Roy Hattersley, the Labour Party’s new education spokesman

Abstract

If one wanted a convenient and unoriginal label to describe Mr Roy Hattersley, Labour's new education spokesman, one could classify him as a whizz‐kid. He is young (just 40), bright, ambitious, full of ideas and anxious to get things done. He is a brilliant Parliamentary performer. He is tipped as a future Prime Minister and, therefore, has political weight. Edward Short, Michael Stewart, Patrick Gordon Walker — none of these worthy people, for reasons that we need not labour, could be described as whizz‐kids. Sir Edward Boyle of course, was young (39 when he became Minister of Education in 1962), bright and full of ideas. But he was not ambitious and did not have the professional politician's killer‐instinct. Mrs Thatcher, it is true, has many whizz‐kid qualities and she is certainly ambitious; but she is a woman and, in the Tory Party, it is still not acceptable for a woman to display such things too publicly.

Citation

by Peter Wilby, I. (1973), "Roy Hattersley, the Labour Party’s new education spokesman", Education + Training, Vol. 15 No. 2, pp. 48-49. https://doi.org/10.1108/eb001751