Martin Bell is relaxing in the sunshine on the terrace of Kenwood House in Hampstead, London – Panama hat on the table and wearing his trademark white suit. He’s instantly recognisable as the man who shook up a true blue Cheshire constituency with an anti-sleaze campaign back in 1997.
The former BBC war correspondent has a copy of Cheshire Life magazine on the table in front of him, dated August of that landmark political year. He’s pictured on the cover, sitting in the blooming garden of the home he rented in Great Budworth during his one term as MP.
It had been a whirlwind campaign – he was selected just 24 days before the election when Labour and the Liberal Democrats agreed to stand down in his favour, in a bid to oust Tory Neil Hamilton, who had been in post since 1983.
Although the journalist knew little about Cheshire or politics – ‘everybody expected me to lose, even myself,’ he says – he went on to win more than 60 per cent of the vote, taking the fourth safest Tory seat in the country with a majority of 11,077.
‘It was quite a high-profile campaign,’ says Martin, who is now 86. ‘I didn’t have any ambition to be an MP. I was a Liberal student at Cambridge but when I joined the BBC in 1962 I gave up politics.
‘I covered 12 wars for the BBC but after the Bosnian War ended in 1995, my talents – such as they were – were not fully used. I wasn’t looking for politics but politics came looking for me.’
‘I said “why not me what?”’ says Martin. ‘I asked them to give me time to think and after a bit of deliberation overnight I agreed.
‘They had also considered Terry Waite, who came from the constituency and was the son of the village policeman in Styal – but he said he had already served a four-year term as a hostage and didn’t fancy another one.’
Because Neil Hamilton had been tainted by his implication in the ‘cash for questions’ affair, the candidate standing against him on an anti-corruption ticket had to be beyond reproach.
‘I had to go to see Alistair Campbell (Labour leader Tony Blair’s strategist and spokesman) because they were very worried about potential skeletons in my closet,’ says Martin. ‘I had already completed two marriages by that time but that was a different kind of skeleton – and I had the endorsement of both my ex-wives. I said they could look at my bank account whenever they liked.
‘I knew very little about Cheshire but I was always a fast learner. When I went to Northern Ireland in 1968 to cover the Troubles I hardly knew the difference between Belfast and Dublin.’
TV crews from around the country were on hand to capture what became known as ‘the Battle of Knutsford Heat’. The 25th anniversary of this pivotal moment in the campaign was commemorated with an exhibition at Knutsford Heritage Centre in 2022, when Martin was the guest of honour.
Martin, who now lives with his fourth wife, Merita, in North London, resigned from the BBC the following day to concentrate on the campaign, despite not feeling confident he would succeed. He was backed by the likes of football manager Alex Ferguson, actor Alec Guinness, author John le Carré, and actor and singer David Soul, a ‘formidable’ team of volunteers, many of whom had never been involved in politics before, and some dissident Tories.
‘Neil was threatening writs all the time,’ he says. ‘He wasn’t very impressed and Christine even less so. They expected to win. The press also expected me to lose and I believed them. ‘Journalism is great preparation for winging it, and it helped me to deal with the press. I knew who the ill-intentioned ones were and I had some heavyweight columnists against me.
‘The BBC director general was not at all impressed with me and made it clear that I couldn’t go back when I inevitably failed. It made me feel nervous. I wanted to win; I don’t like losing – and I didn’t have a job to go back to .I had crossed the line between reporting the news and making it.
‘In those days there were lots of posters in windows for candidates and there were very few for Neil Hamilton. In the week before the election we started to feel encouraged by the posters for me.’
‘A week before polling day I thought I was going to lose and knew I had to win over at least 12,000 Conservatives,’ he says. ‘It was much easier to ask for a one-night stand than a lifetime of commitment, so I said I would stand for one term only – and they knew they would get Tatton back eventually.
‘There was quite a campaign started by the weekly paper in Wilmslow to get me to change my mind and stand again. I wanted to break my word but I couldn’t find a way to do it. Everyone would have said “there goes another lying politician” if I had done so. But I liked being in the middle of things.’
Martin rented a house in Great Budworth from a friend whose mother had moved into a care home, and travelled up from London every Friday to meet constituents and hold weekly surgeries.
He enjoyed helping residents resolve their issues, including a memorable insurance claim when a cow jumped from a field onto a car travelling along a sunken lane, and threw himself into attending events such as the Cheshire Show, remembrance parades, and the commemoration at Tatton Park of paratroopers who died during training for the Normandy landings.
Ever the journalist, he also wrote a weekly column in the Knutsford Guardian and a monthly piece in the Manchester Evening News. ‘I never had to send out a press release in four years,’ he says with a smile.
Martin managed to win round many of his doubters in the constituency – although, he says, the vicar in Great Budworth was a staunch Hamiltonian, which meant he attended church in Alderley Edge every Sunday. He also received a death threat, which was dealt with swiftly by Cheshire Police. ‘In the middle of my term I was on the train on the way to open a housing project in Wilmslow,’ he remembers. ‘Near Macclesfield I had a call from the police to say I needed to go to the police station because they had intercepted a death threat against me. When I got there the whole armed team was there polishing their weapons. I never knew anymore about it. You still have to do your surgeries; you have to be available.’
My secretary had to do a course about “new technology”. I think the internet manages to inflame people. I was very lucky to do my whole journalistic career without using a computer and I spent almost four years as an MP more or less without using the internet.
‘I was a dinosaur. I developed a technique where I didn’t write my scripts down. I can always tell when someone is reading off a screen.
‘We live in very volatile times and I’m very disturbed by the rise of the hard right. I think it will take a long time to recover. I’m worried about all kinds of things, including civil unrest.’
As well as the internet, the media landscape in general has also shifted. There’s a big pause when Martin is asked what he thinks about journalism today.
‘Local weekly papers are in terrible trouble,’ he says, eventually. ‘They have no presence on the ground. When I was MP the Knutsford Guardian was great. Local papers are vital, so important.
‘The national papers are not what they used to be either – although nothing is. When I covered wars in Africa they would be covered by tabloids as well.
‘Television now has a very uneven focus. I’m very concerned about the rise of the GB News echo chamber for the far right. The audience figures are low, but Ofcom has failed. I have made a few appearances on GB News but they only interview me when they want to attack the BBC and need me there for balance to speak in favour.
‘Even the BBC has changed, although it has had to. It’s still the main public service broadcaster. Historically it was always attacked by the government of the day – but it survives.’
And survival is something Martin knows about, having covered 18 wars during his career. He did national service in the late 1950s in Cyprus and was back in military uniform as an embedded journalist with the Queen’s Royal Irish Hussars when Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990.
But working in uniform didn’t sit well with him and while reporting from Croatia in 1991 he donned a white suit. He survived the dangerous posting unscathed – and his trademark as ‘the man in the white suit’ was born.
‘I am superstitious and I started to think of it as my lucky suit,’ he says. ‘It was a helpful symbol but it didn’t have any ethical significance whatsoever. It’s still all I wear – it’s one less decision to make when I get up in the morning.’
Of all the conflicts he has witnessed and reported on, he says Bosnia touched him the most because the press made a difference. ‘We drew attention to what was happening on our own continent and made politicians do something about it,’ he says. ‘It had to make a difference.’
But it was also in Bosnia his ‘lucky suit’ failed him when he was wounded by shrapnel in Sarajevo in 1992. He still has fragments embedded in him. ‘I set off alarms at airports,’ he says. ‘I can explain why in four different languages.’
Even though it ‘became more difficult to summon up the willpower to do it’ after his injury, he got back on the metaphorical horse and continued to travel to some of the world’s most dangerous locations for the BBC, and from 2001 onwards as an ambassador for global children’s charity UNICEF.
Although he no longer travels abroad for the aid organisation – both due to his age and concerns about ‘white saviour syndrome’ – he has made 13 field visits to crisis-hit regions such as Sudan, Somalia, Afghanistan and Yemen, to see how children are being supported during conflicts, disasters and humanitarian emergencies.
On a memorable visit to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Martin visited a maternity hospital for victims of rape. ‘Imagine going to a maternity hospital where the mothers love and hate their babies,’ says the father of two daughters. ‘The man who ran it, Denis Mukwege, beat Donald Trump to the Nobel Peace Prize.
‘I had very good access with UNICEF. I could get to see people like the commanding general very easily. I would go with a cameraman and make what looked like a news report to raise awareness.’
He had to have his face rebuilt by surgeons after a fall at Gatwick airport in 2018 and walks with a stick. But he doesn’t think he has been affected mentally by all the traumatic events he has witnessed at close quarters.
‘I can’t believe I’m 86, but my body tells me so, which is why I’m on a bloody stick,’ he says. ‘I don’t know if I’m traumatised by everything that I’ve seen. A friend did wonder ifI might have PTSD. Maybe denial is a stage of it. ‘I just take everything in my stride. You have to.’.
To support UNICEF’s work and donate, visit unicef.org.uk/donate
