Postman to Peer - A profile of Lord Clarke

The grand and cavernous Royal Gallery at Westminster Palace is a far cry from the Mornington Crescent post office where Tony Clarke began his career. Now almost 60 years on, Baron Clarke of Hampstead is a Labour Party life peer. Sinking deep into a leather chair, with the vast fresco depicting the death of Nelson over his shoulder, he says: “I never dreamt that I would end up here.”

Arsenal fanatic Lord Clarke, the son of a chauffeur and a maid, was evacuated from the capital with his siblings at the outbreak of World War Two. But his mother brought them back to Hampstead after she paid a visit to Bedfordshire. “She didn’t like how we were living, so we came back to London when the Blitz was happening,” he says with his soft, but distinctly North London, accent. However, the threat from enemy bombs never stopped him from enjoying himself: “Although we played football between a barrage balloon and a rocket site, Hampstead Heath was a very safe place for children.”

He started work at 14 as a telegraph boy in 1946, after just two years of formal education at a catholic school. He rode around the city on a bicycle delivering telegrams. “I was physically too small to ride a motorbike”, he recalls. It was when he returned to be a postman after a short spell in the army that he got involved in politics. Angry at the management of his Hampstead sorting office and feeling let down by his union, Clarke spoke out and decided to run for a position: “By 1955 I was a trade union official of that branch, and later the whole district of North West London.”

Through various roles in local politics, his involvement in industrial activism snowballed, and he became a full-time official of the Union of Postal Workers in 1979. He was editor of the union’s monthly journal: “That’s a bit of a laugh if you look at my background,” he says, “but we made it work!” In later years he served as Chairman of the Labour Party and in 1998, became a life peer: “The phone rang, and it was Tony Blair asking if I would accept a peerage. Of course I said yes.”

Lord Clarke’s self-effacing account of his journey through politics explains his approach to the issues he values. He campaigns for better conditions and pay for employees in Britain and abroad, once smuggling his way into apartheid South Africa to negotiate a deal for postal workers. Despite taking the Labour whip, Lord Clarke admits he is outspoken on certain issues, and is not afraid of straying from the party line: “The post office has been destroyed by my government. I think it’s appalling.”

His life-long love for Arsenal Football Club has allowed Lord Clarke to stay in touch with his past and keep his feet on the ground: “It’s a great way for me to switch off. I’m with my son and the people around us are all friends. I just love it.” He was once asked by Neil Kinnock (who he stills calls his comrade) to go to Australia for a meeting. He agreed to attend, on one condition: “As long as I get back by three o’clock on Saturday!”

But if it came down to choosing between his red seat in the House of Lords and his red seat at Arsenal, the 76-year-old says: “I couldn’t voluntarily leave this place,” looking around the priceless paintings, “so I think I’d give up the Arsenal because I’m old enough that I can watch it on television.”