Who Goes Home

Each night when the House of Commons rises, throughout the Palace of Westminster policemen shout, 'Who goes home?', a relic of the days when Members of Parliament were escorted safely to their beds. WHO GOES HOME? is Roy Hattersley's witty and characteristically frank account of a lifetime in the Labour party from schoolboy canvassing in post-war Sheffield through Cabinet office and the wilderness years in Opposition, to the decision to leave Parliament at the dawn of Tony Blair's New Labour. During this period, the Honourable Member for the Sparkbrook constituency of Birmingham never forgot his Yorkshire roots (or his passion for Sheffield Wednesday FC). This memoir is an evocation of the 50-year journey that has taken the Party from Attlee's Welfare State and nationalisation programme to the modernizers of social-ism and New Labour under Tony Blair. For Roy Hattersley, politics was fun while it lasted, even though the joke was often on him. These Scenes from Political Life settle no scores, excuse no mistakes and relive no old triumphs.