Rt Hon David Blunkett MP

Speaker 30:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs Archive. For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music.

Speaker 30:08

The programme was originally broadcast in nineteen ninety, and the presenter was Sue Lawley.

Presenter0:29

My castaway this week is a politician. At the age of forty three he's earned himself a place at Labour's top table, both in the party and in the commons, against terrible odds. He was born blind. When he was twelve, his father, a gas board worker, died after an accident at work. His mother struggled to survive on a pension, looking after him and his eighty year old grandfather. He rewarded them with considerable achievements, passing O and A levels, winning a university degree, and spending seventeen years as a Sheffield City Councillor, seven of them as its leader. He describes himself as a man of the firm left. He is the MP for Sheffield Brightside, David

Presenter1:09

Here waiting to be cast away on our desert island, with his guide dog Offer beside him, whom you can't take with you, David. Now, how cruel is that going to be? Will you be very

Rt Hon David Blunkett MP1:17

I think the rule about only being able to take inanimate objects must actually bear very heavily on all your castaways. In my case, I think Offer would have a wonderful time on a desert island, but he wouldn't be a fat lot of use to me, because the honest truth is he works better in crowded surroundings. He does the job when things are busy, and I couldn't really use him on the island. Having the harness on might stop me falling over the occasional cliff or crevice, but it's not actually going to help me survive, and I'm going to have to find my way round the island. It'll take me a little time, but I'll do it. Making sure that I know where the dangers are and, of course, where the pleasurable bits, the nice places to swim, the beach, everything else is.

Presenter2:02

What does he save you from in in the outside world, in general? I mean, how dependent are you on him?

Rt Hon David Blunkett MP2:07

What he does is to put me on equal terms with other people in terms of being able to relax when I'm walking around. The tension that you feel when you're having to concentrate very hard indeed is quite difficult to describe. If you're in busy surroundings, you're trying to avoid banging into people, you've got to be aware of obstructions. The world that we live in obviously is full of pitfalls, literally in the pavement. And those are relieved to a great extent by having a guide dog because you can hand some of that difficulty over to him. Apart from that, of course, it breaks the ice. People are willing to talk to offer and ask me about him, whereas they may not be either willing to talk to me about my politics or they may be afraid to be able to introduce themselves.

Presenter2:54

And indeed you can use him to get you out of sticky situations, can't just make a joke about the dog.

Rt Hon David Blunkett MP2:58

I can if I don't overdo it and I'm very well aware of that so we're not going to have any in this programme.

Presenter3:04

But can you experience fear still, uh, David? You know, when you're confronted with a new environment, like a desert island, would you suddenly feel, you know, locked in your own dark world? Would you feel terrible panic?

Rt Hon David Blunkett MP3:15

Well, I wouldn't feel the darkness, but I would feel the extent of the environment. I would feel that there were very big open spaces that needed to be explored, and that is quite difficult. Mapping out, if you like, in your own mind

Rt Hon David Blunkett MP3:29

The island that you would have to live in.

Presenter3:32

I presume, then, in in this sightless world, um, that sounds obviously play a very important part, and music a most particular part, hm?

Rt Hon David Blunkett MP3:40

Yes, music does matter to me. I enjoy it very much, the whole variety of music.

Presenter3:44

So what's the first one that you would play on the Desert Island?

Rt Hon David Blunkett MP3:48

Well, I'm I'm a great sentimentalist and um I d I was wondering whether to have uh the Hollies who I went to see recently, uh the air that I'd breathe, but I've chosen instead uh Nana Mascura singing Only Love.

Speaker 24:03

Only Love.

Rt Hon David Blunkett MP4:04

Milo.

Speaker 24:06

Can make a memory

Speaker 24:10

Only love.

Speaker 34:11

Little love.

Speaker 24:13

Can make a moment last.

Speaker 24:18

You were there.

Speaker 24:21

And all the world was young.

Speaker 24:24

And all its songs and songs

Presenter4:27

Nana Muskuri singing Only Love.

Presenter4:30

How old were you, David, when your blindness was discovered?

Rt Hon David Blunkett MP4:34

I was just over a year. My mother had noticed that my eyes moved, flicked a lot, which they still do, and she was concerned about that, and she took me round to a neighbor who is now in her nineties and i is uh living in Northumberland, and Mrs. Kerridge and my mum

Rt Hon David Blunkett MP4:53

Decided that I'd better go to the doctor and they checked it out and they were very worried. They weren't sure whether in fact I'd got a tumour on the brain. And fortunately, my mum stuck it out and said, You're not going to mess with him.

Rt Hon David Blunkett MP5:03

There must be something else, and there was, and it was just one of those genetic factors, one in a million, where things had gone wrong. And my optic nerve hadn't developed a little bit like an electric wire that's not connected up properly. And from then on, my parents supported and worked with me. They had their different ways. My dad was very robust and took me out for long walks and allowed me to fall off my bike and crack my head, which annoyed my mother. And my mum protected me and looked after me. And at the age of four, I had to go to boarding school.

Presenter5:36

But was there nothing medically that could be done for you?

Rt Hon David Blunkett MP5:40

No, there wasn't. I I often wonder whether in a similar situation now or in a few years' time whether microsurgery would be able to help with that, but there wasn't. And now, of course, um

Rt Hon David Blunkett MP5:50

The situation would not be redeemable, and I I learnt to live with that.

Presenter5:55

So you were saying you at at the age of four you were sent away to school. That's very young, isn't it?

Rt Hon David Blunkett MP5:59

It was, and I still remember, going to school, and being there at the time for the whole term with just the ability to come home for one weekend every month, and my mum and dad to come and see me in the intervening fortnight.

Presenter6:13

Incredibly harsh, really, on a child who was already, by virtue of his disability, cut off from the world, to be sent away for sort of two weeks or a month on end like that. What effect did it have on your personality, do you think?

Rt Hon David Blunkett MP6:25

Well, you miss the love and the comfort of your own home and the community in which you live, and there's no doubt about that. I think for me the the good bits'cause you always remember the good bits the good bits were learning to play football with bowl bearings and the ball and

Rt Hon David Blunkett MP6:42

cricket wither, a bell in the ball, learning to ride a two wheeler bike, which usually ended up with me breaking something or cutting my head open.

Rt Hon David Blunkett MP6:49

But all those things were part of life, of of literally learning to survive and to make your way.

Presenter6:55

But then this other terrible blow came to your family, which was that your father died when you were twelve. How did it happen?

Rt Hon David Blunkett MP7:01

He was killed in a horrific uh works accident. In fact, he'd uh he was due to retire and he'd stayed on to train other people in the job he was doing. And uh

Rt Hon David Blunkett MP7:14

The

Rt Hon David Blunkett MP7:15

system at the time, which was called a water gas plant, was uh one which involved

Rt Hon David Blunkett MP7:22

putting coal down into a coking plant and he fell in and he lived for a month and I obviously can remember that to this day.

Rt Hon David Blunkett MP7:30

uh going to visit him and seeing him, and having to leave my mother at home when I eventually went to the school that I should have gone to at the time he was in hospital.

Presenter7:39

And your mother had a job to cope after that, did she?

Rt Hon David Blunkett MP7:42

Well, she'd been very ill herself and she had the enormous financial worries. I think what I am very sure about is that we should never place somebody in a position where they don't know where the next uh meal's going to come from simply because the breadwinner's been killed in an accident.

Presenter7:59

So in a sense, is that age twelve when your political education, if you like, began?

Rt Hon David Blunkett MP8:05

Well, I suppose it did influence the way I think, although being brought up on a a council estate and seeing people working very hard and getting very little reward for it influenced me as well. But I think my my father's death wasn't, in my view, a a political matter. It was very personal and it still is.

Presenter8:23

Let's have your second record there.

Rt Hon David Blunkett MP8:25

My second record is a very

Rt Hon David Blunkett MP8:27

a undervalued composer who originated from Yorkshire was a scoundrel, lived in France. It's Delius, and it's an extract from Song of Summer.

Presenter9:37

Part of Delia's Song of Summer, played by the Philemonia Orchestra conducted by Orwain Arwell Hughes. What were you like at school, David? Were you a leader of men?

Rt Hon David Blunkett MP9:46

I wouldn't put it as strongly as that. I was a torment. I undoubtedly caused my teachers some difficulty, not out of nastiness, but I was always a little bit cheeky and wanted to be involved and question, and I always have. My mum tells me that when I first went to school, I took a little lad by the hand who'd joined me at the same time in school and started to show him round, which is a typical politician when you actually didn't know the way yourself.

Presenter10:16

But did you lead any protests or?

Rt Hon David Blunkett MP10:18

I did when I was at secondary school. I had to go away to school in Shropshire because again there wasn't the integrated education in those days. And we had sausages for main meal three times in one week.

Rt Hon David Blunkett MP10:32

And I organized the my fellow students to go to the principal and say this wasn't good enough, especially as we knew that the staff were eating much more pleasantly than we were.

Presenter10:42

What sort of prospects did they offer then at that kind of school? What kind of future did they encourage you to envisage?

Rt Hon David Blunkett MP10:48

The school I was at concentrated very heavily on music, so people who had an aptitude could get very good qualifications in music, and a lot of people did piano tuning as associated with it. I took a a shorthand typing office course because that was the other option that was available to me.

Rt Hon David Blunkett MP11:06

And gradually over it took me six years in all at night school and then on day release when I got a job back in Sheffield.

Rt Hon David Blunkett MP11:13

to get the ONA levels and the National Certificate in Business Studies and to get myself into university.

Presenter11:19

But did all of that come very easily, or did you have to drive yourself?

Rt Hon David Blunkett MP11:23

Well, I look back now and I wonder how I did manage it. I wonder whether I could do it again, because it was night after night and weekend after weekend. And in one sense, I lost that key late teens, early twenties when people should be having a bit more fun. And I look back now not with resentment, but with the need to recapture a little bit of that, because I think it's important that people do have enjoyment and fun and that they're not just totally bogged down as so often I've been in the past in politics.

Presenter11:54

You were a very earnest young man, no doubt.

Rt Hon David Blunkett MP11:58

A bit a bit too earnest, immature and naïve in many ways, but um very earnest and

Rt Hon David Blunkett MP12:05

bogged down in things that were academic and serious in other ways. And I I did manage to get to university and then of course I started to get involved in the practical side'cause I was reading politics at Sheffield University.

Rt Hon David Blunkett MP12:19

But I also got on the council at the age of twenty two, and as a consequence I was learning as I went along.

Presenter12:25

Shall we pause for the next bit of oh, it's not music.

Rt Hon David Blunkett MP12:27

No, this time it's comedy. I think we need a bit of light relief, and I'm sure I would on the desert island.

Rt Hon David Blunkett MP12:34

And uh I love the comedy of the sixties and the seventies and uh Kenneth Horne Round the Horn.

Rt Hon David Blunkett MP12:42

was brilliant. I think the um

Rt Hon David Blunkett MP12:45

The little extract where we have Hullo, I'm Julian, and this is my friend Sandy, and he says, Ooh, mister Orne, nice to bardy. I think that's an absolutely lovely piece to play, and I I think that it would cheer me up on a desert island, especially in the late evenings.

Speaker 212:59

Hello, anybody there? Oh hello, I'm Julian, this is my friend Sandy.

Speaker 213:04

I've got me articles and he's taken silk. Frequently.

Speaker 213:08

Well, Miss Drawn, how nice to vardy your dolly old eek again. Oh, what brings you, trolling in here? Can you help me? I've heard. Yeah, we've all heard, Ducky. I mean, it's common knowledge, innit, Jewel. Will you take my case? Well, it depends on what it is. We've got a criminal practice that takes up most of our time. Yes, but apart from that.

Rt Hon David Blunkett MP13:14

Yeah.

Presenter13:29

Kenneth Horne, Hugh Paddock, and Kenneth Williams, in an extract from Round the Horn, recorded in nineteen sixty seven. How did you get on socially, David, in those first twenty years ago? I mean, was it an awkward business, youth club and union dances and all that?

Rt Hon David Blunkett MP13:42

I think breaking the ice, especially when you've been away from your own neighborhood, is very difficult for anyone. And when you can't see, you are in a in a you have an obstacle to overcome, I wouldn't put it any stronger than that. When you

Rt Hon David Blunkett MP13:56

When you go up to someone and uh you ask them if you'd like to dance and uh they say, uh no, thank you, mate. You know, you've got a little bit of a problem and it is a joke and I got I got round it and I lived with it.

Presenter14:08

Where you um I mean, are you automatically attracted to people who are kind of decent to you? Or or is it in a voice or a smell? I mean, wh where does where does beauty and attraction lie for you in people?

Rt Hon David Blunkett MP14:20

I think sounds obviously make a difference. You you can, I think, make a reasonable judgment by people's voices. I'm getting a lot better at it. I think we're all taken in by people.

Rt Hon David Blunkett MP14:32

At some time in our lives and I've made my errors in the past, but I think you do gain a picture of someone, a physical and uh an emotional picture, and like everyone else I think it it works most of the time. I think my hearing of people's voices and weighing up their characters is no more fallible or otherwise than you looking into somebody's face and seeing how they react or seeing how they look.

Presenter15:00

But do you wonder what people look like? I mean, I'm sure the important ones in your life are are described to you. I mean, Neil Kinnock, for instance, do you think you know what he looks like?

Rt Hon David Blunkett MP15:08

Well, it's a bit of a difficult one, this, because you obviously hear people's descriptions as well, and they all get mixed up together. You you hear the voice, you have an idea of your own, but I know that Neil's losing his hair and uh that uh he has particular mannerisms just because people have mentioned them and I I I obviously take into account what people say and weigh that up because different people have a different view of not just individuals, of people, but of

Rt Hon David Blunkett MP15:35

what what they see around them.

Presenter15:36

What does misses Thatcher look like in your head?

Rt Hon David Blunkett MP15:39

Well, of course I've got the picture of her doing her hair up nicely so that the um blondness shows through rather than the greying and that uh she uh has this different I mean she has different voices for different occasions and I imagine that that shows through in in the gentle face when uh when the lovey dovey bits coming across and the harsh glance when she wants to cut someone dead. I missed a bit of that and I'm quite glad to be honest.

Presenter16:07

What about the most fascinating one of all, yourself? I mean, I wonder how accurate your your vision of David Blunkett is?

Rt Hon David Blunkett MP16:14

Well

Rt Hon David Blunkett MP16:16

I think David Blanquier has changed, hopefully, for the better. I mean, I'm much more as I was when I was.

Rt Hon David Blunkett MP16:23

My mum's David when I was younger than I used to be.

Rt Hon David Blunkett MP16:27

And I think it's important that we we try and hear what others think about us and see that, but that we are very much ourselves, that we don't respond to being what the political arena wants to make us. I don't want to be

Rt Hon David Blunkett MP16:43

A parliamentarian sucked in by the House of Commons. I want to be myself.

Presenter16:49

I want to talk in a minute about what other people think about you, but let's have record number four first.

Rt Hon David Blunkett MP16:54

This is just straight uh love of the music, and it's uh Prokolharan with whiter shade of pale.

Speaker 217:03

We skip the light, bandango

Speaker 217:10

Turned cartwheels cross the floor.

Speaker 217:16

I was feeling kinda seasick.

Speaker 217:23

The crowd called out more

Presenter17:26

Prokal Haram and a whiter shade of pale. You scored a lot of firsts in your time, and you said earlier that at at twenty two, while you were still at university, you were elected a member of Sheffield City Council. You must have been a good twenty years younger than the rest of them.

Rt Hon David Blunkett MP17:40

Yes, I came in pretty raw, with a lot of corners to be knocked off, and quite a lot of learning to do, but there's no better way of learning than getting stuck in.

Presenter17:49

I'm nevertheless tempted to ask, since you've described this this serious minded, determined, fairly idealistic young man. I mean, were you without wishing to be rude, I mean, might a lot of them have said you were a bit of a bit of a pain in the neck.

Rt Hon David Blunkett MP18:04

Yes, I think they would. And I think they might well have been right to a degree. I think I was pig headed. I think understandably, because the

Rt Hon David Blunkett MP18:12

The obstructions that I had to face, the people telling me that it was impossible to do things, meant that you had to be very willing never to take no for an answer if you wanted to succeed. And of course I knew that there were things I couldn't do. I I won't uh put in to be an airline pilot. I bet there's a lot of people listening who are very glad to hear that. But I can do what I know is possible, and that's true today when people are still sceptical.

Presenter18:40

But do you I mean, you obviously resent that to an extent, and you also, I think, it would be fair to say you you don't suffer fools gladly, do you? You can be jolly prickly.

Rt Hon David Blunkett MP18:50

I don't suffer fools, Dudley. I don't I hope I'm not unkind. I'm much more careful now that uh to take account of people's failings than I I used to be, and I hope they are of mine. I think something that

Rt Hon David Blunkett MP19:04

Blind people and people with disabilities have to be aware of as well that sometimes we are a little bit sharp with people who want to help when they are doing their best and they may have done it in a clumsy or even in a patronizing way. And I'm looking for ways now all the time of saying to people, yes, the help is needed, but could you think about saying it or doing it in a way that you would want for yourself so that it doesn't appear to be done in a patronising way?

Presenter19:30

Is that another reason do you think that you find politics attractive? Because nobody in politics is going to make allowances for anybody, be they deaf, blind, or lame?

Rt Hon David Blunkett MP19:40

Well, they don't and uh I would never have made the leadership of Sheffield City Council, which is a a very wonderful city, but it's a tough environment if I had not been able to do the job, and it's true in Parliament. I think people are initially

Rt Hon David Blunkett MP19:52

a little bit sympathetic and uh they're a little bit wary of coming in with all guns blazing. I think that wears off very quickly indeed and I'm glad about that.

Presenter20:01

Your other notable first, of course, was being elected to the Labour Party's ruling executive, the NEC, before you were an MP, and nobody had done that for forty years, I think. Was that the moment when you knew you could transfer from municipal politics to national politics, that you could get to Westminster?

Rt Hon David Blunkett MP20:18

I think when I decided to stand for the NEC,

Rt Hon David Blunkett MP20:21

the decision had been made at that moment that if I wanted to continue at that level, then I would have to transfer because regrettably in Britain you can't move straight from the leadership

Rt Hon David Blunkett MP20:34

of a council into government as you can in France or the United States, and therefore you have to serve your time. And I took the decision to transfer, in my view, sideways rather than upwards, but other people seem to have a different view of that.

Presenter20:47

But it must have been terribly difficult. I mean, after seventeen years on a big city council seven of them as its leader, of a big city council, suddenly you come to Westminster and you're terribly junior. You've got no power, no decisions to make. I mean, it's a total come down, in one sense, isn't it?

Rt Hon David Blunkett MP21:04

Well, it's made to feel that way. For me it was transferring from one national political job to another. I loved being the leader of Sheffield City Council because I could make decisions, I could affect people's lives, and I hold now the very strong wish that I will be able to do that very shortly in government.

Presenter21:26

Record number five.

Rt Hon David Blunkett MP21:27

Well, record number five reflects my strong commitment to the city of Sheffield, and I can't think of anyone else better to reflect that than a citizen who actually lived in the constituency.

Rt Hon David Blunkett MP21:43

where I now have the pleasure and privilege of representing the people, and that's Joe Cocker.

Speaker 221:49

Cause I wearing you

Speaker 221:54

Where the Eagles cry.

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What a mouth in her

Speaker 222:02

The lifters are where we belong.

Speaker 222:08

From the wild we know

Speaker 222:12

But I can't win

Speaker 222:17

Is a well

Presenter22:19

Joe Cocker and Jennifer Warns singing Up Where We Belong.

Presenter22:23

We skated pretty quickly over your seventeen years on Sheffield City Council.

Presenter22:27

David, you alongside Ken Livingston and Derrick Hatton, I think were probably the most famous of the big city leaders in those early Thatcher years. Now you've survived beyond them, although Ken Livingston's in Parliament, you've got to the front bench of the Labour Party.

Presenter22:42

What's the secret? What have you got that they haven't? How do you differ?

Rt Hon David Blunkett MP22:46

My politics are those of a young man who was brought up on a councillor state, who recognised the real pain that people feel and therefore the need to make sure that what we do is there to assist them. It's not about projecting me, it's working as a team, trying to get my values across, those values of democracy and giving people real power themselves. And I think that the way in which Sheffield City Council developed in the 1980s was very different to the Liverpool of the militant tendency. And obviously there was a different response. And I've tried to carry that into the House of Commons, where I'm not in opposition to my own party. I'm in the business of persuading people of the things I stand for and making sure that I can be there to implement them rather than simply to criticise from the outside.

Presenter23:42

Is that, then, what you mean when you call your brand of politics firm left as opposed to their hard left?

Rt Hon David Blunkett MP23:49

Yes, I believe that it's having very clear principles on which you then judge the policies and the practical way that you're performing.

Rt Hon David Blunkett MP23:59

But you don't believe that you're in a world of your own. We are in the real world as it is now, and we've got to face that. And we have to win people to what we stand for. We have to b to ensure that they believe that we identify with them.

Presenter24:15

I'm sure if I asked you you'd say that you you sent power right now. But but let me put it to you this way. Isn't it still the case that yes, Labour are ahead in the polls, but it's misses Thatcher who is losing rather than Labour who are gaining?

Rt Hon David Blunkett MP24:30

I think we're doing a bit of both. I would accept very clearly that there's more of the Conservatives blowing it through the poll tax and the health service and the the economy falling apart than people actually saying the Labour Party's the best thing since sliced bread and our task is to do both. It's obviously not to ignore the fact that the Conservatives are in disarray. It's to make sure that people want the things that we stand for and are willing to trust us to do them.

Presenter25:00

Number six.

Rt Hon David Blunkett MP25:02

Well, number six goes way back to the days that I did sit and listen to my forty fives, and it reflects the fact that uh whilst I enjoy things like Paul McCartney's music, I was very much in those days a Presley man, and I think The Wonder of You is a very nice record, so we'll have that.

Speaker 225:20

Give me hope and consolation

Speaker 225:25

You give me strength to carry on And you're always there

Speaker 225:32

We're

Speaker 225:40

That's the one there.

Speaker 225:44

The Wonderland

Presenter25:46

Elvis Presley and The Wonder of You.

Presenter25:49

Who are your eyes, David, in your work? Who reads the papers for you, and reads your posts to you, and so on?

Rt Hon David Blunkett MP25:54

Well, I have uh over the years very good staff and friends who do this job for me. When I was a student I had a reading circle of people who did it. I have uh my personal assistant in Sheffield who looks after the Sheffield end of everything and makes sure that the most important part of my work, my constituency

Rt Hon David Blunkett MP26:17

Are serviced and protected and worked for in the best possible way.

Presenter26:21

But how do they do it?

Rt Hon David Blunkett MP26:22

I mean, read onto cassette material that comes in in London. I have staff who.

Rt Hon David Blunkett MP26:28

A braille on special braille equipment which uh they don't need to know braille to be able to operate.

Rt Hon David Blunkett MP26:34

They produce the amendments that I need for committee work. I have to specify what I want putting in braille. The cassettes include the Morning's Post, they include the extracts from the newspapers, and the quid pro quo of that work is that I have to spend time in the evening, late into the night, and at weekends when I'm cooking in the kitchen with my boys, where we're busy getting the Saturday evening meal and I've got a cassette on the machine listening to something very tedious. Those things are my part of doing the job.

Presenter27:06

But it means you can't do two things at once. I mean you can't sit in in a committee meeting and when it gets a bit boring kind of mug up on the the next bit or read a bit of post.

Rt Hon David Blunkett MP27:14

That's right. I mean people aren't supposed to be reading but they do in committee meetings and it does mean that that to me is often dead time which results in me having to put in even greater hours. I don't mind doing that. I've had to do it all my life and it is the way in which I work. Inevitably and the downside of this is I don't read as much as I would like. I don't walk into a library and browse through the books and I do miss being able to do that.

Presenter27:42

Can I ask you, David, what what is the the greatest regret of your sightlessness, if there is one? I mean, is is there anything you find quite impossible to visualize, or that you would love to see?

Rt Hon David Blunkett MP27:52

I partly think that you shut that off. I mean, I can see the woods I can see the the evening sun going down, in the sense that I can

Rt Hon David Blunkett MP28:02

feel the atmosphere I can feel the

Rt Hon David Blunkett MP28:06

the the atmosphere of an old building, a of an ancient church, uh and I can feel through other people's description what is around me when I'm in a strange place.

Rt Hon David Blunkett MP28:18

But I do regret, obviously, being able to see some of the

Rt Hon David Blunkett MP28:22

wonderful, beautiful things in life, as well as this browsing through the library that I've mentioned.

Rt Hon David Blunkett MP28:28

And uh it would be nice sometimes to be able to see my three boys give me a smile when I've uh told them off for doing something cheeky.

Presenter28:39

What's your seventh choice, then?

Rt Hon David Blunkett MP28:41

My seventh choice reflects my belief that there is a power that we're not in touch with as much as we should be, the the the nature, the world around us, the depths of of history.

Rt Hon David Blunkett MP28:55

I call it my little wooden sword, and it's an unusual little recording, and I think that people will find this both strange and I think compelling.

Speaker 229:08

Boy in Busca Damagos.

Rt Hon David Blunkett MP29:10

Uh

Speaker 229:10

Y the princesas.

Speaker 229:13

I go seeking magicians and princesses.

Speaker 229:17

Who has shown you the pathway of the poets?

Speaker 229:20

The fountain and the stream of the old, old song

Speaker 229:25

Go you far?

Speaker 229:26

Far off from the sea

Presenter29:27

Sea and the earth?

Speaker 229:29

My heart of silk is full of lights and far-off bells, of lilies and of bees.

Speaker 229:35

And far away I'll go

Presenter29:37

An extract from Federico Garcia Lorca's poem Ballada de la Placeta, read by Trader Faulkner and Pauline Lettz.

Presenter29:44

So, um, we prepare to cast you adrift, David, to the mercy of the elements. What will you um reflect on in your loneliness, do you think?

Rt Hon David Blunkett MP29:53

Well, I think it would give me a chance to be able to get things in some sort of perspective and of course to make plans to escape because whilst I would love the isolation for a time, I would love the opportunity of quietness, I would want to be back with friends and with the world as I know and love it.

Presenter30:09

Yeah.

Presenter30:13

You've come a long way, David, as we've heard, against an awful lot of odds. Is is there a limit to your ambition?

Rt Hon David Blunkett MP30:21

My ambition's limited to being able to provide myself with a a happy and easy life where I don't mean in terms of creature comforts, I mean in terms of personal satisfaction and happiness inside and be able to do my politics to implement my ideas as well as I can and so I have no burning ambition to have to be in a particular position at a particular time.

Presenter30:48

But you haven't ruled out, I take it, leadership of the Labour Party.

Rt Hon David Blunkett MP30:52

I would very much like to serve in a government under the leadership of Neil Kinnock as next Prime Minister, and anyone in the Labour Party who doesn't want to do that is condemning themselves and the people who they represent to a further term of Conservative government.

Presenter31:09

But alone on your desert island you might succumb to considering life after Kinnock.

Rt Hon David Blunkett MP31:13

Oh, I I might well. I mean, I would be Prime Minister of my own little world out there, and uh I think it's always worth reflecting that we can be, and it's the world as we live in and uh represent it that we have to face.

Presenter31:29

Shall we have your eighth record?

Rt Hon David Blunkett MP31:30

My eighth record again reflects Yorkshire, backed up by the traditional colliery band. We have someone who either you love or you hate, Peter Scallon, singing You're a Lady.

Speaker 231:51

You're pure magic

Speaker 231:53

I love my children.

Speaker 231:56

Nothing ventured.

Speaker 231:58

Nothing game.

Speaker 232:01

So I say with

Speaker 232:04

No restraint be mine.

Presenter32:11

Peter Skellen, and you're a lady. That's a real weepy, David.

Rt Hon David Blunkett MP32:15

Very much so, and uh I feel very soft and uh warm inside. It would be lovely on one of those warm evenings sitting on the beach.

Presenter32:24

Is that the one you'd have, then, as the choice of the age?

Rt Hon David Blunkett MP32:27

It is my single record that I would have to take if I had to choose, and I would be very happy to be able to reflect on life and listen to it.

Presenter32:35

Nice bit of brass in the background, too.

Rt Hon David Blunkett MP32:37

Yes, I think it's the Gramstrope Colliery Ben.

Presenter32:42

What about your book, then? Complete works of Shakespeare and Bible are sitting there waiting for you. What are you bringing in?

Rt Hon David Blunkett MP32:46

Well, in Braille that should be a boatload because it's very bulky. I think Robert Graves' anthology of verse Robert Graves writing as he did in the unspoilt part of New York are one of the least fashionable and one of the most lovely parts of Europe, and I think that would be most enjoyable.

Presenter33:05

And a luxury, one of those two.

Rt Hon David Blunkett MP33:08

I think I would take a ra am I allowed a radio cassette. If I was really cheeky I'd want my recording of Cider with Rosie on the cassette, but I wouldn't settle

Presenter33:16

No, no, no, it's all too much.

Rt Hon David Blunkett MP33:17

No, no, okay, well well uh

Rt Hon David Blunkett MP33:20

One or the other, a cassette machine or a radio, would be very nice indeed, and would be, if you like, the substitute for me for being able to write in the sand.

Presenter33:29

David Blunkett, and indeed your guide dog offer, who's been very patient, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your desert island discs.

Rt Hon David Blunkett MP33:37

Thank you very much indeed.

Speaker 333:46

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Islandists archive. For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co.uk slash radio four.