Ron Todd

Speaker 20:00

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 20:08

The programme was originally broadcast in nineteen ninety one.

Speaker 20:11

And the presenter was Sue Lawley.

Presenter0:27

My castaway this week is a trade union leader. He still lives in the area of East London where he was brought up, the son of a market street trader. The close, supportive community of his childhood was an enormous influence on him, but his conversion to socialism came when, serving as a marine at the end of the war, he witnessed the appalling poverty of Hong Kong.

Presenter0:48

He's not a man who embraces change easily. He's frequently embarrassed the Labour Party with his attacks on its modern ways, and he remains a believer in traditional union organization. He is the leader of the country's biggest union, the Transport and General Workers,

Presenter1:04

Ron, how close do you live these days to the street where you were actually born and bred, right up against it?

Ron Todd1:10

Well, I was born just off of the market in in Walthams Hoe High Street. I currently live uh near the Ford plant that I worked in, so I'm about uh a mile and a half from the market, two miles from the market.

Presenter1:21

And you still walk down there every weekend, do you?

Ron Todd1:24

Nearly every Saturday I'm home I go down the market because many of the stallholders I went to school with and many of them I knew at the time my father and grandfather were in the market.

Presenter1:32

A lot of families in the East End who were born, you know, in the twenties when you were and in the thirties eventually got moved out, didn't they? They they were moved out and rehoused in new towns in Stevenage and Crawley and so on. How did your family avoid that?

Ron Todd1:40

Yes, they were.

Ron Todd1:44

Well, my sister actually lives in Basudan, but the rest of us live around Mum. And I I personally think that that moving around the new towns, the Crawley's, the Basudans and the new towns that came emerged after the war, that did break down the family unit because in when I was a youngster, you know, girls got married, boys got married and they lived round the corner from Mum. Mum became the focal point of the family. And in fact, my mother, every Saturday, my brothers and sisters and I it's very rare that we we don't uh I see Mum at least once a week. My brothers who are retired see her more often than I do.

Presenter2:18

How old is she now?

Ron Todd2:19

My mother's in her ninetieth year now, yes.

Presenter2:21

So that that sense of community and strong roots and loyalty and all those things are really very important to you, very they're fundamental to you.

Ron Todd2:29

Well, they are to me because uh I believe that uh you know uh among the the people that I grew up with, you know, there are wonderful characters. They may not be uh highly educated, you know, but the the compassion that they can feel for people in trouble and the way that they combine to help each other, I think that I think they're a wonderful, wonderful breed of people.

Presenter2:47

Well, we'll talk about all of that in a minute, but let's start really on your desert island and your requirements there. Now, your music is purely nostalgia, is it?

Ron Todd2:56

I had to think of how can I choose a piece of music which would relate to different parts of my life, and so I chose Memory Milestones, uh a song that strikes a chord and reminds me or my wife of some passage of our life together that we can recall.

Presenter3:09

But you can have terrible trouble all alone there without this community and this family.

Ron Todd3:13

Absolutely, but uh I'll have to try and overcome it if I can.

Presenter3:17

So what's the first record you'll put on your gun?

Ron Todd3:18

The first one is a little boy in the market around about seven. We had a we had a music shop that used to have a loudspeaker and uh used to play this music. And the one that sticks in my mind was at the time that Gershwin, George Gershwin, gave his first public performance of Rhapsody in Blue and uh in my years of six and seven I can remember the tune uh incessantly being played.

Presenter5:07

Rhapsody in Blue with the Columbian jazz band played by George Gershwin with Paul Whiteman and his concert orchestra. So there were six Todd children, um, born for the most part during the twenties in Walthamstow, three boys and three girls. What what did your dad sell in the market, Ron?

Ron Todd5:23

Well, my my father and my grandfather, um, w it was fruit, also peanuts.

Presenter5:28

Tell me about some of the atmosphere in that market. I mean, what did it mean to you as a child?

Ron Todd5:33

Well, I I personally love the market. I love the characters in the market. Many of them long gone, you know, some of the old-time characters. But I love the atmosphere, and especially pre-war. Pre-war, just prior to Christmas, they would prepare the stalls, you know, with the frontsmen really doing a really decorative stall and a a show of fruit that looked actually like a work of art. And therefore, on the day before Christmas Eve, they wouldn't dismantle the stall. So they stayed up the whole night so that they were ready for Christmas Eve. And they'll have coke fires and there would be the butcher shops open. And there was just a marvellous atmosphere that surrounded the market.

Presenter6:09

And everybody looking for a bargain.

Ron Todd6:10

Well, yes, and especially on Christmas Eve, because late at night, if you waited until about uh twenty to twenty minutes to midnight, you could probably pick up a rabbit or a chicken for, you know, one and threepence. You know, the the the longer you waited, the the butcher would just let his stock go that he didn't want to keep over Christmas.

Presenter6:25

And what about the characters? Who are your favorites in the little

Ron Todd6:28

Well, there are a lot of characters in the market. I remember Cole the Corn King, who used to have ointment remedies for people with bad corns or bunions. And he would start his spill by getting somebody in the crowd to volunteer to come forward and take their sock and shoe off and show a really bad corn. And then he had a bit of an act where he would say, Yes, we'll soon solve that. And he would pull out a big cleaver from under the stall. And all the crowd, it was just the general atmosphere that you love. The Toffee Man.

Ron Todd6:58

who made the toffee and twirled it on the tray. But he would sling the toffee over hooks and we would hang around the toffee man in case there was a possibility that a piece of toffee uh fell off.

Presenter7:09

So you presumably in that environment never went hungry, although you might have been quite poor.

Ron Todd7:13

Well no. How could you go hungry? There was a position in the market that you got a a cheap rabbit, you you had your vegetables. Uh I would I never went hungry. It's just

Presenter7:21

She did a barter in exchange the whole time.

Ron Todd7:23

Well, of course, and

Ron Todd7:25

My mother and my grandmother capable of producing a meal not only for the s six of us, but to help anybody else who was uh maybe the unemployed and they got children, you know.

Presenter7:35

What about school? Any good there where you can't do it?

Ron Todd7:37

Well, I went to St Patrick's Catholic School where we were taught by nuns. Yeah, I had a reasonably happy uh school life. You know, I I thought personally that the at that time the uh c Catholicism was being almost an an obsessively drummed into, you know. Uh but we had some good times. A bit like the army, you remember all the good times, you don't necessarily remember all the bad ones.

Presenter7:58

I thought you were the young lad who asked too many questions for the nights like

Ron Todd8:00

Well um we had a sister named Sister Mary DeLourtz uh who after Catechism used to say to me, you mustn't ask all these questions. You you'll learn that you'll learn these answers when you die and uh well quite frankly I I wanted the answers a little bit quicker.

Presenter8:15

Is it also true that you once set fire to the priest's cassock?

Ron Todd8:18

Well, there was an occasion when we were doing stations of the cross. My friend had the incense on one side of the priest and I had the candle on the staff. And we had a visiting skating rink and my other friends in the congregation were asking me, apparently, whether I was going skating that night, and I couldn't quite hear them. And I caught the cassock a light. I think I was defrocked within the next quarter of an hour.

Ron Todd8:43

Again, by Sister Mary de Lewis, and I had to say a number of prayers as my penance, which were punctuated by slaps.

Speaker 28:43

Uh

Presenter8:43

Mm-hmm.

Presenter8:51

Shall we have your second record?

Ron Todd8:53

Yes, the second record I would like uh is uh my mother herself playing the piano and uh I would like to have on the island with me my mother playing black and white rag, which she did for me when she was eighty-nine.

Presenter10:11

Amy Todd playing black and white rags, not bad for Ninety Next May, is it?

Ron Todd10:15

No, not at all.

Presenter10:16

She used to earn a living or earn some money anyway for the family doing that, didn't she?

Ron Todd10:18

My mother was a semi-professional and um played silent films, uh what they call mood music, you know. And then uh she played in a in a corner of Woolworths where people could uh select their f fourpenny sheet of music and mum would just run it over before they uh paid for it, I suppose.

Presenter10:35

To show him how to do it.

Ron Todd10:36

Yes, yes.

Presenter10:38

And and don't you collect sheet music to this day?

Ron Todd10:41

I collect Victorian music covers, yes, but I collect for the cover, not the music itself. I had an interest in the uh the artists who did the illustrations, so I've got uh I've got about five hundred Victoria music sheets, just the covers. But I like music, I like songs, I like the structure of songs and I like the story behind songs.

Presenter10:53

Hmm.

Presenter10:58

And you like fossils.

Ron Todd10:59

I collect fossils, yes. I've done for about twenty five years, yes. I'm fascinated by all the details of the first life on earth and how life evolved and uh the different creatures that lived on the earth.

Presenter11:11

What did you think, though, Ron, or what did your parents think you were going to do when you were little? Was there a total expectation that you'd follow them into the market?

Ron Todd11:18

Yes, uh but to be honest I I didn't consciously sit down and think now how shall I plan my life, what will I be? You know. I didn't do that. I just assumed that I'd be working in the market.

Presenter11:28

But did you have, then, the gift of the gab? I mean, did you always question did you like a good argument?

Ron Todd11:34

Well, I must have had the gift of the gab because I remember a nun once uh calling me out in front of the class and uh and and rebuking me and telling the class this boy will one day be either a BBC announcer or Charlie Chaplin.

Ron Todd11:46

So she must have thought I talked too much, obviously.

Presenter11:50

But yours wasn't a a political family. There was not any political debate at home. I mean, you don't have a kind of heavy grounding in Marxism, do you?

Ron Todd11:54

I mean you don't have

Ron Todd11:57

No, no, that's true. I mean, the reverse is true. My family all told me that my grandfather, he wasn't a p he they weren't political animals, but I think that my grandfather, because he was in the market, you know, I think uh at times he would vote uh possibly conservative. Uh but I never grew up with any political discussion and certainly not with any talk about Keir Hardy or any of the early pioneers of the Labour movement. No.

Presenter12:21

Dummer.

Presenter12:22

Some of your brothers and sisters vote Conservative today, don't they?

Ron Todd12:25

Both of my brothers uh support the Conservative Party uh and they describe me as the black sheep of the family. I describe myself as the only one in the family who's seen the light.

Ron Todd12:35

My eldest sister is married to a Yorkshire miner, so I don't have to tell you what their political views are.

Presenter12:40

And and politics, whichever direction you've all gone in, has not divided the family.

Ron Todd12:45

Oh no, no, no, no. When when we go down to mum, you know, the the the two subjects we do not discuss are religion and politics.

Presenter12:52

Always safe.

Ron Todd12:53

Yeah.

Presenter12:53

Tell me about the war. Tell me about you being a teenager during the war. How frustrated were you that you couldn't see action?

Ron Todd13:00

Well, like everybody else, I mean, there's a glamour. You have the ridiculous position that with all my friends, we would come home, and if we hadn't got our call-up papers, we were all going to demand it and write to them and demand to know why we haven't been called up. A view that you soon change when you've had three weeks of square bashing. I eventually did get my call-up papers, and I went into the Royal Marines, in which my father was currently serving.

Presenter13:24

That was nineteen forty-five.

Ron Todd13:25

Yes.

Presenter13:26

Record number three.

Ron Todd13:27

My next song that I would like is uh is really a part of just a pre-war. It was uh the programme on radio with uh In Town Tonight when they stopped the roar of London traffic and you heard uh Aggie Pegg, the flower seller, calling out the sweet violets. And that was Eric Coates's Knightsbridge March.

Presenter14:40

The Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Sir Charles Groves playing Knightsbridge, one of Eric Coates' London suites. So you were eighteen years old, Ron Todd, and as a Royal Marine you were posted to Hong Kong, 1945. What you witnessed there was to change your life fundamentally, wasn't it? Can you describe to me what affected you so deeply?

Ron Todd14:59

Well, yes, at the time when I went to Hong Kong, the Japanese war had ended. Hong Kong was really under martial law, and we went there about five months after the surrender. And I was still then practicing my religion. But when I went to Hong Kong and saw the extremes of wealth and poverty, the rich Chinese merchants living on the peak and down in Kowloon and Hong Kong itself, thousands of them virtually, well I won't be too dramatic, dying from malnutrition, but lying on the used to step over them, going back to the barracks, you know. And I just couldn't reconcile this. And I used to have a discussion with a priest there, and he was talking about the power of prayer. And I thought it would be more effective if somebody went down there and did something about the children that I used to step over, going back, you know, with.

Ron Todd15:48

smallpox and cholera and uh malnutrition, I just began to lose uh my faith.

Presenter15:55

And when did you go on into the analysis of that and think to yourself that that in the end socialism had to be the answer for these kinds of inequalities?

Ron Todd16:04

Well, only because to put some of these things right, you know, requires certain principles to be adopted and also requires collective action.

Presenter16:13

And did you also feel at that point that that it might be you who might become some kind of spokesman, that it was you who was willing and able to get up and do something about these things?

Ron Todd16:22

Even when I first started work, I mean, if if there was something wrong, I was always uh ready, uh, you know, with the others to voice the collective concerns, you know.

Presenter16:30

And you turned out to be quite good at it, didn't you? I mean, you you were said to be a great fixer when by the time you were demobbed you went back to the the Ford motor factory I think it was a cash fixer.

Ron Todd16:38

Well, I was a gas fitter, first of all. I left gas fitting because, quite frankly, the money I was earning with a wife and two children, Fords had opened a factory in my locality where I could probably get eight or nine pounds a week more. Gas fitting I loved, out in the open, working to your own in your own timing, just doing specific, you've got just specifications. Very much left to be your own boss. I didn't enjoy going back in, but the sheer economic requirements forced me to go to work in a factory environment. So I went into Ford's.

Presenter16:39

Hmm.

Presenter17:09

And would it have been then a totally ridiculous thought, totally ridiculous idea, that that man, Ron Todd, in his early twenties, might one day be a Union leader?

Ron Todd17:19

Well, I don't think it was an idea that was that would have been floating around, quite frankly, certainly not in Ron Todd's mind. My main concern was just to represent working people as a shop steward and to be I was deputy convener of the plant. And in fact, when some of my colleagues suggested that I should make application to become a local full-time officer, I questioned very much whether I had the competence to do it. You know, I said I'm quite happy in this environment, but I don't know and it was only because I was persuaded that I then became a local full-time officer.

Presenter17:52

Some more music.

Ron Todd17:53

The next one I would choose would be in fact Dubasi's Claire Delune and I choose it because when I did go to Hong Kong I had a friend I did training with and he spent nine months teaching me Claire de Lune on the piano. He finally accomplished it. I mean I can still play the main melody of Claire de Lune but unfortunately he he was killed the night before we were due to sail home. So that song always reminds me of my friend Mansa Falk and our time in Hong Kong.

Presenter19:30

Cecile Usay playing Debussy's Claire d'Alune.

Presenter19:34

By nineteen sixty two, I think it was Rontod, you were a a full-time Union officer and you worked under Frank Cussons and then Jack Jones.

Presenter19:42

There were many memorable battles during those years over pay and conditions. Did do you relish the memory of that? Did you enjoy all that cut and thrust of negotiations?

Ron Todd19:51

Yeah, well I look back and I don't necessarily relish the sort of nine-week strikes that we went through. What I do remember with affection is the camaraderie of the colleagues in that nine-week strike, you know, despite all the problems we had, you know, the union battling together with colleagues that I've worked with for many years. So you do look back with a degree of nostalgia and

Presenter19:51

Yeah.

Ron Todd20:16

Remember again the humorous moments rather than the bad times.

Presenter20:20

Because of course the sixties and the seventies were the heydays uh for the unions, really. It's not quite like that any more, is it?

Ron Todd20:26

No, it's not. And obviously we've just come through or we're at the end of possibly twelve years of the Conservative government in which four or five Secretary of States have brought in various instruments of legislation that, in my opinion, were designed to render trade unions impotent and make life difficult for us.

Presenter20:46

But what you've been personally criticised for over those past few years, since you were became General Secretary in 1985.

Ron Todd20:47

Bean

Presenter20:54

Is your unwillingness to change, really, to be more flexible and to have local working arrangements and no strike agreements and so on. The criticism you is that you've wanted to cling on to the old style union structures, and that's out of date.

Ron Todd21:07

That's not true, and neither is it true that I'm unwilling to change. What I'm unwilling to do is to surrender fundamental trade union principles. I think it's wrong to enter into an agreement that tells workers that never at any time can they take the, as a last resort, industrial action. That's the fundamental right of any individual.

Presenter21:30

But there was the example, wasn't there, when Fords wanted to build a factory at Dundee, and you refused to sign a a single union agreement, and eventually they went and built the factory in Spain instead.

Ron Todd21:39

Uh the only time that I'm criticised is uh is if I come to a position and say, look, uh we want jobs to come in and uh we want to be cooperative, but no position should be exploited either by management. And there was a clear intention at that time to break through the Ford Agreement and have operation in Dundee which was at lower rates, which would be also detrimental to other parts of the Ford plants.

Presenter22:04

Difficult, though, to explain to a hungry man that he hasn't got a job for the greater good of the Union.

Ron Todd22:09

Well, it is, but when you say hungry, there are two million people unemployed at this moment in time. I argued that, yes, we want to cooperate to get all sorts of jobs coming in. But what do I say to the hungry man in the other four places when Fords transfer the work from them? Now I've got nine hundred people out of work. And I tell those hungry people then that I'm sorry, but I thought it was best that the work you had should go to Dundee. So you're on the horns of a dilemma. It was a new plant in Dundee that would jeopardise and Fords were breaking, in my opinion, would have been able to break the National Agreement, which lays down all the conditions for all Ford plants within the United Kingdom.

Presenter22:49

So what do you say to those people who say to you that that your fundamental trade union principles have really been harnessed to something which now has been bypassed by history?

Ron Todd23:02

Well, I don't think it's been bypassed by history because I believe that with many of the problems we've got, the solution to those problems still rests with the solidarity and the commitment of working people coming together and finding solutions to them. I don't believe that you solve anything by saying, Well, in order to meet with the current economic position, we must give away all of those values that we agree with, you know, do concession bargaining, hand back things that our fathers and our grandfathers fought for. I don't believe that that's the road that the trade union should go down.

Presenter23:36

Let's have record number five.

Ron Todd23:38

Well, I would like to hear one particular big band song that always recalls for me memories of the war years and dancing at the Waltham Stow Assembly Hall is Charlie Barnett's uh band playing Skyliner.

Speaker 223:52

Uh

Presenter24:42

Charlie Barnett and Skyliner to do some ballroom dancing on the beach all by yourself, Ron. We talked about you and the Union. Let's talk about you and the Labour Party. Now, y you believe, don't you, that that it has moved away from its original socialist commitments?

Ron Todd24:58

No, there are some areas where there have been disagreements between myself and the Labour Party. But there's always been a broad church of a party, different political views, you know. Where I think all the media remember is the disagreement that I had with them over the question of unilateral nuclear disarmament. Well, quite frankly, there's nothing special about that. I've been in CND since the early days of CND. I passionately believe in it, and I just can't turn on its head something I've believed in for thirty-odd years.

Presenter25:30

But you've been pretty scathing about it beyond its defence policy, haven't you? You don't like this sort of modernist stuff. You talked about.

Presenter25:37

them dropping Socialist commitment in favour of glossy pink roses and a sharp suit and a a winning smile and

Ron Todd25:43

Well that's uh

Presenter25:44

Cordless telephones.

Ron Todd25:45

Well no but that's that's out of context. Uh uh people who have read the speech that I made at Tribune, and I made it deliberately, I merely wanted to say that there are two groups in the party. There are the nostalgics who live in the past and think that the nothing's happened in the last fifty years, and there are the modernists. And all I indicated was that it's fine to have cordless phones and word processors and all the techniques and a glossy image, but we must also remember that we have policies that we believe in. Otherwise, I said you might just as well be selling soap powder.

Presenter26:13

But what you were talking about is is having principles, and that's what you were talking about in relation to union negotiations as well. I suppose the fundamental point of that is, is it any good having every single one of your principles intact, but never achieving power?

Ron Todd26:28

Well, I don't want every single one intact and you have to adjust to respond to the general views of the people concerned. But there are some fundamental principles that I don't believe you can afford to discard. If you do that, then you won't be in power, you will be in office because you will have shed all the things. Remember, in 1983, 10 million people voted for the Labour Party, and they voted knowing that Labour would unilaterally disarm all the main policies of Labour. So, yes, you do need to that's why we set up the policy review committees to look at our policies, to bring them up to date, to see that they reflected the current thinking of people. But I still say that there are many areas where, quite frankly, we've got to go out to the people and touch them on the shoulder and explain to them. Let them understand, not through the media, but explain to people what we are about, you know, the need to look after the community.

Presenter27:26

But the irony for you, surely, in all of that is b being a very straightforward, ordinary commoner garden socialist, if I can use that phrase, n with no deep roots, as we've said, in in Marxism, and no deep political background.

Presenter27:41

In questioning the Labour Party, as you have done, in embarrassing it on occasions, the result is that you have inflicted blows on the very thing which you hold so dear, the Labour Movement itself.

Ron Todd27:52

Well, I don't believe I've inflicted damage on the Labour Party. There were differences, but did people imagine that in a working class trade union socialist organisation that would be all in tune on every feature, the whole basis of our movement has been born out of the turmoil of the differences? And there are some issues where you've got to have a debate, where there have got to be differences.

Presenter28:15

Record number six.

Ron Todd28:17

Well yes, the the song I would like on the island is one that is uh the singer is uh is a favourite of my wife Jo, and the song is a favourite of both of us, and that's Nat King Cole singing The Very Thought of You.

Speaker 428:33

The very thought of you

Speaker 428:39

And I forget to do

Speaker 428:46

The little arty things

Speaker 428:52

That everyone ought to do

Speaker 428:58

I'm living in

Speaker 429:02

A kind of daydream.

Speaker 429:07

I'm happy as a king.

Speaker 429:12

And foolish.

Speaker 429:15

Though it may seem

Speaker 429:19

To me

Speaker 429:21

That's everything.

Speaker 429:25

The mere idea of you

Presenter29:29

Nat King Cole and the very thought of you. So come on, Ron, what's the image you have of yourself on the island of Saint John?

Ron Todd29:34

Just lying back on a sand dune while Matt's voice is flying over me.

Presenter29:39

It's nice.

Ron Todd29:39

You're lovely. Love you.

Presenter29:41

What do your family think of of your career on on the Union front line? What does your mother think when she sees you on the television?

Ron Todd29:47

When mum sees me at the rostrum and I've got a a very aggressive style of speaking, mum usually tells uh my brother whoever's there, you know, that uh that boy's going to have a heart attack, she says, uh and I have to explain to her, I said, I wasn't angry. She why were you so angry? she said. I said, I wasn't angry, mum, it's it's the it's the way I I just speak like that, it's an aggressive style, but I'm not angry at all, you know. And she said, Oh, I I get worried sometimes the way you shout and rave

Presenter30:13

Didn't you fib to her once about where you were going?

Ron Todd30:15

Well, actually if I'm going anywhere sentinel, if like when I went to Nicaragua or when I went to South Africa with Norman Willis, I don't necessarily tell her because I know that she doesn't you can't explain all the things you're involved in. So on one occasion I told mum that I was going to a conference and just vaguely referred to the continent, you know. And then when Norman and I were arrested in Alexandra in near Johannesburg, the soldiers were in a ring around us, you know, with guns and they were holding us till the police arrived. And apparently they showed that and there was a German television crew there. They showed it worldwide. And when I came home, they told me that my mother was watching and suddenly said to my younger sister, that's Ron. And my sister was saying, no, mum, it looks like Ron. She said, don't tell me it looks like Ron, that's Ron. And when I came home, she rebuked me because she said, I thought you were going to Brussels or somewhere. And I said, well, why tell you, mum, you know?

Presenter31:07

What about your father? Didn't he live to uh see you achieve high office?

Ron Todd31:10

My father lived to see me become an an officer. My father died in nineteen sixty nine. Just the week he died, Jack Jones had had moved me from Edmonton because they wanted me to take over the Dagnam Ford membership. So that move coincided with my father dying, so he he only saw me just emerge as a local union officer.

Presenter31:29

Did he approve? Would he have approved, do you think?

Ron Todd31:31

Oh, I think so. I think actually, although my brothers will tell me that my father and his father voted uh Conservative, I tell my brothers my dad was a socialist. Everything he uttered and the concerns he expressed uh in my opinion, he was my dad was a socialist and he didn't know it.

Presenter31:47

Record number seven.

Ron Todd31:49

What I'd like to hear now is Jerusalem, but Blake's Jerusalem. For me it conjures up all the collective aspirations of people, so Blake's Jerusalem is fine for me.

Speaker 432:23

He must be all God above.

Speaker 432:30

Hey boy, I'm sorry.

Speaker 432:37

The sin is programmed to God.

Speaker 432:43

Her sleep in my name.

Presenter33:20

Jerusalem, sung by the choir of Canterbury Cathedral.

Presenter33:23

So next March uh it all comes to an end, Ron. You step down at the age of sixty five. Are you looking forward to it?

Ron Todd33:29

Yes, I am, uh really. I mean, obviously there'll be

Ron Todd33:33

There'll be misgivings, you know, you look back and you I'll probably read the newspapers and read of some discussions taking place in some industrial problem and uh

Ron Todd33:41

Yeah, it's like m everybody but everybody has to come to a time when they when they pack up.

Presenter33:46

And you're handing on the the Union baton to Bill Morris, Britain's first black union leader. Does it seem odd to you that it's taken so long for a Union here to have a black leader?

Ron Todd33:56

Well, I don't know whether it's odd. I mean, I've been arguing even when Bill was elected as Deputy General Secretary, I think the union membership chose the right leader. He happened to be black. And in the same way that Bill has been my deputy for four years and was successful in the election, and I'm very pleased that the membership chose Bill. I think he would do a lot for the union.

Presenter34:20

Of course, that membership has lost some 900,000 members since 1979, although it's still the most powerful one in Britain.

Ron Todd34:24

Yes.

Presenter34:28

Do you not, though, have to admit that the days of union power, the heydays that we were talking about, the sorts of days that you have experienced of power, authority, and influence of the trade union, are gone now?

Ron Todd34:40

Yes, of course. I mean, the days when unions like the National Union of Mine Workers played a prominent role at the TUC and the Labour Party, yeah, there have been dramatic changes in the unions, and the unions have got to face the challenges of the nineteen nineties and they've got to look across and accept the fact that nineteen ninety two means that we are a part of Europe and we've got to play our role there. We can't stand on the sidelines. As chairman of the international committee, when I introduced the international debate, in fact I said Brussels is the only card game in town.

Presenter35:11

You don't sound like a dinosaur now.

Ron Todd35:13

Well, I mean, I can't help how the papers present me. I mean, nobody will will give any credit for the fact that for sixteen years my union rejected entry into Europe. At my last biennial delegate conference, and we're coming up to another one now, I argue very strongly, yes, that is our policy, but you can't stand on the sidelines, whether we like it or not, whether you're happy or not, we're in Europe and we've got a part to play. If we stand on the sidelines, we'll be isolated. So I don't necessarily take any much notice of when the newspapers print stories of I'm a dinosaur or I'm a backwoodsman. The only time I would worry if I thought there was an element of truth in what they were saying.

Ron Todd35:52

If I know that I can uh look myself in the eyes and say that's not true, I didn't do it for that reason, then it doesn't bother me that much.

Presenter36:00

Last record.

Ron Todd36:02

My final record I would like is uh a song that my mother used to sing and also is by a singer that I know my mother likes and I certainly like, and that's Shirley Bassey singing I Wish You Love.

Speaker 436:14

I wish you blue buds in the spring

Speaker 436:22

To give your heart to song to sing.

Speaker 436:29

And then a kiss.

Speaker 436:32

Lack more than this.

Speaker 436:36

I wish you luck

Speaker 436:43

And in July

Speaker 436:47

Lemonade

Speaker 436:51

To call you in.

Speaker 436:54

In some leafy glade

Speaker 436:58

I wish you health.

Speaker 437:01

And more than wealth.

Speaker 437:05

I wish you luck

Speaker 437:13

My breaking heart

Speaker 437:16

I die and I agree.

Speaker 437:20

That's you and I

Speaker 437:24

They could never be

Speaker 437:28

So with my bless.

Speaker 437:31

My very best.

Presenter37:32

Ah

Speaker 437:35

I'll set you free.

Presenter37:40

Shirley Bassey, and I wish you love. So a little sunbathing, a little fossil hunting, a little hut building?

Ron Todd37:47

Oh yes, definitely, yes, yes.

Presenter37:49

But a planned escape.

Ron Todd37:51

Yes, I think so. But before I have the planned escape, I think I would want to first of all make sure that I've got shelter, either a cave or an overhang. I think I'm assuming that I was sh I'm shipwrecked, so I would be looking for debris. And then looking at the island resources, food, water, fauna, and then make preparation for signal fires and flat area of land where I can construct a a giant SOS, all of those things, you know.

Presenter38:16

And and while you're doing all of that, which of these records would you have played to yourself more than any of the others?

Ron Todd38:22

I think I would like uh my mother's record of black and white rag, if only because uh at eighty-nine years old it would show me that despite some of the problems my mother's had and and her current position, she's still got great uh great fortitude and courage, and that would keep me probably going until the ship came along.

Presenter38:37

And what about your reading material, apart from the Bible and Shakespeare?

Ron Todd38:40

I would like the works of Robbie Burns. When I first read Burns in nineteen forty five. I had to keep going to the margin to understand some of the words that he he used. On the island I will have greater opportunity to concentrate and and really get into Burns's works.

Presenter38:55

What about a luxury?

Ron Todd38:57

Well, I contemplated that and I thought uh is it possible for me to have a man's pie and mesh shop on the island? And I considered well that involves other people so I'm going to settle for an upright piano.

Presenter39:08

And bang away with your mother's black and white rag.

Ron Todd39:10

Well, I can knock out a few cords myself until the rescue party come.

Presenter39:13

Not Least Claire d'Alune.

Ron Todd39:15

Oh, I can yeah, clear to lunch.

Presenter39:19

Ron Todd, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your Desert Island discs.