Clare Short MP

Presenter0:00

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.

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

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My Castaway this week is a Labour MP. She started her professional life as a civil servant but found the strain of remaining neutral too testing.

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She now proudly represents the Birmingham constituency where she was born, and boldly campaigns in support of many issues, not all of them popular. She's resigned from the Labour front bench twice, but her most famous cause has been the attempt to have Page Three girls banned from the tabloid press. In this attempt she's so far failed, but has suffered vilification at the hands of the newspapers as a result. She is Claire Short.

Presenter1:02

Patently, Clare, you're a woman of very strong views who doesn't mind having a go, as it were. Do you ever wish wish you weren't that sort of person?

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I think very occasionally, but I just am. I mean, so if I

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Wasn't that kind of person, I wouldn't exist, and I've always been like it since I was a little girl. I mean, sometimes I am one of these people that will sort of

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argue with people, you know, if if something that I feel passionately about comes up on a social occasion.

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And sometimes I think, Oh, shut up, Claire, leave it. I can't help it. I do I mean it all. But does it mean that um people perhaps have a wrong impression of you? When when people meet you, do they say, Gosh, I didn't know you were going to be like this? Which is that you seem to have a sense of humour and you smile and you seem warm. That's how it used to happen, especially when the sun and all that were really having a go and trying to create this image of me th this harrid and vile, sort of joyless woman.

Presenter1:57

And then I'd turn up and everyone kept saying, But you're lovely And it was only'cause they'd believed the other story. It's a rather sexist thing, though, isn't it, that that people say that about you, that they believe you're some kind of campaigning Harrodon. Because

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They don't say that of men who campaign hard and who are quite fierce and and have strong views.

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They say it of you because you're a woman. I think that's right. I think there's all sorts of.

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Extra bits of attacks that women politicians get. And then you can either sort of go quiet and pretend to be sweet, or just take it.

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And I just keep taking it. But it's gone a bit a bit softer lately. Do you like the fact that it's gone softer, or does that mean that you're not having uh getting the reaction that you want? No, I like it. It was getting I there was a whole series of assaults on me. The West Midland series crimes got the news of the world, and then I had the ETPU in my constituency, and I thought

Clare Short MP2:38

Yeah.

Presenter2:48

The next national institution that throws itself at me, I'm going to give in. I it I was getting to the point where it was getting a bit hard to take, so I'm glad they're leaving me alone at the moment.

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Let's look into your records. We're going to create aloneness for you here. What what kind of music would you want if you were all by yourself on a desert island? I would want nostalgia. I would want things that reminded me of things.

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And number one is

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Bob Marley no woman, no cry.

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And why do you want that?

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It fits very much my constituency and um

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You know, a lot I remember when I was a little girl, the first people from the Caribbean coming to live in Handsworth, and that's all part of my life.

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And the words say remember who you are, which I think everyone should, and we should all respect all the differences that we are. But then this no woman, no cry almost says as well

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That you can't be that if you're going to be happy, you'll also have some tears.

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That if you're gonna have love in your life, you'll also have and that's true too. So I just like the whole package.

Clare Short MP3:54

Yeah.

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No one

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No, warm and no cry.

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E little darling, don't shed no tears.

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No, one man of black

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Sit sick

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And I remember when we used to say

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Bob Marley and No Woman, No Cry. It's difficult to imagine you, Claire, tucked away in Whitehall, as you were for the first half of the seventies, as a civil servant. Did you really think you could spend your lifetime as a well behaved, neutral civil servant?

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No, I of course am part of that enormously lucky generation, the only generation that's grown up in this country that grew up with full employment.

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So I wasn't starting off thinking this is a job forever. I didn't have any of that sort of terror that people have to have now when they're making life decisions.

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So I thought I'll go and have a look at the British establishment. I'd done a degree in politics, I'd heard about all these Oxbridge Whitehall people who really ran the country. So I thought I'd go and see what they were like. But you had to pass some examinations to do that, so obviously you'd done quite well.

Presenter5:09

Yes, I took the exams and I did reasonably well and went to the Home Office, which is considered one of the um status departments. Were you considered a a a flyer or a high flyer or a?

Clare Short MP5:17

Yeah.

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Well, I was the last year of the very old, very privileged entry system. Um, when you got you know, you went through a minister's offices and then got promoted straight away and was meant to go flying on, but of course I left.

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I enjoyed it. I mean, I met the establishment. I met those kind of sort of Oxbridge upper middle class Englishmen that I'd never met before, who you know, who opened doors and leapt round and went on the outside and walked near the gutter and all that. And I found it very sweet and that

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And I I got rather fond of them. And of course, there was masses of ability and quite um

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Serious commitment, things that have been dishonoured since to public service, to caring for the country. There was a small C Conservatism.

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And they found me I mean I was just they didn't have people like me, they didn't have women, I wore short short skirts at the time, I soon got rid of those. And I'd say things like, Shall we go to dinner? and they'd think I was propositioning them about the evening and I meant lunch, which I've learned to call it. And it was very interesting and I also did some serious work. But what about your political opinions? Were you able to keep those to yourself? Absolutely. I think people who know their politics know what neutrality is. I actually, I think, I mean, some of the Tory MPs are absolutely amazed to think of me being a private secretary to a Tory minister. Which you were for most of the time, because you were there from 70 to 75, so four years serving Tory ministers. Yes, but I was actually, you know, yes minister person for a Tory minister. And they think, how could someone like me with the strong views I have be looking after loyally a Tory minister? And I could, and you can ask him, it's Mark Carlyle. Because I know my politics, I know what's proper. I knew they're the government of the day. I'm not going to cheat.

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Whereas I think people who don't know their politics and think any of their views are neutral

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are actually probably more biased than I was. But presumably what the experience did for you was it brought you into contact with the establishment, as you say, and you saw MPs at work and you thought, hang on, I could do that. Absolutely. I would never have thought of people like me being an MP until I met them and found how unimpressive they were. So I had two things going on. One was I didn't want to spend the rest of my life in Whitehall.

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I didn't want to be a neutral. I wanted to be me. But I cared about all the issues that were being dealt with and wanted to influence them. And then I saw these MPs and thought, well, I could be that, and then I could come in here and organise it all and be me. Record number two. This is really to encapsulate my childhood and youth, my Catholic schools and childhood. It's ave verum. It's uh just a beautiful hymn.

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Living for us.

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The choir of Seaford College Chapel directed by Philip Hill, singing part of Mozart's Arve Verum Corpus.

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Where does the passion come from, Claire, the campaigning zeal? Is it in the blood?

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Probably. My father was from Crossmaclen in Northern Ireland. Um came to Birmingham and met my mum, who is sort of fourth generation Irish potato farm in her mother was Welsh.

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My father, who was an enormously fine man, but had a deep sense of injustice about the history of Ireland, that.

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We were just brought up with it in a natural way, not that we, you know, were instructed to believe anything.

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And um

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That sort of extended out to the whole of the world. So we understood slavery was wrong, that uh the colonization of Africa was wrong, India. No one told us, but we had that sort of world view and a sense of

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The injustices of history.

Clare Short MP9:44

But how

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Absolutely. Well, the seven of us, seven children, we didn't have a telly until Dad got one for his retiring present when he was a teacher.

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So there was a lot of sitting round the table talking.

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Where did you come in the running order of a song? I'm number two. There's five girls, two boys. I'm the second girl.

Clare Short MP10:01

The same number.

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So what was your family role, as it were? Did you have one?

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So I was the big sister. I was I think the first is often the princess or the prince, and Mary Pat was, and then I was the one who sort of stayed at home when mummy had the babies and um Well, she was prettier than you were your elder sister. Yes, she was slim and had curly hair, and in those days curly hair was absolutely compulsory. Um Were you jealous of her?

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No. Uh I was me. I um

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I've always sort of got on with life.

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But I remember, actually, when I was about fifteen or sixteen and Plokes first started making advances to me, being absolutely amazed.

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'Cause I never thought of myself as

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I thought people liked me. I mean, I've always got on with people.

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but some one who'd be attractive in that way, and I didn't believe them at first.

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Which was ever so nice. Because you hadn't been brought up to believe you were the pretty one. Well, that's right. My older sister was the pretty one. I was the one who.

Clare Short MP10:56

Well this j

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Did all the practical things. But were you also the thinker? Were you the one that went to school with the political views?

Clare Short MP11:00

Yeah.

Presenter11:05

Well, we're all pretty political, just in a natural way. Everybody in the family is. But yes, I mean I was ten at the time of Suez, which was also the same year as the Russian invasion of Hungary.

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And I knew both were wrong. And the kids in my class were singing this We'll Throw Nasser in the Suez Canal. And I it wasn't that I had to fight them, I had to ground them all up and explain they were wrong.

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And the Egyptian people were obviously entitled to their own canal. But I also knew the Russian invasion of Hungary was wrong. So when when politicians today say to you, do yourself a favour, Claire, and keep quiet about Northern Ireland and don't always say what you think

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They might as well be talking to the wall, really.

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Absolutely.

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I mean, people did take me aside early on and say, Claire, leave Northern Ireland alone. It's bad for your political career.

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But half my family live there.

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That is impossible, whatever the consequences. And your Dad would never forgive you.

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Yes, but not in the sense that

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I wouldn't do it because he wouldn't forgive me. I wouldn't do it because I he's dead now, but I so respect him.

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Next piece of music.

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It's Four Green Fields, Tommy Makeham. It's an Irish song and it's the the Four Greenfields are the four parts of Ireland and one of them that's lost is the North. My Dad used to sing to us when we were children and sort of sing in the Bath and this is just a beautiful, beautiful song and it represents all those memories of my dad singing to us, Nels singing.

Clare Short MP12:38

What did I have?

Clare Short MP12:43

Said the fire old woman

Clare Short MP12:48

What did I have?

Clare Short MP12:53

This proud old woman did say

Clare Short MP12:58

I had four green fields.

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Tommy Macum singing four green fields.

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But despite that strong Irish upbringing, Clare, at some point in your teens you turned your back on the Catholicism you'd been brought up with, didn't you? Why did you do that?

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Well, I can remember, funnily enough, it was about contraception at a time when it was th it it really started to crumble, because I took it all very seriously. We were very thoroughly brought up as Catholics, and I

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I remember this no contraception is allowed, says the Pope, and the Pope's supposed to be infallible. And I thought at the time

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I was thinking about India. Well, maybe I was having premonitions about me and my classmates, but and I thought this is ridiculous. People should have contraception. And then of course one of Catholicism's problems is if you say up they're absolutely wrong about that, then you say that that means the Pope isn't infallible and

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Six months later I wasn't sure God existed.

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I remember my mum sending me to a sort of trendy American priest to get me back, and he sort of pulled me back a little bit, but I was going.

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And have you gone completely now? Absolutely gone. But what about when you go through trying times and you and you've been through some, whether at the hands of the tabloid press, as you've mentioned, or your husband he's he's very, very ill.

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Aren't there times when you feel the need for the old refuge that your parents taught you about?

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No, there were moments of desperation when I say God

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You know, I think you're not there, but if you are, please help me out here. I've I've done that now and again.

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And I've um because of my job, you know, one is invited to synagogues or different services, mosques and so on. And I'm still very moved and touched by sort of spirituality, and I respect it very deeply.

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But it I don't God isn't there, I know that, though I think he's a really nice idea.

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So where where is your faith? Is it solely in yourself?

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I mean, let's put you on the desert island, and the weeks turn into months, and the months turn into years, and there ain't no hope. Nobody's going to come by, and you're all by yourself. What do you do? Where do you turn?

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Well, I think I'd go hunting around for the footprint, though I know you don't allow it in your rules, but I would.

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And then I'd probably go and find some animals and be to befriend them. I would be hopeless. I mean, I think I'm a bit better now on my own than I used to be,'cause I grew up with lots of brothers and sisters and

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Until I suppose Alex was ill, I'd always had lots of people in my life all the time.

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I wouldn't like it, being lonely. Record number four.

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Well, this is just to represent my youth. I mean, what does one do? The Beatles was obvious, that was my era.

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I always just really liked this Simon Smith and his amazing dancing bear, and I just think of it and it makes me feel sort of happy about when I was eighteen, nineteen.

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I may go out tomorrow if I can borrow a coat to wear.

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Oh, I'd step out and style With my sincere smile And my dancing bear outrageous

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Allow me

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Courageous and charming Oh one would think our boy and bear could be well accepted everywhere It's just amazing how fair

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Alan Price and Simon Smith and the Amazing Dancing Bear. You won Birmingham Ladywood, Clare Short, with a safe majority in nineteen eighty three. What did you think of the House of Commons when you finally got to sit in it? Was it what you'd expected?

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Well, of course, I'd sat there in the box as a civil servant, and I.

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had not been particularly impressed.

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And when I got inside it,

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I was even less impressed. I mean, there's all these people who go around, you know, sort of Enot Powell and Michael Foote and being House of Commons men and saying this is the most wonderful Parliament in the world. Well, it isn't. Or it w it certainly wasn't by nineteen

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And yet the job is

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It's lovely having a constituency. I find it a great honour, and I'm very moved by it, and I love.

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trying to help people and going in and out of schools, hospitals, all those places. But what about you in in the House, where you made your mark very quickly, not least because you accused a minister of being incapable through drink, and another time you attempted to physically bar David Owen getting to the dispatch box, I think, didn't you?

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When you which, by the way, he was blundering in and trying to take over the dispatch box from Labour, and we were there.

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I mean, I so right to idea, you suggest I never do, you know, have they put up their feet at the dispatch box. Well, obviously, because I often have skirts on, I don't do it.

Clare Short MP17:26

The right idea is

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But someone said to me, Put your feet up So I just put them on the box and he came and pushed me out of the way. So he he pushed you, you didn't he was the aggressor, but of course he instantly eyed the images of me beating up David O.

Clare Short MP17:41

He was the aggressor, but of course he must.

Clare Short MP17:44

BT

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But how do you feel when those kinds of incidents begin? Do you does your blood start to race? Do you think, Oh, I here I go. I'm going to get into trouble again, but I've got to do it.

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Or are you blinded by outrage and you don't feel a thing?

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I've only once done something like that that I regretted. I mean, nothing very serious, but jumped up and said, I agree with what I did, but I slightly let myself sort of go out of control. But all the rest.

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No, I mean it and I mean, what is the point of being there if you don't

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Say what you think is true. If you double guess and calculate everything. I don't want to be like that. Well, some people would say that's self-indulgent, that sometimes you've got to compromise your principles in order to get things through, to make things work. That if everybody jumped up and down every time they ag disagreed with the slightest point, then the whole system wouldn't work.

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Well, of course di the very nature of democracy is that ev the voices should be there, the truth should be spoken, and then we vote.

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You don't have to compromise before you speak your truth, unless you're calculating, you know, how

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You may get on. Or unless you're on the front bench and you've been asked to keep your mouth shut for the sake of collective responsibility.

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Or so that you can crawl up the pile. But the fact is that if you want to, as you put it, crawl to the top of the pile, you have to behave. But you've got to be at the top of the pile in order to achieve any power to bring about the things that you say you're there to bring about.

Clare Short MP19:10

Please

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Nick Budgeon said

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once to me that politics needs creeps, governments need creeps to sustain them and support them and be ministers.

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But politics also need some bits of grit.

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And he was suggesting that both he and I were bits of grit. Well, I'd like to be a bit of grit that could get

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My hands on some serious political influence, but um But you're not gonna be a creep in order to do it. No.

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Record number five.

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Now this is Nkozi Sikhale Afrika, God Bless Africa. This is a beautiful, beautiful hymn that's the ANC song in a number of African countries.

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And I choose it because it's beautiful, but I choose it also to represent that very natural internationalism that

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came through my father to our family, so that I very much feel part of the whole world, that what goes on in Africa or India or Bangladesh is part of my life. I don't feel like just a little person from England. So I choose this to represent all that.

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Single land on Crossy Single

Clare Short MP20:18

Singa Tender Rossi Singer Ten Mozamboya.

Clare Short MP20:24

Ah

Speaker 420:25

Oh ye singellah luxapol wario.

Presenter20:40

The cast of Poppy Non-Gamer singing God Bless Africa.

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So to the Page Three girls campaign, Claire, um, those whom you've been trying to get rid of since nineteen eighty six. If you say Clare short to anybody, they say Page Three Girls.

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Has that become a bit of a burden for you? Yes, I re I resent. I mean, I absolutely mean what I said. I think it was right.

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I just made a little speech of objection and I think all this enormous em well of emotion and strength of feeling from women came pouring out and I think all of that was good.

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But I do find it a burden and I don't want people to think of me and just think of pornography or or my objection to it.

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Because I'm many things. But as you say, it was an accident. You you stumbled into it as a cause, really, and discovered that so many people felt what you felt and what many of us feel, which is that the Page Three girls would be better if they weren't there. But for you, personally, the result has been well, it was tantamount to declaring open season on yourself, wasn't it? The newspapers just went for you. Absolutely. They I mean, it's crazy, too. I'm just one little Labour MP and the sort of sun throws itself at me and then the news of the world comes in later. But how much of a toll ha has that taken on you, that you've been represented as well, all sorts of different things, really, from a man-hater to a wanton woman. But certainly as somebody who's

Clare Short MP21:55

Yeah.

Presenter21:58

Ugly, humourless, puritanical, sour

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Well, the Sun started that and and went on for years, this hariddin, joyless, vile, ugly Clare.

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And it was there and I didn't particularly like it, but I could carry on and no big deal.

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When the News of the World got together with the West Midland Serious Crime Squad and tried to do over my whole life, that was horrendous. That was terrifying and ever so did it make you ill?

Clare Short MP22:22

Did you make

Presenter22:23

Yeah, I didn't sleep. I I lost weight.

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And I'm not I usually sleep okay. I'm not a warrior. That was the most unfair, vicious, vile thing. I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy. But why? Where where was the pain?

Presenter22:38

Well, of course they're crawling through your life. They crawled right through my life from when I was seventeen. They went to this man I was married to in my twenties, offering him money for pictures of me in a ninety. And there it is. There's nothing wrong with the pictures. But can you imagine pictures of you when you were twenty and a ninety on the front page of the News of the World? It's just awful.

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I don't know. Now I'm here and all in one piece and all my complaints have been vindicated, I it's all right, but

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What were they trying to do to me? They I mean, they changed. I clearly I wasn't going to be a Harrod and Manhater. I was going to be a Floozie this time.

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They really ought to make their mind up. They don't even have to be consistent. But meanwhile the Page Three girls are still there. Two bills you brought forward and both have fallen by the wayside.

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Is there any chance that one will ever win through, or is it a lost cause? No, I think they're not there in the mirror anymore. I'm not saying that was me, but they dropped them.

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I think they'll go. Next piece of music. The next is Billy Bragg and Dick Gohan singing the red flag.

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And I choose it'cause Billy's a friend of mine and because I am a socialist and I'm proud to be a socialist and we're all supposed to say socialism's dead and in this world that's half hungry and falling apart with too much poverty within the rich world, I think that's nonsense. Of course, we have to adapt to changes in the world. And I think actually we ought to change the words of the red flag, perhaps have a competition. But I stick with those roots of ours and I'm proud of them.

Speaker 324:14

It waved above our infant night Spun all our heads in darkest night It witnessed many it didn't bow One mustn't change its colour now To raise and scarlet star

Speaker 424:26

And the high, the newest falls will live and die.

Speaker 424:30

Till cowards flinch and traitor sneer We'll keep the red flag flying here.

Presenter24:37

Billy Bragg and Dick Gochan singing the Red Flag. Tell me about your husband, Claire. He's Alex Lyon, who was an MP, but he lost his seat in York when you won yours in nineteen eighty three, and then he fell ill.

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What's wrong with him?

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Well, he had a condition a sort of muscle wasting thing called spinal muscular atrophy that gradually made him less mobile and have difficulty walking.

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And then he developed Alzheimer's as well?

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And now he's horrendously ill. Um

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He's in residential care.

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He doesn't know me.

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Um, it's a tragedy.

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How how long has he not known you?

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Just since Christmas.

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But before that was he able to take part in your political life? Was he able to help you? Yes, well, that was the terrible thing I won he lost in'83.

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So I never sort of felt over the moon winning. I mean, I understood that Labour hadn't done well even though I'd won.

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He worked as my secretary for a bit and he was massively supportive of me. I think most people.

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If they've lost the job they love.

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And

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someone close to them got it, would have a degree of jealousy and anger, and if it was a man and a woman, that would usually be worse.

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And he wasn't like that at all. He just supported me completely, fantastically so. And you say he's in care now. I'm presumably you've spent some time looking after him yourself. Yes, he was at home until last summer.

Presenter26:00

But then it got to the point where it wasn't safe. I mean, obviously I had to carry on doing my job and he didn't want anyone else but me around him and I it became unsafe to leave him. And I found this wonderful, caring, beautiful Methodist home place where he is, so I feel good that I know the quality of the care he gets is is better than it could be anywhere else.

Presenter26:23

And you didn't have any children. Um h has that been a a source of great pain to you that you haven't got children?

Presenter26:29

Well, I regret it greatly and I certainly when I was thirty five, thirty six and all that biological time clock, I was was very upset about it. But then the way things have worked out with Alex being so ill and so on and now I'm forty six and more used to it and I've got all these nieces and nephews who are lovely, I'm sort of okay. And I'm I'm willing to talk about it because there's so many women out there hurting on this question.

Presenter26:58

And of course, it hurts, but there's life after not having children. And there are some things you do have more.

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love to give. I mean, I think

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Of course women with children can do everything in the world, but um

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I think probably just the time and energy and affection I've got for Ladywood is more. So there are other ways of giving your contribution to life. Doesn't necessarily equal desperate loneliness. No, no. I'm not lonely except on this fl flipping island you're gonna put me on.

Clare Short MP27:24

Uh

Presenter27:25

But on the purely personal level, again, you know, then the next blow you had to suffer was that Labour lost the general election.

Presenter27:34

You must have been looking forward to the demands of your party being in office, wh whether you were on the front bench or not, to its giving your life a a new focus and a kind of new beginning. That must have been a hard blow.

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Well, I feel it isn't about me. I feel

Presenter27:51

that we owe it to our country to make the sort of changes that I believe in that will make it a better country for everyone to live in. But what is the effect on you personally, the politics part? And of course you would say w what you say there, but

Clare Short MP27:59

But what is he affected?

Presenter28:06

Has it depressed you more?

Presenter28:09

that somehow, you know, you've just got to go wading on in the same way at your personal level.

Presenter28:15

Yes, I had the downer, and very much thinking about my life. What am I doing with my life?

Presenter28:20

But then in the end I have got this constituency to look after and of course it'd be better to sort of build more houses rather than try and get people's roofs fixed.

Presenter28:28

But I still can be there trying to

Presenter28:31

Make some people's lives better.

Presenter28:33

Record number seven.

Presenter28:36

This is Bangra Muffin, and this is really about my constituency and all that part of my life. Bangra music is um Punjabi wedding music, and it's taken off and is a kind of quite popular pop music, particularly amongst Asian young people, but spreading.

Presenter28:52

And I remember this I heard this band when I went to a wedding of one of my good friends, Kanana, one of his sons was getting married.

Presenter28:58

And this band were playing, and there was everyone dancing. My mum, who never dances, who's seventy two, dancing my little niece, the my youngest niece, Rosie, who was about two at the time. And there were Asian men, women,

Presenter29:10

This lovely music, and we were all dancing. And it's just people talk about the inner city as though it's all misery. There are some lovely things in the meetings of different people, and they're learning about each other's cultures and to respect each other. And this, I really like the band, I danced a lot that day too, and it encapsulates some of that loveliness. That's why I've chosen it.

Presenter29:59

Fangra Muffin and Dola Ve Dola. Your father lived to see you become an MP, didn't he? And was very proud, I'm sure.

Clare Short MP30:03

Mm-hmm.

Presenter30:06

Probably. I mean he wasn't he was the sort of person when you came first at school he'd always say, Well, there's only one way and if you came lower he'd say, Well, it's easier to rise He wasn't into being boastful or all that, but I think quietly.

Presenter30:18

And your mother lives with you and you look after her and she looks after her.

Clare Short MP30:21

Well, she looks after me, yeah.

Presenter30:23

What what does she and what would your father want for you now? What's what's Claire Short gonna do with the second half of her life?

Presenter30:31

Well, I'm going to speak the truth.

Presenter30:36

And I would hope to help too.

Presenter30:41

make my party capable of doing for this country what I think needs doing so that it's a better country for people to live in and has a more civilized stance for the world. I know

Presenter30:52

That's terribly large and sort of greedy, but

Presenter30:56

That's me, that's what I'm doing, and I would hope

Presenter30:59

that we'll make it and that I can help to make it happen.

Presenter31:02

And what about for yourself? What are you going to do for yourself? I need to keep a bit more time for myself. I need to treasure my friends more. I've seen.

Presenter31:10

People get old in politics and be scared to retire because, of course, they gave all their life to politics, neglected their friends and their own life. So I've sort of.

Presenter31:19

started organizing trips to the pictures on Sundays and having people around for food and um

Presenter31:25

I think it's important to remain a normal human being just well,'cause we all should, and because politics can eat you up to the point when you become a sort of obsessive bore, really.

Presenter31:37

So and then who knows? I just wanna be happy, learn things, enjoy life, do some good.

Presenter31:45

Nothing much, really?

Presenter31:47

Record number eight.

Presenter31:49

Now this is Schoenberg's Girlida, and I've chosen it because it was my sort of liberation with classical music. I had never had it around me in my youth, and I think I thought it was all very complicated, and you needed to understand something to appreciate it.

Presenter32:04

And then I was the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra is in my constituency and I keep getting invites.

Presenter32:10

And I was invited to this and Simon Rattle was going to conduct, and I thought I must go, and I went with this good friend of mine who does enjoy this music, John Law, and I thought this is so essential and so beautiful. It's completely uncomplicated. And it was just lovely, and it opened up all this beautiful music for me.

Speaker 432:57

For Space.

Speaker 332:59

Oh, he said.

Presenter33:00

If you swim Uh

Speaker 333:02

Ah Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 333:03

Yeah.

Clare Short MP33:04

What do you do?

Presenter33:24

Uh

Presenter33:24

Uh

Presenter33:29

Susan Dunn singing the aria Nun Zagisch Dier zum Ersten Mau from the first act of Schoenberg's Guraliede with the Radio Symphony Orchestra of Berlin conducted by Riccardo Schae and not from Simon Rattle and the Birmingham Symphony Orchestra because they haven't recorded that particular work. So which of the eight records, Clare, will be most necessary to you on the island? I'll have the Schoenberg, because I remember all the others. They're then I'll study, but there's lots and lots in there for me that I haven't heard yet.

Presenter33:55

And the book with the Bible and Shakespeare waiting for you.

Presenter33:58

I thought about Perch. I used to love Perch at school, and I don't have time to read at that pace now. But actually, with the whole of the Bible and Shakespeare, which I would read all of that, I want something entirely different. I want a sort of

Presenter34:11

geometry tutor or something to keep that kind of disciplined part of my brain going.

Presenter34:17

So that's what I'd have if I may.

Presenter34:19

And your luxury.

Presenter34:22

I really wanted to have my dog, but you wouldn't allow it, and then he died. And then I thought I'd have a musical instrument, and I can't decide

Presenter34:29

whether a flute or piano, and then a tutor, and I would teach myself.

Presenter34:34

Hey.

Presenter34:35

But also which is it, a flute or a piano?

Presenter34:38

I love the flute, but I think a piano,'cause that's got more range and people have them in their houses. I think a piano.

Presenter34:45

Claire Short, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your desert island discs. Thank you.

Presenter34:56

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