The Middy May 20 1999

'Weigh them, don't count them!'

Before the Mid Sussex Constituency came into being – with Timothy Renton as its first MP – Mid Sussex was divided between the East Grinstead and Lewes Parliamentary divisions.

Haywards Heath and villages to the north were in East Grinstead, Burgess Hill and villages to the south in Lewes.

In those days, politically speaking, Sussex was as blue as a nudist camp in January. Tories, with one exception when the Liberals gained power, have always dominated mid Sussex.

It was often said it would have saved time to weigh their votes rather than count them.

Ironically Lewes managed to return a Tory in the Liberal landslide of 1906 when East Grinstead fell – but the 1997 election saw Liberal Democrat Norman Baker break the centuries Conservative stronghold in Lewes, winning the Seat from Tim Rathbone who had held it for 23 years.

Mr Rathbone was a man of high principles but also something of a maverick for the Conservative Party of the 70s and 80s – many people felt it was those very principles which lost him the seat to Mr Baker, who squeaked in with the majority of just 1,300.

Tim Rathbone was never afraid to stand by his beliefs in Proportional Representation and constitutional reform of the House of Lords. He was also a strong supporter of the EU and backed the concept of the single currency. These opinions – always clearly stated in his manifestos – did not endear him to his boss Margaret Thatcher, and he never held high office in government.

Norman Baker is equally forthright, though a very different political animal. Since winning in 1997 he has earned a reputation as the House of Commons most active MP, and recently won an award for the most questions asked. He is Lib Dem spokesman on transport and has shamed many an MP for their reliance on the motorcar – Mr Baker believes in leading by example and takes the train to Westminster.

Mr Rathbone succeeded the longest service serving MP for the Lewes division this century – Major Tufton Beamish, who later became Sir Tufton Beamish, and finally Lord Chelwood.

A dapper, alert military figure with a moustache, Major Beamish was MP for Lewes from 1945 to 1974, succeeding his father, Rear Admiral Beamish who held the same seat from 1924 to 1931 and 1936 to 1945.

A Sandhurst man, Tufton served with the Royal Northumberland Fusiliers in the Second World War during which he saw action and was wounded twice. He was mentioned in dispatches and awarded the Military Cross for his part in the evacuation from Dunkirk. Tufton was also known for his escape by rowing boat from the Japanese when Singapore was taken.

Not surprisingly, he was a hard liner on matters relating to the armed forces and defence. He was subsequently the subject of parody in the satirical prints of the day where he was referred to as Sir Bufton Tufton. An industrious constituency MP, he frequently attended fetes and other functions in Mid Sussex with his first wife, a glamorous American, and their children. He lived at Chelwood Gate and died in 1989 at the age of 72.

One of our most famous Prime Minister's, David Lloyd George, put Mid Sussex – Hurstpierpoint in particular – very much on the map when he and members of his First World War cabinet had meetings at Danny, the Elizabethan Home in the parish of the Campion family. And it was here while the world waited agog that the terms of the armistice were drawn up.

To relax and get some exercise the dynamic Welsh wizard liked to climb wolstonbury Hill, one of the South Downs that overlooks Hurst.

This tended to cause consternation among his officials as he often left papers there.

Although not a Sussex MP, another PM came to be even more closely associated with Mid Sussex. Harold McMillan, the Conservative Prime Minister from 1959 to 1964, lived at Birch Grove near Horsted Keynes and was very much a part of the scene here.

He too liked to play the country gentleman, reading the lesson at Horsted Keynes Parish Church and with his wife Lady Dorothy playing host to the public at daffodil time in the spring when thousands used to flock to the grounds at Birch Grove. They went not just to see a sea of dancing yellow blooms but also to brush shoulders with SuperMac, as he was known in the press.

In those pre-Sun days nobody knew about the tensions in the PM's marriage. They were considered in a recent West End play in which the Cuckfield actor Edward Fox gave a sympathetic performance as the sad McMillan.

Something of an actor himself, Harold Macmillan, a publisher, liked to cut a laid-back Edwardian figure. He said prime ministers should have plenty of time for reading as they did not have a department of their own to run. For good relaxing reading he recommended Disraeli and Anthony Trollope. In her autobiography Margaret Thatcher judged that he must've been joking!

There is no doubt that he was a phrase maker: “You've never had it so good” and “The wind of change” are now part of the language.

McMillan and President John Kennedy worked well together and because of the difference in our ages their relationship was often described as being like a father and son.

Supermac invited the young president to Birch Grove and he duly arrived by helicopter. The Red Lion at Chelwood Gate was stuffed with reporters and hefty security guards, some of whom were so sadly to fail the president a short time later when he was assassinated in Texas.

In his latter years McMillan would often answer the phone himself if a reporter rang Birch Grove for a quote. A young white liberal South African reporter working on the Middy at the time, who had been brought up on the ‘wind of change' speech, was so overawed when this happened to him that he instantly dropped the receiver!

When he attended the selection meeting to be prospective Conservative candidate for the new Mid Sussex constituency, Timothy Renton's rivals included Michael Heseltine, Sir Ian Gilmore and Norman Lamont.

Heseltine, the favourite, made a typical barnstorming address, the impact of which tended to frighten off the selection committee.

They opted for a safe pair of hands and Renton – now Lord Renton – got the nod.

Towards the end of her reign, Prime Minister Sacha made the Mid Sussex MP her chief whip. When she was assessing her prospects for the second ballot – the one she hoped would keep her as leader – she consulted all the influential figures in the party and the tensions between her and her chief whip became apparent.

Later she was to write coolly: ‘Tim Renton gave a characteristically dispiriting assessment. He said that the whips’ office had received many messages from backbenchers and ministers saying that I should withdraw from the contest.

‘Willie Whitelaw had asked to see him. He was worried that I might have been humiliated in the second ballot.’

History has judged that the honourable member for mid Sussex got the arithmetic about right. There was no way his boss could win. The political Tide has begun to turn.