FEW Tory leadership contenders can claim to have experienced genuine political drama in Downing Street at 17.
That was how old David Davis was when he went to see the Chancellor of the Exchequer as a prize for winning a school essay competition. The visit in July 1966 took place against the backdrop of another sterling crisis.
When he left, Mr Davis, a pupil of Bec School in Tooting, southwest London, was besieged by reporters anxious to know the atmosphere inside No 11 as the Chancellor fought to avert devaluation by announcing a wage freeze.
Writing for his school magazine, the young Davis described what he now hopes is not his last role in political history. “Harold Wilson had just returned from Moscow to a country in the throes of an economic crisis, a country in a dissatisfied mood. We were in a unique position.”
Emerging after a guided tour with Audrey Callaghan, he found momentary fame on national television and kept his first Cabinet secret. A civil servant had announced that the Cabinet had concluded that the new, controversial selective employment tax had failed. “I understood that this discussion was in confidence, so I said nothing about it,” he wrote.
An illegitimate child, he had been brought up in York in a prefabricated bungalow dominated by the politics of his grandfather, Walter Harrison, a Communist who led the 1936 Jarrow hunger march from York to Aldermaston.
His father had vanished within days of learning that his married mother, Betty Brown, was pregnant. After four years in York, he moved to London when his mother married Ronald Davis, a shop steward at Battersea power station, who adopted him at the age of 11. They lived in a flat in South London which Mr Davis describes as a “slum”. They later moved to a council house in Tooting which the boy thought was luxurious: it had an indoor bathroom and electricity.
At Bec School Mr Davis excelled at science, even managing to set the chemistry lab alight. He passed A levels in physics and chemistry but failed zoology the first time after walking out of the house the night after yet another confrontation with his stepfather. Barry Trowbridge, who used to walk to school with Mr Davis, said: “He was a tough kid who knew how to look after himself. He had a reputation for getting into scraps.” That label has followed him into the Commons where many Tory MPs resent his bombastic style.
Mr Davis, who had a boxer dog named Winston, was a popular figure at school. A scruff, whose tie was always crooked and whose hair looked like it had never seen a comb, he was outspoken in current affairs debates. In a survey of the classmate most likely to be Prime Minister by 25, he was top.
Freddie Hore, 89, who was Mr Davis’s headmaster until the sixth form, said: “The school recruited bright boys from underprivileged backgrounds. David Davis exemplified what we were trying to do. He was conscientious and an admirable scholar.” Mr Hore was a feared disciplinarian. “I had simple rules. If the boys broke them they were caned.” Mr Davis was caned once.
The school, whose old boys include the actor Art Malik and the former England rugby captain Bob Hiller, was amalgamated with a neighbouring comprehensive in 1970. In 1971 it was renamed Ernest Bevin after the socialist Foreign Secretary. Margaret Thatcher, the Education Secretary at the time, has not been forgiven by the Old Boys.
Mr Davis was a prop forward in the school rugby team. He broke his nose three times, the school magazine noting that the “2nd XV have pounded their way to victory, suicidally led by D.M. Davis”. He broke his nose twice more, once in an accident in a swimming pool and again in a fight on Clapham Common.
A further sign of the now carefully cultivated action man image came when he joined the Territorial Army SAS for two years. It was not just about derring-do antics but to finance his education at Warwick University. His parents had refused to help.
While at university between 1968 and 1971, he met Doreen, a fellow molecular science student. They married in July 1973. Their daughter Rebecca came the next year, Sarah in 1977, and son Alexander, who is still at home, in 1987.
Doreen Davis is a rare politician’s wife. She is never seen at Westminster or party conferences; there are few photographs of them together. A request for one was politely declined. Unlike Sandra Howard, there will be no interviews or solo television appearances.
Yet behind the scenes she is a huge influence. Mrs Davis, who gave up her career to look after the children, runs the constituency office in their Yorkshire farmhouse.
In 1971 he went to London Business School and, at a time of radical student activism, became chairman of the deeply unfashionable Conservative Association. At the London School of Economics, a left-wing hotbed, John Blundell, now the head of the Institute for Economic Affairs, the free-market think-tank, was elected to the same Tory post. They have been friends ever since. In 1973 Mr Blundell backed Mr Davis for the chairmanship of the Federation of Conservative Students. He won and his first act was to ally it to Amnesty International, a move he would be unlikely to repeat today.
His unexpected victory underlines the extent of his political journey. Mr Davis, the current standard-bearer of the Thatcherites, was the candidate of the Left against the rightwinger Neil Hamilton.
Mr Blundell said: “Then David was a Heathite managerial Tory but he won the vote of the free-marketeers because, having read Hayek and Friedman, he was open to ideas.”
When a delegation from the federation was booked in to see Mrs Thatcher about student grants, Mr Davis took no chances. Mr Blundell recalled: “We had a 30-minute slot but he made a dozen of us swot all weekend so we were fully briefed.” Another friend was Michael, now Lord, Forsyth, the former Scottish Secretary. Mr Blundell said: “We joked that I would become director-general of the IEA, Michael would be Scottish Secretary and David would be leader of the Conservative Party. So far it’s two out of three.”
In 1974 he joined Tate & Lyle and was made a director ten years later. Mr Davis, who has a pilot’s licence, ignored the usual convention that Tory MPs should first fight a hopeless seat. He secured Boothferry, now Haltemprice and Howden, in Yorkshire at the first attempt in 1987 with a 19,000 majority.
By now the model young Thatcherite, he shocked his colleagues when he voted against charges for eyesight tests in 1988. The rebellion, which enraged Mrs Thatcher, cost him a ministerial job. He became a whip in 1990, earning the nickname “Bruiser”, and by the 1997 election was a minister of state, knocking on the Cabinet’s door. A supporter of the death penalty for serial killers, he opposes any softening of the approach to drugs, supports limits on immigration, is Eurosceptic, hates focus groups and is privately contemptuous of the Tories’ timid £4 billion election tax-cut pledge.
With his good looks, deprived background and boardroom experience, Mr Davis would appear to be a shoo-in for the leader’s job. But many colleagues whisper loudly that he is lazy, divisive and arrogant. And those are the ones who will vote for him, according to the wags at Westminster.
William Hague’s friends say that Mr Davis, who rejected a frontbench job in 1997 in favour of the more high-profile chairmanship of the Public Accounts Committee, plotted against him. Mr Davis backed Iain Duncan Smith in 2001 not because he thought that he was the right man for the job, but to stop Michael Portillo. In Westminster tea rooms there is talk of whether a “stop Davis” candidate would emerge.
Aware of backbiting, Mr Davis had lunch with a powerful newspaper editor. He droned on so long that the editor cancelled the wine, ending things abruptly. His friends know that they must soften his edges.
Closest among them are Michael Brown, the former MP, Iain Dale, his chief of staff, and Nick Herbert, who succeeded Howard Flight as Tory MP in Arundel & South Downs. They are all openly gay, yet Mr Davis has opposed every attempt to end discrimination against homosexuals by voting against equalling the age of consent and opposing the abolition of Section 28. Yet when Mr Brown was forced to resign as a Tory whip for having sex with a 20-year-old when the age of consent was 21, Mr Davis drove through the night to give him sanctuary in his home from the tabloids. He sponsored Mr Dale’s application to become an MP. When he was party chairman, more Asian and openly gay candidates were chosen than at any other time. But when he was sacked as chairman the joke was: “What’s the difference between David Davies and David Davis? Answer: “One runs the FA and the other does FA.”
Mr Davis, whose passion is military history, is hardly a new man. He cannot cook but has a copy of How to Boil Water in his London flat. He never changed his children’s nappies but taught them maths, English, and rock climbing.
In 1988 he wrote How to Turn Around a Company, which is on a shelf in his study.
If he wins the leadership he will need to reread it.
DAVID DAVIS
Born 1948
Education Bec Grammar School; Warwick University, 1968-1971; London Business School 1971-1973; Harvard, 1984-85
Employment Tate & Lyle plc, director Political career elected MP, 1987; junior Whip 1990-93; Minister at Office of Public Service and Science, 1993-1994; Minister of State, Foreign Office, 1994-1997; Chairman, Public Accounts Committee, 1997-2001; Chairman, Conservative Party, 2001-2002; Shadow Home Secretary
