Mr Jim Dowd (Lewisham West)

I rise to speak for the first time in the Chamber. When I was preparing my speech I asked someone whose recollection of when he made his maiden speech is dim and distant about the sort of reception that I could expect. I was told that the Chamber has three types of people: those on the Front Benches who are present because they have to be; those who have just spoken and who will stay for a decent interval before leaving; and those who would be waiting for me to sit down so that they could speak. I shall therefore do what I can to keep my speech brief.

My first thanks go to the people of Lewisham, West and I pledge to work on their behalf. My constituency has had a habit—I use the past tense—of changing its representatives at fairly regular intervals. I am sure that it has outgrown that, however, and can look forward to some decades of uncharacteristic tranquillity. The constituency covers a fairly anonymous part of inner suburban London—Forest Hill, Catford and Sydenham. I am sure that not many Members are familiar with it because it is so far from a tube station and the paucity of black cabs means that journalists, in particular, regard it as an extreme adventure to go that far. In common with millions of people throughout the British Isles, however, the people of Forest Hill, Sydenham and Catford are decent, hard-working and industrious and judge their public representatives harshly. I shall be happy to rest on their future judgment.

The constituency has had a collection of representatives in the House. The father of the right hon. Member for City of London and Westminster, South (Mr. Brooke), who was in the Committee a short time ago, represented the constituency for a short time just after the war. John Maples was my immediate predecessor. Politically, he and I were about as opposed as it is possible to be on most things. In his maiden speech some nine years ago he called, rather inauspiciously, for the introduction of a poll tax. He even called it that at the time. He then spent some years learning to call it a community charge. In the world outside, one can always recognise Ministers or their predecessors because they are the only people who talk about the community charge—the rest of the world calls it the poll tax.

As I have said, I did not get on with Mr. Maples politically. He strongly supported the abolition of the Inner London education authority, a blow which inflicted grievous damage on the education prospects not just of children but of almost the entire population of inner London. He opposed the establishment of a London-wide authority, the absence of which has damaged the prospects of London people. Despite our political differences, however, I found Mr. Maples helpful and courteous and I wish him well in whatever lies before him. I am led to believe that he is well thought of in certain circles in the Conservative party, so perhaps we shall see him somewhere else. I suspect that the people of Lewisham have taken permanent leave of him.

The hon. Member for New Forest (Sir P. McNair-Wilson) represented Lewisham, West for a couple of years back in the 1960s, as did the now Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food.

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