Theodore Kim and Jim McInally (both BSc Econ 1987) remember the life of fellow LSE alumnus Elwyn Watkins and their time together at LSE in the 1980s. Elwyn served as President of Carr Saunders Hall and later General Secretary of the Students’ Union. He was very active in student politics and after a career in consultancy became a Liberal Democrat councillor and contested the 2010 UK general election.

Chips, Chips, Chips!!

For a brief moment in history, Elwyn Watkins, a former LSE General Secretary was a global political media celebrity, resulting from using an arcane act of parliament to overturn a disputed election, writes Theodore Kim. 

Like many LSE alumni, Elwyn ran for a seat in parliament. The day after the general election in 2010, he began a heroic battle and history making court case fighting for election integrity in UK politics. From the age of nine as a schoolboy volunteer, Elwyn devoted his life to the Liberal Party, now known as the Lib Dems. He continued that fight at LSE and made the mid-1980s one of the more colourful and memorable eras in LSE’s illustrious history of student activism.

When I arrived from the US at LSE, I immediately met Elwyn as the larger-than-life student politician know to all – and who openly made clear to all his career plans to serve in parliament. Within the unique culture of LSE, student politics was a brutal blood sport based on the principle of Eat or be Eaten.

During the 1980s, LSE students remembered well our weekly showtimes: Thursdays at 1pm in the Old Theatre the union meetings when Elwyn approached the speaker’s spot centre stage and took the mike in hand. The audience yelled in unison Chips, Chips, Chips! For Elwyn, the price of chips was just the first of many battles he fought for underserved students.

Elwyn learned that chips in the student cafeteria were twice the price of the chips in the staff restaurant, known as the senior common room. He discovered that the student canteen ran at a profit and subsidised the senior common room. After lobbying the School’s administration, he was able to see chip prices fall for students by eliminating the subsidy they paid. Back then, while London was fast becoming a global financial capital, the UK as a whole was by no means a wealthy economy. Many students could barely afford the cost of living in London, including lunch at the cafeteria.

By contrast to the price of chips, LSE politics in the mid ‘80s was focused on global issues of class struggle, such diverting union funds to Arthur Scargill and the striking miners of the Ferrymoor Riddings Colliery in South Yorkshire. The LSE branch of the Revolutionary Communist Party of Great Britain won union funds to send students on subsidized fact-finding missions to Albania, the world’s most perfect socialist state. (I myself, as President of the Grimshaw Club in the International Relations department, ran a huge annual trip to Russia. But as a card-carrying member of the Young Conservatives, I never sought any subsidy.)

While Elwyn had great empathy for striking miners, as well as anyone reliant on a food pantry – which meant most all Albanians – there was nothing he could do about the struggles of the National Union of Mineworkers. Instead, he could help his fellow students eat, a number of whom struggled to survive on a small grant. He knew one LSE student who survived mainly on a diet of chips and ended up diagnosed with scurvy, an ancient ailment caused by vitamin deficiency.

Thirty pence savings for chips, Elwyn explained, made a difference for many – and would make the difference in how they voted in the election for general secretary of the LSE student union. Giggle you may, but that was deep political insight for a 20-year-old who had never lived outside his hometown of Rochdale.

Fast forward to today in the United States, where I now live, and the 2024 presidential election. The electorate will shortly decide who will occupy the White House and lead the free world. This election will not be influenced by the tragic events in Gaza, Ukraine nor the fight against global warming. Rather, voters in crucial swing states – marginal constituencies as the British say –  will choose our next president based on milk and eggs. Notably, the election will depend on a pressing issue; a gallon of milk or a dozen eggs is now a dollar higher than they were four years ago.

A recent TikTok video coming from Lancashire has amassed over 30 million views. Succinctly expressing voter sentiment in the run up to the UK General Election, twin sisters passionately rant against the high cost of ice cream. In 20 seconds, these girls demonstrate how voter anger about inflation can readily decide an election outcome.

Elwyn’s dogged fight to knock off 30 pence from the price of chips may not have been so silly after all.

Fake election – part I

In 1985, I stood next to Elwyn during the counting of the votes for the LSE student union elections, when he fought to become the first General Secretary elected in the School’s near 100-year history who was not a socialist. The returning officer announced that the Labour candidate had won, and Elwyn lost by 75 votes out of some 2,000 votes cast. Labour supporters loudly broke into a well-rehearsed chorus of “Elwyn is a wanker, Elwyn is a wanker!!”  (At that time, I did not know the meaning of the pronoun “wanker,” nor the verb “to wank,” as the word does not exist in American English.)

Undeterred, Elwyn stood silently like a Sphinx. He had canvassed the School far and wide. While he did not know everyone personally, and the Liberals were the smallest party, absolutely everyone knew him. He had been quietly confident he would win. Now facing his ostensible electoral defeat, he smelled a rat. The louder that Labour sang, the more determined he became. He would catch that rat.

Elwyn’s own Liberal supporters advised him that ballot boxes were often stuffed, this was politics as usual and suggested he drop the matter and accept defeat. Many Labour students openly bragged about manning the polling desk expressly in order to stuff the ballot box. In Labour’s mind, the problem was not that they had cheated on the election. Instead, the Liberals had a problem because they were too lazy, too naïve and too few in number to command the wherewithal to stuff the ballot box themselves.

However, Elwyn was adamant that elections should be fair. The next day, he examined the paper voting register and saw huge number of Asian names had been crossed out indicating that they had voted. LSE politics was odd in that the vast majority of voters are British nationals, even though over half the student body were non-British nationals – particularly from Asia. Those foreign students rarely voted.

Elwyn sought the support of the president of the Malaysian Singapore Student Society, or MASS. While this particular Singaporean student had no interest in the bare-knuckle Labour versus Liberal fight, he did take offense to Labour activists crossing out Asian names on the register, and then voting on the behalf of Asian students. Together, the MASS president and Elwyn gathered a petition and demanded a new election.

Weeks later, the non-partisan Electoral Reform Society was called in to hold a new election. One of their representatives recounted to me how he had monitored elections in violent, war-torn regions of Africa and Latin America, as well as trade union elections in the UK where allegations of corruption were rife. Exactly where he thought LSE politics stood in comparison to elections taking place during a civil war in Sierra Leon is hard to say.

That night, the ERS team carefully counted the ballots. Sure enough, in this new fair and clean election, Elwyn emerged the winner by a landslide. That was the first time in LSE history that a fraudulent election was nullified, and a new election called.

The fight begins

Fast forward to the 2010 general election and the rolling Pennine hills of Oldham East and Saddleworth. Elwyn and his band of Lib Dem party workers were spending days leafleting far and wide. I arrived in the UK to help in the campaign. I met Elwyn and saw that his normally cool stoic demur was clearly rattled.

Labour Party leaflets filled with defamatory racially tinged accusations had been distributed throughout the constituency. Elwyn clearly knew this was race baiting at its ugliest. The fabricated accusations in Labour’s leaflets were maliciously designed to defame him suggesting he had cozied up and sough support from Muslim extremists. This suggestion, clearly nonsensical, could cost him a closely fought election given the delicate racial tensions of the constituency and growing popularity of the BNP. As a council member in nearby Rochdale, Elwyn vigorously fought for those struggling to make ends meet. Among white voters, there was poverty. Some of those voters put the blame for their economic struggles on immigrant Muslims.

The morning of May 6, the parliamentary election results were announced. When Elwyn learned he had lost by exactly 103 votes, he displayed the exact Sphinx-like character from decades ago following the rigged election at the LSE. Elwyn smelled another rat.

Fight for fairness

While there was disgust at the race-baiting dirty tricks used by Labour, Elwyn was advised, like decades ago at LSE, that this was all British politics as usual. But Elwyn’s conviction that British elections must be fair was far greater than his advisor’s conviction the he should drop the matter.

People who have never been party to civil litigation have little idea of the stress and turmoil that the painstakingly lengthy process can inflict. Undeterred, Elwyn then became one of the few people outside of the legal profession who printed out and studied every word of the little-known Representation of the People Act (1983). Elwyn was determined to get a fair election – and took action to begin that painstaking process of litigation.

Months later in November 2010, for the first time in 99 years a specially convened election court ruled that a sitting Member of Parliament had breached Section 106 of the RPA in publishing false defamatory statements. The two high court judges presiding issued a certificate of their decision to the speaker of the house of commons. Before the sun set that day, the MP who had made the defamatory statements to win the election was ejected from parliament, stripped of his pass to the Palace of Westminster and escorted out of the building.

Some weeks later, on the afternoon that the inevitable appeal was rejected by the Court of Appeal, Elwyn walked out of the Royal Courts of Justice on Fleet Street with Jim McInally at his side just down the street from the LSE. He was met by a mob of journalists from Australia to Aberdeen. This victory, he announced to world’s media, was not simply about a dispute between two politicians. This was a victory for democracy, and a victory for justice and fairness in British elections.

Second time unlucky

In the January 2011 by-election to replace the now ousted Labour MP,  Elwyn fought heroically. Joining him on the campaign trail was Lib Dem party leader Nick Clegg, now a Silicon Valley resident and President of Global Affairs, and  Mark Zuckerberg’s go-to person at Facebook, part of Meta, Inc. Despite Elwyn’s struggles fighting two brutal campaigns as well as a tortuous litigation process all within a year, Elwyn fell short of capturing the parliamentary seat. Ever since he was a nine-year-old student volunteering for the Liberal Party in Rochdale, Elwyn had aspired every day of his life to serve in parliament. That dream now came to an end.

In the years that followed, Elwyn was often advised by Labour party members that he should join Labour. He likely could be chosen to run for a seat in parliament as a Labour candidate. While he made a few enemies by ousting one of their MPs, he gained far more supporters across the political spectrum in his fight to clean up UK politics. Elwyn refused. Ever since his school days in Rochdale leafleting for Liberal candidates, he served as a committed Liberal Party member for over 40 years and was not about to betray his beliefs. To paraphrase Lady Thatcher; the gentleman was not for turning.

Fond farewell

The last time we met, I accompanied him on a visit to the Mayfair London townhouse of his consulting client, a billionaire Saudi Sheik who owned a conglomerate operating in the Middle East. This was the first time I ever stepped foot inside a Mayfair house – not a block of  flats, but an actual Georgian house. It was also the first time I had seen a butler in person – not in the movies, but a real-life butler dressed in a black butler uniform and bow tie.

The butler, like most Saudi domestic workers, was of Asian descent. In the Gulf states, a system of Kafala is used to import low-cost migrant laborers from poor countries, notably the Philippines. This Kafala system is critiqued by human rights campaigners across the globe, such as the International Labor Organization, as a form of modern-day slavery.

Butlers are classified by Saudi society not as a lesser people, but essentially invisible non-people. Undoubtedly, many foreign businessmen visiting the Sheikh’s palace and being greeted at the front door by the bow tied butler would also categorize him as an invisible domestic servant.

But not Elwyn. When the butler met Elwyn, they embraced like cousins and made small talk about family back in the Philippines.

For Elwyn, whether you were a butler, a baker, a candlestick maker – or a billionaire Sheik – he treated everyone with respect. In fact, in 40 years of knowing him, I never heard him personally insult anyone and most definitely not any of his political opponents – not at the LSE, not on the Rochdale council where he was elected, and not while fighting for a seat in parliament.

Elwyn simply did not see the reason to waste words on meaningless insults. In politics, he believed elections must be based on policy – and not personalities or insults. Hurling childish insults would degrade the democratic process and cause voters to lose confidence in the system.

Fast forward to the US today, where politics is based almost entirely on personal insults. There is no Representation of the People Act outlawing outright false, defamatory statements about political opponents. The electoral process is like a late-night comedy act filled with ever more visceral schoolyard insults between politicians. It is the base case assumption among American voters that political speech is largely composed of personal insults, deception and fabrications.

More alarming, one-third of US voters polled believe that the 2020 presidential election was rigged. (Despite some 70 failed court challenges, there has never been credible evidence of vote tampering put forward.)   For half of Republican voters polled, it is assumed that the 2024 election will also be rigged.

Sadly, confidence among Americans in fairness of our democratic system – the type of confidence Elwyn fought for –  is dead and buried.

Rough and tumble LSE student elections and a hard-fought UK election court case from over a decade ago played out in the Saddleworth town hall are long forgotten. Elwyn’s brief time in the global media spotlight as one of the more renowned and courageous Liberal Democrat politicians is in the distant past. But whether inside or outside politics,  Elwyn’s spirit of how we can lead our  lives with honour and integrity – while fighting for fairness and helping the lives of others –  should live for a lifetime in the hearts and minds of those who knew him.

The “Show of the Week”

Elwyn Watkins was a force to be reckoned with at LSE, writes Jim McInally. His combination of incisiveness and wit made their time one of the more colourful and memorable eras in LSE’s long and illustrious history of student activism.

When we first met, Elwyn had been elected President of Carr-Saunders Hall, then LSE’s largest Hall of Residence. Hundreds of students lived there, in the shadow of the BT Tower in central London. He was known to everyone in the Hall and, being a larger-than-life character, to many, many more across the whole university. Elwyn was gregarious and enjoyed engaging with people. He had a brilliant knack of being able to relate to and build a rapport with almost anyone, in a natural rather than calculated way.

Elwyn lived and breathed politics; and his engagement with politics started at an early age, volunteering for the local Young Liberals when he was still at primary school. Over the years his commitment to the cause grew and he loved to travel with the Young Liberals, campaigning around the country. He was part of what became Chris (now Lord) Rennard’s band of election warriors, a highly effective political campaigning machine.

Nowadays, we read reports of “wokery” in universities, complaints of limitations on free speech and the like. Life was a bit different in our day. LSE is located around the Aldwych in the heart of London, next to Theatreland. However, every Thursday lunchtime, the Old Theatre of the LSE was packed with hundreds of students coming along for the “Show of the Week”. This was the bedlam of the Union General Meeting. Some of the brightest people in the world were on show, pitted against each other, clamouring for the microphone, rhetoric flowing. It was sometimes very funny, but it could also be brutal – as our former flatmate, Theodore (Ted) Kim, put it in his Obituary for Elwyn, life there was based on a simple principle; “Eat or be Eaten.”

Elwyn thrived in that environment. He was elected as a student delegate to the LSE Court of Governors and, later as General Secretary of the LSE Student’s Union. He was a principled but also immensely practical person. Whether it was the price of chips in the Café, the availability of student accommodation or the cost of property rental, Elwyn was a strong and effective advocate for those he represented. Throughout this period, Elwyn retained the capacity for extremely robust public political exchanges but thereafter would happily go for a chat and a pint to continue the discussion in a convivial manner.

Four of us shared a flat. Elwyn, Tim Frost, and I together with Ted Kim. We all held divergent views, supporting different political parties, and we were all adept at defending our corners. But we were happy in one another’s company and respected alternative points of view. We agreed to disagree. As Dave Bull, another fellow student recently wrote, Elwyn could remain calm and be combative simultaneously, but it helped that he had an irreverent sense of fun. Dave recalled a particularly challenging audience at the University charity Rag Week, where Elwyn was being heckled mercilessly. He grabbed a large sack and both he and his then girlfriend Jill jumped into the sack. After some rummaging around, they emerged – wearing each other’s clothes, bowing to the masses. Great cheers ensued. He knew how to work an audience!

A career in consultancy and financial analysis

During his time at LSE, Elwyn did some consultancy work which set him up for his full-time career and after LSE, he started work as an analyst at Pergamon Press, designing and compiling an early online company information network. Elwyn worked for Ian and Kevin Maxwell, Robert Maxwell’s sons. Pergamon was a subsidiary of the British Printing and Communications Corporation (later Maxwell Communications Corporation) and of course Robert Maxwell was Chairman, Chief Executive, major shareholder, and general dictator. Elwyn had a ring-side seat to some of the aftershocks of Ian and Kevin’s meetings with their father. He described events as a combination of outrageous dysfunctional behaviour and a fascinating insight into the corporate world.

Following this, he spent time in the City, completed an MBA at Bradford University, then spent almost 20 years working between the UK, Germany, and Saudi Arabia, for much of that time as a close confidante of Sheik Abdullah Alhamrani. Following a schism within the family, Elwyn helped Sheik Abdullah secure overall control of the Alhamrani Group. It was essentially a hostile takeover, and Elwyn completed the entire business case, in immense secrecy, presented this to the banks, mainly in Paris, London and Lebanon, raising the necessary financial backing and ultimately, they won their battle in the Sharia courts.

He ultimately acted as the personal adviser to the Sheik on all aspects of the Group’s business. I recall the time when Elwyn, who had just returned to Riyadh from New York and was knackered, received a call from the Sheik to join him in Sri Lanka. The Sheik had decided to go ahead and start negotiating yet another deal, but the parameters were changing, and the Sheik needed Elwyn there. The Sheik had his own plane in Sri Lanka and therefore he “borrowed” one his friend’s planes to fly Elwyn to Sri Lanka, arranging for him to depart through a Saudi military airport for ease. Elwyn grabbed his “go bag” and jumped into the waiting car. He slept on the plane, got to his hotel, took a quick shower. He donned his shirt, suit, and tie – no shoes. So Elwyn conducts the meeting in full business attire and flip-flops!

The 2010 general election

Elwyn made unstinting efforts to represent and to improve the lives of his “Northern” kinfolk. He was a proud Welshman by heritage, a huge supporter of the Welsh rugby side and a proud “Northerner” in equal measure. He was elected as a Liberal councillor to represent the people of the Healy Ward on Rochdale Council. Many will recall him as a robust and passionate campaigner for local people.

Like many LSE alumni, Elwyn ran for a seat in the House of Commons. On the night of the general election in 2010 after the initial vote count, he lost by 103 votes. He then began a long, brave, and potentially very costly legal battle. Elwyn knew that his opponent was guilty of illegal practices, making false statements about Elwyn. He won the case in the special Parliamentary Election Court. Elwyn had to reflect long and hard about whether to pursue the case; if he lost it could have been very costly indeed. But he did pursue it. I often wonder of he was influenced by J S Mill’s writings – Elwyn was fond of quoting J S Mill. Mill wrote that “A person may cause evil to others not only by his actions, but by his inaction, and in either case, he is justly accountable to them for the injury.”

It was headline news. A sitting MP was ejected from the House of Commons and banned from standing for Parliament again for three years. There was a subsequent appeal to the High Court, but three High Court judges again found in Elwyn’s favour. And history was made. I recall standing by his side at the front of the Royal Courts of Justice, where Elwyn was revelling in his victory. Lord Justice Thomas had just underscored the importance of honesty in electoral campaigns, the judicial role in maintaining the integrity of the democratic process and commended Elwyn for his role in reinforcing public trust in the democratic process. Just before going to face the press, Elwyn said to me, I just want to get my point across. When I have done that, please usher me away.

It will come as no surprise to those who knew and loved Elwyn that I singularly failed at the first, the second, and the third attempt – and it took some considerable effort to prise him away from the microphones.

Last week, I received a note from Nick Clegg, who was the Leader of the Liberal Democratic Party, and Deputy Prime Minister, at the time of the Court case. The note said that “he liked Elwyn immensely. He was brave, kind, and principled and exactly the kind of politician this country needed and needs.” He asked me to convey his sincerest condolences to Elwyn’s family and friends. Elwyn had what I would describe as a political savviness, not always evident in the politicians of today. It is a mark of the man that he was respected by people from across the political divides.

Elwyn contributed to, helped shape and improve the lives of many people – probably more than we will ever know. He was extraordinarily generous with his time. When he took-up a cause, he was utterly committed, doggedly so. He was in many ways a simple soul – again, reflecting on Mill’s writings – Mill said, “I have learned to seek my happiness by limiting my desires, rather than in attempting to satisfy them.” That kind of sums Elwyn up for me. He did not judge anyone by status, by material wealth or power.

He took up the causes of the underdog, often fighting bureaucracy and officialdom. His brief time in the media spotlight as one of the more renowned, committed, and courageous Liberal Democrat politicians may also be in the distant past. But whether inside or outside politics, Elwyn’s spirit, demonstrating how we can lead our lives with honour and integrity while fighting for fairness and helping the lives of others, will live for a lifetime in the hearts and minds of those who knew him.

Always practical, always thinking of others. Farewell Elwyn, you will always be remembered, and you will always be loved. Rest easy my friend!

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