‘With love from the poisoned pen of Piers?’

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Ex-colleagues and Town Hall rivals attend launch of former Tory leader’s revealing book

Published: 25 March, 2010
by RICHARD OSLEY

NEVER has Piers Wauchope been cheered by so many Labour supporters.
The former Conservative Party leader was the toast of the old Hampstead Town Hall in Belsize Park on Monday night as he launched his new book: Camden, A Political History.
Yet almost as soon as the speeches were over and the champagne and canapes had been consumed, his one-time opponents were quickly seen thumbing the pages to see if they had suffered at the hands of Mr Wauchope’s famous dry wit. Nervously, they raced to the index to see if they had escaped his barbs.
The most recent Labour leaders of the council, Dame Jane Roberts and Raj Chada, who was at the helm when the party lost control of Camden in 2006, may want to steer clear of what will make unhappy bedtime reading for them. Others received generous praise.
Mr Wauchope, a barrister, said he had consulted top Labour party sources to uncover the clearest picture of the machinations that took place.
But he insists writing the book was not all about getting revenge for his days on the opposition front bench as he chronicled Labour’s final election nightmare in Camden.
“Why those knowledgeable and erudite newspaper editors, the twin colossi of Camden’s press, Gerry Isaaman formerly of the Ham&High and Eric Gordon of the New Journal have not written an account of Camden, I cannot tell,” said Mr Wauchope. “I hope they will and that my effort will one day be seen as a stop-gap for the greater work yet to come.”
He added that he felt moved to write it after speaking to a fresh-faced current councillor about Alderman Roy Shaw – who was on Camden Council for 51 years up to his death in 2007.
A passage in the book says: “‘That old Labour bloke,’ said the new councillor, ‘what’s his name – he’s standing down through ill health’. By ‘what’s his name’, he meant Roy Shaw, the man who had dominated Camden politics for over a decade.”
Mr Wauchope, who lost his seat in Belsize to the Lib Dems in 2006, said the book would provide the current crop of politicians with a link with the council’s past.
Among the guests at the launch were former Labour cabinet members Richard Arthur, John Thane, Theo Blackwell and Jake Sumner and leader of the council Keith Moffitt. Former Tory councillors Mike Greene and Brian Cattell shook hands with the Tory members who have followed in their footsteps.
In a speech, Martin Morton, another former leader of Camden’s Conservatives, said: “When I was on the council we spent far too much time in opposition. Whenever I pass the Town Hall now, I wonder what we did with all those long evenings.
“Reading Piers’s book did bring back some memories of things I did and things I’m quite certain I never said. But Piers has gone through the old copies of the Camden New Journal or whatever it was called then as evidence, so I must bow to their records rather than my memory.
Another speaker, Roger Robinson, the longest serving current councillor in Camden, said: “I don’t agree with Piers all the time. In fact, I don’t agree with him at all, but this excellent book gives great credit to him and to Camden. It is a fantastic borough. I love being here and I love my friends on both sides of the chamber.”