What a great country Britain must be, and what a healthy state Britain's democracy must be in, when a 65-year-old woman, on her way to buy a loaf of bread from her local shop, inadvertently bumps into the Prime Minister and probably brings about the downfall of him and the Government.
That woman happens to be Gillian Duffy. On Wednesday, PM Gordon Brown visited the Lancashire town of Rochdale to try and woo voters, hoping to gain precious votes for his ailing party.
Whilst there, he was intercepted by the patriotic 65-year-old widow and lifelong Labour supporter Gillian Duffy who asked the questions that the vast majority of British voters would love to ask the Prime Minister - such as "What are you going to do about the National Debt?" and "What are you going to do about cutting immigration, which has increased greatly under 13 years of this Labour government?". Another question she asked the PM was "Why do I pay tax on my pension because my husband’s pension has been added to it since he died?"
Surrounded by Sky News and BBC News 24 cameras, the PM did answer most of the questions (though not every one satisfactorily, such as the one about immigration), but the PM did leave Mrs Duffy, who has voted Labour all her life, satisfied with the PM's response and happy to continue voting Labour.
But it was when Brown got back into his Prime Ministerial Jaguar that the controversy started. Forgetting that his Sky News microphone was on, the PM said that the meeting was a "disaster" (even though Mrs Duffy and most other people assembled there thought it had gone well) and even called Mrs Duffy "that bigotted woman" (probably because she asked a question, as is her right, about immigration).
Then, about an hour later when Brown was having an interview on a BBC radio station, it was revealed to the Scotsman that his comments were overheard and being played on national TV, causing the PM to hold his head in his hands, probably thinking "There goes my hopes of regaining office." Although it was good entertainment to see it.
Later, the PM phoned Mrs Duffy - who spent 30 years looking after disabled children - to apologise, then went round to her home. He probably thought he would be there for just a few minutes - but he was there for 45.
In this exclusive interview, Mrs Duffy explains what went on in her home during that 45 minutes, and even reveals that the PM wanted her to shake hands outside her home in front of the cameras, which she refused.
She has also said that she will now refuse to vote Labour - or any other party - in the election, and has even thrown away her postal vote.
The redoubtable Gillian Duffy on Gordon Brown's grovelling 45-minute apology
By Laura Collins
The Mail on Sunday
2nd May 2010
His withering – and unjustified – description of her as a bigot sparked THE story of the Election. Now the redoubtable Gillian Duffy reveals in all its damning detail Gordon Brown’s grovelling 45-minute apology – and why she wouldn’t shake his hand, give him her vote (or open the Scotch for him)
Where the apology took place: Mrs Duffy pictured at home where she received Gordon Brown
How could he! Gillian Duffy, the moment she was told of the Prime Minister's insult on Wednesday
It is a meeting that will go down in history and may yet prove the Election’s – more particularly Gordon Brown’s – defining moment. Never mind the leafleting, the multi-million-pound broadcasts, the graphics and polls and think-tanks, it was a chance meeting with a pensioner on a street in Rochdale that could prove the tipping point of the campaign.
What followed was both shocking and extraordinary as the Prime Minister’s public face slipped, thanks to a forgotten microphone and a candid conversation in the back of his Jaguar, to reveal an altogether different and, he thought, private reality.
Last Wednesday Mr Brown was caught on tape describing pensioner and lifelong Labour supporter Gillian Duffy as ‘just a sort of bigoted woman’.
Moments earlier he had ‘smiled’ at her, patted her on the shoulder and called her a ‘good woman,’ to her face.
Flashpoint Rochdale: Gillian Duffy meets Gordon Brown in the street on Wednesday - inadvertently sparking Labour's biggest crisis of the election
Later alerted to his faux pas, Mr Brown held his head in his hands, and looked wrung out. He telephoned Mrs Duffy to apologise and, later that same day, scrapped what plans he had so he could visit her home and apologise in person.
Perhaps he envisaged a swift ‘I’m sorry’, a handshake for the cameras and absolution.
But then he had already proved his judgment to be wide of the mark once that day.
HOW THE POLLS STAND
Mail on Sunday
Tories 34%; Lib Dem 30; Labour 27%
Sunday Telegraph
Tories 36%; Labour 29%; Lib Dem 27%
News Of The World
Tories 35%; Labour 35%; Lib Dem 22%
Sunday Times
Tories 35%; Lib Dem 28%; Labour 27%
Sunday Mirror
Tories 38%; Labour 28%; Lib Dem 25%
Sunday Express
Tories 35%; Lib Dem 29%; Labour 23%
For 45 minutes, the door of Mrs Duffy’s neat little Rochdale home remained firmly shut. And with just days to go before polling day, it was the machinations behind that ordinary white door, rather than anything going on in No10 Downing Street, that held the electorate rapt.
Now, speaking exclusively to The Mail on Sunday, Gillian has revealed exactly what was said during that unprecedented conversation. She has spoken of her own dismay and profound hurt at the events that led to the Prime Minister’s grovelling visit.
And she has revealed that, even though Mr Brown stood at her door and declared the meeting a success, she has since discarded her postal voting slip and vowed to abstain from voting for the first time in a life characterised by strong political belief.
She says: ‘I still can’t believe it, what happened. It’s unreal to me. I was shocked at the time and I still am. They say you go through stages of emotions and that you get angry. But I’m not angry. I’m sad, really.
Devoted: Mrs Duffy pictured with husband Richard on their wedding day in 1966
‘I’ve always loved my country. I love my town, too, but I’m getting upset about what I see happening to Rochdale.
We’ve hardly any good shops, Woolworths has gone, all the new ones moving in are pound shops and cheap shops. There used to be two lovely big markets – now you can walk round the one small one in a few minutes. And where are the jobs?
‘I’d often said to my brother, “I wish Gordon Brown would come to Rochdale. I’d like to meet him, I’d like to talk to him.” Well, I wish he hadn’t bothered now.
‘He was smiling when he spoke to me but he was thinking that. What else is he thinking when he smiles?
‘If you’re going to go and talk to people you should have answers shouldn’t you? You don’t just go there and shake their hands and tell them how well they’re doing.
‘All I did was ask questions. Does that make me a bigot?’
Tellingly, after 45 minutes’ one-to-one with Mr Brown, expressing her concerns with the eloquence for which she is now famous, Gillian still hasn’t got the answers she sought.
But then, as she recalls it, her visit from the Prime Minister was not so much an apology but a prolonged self-justification – a plea to be understood from a man whose business should be listening to and understanding others.
Moment of realisation: A shaken Gordon Brown listens to his bigot comment being played live on the Jeremy Vine show
‘I only went out for a loaf of bread,’ Gillian despairs, her eyes widening as she recalls her first encounter with Mr Brown.
‘I was walking up to the shops when I saw some commotion, there were police there and the road was blocked off a bit. I thought there had been a car crash. But I asked someone and they said that Gordon Brown was there and I thought, “Ooh, I’m going to go and see him.”
‘There were more Press than ordinary people there so I was quite close really, even though I was at the back, and I shouted out, “What are you going to do about this debt, Gordon?” That’s the only time I shouted, just to get his attention.’
Initially though, while there was a flicker of alarmed acknowledgment from Mr Brown, it was Labour candidate Simon Danczuk whose attention she caught. He made a beeline over to Gillian. He established that she was a supporter – crucial that – and, within moments she found herself introduced to the Prime Minister.
Dedication to her job: She receives a long-service award from Rochdale's mayor
‘I know later Gordon blamed Sue [Nye, his gatekeeper] for introducing me but it wasn’t Sue,’ Gillian says adding with genuine concern. ‘I was that worried about Sue. I thought, “I hope she doesn’t lose her job.” I was looking for her on telly the next day and I was very glad to see her there with Gordon in Birmingham.’
As for the now infamous street conversation, Gillian thought it was just that, a conversation, although it has since been referred to as a confrontation.
‘You probably know better than me what I said now,’ she says. ‘I’d been watching the news bulletins earlier in the day and they were talking about the national debt and how none of the politicians are mentioning that and I thought I’d ask him about that.
‘I wasn’t asking for myself. I’m thinking about my daughter and my grandchildren who are ten and 12. They’re the ones who’ll be paying and paying, aren’t they?
‘I did say to him that I thought the schools in Rochdale were very good but I’ve lived in Rochdale all my life and I see what’s happening and it makes me worried and sad.
‘I know that afterwards everyone picked up on immigration but I hardly mentioned that really, did I?’
It would be fair to say that, even before the catastrophe that would unfold that day, Mr Brown hadn’t made a great impression on Gillian.
She had, after all, wanted answers to her genuine questions, not a pat on the shoulder, a patronising faux smile and to be told, apropos of nothing, that she was ‘a good family woman’.
‘Well I wasn’t going to argue,’ she says. ‘I am a good woman but how the heck is he to know that?’
Still, she concluded after their pavement chat that Mr Brown was ‘the best of a bad bunch’, and carried on her way to the shops.
Long marriage: On holiday with her late husband Richard
‘I got halfway up the hill and thought I’d better phone my daughter Debbie to warn her I might be on telly. I said, “Don’t be mad at me but I just spoke to Gordon and it might be a small bit on the news.” Then I thought I’d better just head home and see.’
Turning on her heel Gillian retraced her steps and was met by a throng of journalists as she did. ‘There’s been a development,’ she was told by a reporter from Sky News, whose microphone had been attached to the Prime Minister’s lapel.
‘I didn’t understand at first,’ Gillian reflects. ‘I went to sit at the back of the van where they played me the tape. Everyone was watching as they played it back. They had to play it twice to me. I couldn’t believe it. I wasn’t even quite sure what the word really meant. I called Debbie and had to ask her. Then I thought, why has he called me that?’
For a moment Gillian looks bereft. Then, gathering herself, she adds: ‘I saw myself later on telly and I had to laugh. Somebody asked me what I was going to do and I just said, “Oh, I’d best go home.”
‘Then I waddled off like a penguin, I looked so despondent.’
She roars with laughter and, not for the first time, the extent to which Mr Brown misjudged this woman is clear.
Gillian had been home for about 20 minutes when there was a knock on the door from one of Mr Brown’s aides. It wasn’t the first knock, as much to her bemusement a Press pack had already assembled outside.
Family life: Gillian's father Walter in The Royal Engineers during World War Two
The publicity officer asked Gillian if she would accept a telephone call from Mr Brown and informed her that the Prime Minister was, ‘very sorry’ and that he wanted to apologise.
‘The telephone went, I answered it and Gordon said, “I’m very sorry. I misheard what you were trying to get across. There was a lot of noise.” Well, I didn’t think there was that much noise.’
Gillian can’t remember whether it was the Prime Minister or his PR officer’s suggestion that he come to visit. By the time he arrived she had seen the footage of him, head in hands, as his words were played back to him on Jeremy Vine’s Radio 2 show.
Did she feel any sympathy for him when he arrived?
‘Not really. I saw him and I thought he was in a state, but he fetched it on himself, didn’t he? I didn’t abuse him. He abused me. I just talked to him.’
Gillian had taken the newspapers off the sofa and washed the pots in the sink in readiness for the Prime Ministerial visit – ‘not that he was going to be in the kitchen. I keep a tidy house so there wasn’t much to do. It’s just me by myself’.
Gillian, who was married for 40 years and has been a widow for four, recalls: ‘Gordon came in and sat on sofa beside me. I couldn’t offer him a cup of tea because I didn’t have any milk did I?
‘I had a bottle of whisky that I’d bought to take with me when I go to visit friends in Canada, but I thought, “I’m not opening that for him!” As he came in he just said, “I’m very sorry for the comments I made earlier Gillian.” I sort of said, “Yes well I suppose...”
‘He said, “I’m a family man, have you a family?” Well, I’d already told him I had.’
Post-industrial decline: An estate in Rochdale, where unemployment is at the highest levels for 15 years
Mr Brown sat on the edge of Gillian’s cream leather couch. Head slightly bowed, hands clasped anxiously at his knees, he smiled very little and often looked down, adopting the pose of a penitent.
He looks younger in the flesh than he does on camera, Gillian kindly observes.
‘He said, “You do know my father was a Presbyterian minister and I was brought up with family values.”
‘I told him that my family had worked hard all our lives.
‘My brother was a bricklayer. My father was a window-cleaner, my husband was a painter and decorator and they were both strong union men. I worked in the council education department for 30 years, as a supervisor and escorting disabled children to and from school, looking after them.
‘None of us have ever been in any trouble. And all of us have had to work all our lives and this country’s fetched up a generation of people who won’t work.
‘Well, he just said, “I’m so sorry – please take my apology.”
‘I said, “You know, Gordon, my father was a very politically minded man and very argumentative. He upset a lot of people and he would say to me, “Don’t worry about it, Gillian, you can always say sorry.” I told him, “No, Dad, it doesn’t work like that, sorry is a very easy word.”
‘I said, “I’m sorry for you, Gordon, because you have more to lose than me. I’m very sorry that this has happened but it’s you who’s going to lose out not me.”’
If there were a point where Mr Brown realised that this was not going to be an easy ‘in and out’ visit that was probably it. He looked at the 65-year-old earnestly blinking at him through her spectacles and tried a different strategy: ‘Have you met Sarah?’ he asked.
Eating his words: Gordon Brown sports a forced smile as he emerges from Gillian Duffy's after his grovelling apology
Eye of the storm: The Prime Minister apologises on the pensioner's doorstep
Even as she recounts this today, Gillian looks bewildered by the shift in conversation.
‘Well, how would I have met his wife?’ she says sensibly.
‘He spoke a lot about Sarah. He said she was a good woman and he asked whether I knew he had two lads and I said yes. Well, I knew he had two children, I didn’t know they were both lads.
‘Then he asked, “Do you ever come down to London?” And said, “If you ever come down you must come to No10 and meet me and Sarah.”
‘Well, I just looked at him. I didn’t like to say it, but all I could think was, “I don’t think you’ll be there.”’
Besides, Gillian didn’t want to exchange awkward small-talk with the Prime Minister, she wanted to talk to him about the things that matter. She raised the subject which had sparked the whole saga in the first place:
‘I said to him, “What are you going to do about the debt, Gordon? Greece is down and now Spain and Portugal have lost their credit rating. Who’s next?” I’m going on holiday to Canada and I used to get $2.50 to the £1. When I go to change my currency this time I’ll be lucky if I get $1.50.
On holiday in Margate as a young girl with her mother Nellie and father Walter (right) and other family members
‘Then I asked him about all this trouble with the volcanic ash cloud. I said if we’re in the EU, why were people allowed to charge stranded tourists €500 for a coach ticket to take them to Calais – that’s €500 for children as well?
‘Why didn’t the other European governments step in to stop that? And what happens now?
‘When the airports were closed, the volcanic ash was top priority but now they’re open, it’s just disappeared – how can that be? The volcano’s still erupting and people need help and advice on claiming compensation, but it’s just disappeared off the map, hasn’t it?
‘Sometimes I don’t think these politicians live in the real world. I asked him, “If you and Sarah were to go out for a nice meal with a bottle of wine in London I bet it would cost you more than £60 wouldn’t it?” And if you live in London you might do that twice, maybe more, a week?
‘Well, pensioners are living on £60 a week up here, I know that with Pension Credit it might be more, but not everyone is on that. And what you get on one hand you lose on the other.
‘During the winter when they did the cold allowance, £250 I think it was, they did an extra bit, but I wasn’t eligible. And why do I pay tax on my pension because my husband’s pension has been added to it since he died?’
And what was the Prime Minister’s response?
‘Well, he just looked at me,’ Gillian says. ‘He kept saying he was sorry and saying that his wife was a nice lady. Well, I bet she doesn’t leave his side now – she’s his PR, isn’t she?
‘The thing is, I’m the sort of person he was meant to look after, not shoot down.’
Gillian says this without any rancour but with genuine, and affecting, dismay. And it’s true. If Labour HQ had hand-picked somebody to meet Mr Brown they’d have been delighted to find Gillian.
Her father, Walter, was secretary for the local branch of the Federation for Window Cleaners. Her mother, Nellie, from nearby Norden was a weaver working at the mills.
In their early days of courtship, Walter took Nellie on a date to Manchester, to the Free Trade Hall which culminated in singing the Socialist anthem The Red Flag. ‘He weren’t much of a romantic,’ Gillian laughs.
Walter and Nellie spent their early married life in Middleton, a couple of miles from Rochdale, and when war broke out in 1939, Gillian is proud to recount that her father was among the first to sign up for the Army and the last to return home.
He served with the Royal Engineers in India. Back home he set up his own business.
He was ambitious to improve the lot of his family, Gillian and her brother Ralph, five years her senior.
‘He moved with the times,’ Gillian says. ‘When he went down south and saw televisions for the first time he came back home and told my mother we were going to get one.
Media circus: Mrs Duffy's home became the centre of the scandal last week in Rochdale
‘The whole row watched the Queen’s Coronation on our 12-inch telly. He was forever coming home with the latest vacuum cleaner or what have you. They were so heavy to use my mother would have been better with a dustpan and brush...we only had a two-up, two-down.’
At 15, Gillian went to work for the Co-operative Society in Rochdale as a sales assistant. She worked there for three years before moving on to a factory in Rochdale.
She was 21 when she married Richard Duffy, something of a political firebrand himself; a principled man and lifelong union member.
When their daughter Debbie was born Gillian stopped work, returning as a break-time supervisor at a local school only when Debbie was old enough to go to school.
‘For the first few years my salary paid for Debbie’s school fees. My husband was Catholic and we sent Debbie to the convent which was private, but after about three years they put the fees up so we couldn’t afford it any more.
‘She went to the local state Catholic schools all the way through and I have to say the education was marvellous. I said that to Gordon.’
One wonders whether he listened.
Her family means everything to Gillian. A framed picture of her grandchildren sits on top of the television set – one of many family pictures she proudly displays throughout her comfortable home – and she intends to donate part of the fee for this interview to her grandson’s school football team, which she says recently became the first Rochdale team to make it to the finals of the National English Schools Cup. They play at Chelsea’s Stamford Bridge stadium next month and she couldn’t be more proud.
She’ll give money to her local church too, she says. ‘The rest is all for my grandchildren really,’ she adds. ‘I give them everything.’
Nothing would ever shake Gillian’s belief in the importance of family and in wanting better for them than she had for herself. But the extent to which her meeting with Mr Brown has shaken her confidence in her family’s long lineage of political belief is sad. It has knocked her in a profound way.
As a younger woman Gillian went to hear then Labour Party leader Michael Foot (who lost the 1983 General Election against Margaret Thatcher) speak when he visited Rochdale. ‘I thought he was wild,’ she smiles. ‘He was a one of a kind, wasn’t he?’
And in 1997 Tony Blair visited the school where Gillian worked. ‘Richard and I went,’ she remembers.
‘I didn’t talk to Mr Blair, but we listened and he seemed to me like a young man full of fresh, exciting ideas. We came away really satisfied. I was happy. He could put himself across well.’
Then Mr Brown rolled into town and after meeting him not once, but twice, a woman who has voted Labour all her life has lost all faith.
‘When Tony Blair finished, Gordon Brown should have gone to the country,’ Gillian says, voicing an opinion shared by many. ‘You can’t just walk in and say I’m Prime Minister and that’s that.’
And you can’t just walk in and say, ‘I’m sorry,’ and expect that to be that either, it seems.
Throughout their second meeting, Mr Brown’s aide Sue Nye had hovered nervously by the door along with a publicity officer. As their conversation came to an end, Mr Brown stood in readiness to move on to the photo opportunity which, no doubt, he had hoped would wipe away the stain of this particularly unpleasant episode.
Gillian says: ‘He wanted me to go outside with him and shake his hands for the camera but I said no. I didn’t want that fuss.
‘He stood for a minute or so and looked at me and said, “So are you accepting my apology, Gillian?”
‘I said yes, but I wasn’t going outside.’
Mr Brown emerged like a statesman who had just negotiated a complex peace treaty. He smiled the tight smile he had occasionally flashed at Gillian as he apologised.
The next day Gillian’s postal vote slip arrived. She filled in the council election slip and discarded the General Election slip and sealed up the envelope without it.
‘Richard used to say you must vote,’ she says softly. ‘He used to say if you don’t vote you’ve no say later. But I can’t bring myself to.’
Watching the final leaders’ debate last Thursday made no difference as far as that is concerned. ‘I don’t think Gordon came across at all well,’ she says.
‘He did mention what happened as if he wanted to forget about it. Well, I thought, it’ll take more than that, Gordon. I think David Cameron knows he’s three-quarters of the way there.’
In the days since the infamous gaffe, various excuses have been offered for the outburst.
Interviewed by the BBC’s Jeremy Paxman on Friday, Mr Brown offered the explanation: ‘I thought she was talking about expelling all university students from here who were foreigners.
I misunderstood it. Look, people say things in the heat of the moment, when you get angry, and you’ve got to apologise for it.’
But when told of this, Mrs Duffy looks horrified by the suggestion that is anything like what she meant, saying: ‘I never said anything about expelling students or sending Eastern European students back home.’
Another suggestion circulating, from anonymous sources, is that Mr Brown thought that Gillian had sworn on the street – and it was that which put him in such a foul mood.
Yet again the smear reveals a profound lack of judgment. Gillian says: ‘It’s an awful thing to say I swore or that he thought I did.
‘They’ve come out with that because he said he misunderstood me. The Labour Party is just a big machine with spin doctors and what have you and they’re doing everything to get him in. I should think that’s where that came from.
My family never swore. My husband Richard never swore though he worked in the building trade with men under him all his life. He said you could make your argument without using language.’
A point that, with her eloquence, Gillian repeatedly proves. Pausing she says: ‘You know the thing that upset me the most wasn’t the word bigot.
It was the way he called me “that woman”. I’m not “that woman”. It’s no way to talk of someone that is it? As if I’m to be brushed away. Why couldn’t he have said, “that lady?”’
Perhaps, to Mr Brown, that seems a small point. Certainly it didn’t feature in his apology. But it exposes the gulf between the values for which Gillian Duffy stands, and by which she actually lives, and the platitudes that Mr Brown mouths in public then disdains in private.
dailymail.co.uk
That woman happens to be Gillian Duffy. On Wednesday, PM Gordon Brown visited the Lancashire town of Rochdale to try and woo voters, hoping to gain precious votes for his ailing party.
Whilst there, he was intercepted by the patriotic 65-year-old widow and lifelong Labour supporter Gillian Duffy who asked the questions that the vast majority of British voters would love to ask the Prime Minister - such as "What are you going to do about the National Debt?" and "What are you going to do about cutting immigration, which has increased greatly under 13 years of this Labour government?". Another question she asked the PM was "Why do I pay tax on my pension because my husband’s pension has been added to it since he died?"
Surrounded by Sky News and BBC News 24 cameras, the PM did answer most of the questions (though not every one satisfactorily, such as the one about immigration), but the PM did leave Mrs Duffy, who has voted Labour all her life, satisfied with the PM's response and happy to continue voting Labour.
But it was when Brown got back into his Prime Ministerial Jaguar that the controversy started. Forgetting that his Sky News microphone was on, the PM said that the meeting was a "disaster" (even though Mrs Duffy and most other people assembled there thought it had gone well) and even called Mrs Duffy "that bigotted woman" (probably because she asked a question, as is her right, about immigration).
Then, about an hour later when Brown was having an interview on a BBC radio station, it was revealed to the Scotsman that his comments were overheard and being played on national TV, causing the PM to hold his head in his hands, probably thinking "There goes my hopes of regaining office." Although it was good entertainment to see it.
Later, the PM phoned Mrs Duffy - who spent 30 years looking after disabled children - to apologise, then went round to her home. He probably thought he would be there for just a few minutes - but he was there for 45.
In this exclusive interview, Mrs Duffy explains what went on in her home during that 45 minutes, and even reveals that the PM wanted her to shake hands outside her home in front of the cameras, which she refused.
She has also said that she will now refuse to vote Labour - or any other party - in the election, and has even thrown away her postal vote.
The redoubtable Gillian Duffy on Gordon Brown's grovelling 45-minute apology
By Laura Collins
The Mail on Sunday
2nd May 2010
His withering – and unjustified – description of her as a bigot sparked THE story of the Election. Now the redoubtable Gillian Duffy reveals in all its damning detail Gordon Brown’s grovelling 45-minute apology – and why she wouldn’t shake his hand, give him her vote (or open the Scotch for him)
Where the apology took place: Mrs Duffy pictured at home where she received Gordon Brown
How could he! Gillian Duffy, the moment she was told of the Prime Minister's insult on Wednesday
It is a meeting that will go down in history and may yet prove the Election’s – more particularly Gordon Brown’s – defining moment. Never mind the leafleting, the multi-million-pound broadcasts, the graphics and polls and think-tanks, it was a chance meeting with a pensioner on a street in Rochdale that could prove the tipping point of the campaign.
What followed was both shocking and extraordinary as the Prime Minister’s public face slipped, thanks to a forgotten microphone and a candid conversation in the back of his Jaguar, to reveal an altogether different and, he thought, private reality.
Last Wednesday Mr Brown was caught on tape describing pensioner and lifelong Labour supporter Gillian Duffy as ‘just a sort of bigoted woman’.
Moments earlier he had ‘smiled’ at her, patted her on the shoulder and called her a ‘good woman,’ to her face.
Flashpoint Rochdale: Gillian Duffy meets Gordon Brown in the street on Wednesday - inadvertently sparking Labour's biggest crisis of the election
Later alerted to his faux pas, Mr Brown held his head in his hands, and looked wrung out. He telephoned Mrs Duffy to apologise and, later that same day, scrapped what plans he had so he could visit her home and apologise in person.
Perhaps he envisaged a swift ‘I’m sorry’, a handshake for the cameras and absolution.
But then he had already proved his judgment to be wide of the mark once that day.
HOW THE POLLS STAND
Mail on Sunday
Tories 34%; Lib Dem 30; Labour 27%
Sunday Telegraph
Tories 36%; Labour 29%; Lib Dem 27%
News Of The World
Tories 35%; Labour 35%; Lib Dem 22%
Sunday Times
Tories 35%; Lib Dem 28%; Labour 27%
Sunday Mirror
Tories 38%; Labour 28%; Lib Dem 25%
Sunday Express
Tories 35%; Lib Dem 29%; Labour 23%
For 45 minutes, the door of Mrs Duffy’s neat little Rochdale home remained firmly shut. And with just days to go before polling day, it was the machinations behind that ordinary white door, rather than anything going on in No10 Downing Street, that held the electorate rapt.
Now, speaking exclusively to The Mail on Sunday, Gillian has revealed exactly what was said during that unprecedented conversation. She has spoken of her own dismay and profound hurt at the events that led to the Prime Minister’s grovelling visit.
And she has revealed that, even though Mr Brown stood at her door and declared the meeting a success, she has since discarded her postal voting slip and vowed to abstain from voting for the first time in a life characterised by strong political belief.
She says: ‘I still can’t believe it, what happened. It’s unreal to me. I was shocked at the time and I still am. They say you go through stages of emotions and that you get angry. But I’m not angry. I’m sad, really.
Devoted: Mrs Duffy pictured with husband Richard on their wedding day in 1966
‘I’ve always loved my country. I love my town, too, but I’m getting upset about what I see happening to Rochdale.
We’ve hardly any good shops, Woolworths has gone, all the new ones moving in are pound shops and cheap shops. There used to be two lovely big markets – now you can walk round the one small one in a few minutes. And where are the jobs?
‘I’d often said to my brother, “I wish Gordon Brown would come to Rochdale. I’d like to meet him, I’d like to talk to him.” Well, I wish he hadn’t bothered now.
‘He was smiling when he spoke to me but he was thinking that. What else is he thinking when he smiles?
‘If you’re going to go and talk to people you should have answers shouldn’t you? You don’t just go there and shake their hands and tell them how well they’re doing.
‘All I did was ask questions. Does that make me a bigot?’
Tellingly, after 45 minutes’ one-to-one with Mr Brown, expressing her concerns with the eloquence for which she is now famous, Gillian still hasn’t got the answers she sought.
But then, as she recalls it, her visit from the Prime Minister was not so much an apology but a prolonged self-justification – a plea to be understood from a man whose business should be listening to and understanding others.
Moment of realisation: A shaken Gordon Brown listens to his bigot comment being played live on the Jeremy Vine show
‘I only went out for a loaf of bread,’ Gillian despairs, her eyes widening as she recalls her first encounter with Mr Brown.
‘I was walking up to the shops when I saw some commotion, there were police there and the road was blocked off a bit. I thought there had been a car crash. But I asked someone and they said that Gordon Brown was there and I thought, “Ooh, I’m going to go and see him.”
‘There were more Press than ordinary people there so I was quite close really, even though I was at the back, and I shouted out, “What are you going to do about this debt, Gordon?” That’s the only time I shouted, just to get his attention.’
Initially though, while there was a flicker of alarmed acknowledgment from Mr Brown, it was Labour candidate Simon Danczuk whose attention she caught. He made a beeline over to Gillian. He established that she was a supporter – crucial that – and, within moments she found herself introduced to the Prime Minister.
Dedication to her job: She receives a long-service award from Rochdale's mayor
‘I know later Gordon blamed Sue [Nye, his gatekeeper] for introducing me but it wasn’t Sue,’ Gillian says adding with genuine concern. ‘I was that worried about Sue. I thought, “I hope she doesn’t lose her job.” I was looking for her on telly the next day and I was very glad to see her there with Gordon in Birmingham.’
As for the now infamous street conversation, Gillian thought it was just that, a conversation, although it has since been referred to as a confrontation.
‘You probably know better than me what I said now,’ she says. ‘I’d been watching the news bulletins earlier in the day and they were talking about the national debt and how none of the politicians are mentioning that and I thought I’d ask him about that.
‘I wasn’t asking for myself. I’m thinking about my daughter and my grandchildren who are ten and 12. They’re the ones who’ll be paying and paying, aren’t they?
‘I did say to him that I thought the schools in Rochdale were very good but I’ve lived in Rochdale all my life and I see what’s happening and it makes me worried and sad.
‘I know that afterwards everyone picked up on immigration but I hardly mentioned that really, did I?’
It would be fair to say that, even before the catastrophe that would unfold that day, Mr Brown hadn’t made a great impression on Gillian.
She had, after all, wanted answers to her genuine questions, not a pat on the shoulder, a patronising faux smile and to be told, apropos of nothing, that she was ‘a good family woman’.
‘Well I wasn’t going to argue,’ she says. ‘I am a good woman but how the heck is he to know that?’
Still, she concluded after their pavement chat that Mr Brown was ‘the best of a bad bunch’, and carried on her way to the shops.
Long marriage: On holiday with her late husband Richard
‘I got halfway up the hill and thought I’d better phone my daughter Debbie to warn her I might be on telly. I said, “Don’t be mad at me but I just spoke to Gordon and it might be a small bit on the news.” Then I thought I’d better just head home and see.’
Turning on her heel Gillian retraced her steps and was met by a throng of journalists as she did. ‘There’s been a development,’ she was told by a reporter from Sky News, whose microphone had been attached to the Prime Minister’s lapel.
‘I didn’t understand at first,’ Gillian reflects. ‘I went to sit at the back of the van where they played me the tape. Everyone was watching as they played it back. They had to play it twice to me. I couldn’t believe it. I wasn’t even quite sure what the word really meant. I called Debbie and had to ask her. Then I thought, why has he called me that?’
For a moment Gillian looks bereft. Then, gathering herself, she adds: ‘I saw myself later on telly and I had to laugh. Somebody asked me what I was going to do and I just said, “Oh, I’d best go home.”
‘Then I waddled off like a penguin, I looked so despondent.’
She roars with laughter and, not for the first time, the extent to which Mr Brown misjudged this woman is clear.
Gillian had been home for about 20 minutes when there was a knock on the door from one of Mr Brown’s aides. It wasn’t the first knock, as much to her bemusement a Press pack had already assembled outside.
Family life: Gillian's father Walter in The Royal Engineers during World War Two
The publicity officer asked Gillian if she would accept a telephone call from Mr Brown and informed her that the Prime Minister was, ‘very sorry’ and that he wanted to apologise.
‘The telephone went, I answered it and Gordon said, “I’m very sorry. I misheard what you were trying to get across. There was a lot of noise.” Well, I didn’t think there was that much noise.’
Gillian can’t remember whether it was the Prime Minister or his PR officer’s suggestion that he come to visit. By the time he arrived she had seen the footage of him, head in hands, as his words were played back to him on Jeremy Vine’s Radio 2 show.
Did she feel any sympathy for him when he arrived?
‘Not really. I saw him and I thought he was in a state, but he fetched it on himself, didn’t he? I didn’t abuse him. He abused me. I just talked to him.’
Gillian had taken the newspapers off the sofa and washed the pots in the sink in readiness for the Prime Ministerial visit – ‘not that he was going to be in the kitchen. I keep a tidy house so there wasn’t much to do. It’s just me by myself’.
Gillian, who was married for 40 years and has been a widow for four, recalls: ‘Gordon came in and sat on sofa beside me. I couldn’t offer him a cup of tea because I didn’t have any milk did I?
‘I had a bottle of whisky that I’d bought to take with me when I go to visit friends in Canada, but I thought, “I’m not opening that for him!” As he came in he just said, “I’m very sorry for the comments I made earlier Gillian.” I sort of said, “Yes well I suppose...”
‘He said, “I’m a family man, have you a family?” Well, I’d already told him I had.’
Post-industrial decline: An estate in Rochdale, where unemployment is at the highest levels for 15 years
Mr Brown sat on the edge of Gillian’s cream leather couch. Head slightly bowed, hands clasped anxiously at his knees, he smiled very little and often looked down, adopting the pose of a penitent.
He looks younger in the flesh than he does on camera, Gillian kindly observes.
‘He said, “You do know my father was a Presbyterian minister and I was brought up with family values.”
‘I told him that my family had worked hard all our lives.
‘My brother was a bricklayer. My father was a window-cleaner, my husband was a painter and decorator and they were both strong union men. I worked in the council education department for 30 years, as a supervisor and escorting disabled children to and from school, looking after them.
‘None of us have ever been in any trouble. And all of us have had to work all our lives and this country’s fetched up a generation of people who won’t work.
‘Well, he just said, “I’m so sorry – please take my apology.”
‘I said, “You know, Gordon, my father was a very politically minded man and very argumentative. He upset a lot of people and he would say to me, “Don’t worry about it, Gillian, you can always say sorry.” I told him, “No, Dad, it doesn’t work like that, sorry is a very easy word.”
‘I said, “I’m sorry for you, Gordon, because you have more to lose than me. I’m very sorry that this has happened but it’s you who’s going to lose out not me.”’
If there were a point where Mr Brown realised that this was not going to be an easy ‘in and out’ visit that was probably it. He looked at the 65-year-old earnestly blinking at him through her spectacles and tried a different strategy: ‘Have you met Sarah?’ he asked.
Eating his words: Gordon Brown sports a forced smile as he emerges from Gillian Duffy's after his grovelling apology
Even as she recounts this today, Gillian looks bewildered by the shift in conversation.
‘Well, how would I have met his wife?’ she says sensibly.
‘He spoke a lot about Sarah. He said she was a good woman and he asked whether I knew he had two lads and I said yes. Well, I knew he had two children, I didn’t know they were both lads.
‘Then he asked, “Do you ever come down to London?” And said, “If you ever come down you must come to No10 and meet me and Sarah.”
‘Well, I just looked at him. I didn’t like to say it, but all I could think was, “I don’t think you’ll be there.”’
Besides, Gillian didn’t want to exchange awkward small-talk with the Prime Minister, she wanted to talk to him about the things that matter. She raised the subject which had sparked the whole saga in the first place:
‘I said to him, “What are you going to do about the debt, Gordon? Greece is down and now Spain and Portugal have lost their credit rating. Who’s next?” I’m going on holiday to Canada and I used to get $2.50 to the £1. When I go to change my currency this time I’ll be lucky if I get $1.50.
On holiday in Margate as a young girl with her mother Nellie and father Walter (right) and other family members
‘Then I asked him about all this trouble with the volcanic ash cloud. I said if we’re in the EU, why were people allowed to charge stranded tourists €500 for a coach ticket to take them to Calais – that’s €500 for children as well?
‘Why didn’t the other European governments step in to stop that? And what happens now?
‘When the airports were closed, the volcanic ash was top priority but now they’re open, it’s just disappeared – how can that be? The volcano’s still erupting and people need help and advice on claiming compensation, but it’s just disappeared off the map, hasn’t it?
‘Sometimes I don’t think these politicians live in the real world. I asked him, “If you and Sarah were to go out for a nice meal with a bottle of wine in London I bet it would cost you more than £60 wouldn’t it?” And if you live in London you might do that twice, maybe more, a week?
‘Well, pensioners are living on £60 a week up here, I know that with Pension Credit it might be more, but not everyone is on that. And what you get on one hand you lose on the other.
‘During the winter when they did the cold allowance, £250 I think it was, they did an extra bit, but I wasn’t eligible. And why do I pay tax on my pension because my husband’s pension has been added to it since he died?’
And what was the Prime Minister’s response?
‘Well, he just looked at me,’ Gillian says. ‘He kept saying he was sorry and saying that his wife was a nice lady. Well, I bet she doesn’t leave his side now – she’s his PR, isn’t she?
‘The thing is, I’m the sort of person he was meant to look after, not shoot down.’
Gillian says this without any rancour but with genuine, and affecting, dismay. And it’s true. If Labour HQ had hand-picked somebody to meet Mr Brown they’d have been delighted to find Gillian.
Her father, Walter, was secretary for the local branch of the Federation for Window Cleaners. Her mother, Nellie, from nearby Norden was a weaver working at the mills.
In their early days of courtship, Walter took Nellie on a date to Manchester, to the Free Trade Hall which culminated in singing the Socialist anthem The Red Flag. ‘He weren’t much of a romantic,’ Gillian laughs.
Walter and Nellie spent their early married life in Middleton, a couple of miles from Rochdale, and when war broke out in 1939, Gillian is proud to recount that her father was among the first to sign up for the Army and the last to return home.
He served with the Royal Engineers in India. Back home he set up his own business.
He was ambitious to improve the lot of his family, Gillian and her brother Ralph, five years her senior.
‘He moved with the times,’ Gillian says. ‘When he went down south and saw televisions for the first time he came back home and told my mother we were going to get one.
Media circus: Mrs Duffy's home became the centre of the scandal last week in Rochdale
‘The whole row watched the Queen’s Coronation on our 12-inch telly. He was forever coming home with the latest vacuum cleaner or what have you. They were so heavy to use my mother would have been better with a dustpan and brush...we only had a two-up, two-down.’
At 15, Gillian went to work for the Co-operative Society in Rochdale as a sales assistant. She worked there for three years before moving on to a factory in Rochdale.
She was 21 when she married Richard Duffy, something of a political firebrand himself; a principled man and lifelong union member.
When their daughter Debbie was born Gillian stopped work, returning as a break-time supervisor at a local school only when Debbie was old enough to go to school.
‘For the first few years my salary paid for Debbie’s school fees. My husband was Catholic and we sent Debbie to the convent which was private, but after about three years they put the fees up so we couldn’t afford it any more.
‘She went to the local state Catholic schools all the way through and I have to say the education was marvellous. I said that to Gordon.’
One wonders whether he listened.
Her family means everything to Gillian. A framed picture of her grandchildren sits on top of the television set – one of many family pictures she proudly displays throughout her comfortable home – and she intends to donate part of the fee for this interview to her grandson’s school football team, which she says recently became the first Rochdale team to make it to the finals of the National English Schools Cup. They play at Chelsea’s Stamford Bridge stadium next month and she couldn’t be more proud.
She’ll give money to her local church too, she says. ‘The rest is all for my grandchildren really,’ she adds. ‘I give them everything.’
Nothing would ever shake Gillian’s belief in the importance of family and in wanting better for them than she had for herself. But the extent to which her meeting with Mr Brown has shaken her confidence in her family’s long lineage of political belief is sad. It has knocked her in a profound way.
As a younger woman Gillian went to hear then Labour Party leader Michael Foot (who lost the 1983 General Election against Margaret Thatcher) speak when he visited Rochdale. ‘I thought he was wild,’ she smiles. ‘He was a one of a kind, wasn’t he?’
And in 1997 Tony Blair visited the school where Gillian worked. ‘Richard and I went,’ she remembers.
‘I didn’t talk to Mr Blair, but we listened and he seemed to me like a young man full of fresh, exciting ideas. We came away really satisfied. I was happy. He could put himself across well.’
Then Mr Brown rolled into town and after meeting him not once, but twice, a woman who has voted Labour all her life has lost all faith.
‘When Tony Blair finished, Gordon Brown should have gone to the country,’ Gillian says, voicing an opinion shared by many. ‘You can’t just walk in and say I’m Prime Minister and that’s that.’
And you can’t just walk in and say, ‘I’m sorry,’ and expect that to be that either, it seems.
Throughout their second meeting, Mr Brown’s aide Sue Nye had hovered nervously by the door along with a publicity officer. As their conversation came to an end, Mr Brown stood in readiness to move on to the photo opportunity which, no doubt, he had hoped would wipe away the stain of this particularly unpleasant episode.
Gillian says: ‘He wanted me to go outside with him and shake his hands for the camera but I said no. I didn’t want that fuss.
‘He stood for a minute or so and looked at me and said, “So are you accepting my apology, Gillian?”
‘I said yes, but I wasn’t going outside.’
Mr Brown emerged like a statesman who had just negotiated a complex peace treaty. He smiled the tight smile he had occasionally flashed at Gillian as he apologised.
The next day Gillian’s postal vote slip arrived. She filled in the council election slip and discarded the General Election slip and sealed up the envelope without it.
‘Richard used to say you must vote,’ she says softly. ‘He used to say if you don’t vote you’ve no say later. But I can’t bring myself to.’
Watching the final leaders’ debate last Thursday made no difference as far as that is concerned. ‘I don’t think Gordon came across at all well,’ she says.
‘He did mention what happened as if he wanted to forget about it. Well, I thought, it’ll take more than that, Gordon. I think David Cameron knows he’s three-quarters of the way there.’
In the days since the infamous gaffe, various excuses have been offered for the outburst.
Interviewed by the BBC’s Jeremy Paxman on Friday, Mr Brown offered the explanation: ‘I thought she was talking about expelling all university students from here who were foreigners.
I misunderstood it. Look, people say things in the heat of the moment, when you get angry, and you’ve got to apologise for it.’
But when told of this, Mrs Duffy looks horrified by the suggestion that is anything like what she meant, saying: ‘I never said anything about expelling students or sending Eastern European students back home.’
Another suggestion circulating, from anonymous sources, is that Mr Brown thought that Gillian had sworn on the street – and it was that which put him in such a foul mood.
Yet again the smear reveals a profound lack of judgment. Gillian says: ‘It’s an awful thing to say I swore or that he thought I did.
‘They’ve come out with that because he said he misunderstood me. The Labour Party is just a big machine with spin doctors and what have you and they’re doing everything to get him in. I should think that’s where that came from.
My family never swore. My husband Richard never swore though he worked in the building trade with men under him all his life. He said you could make your argument without using language.’
A point that, with her eloquence, Gillian repeatedly proves. Pausing she says: ‘You know the thing that upset me the most wasn’t the word bigot.
It was the way he called me “that woman”. I’m not “that woman”. It’s no way to talk of someone that is it? As if I’m to be brushed away. Why couldn’t he have said, “that lady?”’
Perhaps, to Mr Brown, that seems a small point. Certainly it didn’t feature in his apology. But it exposes the gulf between the values for which Gillian Duffy stands, and by which she actually lives, and the platitudes that Mr Brown mouths in public then disdains in private.
dailymail.co.uk
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