Rt Hon Shirley Williams

Rt Hon Shirley Williams0:00

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. The programme was originally broadcast in two thousand and six, and the presenter was Sue Lawley.

Presenter0:29

My Costaway this week is a politician. Throughout her upbringing, from her Chelsea childhood to her Oxford and American education, she moved in political circles and absorbed the ideas of reform and change. Her father was a Labour activist, her mother a feminist and a pacifist. She sat on Nairu's knee as a child and struck up a friendship with Herbert Morrison in an air aid shelter.

Presenter0:51

Hardly surprising, then, that she joined the Labour Party, became an MP, and then a Cabinet Minister, this under Wilson and then Callaghan.

Presenter0:58

But her support for her party ebbed away during the late seventies as she watched it succumb to union control and militancy. She became one of the gang of four who founded the Breakaway SDP, and for the last twenty years through all its transformations since those heady days has been one of its best known and eloquent advocates. I wanted to be a politician, and I have paid for it in many ways, she says. Yet I would not have it otherwise. She is Shirley Williams. So would you say, Shirley, that politics, if you like, has been your vocation. You didn't have a choice. It's something you had to do.

Presenter1:33

Uh

Presenter1:33

Probably. I think I started out by thinking I might want to be a journalist. When I was very young, I might want to be a farmer. But in a way, politics was insistent, and for me, it was an endless sitting in the

Presenter1:45

Circle of the theatre of the world, and I found that extremely fascinating. So I got involved in politics as a very young person indeed. Of course, it was always said that you were always tipped as going to be the first woman Prime Minister. Before we'd even heard of Margaret Thatcher, the Sunday Times in 1967, something like that. Right. I think I never took it as seriously as some parts of the media did.

Rt Hon Shirley Williams2:03

Sounds like what?

Rt Hon Shirley Williams2:04

Right.

Presenter2:08

For one thing, I realised that in myself there were some drawbacks. For example, I've never been a terribly highly organised person, and I've got away with it because I'm hugely energetic. But you do have to be pretty well organised, I think, to be a Prime Minister, and I'm not sure I was sufficiently well organised. You mentioned drawbacks in yourself, and we can't really have this conversation at this point in the history of your politics without mentioning the rather disastrous drawbacks that have recently been exposed among the upper echelons of the Lib Dem party, namely Charles Kennedy's drinking and Mark Oaten's secret private life. Do I presume

Presenter2:44

that like many other people at the top of the Liberal Democrats, you you knew about the one but but were quite ignorant of the other. That would be correct, yes. Uh I did know a bit about Charles's problem and and one has to say that uh

Presenter2:57

Alcoholism or heavy drinking is an occupational hazard of politicians. I think it would be fair to say that someone like Winston Churchill more or less marinated in alcohol, but it didn't seem to affect his performance. Somebody, on the other hand, like George Brown, who I knew well, was driven to extremes by just a couple of sherries. Nowadays, because we have this society which is a curious mixture of Puritanism and permissiveness, but hasn't quite decided which it is, I don't think either George Brown or Churchill would have got away without massive criticism from some newspapers for this particular thing. I think that's the point, isn't it? And that's really what's quite shocking about

Rt Hon Shirley Williams3:28

Uh

Rt Hon Shirley Williams3:30

Nice.

Presenter3:33

Both these cases, although they are very different, that these men displayed great naivety to think that they could get away with either of these things going on in their lives in a kind of society where the press, the light of the press, bores down into every single corner of a person's private life. I think the problem with Charles was that he promised more than once to give it up and then made real efforts.

Speaker 43:48

It's quite upsetting.

Presenter3:55

for a while, and then after a while under pressure lapsed. And I think the problem is that many people with the issue of alcoholism as a sort of disease do tend to believe that they can break the habit, and it's much, much harder than they believe. But is there part of you that

Presenter4:12

understandably perhaps feels resentful that these men, in very different ways, have actually brought the party so low, just when it felt as if it was going somewhere and might have been able to do so. I mean, it was not that long ago it was being talked of as a possible

Rt Hon Shirley Williams4:25

Good.

Presenter4:27

You know, the second force in British politics. And now where is it?

Presenter4:31

I think I don't feel so much resentful as rather as simply sad. I have seen this happen with party after party. It's not anything very new. But I agree with you it's very sad, and I think one of the harsh things just life is not altogether fair is that by and large the Liberal Democrats were held and to some extent held themselves to a higher standard, and that's where part of the pain comes. It's a long way back up now, isn't it? Oh, I think we'll make it. But no, you're right. It will be a pull, and we'll have to overcome the setback that is undoubtedly there.

Presenter5:03

Tell me about your first record. What are you going to take to this desert island? Cheer you up.

Presenter5:07

Well, my first record really reflects my great fondness for one of the people who made a lot of my work in education possible, and that was my friend John Little. He was a remarkable had remarkable political insight, great devotion and commitment.

Presenter5:24

And in a fairly hard life, because he was not a man who enjoyed good health, and he died young.

Presenter5:29

Um I remember this always being associated with him. It was somehow it captured the nature of the man.

Presenter6:35

Scott Joplin and the Entertainer. You were born, Shirley, into a family alive with politics and vigorous conviction. You apparently complained in the early days that your parents cared more about Hitler than they did about you. When I was about four, that's exactly what I said to them. That's what it felt like, was it? Oh, yes. I mean, my parents I didn't see my parents all day long. My mother, for one thing, was locked in her study for the whole of the morning and part of the afternoon. But by the time we all got together, usually at tea, the conversation was almost invariably about the major issues at the time, from the Spanish Civil War to the rise of Hitler. And I remember listening to my parents vigorously discussing with one another and finding out that the only way I could get into the conversation, my brother would be there too, would be by saying something like, well, is Hitler going to bring the whole world to an end then? And then my parents would stop, look at me, listen, and I felt that that was how to get into the conversation. So you were allowed in, you were treated as part of the conversation. Oh, very much so. Yes, particularly by my father. He had absolutely no sense that there is a different set of potentials for boys than for girls. And I always remember he used to encourage me climbing his bookshelves, which went right up to the ceiling.

Rt Hon Shirley Williams7:25

Daily.

Rt Hon Shirley Williams7:28

Oh, very much so. Yes, my particular

Presenter7:40

when I was about three and my mother was terrified I would fall off. And he encouraged me always to go to the very top shelf and I felt he was entirely behind me and it was a wonderful feeling. But it was your mother, of course, who was the star, wasn't it? She was Vera Britton. She

Rt Hon Shirley Williams7:46

My f

Presenter7:54

Was publishing Testament of Youth, her long account of her experiences during the First World War, just about when you were a toddler, I would have thought. Thirty-three. Yes, I was three. So were you aware that she was suddenly a very important person? Too small. But by the time I was about six, I became conscious that my mother was.

Rt Hon Shirley Williams8:04

Yes, I was three.

Presenter8:14

Somewhat unusual. Earlier, what I was conscious of was that there was this very strict discipline in my house under which you did not interrupt either mother or father unless something disastrous had happened, because they had to be working and you had to learn that. And I must ask you quickly before we move on, do you remember sitting on Nehru's knee?

Presenter8:34

Not isn't he, actually. Um I remember he came quite often to the House. My father was secretary of the Free India Committee.

Presenter8:40

and Neru as a young man who just got out of prison.

Presenter8:43

Came to our house and spent several hours talking to other Fabians and people on his side. That was the nature of the household, wasn't it? Endless people. Many people were coming through, well-known people or activists. Well-known people, activists, in fact, fans of my mother, all sorts of people. It was a constant flow in and out, but not until tea time.

Rt Hon Shirley Williams8:52

Yeah.

Speaker 48:54

Well known.

Presenter9:05

All the earlier hours were dedicated to work. Record number two.

Presenter9:09

Well, record number two is the famous Vorjak New World Symphony. My parents, both being high minded people, wanted their children to actually live

Presenter9:18

In part of the war

Presenter9:20

So they sent us to America, but the minute, the minute that it was clear there wasn't going to be invasion, they tried to get us back, because, quite rightly, they thought if we were going to be part of the post-war world, we had to have had experience of the war, but not the one that might have been an absolute disaster in the sense that we might have been left orphaned and abandoned.

Presenter10:38

Part of the second movement of Dorjac's New World Symphony, Symphony No. Nine, played by the Berlin Philharmonic conducted by Klaus Tenstedt. So you were evacuated, Shirley. You were nine, I think, when you were sent out to Midlands. Nine when I went and thir and thirteen when I came back.

Rt Hon Shirley Williams10:49

Nice one.

Presenter10:52

You fell in love with the place. You the space. You were a tomboy. You knew everything you wanted to do. And in Minnesota.

Rt Hon Shirley Williams10:55

You know everything you want to do.

Presenter10:59

Um I moved quite rapidly from being suspect because Britain was seen as a an old European power trying to trap fresh young Americans into wars that they had nothing to do with.

Presenter11:10

And then by the time the Pearl Harbor occurred in'forty one, I suddenly became the town's heroine because I was the representative of gallant our gallant little ally, quote. Probably the only English evacuee there, anyway. Well, my brother was there too, but there were very few of us. Yes, so you'd have been quite

Rt Hon Shirley Williams11:17

Go.

Speaker 411:19

Probably the

Rt Hon Shirley Williams11:21

It's one.

Presenter11:25

Famous in your way. Quite famous in my way. Which of course is what led to the famous Elizabeth Taylor story, which was when my the Middle West film correspondent suggested my name.

Presenter11:37

as the lead part in National Velvet. Because you could ride. Because I could ride,'cause I was blonde,'cause I was blue eyed and because I was English enough to be going on with it. And uh of course in the end we went to through to the uh final gallop.

Rt Hon Shirley Williams11:40

Because you could

Presenter11:50

And Elizabeth Taylor got a nose ahead, and Susan Effel became the lead part in National Velvet, and I'm always regretful I wasn't. Things could have been very different had you been wilful.

Presenter12:01

And I wouldn't want to be married eight times for a start.

Rt Hon Shirley Williams12:01

Really awful

Presenter12:05

Didn't necessarily follow. Three years then you were away from home. Important years in your life, aged 10 to 13. Absolutely. Do you remember the moment?

Rt Hon Shirley Williams12:10

Yes, absolutely.

Presenter12:14

when you saw your mother again.

Presenter12:17

Yes. My father came down to Bristol, which is where the plane landed, took me back in the train to London. My mother was in a meeting in Birmingham and had no idea. And so he hid me behind a curtain. And when my mother came back from her meeting in Birmingham at about eleven o'clock that night, he pulled back the curtain, and there was her daughter.

Presenter12:36

And how was it?

Presenter12:39

On her side, very emotional.

Presenter12:41

On my side not, because I'd learnt independence and I couldn't take the leap of the three years when she hadn't been there. So it took little time.

Presenter12:49

And my mother, who was a subtle woman, I mean, she was she was very sensitive.

Presenter12:54

Realized that the best way was not to sort of hug me over and over, though she certainly started that way, but to leave me time and space to adapt myself to the idea of once again being the daughter in a household rather than a free spirit. Record number three.

Presenter13:10

In nineteen forty-eight, when I was seventeen, I was sent to Germany by the British Control Commission, and I remember as we went through out of the holes in the ground, literally the holes in the ground of the cellars, there emerged these sort of ghost people who were wearing rags, desperately hungry, and they just sort of came out of the depths almost, as if it was an inferno that was down there.

Presenter13:32

And so this had a great impact on me, and it was the first time that I really began to think.

Presenter13:38

I put it very bluntly, that we, the Allies, were not quite as wonderful as we presented ourselves, that we were capable of shutting one's eyes to the sufferings that were going on in consequence of the war. And this war requiem, in a way, summed that up for me.

Speaker 414:14

We lost overhead.

Speaker 414:23

Lay not thy hand upon the land, and neither do anything

Speaker 414:36

Go the way. Caught in a thicket by its horn.

Presenter14:48

So Abraham rose and claved the wood from the offatorium of Britain's War Requiem sung by Peter Peirce and Dietrich Fischer Dieskau with the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by the composer Benjamin Britton.

Presenter14:58

Um so you saw?

Presenter15:00

Shirley Williams, at first hand, aged seventeen, the results of the kind of carpet bombing that your mother with her pacifist views had very much campaigned against. It but it she had suffered as a result of that campaign. I mean nobody nobody nobody liked a pacifist during the course of that war.

Speaker 415:12

Yeah.

Presenter15:19

And I think she also stirred up some quite profound sense of guilt that some people felt in Britain, because she wrote a pamphlet called Seed of Chaos, which specifically came out against saturation bombing and the attempt to break German morale by bombing civilians in large numbers. And it led to an absolute eruption. She was stopped from going on the BBC. She was denounced in the commons. Was it difficult at home? I mean, did you get personal attacks of any kind? Oh, yes. We got various dubious things through the door, as you might imagine, all that. And she had a terribly hard time, there's no doubt about it. It was very funny. Luckily for her,

Presenter15:56

It actually ended sooner than it might have done because in April 1945,

Presenter16:01

The newspapers published on their front page the Gestapo blacklist, and by sheer good luck my mother, Vera Britton, my father, George Catlin, were on the same page as Churchill.

Presenter16:13

And so there was in a sense the absolute proof that the Nazis hated her.

Presenter16:18

More than they did.

Presenter16:24

the courage to take a stand. Correct. I I just wonder if, you know, spooling on thirty odd years from then when you took your stand against the Labour Party, it was a big decision for you, leaving a party which you you joined age sixteen. I wonder whether you recalled the kind of courage it took in that moment.

Rt Hon Shirley Williams16:26

Yeah.

Rt Hon Shirley Williams16:30

Years from that

Rt Hon Shirley Williams16:32

Labour pot. It was

Rt Hon Shirley Williams16:35

Very painful.

Presenter16:41

Yes. I mean, my mother was always a a beacon to me. My father, in a way, shared my ambitions, but my mother was my moral beacon.

Presenter16:48

and she was a woman of the most profound integrity.

Presenter16:53

We must just nip back into the war for one more story, because of course I mentioned that you'd met Herbert Morrison in an airage at. I mean you and he stuck up quite a friendship, didn't you? We did. Herbert was for one thing he was a tremendously warm and funny individual, but he'd also wanted to have had a lot of children. He only had, I think, one daughter. And so he actually did thoroughly enjoy children. How old were you at the time? When we met in the air at Shuttle 13.

Rt Hon Shirley Williams17:16

How old

Presenter17:20

Yes. And so I was sitting next to him. It was a long air raid, about two and a half hours. And I was sitting next to him in the air raid shelter.

Rt Hon Shirley Williams17:26

Uh

Presenter17:26

He would have been home secretary at the time. He was home secretary and I just lit into him.

Speaker 417:26

People have been hopeful.

Rt Hon Shirley Williams17:27

Uh

Presenter17:30

About capital punishment for one. I said, you know, disgusting, and almost everything I could think of. And he, instead of thinking, Oh, my godfather's this pert, wretched young woman, he actually thoroughly enjoyed it. We had a great argument, and after that, we had lunch every now and then. He was really very fond of me. I became a sort of mentor. You could go on telling him what to do. You were his mentor.

Rt Hon Shirley Williams17:50

Yeah.

Presenter17:52

Willip cut both waves.

Presenter17:54

Record number four.

Presenter17:56

Record number four flows from my experience of going after I left uh University at Oxford, where I'd had a multiple time, and I got a full right to Columbia in New York.

Presenter18:07

And I spent the year 1952 there. My future husband Bernard was training to be a pilot, a jet pilot in Canada, and he didn't get much leave, but on one occasion he got some leave and wanted to come and see New York. And it was very it was the beginning of Guys and Dolls. It was the earliest beginning of the run of Guys and Dolls, that great musical. But I still remember the extraordinary excitement of New York for both of us, the feeling of this incredibly lively, vivid city. And the record I'm now asking you to play sums up for me the spirit and nature of New York as at that early performance of Guys and Dolls.

Speaker 418:44

My time of day is the dark time.

Speaker 418:50

A couple of deals before dawn

Speaker 418:56

When the street belongs to the car, And the janitor with the mark

Speaker 419:06

And the grocery clocks are all gone.

Presenter19:11

Yeah.

Presenter19:11

Yeah.

Presenter19:12

My Time of Day, sung by Ian Charlson from the National Theatre cast recording of Guys and Dolls. That was made in nineteen eighty two. So you married um Bernard Williams, Shirley, and uh you you set up a sort of uh a a menage with another couple, didn't you, Hilary and Helga Rubinstein, which see it sounds to have been a bit similar to the the one you were brought up in, with lots of people passing through. We had another couple besides Frank Windsor, famous from Zed Cars, and his wife, Mary, who lived on the top floor.

Speaker 419:34

See

Presenter19:41

And they became a bit later. But the great thing about this menage was, first of all, that between us all we could afford much more space than if we bought three small houses, because one huge Victorian house

Presenter19:52

Ideally, it fitted three families. So we each had a floor. I think the Ruby's had two floors, we each had one. But Helga said, you know, it wasn't as much open house, it was like the Suez Canal. Yes, people closed in and out the whole time. And transit in the spare room. Absolutely right. But the great thing was that we could have dinner parties together so that we could share our friends and so on. San a middle-class commune, really. San a middle-class commune, yes. But you couldn't have done what you did, I presume, without it. I mean, you were out there trying to win a seat without all of that backup.

Rt Hon Shirley Williams20:02

Yes, people and

Rt Hon Shirley Williams20:04

And transit.

Rt Hon Shirley Williams20:11

Friends and so a lot of our friends can't.

Rt Hon Shirley Williams20:19

No, I

Rt Hon Shirley Williams20:21

Uh

Speaker 420:21

Yes.

Rt Hon Shirley Williams20:21

With

Presenter20:23

I think absolutely. I think that it would have been lonely for my daughter. I think it would have been.

Presenter20:28

very hard on us. It was quite hard anyway, but it would have been much, much harder. But it did mean, of course, that Bernard was quite a new man in the sense that he would have taken some charge of the money. He was very, very good at at sharing.

Rt Hon Shirley Williams20:38

Oh, he's trying to.

Presenter20:42

Responsibility for helping to raise our daughter. And he was of course his own career was taking off completely at that time. He was one of the youngest professors in the country at Bedford College at that time, University of London, and then later at University College London. But he didn't like it because he felt he was Mr. Shirley Williams, is that right?

Presenter20:59

No, he's even quite good about that. He sort of managed to laugh about it, but I think it did cut a wound. But until he went to Cambridge, when we then lived in two separate places, um I think our marriage was a pretty happy one. That was really put the guy boss on it, though. But no, generally speaking, I must say, I think it worked very well for quite a long time. But in the end, he fell in love with somebody else, and I think he probably needed that somebody else, because she was uh

Rt Hon Shirley Williams21:20

Can you get with Helena?

Rt Hon Shirley Williams21:22

My lazy.

Presenter21:25

She was somebody who was prepared to, as it were, make him not only first, but almost everything, and at the same time was intelligent and attractive. But that would have been hard for you not just personally, but also because of your

Rt Hon Shirley Williams21:36

Which is nice.

Presenter21:38

Strong Roman Catholicism. Yes, I didn't want to see my marriage break up. It was very tough for a couple of years. I mean, I I was uh did everything I could to save it, but it couldn't be saved in the end.

Rt Hon Shirley Williams21:40

Yeah.

Presenter21:49

It was a sort of coup de foudre, I think. They were both obsessed with one another.

Presenter21:54

And I finally came to understand that and realized that it was no good to keep trying to hang on.

Presenter21:59

And the best way to save some sort of friendly relationship, which we didn't manage to achieve, was by in a way in the end accepting that I had to get out of the way.

Presenter22:08

Record number five.

Presenter22:10

Well, record number five was when I was still married to Bernard, and very happily so, and we were we had he'd just been invited to go to Ghana, which was just becoming freed from its colonial status, the first British colony in Africa to become independent. And it was a marvellous experience. You'd you'd come into a village in the total black, no electricity, of course, and uh you'd hear monkeys shrieking and parrots

Presenter22:34

gossiping in the trees and so on. And then all of a sudden out of this total blackness, I can't describe how black the blackness was, it was like black velvet, there would be these little points of light, which would be hurricane lamps borne by the students who came to my classes. It was an extraordinarily enjoyable experience.

Speaker 322:57

Nana, we now have freedom.

Speaker 323:01

Wanna

Speaker 323:02

Land of freedom

Speaker 323:04

Toils of the brave, and the sweat of their labours. Toils of the brave, which have brought return.

Presenter23:17

Iti Mensa and Ghana Freedom.

Presenter23:20

Being a woman in public life through the second half of the twentieth century could be both exciting and obviously infuriating when you hit up against sexism. But presumably when once you became a Cabinet Minister, that kind of attitude fell away with rank, did it?

Presenter23:35

No, not entirely. I mean, uh Harold Wilson was really the first Prime Minister who broke through the view that in the Cabinet there was just one woman, the statutory woman. But even so, uh one still did run into a certain feeling that women weren't really

Presenter23:50

thoroughly serious practitioners. And if you look at the history of women in politics, Barbara Castle, Claire Short, Mrs. T, et cetera, what you find over and over again is that they tend to be outsiders.

Presenter24:03

They tend to be boat rockers or whistleblowers.

Presenter24:08

And the other crucial fact is that they are not part of the culture of clubbery.

Presenter24:14

Which is a very important part of British politics and has been ever since the days of Antony Trollope. It's probably impossible to change that. No, it's not impossible to change it because I think what we're gradually. Let me give an example.

Rt Hon Shirley Williams24:21

No, it's not impossible to change it because

Presenter24:25

We have far more emphasis today on things like conflict prevention, conflict resolution.

Presenter24:31

Peacekeeping, the role of the United Nations and all this, international relations is gradually becoming feminized.

Presenter24:38

And that's the way it's going to go. And women will lead the way, is what you suggest. Lead the way into the next record.

Presenter24:46

Well, this next record, of course, for me uh i it sums up the birth of the Social Democratic Party after I left the Labour Party in nineteen eighty one.

Presenter24:55

Uh primarily, as you said.

Presenter24:57

for reasons connected with the attempt to make accountability to the party and not to the

Presenter25:03

People

Presenter25:04

And secondly, because on very specific issues that the Labour Party at that point had decided to leave the European

Presenter25:10

common market, which I had always been strongly in favor of, to leave NATO, various other rather far reaching decisions of this kind. I just felt I couldn't I remember feeling very strongly I cannot get up on an election platform.

Presenter25:23

And advocate these policies because they are 180 degrees the opposite of where I actually stand, and I can't do it.

Presenter25:31

And so I felt the only way I could stay in politics and actually.

Presenter25:36

we could p put forward this extra option, this new choice, was by creating a new party. And Chariots of Fire was the

Presenter25:45

Music I chose for my Crosby campaign, which was the first time anybody got elected as an STP MP in a very, very Conservative seat. It was pouring with rain, it was November, it was cold, it was bitter, we had no money, we had an open truck.

Presenter26:00

And I remember for week after week

Presenter26:02

Uh Roy Jenkins, David Owen, Bill Rogers and me in this open trap with the rain often pouring down.

Presenter26:08

were cheered up entirely by playing Chariots of Fire as we went round all the villages and towns of the Crosby constituency to the point where finally we had established the brand music and the brand name and people came out in their thousands to vote for the STP.

Presenter26:50

Bangelis and Chariots of Fire. They were such heady days, the the launching of the SDP, Shirley. I think fifty thousand members joined you practically overnight, many of them political virgins, and suddenly spotted that this was a

Rt Hon Shirley Williams26:59

Many of them put

Presenter27:03

A party that was going to sit in the middle and perhaps be for them. It must have been the most delicious feeling to feel that you were in the vanguard of a movement that was going to change the course of British politics. It was colossally exciting. And I remember we launched it in all eleven regional capitals from Glasgow down to Cardiff to Southampton, which also meant that everybody felt that the party had been launched in their backyard. It was a tremendously clever way of getting people to identify with the party everywhere. It meant a lot of travel. I think what really

Presenter27:36

probably hurt it, um, was that

Presenter27:40

David was a brilliant leader, but he wasn't a team player.

Presenter27:43

And so he, I think, as he became more and more the sole.

Presenter27:48

banner carrier in in Parliament. So eventually he merged he sort of became more the leader of one party and the rest of us were sort of ab somewhat abandoned. But it was a a big move to form it's a big move, as we've said, for you to to leave the Labour Party, the party that you loved.

Rt Hon Shirley Williams27:58

Tamoto.

Presenter28:05

Um

Presenter28:06

Was in the end the game worth the candle? Because of course the the the Labour Party heeled over, pulled itself together, achieved power and you know. The Labour Party is not the party I would today wish to belong to. I am very happy to belong to the party I belong to.

Rt Hon Shirley Williams28:16

Yeah.

Presenter28:25

Because in the end I I think that first of all I passionately wish to see our civil liberties defended.

Presenter28:33

I think on many areas like prison policy

Presenter28:36

like education policy, like what I see as a gradual dismantlement of the National Health Service, Labor isn't doing what I would be happy with. And I don't want to go from one policy I finally became unhappy with to another one I would still be unhappy with.

Presenter28:50

Back on number seven.

Presenter28:53

Record number seven is um really

Presenter28:56

comes after quite a long period in my life, which I will deal with very quickly. After eighty seven, I decided that, first of all, I'd stop being the party president. I could only be it for six years. I'd been it for six years. It was now eighty seven. I was at the end of that period. And I decided to go

Presenter29:11

and spend some time back in the United States. So in those I then spent the next eight years pretty well full time at Harvard. I came back in uh sort of three, four months, a year, and there I picked up a very old friendship.

Presenter29:24

With Dick Neustadt, who was one of the probably the for most formidable authority on presidential power in the United States, that there's been a towering academic figure.

Presenter29:34

I had known him very well when he was married to his wife, who later died of multiple sclerosis. I was particularly a friend of his wife, Bert, rather than of him, at that time. I knew him, but she was the one that was my real friend.

Presenter29:45

Um and when I went back to Harvard, of course I saw a bit of Dick as

Presenter29:50

Friend, widow, widower, but friend. Um and very gradually um we moved towards falling in love and getting married. He was a wonderful husband. He was sort of the ideal husband one would have wanted to choose, because he was already

Presenter30:04

Very well established in his own career, very famous in America, very much admired. The most lovely man, because he'd served and nursed his wife throughout her illness and uh

Presenter30:14

His I Lost Him in two thousand and three. He was of

Presenter30:17

Reasonable age, but he was so wonderful as a member of our family, as the

Presenter30:22

Sort of pata familias to both me and my children and my grandchildren.

Presenter30:27

that we all miss him very, very badly indeed, and this sums up that sense of loss.

Presenter31:30

The Plaint from Purcell's The Fairy Queen, sung by Anne Grimm, with the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra conducted by Tone Koopman.

Presenter31:37

Um

Presenter31:38

Life goes on, as you say, Shirley. Although I have to ask you one thing about um your second husband, Dick Neustadt. Um I read that he was responsible for smartening you up. He finally finally persuaded you that a woman was judged by the way she looked and you better do something about it. Well, A, that, and B, he just loved clothes. He just loved going out to buy clothes. I mean, he this was just about the well, things he really enjoyed in life. One of the things he really enjoyed in life was helping to choose clothes for very pretty

Rt Hon Shirley Williams31:48

Finally

Presenter32:04

Women. Um he then decided to take me in hand, and he used to go to shops and sort out what he thought would be would suit me, and he was always right, and I would then come along with only half an hour to spare and choose between the four things he'd sorted out, and he always got it right.

Rt Hon Shirley Williams32:26

And you man

Presenter32:28

Well, I'm better, put it that way.

Presenter32:31

Your mother once wrote about you when you were a young woman. Shirley will go, and was intended to go, further than I was. I think she will be one of those people who will help to achieve the heights that humanity can reach. Do you think she would have judged you to have made a success of your life? She but not that. I mean, there's no question in my mind but that she has achieved a certain kind of

Presenter32:51

Immortality. I mean, she is now part of the canon of literature of the First World War.

Presenter32:57

And lots of people study her and so on. No, she went she she achieved more than I've achieved. But I think she would have died reasonably happy, put it that way.

Presenter33:05

Last record.

Presenter33:07

On my mother's gravestone the proper phrase is Blessed are the Peacemakers, and this uh particular record sums that up for me.

Speaker 433:32

What a fool is it for them?

Speaker 433:38

Yeah.

Speaker 433:49

Order.

Speaker 434:03

Yeah.

Presenter34:14

Felicity Lott singing How Beautiful Are the Feet from Handel's Messiah. Now, if you could only take one of those eight records, Shirley, which one would you take?

Presenter34:23

I think that I would probably uh

Presenter34:26

I would probably take that one.

Presenter34:28

Because I think the plaint would be too sad.

Presenter34:32

And some of the earlier music, though lots of fun, would be very much tied to a specific time in my life. So I think I would take this one. And what about your book, as well as the Bible and the complete works of Shakespeare? I'm very fond of poetry, partly because it in politics that's what you've got time to read. You haven't got time to read an awful lot of books. So I'd take probably the collected WH Orden.

Presenter34:54

And your luxury.

Presenter34:56

I was going to say my luxury with my grandchildren, but you're not going to permit that, are you? So I think what I'd better say is I'll take with me my um

Speaker 435:00

Yeah.

Rt Hon Shirley Williams35:00

But

Presenter35:05

P C linked to the Internet, and then I'll have things to think about for all the time I'm on the island. But no emailing. You have to promise me. Oh no, no emailing. No access to the Internet will be quite acceptable, thank you.

Rt Hon Shirley Williams35:12

Oh no no you need no exception

Presenter35:18

Shirley Williams, Baroness Williams of Crosby, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your Desert Island discs. Thank you very much, too.

Rt Hon Shirley Williams35:31

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