The answer might surprise you – as it did me when the question was recently put to me by a friend over dinner. The answer is Jim Callaghan who, at the time, was a junior minister in the Ministry of Transport in Clement Attlee’s postwar Labour Government and subsequently became Prime Minister himself. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
In 1948, Callaghan’s ministerial portfolio included road safety and, in that capacity, he visited Britain’s Transport and Road Research Laboratory where he discussed and supported two new safety measures: the zebra crossing and illuminated metal studs (known as ‘cat’s eyes’). The first zebra crossing was then introduced at Slough High Street on 31 October 1951. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The story is that, on his visit to the laboratory, Callaghan remarked that the new black and white design for a pedestrian crossing resembled a zebra which led to the popular name for the innovation, but he himself never claimed authorship of the term.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Fast forward to 24 March 1972 when I was invited to the House of Commons to be interviewed for the award of a Political Fellowship offered by the Joseph Rowntree Social Services Trust. The interview panel was headed by Jim Callaghan and I was given the fellowship, initially working for him and then for Merlyn Rees.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Jump again to the spring of 1976: Harold Wilson resigns as Prime Minister, Jim Callaghan runs to succeed him, Merlyn Rees becomes campaign manager for Callaghan, I attend all the campaign meetings, Jim wins the election to be party leader and therefore PM and he invites me to run his political office at 10 Downing Street. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
In fact, private funding for the political office was not forthcoming, I never moved No 10, and instead I continued working as Special Adviser to Merlyn until 1978.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The answer might surprise you – as it did me when the question was recently put to me by a friend over dinner. The answer is Jim Callaghan who, at the time, was a junior minister in the Ministry of Transport in Clement Attlee’s postwar Labour Government and subsequently became Prime Minister himself. In 1948, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29569","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-history","category-my-life-thoughts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29569","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=29569"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29569\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29571,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29569\/revisions\/29571"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=29569"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=29569"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=29569"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}