An Encounter with Denis Healey

Denis Healey  30.8.1917 - 3.10.2015

Tributes are quite rightly being paid today to Denis Healey, who has died at the age of 98. Everyone agrees he was a Giant of post-war UK politics, which objectively he was. He was famous among other things for his caustic & ready wit; for instance when he described an attack on him by Geoffrey Howe in 1978 as "like being savaged by a dead sheep". You can hear that here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/democracylive/hi/historic_moments/newsid_8185000/8185778.stm

As my own small tribute, I want to record an encounter I had with him when he was Chancellor of the Exchequer - that's the finance minister in the UK - & I was a 9-year-old schoolboy.

It was in 1979 during the General Election campaign, so it must have been in April, & in York, where I live, then & now. The crucial detail to bear in mind here is that I went to a prep school at the time, & we had a ludicrous uniform - it was fantasy Edwardian - which consisted of grey shorts, grey socks with red stripes at the top, a red cap and a bright red blazer. Denis Healey was campaigning at the factory gate at Rowntrees Chocolate factory. My family lived five minutes round the corner at the time - what is now a cycle lane was then a railway line on which cocoa beans were delivered to the factory: I used to hear the trains rocking & grinding in the early mornings, it was an oddly comforting sound - & I suppose I & my friend Robin must have been walking to my house, seen the crowd & gone to see what it was all about. Denis Healey was addressing the crowd, & for some reason - arrogance probably - I started heckling him. When I was done, he just turned around & said -

"Well, at least your jacket's the right colour"

at which the crowd collapsed in laughter, & I was absolutely mortified, crushed. Robin & I must have slunk away, because there was no recovering from that. 

I remember this encounter vividly & with affection for Mr Healey: I remember it  as a brief, real interaction with a great man, & the sharpness, readiness & effectiveness of his wit, excercised on a cocky little oick as I was then who had no understanding yet at all of who Denis Healey really was. May he rest in peace.