The publishers have allowed me to reproduce Finlay Macdonald's Foreword to the book .
When the central character in the following narrative published his own memoir in 2005 he confined reference to the central character in his life to a bare minimum. He may have wished to say more, but he had wishes other than his own to consider. ‘Margaret I know would be happiest if she did not appear at all in this book,’ he wrote, ‘and I have as a result said less about her than I wanted to. She means so much to me; she always has.’ Nevertheless, Margaret Pope remains a palpable presence within the pages of David Lange’s My Life. The few, brief mentions of her and their relationship serve to suggest a rich off-stage drama that keeps threatening to invade the main action — which, in the end, is probably an accurate reflection of the political reality as it played out during those hectic years in the 1980s.
Perhaps because neither party spoke much about it publicly, Margaret’s role in David’s life, and by implication his actions as prime minister, have assumed somewhat mythical proportions. To read some versions of history you could be forgiven, as someone once suggested, for viewing her as a ninth floor Yoko bent on breaking up the cabinet Fab Four of Lange, Douglas, Prebble and Moore — a conceit as demeaning as it is convenient. If she dwells here on the context of her affair with David at any greater length than he chose to, it is only to demonstrate that its role in the government’s fortunes suits the “legend” better than the truth.
As the commissioning editor of David Lange’s memoir I was all too aware of his failing health during the year he worked on the manuscript. I know he was anxious at times that he may not be able to finish the task — which, as anyone who has even tried to write a book will know, is a considerable one. That he did complete it was testament to his will and determination, and it is no criticism to say he might have written a different book had he begun it sooner. Perhaps he would have described in greater detail the machinations behind his eventual resignation, and forensically re-litigated the policy debate that caused it. I don’t know. I suspect he was content by then to place such supposedly momentous events within the broader trajectory of his life. As he put it, ‘A lot has been left out, but it is not always because I have forgotten what happened.’
Still, I was aware some readers would have liked more about the crucial period, post-1987, when promise curdled into broken promises and the personal truly did become political (and vice versa). Here then is the perfect companion volume to David’s — a companion volume in more ways than one, you might say. David stated in his memoir, ‘What I have written in this book is subjective, and that is its only perspective.’ Margaret, too, is scrupulous to offer the same disclaimer. Eyewitness accounts are, in my experience anyway, reliable in inverse ratio to protestations of objectivity or disinterest.
More than two decades on, the story of the fourth Labour government’s rise and fall still makes for unusually compelling reading. At the risk of resorting to cliché, it’s a page-turner. But then, as Margaret’s choice of title alludes, so much turning was going on anyway; social democrats into free market zealots, political friends into bitter foes, an entire nation from social and economic fortress into vaunted neoliberal utopia. And at the centre of it all, a prime minister turning away from a path he felt he could no longer follow, towards a clearer conscience — but inevitable isolation.
I’m glad Margaret has decided to fill some of the silence David left when he wrote less about her than he wanted to. That she has done it with such clarity, wit and wry insight is both a tribute to her subject and a very valuable contribution to our understanding of the recent political past.
Finlay Macdonald
June 2011
Also here for your interest is Kathryn Ryan's interview with the author -
At The Turning Point – My Political Life with David Lange
© 2011 Margaret Pope - $39.99
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