A rebel without applause

It was only on page 21, some time after the true colours debate over whether the Prime Minister tints his hair, that Tuesday's Evening Standard acknowledged Princess Margaret's passing, and only then with a 22 carat cliche about "Margaret as you've never seen her before".

It was a photograph by Norman Parkinson. What we'd never seen before, said the Standard, not untreasonably, was that the Queen's sister was "warmly" smiling. Lord Dormand of Easington, light lunching at Westminster, would have allowed himself a little smile, too.

Though he never much talked about it in 17 years as MP for the Durham coastal constituency, Jack Dormand has long been secretary of the Parliamentary Republican Group.

Once there were just four of them - Dormand, Tony Benn, Paul Flynn and Gordon Prentice - now at least 20 are openly supportive.

He is no Willie Hamilton among anti-monarchists, however, no off-with-their-heads headline grabber - more a quiet campaigner, a rebel without applause.

Lord Dormand, now 82 and still active at Westminster five days a week, is nonetheless convinced that the tide has turned inexorably towards republicanism, and that an elected head of state is only a matter of time.

"How can it be otherwise in a democracy?" he asks. "Besides, with a hereditary head of state, you never know what sort you're going to get next."

Though, surprisingly, he'd not seen it - "I never read the Telegraph," he says, and wears it like a fresh red rose - a poll last week in that traditionally Conservative newspaper revealed that while only eight per cent were "very much" looking forward to the Golden Jubilee, 43 per cent couldn't give a courtier's cuss.

Only 45 per cent believed the monarchy would still exist at the end of the 21st Century, though 17 per cent didn't know. Just over half thought that it should continue.

Lord Dormand insists, publicly at least, that he doesn't know how much longer the palace guard will survive. "It will happen and it is happening; we will continue to work towards it."

Born in Haswell workmen's club, where his father - a former miner - was steward, his commitment to a republic grew simultaneously with his school days interest in politics.

Partly it was a social class thing, he admits - "there were some people, including royalty, who lived a very different life from what we lived" - partly it was a reaction to the "deference" shown to the Royal Family (which may be reflected in the close decision to give them capital initials.)

Though he concedes that the Queen herself has done "a decent and a dignified job in the context" he has met just two members of the Family Firm, Prince Charles and his sister.

Charles was visiting Easington. Dormand told his local party that he didn't want to meet him but was "persuaded" to stand in line, if not exactly to fall into it. "They said it would look bad if I wasn't there," he admits, though he wore his Labour Party tie for the occasion.

Charles, a familiar conversation piece, asked him what it represented. "You wouldn't know about that sort of thing," said Dormand.

Princess Anne was at a boat show where Teesside Development Corporation, of which he vice-chairman, had for some reason pushed out a promotion. They had arranged, or thought they had, for the princess to speak to round-the-world yachtsman Chay Blyth by telephone in Australia.

The princess claimed she knew nothing about it and refused, though Blyth was waiting on the other end. "It didn't help," he says, but declines to reveal opinions about other members of the Firm.

"Next question...."

"You won't be dancing in the street parties, then?"

"The street party thing is perhaps the biggest indication of the growing lack of interest in the Royal Family, especially when you consider what happened in 1977. Now there are going to be very, very few.

"I'm not surprised at the lack of public grief for Margaret. Circumstances have changed, that deference has gone. A republic is only a matter of time."

FAMOUSLY fit, Jack Dormand kept goal for Bede College, played cricket and rugby until he was 63 ("just third team stuff, mind"), did his daily exercises and rode his bike around London until 1987 when keeping fit almost killed him.

"There were a couple of times when buses pulled out right in front of me. Apart from anything else, it almost frightened me to death. It's just impossible to cycle in London these days."

Last year, however, he noticed increased breathlessness when walking, saw a consultant and was advised to have a double heart bypass at the renowned Papworth Hospital in Cambridge.

"It came as a very big shock to me. The doctor said if I hadn't done anything, I wouldn't have lasted another winter."

Eight months later, he continues to recover, envies a 93-year-old fellow peer who has the same operation by the same surgeon - "bounces all over the place; Tory, too" - has returned to full time attendance at the Lords and, Lady Dormand in attendance, to his weekday flat in the city.

Though Neil Kinnock at first failed to persuade him to become a life peer - "I just refused; I'd long campaigned against the House of Lords" - he admits that it is a pleasant place from which to operate.

There are thick carpets - red for Lords, green for Commmons - sumptuous surroundings, big armchairs, familiar faces, even boot polish in the gent's.

It is very congenial, he concedes; even the tea lady calls him Jack and never once Your Lordship.

Educated at Oxford and Harvard, he became a teacher and then Easington area education officer, MP for Easington in succession to Manny Shinwell and chairman of the Parliamentary Labour Party.

For much of his time, the "coastal" constituency extended through Thorpe Thewles - north of Stockton - to Eaglescliffe on the Durham/Yorkshire border, a piece of border line baloney for which they'd hived off Seaham from Easington. ("It's the sort of thing they used to do," he says, and that's not going to make two inch headlines, either.)

He fought in vain to save the pits, supposes that the good which came out of it was that men no longer had to work in three foot seams - "it wasn't the sort of job which human beings should have had to do" - helped attract alternative industry to the Peterlee area.

For four years after entering the Lords, he and his wife Doris, a former teacher, continued to live in Easington Village. Now they're in Rutland, the Republic of Rutland some say, because the weekly car journey became too much.

"It's still near the A1 for a quick getaway," he says, though his illness has meant that he hasn't been home for a year.

On Tuesday, he was due to ask a Lords question about another of his favourite subjects - "pet hates" would perhaps not be appropriate - Fat Cats (and they can have capitals, too.)

A well-thumbed folder with his name written on the front contained details of his question - "I get particularly upset about the huge pay-offs they get for being failures" - and of his "spontaneous" reply to the minister's no more or less spontaneous answer.

"I used to have a big file on all of them, but there just became too many," he says.

The Government hasn't done as much as he would like to curb such abuses. It is still, he says ritually, a whole lot better than the bloody Tories.

His principal interests, however, continue to be education, tourism and regional government. "I still work firstly because I love it but secondly, because if you lose interest, especially at my age, you die."

He greets almost everyone, even the Tories, as he conducts a little guided tour - "a walk around the block," he says. Lord Dormand of Easington, 83 in April, remains very much alive.

AN exercise of which Jack Dormand wholeheartedly approved, we had walked up a sweat from Kings Cross to Westminster, 55 minutes flat out.

It took us past the headquarters of the British Medical Association, where house policy is clearly against those catastrophically carcinogenic "smoking rooms".

The BMA's smokers had taken to the street outside instead, the more salubriously to dig an early grave.

Published: 14/02/02