Gavin Laird

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 two, and the presenter was Sue Lawley.

Presenter0:31

My Castaway this week is a trade unionist. His background and upbringing, Glasgow working class, may not be unusual for such a man, but his approach to his work is little short of revolutionary.

Presenter0:42

After a youthful flirtation with Communism he deserted the party and turned to labour. He rose from shop steward to full time union official.

Presenter0:50

Now the leader of one of the biggest unions in Britain, he argues that the TUC must undergo radical change if it's to have an effective future.

Presenter0:58

But how, he wrote recently, do you turn a cart horse into a thoroughbred? He is the general secretary of the Amalgamated Engineering and Electrical Union, Gavin

Presenter1:08

It's phrases like that, of course, Gavin, the the T U C as cart horse, which do a little for your popularity among the brothers, isn't it?

Gavin Laird1:14

Indeed, uh much less than popular over the years, but it's reassuring.

Gavin Laird1:19

That recently we had the Director General of the CBI something I advocated six years ago.

Presenter1:25

To address the TUCs.

Gavin Laird1:26

To address the TUC. That's indicative of the change that would be unheard of a few years ago. We've got guys and women who just a few short years ago were telling me in rather unfortunate terms that I didn't reflect the best interests of working men and women, who are now singing the same song that I've been singing for a number of years, and that's reassuring.

Presenter1:46

But what what does it do um if it is a cart horse? I mean, the the days of flying pickets and closed shops and single union agreement opposition is gone away. What does it still do, in your view, that is clod hopping?

Gavin Laird1:59

The cart horse

Gavin Laird2:01

Position, frankly, and image isn't so much the things that they do as the things that they don't do. We keep telling management how they should do things better, how they should train, how they should invest, but when you look at our own organisations, we don't do it particularly well. And what I'm saying is that the leadership of the TUC they've got to give more leadership, more dynamic leadership, they've got to have a focus on what they're aiming for. They've got to recognise that we're no longer the popular mass movement that we once were. But by doing the things you should do in the manner that you should do them and achieving things for working men and women, then that brings popularity with it. And we've been doing it the wrong way around.

Presenter2:41

And we

Presenter2:42

You become sleek and thoroughbred.

Gavin Laird2:44

Well, I hope so.

Presenter2:46

Let's talk more about that in a moment, but let me turn to you and your music, because you read your morning newspapers, I understand, at seven thirty every morning in your office to Mozart and Beethoven, is that right?

Gavin Laird2:56

No, it's not. Seven o'clock.

Gavin Laird2:58

I'm in at seven o'clock. I've never altered my habits since I was an apprentice in at the cl in the Clyde. I get up about quarter to six in the morning, make my wife her breakfast, give her her tea in bed, poor lady, then I shoot off to the office. I'm there about ten minutes to seven. I put on one of my C D's and I read the newspapers. I flick through the newspapers and I have coffee, coffee and more coffee, and I find it a great way to start the day.

Presenter3:27

Okay, so there you are alone on your desert island at seven o'clock in the morning. What's the first piece of music you've put on?

Gavin Laird3:33

It's Sandsong, the Organ Symphony, number three. It's a very stirring piece of music. I would have landed in Ireland. I'd be thinking about what I'm going to do for forever, and I would want something to inspire me, and this is certainly inspiring music.

Presenter4:47

Part of Saint-Sanson's Symphony No. three, the Organ Symphony, played by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Daniel Barrenboym. So you have Gavin Laeda, a sleek C D player in your office in Peckham in South East London. The whole office is sleek by all accounts, which is not how it was when you took over some years ago.

Gavin Laird5:05

I'm afraid not. If you walked into our office ten years ago, people were sitting at desks with pens and pencils like something out of Dickens, literally so. And pretty awful working conditions I hastened to add for the staff. And you cannot do things efficiently unless you have the atmosphere, unless you're given the tools to do the job. And I decided that, however difficult the problem-and it was difficult because of declining membership-I was going to tackle it, I was going to modernise. And there's pain associated with that, by the way, because we have only one-third of the number of people working in our office than the period when I first started.

Presenter5:39

So you sacked people, you

Gavin Laird5:40

No, what they call that horrible expression, natural wastage is people left or not replaced. We're still doing that.

Presenter5:46

And you froze wages?

Gavin Laird5:48

Froze wages on one occasion that was less than popular, I have to say, but included my own in that. In fact, we gave the lead. The executive gave the lead.

Presenter5:53

And if

Presenter5:55

But it does sound as if you behaved like the the sort of boss trade unionists well used to love to hate, anyway.

Gavin Laird6:01

Maybe, but I've found in this life that uh trade unions cannot divorce themselves from from the reality out there, and if that sounds a bit like market place philosophy, then I plead guilty to that.

Presenter6:11

So are you in profit today, the yellow?

Gavin Laird6:13

Mr President, no. We ended up last year at one million in the red and we're still in what has happened to us is our membership has halved in that ten year period. As manufacturing industry has shrunk, two and a half million jobs have disappeared, so we've contracted with it, and we're running fast and still not actually standing still. But we all the trends and that's what's important all the trends are correct and we are well on the way to solving our financial problems.

Presenter6:40

So your approach to the job has been really rather like that of a general manager of a large company. You made a business plan and you carried it out and the company became more efficient. The difference is, of course,

Presenter6:52

That that you work for them, the workforce, as it were, the workforce don't work for you. Do does that, should that, make any difference?

Gavin Laird6:59

It makes a big difference. Everything I do has to be done by consent. I have to persuade people. The result of that is, of course, that sometimes it takes you much, much longer to achieve an objective than you would if you were in a business situation.

Presenter7:10

Deeply frustrating, I would

Gavin Laird7:11

Well, of course it's frustrating, but that there's nothing wrong with that either, because it it eliminates arrogance. One could become quickly in this job a very arrogant person. Some people may say I'm arrogant, I have views and things and I'll express them strongly, forcefully. But the one thing I do know, if I go to whether it's our executive or our lay members or policy body and I prevail on them and argue and they eventually say no, sir, I accept that, no problem, and then have to find another route to achieving the same objective.

Presenter7:41

Record number two.

Gavin Laird7:42

Record number two is Mendelssohn's Fingle Cave from the Hebridine Overture. It's one of my favourites. As a boy, about twelve years of age, I took an interest in the Clybank rep. They allowed us to act as unofficial stage hands. We really loved that, loved the atmosphere. And one of the plays I don't know which play it was that they performed they used the music of Fingel's Cave and I didn't know what it was, I just loved the sound of it. And probably three or four years later before I actually found out, and I've had a record of Mendelssohn's Fingel Cave ever since. I think it's beautiful.

Presenter9:20

Part of Mendelssohn's Fingles Cave from the Hebridean Overture, Opus No. twenty six, played by the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Claudio Abardo, and memories for Gavin Laird of helping out on Clyde Bank Rep

Gavin Laird9:31

An unpaid stage hand. I'd loved it.

Presenter9:33

But were you were you a talkative chap even then? I mean, did you have the gift of the gown?

Gavin Laird9:37

I don't think so. No. I don't really think I'd any particular attribute in that way at all. I was particularly good at playing at football. It's the only outstanding memory I have as a boy. I wasn't good at school, and I don't say that with any pride. Thoroughly enjoyed my youth and our family, but nothing that one could look back and say, Oh, there was a shining light of some description. Certainly not.

Presenter10:02

So you you left school early, because you were

Gavin Laird10:03

At fourteen.

Presenter10:04

Di did you I mean, were you any good when you were there at all?

Gavin Laird10:07

No, I was rubbish, I must say. Uh the only examination I ever passed was uh what we called

Presenter10:08

No matter.

Gavin Laird10:13

uh the quali, the qualifying examination, a living plus type of examination, and I struggled very hard and just passed, not with any kind of honour at all, I'm afraid.

Presenter10:23

Did you play truant?

Gavin Laird10:24

Oh, regularly. I became an expert at it.

Gavin Laird10:27

During the war and uh

Gavin Laird10:29

We lost our house, we were bombed out, there was a blitz and we lost our house. Prior to that, and during, you know, immediately following the blitz, of course, we were evacuated.

Gavin Laird10:39

We ended up in the outskirts of Glasgow.

Gavin Laird10:42

Hauled round in army lorries to big houses for asking people to take families in, that's the way they did it, and being rejected. The point being.

Gavin Laird10:51

Eventually, to school, and then I discovered that they didn't take your name, there was no register. And so the bold boy and his young brother just dodged the column. We call it plunking in Scotland. I became an expert at it. My young brother and I.

Gavin Laird11:02

We loved swimming. It was the one thing you could do during the war. And there was a canal and we used to swim, but you bear in mind we were supposed to be at school, no bathing costume, and one day my mother.

Gavin Laird11:11

and my elder sister, walking along the canal bank my young sister was a babe in a pram saw these two naked young boys swimming in the canal. My mother leapt forth to my elder sister. It disgraceful anyone allowing that to happen, these children, but discovered it was their own sons.

Presenter11:26

Her gaze in

Gavin Laird11:27

And at night, I tell you, my old man had a an open leather razor st strap, and she gave us it across the back, so I can still feel it yet. She was a lovely lady.

Presenter11:35

Yeah.

Presenter11:37

And when you were taken round and they were trying to find a home for you as an evacuee and the big houses turned you away.

Presenter11:44

Did you have a sense then of social injustice? I mean, were there the stirrings of

Gavin Laird11:49

No, I think that would be an exaggeration. I certainly

Gavin Laird11:52

Uh on the night we we lost our house, it was my eighth birthday.

Gavin Laird11:57

So I vividly, vividly remember that, as you could well imagine.

Gavin Laird12:02

So when they bundled us on to the army lorries and whipped us through to Kirkintulloch, we stayed in a school, we were all put up in schools, a burden on the floor. And then of course they have to try and find these hundreds of people, hundreds of families accommodation. It's very difficult. I understand all that.

Gavin Laird12:18

But it did stick in my mind that there were Narmilla driving up to the bigger houses first, because that's where there would likely be accommodation, and people had to say yes or no.

Gavin Laird12:27

With a lovely Irish setter, incidentally, and these big family houses and very wealthy looking people offered to take the the dog in on more than one occasion. As an eight-year-old, even then, I realized this this is crazy.

Gavin Laird12:38

And I I can in retrospect and it's all retrospect of course, I can imagine looking into the back of an army there's a a woman with a babe in a pram, two young boys, you know, probably dishevelled at best, and a large Irish setter. It's a bit of much to sort of yes, sure, come in you come. But having said all that, when when the army lorries left

Gavin Laird13:00

These rather affluent parts of Kirkensaloch. We then went to what at that time was a mining.

Gavin Laird13:06

Quarter or part of the town. And I tell you now, no exaggeration, every family found a home. And we stayed with a miner's wife who had two children in a four-bedroom council house. And that was an imposition, but it was one that she took on willingly. But I don't, in all honesty, remember being shocked and feeling deprived. In fact, I don't remember feeling that way any time during my childhood, but I didn't have a particularly affluent childhood, but a happy one.

Presenter13:36

More music.

Gavin Laird13:38

My next record's Beethoven's Sixth Symphony.

Gavin Laird13:41

At one period in my life the only record I would buy was Rossini. Another time it was Beethoven. At the moment it's Sansong. And I had a Beethoven period when I first got introduced to the Scottish National Orchestra, the promenade concerts in the St Andrews Hall in Glasgow. And that was a great period in my teenager, beginning to enjoy many, many things, not just music I hasten to add. Certainly music's always played a part in my life and and the promenade concerts were wonderful and I remember going along to a Beethoven night and it was a pastoral symphony and I scribbled it down in the programme, marked it, underlined it, and dashed home and the next day bought the record.

Presenter15:20

part of Beethoven's Sixth Symphony The Pastoral, with the Berlin Philharmonic, conducted by Herbert von Karian. So you left school at fourteen with no qualifications, and then at the age of sixteen you joined the Young Communist League. What what was the thinking behind that?

Gavin Laird15:34

A number of things influenced me. First of all, that was not particularly unusual in the Clyde.

Gavin Laird15:38

Secondly, my father was a member of the Communist Party, a foundation member, and encouraged me. And I don't blame him for that. If I'm not blaming anything one for anything, I don't apologize for anything I've done in my life.

Gavin Laird15:50

Strangely enough, I was the only member of the family that had any political leanings. But there I was, I was an apprentice, I was in the Clyde, I worked in a closed shop.

Gavin Laird15:59

I to the truth be told, I rather resented having to pay sixpence a week, old pence a week, to join a union. That kind of grated with me a little bit, but that's because I'm probably a bit mean. But there you are. I joined the union, joined the YCL, met of lots of fine people, and became actively involved politically.

Presenter16:15

Anybody well known, contemporaries, at all?

Gavin Laird16:16

Uh well, yes. Uh one of my contemporaries was Jimmy Reid, quite a famous character, Jimmy who in latter years opposed me on a number of occasions for elected position in the Union and I thrashed the hell out of him.

Presenter16:29

He remained a Communist, of course, who didn't.

Gavin Laird16:31

That's right, that's right. But Jimmy I forgive him because he didn't have my experiences. He didn't go to sea as I did. He didn't find himself in Poland and here was this great workers' paradise dreadful to experience it. He didn't, as I did, write to the then Secretary of the Communist Party, please explain this to me, I don't understand it. I've actually now been to paradise and it's dreadful. Please square this circle.

Presenter16:55

This was with the Merchant Navy.

Gavin Laird16:57

This was the Merchant Navy. I joined the Merchant Navy when I had finished my apprenticeship.

Presenter17:00

So what you're saying is that that what you then saw did not live up to what you thought Marxism should bring about?

Gavin Laird17:06

Absolutely. But a number of things came together. First of all, you've got to remember the expose of Stalin, uh that that dreadful person.

Gavin Laird17:14

Coupled with Hungary in fifty six.

Gavin Laird17:17

add to that mix the fact that I'm I'm now by this time in my early twenties, I'm in the Merchant Navy, I'm visiting foreign ports, I'm seeing with my own eyes, not reading, not being told, I'm writing back asking for explanation and I'm getting no explanations.

Presenter17:30

Who did you who did you write to?

Gavin Laird17:31

Well, I wrote to the the then General Secretary of the Communist Party, a guy called Gordon McLennan, whom I admired then and now. But he couldn't give me the answer, and I now know why he didn't have the answer.

Presenter17:37

But it couldn't supply the answer.

Presenter17:42

So

Presenter17:43

Did that turn you off politics completely?

Gavin Laird17:46

In a sense it did.

Gavin Laird17:48

When I halfway through my Merchant Navy career, I met a young woman and fell in love and got married, and I became more interested in things domestic. And then when I came ashore, by this time I was about twenty-six years of age, and I got a job ashore in the Singer Clyde Bank. And I was not I I was interested, I had a mortgage and I wanted to pay, I was working overtime, I had to pay for buying this house. I was more interested in overtime than political economy, the truth be told. But eventually I found myself getting back into it, but primarily because the shop stewards were saying things I violently disagreed with in my name. He would be what you describe as a militant or a mouse or some of these strange phrases. And I just objected to what he was saying and doing in my behalf. And eventually he in turn said, and the men whom I represented, well, mate, if you think you can do it better, go ahead and do it. And I said, well, fine.

Presenter18:41

So he became a shop steward.

Gavin Laird18:42

So I became a shop steward.

Presenter18:43

We'll hear more about that in a minute, but let's have record number four there.

Gavin Laird18:46

Record number four would have to reflect that period of my apprenticeship, that period when I was active as a young man politically. And at that time, a country that I love and admire to this day, America, was very unsure of itself, and they incarcerated Paul Robeson.

Gavin Laird19:04

I had heard Paul Robeson and seen Paul Robeson again in St Andrews Holland and Glasgow, but they wouldn't let him out of the country. And there was a transatlantic concert between New York and St Pancras Town Hall and it was recorded. I bought the record and it reminds me of the wonderful occasions when this great guy who worshipped that false god I referred to, but a great man with a wonderful voice and I would like an excerpt from that record.

Speaker 119:30

I want you to see, can we afford it? Two pounds a minute. Paul, will you sing Old Man River?

Gavin Laird19:34

Hold the

Speaker 119:36

Four.

Speaker 119:39

He's gone. No, no, I'm right here. Just a second.

Gavin Laird19:41

Right here. Just a second.

Speaker 119:43

How about it? How about CEO man Richard? Just a second, Joe. Just a minute. We want him.

Gavin Laird19:45

Just a second, you got to go.

Speaker 119:47

We'll pay for it.

Presenter20:01

Paul Robeson singing Old Man River and talking live from New York City to St Pancras Town Hall in nineteen fifty seven, when you were a shop steward at the Singer Sewing Machine Factory, I mean

Gavin Laird20:09

Yeah.

Gavin Laird20:12

That's right.

Presenter20:13

You obviously then discovered quite early on that you were a natural moderate.

Gavin Laird20:19

Yes, I think that's true.

Gavin Laird20:21

I've always believed that it's wrong to try and promise people things that you cannot deliver.

Gavin Laird20:30

I've even more firmly believed that the trade union movement is should never be used as a political instrument, and I've seen national trade union leaders.

Gavin Laird20:39

One who'll be nameless and recently retired and he's used all his life used the trade union as a political instrument for his own ambitions and misled trade unionists. And now if that's moderation, then so be it. I plead guilty.

Gavin Laird20:53

On the other hand I would say this that

Gavin Laird20:56

I would fight as hard, work as hard, be as effective as anyone that I know this is not an ego trip by me to achieve something which is and we're entitled to, our members are entitled to, and recently that was demonstrated to Rawaldner's uncle when I took the lead along with other three or four guys in particular in achieving shorter working time for six hundred thousand people in engineering, and we had to fight hard to get it. But strike's a failure.

Gavin Laird21:25

Going on strike is no great deal for me and for our members. It's a failure. We've failed in our efforts to negotiate. And again, all my life I've tried to find an instrument.

Gavin Laird21:36

To take out the adversarial relationship that currently exists in this country.

Presenter21:40

And indeed, even in those early days, uh apparently you went on a on a management training course just to find out what their language was so that you could see it from their point of view.

Gavin Laird21:48

Yes, indeed. I wanted to know the system. I wanted to understand it. I wanted to be able to articulate our members' demand and not just on the basis of emotion. I wanted to do it in a real at a practical level.

Presenter21:59

But have you therefore over the years and I mean these days you

Presenter22:02

sit on the board of the Bank of England and on Scottish Television's board and you've been on the Arts Council. Do you sit in these boardrooms now and, you know, for all the best reasons think, My God, I've come a long way

Gavin Laird22:17

The answer to that's yes. I tell you, I often sit

Gavin Laird22:22

and look around me, listen to very, very well educated men and women, mainly men, I have to say and particularly Bank of England, none of whom have ever patronized me, I have to add that.

Gavin Laird22:33

And say, How on earth did I get here? I'm an apprentice in a clade. I don't have a single O-level. I've had no formal education. I don't wear a hair shirt. I'm not a clown. I know that. I have to take on people who are much better educated than me. And I would suggest I come out of it reasonably well in these encounters.

Gavin Laird22:53

But I have to you know, there is no other way I could have had the achievements that I and been the places that I've been, did the things that I've done, had it not been for the trade union movement. They gave me that opportunity, that access, coupled with luck. You've got to have luck.

Presenter23:07

Next piece of music.

Gavin Laird23:09

The next piece of music is from Les Miz. It's a track, I Dreamed a Dream.

Gavin Laird23:16

Referring to the the look of the draw, I was on the Arts Council for three years, it was a marvellous three years.

Gavin Laird23:24

My wife and I were at the opera, theatre, ballet.

Gavin Laird23:28

Of all the plays that I've had the privilege of seeing uh

Gavin Laird23:32

And I've been to the Barbican and the Royal Shakespeare Company. Well, this country's blessed with that talent. Sadly, we don't underpin it financially enough. But of all the plays, Les Miz, it's the only time in my life when I found myself, actually found myself standing up at the end of the show applauding. And in my desert island, I would want to have a a memory of that very, very wonderful night and that wonderful period in my life.

Speaker 323:58

But the time has come at night.

Speaker 123:59

Yeah.

Speaker 124:01

Not

Speaker 324:05

With a voice as soft as thunder

Speaker 324:12

As they tear you hope apart

Presenter24:17

What?

Speaker 324:18

Yeah.

Presenter24:19

As they turn your dream to shame

Presenter24:26

Patty Lepone singing I Dreamed a Dream from Les Miserable and that was the original London cast recording.

Speaker 124:31

Yes, it was.

Presenter24:33

We've mentioned some of your public appointments, Gavin there. Let me mention some others. You're a Governor of Atlantic College and of the London Business School. You're on the Highlands and Islands Development Board. You you're a non executive director of Britannia Life and GE C. Scotland. You I mean, you must know the inside of a boardroom better than you know the shop floor these days.

Gavin Laird24:52

Well, I hope that's not true. Uh I have to go to

Gavin Laird24:56

meet our shop stewards regularly in various companies and district officials, local officials, and I make a point at least once a month of being in a factory. So there's no opportunity, even of a wish to be divorced from the members, they make sure of that.

Presenter25:10

But you've taken some stick from from members, haven't you, for for taking all these appointments? They sort of perhaps think there's a conflict of interest there.

Gavin Laird25:16

I think it's a

Gavin Laird25:18

From those who would be described as left-wingers, but on the other hand, I've been able to apply many of the lessons I've learned in the boardroom to the running of our own organisation.

Presenter25:27

But are there occasions when you feel perhaps like the token trade unionist? Because you're the moderate, the the boards have perhaps thought, well, we've got to have a trade unionist, let's have him,'cause he won't cause us too much trouble.

Gavin Laird25:40

That may be so. Um

Gavin Laird25:43

Certainly in public boards where it's laid down that there has to be a trade unionist. But on the other hand, in the companies that you mentioned, none of them have to have a trade union indeed and a number of them and the first time ever. So they had the choice. The board had the choice.

Gavin Laird25:57

I feel flattered that they think I've got something to contribute.

Gavin Laird26:00

Uh and one thing I do know

Gavin Laird26:02

Uh

Gavin Laird26:03

Wherever I'm operating in whichever forum

Gavin Laird26:06

Uh I try as best I can to represent

Gavin Laird26:09

the employees of that establishment, that firm, that company. And I could give many instances, but I won't do that. I could give many instances where I've played a very real part in securing for people well, they'll never know that fact, but securing for people that which they're entitled to.

Speaker 126:20

Uh

Presenter26:20

I don't know.

Gavin Laird26:24

and add good forcibly at boardroom level, and I'll continue to do that.

Presenter26:28

Record number six.

Gavin Laird26:31

Now to the love of my life, I'm blessed, my wife and I are blessed, with a wonderful, beautiful daughter. She lives and worked in New York City. Fiona, she's now, dare I say, a lawyer operating in America. She married a young American three years ago. He's a fine young man, learning to be a doctor.

Gavin Laird26:55

Uh they got married in Boston.

Gavin Laird26:57

Ah and at the reception.

Gavin Laird27:00

Well there was a black lady song What a wonderful world and that's when I danced with my newlywed daughter.

Gavin Laird27:07

And if I'm in that desert island uh and if ever I felt depressed, I would play that and love every second of.

Speaker 127:13

I see trees of green.

Speaker 127:18

Red Rose is June.

Speaker 127:21

I see them blue.

Speaker 127:24

Fabian you.

Speaker 127:27

And I think to myself.

Presenter27:32

What a wonderful

Presenter27:35

Louis Armstrong, Satchmo, singing Wonderful World, and memories of Gavin Laird's daughter, Fiona, and her wedding, and you and Catherine aren't grandparents yet.

Gavin Laird27:44

Not yet. No. Hopefully some day, but not yet.

Presenter27:47

You said that the the trade union movement has to make radical change, modernize itself, haul itself into the nineties but there are still, are there not, a a large number in the movement who long for the good old days of beer and sandwiches at number ten and an opportunity to swing some political weight.

Gavin Laird28:04

They're getting fewer and fewer and rapidly reaching the aid of retirement, and God bless them, may they go the sooner the better. Now there is a new age era of realism about the trade union movement. But on the other hand, I have to repeat, if there are people in the trade union movement who see trade unions as the political instrument

Gavin Laird28:24

to achieve political power, then that's the wrong reason for being in the trade union movement. They should be in a political party. Our job is in an interface with employers. Our job is to recognise the economic aspirations of men and women and at the same time make representations to political parties in government. Certainly that's my belief.

Presenter28:42

And is that, in your view, the only way in which the trade union movement can be saved?

Gavin Laird28:48

If the trade union movement has a future at all, and that's open to question.

Gavin Laird28:53

It must be relevant.

Gavin Laird28:55

And I tell you, speak to the members as I do, and they'll tell you that trade unions are economic instruments, not political. We've got to be better at giving a service to the members and not to be seen to be budding prime ministers, harking back to the good old days as perceived by some people. If we've got to be a future, then we've got to be sleek, efficient, businesslike, and leave the politicking to the politicians.

Presenter29:20

Record number seven.

Gavin Laird29:21

I I cannot conceive of being in a desert island for the length of time that I'm going to be without something from Mozart, and so therefore I chose the beautiful, pleasant piece of music.

Presenter30:32

Mozart Symphony No. Forty, played by the Vienna Philharmonic, conducted by Carl Berm.

Presenter30:37

You must have nursed ambitions to lead the T U C in your time, Gavin.

Gavin Laird30:41

Difficult to admit to that.

Gavin Laird30:47

I don't know what.

Gavin Laird30:49

How can one be honest? If if my peers had thought had the ability and had asked me if the job would be there, of course I would have said yes.

Presenter30:57

Is it too late now?

Gavin Laird30:59

Yes, it's far too late. They've got many young, able men and women who could fill that post no bother than they will do in the not too distant future. That's not me suggesting Norman has to go. I'm not going through that circus again, but like me he's getting on and has to go.

Gavin Laird31:16

But that said, I really mean it, Sue, if I may say, I've been very, very, very lucky. I've got a job that fully realises any ambition ever I had. It's a privilege. I'm the first General Secretary of the Amalgamated Engineering and Electrical Union. For 98 years, our union had discussions off and on with the electricians to come together to amalgamate, and that has now happened. And I'm one of the architects of that. I played a major role in that. To be the first General Secretary, that should fulfil any person's ambition. So I have no thwarted ambitions, no deep regrets. Boy, have I been lucky. And I played a role.

Speaker 131:53

How much longer have you got to go, then?

Gavin Laird31:54

I have a choice. I've got twenty months to go as a General Secretary of the AWU. I can then, if I so wish, revert to being the General Secretary of the Engineering part of the Union, because they're a two-part union, and stay in the post until I'm sixty-five, which means another five and a half years. Whether or not I'll do that is questionable. I think I'll probably retire before that.

Presenter32:17

Will you will you be any good at retirement?

Gavin Laird32:19

Oh no, I'm not looking forward to it. I dread it. I dread the fact that getting up in the morning with no challenges. I really do. I dread the thought of it. And then the other thing is my wife might expect me to go shopping with her. There's nothing worse than that. I can conceive of nothing nothing worse than that.

Presenter32:34

Going shopping per se or going shopping with your wife.

Gavin Laird32:36

Going shopping per se. Oh dear, don't drag me round these stores, I hate it.

Presenter32:41

And on your island. I mean, I can't believe that you're not a practical man and that you couldn't knock up a shelter and put in air conditioning and all the things that I'm sure you're a pastmaster at.

Presenter32:50

What will you most be pleased to have escaped from?

Gavin Laird32:54

The Dart and Traffic of London

Presenter32:56

And won't you also surely be delighted to have escaped from all those conferences and all those substantive motions and all those amendments?

Gavin Laird33:03

And all that applause now and again. A bit of that, perhaps. A bit of that.

Presenter33:08

Last record.

Gavin Laird33:09

It's Wagner's prelude to Act Three of Londren.

Gavin Laird33:13

Uh I'm a kinda moody guy.

Gavin Laird33:16

And this uh really is a stirring piece of music. But if I feel that I want to have something to stir me, then Wagner is the man to do it in this particular piece of music.

Speaker 333:50

Uh

Presenter34:16

Uh

Speaker 334:16

Uh

Presenter34:26

Part of the prelude to Act Three of Wagner's Lohengrin, played by the London Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Barry Tuckwell. So which is your favorite record of the eight, Gavin?

Gavin Laird34:34

It would have to be Sansong's symphony number three, the organ symphony.

Presenter34:39

You're in your sense of

Gavin Laird34:40

Yes, I'm in my sansong phase at the moment, have been for some considerable time. Uh I would hate to only have one uh choice, but there you are, you've got to make choices in this world, and that would be the one.

Presenter34:50

And your book?

Gavin Laird34:51

My book, that's no problem, uh and that's Sam Pepys's Diaries. Uh I would like all six of course, but I know I'm not allowed that, so I'll the the the largest one I can take with me. Uh that I really for humor.

Gavin Laird35:04

For honesty, not a bad trait in a person, for absolute honesty, for humour and description of a time and a place. It's a marvellous book.

Presenter35:14

And your luxury.

Gavin Laird35:15

My luxury.

Gavin Laird35:16

I want a year's recording.

Gavin Laird35:18

Of Radio 4, the Today programme, one year's recording. I can sit and listen to it and listen to the presenters and all that they say, and that would do me fine. Thank you very much.

Presenter35:29

Gavin Laird, thank you very much for letting us hear your desert island discs.

Speaker 335:40

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