your recent ACA claim dated November 1-30, 2004, for reimbursement of £2,966.22. An amount of £1,450 for the purpose of reclaiming a derelict garden has been withheld.” With the local press picking up on the Mail story, Frank had little choice but to engage in repeated and increasingly detailed public explanations of his claim which did fall within the criteria for the ACA.
The Evening Gazette published his fullest explanation on February 1st, beside a gracious editorial. Frank explained the necessity for and extent of the work –which not even The Mail disputed – and admitted that he been insufficiently sensitive to public reaction to the story as originally run. That reaction had included public criticism of the claim from Stockton North CLP Chairman Clr Bob Gibson, in advance of a meeting on January 21st. It was mostly taken up with Gardengate but the twelve members present all loyally declined to comment to the press outside.
Frank was expecting this frontal assault – and possibly another at the February 18th meeting – but not a potentially fatal stab in the back from his own trade union. His association with Amicus, formerly MSF and AUEW TASS, dated back to his being an official long before they began to sponsor him as an M.P. (the money all going to his local party for campaign activities) in 1983. More resources had recently been promised to Stockton North CLP through a Constituency Development Plan Agreement. Frank was therefore expecting just a friendly chat, with perhaps the offer of some sorely needed practical campaign assistance, when Amicus Regional Secretary Davy Hall came to his office for a talk on the afternoon of February 15th.
What Mr Hall actually brought was the message that Frank, allegedly devoid of support within the Labour Party and the union, should stand down as the already duly selected prospective parliamentary candidate for Stockton North in advance of the imminent general election, making way for another. This unfraternal advice was reinforced by a threat, made repeatedly, to ‘undermine’ Frank if he declined to obey.
After this bombshell, the February CLP turned out to be something of a damp squib, with no overt hostility or hint of Frank’s position as PPC being threatened. He said he would be his own general election agent – entirely permissible under legislation.
It has already been noted how Frank, along with Ashok Kumar M.P., had urged close scrutiny of the closing accounts of the Teesside Development Corporation. In early 2005 he publicly turned his attention to an existing organisation, the principal agency promoting the subregion: Tees Valley Regeneration. They had lead responsibility for the North Shore Project, an ambitious proposed redevelopment of a former industrial area on Frank’s side of the Tees which, in itself, he warmly welcomed. However, a member of its board, Alistair Arkley, who also around this time stepped down as Chairman of the Tees Valley Partnership, was minuted at the December meeting as articulating worries about the management of the agency, which was and is funded by the five unitary authorities in the Tees Valley. Another board member, Redcar and Cleveland Council Chief Executive Colin Moore said he had considered resigning over concerns about management but felt that the relevant issues were being tackled and in February Frank expressed his own concerns in a letter to the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister which hit the local media in March and April.
The Northern Echo carried one of a series of comments made by Mr Joe Docherty, TVR’s Chief Executive: “The last time Mr Cook spoke publicly about TVR and its projects was on January 19th at the launch of the North Shore project when, in front of an audience of media and invited V.I.P.s, he said he was delighted with the project. Mr Cook has never contacted Tees Valley Regeneration about his concerns.” An article in the other local newspaper, The Evening Gazette, quoted Frank: “I am not alone in being anxious about this. It is important if we have quangos that they behave in compliance with the rules laid down.” It also quoted his February 3rd letter to ODPM Minister Lord Rooker, suggesting that there were serious concerns about the TVR governance: “I am compelled to believe there remain issues which suggest that in a number of respects proper standards of conduct have not been observed to date.”
The most sensitive national issue in the runup to the 2005 general election was how far, if at all, the Mental Capacity Bill might become a medical Trojan Horse for euthanasia – something to which Frank has been implacably opposed throughout his political career. The Commons vote at Third Reading had actually been back on December 14th 2004 but at and after its enactment in April, religious organisations which had been assertively promoting their own interpretation of the legislation made a point of publicising which M.P.s had voted for and against. Their intolerance of any interpretation of complex legislation other than their own – setting up an artificial or at least highly subjective hurdle for M.P.s to clear – is also prejudicial to proper debate. Frank co-operated with initiatives from M.P.s like Jim Dobbin who combined real concern about potential misuse of provisions like ‘living wills’ with the intention to amend essential and well-intentioned legislation in a sensible way.
As preparations took shape for the General Election, complications with premises in Norton necessitated finding somewhere else at short notice. Stockton-on-Tees Borough Council provided one of the large shops they had vacant in the West Precinct of Billingham Town Centre, on commercial but convenient terms. The virtual breakdown of relations with his CLP, (although Treasurer Dick Cains was active and helpful) meant that Frank was initially bereft of campaign workers. A tiny handful of volunteers presented themselves and Frank devoted all available resources into keeping up a front, the campaign office opening almost full shop hours, April 14th to polling day May 5th although organised activity behind the façade was very limited. There was certainly no question of an all-constituency leaflet delivery such as had been carried out in the heady days of 1997 and even, with a struggle, in 2001.
Another reason the 2005 Stockton North Labour campaign was a mere shadow of its predecessors was the poor state of Frank’s health, as revealed in a May 10th Gazette article. Minor surgery just before the campaign let to complications, including heavy nosebleeds and he was mostly sidelined from what little activity could be managed. He was, however, able to participate vigorously in the one candidates’ debate, at Stockton Sixth Form College on April 21st, energised by a highly questionable Tory advertising campaign about the alleged cost to Council Tax payers of asylum seekers. Conservative candidate Harriet Baldwin seemed rather embarrassed by that initiative. She fitted the usual Stockton North Conservative profile of being both economically and socially liberal and was also typical in being generally impressive. Unlike his 2001 predecessor, Liberal Democrat Nigel Hughes turned up but not UKIP candidate Gordon Parkin and none of the above would share a platform with the BNP. On May 5th their Kevin Hughes lost his deposit with 986 votes as did Mr Parkin, also 986. Nigel Hughes polled 6,869, Mrs Baldwin 7,575 and Frank 20,012, retaining 54.9% of the vote as a national swing to the Conservatives, slashed Labour’s majority to 67.
Easier availability of, and better publicity on, postal votes slightly increased the abysmal 2001 turnout, to 61.2% nationally and 57.6% in Stockton North. In July, Frank raised some hackles by advocating compulsory voting, like in Australia, with a “none of the above” box on the paper but a £20 fine for those who chose not to vote.
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