Peter Black, sailor in the Royal Navy, died aged 20 when the HMS Barham went down in 1941. What follows occurs in a world where he was one of the lucky third of the crew who did not.
Obituaries
Peter Black, 1921-2005
Miraculously spared by the explosion on the Barham, Black served as an electrician on two other ships for the duration of the war after three months' recuperation at home on Malta. After the war, he requested to be discharged and moved to Portsmouth to be near his family (his younger brother Bernard, a dockyard electrician, having been posted there in 1943 to prepare for D-Day and having brought his mother with him).
After marrying local butcher's daughter Eleanor Powell in 1950, Black worked as an industrial electrician for much of the 50s, his experience in the Navy proving useful to factory owners as Britain rebuilt herself after the war. Partly because of this, and partly because of the respect he garnered as a survivor of not just the war, but the tragedy of the Barham and the siege of Malta, he was promoted to the post of Chief Electrical Engineer of Babbage and Co., a motor company. In 1966 he persuaded his colleagues to headhunt his brother Bernard, a skilled salesman managing Portsmouth's Co-operative Department Store, who in turn became a Sales Director for the company.
After a dispute over the location of a memorial for those killed in the Mediterranean in the Second World War with local officials in 1969, Black took an interest in politics and became dismayed at what he perceived as the relentlessly forward-looking attitudes of the Wilson government. After launching the 'Remembrance' campaign (superficially a campaign focused on remembering the struggles Britain had gone through to survive the war, but really a thinly-veiled attack on the Wilson government's perceived technocratic socialism that cared nothing of the British tradition of fighting totalitarianism) in co-operation with the Portsmouth Evening News, he found himself catapulted to the national stage when the Daily Mail seized upon the campaign and made arrangements to turn it into a national affair. Its role in the 1970 defeat of Wilson's government is debatable, but Black and his brother (by now Deputy Sales Officer in Babbage and Co.) certainly profited from it, becoming local celebrities and earning substantial wealth from increased exposure for Babbage and Co. (renamed Babbage, Black and Co. in 1973 when Peter Black became a partner in the company - this is arguably due to his national status, as his brother was the more business-minded of the two).
At the February 1974 election, the Conservative candidate for the new seat of Portsmouth North lost by a margin of 102 votes. Black, a member of the Party since 1950 and popular across the city, was approached to be a candidate in the expected second election that year, as he was seen as distinct from the liberal ineffectiveness of Heath, who was rapidly becoming more and more unpopular. A charismatic, down-to-earth businessman, war hero and respected mind in a field known for producing calculating experts (electrics), Black was a dream candidate and, thanks in part to a well-produced and circulated series of leaflets promising 'a return to the Conservatism of MacMillan' (who Black admired as a soldier, statesman and man who understood what Britain had gone through to maintain her status quo) managed to carry the seat by 2019 votes in October 1974, becoming MP for Portsmouth North.
As a backbencher, Black was a thorn in the side of Wilson to the point that by late 1975 whenever he rose to his feet to speak he was supported by cheers of anticipation from his fellow Conservatives. Plain spoken but articulate and full of life, he was respected on both sides of the house for his integrity. When Mrs Thatcher won the election of 1979, Black was approached and offered the new middle-ranking post of Minister of State for the Armed Forces, something he himself had proposed while leading the Remembrance campaign in the late 1960s. Black took the post extremely seriously, and made what is considered the speech of his parliamentary career in 1982 when speaking on the sinking of the HMS Sheffield. His own memories of the Barham motivated what was clearly a deeply emotional speech that made no mention of the war as a whole, only a profession of deep regret and respect for the loss of life that had occurred. 'Britain's enemies have blown our sailors up before,' he concluded, 'I know that all too well. But it did not, has not, and will never shake our resolve and undying duty to our servicemen.' The speech was met with a standing ovation from all corners of the House and Black, along with Mrs Thatcher, became an extremely popular national figure as a result of the war.
But the Falklands would be the event that ended Black's ministerial career, not launched it. Citing the stress and emotional strain involved in overseeing the repatriation of the dead and organisation of memorials, Black announced his intention to resign 'the day I believe this war, that ended only hours ago, to be truly finished with.' True to his word, he resigned as Minister of State for the Armed Forces in March 1983, the day the final agreements for a war memorial to those killed were completed.
Black remained a backbencher until the 1992 election, when he stood down to spend more time on the running of Remembrance. He turned down a peerage as he thought it an unearned honour that was against his strict military belief in meritocracy. His time away from the front bench was sombre and rarely critical of the government, though he infamously fell out with Mrs Thatcher after he sided with Michael Heseltine over Westland in 1986. The two did not speak in a personal capacity until the mid 1990s. The only other controversy was a brief furore in mid-1988 over comments made by Bernard Black to the Portsmouth Evening News regarding immigration and the death penalty. Peter steadfastly supported his brother's right to his own views while saying he respectfully disagreed with them (though he had been one of the group of MPs who consistently voted for the near-annual attempt during the Thatcher governments to bring back hanging). He and Eleanor ('Ellie') had no children, but Black made it one of Remembrance's aims to provide grants to attend private schools and, later, University to children of servicemen killed in action, earning him the nickname of 'Grandfather' by many activists of the charity.
His brother, meanwhile, had become CEO of Babbage, Black and Co. (which rebranded to Black Motors in 1993) and remained in that post until retiring in 1999. His sudden death in 2001 resonated with Peter, who became increasingly insular, partly due to his own declining health. He handed over the running of Remembrance in 2003 (he had resigned from Babbage, Black and Co. when he became an MP) to Revd Andy Davis, his Vicar for over twenty years who had been a significant figure within the organisation during Black's time in the Commons as someone who had drawn support from across the Church of England for the charity. On 24 November 2005, a day before the 64th anniversary of the sinking of the Barham, he passed away peacefully at home. He is survived by his wife Ellie, his sister-in-law Elizabeth and his nephew Stephen, who was elected earlier this year as the Conservative MP for Portsmouth North.