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Where are they now?: Sir Cyril Smith

 

Paul Linford

 

More than a decade and a half has passed since Sir Cyril Smith ceased to be the most instantly recognisable
figure at Westminster. But 16 years on from his Commons retirement, he remains the most instantly recognisable figure in Rochdale.

 

It's hardly surprising. As well as being a former (Labour) mayor of the town and then its former (Liberal) MP, 'Big Cyril' has lived in the same small terraced house near the town centre for all of his 80 years.

 

Not for him the trappings of political fame. He confesses to never having taken to Parliament as an institution, and once described it as "a charade and a farce".

 

He is, and always has been, a man of the people - one of that generation of Liberals for whom grassroots 'community politics' was always a more effective way of getting things done than the formality and flummery of parliamentary procedure.

 

Like most other Liberal MPs of is vintage, Cyril Smith was first elected at a byelection, in Rochdale in 1973. Unlike almost all of them - Alan Beith is another honourable exception - he held onto it at the next general election and  subsequently until his eventual retirement in 1992.

 

He had come into Liberal politics by a circuitous route. A member of the Young Liberals national executive in the late 1940s, he crossed over to the Labour Party in disillusionment at the Liberals' poor performance in the 1950 election.

 

He was first elected to Rochdale council as a Labour candidate in that year and became mayor in 1966. But two years later he rejoined the Liberals, after falling out with his council colleagues.

 

He was hand-picked by party leader Jeremy Thorpe to fight Rochdale in the 1973 contest - 15 years after he had campaigned strongly against the Liberal candidate, broadcaster Ludovic Kennedy, in a previous byelection in the town.

In the course of his 19 years in the House he was to become a substantial figure in Liberal politics in more ways than one. An oft-heard joke about the parliamentary Liberal Party at the time was that you could fit all its
members into a single taxi. After Smith's election, they would need two.

 

His first frontbench job was as chief whip at the time when the party was being buffeted by the scandal over Thorpe's alleged involvement in a plot to kill Norman Scott, but he was not a conspicuous success in the role.

 

Thorpe's successor David Steel later said that Cyril was not an ideal chief whip, because he did not handle a crisis well and "had the tendency to say anything to a news camera". Partly because of his political background, he was generally sceptical of cooperation with other parties, supporting the 1976-78 Lib-Lab pact only grudgingly and taking a hard line against a too-generous allocation of seats to the SDP in the early days of the Alliance in 1981-82.

 

Rochdale remains a Liberal town. Smith was succeeded first by Liz Lynne - another fiery populist from the same
mould - then after an eight-year Labour interlude, by the current MP Paul Rowen. And even at 80, Smith remains an active figure in Liberal politics in the town.

 

Until recently, the Rochdale Lib Dem website had a Sir Cyril Smith page, where the veteran former MP regularly weighed in with his verdict on current political developments.

 

His 80th birthday celebration earlier this year at Rochdale Town Hall, under the banner 'Nice One Cyril', was among the biggest political events ever seen in the town. Comedian Jimmy Cricket led the entertainment, and there were video messages from Jim Bowen, House of Commons Speaker Michael Martin, party leader Nick Clegg, former leader Paddy Ashdown and more.

 

Said Cyril: "In life, whoever you are, if you have beliefs then follow them. That is all I have ever done and I am truly gratified at all this recognition. Nice one Rochdale!"

 

Paul Linford is a digital publishing manager and a former parliamentary lobby journalist