Saviour of Liberal cause

its lowest fortunes in modern Britain. Grimond's Liberal Party was never

a serious contender for power and in two out of three of his three

General Election campaigns failed even to contest a majority of

parliamentary seats. Yet Grimond's lively leadership saved the Liberals

from political oblivion: to the party he brought stability and he lived

to see Liberalism as a revived, formidable force in national affairs.

Joseph Grimond was born in St Andrews in July 1913, the youngest child

of a Dundee jute manufacturer. His early days were happy. He proceeded

through Eton and Oxford -- making lifelong friendships with such as

Jasper Ridley and William Douglas-Home -- before pursuing a legal career

in London. In 1938, he married Laura Bonham-Carter, granddaughter of

Herbert Asquith and scion of a great Liberal dynasty. Their partnership

was to be long and steadfast.

Grimond's politics were like himself -- vague and tweedy, clean and

nice. After war service, he stood for the Liberals in Orkney and

Shetland in the 1945 election. It was a disastrous poll for the party

nationally -- virtually all its leaders were defeated and only 12

Liberals returned to the Commons -- and he came within 500 votes of

winning the seat. After five years in the South working for the United

Nations and then the National Trust for Scotland, he returned to fight

again in 1950, and won.

''I never canvassed,'' he said. ''To ask anyone how they were going to

vote would have seemed impudent to many of my constituents. Laura once

approached the subject obliquely. She got a terse and dusty answer --

'The folk in this parish will vote as they think fit. They will vote

Liberal if they be of that mind.' '' Such were Grimond's constituents,

whom he came to love. South of the Pentland Firth, he had little to

encourage his ambitions.

Irish home rule, the Great War, and years of internecine strife had

long since ruined the Liberal Party. The ageing Clement Davies was the

only senior figure to survive the 1945 election and under him the party

drifted unhappily. Grimond's victory in 1950 was the only glory in a

debacle. The party lost 319 deposits. The next election came barely a

year later. The Liberals fielded a mere 109 candidates and took all of

2.6% of the poll. Only six MPs were returned and of these only Grimond

had won against Tory oppostion. The party faced extinction.

All six MPs survived the 1955 election but the following year Clement

Davies retired. Grimond succeed him. The party had little choice. Of

available MPs, one was deputy chairman of ways and means in the House of

Commons and debarred from active party work, two could not hope to hold

their seats should the Conservatives choose to oppose them, and a fourth

was a busy barrister. On November 5, Jo Grimond became the new Liberal

leader.

He faced a rocky ride. The party promptly split over Suez, before

uniting to condemn Conservative policy as Eden fell from power -- a

dangerous manouevre when Liberal MPs owed survival to a Tory pact. In

1957, Carmarthen was lost in a by-election -- to none less than Megan

Lloyd-George -- and the Liberals were reduced to five seats. Still, in

Rochdale the following year -- fielding a young Ludovic Kennedy -- they

came a convincing second. Two weeks later, Grimond's brother-in-law Mark

Bonham-Carter won Torrington. The party polled well in a succession of

similar contests; high Liberal votes in such Scottish seats as East

Aberdeenshire, Argyll, and Galloway presaged SNP triumphs in years

ahead.

In the 1959 General Election, the Liberals lost Torrington but gained

North Deveon with the bright Jeremy Thorpe, and the average vote in

contested seats rose markedly. The Labour Party had lost a third

successive election, while the Liberals were making discernable

progress. A serious renaissance was beginning. In the Paisley

by-election, John Bannerman came within 2000 votes of success. In the

next 10 months, as the Macmillan Government hit trouble and Labour tore

itself apart over defence, the Liberals came second in eight

by-elections and won dozens of seats in municipal government.

In March 1962, the party missed Blackpool North by a mere 973 votes. A

week later came the sensational Orpington result. This middle-class

commuter suburb, which had given the Tories a 1959 majority of 14,760,

now returned Eric Lubbock as Liberal MP by an astonishing 7855 votes. It

was a high point of Grimond's career. A Daily Mail opinion-poll showed

that the Liberals were the most popular party in the country.

Strong Liberal votes followed apace. Montgomery was held easily after

Clement Davies's death. In May, the party stormed municipal elections in

such Home County fortresses as Finchley and Aldershot. A high Liberal

vote in North-East Leicester that July -- along with a humiliating

Conservative performance -- prompted Macmillan's desperate ''night of

the long knives'' Cabinet reshuffle. ''Greater love hath no man than

this, that he lay down his friends for his life,'' quipped Jeremy

Thorpe.

All pondered ''Orpington Man'', this new prosperous middle-class voter

who could turn Liberal when tempted. It seemed that the party was no

longer at the mercy of Tory pacts and the ''Celtic fringe'' -- Wales,

the Highlands, and the West Country. Liberalism achieved publicity it

had not known for a generation. Membership rocketed and finances rose by

50%. But the tide was already ebbing. Slowly Liberal support fell in

opinion polls and by-elections. New Tory and Labour leaders jousted for

No. 10 and the Liberal Party was squeezed to death.

''Orpington Man'', in truth, was but a blip. The Liberals had only

seduced a protest vote. Grimond sought ''radical re-alignment'' in

political Britain but the Labour Party showed no interest. And the

Orpington victory lies sour in history. The Conservative candidate,

Peter Goldman, was a Jew with a very Jewish name. Lubbock's supporters

had included the most notorious bigots in town.

Labour won the General Election with a tiny majority. The Liberals

polled well, fielding 365 candidates, but took just nine seats. Only

David Steel's victory in the Roxburgh by-election of March 1965 -- which

precipitated Douglas-Home's retiral as Tory leader -- augured well. The

party had lost its way. Grimond's unwise remarks to a Guardian

interviewer -- to the effect that rapprochement with Labour was

desirable if the two parties could agree on aims -- provoked hostility

from his colleagues.

The Liberals were ill-prepared for the 1966 General Election. Liberal

candidates faced crushing defeat in all seats which they had no hope of

taking and Grimond's leadership was in doubt -- he was talking openly of

giving up. But a cheerful manifesto was drafted. ''For All The People''

proffered heavy defence cuts, entry into the Common Market, and more

amenable industrial relations. In the event, the party put forward 311

candidates and won 12 seats. Yet their vote had plunged. The hopes of

Orpington were gone.

In the midst of the campaign, Grimond's eldest son, Andrew, committed

suicide. The tragedy scarred his father deeper than Grimond ever

revealed -- autobiographical references to the boy are chillingly bright

-- and it hastened abdication. Early in 1967 he announced his retiral.

''It alters nothing,'' wrote John Vincent sourly in the New Statesman.

''It introduces no new factor. It stresses, if it needed stressing, that

the hopes of the Grimond era are as dead as the Liberal Conservatism of

the Macmillan era . . . for 10 years it has lived in a dream that was

never probable and is now probably impossible.'' Less cruelly, Roy

Douglas memorialised: ''Any Parliament would probably benefit fom the

existence of a dozen or so cross-benchers of Grimond's type; people

whose political judgement is sometimes extraordinarily faulty and even

naive, but who at times perceive important political truths with quite

exceptional clarity.''

Grimond was only 54. He stayed in Parliament and continued as a

Liberal spokesman. When scandal overwhelmed Jeremy Thorpe in 1976,

several MPs -- including David Steel -- implored Grimond to return. He

consented only to serve as interim leader while the party prepared to

elect Thorpe's successor.

He concentrated on local interests. He negotiated skilfully for extra

powers in the islands councils -- especially for oil-boom Shetland --

and fought successfully for a clause in the Scotland Act that would

exclude Shetland from Assembly control should she vote no in the

referendum. His agreeable if chaotic memoirs were published in 1979.

Under Mrs Thatcher's Government, he urged powerfully for liberal

co-operation with the new Social Democrats. He drafted his own political

credo -- A Personal Manifesto was published in 1982. For a time, another

''radical alternative'' rode high. But that too would fall.

In 1983, he retired to the Upper House as Lord Grimond of Firth. He

gave occasional interviews and spoke in the Lords when the mood took

him. He moved in Anglo-Scots society, alternating time in London with

long contemplative spells at his home, the Old Manse of Kirkwall. He

would never serve in a Liberal Government -- never see one -- but in the

far north, under high grey skies, he found perspective and peace.

''A curious combination of oil and seals have half-awakened

Southerners to the existence of regions even north of Caithness,'' wrote

Grimond puckishly in 1979. ''It is to be expected, I suppose, that I

have received a hundred times more letters about the killing of seals

that I have about any other matter. Three letters made up my total

postbag on Scottish devolution, more than 1300 on seals.''

Paul Johnson said: ''I don't think I have ever heard him say anything,

in public or private, which is not sensible, true, rational, and decent.

Even the most malicious political gossips have never accused him of a

mean or underhand or even merely devious act. He has supported many

unpopular causes simply because he felt them to be right.''

Grimond's impact on national life was minimal. His true monument is

the Liberal Party itself. He inherited a nostalgic little club without

creed and without organisation. He created a modern, gutsy body that at

least turned its back on interwar failure and began to hammer out a

distinctive contribution to public affairs. Under his leadership, future

princes entered Parliament -- John Pardoe and Emlyn Hooson, Russell

Johnston and David Steel.

Steel was one of many drawn to the Liberal party by its energetic

leader. But neither Steel nor Thorpe could overcome what had broken

Grimond -- the struggle of leading an uneasy coalition through dreary

flats to passing success and translating a powerful but ephemeral

protest vote into the solid support that alone could restore a Liberal

Britain.