Sir David Amess: we must celebrate his life as well as mourn his death
“Any man’s death diminishes me,” wrote John Donne. Taken literally, that would be prescribing a Gospel of perfection, making an impossible demand on frail mankind. But some deaths do diminish us all, among them the murders of David Amess and Jo Cox. They were both good people who had earned respect and affection. In each case, this was reflected in tributes that were heartfelt and sincere, expressing an aching sense of loss and grief.
David had been an MP for 38 years. But he never grew stale. That would have been unthinkable. He had been elected to the privilege of service in the Commons and I suspect that to the end, every time he entered the Palace of Westminster, he was as proud as he had been on his first day as an MP. It is hard to imagine that he would ever have retired, and he would have made an excellent Father of the House that he loved.
Never a slave to fashion, he was a man of strong opinions, some of them inspired by his Catholic faith. But he would not have dreamt of turning his convictions into intellectual hatreds, which is why he never made enemies. It was even possible to forgive him for his opposition to fox hunting.
He was also of interest to political sociology. Up until the Eighties, the Tory party had very few MPs from a working-class background. David advanced from the East End to south Essex. He was an archetypal Essex man and as such, ideally placed to consolidate his Party’s hold on the C2s and similar swing voters. David Amess was Thatcherism as psephology.
It seems unlikely that he would ever have taken much notice of Andy Warhol, who himself survived an assassination attempt, by a loony feminist who wanted to abolish men. But in 1992, David had his Warholian quarter of an hour of especial fame. There were some crucial marginals in Essex, among them his constituency, Basildon, which was due to declare early. If David held it, John Major would return to No.10. If it had fallen to Labour, Neil Kinnock would have been on track to kiss hands. Up and down the land, wherever political obsessives were intent on the TV screen, the atmosphere crackled with tension. Then the result came through, accompanied by David’s delighted schoolboy grin, one of the abiding images of that remarkable evening. He had held the seat by almost 1500 votes, with only a tiny swing against him. John Major was still in office. It was not David’s fault that the 1992 Parliament turned into a Calvary.
In consequence, by 1997, even David Amess could not have held on to Basildon. He moved down the road to Southend West, which was a piquant move. He replaced Paul Channon, an old-fashioned and delightful Tory toff, the son of Chips of Diary fame – or should that be infamy? The seat had been a Channon/Guinness fiefdom. David’s arrival symbolised the changing nature of the Tory party, as the grandees gave way to the garage-istes.
The shocked and outraged response to David’s murder has led to a search for explanations, and for measures to ensure that this never happens again. That is an understandable reaction. Although no-one should wish to prevent constituents from meeting their MPs, there are steps that could be taken without flooding constituency offices with policemen. Metal detectors are an an obvious example. Stab vests could be another.
It is dreadful that we have to contemplate such measures. What sort of society are we becoming? There is, unfortunately, an obvious answer: one in which such precautions are necessary. I remember the days when Downing Street was a short cut from Whitehall to St James’s Park while it only took a few minutes to board a shuttle plane service. Those are memories of a vanished world, which will never return.
As to the broader social questions, it is a matter for regret that we cannot find enough HGV drivers, care-home workers or fruit pickers, but we do admit immigrants who have been warped and embittered by political or religious – or both – conflicts in far-away countries of which we know nothing.
The coarsening of public debate is also regrettable. Low-grade social media is encouraging anger, abuse and persecution. Even ten years ago, who would have thought that any academics who claimed that there is a biological difference between men and women would be at risk of being hounded out of their university? Anyone who had predicted that would have been laughed to scorn. Today, it is not even clear whether Sir Keir Starmer could be trusted not to cancel those who subscribe to elementary physiology.
Universities should be civilised places, but it is not clear that all dons can be trusted. Apartheid was invented in a university. Marxism has been given asylum in many universities, and wokery is now rampant. It sometimes seems that no idea is so daft that no professor will espouse it. Common sense also needs protection. Achieving that would improve the quality of public discourse, though it will not necessarily prevent murders.
David’s murder reminded me of an earlier one, and a cruel irony. In early 1990, Ian Gow gave a small drinks party for Sally Bruce-Gardyne, her first social event since her husband Jock’s death. There was no more staunch supporter of patriotic Unionist Ulster than Ian. Fearing that this might make him a target for evil-doers, Jonathan Aitken asked him if he took precautions, such as varying his route while driving to the Commons or looking under his car. “Certainly not,’ came the reply,” and anyway, I would not know what to look for. I am at less risk that any serving officer in Her Majesty’s Royal Ulster Constabulary. Alas, that turned out to be untrue.
“Deliver us from evil,” David would often have prayed. In this fallen world, that prayer will always be necessary. Without cancelling freedom, the authorities should do what they can to deliver us from evil. But it will never be eliminated. The prayers will continue. So will the evil-doing.
Dear departed David: we should celebrate the life as well as mourn the death. We can only hope that his family find comfort in the knowledge that their husband and father was as decent a man as anyone could hope to meet. He had values and he lived by them. He had faith, and he strove to live by that. Above all, he had decency and he lived by that too. Requiescat in pace. A man like that deserves a Heaven.