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Ernes

26th February 1960
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Marples, M.P.

EVER since he started impressing his personality on the Ministry of Transport—that is to say, when he first entered Berkeley Square House—newspaper opinion about Ernest Marples, 21st Minister of Transport, has been undergoing a subtle change. Only a few months ago, it seems, for the political gossips of Fleet Street he was the cocky lad from Lancashire kept as a sort of amusing mascot by the political section of the establishment. But today the contractor with the gadgets is coming to be regarded as a man with ideas and the energy to carry them out—as, in a word, formidable.

In two interviews, one at Berkeley Square House, the other in his elegant Belgravia home, I observed no brashness. Of course he is proud of his achievements. Of course he is a forceful talker—how else would he have done so well with the tough burgesses of Wallasey, who liked him when Conservative political fortunes took a nose-dive just after the war and have sent him back to Westminster with an increased majority at every subsequent election? He is a fundamentally modest man whose complete selfconfidence is well based upon demonstrable achievement and the knowledge that his private fortunes do not depend upon political advancement.

What are the secrets of that success which took him from a working-class home up north to a grammar school, thence to an accountancy qualification, to a fortune-making property-dealing business, to a millionaire civil-engineering enterprise, to Parliament, to close friendship with-that most discerning of men, Harold Macmillan?

First, I would say (and he would agree), self-discipline. This involves great attention to physical fitness. At 51 his clear complexion, bright eyes and emphatic gestures implying immense reserves of energy, are due, he says, to early-morning tennis, long walks'-on Sundays, ski-ing, mountaineering and temperate eating and drinking. He is not a big-lunch man. He prefers to return home at midday. He can eat what he likes there; he's a gourinet and his food is prepared in one of the best-equipped private kitchens in

London—his own, and Marples-designed. He takes an hour's snooze afterwards if he feels so disposed. He attaches great importance to ability to relax, to shed cares at night, adapting a phrase of Sir Walter Raleigh's, as he would his doublet. This is part of self-discipline, too.

"Make no mistake, you must want to do the job you are tackling," he said. "And you must pay in full the price it demands. What to spectators may seem intolerable sacrifice —of leisure, maybe, of family life, of the pleasures of society—should be to a man aiming at any sort of success the pleasurable expenditure of reserves he can afford to expend. Call it ambition, if you like. Say a man must keep his eye on the ball. Accuse him of having a one-track mind. My phrase for it is self-discipline."

That is what he said to me as we savoured wine from his own French vineyard in that quiet room in Eccleston Street.

"As a Minister of the Crown," he told me, "you can leave an awful lot to the civil servants, if you are that way inclined. You can play safe and initiate little. The papers will come for approval and signature, of course; but it's possible to get away with actually doing comparatively little. Or you can do things. You can produce ideas and see that they're carried out. I prefer it that .way"

The "pink zone" was one such idea. A Minister of Transport might have been content to sit back with hands folded, hoping that the public would forget London's preChristmas traffic snarls during the festivities. Not so Ernest Marples. Whether the idea is good or bad is not the point. It's an idea, it's an aggressive facing of facts that others might comfortably regard as intractable.

How do the civil servants, those inveterate resisters of change, react to a Minister who relentlessly produces ideas? One recalls wartime instances of civil service resentment against successful and urgent captains of industry turned temporary Ministers. How fares Mr. Marples? "I carry them with me," he declares. I believe him.

I, for one, had always clung to the view that the transition from, say, Marples, Ridgway and Partners, Ltd., to the Ministry of Housing, with the job of building 300,000 houses in a year, or even to the Post Office to initiate business methods, would present few difficulties. After all, are not similar administrative abilities and the same mental agility called into play? I asked him that question.

Child's Play

"Look at this," he said. Then he thrust into my hand an album of photographs illustrating some aspects of Marples, Ridgway and Partners' contracts: a dam in onepart of the world, an alumina plant in another, and so on—millions upon millions of pounds worth of enterprise involving great technical and scientific skill as well as consummate financial ability. "I built that business up from scratch. It did not exist before 1945. I created it. And I can tell you that compared with the task of being a Minister all that was child's play."

Ministers, in the Marples conception of the Ministerial function, work on a much broader front than industrial leaders. There is day-to-day departmental administration. Deputations come and go. Question-time in the House is itself an ordeal, for although faithful civil servants supply answers, somebody may pop up with a devastating supplementary that neither the Minister nor his henchmen thought of. There are debates. In the constituency, voters expect personal attention to their problems and refuse to talk to anyone but the Member. And (if you are Ernest Marples) you are bubbling with new ideas, impatient to get them working. And all the time there are plenty of eager, able, ruthless men ready at the twinkling of the Prime Minister's eye to step into your shoes.

Of all his preoccupations, I judge the fear of supplanters to rank least in Mr. Marples' mind. He does not depend upon politics for a living. He is wealthy already. If he left politics tomorrow he would earn much more money than the Treasury pays him now.

Is he not ambitious, then? ' Some commentators slyly suggest he has his mind on No. 10. I put this point to him. "That's been asked more than once," 'he replied. "And my answer is itill the same. I'm ready to take any

job that's offered, if I believe I can do it." H.C.


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