Tariq Ali

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. The programme was originally broadcast in two thousand eight.

Presenter0:27

My castaway this week is Tariq Ali. A novelist, filmmaker, historian and playwright, he first made his mark as a charismatic student leader in the late sixties. His striking looks, thick wavy hair and penchant for wearing a red mac made him a radical celebrity. Born to upper class atheist Communist parents in Pakistan, his intellectual rigor and political naus were honed from a very early age. He led his first street protest at twelve, his first strike at fifteen.

Presenter0:55

His role as an anti establishment agitator in chief was cemented when he headed two major revolutionary marches in London in nineteen sixty eight. The years have passed he's found success as a novelist, documentary maker, and commentator, but his categorical anti establishment spirit remains intact.

Presenter1:11

Expressed regularly in print rather than on the street, but none the less passionate for that. Let's start, Tarik, then, with you as a teenager. You're in your mid teens.

Presenter1:21

You're in the Himalayas on holiday and what happens? How do you get involved in well, it was a strike, really.

Tariq Ali1:28

It was a strike, and you know, this was an old hill station, colonial hill station, beautiful place called Nathyagali, where we used to go every summer. And in those early days, in the fifties, the sewage system was very primitive. So you had sweepers, as they were called, who would come and clean the toilets, the old thunder boxes, and take them and dump it somewhere. And one day I was talking to one of them and I said, How much are you paid? and he said, you know, gave me the figure, and it was just piffling. And he said, we try hard really to get a raise. And I said, well, you've got to go on strike. And he said, what? I said, you have enormous power. If you stop doing your work, the whole place will be stinking to high heaven. And they'll be falling on their knees pleading with you to work. And they announced a strike. And the whole place, this sort of elite hill station, was stinking for exactly twenty four hours and they won all their demands. And I it gave me enormous confidence in the collective power of workers.

Presenter2:37

I bet it did, but I'm wondering why you cared, as a fourteen, fifteen year old boy, what these cleaners were being paid.

Tariq Ali2:43

Well, you know, because I guess my parents were radical and when I was growing up in Lahore, our house was always packed with all sorts of people, trade union leaders, peasant activists, poets, artists, singers on the one side, and then members of the family who were incredibly crusty, reactionary, heads of police, military intelligence on the other. And I was always attracted to the underbelly. My natural sympathies were with the underdog.

Presenter3:12

Radical politics, of course, is um understandably the comfort zone of the young of students. I'm wondering that as you've gotten older, how comfortable you've been with maintaining that radicalism?

Tariq Ali3:24

Totally comfortable, especially in a culture where conformism has become a part of life. But I don't feel, you know, that the world has improved. I think in many ways it's got worse, and I have no problems with it.

Presenter3:39

Tell me about your first piece of music, then.

Tariq Ali3:41

It's for is Requiem, which, I think given what we've been talking about, is quite apposite, that it's a requiem for a world that has gone, which many people now regret has passed away, but find themselves unable to do anything to bring it back. So I thought it was appropriate that we started off with a requiem.

Presenter4:58

The opening of Foray's Requiem, performed by the choir of King's College, Cambridge, and the English Chamber Orchestra, led by Stephen Clebery. So, Tarek Ali, you were born in nineteen forty three in Lahore, then part of British India. What do you recall of your very early life?

Tariq Ali5:13

When partition took place and Pakistan was formed in nineteen forty seven, I was about three and a half. I have no memories of it because I guess we weren't so traumatized, because we didn't move.

Tariq Ali5:27

We didn't have to leave the city. Pakistan came to us. We didn't have to go to Pakistan from India. And so my memories of it are very hazy. Uh my

Tariq Ali5:40

Nanny used to tell me that she took me out on to the streets and to wave a Pakistan flag and shout Long live Pakistan, Pakistan Zindabad and I said Did I really shout that? and she said you did. So I said I think that was the first and last time I ever did that.

Presenter5:59

Your mother came from a very prominent Moslem family, and as I said in the introduction, both your parents were Communists and Atheists. Were you aware of those very marked differences of opinion that they would have from the broad populace surrounding them?

Tariq Ali6:15

I guess when I was about five or six it became very obvious that they were different from the rest of the family. They behaved differently, they met different sorts of people.

Presenter6:25

Had this been an arranged marriage between your parents?

Tariq Ali6:27

No.

Tariq Ali6:28

In fact, I've not really told this story before, but they fell in love, they were cousins, they fell in love.

Tariq Ali6:35

My grandfather, my mother's father, was Prime Minister of the Punjab, elected Prime Minister of the Punjab. My father was a radical fighting against colonialism and for independence and a Communist. His father was a member of the Cabinet.

Tariq Ali6:53

And so you would have thought this was a marriage made in heaven, but my maternal grandfather said that he couldn't allow his daughter to marry a Communist, that, you know, blood was not as important as politics. Quite right on that, I have to say. And finally he laid a condition that my father could only marry my mother if he joined the Indian Army, the British Indian Army. And my father thought he would go completely mad, because as a Communist he couldn't conceive of this. And then the Soviet Union was invaded, and the Indian Communist Party instructed its upper class and upper middle class members joined the army. So my father went, joined the army, and wedding photographs show him in a very snazzy lieutenant's uniform, looking very cocky indeed. That's how they got married.

Presenter7:45

And so politics was in the very blood of your family from the beginning.

Tariq Ali7:49

But since politics had stopped them getting married, and then finally politics actually facilitated it, it was difficult to get away from it.

Presenter7:58

Tell me about your second piece of music, then.

Tariq Ali7:59

Well, this is something I didn't discover till

Tariq Ali8:03

Later in life, Howard Brenton and I were writing a play together called Moscow Gold for the Royal Shakespeare Company, and the director was to be John Dexter, who died, alas, before he could do the play. But as we were discussing the play with John Dexter, he said, I've got the music for the play. Do you know Shostakovich? So I said, Yeah. And Howard said, We we knew the symphonies. He said, No, not the symphonies, the string quartets. I'd never heard them. And this particular one is quite gentle compared to some of the others, which can be very harsh, but they're all wonderful.

Presenter9:37

Part of the final movement of Shostakevich's String Quartet No. 7 in F sharp minor, performed by the Borodan String Quartet. You've spoken then, Tarek, of this very vibrant household, a sort of salon for politicians and writers and radical thinkers that was your home. Your father at that time was editor of the Pakistan Times, so even though he was a Communist, he was part of the ruling elite, if you like. Your parents didn't see any contradiction in that.

Tariq Ali10:03

I think they did occasionally see the contradictions in that, but they tried to ignore them and get over them. My father

Tariq Ali10:12

You know, at one point it thought he would be a politician, but then came this group of people and said, We Pakistan is a new state which has been created and it doesn't have any real newspapers, so why don't we set up a chain of newspapers? And they were genuinely secular, progressive, in favor of socialism in a broad sense, and they had a big impact.

Presenter10:37

And there was a military coup in Pakistan when you would have been around about fifteen. Do you have any memories of that?

Tariq Ali10:42

Very much so. I remember in it was October 58 and

Tariq Ali10:50

My father coming home and saying, you know, there's been a military takeover.

Tariq Ali10:55

And you know, we were in a state of shock why had this happened, what was going to be the result of it. And my father's sister was married to a leading general who became the new Minister for Interior. And I remember she came to see us about a week later, and she said that this is a very, you know, anti-communist coup, so all of you had better be careful.

Presenter11:21

Yes, I mean, given that the country was known at that time then as the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, were your family properly worried about their future as prominent atheists and prominent colleagues?

Tariq Ali11:32

No, it was nothing to do with religion. Despite what the country's been called, till very recently, religion has been a very soft business in Pakistan. No one took it too seriously. It was part of your culture. If you wanted to pray, you prayed. If you wanted to fast, you fasted. It wasn't so important for the everyday life of uh uh people. It still isn't, but there's more religiosity today.

Presenter11:57

And why did your parents decide that you should go to Oxford then?

Tariq Ali12:00

Well, they decided that because I had become extremely active in the student movement against the military dictatorship. And my m mother's brother, one of them, was a senior figure in military intelligence, and he came home one day when I wasn't there and said to my mother, Get him out of the country or he'll spend the next five years in prison.

Presenter12:22

Were you aware of that at the time?

Tariq Ali12:23

I was not aware of it.

Presenter12:25

When did you find out?

Tariq Ali12:26

I found out many years later when my parents came to see me at Oxford, and I was so angry, because my mother said I knew if we told you you would never go, and this is absolutely true. I would not have left had I been told that they wanted me to leave.

Presenter12:43

More of Oxford in a minute, for now tell me about your third piece of music.

Tariq Ali12:48

Oh, this is just something I've always liked. I mean, I love Dietrich Viscadiskow, his singing, and Goethe's poem Set to Music. And Prometheus, of course, is the great rebel amongst the ancient gods, because he gave the earthlings fire and had to be punished for the rest of his life. So anyone who's radical has to identify with Prometheus.

Speaker 313:13

Medeted eye and he melts be to volcanst.

Tariq Ali13:16

Yeah.

Speaker 313:24

Umt me bedentna gleisch, er dies and perf.

Speaker 313:33

One ice.

Speaker 313:35

Sure.

Speaker 313:40

Most mier mine eto Frasenstein.

Speaker 313:45

Both spider

Speaker 313:47

Please give me a huge piece of money.

Speaker 313:53

Um designs do me spreadest.

Tariq Ali13:55

Please benefit

Speaker 313:58

Istre district.

Tariq Ali14:01

Two.

Speaker 314:02

It's always girl.

Presenter14:11

Dietrich Fischer Descow and Prometheus, accompanied by Gerald Moore. So, Tarikali, it was the autumn of nineteen sixty three, and you arrived in Britain. You would have been just a few weeks short of your twentieth birthday.

Presenter14:22

Can you remember what occurred to you?

Tariq Ali14:25

Well, there was a terrible fog and mist, and I'd never been so cold in my life before. And I arrived at my college in Oxford and got my rooms and found there was no heating in the bedroom, and the blankets were skimpy. But I got used to that. But the real sense of shock, I have to be honest with you, was at how bad the food was. I mean, people living in England today would never believe this, but coming to Britain in the sixties, the food was just a disgrace. What were you served? Look, the food at college, I mean, that's notoriously bad. It's like being in prison. But it's the cafes were pretty awful too. And I finally found an Indian lady in North Oxford who would cook every weekend for people like me who'd just come and were in a state of shock at how bad the food was. And then finally, it forced me to learn how to cook.

Tariq Ali15:20

But I would never have learnt how to cook had I not come to England.

Presenter15:24

You became President of the Oxford Union.

Presenter15:27

You felt comfortable being a a leader of men, did you? As somebody who naturally rose to the top and rallied the troops.

Tariq Ali15:33

Well, I don't know about that. I think it was the election in which

Tariq Ali15:38

I fought and one was very bitterly contested between left and right, so it was very political. And my opponent was Douglas Hogg, and I remember half the shadow cabinet came to vote for him, which made it even more exciting. But it was quite a polarized election.

Presenter15:56

I've also seen a fascinating photograph of you at the Oxford Union with Malcolm X sitting among you.

Tariq Ali16:01

It's true Malcolm came to speak at Oxford in I think it was sixty four.

Tariq Ali16:08

And he was a very, very intelligent guy, and we had a long talk that day.

Tariq Ali16:15

And I remember when I was leaving him that night, you know, you say the way you say to people. I said, Malcolm, great it'll be lovely to meet you, and I hope we meet again. And he suddenly said, I don't think we will.

Tariq Ali16:27

And I said

Tariq Ali16:29

What why? He said I think they're going to kill me.

Tariq Ali16:33

I said, who's going to kill you? He said, The Establishments, the Nation of Islam, one of them. And I just sat down again because I said

Tariq Ali16:43

To myself a thought passed either this is a very great man, or he's a hustler. How can people talk like this?

Tariq Ali16:49

And then I remember in February'sixty five picking up my copy of The Guardian and there on the front page Malcolm X assassinated. I remember weeping actually. I was really upset that this had happened.

Presenter17:02

Tell me about your next piece of music, then.

Tariq Ali17:04

The next piece of music is um jazz. I love jazz and Alice is the middle name of my companion and we've been together now for over twenty five years, so we play it occasionally and it's very nice.

Presenter18:19

Charlie Parker and Blues for Alice. The Vietnam War then, of course, became the focus of huge student protest and unrest. You travelled to Vietnam. What did you find there?

Tariq Ali18:31

I spent six weeks in Cambodia and Vietnam in sixty six and early sixty seven, at the height of the bombings, and this was my first direct experience of war.

Tariq Ali18:45

and I'm happy to say the last. And you know, traveling through that country, you couldn't travel during the day because it was being bombed. We had to travel at night.

Tariq Ali18:56

To see so much destruction, dead bodies, mangled children it never left me. It's a memory which haunts me still.

Presenter19:06

You also went to Bolivia in search of Sheikhara. You went to Palestine in the aftermath of the Six-Day War.

Presenter19:13

It's a very different thing to find yourself in a place potentially in danger and certainly in very explosive situations than sitting in a room somewhere arguing with somebody. Did you find it difficult to adapt to the reality of those radical situations?

Tariq Ali19:28

I didn't actually, and I guess it's because when you're young you really don't care. And I was thinking both in Vietnam and even in Bolivia that so if one's killed, so what? So many other people are dying. What makes you that special? You know, it's not bravado. I wasn't frightened of death at I'm much more scared now. I wasn't frightened of death at that time. And in Bolivia it was quite bad. You know, they could have knocked you off without anyone knowing and said it was an accident. In Vietnam you could have been killed by the bombs. But it didn't bother me that much.

Presenter20:01

Did your parents worry for the dangerous situations you were putting yourself in?

Tariq Ali20:05

Well, they didn't totally realize what was going on till afterwards. I remember my mother saying when she read my memoir of that period, she said, God, I hadn't known what had happened to you in Bolivia, I'd have been worried sick but, you know, parents are always like that.

Presenter20:20

Now, curiously, for a radical socialist, you were very aware of branding. Tell me about this red Mac, because it became your your signature, really.

Tariq Ali20:28

Well, you know, it's a stupid story. I had a friend, um, Ken Thompson, who was working with me on Town magazine, which was owned by Michael Heseltine, and the fashion editor of that magazine was Ken Thompson, and he would get clothes into the office. And I think Aquascutam sent him in three Macs, and there was a lovely red Mac, and Ken said to me, Ah, you better have this for the, you know, whatever. And I had it. And I wore it on one demonstration and it became very famous. But I think the actual people who had made it were extremely embarrassed.

Presenter21:04

Tell me about your next piece of music, then.

Tariq Ali21:06

Um the next piece of music is

Tariq Ali21:10

Verdi's Don Carlos, one of my favorite operas of all time. I love the Schiller play, but its grand passion, love, anger, inquisition,

Tariq Ali21:24

dissent, all the things that appeal to me brought into one opera. And with Verdi, of course, everything is marvellous. He he sort of conveys passion, political passion, sexual passion, love like no one else, in my opinion.

Speaker 321:43

Second.

Speaker 321:57

Uh

Presenter22:40

Carlos and Elizabeth's duet from Act One of Verdi's Don Carlos, sung by Luciano Pavarotti and Daniella Dessi, with the chorus and orchestra of La Scala, conducted by Riccardo Mutti. I wonder then how important it is for you to reach out to the public with your radical views, to not simply be preaching to the converted, if you like. How can you make the beliefs you have, the passion you have, relevant to people who don't agree with you?

Tariq Ali23:09

This is a difficult question because it's not easy to do that.

Tariq Ali23:13

It was much easier.

Tariq Ali23:15

in the sixties and seventies, because one did feel that both the print media and the broadcast media had much more space for dissenting views than they do now. So it is not easy to be as effective if you insist on remaining on the left as I do.

Presenter23:34

But what about the very paradox of your existence? You almost have the bearing of somebody who is part of that ruling elite, and yet you're seeking to challenge it and to overthrow it, but it's the very thing that's given you the ability to express yourself the way you do, and to be a leader of radical or would be radical men.

Tariq Ali23:53

Well, this is one of the contradictions of the system, that it often produces people like myself, and not just me, but you know, a whole wave of us all over the world who come from privileged backgrounds, but basically understand privileged for that reason better than others, and see it as something which is undesirable.

Presenter24:13

You have children. Have you ever wondered did you ever wonder whether you should send them to English public school or state school?

Tariq Ali24:20

No. And uh I didn't. All my children uh went uh to uh state schools and, you know, are quite happy as a result.

Presenter24:29

And if you are invited to speak at places as you often are, and people are thirsty to hear your views, and somebody sends you a first class ticket for the train, or a first class ticket for an aeroplane, what do you do?

Tariq Ali24:43

I accept it. Uh I have no problems with that. I mean, especially now at this age, you know, one's in one's sixties and there are certain creature comforts uh which I do enjoy and it'd be hypocritical uh to deny it. So if someone sends me a first-class train ticket or plane ticket, as rarely, but it does happen. I don't say I'm not going to travel in that way. That'd be very stupid.

Presenter25:05

Are you part of the establishment, really?

Tariq Ali25:07

I don't think so, and I never will be. And uh, you know, I get really irritated when people who've been anti-establishment.

Tariq Ali25:16

buy into the honours system and accept all these stupid gongs which are handed out. I don't like that. I think it's completely foolish, and uh I hope I will die as I've lived, never part of any establishment.

Presenter25:30

Tell me about your next piece of music, then.

Tariq Ali25:33

The next piece of music is was composed by Cornelius Cardieux, who used to do a lot of things with us during the anti-Vietnam War movement. He died tragically young, and this is his composition of The Croppy Boy, which is a very famous Irish tune, but which will surprise you, because it's done in a very gentle mode, and it's not folksy and it's not ultra-emotional. The emotion that is is suppressed. So it's a tribute and a homage to Cornelius, who would have developed as a very great composer had he lived.

Presenter27:07

Cornelius Cardew and the Croppy Boy. So, Tarekali, you'd been a member of a Marxist group. You'd spent many years campaigning.

Presenter27:15

In suicing people from the sidelines. In the 1970s, you moved away from direct political involvement. Why did you do that?

Tariq Ali27:21

It was in the nineteen eighties uh that I did that, because I thought life in a small left wing Marxist group had become very introverted. People were fighting, turning on each other, crazy things were being done, and I just thought one cannot be effective any more.

Presenter27:38

As Thatcherism swept Britain, did you think that anything significant had been left behind by the struggles of the sixties and early seventies?

Tariq Ali27:49

Well, I think the miners' strikes were very formative uh in the seventies. And when the mines were being closed, the miners attempted one last big, and the whole country which who hadn't supported them in the seventies did support them in the eighties. But they failed, and I think people didn't feel good about that, that uh too much uh was being destroyed by the wave of Thatcherism.

Presenter28:16

Did you personally feel defeated?

Tariq Ali28:19

Look, I didn't personally feel defeated. You know, my attitude to these things is there are defeats, you have to live with them, and you have to fight back with your pen.

Presenter28:30

And you decided, interestingly, that you were going to move from being part of making political history to chronicling it. Is it less satisfying to do that, or more?

Tariq Ali28:39

I don't think so. It can be affected. I mean, what I did for most of the eighties and nineties was do a lot of films for Channel Four, documentaries, drama, because Channel Four had just been born in the eighties. So we had the most incredible freedom in those years of Thatcherism as far as Channel Four was concerned. And a creative freedom always involves the right to fail. And if you take that right away by employing constantly consultants and managements who are there to sort of supervise what you do and you don't do and focus groups to say what they like, what you get is a blandness, which is the feature, I think, of most of mainstream television today.

Presenter29:26

I can hear the echoes of people shouting at their radios right now, saying you're just a man out of time. You were making your shows when you deserve to be making them. The people who are making television now are speaking to the youngsters of today. They're speaking to an audience who is as enthused by the comedies or documentaries or music that you see. You're just out of step.

Tariq Ali29:46

No, I'm not attacking some of the comedy shows that are being done, but by and large I think.

Tariq Ali29:52

Television in general has become too narrow. And this sort of culture of youthism that the young people are by and large stupid and not interested in anything highbrow is something I reject completely and that is not my experience of young people today. And it also forgets, of course, how many people above the ages of forty or fifty there are in this country.

Presenter30:19

Tell me about your next piece of music, then.

Tariq Ali30:21

The next piece of music is um

Tariq Ali30:26

Pakistani devotional singer, now dead, belonging to a tradition of Sufi mysticism, and this is the strongest religious tradition in the Pakistani countryside. Even to day,

Speaker 330:45

Madagin Iman Madadin Madagisbitu Madaduitu Madagalitu.

Presenter31:08

Patani Khan and Mede Ish Kvetun, my love is you. We are now then even forty years on from the sixties, still obsessed with it. We talk about it a lot. We read books about it, the cultural shifts, the impression that it made on the generation that are now ruling us. As a central figure, do you look back at the landscape and try to make sense of the sixties, or have you left it well behind?

Tariq Ali31:32

I try and leave it behind because I don't like nostalgia. And I think there is a banal reason for this obsession with the sixties, is that most of the people who participated or lived through it are now senior figures in publishing, politics, broadcasting. They can't get over it, and so they insist on inflicting these things on the generation today. And I really don't understand this obsession.

Presenter31:56

Susan Watkins, who you mentioned, who has been your long-term partner, she's an editor at the New Left Review.

Presenter32:02

Post Thatcherism, given that we all appear to want to be middle class now, do you and Deshee worry about the fact that increasingly you talk to a much narrower band of people that are interested in the same things that you are both interested in?

Tariq Ali32:15

Well, I wish uh I could sort of be honest and say yes, but it's not true, because the New Left Review today has more readers than it ever did in the sixties and seventies. So there is a layer of people out there. I don't say they're the majority, but probably even more in some cases, desperate for critical voices. So I think it's it's different from the sixties. It's not that world. But hope is constantly reborn in different circumstances, and I think it is being reborn.

Presenter32:46

Now, of course, you're leaving for this desert island, so you're not going to see much of this rebirth as it goes on. How will you manage, alone, without anybody to engage in discourse with?

Tariq Ali32:58

Well, I would read, because if you take books with you they are companions till you drop dead. As long as I had books and writing paper and note books, I could last on my own for quite a long time on a desert island or anywhere.

Presenter33:15

Okay, we'll find out more about that in a second. Tell me about your final piece of music then.

Tariq Ali33:20

Well, this is one of my old-time favourites, and Tom Lehrer was my old-time favourite. And he gave up writing music when Henry Kissinger got the Nobel Prize, because he said satire was no longer possible. But this is a piece of music which was written in the 60s, but applies even more strongly to the world in which we live today.

Speaker 233:42

When someone makes a move of which we don't approve, who is it that always intervenes? UN and OAS, they have their place, I guess. But first, send the Marines! We'll send them all we've got. John Wayne and Randolph Scott, remember those exciting fighting scenes. To the shores of Tripoli, but not to Mississippi. What do we do? Send the Marines!

Tariq Ali33:46

Who is it that always intervenes?

Presenter34:12

Commer and send the marines. So I will give you the Bible and the complete works of Shakespeare. You're allowed to take one other book. What will it be?

Tariq Ali34:20

I don't want the Bible. Um I'll have Shakespeare and I would probably take the collected works of

Tariq Ali34:32

Proust Balsac, either would do me.

Presenter34:36

Right, we'll give you the proust, I think, and a luxury.

Tariq Ali34:39

Well, the luxury item would have to be a little D V D player with my favorite opera.

Presenter34:47

Which is what?

Tariq Ali34:47

Which is Don Carlos? I could listen to it endlessly.

Presenter34:51

And if you had to choose just one piece of music, what would it be?

Tariq Ali34:56

I think I would probably choose a piece of devotional music from the Punjab, some of which you've heard today, because you can listen to it again and again. It has that quality to it.

Presenter35:09

Tarikali, thank you very much for letting us hear your Desert Island discs.

Tariq Ali35:12

Paul. Thank you.

Presenter35:20

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