Lord Kinnock: Lord Speaker's Corner

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In this episode

‘I guess that's what gave me my politics basically. The idea that many people working together could produce and provide at the level of quality that would've been absolutely impossible for the individual or the family.’

Lord Kinnock speaks about growing up in south Wales and what drew him to politics, his early years as an MP and the Labour party of the late 80s and early 90s. He also speaks about his regrets from his time as leader, plus how politics and public discourse has changed today:

‘I don't want deference. Deference is not part of my makeup and I don't want anybody else to show it. But respect, accommodation, compassion, those instincts are fundamental to human beings, and they're too often being discarded or suppressed.’

Lord Kinnock also explains that he wished he had challenged the President of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), Arthur Scargill, more forcefully about the need to ballot its members: 

'I told Scargill at the beginning of April 1984 that without a ballot, the strike would not succeed. And I said it publicly, I just wish that I'd said it more publicly (even), and repeatedly over the subsequent months as a way of simply telling the truth to men and their families who were showing superhuman loyalty to the cause and whose loyalty was being abused by someone who had a very peculiar, very odd interpretation of what he thought of as his socialist mission, which was misplaced and misleading and assisted in tragedy. I've said before that Scargill and Thatcher deserved each other. Nobody else did.'

The former Labour leader also gives a rare insight into private discussions between himself and Shadow Chancellor John Smith in preparation for the 1992 general election. Watch or listen to the full episode to find out more.

 

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Transcript

Lord Speaker:                                    

Lord Kinnock. Neil, welcome to the Lord Speaker's Podcast. It's a pleasure to have you. Can I take you back to your early life and your roots? Your roots seem very, very integral to your personality. Describe your upbringing.

Lord Kinnock:

I think it'd be familiar to you because I was brought up in what was still a coal mining town in south Wales then. My father was a collier, a face captain who loved working in the ground, but he had industrial dermatitis and he had to leave the pit after 27 years. And he became a labourer in the blast furnaces in Ebbw Vale Steelworks. And of course he had a dust allergy. And the blast furnaces were much dustier as an environment than working underground. And he used to describe it as nature's little joke.

My mother was a district nurse. They were both very intelligent people, widely read, cultured, loved classical music, and if you like, the classic working class of their generation who were absolutely determined that any child of theirs was going to get on. So they were immensely supportive. The community was too, and this would be familiar to you, I know, it occurred to me by the time I was about 11 or 12, that everything good that I was experiencing, the park, the tennis court, swimming pool, the dance hall, the library, the snooker hall where we had world champions, was a consequence of collective effort, collective contribution, and committees and accountability.

And I guess that's what gave me my politics basically. The idea that many people working together could produce and provide at the level of the standard of quality that would've been absolutely impossible for the individual or the family. And consequently, that sort of meant that I absorbed my political convictions osmotically really.

Lord Speaker:

Yeah. But your parents weren't pushing you. It was just the environment that you lived in and their values.

Lord Kinnock:

Yeah, and the idea, I suppose, was there somewhere that because of their support and that my grandparents and friends and neighbours and the extended family as it were, that I had a duty to them. I didn't have this massive burden of obligation. I was far too much inclined towards simply having fun to be that serious. But I guess there was this sense, and I know that my schoolmates shared it, some of them certainly, that sense of duty that you had to fulfil their expectations. So all those dynamics work together. They were prepared to commit, to invest, to show love and endless support. And in return, you are expected to get picked as it were.

Lord Speaker:

Your colleague, Roy Hattersley. Roy described you as a gregarious loner. Now obviously you're gregarious, but the loner aspect surprised me a little bit, but had that to do with the determination, the sense of duty and the political drive that you had?

Lord Kinnock:

It might do. I thought it was a very perceptive observation by Roy, actually, and certainly better than my comment on him. When somebody criticised him, I objected to them and said, "Do you realise that you're trying to denigrate one of our country's greatest contemporary essayists, certainly on light subjects and issues?" [laughter]. And Roy thought there was a mixed compliment, but no, I guess he got to me really with that gregarious loner remark. I mean, I'm endlessly social. I like company. I enjoy the buzz and the interaction of conversation, of choir singing. I love that. But I've formed very, very few close attachments, and I think that's what Roy was getting at. So it isn't that I'm obsessively driven or anything, but I'm immensely choosy about who I confide in and who I regard to be close, invaluable friends. I try to show loyalty and friendship and love where it's appropriate, but I don't expect it in return, I guess.

Lord Speaker:

You mentioned your mum and dad, but it's been mentioned that it gnawed at your soul that they weren't there to see your triumphs, your mother in particular.

Lord Kinnock:

Yeah. They weren't there to see the disasters either! No, they did see me elected to Parliament, and they were obviously immensely proud of that, and I was very glad to deliver this reward of manifest success because they backed me, supported me through exam failures and various scrapes I got myself into. So I was delighted to be able to hand that to them. I thought then, and I think now they considered that when Glenys gave birth to our first child, Steve, that was the greatest accomplishment, certainly as far as my mother was concerned. Both of them were trade unionists and socialists. So they took a delight in my political commitment and success, but they didn't join the Labour Party until my mother retired as a district nurse because she didn't want anybody to be able to ever think, let alone claim that she gained preferment because of political favouritism in the South Valleys. And of course, that was huge exaggeration of any possibility, but she regarded it to be vitally important to be above any kind of suspicion or claim. And as soon as she retired, a week afterwards, they joined the Labour Party. Yes.

Lord Speaker:

Your mother was very religious, but you have lost any sense of religion. But I put it to you that you've maintained the social and the moral elements of the teaching. And maybe like Clem Atlee, you say that you like the ethics, but not the mumbo jumbo.

Lord Kinnock:

No, I was going to quote Atlee back at you actually, because that sums it up completely. I could never make the leap of faith. So when I was 17, having been a fairly, well, very fastidious attender in Methodist Chapel together with Baroness Andrews, Kay Andrews. She's from the same town, and we went to the same chapel and of course she was a stalwart then. I think her inclinations and convictions have taken her in much the same direction as myself. But my mother was religious in the sense that she was very committed as a Christian socialist, but because she worked on Sundays as a district nurse, her attendance at chapel was very infrequent. And I mean, she lived by the maxim that her beliefs were inside her and for application, not for recitation. So she was never very bothered about chapel attendance.

Lord Speaker:

So she was a practical Christian?

Lord Kinnock:

Yeah, I mean, she lived it really.

Lord Speaker:

Yeah. I think you took an interest in politics from 14.

Lord Kinnock:

I joined the Labour Party when I was 14 after nagging our ward secretary, who was also our County Councillor, a guy called Bill Halley. He was a coal miner, very intelligent man. And I nagged Bill, and he allowed me to join in January 1957 instead of waiting until the March. So I was 14 when I joined.

Lord Speaker:

And then you entered Parliament at 28.

Lord Kinnock:

Yeah.

Lord Speaker:

A very young age. There were a number of rebellious elements to you in Parliament at that particular time. Did you feel a fish out of water because you did a lot of speaking around the country rather than being in Parliament and voting?

Lord Kinnock:

Yes. I always felt that before I became a member of Parliament, and certainly when I was elected that as a paid activist, a Member of Parliament, I had an obligation to sustain my role as well, almost as a tutor, which I was with the Workers' Education Association, the job I dreamed of before becoming an MP. I did that for four years and enjoyed every moment of it. It was quite extraordinary. And so in a strange sort of way, I simply sustained that when I was elected. And what I didn't realise, of course, is that I was investing in future support. I didn't think within those personal terms at all. And sometimes I used to take myself on a Friday night, I'd be on a train going past rows of houses, seeing people, putting their kids to bed and think, "What the hell are you doing here?" Glenys was always immensely supportive.

Lord Speaker:

And from an early age, you were with her?

Lord Kinnock:

Well, we met, the poor girl, on her first day in university, and so we were together for 60 years. Yeah.

Lord Speaker:

Maybe I could loosely refer to your rebel days. Now in Parliament, you voted against the government on quite a number of issues at that time, but then when you went into the shadow cabinet, it seems as if there's a bit of a change there.

Lord Kinnock:

Yes, yes.

Lord Speaker:

Then we take it forward to the time of the Healey-Benn issue, and you certainly were very firm in ensuring that the status quo for the Labour Party was maintained and Tony Benn wasn't elected. John Henry Newman said, "To live is to change and to be perfect is to have changed often." Do you live by that norm?

Lord Kinnock:

No, I do live by John Maynard Keynes’s maxim, "When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do?" Which I think is a very sound basis for being an adult. In the seventies, I got elected, as you said, when I was 28, to the very safe, the wonderful seat of Bedwellty, which with hardly any boundary changes, became Islwyn. Wonderful people, great place.

Lord Speaker:

You won it by one vote.

Lord Kinnock:

I won the selection by two votes.

Lord Speaker:

Two votes.

Lord Kinnock:

Which makes me twice as good as my son because he got selected by one vote! [Laughter]

No, it was quite an enthralling evening. That was quite extraordinary. And just as a side insight, Glenys was the chairman of the Young Socialists in Bedwellty. And so she was a delegate at the selection meeting. And in fact, it was crucial because when I tied with the other guy, who was the man I would've voted for, had I not been running for a nomination myself, veteran of the Spanish Civil War, a guy called Lance Rogers, very fine man. Anyway, Glenys was there, and when we tied all my associates, my supporters said, "What will we do, Glenys?" So there's Glenys, 25 years age, heavily pregnant, saying, "Let's get it over with tonight." So we spoke again, and he simply attacked me, and I made a different speech and I got selected by two votes. Anyway, we phoned my parents. I said to my father, "Westminster, the next stop, dad." And he said, "Whoa, you don't know." I said, "Dad, we got a 24,000 majority." He said, "Yes, but people can be funny." [laughter] And all my mother was said-

Lord Speaker:

And that stuck with you, that phrase.

Lord Kinnock:

Oh yeah, absolutely. But my mother's response was, "That's lovely, darling. That's really great. Now you take Glenys home and put her feet up and make a cup of tea." She was much more worried about Glenys' pregnancy because Glenys and I went with our mates down the pub. But in the seventies when I was a young Member of Parliament, I was very, very serious and, like a lot of young people, very earnest as well, which is a good thing. And I was totally dedicated to representing my patch, of course. And so I took the business of voting very, very seriously.

And I can honestly say when I voted against the party line or abstained when we were in government, it was a matter of utmost significance to me. So my rebellions were on the government's public expenditure policy, which was wrong. I didn't know it at the time, but I turned out to be very right when eventually the adjusted figures were known from the mid-seventies. And Denis Healey, who naturally was ferocious in his criticism of the action that I had others had taken, was big enough to say to me years later that he wishes he'd shared my scepticism about the Treasury. Anyway, and then the other major rebellions where I played a leading part in organising them was on devolution. And so I wasn't-

Lord Speaker:

You were really very firmly anti-devolution.

Lord Kinnock:

Yeah, but I'm very pro-devolution, always have been, except that I argued that if it's a good thing for Scotland and Wales, as decentralisation must be, any democrat would agree with that, then it was good for everybody. And I think we'd be in a different situation now if we'd had proper decentralisation of government, not just to Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland, but to the whole of England as well. I think that we'd be better governed, and I think that we'd more rationally governed as a country. We still need that great wave of reform, of course. And sometimes it looks nearer as with the material produced by Gordon Brown, genius quality as ever. But it needs to be done, and it will only be done effectively, properly if there is a substantial measure of cross-party agreement. I don't see that available yet.

Lord Speaker:

And also change in the mechanism of government, particularly the Treasury.

Lord Kinnock:

I would make an argument, maybe it's too late for the new government even, that we do need a time-limited Royal Commission to examine the British Constitution for a number of reasons, not least the whole issue of first-past-the-post and proportional representation. We need a rational analysis and the degree of consensus about that. But also very importantly, this patchwork quilt of local government organisation and disorganisation, all the injustices of inappropriate funding, and the fact that decentralisation of powers has not carried with it a decentralisation of fiscal policy. So the devolution, instead of being a way of enriching and strengthening democracy and confidence in our system of government has actually diminished it because the responsibility is there, but the resources are not there. So it's the inverse of the privilege throughout the ages. What we've now got is this mixture of underfunding and powerful obligation, but not powerful execution.

Lord Speaker:

It was said that you became an MP because of your powerful communication skills, and I think you mentioned yourself you were good on telly. That was important then really, really important. Nowadays with the change landscape and social media and whatever, what advice would you give to people in terms of communication and getting your message across as you did on television and radio at that time?

Lord Kinnock:

I'm bewildered and to some extent intimidated by social media. And I just thank providence that it wasn't even in existence when I was a member of Parliament and when I was leader of the opposition, even when I was the European Commissioner. I am so glad that we didn't have this minute-by-minute opportunity for sniping and refusal to accept balance of argument, refusal to use what I consider to be the greatest human power of discernment, of judgement, which is fundamental, of course, to democracy and accountability. So I have to rely for any form of technological instruction on my grandchildren who of course are completely au fait. And they simply say to me, "Pa, stay away from social media. It'll just make you angry and you'll be tempted-"

Lord Speaker:

Do you say that back to them?

Lord Kinnock:

Well, yes. The only thing is I respect their judgement. They are, even the youngest who's 12, she is a fun-loving fit, beautiful girl, very smart, and all the rest of it. But she's got, as a lot of kids, do a level of maturity of good judgement that I trust. And so I am simply not in a position to give them instruction of any kind because the whole system baffles me and the capabilities they show just enchant me and they help me out of all kinds of difficulties technologically. So I see social media, I never contribute to it at all. Now I know that 40, 50 years ago- when I was an active member of Parliament, I could not have resisted the temptation to offer the bon mot, to be ultra-clever, to throw a punch, to take a punch, to assert a joke.

Lord Speaker:

And physically, John Prescott wasn't the first to throw a punch, was he?

Lord Kinnock:

Oh, no, he wasn't. He wasn't. I got myself, well, I was put into situations from time to time where I had to defend myself. There was no other option. And so you do, and sometimes I reflect on the growing incidence of violence and intimidation in modern politics, including of course, the murder of my beloved friend who was very, very close to Glenys as well, Jo Cox. And the fact that people now, it appears to me, more than any other time in history feel completely at liberty to say what they want, when they want, to whom they want, regardless of any sense of consideration.

I don't want deference. Deference is not part of my makeup and I don't want anybody else to show it. But respect, accommodation, compassion, those instincts are fundamental to human beings, and they're too often being discarded or suppressed. And that is appalling and it's also fearful. And because there are people who really do live with a sense of peril because of the tensions that are now evident in society, and I'm cautious about, I think you probably are too, about dwelling on that because I don't want to sound like an old man, and I'm certainly not saying things were better in our day. I don't know if they were better or worse. They were different. I know they were different. And really, that's what I'm expressing now.

Lord Speaker:

I would like to explore the, your transition, for example, your decision to go into the Shadow Cabinet with Michael Foot. I know one of the Welsh poets that you admire is Idris Davies.

Lord Kinnock:

Yes.

Lord Speaker:

When he says that, ‘the things my boyhood cherished stand firm and shall remain’. Now, was it that thought, a part of that thought that made you respond to Michael as leader because it wasn't a very auspicious time to get into the Shadow Cabinet?

Lord Kinnock:

Quite, there's a lot of wisdom in Idris Davies, of course, I strongly recommend him. What happened was we got to 1979 and we got defeated, and I thought it's time to put up or shut-up. Because in the Labour Party, it was already evident, partly as a reaction against the difficulties encountered by that minority Labour government, but for other political reasons as well, including the self-indulgence of the ultra-left, which I'd always been locking horns with in any case, since I was a kid before I went to university even. That, when Jim Callaghan asked me to become Shadow Education Secretary, even though I hadn't been elected to the Shadow Cabinet, I was first runner-up. I knew that it was time to become more of a team player. I had always considered myself to be a team player, but didn't really respect some of the offside rules. The following year I was elected to the Shadow Cabinet, and then of course Michael became leader, my beloved comrade. I was very, very happy.

Lord Speaker:

There was an emotional attachment to him.

Lord Kinnock:

Oh, sure. Very strong political attachment.

But he was such a very fine man, and so I was determined wherever I was that I would support him against all comers, including some people who had been regarded as his friends. And then the moment that he had the obligations of leadership and tried to discharge them, deserted him, I would say in some cases, betrayed him. So it was important to support and sustain Michael. And it was a time when Tony Benn, a man who had great talent and real charisma, but nevertheless simply got hold of the wrong end of the stick in terms of the feasibility of democratic socialist advance in our country.

I don't doubt the sincerity of his passion, but it was immature and it became self-indulgent. It was a great shame because he was a supreme political talent, terrible waste. Anyway, he decided that Michael was taking the Labour Party away from its roots and its purpose, and he was utterly wrong, but that's what he thought. And he made Michael's period of leadership from 83, sorry, from 1980 to 83 into purgatory, absolute purgatory. And so I had no alternative but to stand by and stand up for Michael, which I was proud and privileged to do. And he remained a great, great friend for life. And of course, he lived for a very long time. He published a book when he was 90 years of age, quite extraordinary. Anyway, I knew which side I was on, and so the battles were undertaken, and as a consequence of that, I became leader of the Labour Party.

Lord Speaker:

It’s suggested in some of the profiles of you that your fights, which were regular, extensive, but they were with other socialists rather than political opponents. And the Benn-Healey issue was a big thing because it would've been natural people thought for you to vote for Benn, but you didn't. Give me a feel of your understanding of that and the journey you were on at that particular time.

Lord Kinnock:

By the time that contest came about in 81, I knew that the election of Tony Benn as deputy leader of the Labour Party, would've sent such a signal to the electorate about the lack of political seriousness of the Labour Party, that it would've been ruinous. And so I couldn't vote for Tony. And of course, because I was on the left and Denis was on the right, and there were basic things we disagreed about at that stage, I couldn't vote for Denis either. So I organised the abstention, I think 31 of us from the broad left of the Labour Party, members of the Tribune Group abstained. And it meant that Denis won by 0.6 or 0.8 to 1%.

And as I sat on that platform on that Sunday night of the deputy leadership election, and we knew it was going to be very, very tight, I found myself thinking, why didn't you vote for Denis you bloody fool? And because the crucial thing in this election was to stop Tony and I could have easily defended a decision to vote for Denis. As it turned out, we got the right result and I didn't need to. But again, that was a process of getting to know myself better as it were, about the degree of seriousness that I was prepared to show in trying to defend what I thought were the best interests and instincts of the Labour Party. Now, your point about quarrelling with other socialists is a very good one, certainly not by choice, but I had to do it because the main task, as I saw it, of an opposition is to combat the government.

And that's where I would've liked to make the whole focus. But when you have people like Arthur Scargill and the Militant tendency, and Tony Benn and some others occupying a majority position on the National Executive Committee, as well as commanding endless attention in a mischievous and oppositional media, then the wellbeing of the Labour Party couldn't be treated as a kind of debating society exercise. So it is important to use whatever skills I had as an advocate and as an organiser to try and secure trust for the Labour Party and re-establish it as the party representative of the mainstream of politics, and particularly of people who only have their labour to sell, to give them a living, working people, the working class, which in my view is a much broader concept than the conventional and typical misunderstanding of what being working class actually means.

Lord Speaker:

How would you define working class then?

Lord Kinnock:

In my view, anybody who, as I said, has to sell their abour by hand and by brain in order to give themselves and their families a living, which makes it endlessly broad, of course. And that's the view I've always taken. I suppose I contracted that from my background because first of all, our idea of a middle class was the two or three solicitors in the town.

Lord Speaker:

The bank manager.

Lord Kinnock:

The bank manager, a couple of police inspectors, and the manager of the employment exchange. And that was about, maybe the town clerk, and that was the middle class. And I remember my father saying, of course they are middle class, they're professional people, although they needn't think too highly of themselves, they've got to sell their labour to live. And I remember him saying it so clearly. I must've been about 12 or 13, and he wasn't being envious. He was just telling what manifestly to me as an intelligent 13 or 14-year-old was a fact of life. So I've always had that attitude.

Lord Speaker:

Broad definition.

Lord Kinnock:

Yeah.

Lord Speaker:

The miners’ strike, that was the most tumultuous period in the Labour movement.

Lord Kinnock:

Yeah.

Lord Speaker:

And you were the leader at that time. What scars or regrets did that leave on your soul?

Lord Kinnock:

Oh God, they're endless. I knew from the outset as a representative of a coal field constituency with lots of really good friends who were working miners and trade union officials. Some of my best mates were executive members of the South Wales Miners. Terry Thomas, the vice president, was a former student of mine in adult classes. And we were really very close comrades. We had our quarrels from time to time. But Terry was the ultimate in common sense and very highly intelligent man with great insights and a terrific public speaker. And he and Kim Howells, who later became a Member of Parliament and then minister, was the research secretary of the South Wales NUM. And Kim and I have always been very, very close.

Anyway, given all that, I knew that the men on my coal field were the first out, and they would be the last back in, but that they had severe doubts about the integrity of Arthur Scargill and so did I. I'd known him for some years beforehand, and I realised that he wanted power in the labour movement more than he wanted power for the labour movement. And he had this weird idea of kind of semi-syndicalism that by controlling production, the working class could secure political domination. And of course, there was a lively theory of that kind from the 19th century through to the 1920s, right through to the general strike. But it had been discarded even by its most fluent, most articulate advocates by the 1930s. And Scargill still clung onto it.

Lord Speaker:

But he forgot perhaps that the coal board had stocks built up at the time.

Lord Kinnock:

No, he must have known, but he ignored it because Margaret Thatcher, of course, after having to concede a pay award in 1981, because she'd not made preparations-

Lord Speaker:

With Joe Gormley.

Lord Kinnock:

... For a strike with Joe Gormley, had been making preparations in terms of NCB appointments, notably with McGregor as a chairman, the coordination of police communication across the whole country for the first time ever, the massive stockpiling of coal, 40% higher in February 1984 than any time since the war. And even things like changing benefits law to deprive strikers' families of benefit. So she had spent time preparing and organising and Scargill blundered straight into it without any proper preparation. And he did it with two gifts to the Thatcher government, first of all, starting a miner strike at the beginning of spring, which everybody wondered at, who thought about it. And secondly, not having a ballot. And I knew that from the start, the strike would be doomed if its intention was to stop all closures, certainly without a ballot.

Lord Speaker:

And not to the miners, they broke away.

Lord Kinnock:

Yeah, exactly. I knew it would mean the workforce, the mining workforce would be fractured. Coal field against coal field, or at least within coal fields, pit against pit. And I knew that the solidarity action, especially with transport workers and power workers, which is absolutely vital to the success of any coal miners strike, would be diluted if not absent.

And as the strike went on, of course, it slipped from diluted to virtually absent with the exception of a few rail workers. So he was inflicting massive disadvantages, which in addition to Margaret Thatcher's preparation, simply spelled catastrophic disaster, which of course occurred with dreadful, dreadful poverty and deprivation in the coal fields, which ran on long after the strike simply because people were bereft. They had no resources at all. They ran into terrible debt, which generated awful social pressures and problems, and it was an unmitigated disaster, especially when there were two occasions during that 12 months when formula had been accepted by the coal board, that would've enabled the miners to mitigate the closure list substantially. Wouldn't have got rid of it. Coal mining is an extractive industry, and consequently, pits will close and everybody in the industry understood that. But to get some control or some supervision, some modification of the grounds on which a coal mine could and should be closed, that was attainable, not easily, but attainable and Scargill completely rejected out of hand, both the occasions on which he could have at least secured a score draw.

Lord Speaker:

You've had a litany of unpopular decisions to take. What advice do you have for ministers, politicians taking unpopular decisions?

Lord Kinnock:

The test always, and since I've grown a beard, maybe I shouldn't be saying this. The test always is whether you can look yourself in the mirror in the morning. That popularity or lack of it, in the end doesn't matter. Can you live with a decision yourself? Now, there are some decisions you live with whilst regretting them, but nevertheless, you have to relate to the decision, to the circumstances and the likely outcomes. So that's the only way to conduct yourself.

Lord Speaker:

What decision have you made that you regret?

Lord Kinnock:

Well, it wasn't so much a specific decision. I told Scargill at the beginning of April 1984 that without a ballot, the strike would not succeed. And I said it publicly, I just wish that I'd said it more publicly even, and repeatedly over the subsequent months as a way of simply telling the truth to men and their families who were showing superhuman loyalty to the cause and whose loyalty, whose fidelity, was being abused by someone who had a very peculiar, very odd interpretation of what he thought of as his socialist mission, which was misplaced and misleading and assisted in tragedy. I've said before that Scargill and Thatcher deserved each other. Nobody else did. And that was basically the truth then. And it's still the truth now, but that wasn't an explicit decision. I guess there's one decision that I thought I was postponing, and that was in 1988, Tony Benn ran against me. He got 11% and I got 89%. And I took the decision then that I would continue as leader until the next general election. And that was an explicit decision against the other consideration I had. Should I quit now when the condition of the Labour Party is hugely improved, we are in a much better position to fight and win an election, we are ahead in the polls? This is by early '89, and this is a good time to go. And I took the decision that I would stay, frankly, because I didn't think anybody could do the job that needed to be done, and I've wondered many times since-

Lord Speaker:

Did Glenys support you in that? Did she?

Lord Kinnock:

Oh, absolutely. And of course-

Lord Speaker:

What was her view on that?

Lord Kinnock:

She was willing to trust in my judgement either way. I knew as my wife, she would've been very glad for me to step down, that I'd done just about anything that I could do. But she also felt, I guess as my wife and comrade too, that if there was going to be a real advance, if we were going to win, I deserved to lead on to victory. So in the end, she said to me, "Look, I trust your judgement. I believe you will do the right thing for the party, for yourself, for us." And that's the basis in which I operated. I only talked to two other people, and her insights, her thinking were by far the most important. So she utterly supported my decision, but she knew that I was going through this process of consideration.

Now as it happens, I think I got cause to regret taking that decision simply because by the time 1992 came, I'd been there 9 years and that was too long. But it wasn't a matter of having the guts to quit or sufficient modesty to quit or whatever other rational applications can be made. In the circumstances of the time, I didn't regret my decision to continue. On reflection much later, maybe it wasn't the right decision.

Lord Speaker:

You saying having the guts reminded me of the 1985 Labour Conference. Now, part of being a leader is being a teacher as well, and you have experience in the education field, and it is dear to you, and being a teacher, you can have scripted and unscripted comments.

Lord Kinnock:

Yes.

Lord Speaker:

Was that comment you made at the conference, was that unscripted?

Lord Kinnock:

There speaks a teacher. I think the bit that everybody plays from the television is the attack on Militant, that was an unscripted part. And indeed, the bits that everybody remembers from a few other speeches tended to be unscripted. That extra 5% that you use when you know you've got the attention of the audience, but you haven't really ignited them. And so you press a bit harder, you paint a more colourful picture, and they're the bits that get picked up. So I'd written what I wanted to say throughout the night, the night before, which was a stupid habit that I had. I wrote my leader's speeches overnight. Ridiculous. But that's what I did every year. Always intended next year will be different, and it never was.

But in the circumstances of the moment when I was heckled, I decided to punch back, which I did. And that's the bit people remember. It's quite extraordinary. It had to be done. It didn't, in my view, didn't take courage because I realised you raised the question of that '85 conference out of my reference to guts to fortitude. No, it was more the act of a professional combatant at that time. I wasn't nervous. If I had a worry, it was about the willingness and ability of the National Executive Committee on which I had sometimes unreliable majority of two to follow through with the investigation and the hearings on which we would have to base any decisions relating to expulsion. And I didn't know whether I'd be able to carry enough votes in the National Executive Committee. But actually getting up and denouncing those people was, in one sense, that was the easy part.

Lord Speaker:

After that, you stood down, Tony Blair made you a commissioner, and you were the commissioner for transport?

Lord Kinnock:

No, actually. No, John Major appointed me.

Lord Speaker:

Oh, sorry. I'm sorry. Yeah, John Major.

Lord Kinnock:

No, no, no. I mean, Tony ... John Smith had two years earlier said to John Major when Bruce Millan wanted to retire. And Bruce was the first person to suggest to anybody that I should be his successor, which was very, very kind of him. Good man, Bruce, very good man.

Lord Speaker:

He was. He was. I knew him well.

Lord Kinnock:

Yeah, you knew him. He was a lovely man. And so John had put my name forward, but John Major, as he later explained to me, didn't feel that he could appoint me at that stage because as colleagues in the cabinet had said to him, "We've just spent years telling everybody that Kinnock couldn't run a whelk stall, so it would not be appropriate to make him a European Commissioner." So he didn't then. But when tragically John [Smith] died, Tony became leader, one of the first thing he did was to tell John Major that he wanted me to go to the Commission when the new Commission was formed in '95. And Major by that time was able to agree with some enthusiasm actually.

Lord Speaker:

I was going to interject there because when the public look at politicians, it's a gladiatorial fight. But you and I know that the business of politics can only be done by engagement and understanding. And John Major, would you say he was a decent politician you could engage with?

Lord Kinnock:

Oh yes. He's a decent man.

Lord Speaker:

Exactly.

Lord Kinnock:

And before I became leader of the party, and certainly in the weeks after my election, I spoke to both Harold Wilson and to Jim Callaghan about the way they treated the leader of the opposition. So they led me to expect, not unreasonably, that the position of leader of Her Majesty's loyal opposition doesn't have privileges, but has got certain rights of access. And among them is the willingness of the Prime Minister to brief the leader of the opposition on issues of fundamental national significance, particularly security.

So I was expecting periodically, not on a weekly or even a monthly basis, but periodically as issues arose to be briefed by Mrs. Thatcher, especially on Northern Ireland, to which Jim, of course, gave particular attention when he was telling me. And I spoke to Merlyn Rees, who was a good friend, as indeed Jim was in great detail about Northern Ireland, about which I was always right from the outset, very, very exercised and deeply engaged. But it didn't happen. And when I did have briefings from Mrs. Thatcher, which were sporadic to say the least, they were very superficial. And they signified to me either that she wasn't telling me anything or she didn't know enough because I knew more than she did. And it really came home when John Major became Prime Minister, and we did have dependably regular briefings, particularly on Northern Ireland.

Lord Speaker:

And he worked very well with Albert Reynolds, Taoiseach, which was very good-

Lord Kinnock:

Absolutely.

Lord Speaker:

... Take the peace process forward.

Lord Kinnock:

And John Major was knowledgeable, very committed, wanted to undertake a peace process to which I was committed as well. And we had frank conversations. Now, I will never of course relate a word of what passed between us any more than he would, but that I think is not the keystone, but a significant part of the trust that cements the British constitution. Although I think now on reflection after the experience of the last six or seven years, we should have a written constitution. But one of the items, written or unwritten, that makes it work is the degree of integrity of the relationship between the leader of the government and the leader of the opposition. That was present when John Major was there. It wasn't when Margaret Thatcher was there.

Lord Speaker:

Now you then went to Europe and you-

Lord Kinnock:

I went to Brussels. We've already been in Europe unless there's another Ice Age, we are in Europe, yes.

Lord Speaker:

Okay. Right. But you became the Transport Commissioner.

Lord Kinnock:

Yes.

Lord Speaker:

And as the Transport Commissioner, you instigated a number of really large projects in energy, transport, security and whatever else. And I think it has a lasting effect in quite a number of countries. Give us an insight into that.

Lord Kinnock:

Well, it was the job I wanted. I was delighted to be appointed to the European Commission, and by amazing, astounding coincidence, Glenys had been elected six months before for Southeast Wales, elected to the European Parliament. So she was the democratic one. I was the bureaucratic one. Anyway, I even pleased Jacques Santerre, the President by walking into his office and saying, "Mr. President, I want to be the Transport and Trans-European Networks Commissioner." And he was delighted because somebody walked through his door being very specific-

Lord Speaker:

They knew what they wanted.

Lord Kinnock:

... About a job that needed to be done, and Santerre didn't know if he was going to be able to fill it. And I came in on, I think the second day that he was interviewing people and told him that, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. And we did make a change. I had a great team, a terrific directorate general, and a great director general, Robert Coleman, Sir Robert Coleman, lovely guy and utterly committed. And we made some good changes. Not easy because of the diversity of member states' interests. And invariably, in order to get progress in the European Union, you have to convince every size and kind and location of member states. Now, I mean, Austria had just come in to the Union, didn't have a coastline, but nevertheless, had a very strong view of maritime policy, the Greeks took a keen interest in the North Sea, and people had inherited, countries have inherited from the 19th century, different railway systems installed deliberately to sustain national security. So if a country had a particular gauge for its rail tracks, the next country would deliberately choose a different gauge so that in the event of hostilities, trains couldn't travel between them. And there are all kinds of twists and turns of that kind. So getting people to reach a consensus on basic issues on transport, which is fundamental to the operation of any economy and society wasn't always easy, but we managed to make a lot of progress.

Lord Speaker:

You had 14 major cross-border projects, and I think you gave a push to the bridge between Sweden and Denmark.

Lord Kinnock:

Yeah, the Øresund. Yes. My predecessors, especially Karel Van Miert, the Belgian Commissioner was a good friend and a fellow socialist. He kicked it off, but we needed strong engagement to ensure that it came about. And the Storebælt, the other bridge, connecting Western Denmark to the mainland was very, very important as well. But if people ask, what are the great achievements? I say, I think two things. One, persuading so many countries who thought they had diverse interests, that when transport works, most other things do. When it doesn't work, nothing does. To get them to comprehend that was quite an achievement.

Lord Speaker:

Can I take you back to the 1992 shadow budget-

Lord Kinnock:

Yes.

Lord Speaker:

... where we promised increase in public spending, also increase in tax, namely over £40,000, it would be a 50% tax rate and also National Insurance, I think, at £20,500. Now, I remember fighting that campaign, and I was in one of the town centres. And I felt somebody brushing my back, and I looked, and it was an old pal of mine. And he shouted to me, he says, "John, I ain't voting for you." So I put everything else down and I said, "What's the score here? Not voting." He says, " I'm in the local whisky plant, and I'm on £19,500 at the moment. And if it goes up, then I'm paying this extra." Things are bad enough for me at the moment, so you can forget about it. I think I turned him round. Maybe that's just a wee bit arrogant, but it made a big impression on me on that. Did you feel that that was a weak point for us?

Lord Kinnock:

I always knew it was, and that's why,  months before I got myself into trouble with my highly esteemed friend and colleague, John Smith, the Shadow Chancellor, when I drew attention to the fact that in all our policy documents in a supper I had with journalists, we'd actually put an emphasis on the gradual introduction, the phased introduction of increases in National Insurance for salaries above £24,000 a year, to make it a gradient so that we weren't continuing with a system that meant somebody on £30,000 a year was paying only the same National Insurance as somebody on £19,000 a year. But that there would be a gradient, that would mean there would be an increase in National Insurance revenues on a very gradual basis. And the explicit purpose of increasing National Insurance was to increase old age pensions, because pension poverty, as you recall, John, was very, very widespread and deep and it had to be tackled.

In rejecting us at the '92 election, of course, people of all ages were inflicting serious, continuing difficulties of poverty on their parents. But okay, that's the outcome of an election. Now, the problem was, and the disagreement I had with John Smith was arising from the fact that in the previous autumn, I'd been arguing that we needed to release much more detail of our fiscal plans, specifically in order to inform the public and to rebut the challenges that inevitably would come, not just from the Tories but from the Tories' newspapers as well. And I said, "We are going to need months in order to try and ensure that people comprehend how very modest these changes are. That only about one in 10 families will see any rise in their taxation. And of the other nine out of 10 there will actually be beneficiary families, about three families out of 10 will benefit. And the remainder, the other six out of 10 will feel no difference whatsoever except that their parents will be better looked after."

John took a different view. He said, "We're going to produce a shadow budget as soon as the Tories have produced their budget. We'll be working against the background of realistic figures." And the fact of the matter is that John was such a significant figure and so widely respected, I could not afford to have a public punch-up. And of course within seconds, any divergence that we had would've become public in any case.

So eventually with huge regret, I had to go along with the idea of the production of the shadow budget, which as I said to him, would give us weeks of an election campaign of rebuttal instead of giving us months before an election campaign for information, education, and rebuttal, so that was the difference. Now, I'm not putting the blame on John, God rest his soul, but that was the divergence. And it was obvious to me that in the maelstrom of an election campaign, getting through the truth about how much or how little we were going to seek to collect and how it was going to be spent, was going to be a damn sight more difficult than in just about any other circumstances.

Lord Speaker:

Finally, Neil, your passion for politics is undiminished, notwithstanding your retirement, your age, or whatever. And you mentioned about your grandchildren and their future on that. What message do you have for young people, as a final comment on this podcast, given that it's seen that we've probably shortchanged that generation?

Lord Kinnock:

We have shortchanged them in a variety of ways. You can enumerate them, and I can point to origins of the difficulties we are inflicting on them going back 40 years. But what I say to my own grandchildren is what my grandparents said to me, "Be yourself. Be yourself.” Understand that you're not inferior or superior, and act that out. Never defer, never dominate." Just be what my mother used to call a good citizen. Fastidious, work hard, play hard, all those cliches. They're cliches because they're true.

And the other thing I say to them with some reciprocation is, "You have to be politically involved because if you don't do it to politics, politics will do it to you. You'll be subject to political manoeuvres and decisions instead of influencing the direction of politics. And you can't afford for that to be the case." And it does mean that some of them are, they're all politically sound and conscious, admirably so. They know things I couldn't have taught them. They have insights that astound me. It's a delight. And one or two of them are active with a very progressive feet on the ground attitude, which I love, of course.

Lord Speaker:

Good. Well, Lord Kinnock, Neil, thank you very much for the pleasure of this this morning. It was a great experience, and I'm grateful to you.

Lord Kinnock:

Thank you very, very much.

Lord Speaker:

Thank you.

Lord Kinnock:

Thank you.