Class Notes:
Concordia
Merchant Taylors’ School
Lord
Gilbert
LordGilbert, whohas
diedaged86, was,
asDr JohnGilbert,
amiddle-ranking
minister underHarold
WilsonandJames
Callaghan; at theage
of 70hewas recalled
byTonyBlair to ensure
Atlanticist continuityat
theMinistry of Defence.
In between, he made an impact
interrogating the mighty on Select
Committees. The lean, magisterial
Gilbert directed an accountant’s
forensic brain against the evasions
of highly-placed witnesses to
deadly effect, notably during the
Defence Committee’s hearings into
the Westland affair.
A former international banker with
a private pilot’s licence, Gilbert was
not a typical Labour MP; indeed, a
psychologist who showed photographs
of politicians to women voters found
that most reckoned the pinstriped
Gilbert a Tory. Yet he was an asset to
his party and to Parliament.
Gilbert made his greatest mark — and
won The Spectator’s “Inquisitor of the
Year” award — in opposition, after the
resignations of Michael Heseltine and
Leon Brittan fromMargaret Thatcher’s
Cabinet over Westland. When Brittan,
himself a renowned QC, appeared
before the committee, Gilbert accused
him of having a selective memory over
the leaking by his press secretary, Colette
Bowe, of an opinion secured from the
Solicitor-General, Sir Patrick Mayhew, to
undercut Heseltine’s position.
Gilbert was as tenacious with Sir
Brian Hayes, Permanent Secretary at the
DTI, the Cabinet Secretary Sir Robert
Armstrong and eventually Heseltine
himself. He shook Armstrong, in
particular, by suggesting that he saw the
“scandalous” episode of the leak as no
more serious than a waiter spilling soup.
Labour members of the committee were
convinced that the trail led to Downing
Street, and Gilbert’s weighty thoroughness
enabled it to issue a unanimous report
accusing Sir Robert of neither giving a clear
lead to his civil servants nor disciplining
those who “connived” in the leak.
Removed from the Defence Committee
after the 1987 election for attacking
Labour’s “non-nuclear” policy, Gilbert
found fresh challenges on the Trade and
Industry Committee. He joined forces with
its Conservative chairman, Sir Kenneth
Warren, to tease out of Shell executives the
admission that their own, “better”, petrol
was frequently bought from a competitor.
And he asked uncomfortable questions
about the Matrix Churchill “arms for Iraq”
affair, saying that ministers had “connived
in and were complicitous in the activities
of the men who were put on trial”.
John William Gilbert was born on April
5 1927, the son of Stanley Gilbert, a civil
servant, and the former Mary Davies.
Educated at Merchant Taylors’ School,
Northwood, and St John’s College, Oxford,
where he read PPE, he was a management
trainee with the Forte catering group
before moving to Canada, where he
qualified (in 1954) and practised as a
chartered accountant. After a spell in
international banking in New York City, he
took a PhD in International Economics at
New York University, thereafter insisting
on being called “Dr Gilbert”.
Gilbert had joined the Labour Party
in 1945, serving as secretary of the
Oxford University Labour Club, and
was an active trade unionist. Returning
to Britain early in 1966 as an industrial
and financial adviser, he was selected for
Ludlow in the imminent election, halving
the Conservative majority. He secured
the candidacy for the supposedly safe
Dudley in the 1968 by-election caused
by the elevation of George Wigg to the
peerage, but at the depth of Labour’s
unpopularity the Tories swept home
by 11,656 votes. Gilbert nursed the
constituency and in 1970 regained it by
just 336. At Westminster he specialised in
financial issues and was put on the Select
Committee on Expenditure.
In 1972 Wilson recognised Gilbert’s
ability by appointing him a Treasury
spokesman in the reshuffle forced by
Roy Jenkins’s resignation over Europe. A
persistent critic of the Takeover Panel’s
limited powers to tackle insider dealing
and other abuses, he asserted in a BBC
documentary that malpractice was taking
place on the Stock Exchange, a charge
furiously rebutted. Gilbert raised questions
about several takeovers, making his
greatest impact questioning Sir Geoffrey
Howe, Consumer Affairs Minister, over the
collapse of the banking group London and
County Securities.
Boundary changes at the February
1974 election helped Gilbert hold the new
Dudley East constituency with a majority
of 11,622. On Labour’s unexpected return
to power, he became Financial Secretary
to the Treasury under Denis Healey; his
transatlantic experience proved useful
in discussions with American business
leaders on Healey’s tighter tax regime for
foreigners working in Britain.
With Labour committed to a red-
blooded programme of nationalisation,
Gilbert was perceived as a “dove” despite
his views on the City — and was not
helped when Conservative MPs got up
and said so. His first months were spent
getting Healey’s first Finance Bill through
a hung Parliament.
Later that year Gilbert announced
that charitable payments to thalidomide
children would be subject to income
tax, only for Wilson to overrule him;
a compromise was found, with the
government paying victims £5 million to
offset tax due. Gilbert went on to launch
“granny bonds” to protect the elderly
