Sir Geoffrey Howe

Sir Geoffrey Howe0:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For rights reasons we've had to shorten the music.

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The programme was originally broadcast in 1986, and the presenter was Michael Parkinson.

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Our castaway was once described by an observer as a good man in a blizzard, a tribute to his unflappable nature. Another described him as one of the most decent and well liked men in British politics. He is the Foreign Secretary, Sir Geoffrey Howe. Sir Geoffrey, a good man in a blizzard does that mean you make a good man on a desert island, you think?

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I'm not sure. I think the techniques are rather different.

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And in the blizzard I was with a lot of other people, so I had company to keep me going. I don't think I'd be too bad on a desert island. What about the background of yours? You're Welsh. Did music play a big part in your life, for instance? It always has, yes, but as a listener rather than a performer, I mean, I have

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painfully performed my way through school.

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I've always enjoyed singing. We have a daughter who's a singing teacher.

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But really music is

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an inescapable part of the background of a Welshman.

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My father and my aunt were both regular chapel goers.

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My mother went to a different chapel and church.

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and my grandfather founded.

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one or even two Welsh speaking Japans.

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So that Welsh hymns.

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were very much part of the background. Your grandfather, he he founded a union too, didn't he? He was a founder member of the Tim Bladers Union, yes.

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What about your father? What did he do? Oh, he was a solicitor, went into his uncle's firm. A family firm started in the last century.

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and he became the local coroner.

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and clerk to the trustices. I used to go round the South Wales Valleys of West Morgan with him as a boy.

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going to many of those tragic inquests that he had to preside over.

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And he was

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a very typical Welshman of his generation, not allowed to become involved in politics because of his job.

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He knew Lloyd George, Lloyd George knew my father.

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And I think I derived quite a lot of my approach to politics from him and his family.

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What about the area you lived in? This is Port Talbot, wasn't it? Were I right in assuming that that was very much a sort of Labour stronghold at the time? Oh, yes. It's um a massively strong Labour seat. It was then, it still is now.

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I fought my first parliamentary election there in nineteen fifty five, and again in nineteen fifty nine.

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against a Labour majority that I managed to haul down from eighteen thousand to sixteen thousand, but that was about as far as it ever came.

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Let's have a first choice of records, Geoffrey. Well, it has to be something from that background. Callon Laun, sung by the Triorke male choir. Difficult to choose which one of the famous hymn tunes one would have.

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Come Ronda.

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the best known Carondon, one with different but still equally happy memories for me.

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Sir Geoffrey, were you a bright child?

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I suppose I was, yes, I I was lucky enough to get an exhibition to Winchester.

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and in due course a scholarship, a minor scholarship, to Cambridge.

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So I must have been on the right side of the tracks anyway. What about your ambitions as a boy? Did you want to be anything other than a politician when you were growing up? I certainly became very strongly interested in politics from about the age of fourteen or fifteen, and I think that I was always then set for a double career of

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Politics and the law. My father was in the law and

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It seemed natural and inevitable to him and to me and to the family that I should follow him.

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Which ideas, and I've never regretted that. It's a marvellous profession to be in.

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But then politics was the other.

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Part of the bloodstream. What was it about politics that first fascinated you? I mean, what were the first uh instincts? Well, I suppose that when I first went away to boarding school to Winchester,

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One became interested in the life of the house. It was a very small but active community.

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lots of things one could find oneself in involved in doing.

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And then we had a particularly impressive form master who

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allowed us to run the work of the form for a year by a sort of democratic elected assembly. He called it a bowlie because he was a great classical scholar.

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and I found myself irresistibly drawn into

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trying to organize things. And a politician I suppose is

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By definition, for those who don't like him, a a busybody. For himself, he's someone who cares about the society in which he lives. Was there any doubt about which side the political fence should be on?

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Not really. I think that in 1945 I did actually canvass for a Liberal candidate, but I think he was probably a National Liberal, so that's all right.

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But having lived one's university years under a Labour government, having lived one's childhood under a Labour Council.

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One moved into the other end of the spectrum.

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I've never regretted it. I think I've always been able to apply conservative thinking in a fashion that is compatible with all the best that is about being Welsh.

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Let's go back to Winchester now. They were ensconced a good academic record. But it's also a school, of course, with a very fine sporting tradition.

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Did you play any part in that? As little as possible. Why is it? I forget how many, but so many hours a week and we had to record it in a an honesty book showing how much fun had done and of what kind.

Sir Geoffrey Howe6:07

So we will

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And I used to work out the best possible way of completing the programme in the least possible time.

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I think that um the truth about my sporting performance is to be found in

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My achievement when we went into a compulsory boxing competition at Octu when I was training as an officer cadet.

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and I didn't have much enthusiasm for that either. At the end of it I was adjudged by the judges to be runner up for best loser. That's about as modest a sporting achievement as you can boast of.

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Let's have a second choice of record.

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The second choice is Rachmaninoff's second piano concerto.

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One can take almost any part of it. I've chosen the end of the concerto.

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That is a very beautiful piece of music. Why do you particularly choose this, Geoffrey? George. Well, because it's beautiful, but because it has such clear memories for most of us of

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The film Brief Encounter is probably one of the most natural pieces of film music ever chosen, ever written. And one of the things that I found myself doing at school was running the School Film Society, in the days when they only had silent films, and one had to try and find musical accompaniments to go with them.

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These films would arrive by post on a Saturday morning.

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and I would spend the whole of the Saturday with a friend.

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Ploughing through the house record library saying, Oh, we want the second side of the third record of Beethoven VI, or whatever it was.

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And this record is such a beautiful piece of film music, it reminds me of the whole of that rather.

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Fun part of my life. Are you still a film fan?

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Not really. I I I would still like to be, but one of the problems with one's present existence is that one hardly ever has time to go to the cinema. I spent quite a lot of time a few years ago making home movies.

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Again, I've given that up now because it needs such an awful lot of work to do it, but I shall come back to it when I retire.

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Because I like the business of making films.

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Let's go back to your career now. You uh you left Winchester and you went to the army. Which regiment are you going to? Well, I I left just before the war was over and went into the signals and eventually went to the East African Signals out to serve in Kenya for a couple of years. Did you enjoy that? Very, very much indeed, yes.

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I I joined the sequence, it must be said, because

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On the very first field day we went out to in the school corps, I marched out there with all the rest of them and saw one group of characters who came out by taxi. And I said, Who are they and why did they come that way? and I was told they were the signal section. So I set my mind on that. And I actually enjoyed making my own radio set and things like that and it became a natural thing to gravitate to. And when I went out to East Africa, to be one of the two officers in a unit responsible for

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Communications between Nairobi, Mogadishu, Kampala and the northern Frantia province. Part of

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East Africa was part of our little sort of mini empire.

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Minium

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So it was a tremendous fun.

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You climbed Kilimanjaro, which seems a very, very glamorous thing to do. Were you at this time a mountaineer, or did you just do it for a bet or something? No, I I found that was something that I got drawn into when I was in the army, serving first of all up in Yorkshire and Catrick and the Yorkshire Moors, and thereafter in the army and at Cambridge. I did quite a lot of modest mountain climbing. And with Kilimanjaro and Mount Kenya on one's doorstep, as it were, in East Africa, it was obviously worthwhile trying to do it.

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And I remember in the end

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I had to climb Kilimanjaro by myself in the sense that the friend who was going to come with me couldn't come, and I had the services of one African guide and four African porters for five days going up the mountain and coming down, and the total cost of that magnificent expedition, including food and all portrait, eight pounds.

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Fantastic.

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Let's have another choice of record.

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Tuxeda Junction by

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The Glenmiller Orchestra.

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A marvellously professional piece of music.

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So Geoffrey, after the army came university, of course, and was it here that your political ambitions really took shape?

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Yes, I think once I got back to university I

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started off on the business of university politics and became chairman of the Conservative Association, took an active part in the Union and so on and really began getting stuck into it. You were called to the Bar one in 1952. Was this very much just a means to a political end? Were you just biding time in a sense? No, it was always my chosen profession and I always needed to establish myself in a profession with an independent source of income. And I deliberately remained practising at the bar, not getting into parliament until I'd been established well and truly as an independent barrister. I didn't get into the house until 1964, which was twelve years later. Before that, of course, before you went in, you fought Adam Avan, didn't you, twice, 1955 and 1959. What kind of a an experience was that for the young politician? Great fun, actually, because one was fighting in one's home territory.

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Virtually all the people around met, whether they were on my side or on the Labour side or supporting the applied Cymru Welsh Nationalist candidate.

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Uh most of them were friends of myself, my family.

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So it was a good way in which to earn one's political spurs.

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And there was no danger of getting in. I didn't want to get in as soon as that. And it wasn't a a souring experience at all. No, not a bit. I think that it reinforced my perception of the need for politics and politicians to remember the universality of the constituency to which they have to appeal.

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I think that the

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traditional uh Welsh Labour movement.

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was a movement that embraced a tremendous passion for quality of education.

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Tremendous passion for home ownership, a tremendous patriotism.

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And one that was not so different from the kind of conservatism that I believe in. I think in some ways that's one of the pities of the way in which the Labour movement has gone in the years subsequently. It's moved away from its

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popular roots of that kind.

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So I didn't feel in a hostile environment at all. I felt I had to try and convince the

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labor majority of my fellow countrymen that Tories were not born with horns and tails and cloven hooves, and that I think has been part of my mission ever since.

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You obviously feel very fondly for your background. There's a very strong link back there still with you. What what about your your your accent? Do you ever find when you go back down there that you become Welsh in manner of speech? I think so, yes. Not not very deeply, not very consciously, because so much of my school days were spent away from Wales. But

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I certainly found myself identifying with and lapsing into the background, so to speak.

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And then of course I don't go there very often nowadays. I find the interesting thing is that when I come back to London

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coming back as in the old days on the train to Paddington.

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One finds oneself reinforcing one's conviction that one really would like to be in Wales after all.

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Now you entered Parliament in nineteen sixty four as uh MP for Bebington. That's up in Liverpool, isn't it? It's on the Wirral side of the river, the other side of the river. What kind of a constituency was there?

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Yeah.

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Well, when I arrived there it looked as though it was a safe Conservative seat. Uh when I left it wasn't because I lost it. That's right in sixty six. Yes. But it it was a mixed seat, including five wards at Birkenhead, starting just outside the Camerlet shipyard.

Sir Geoffrey Howe15:15

Yeah.

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extending to Port Sundite and the tremendous Unilever works and some of the Wirral Greenbelt. Uh to some extent a Liverpool commuter seat as well. I enjoyed it very much. When you lost in in'66, I mean, was it again in any sense a dispiriting occasion for you? It was, because we knew we were on the edge, as it were. When I held it in'64, it was when we first taught the election, the majority came down to two thousand odd.

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and we thought we might be able to hold it through the swing delay that came a little bit later.

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I lost it by two thousand and sixty six. I remember going back to our house after the count that night, and sending a telegram rather dispirited to my clerk in the Temple, knowing I had to go back to the bar, saying simply, Brother, can you spare a dime?

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I'm choosing a number by the Beatles because they were very much part of the flavour of life on Merseyside at that time. It was a time when Merseyside was confident and seeming to do better.

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And I've chosen one of the more sensitive numbers, Ellen Ridge.

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Eleanor Ringby Except the rise in the church where a wedding has been

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Lives in a dream, waits at the window Wearing the face that she keeps in her jar by the door

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Who is it for? Yeah.

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Yeah. All is early before.

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Where do they all come from?

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All the lonely people, why do they all belong?

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Sir Geoffrey, you became the member for Reigat in nineteen seventy, and in 1971 you drafted the Industrial Relations Bill.

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When one reads about you, th it comes through that a lot of commentators regard this as being a kind of albatross round your neck for a while. Do you see it that way?

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No, I think, on the contrary, it was, if anything, the right work a bit before its time.

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Because one of the tragedies of the British industrial scene has been the long delay in modernizing our industrial relations. We didn't make it then. The Act was repealed when we lost the election in'74.

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who had come back to the Course Since in the last seven years.

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And all those things which are now taken for granted, like the right to have ballots before you strike, the right to have ballots before you elect uh union officers and so on, the change that's taken place in the last seven years has really been

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recapturing the ground we would have won in seventy one had we not lost that seventy four election. I don't say every detail was right. Never is. But the battle that we were fighting was one that had to be fought. Because at that time we were talking of, of course, you were working under mister Heath as the as the leader.

Sir Geoffrey Howe17:58

Yeah.

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What were the qualities of Ted Heath? I mean, what did you admire about him? I think the determination.

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I remember him.

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presiding unusually at one meeting of NEDI, the National Economic Development Council, when we were beginning to run into the storm of the oil price rise that happened in late nineteen seventy three and the arguments were taking place as to whether we should continue going for growth or not.

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And he said there, rather strikingly, This time we are determined to sail through the whirlpool. Now you may say the policies were right, they were wrong, but they were policies to which he was committed, to which he was committed with great passion. And I think it was a great misfortune that the oil price changes were followed by the minor strike, which dislodged that government, which was doing many things right. What about the Tor of leadership in 1975? I mean, you were a contestant in that. You got, what, nineteen votes, I think, didn't you? Yes, a modest figure. Modest figure, yes. Did you think you had any chance of winning? No, quite frankly, no.

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I thought it was worth while trying to put one's name into the running.

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Because one didn't know quite how the ballot was going to work out. In certain circumstances it might have been possible that I would win.

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But I think it was worth while.

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Asserting one's independence in that way anyway. What about the present leader, misses Thatcher? One of the most controversial politicians of of modern times. You're worked closely with her for a few years now. What are her qualities? What do you

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discern in her that you admire.

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I think the first thing is the one that everyone is familiar with.

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tenacity, the determination, the qualities that led to her being dubbed the Iron Lady.

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A terrific insight and toughness.

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But alongside that, what people don't as readily appreciate, an immense humanity as well, the occasions in which one's seen her making a spontaneous gesture which is prompted simply by

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an impulse of humanity that comes across her.

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Could you give me an example of that?

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Well, I think when bad news comes of the death, for example, suddenly of a close friend of one of our colleagues

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more quickly than anybody else she is moved to

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do or say the thing that you wish you had thought of saying and doing yourself before she had. That kind of very spontaneous gesture.

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I don't expect to get an answer to this, but what would be the things that you didn't like about her? Well, I'm not going to get an answer to it, but I think that

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Nobody is going to have

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the positive qualities that Margaret Satcher has got, without having to some extent the flip side, but taken the personality as a whole.

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It's a very remarkable, impressive personnel.

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Let's have another record, said Geoffrey.

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Cliff Richard, rather a surprising choice, and his recording of summer holiday.

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Going on a summer holiday No more working for a week or two Fun and laughter on a summer holiday No more worry

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It's called me

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Uh

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Uh

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Uh

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Uh

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Or a week or two.

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Uh

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Yeah.

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We're going where the sun shines brightly We're going where the sea is blue We've seen it in the movies

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Yeah.

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Blood.

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Ale

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Let's see.

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Cliff Richard and Summer Holiday. So Geoffrey, why did you pick that record?

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Partly because I've always admired professionalism and I think that Cliff Richard is a very good example of

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professionalism that has survived changing conditions with remarkable skill and tenacity.

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Participants I think the tunes are marvellous. It was a splendid film when he made it summer holiday.

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A film that for me symbolised the opening up of Europe and holidays beyond the shores of Britain for a new generation, a whole new group of young English people who've never been abroad before. And that film, when he ends up with the shadows on the slopes of the Acropolis, was a kind of symbol of political and travelling liberation. The music makes it sound good as well. I bet they didn't know that when they made the film. You're going to see all that in it. I must say, I never thought either. Let's talk about the job or the role of Foreign Secretary. It must be a very, very arduous job. I mean, what is your working day? How does it start?

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Oh, it is a long working day because one is in the office by half past eight normally, quite often doing a broadcast on the Today programme before that, quite often up for some time before that, reading through the inevitable boxes of papers.

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And the day normally ends either in the House of Commons or entertaining some visiting foreign statesman. And of course a great deal of the time is spent outside this country anyway. Last year I think I spent between ninety and a hundred days outside Britain during the year.

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People make guesses about how long you sleep. It ranges from one and three quarter hours, which I find unlikely, to four hours a night. I mean, what is the truth of it?

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Well, one and three quarter hours, you can discount that one, certainly. I guess that during the working week, on average, four hours is probably about right, but then at the weekend I catch up with

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A good long seven hours. Four hours is very little. Has it has it always been that way? Have you always been that that kind of thing? For a long time, yes, partly I think because in my school days we used to have to do fire watching once every five nights.

Sir Geoffrey Howe22:51

Kerlaw

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And I found that I could cope with that better than than one's contemporaries. I often took on their shift, as it were. Not the whole night, it went two hours a night.

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It got me into the habit of sleeping short. Now what about the travel? Because also foreign secretaries have found the travel to be indeed arduous and tiring. It seems that you don't find that at all. I think not. I think one's got to be grateful for the fact that a lot of one's journeys are made.

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On the private aircraft, we use for a lot of long journeys. So it is the best way of travelling. One couldn't do it any other way, frankly, because there's so much work being done between stops.

Sir Geoffrey Howe23:28

Yeah.

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And I've always thought that if one's doing a job that's a hard one.

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one must also try and look for the opportunities of enjoying it.

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And I've never felt guilty if one finds oneself with half a day to spare, having finished something soon or got it available, if I then do take time off and see something, go somewhere, and enjoy the opportunity while one's there. And I hope that helps to keep it going. Which have been the most fascinating trips then that you've made as Foreign Secretary?

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Oh, I think inevitably because of the nature of the work you're doing, the many journeys I did to China

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mainly in connection with negotiating the Hong Kong agreement, because that was a

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A fascinating exercise, trying to

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construct a framework of agreement between countries as different as ourselves and the People's Republic of China and knowing that one was helping to shape the future for the millions of people who live in Hong Kong. Did you find you had much chance there to get away from the the routine of work and to explore into what we might call some normal parts of China, meet normal people?

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I had a chance of exploring in China on a visit I made before that round started when I was in opposition reventer in nineteen seventy eight.

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We were then able to travel to quite a number of places to visit Shanghai, to go up to the remote northwestern province of Shinkaang.

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During the Hong Kong negotiations, very little time off. I think one afternoon at the summer palace is all I can remember. I suppose that personal relationships in the job that you do are in fact very, very important. You must strike up some kind of relationship beyond the business form with the people that you're dealing with. I wonder how difficult it is with the vast cultural and language differences there are between say you and or us and the Chinese.

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It's very interesting.

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uh the way in which in some cases

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It is possible to establish a relationship which almost surmounts the interpretation. You uh get into such a natural, spontaneous flow of conversation. I think that

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I was able to achieve that with my Chinese opposite number, mister Wu Xia Chen.

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He could speak some English, so there was an additional point of contact.

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And I think it's one of the things again that strikes one as remarkable, that

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To a certain extent, anyway, the management of relations between two huge countries

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More than fifty million of us, and more than a billion of them.

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Can depend at that point of contact on the personal relationship between two people who've thrown up.

Sir Geoffrey Howe25:44

Leave in a

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Almost by chance. But it's certainly true and it's

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A fascinating part of the job. So Geoffrey, let's have another choice of record. Well, one to illustrate, I think, one of my favourite leisure pastimes, opera, my wife and I go to a lot whenever we have the chance, from the magic flute.

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The Papageno Duet.

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I'm

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Right to a demonstration.

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Maybe it's also

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And he got the woodspit across.

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Who's believing that shaken? Who's believing that shaken to the mind and king?

Speaker 426:56

Ah

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So, Geoffrey, you spend an awful lot of time abroad, travelling around, seeing other countries. I wonder what perspective of Britain

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you have when you get back. What do you think when you come back to country, looking at it with an almost fresh eye? I think most often one is most struck by the greenness of Britain.

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There's so much fish in almost any other country.

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and also, I suppose, by the immense diversity of our history.

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But what about the other side of it? I mean, by comparison to certain other countries and Europe particularly, we seem to be a fairly scruffy nation. Does that ever strike you as well when we're talking about the... I was criticised by someone a year or two back for making just that point, but I don't apologize for it. I think that if you compare the style of the streets and the parks and the public places in many other countries in Europe, but not just in Europe, with the impression you get in too many places in Britain now.

Sir Geoffrey Howe27:35

Yes it does.

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There is a seediness about it which is unnecessary and irritating. I don't think it represents the best of what we can do, and I would love to see it being improved.

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Sugarnets have another choice of record.

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It's a strange record made by

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A Miss Beatrice Harrison.

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playing the cello herself alongside a nightingale, a piece of music by Vorjak. Why did you choose this? I remember hearing the story of it being recorded. It's a very strange thing to have done more than fifty years ago. And the recording was actually made in a wood in my constituency, near Oxted, which adds a certain amount of personal charm to it.

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Sir Geoffrey, several commentators remark upon your restraint, your low profile, they describe it as I think. They see it, some of them, as a shortcoming in a political career. Do you?

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I don't think so, as long as it isn't seen as the only aspect of a personality.

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I think that a lot of leadership, particularly in today's society, can be advanced by being human and approachable and calm and

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Not too melodramatic. I think at the same time, a politician has got to be able to make the dramatic speech at the party conference. I've not done too badly at that either. But on the whole.

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I like being thought of as someone whom people can get on with.

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You seem remarkably unflappable, or even tempered. I mean, are you really like that?

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Most of the time, not all the time.

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You'd have to ask people who work closely with me, and my wife, to know what the total how was like. What might she say, do you think? I think she would say that when I lose my temper it's manifest by a certain mounting obstinacy rather than by a dramatic fury, and that probably makes it even less attractive. Let's then have a a final record. Well, it's Noel Card, with a record that reminds me of at least some of the places I've visited during the last few years.

Presenter30:31

where Englishmen as well as Welshmen and Scotsmen have made something of a role for Britain round the world. Mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun. The Japanese don't care to, the Chinese wouldn't dare to.

Presenter30:45

Hindus and Argentines sleep firmly from twelve to one. But Englishman deter stars, he yesterday.

Presenter30:52

In the Philippines they have lovely screens to protect you from the glare. In the Malay States there are hats like plates which the Britishers won't wear.

Speaker 330:56

Yeah.

Presenter30:59

At twelve noon the natives swoon, And no further work is done, But ne'er dogs and Englishmen go worked in the midday sun. Sir Geoffrey, you're now on your desert island.

Presenter31:09

Will you try to escape, do you think?

Presenter31:11

Yes, I think I would. I would like to have some.

Presenter31:13

Focus in life, and I can't think of anything better than trying to get out of the place. Are you practical enough to make a raft to get away on? No, I'm very bad at that kind of thing, but I'd have plenty of time to practise.

Presenter31:23

Let's imagine that seven of your eight records have been washed away in some sort of tidal wave and you're left with one record of the eight you've chosen. Which would it be?

Presenter31:31

Well, if I'm allowed to have the whole record, I'll have the magic flute, because that embraces the Papagena DuS. Right, you can have the entire opera. What about a book?

Presenter31:39

I think the the good food guide.

Presenter31:42

Uh partly'cause it'll give me something nice to think about, and partly'cause it might give me some ideas as to what I'm else to eat.

Presenter31:48

And what about the the luxury object?

Presenter31:50

A computer bridge game, if I'm allowed that. If I'm allowed the solar battery to make it work. The wish is granted. Sir Geoffrey Howe, thank you very much indeed. Thank you.

Sir Geoffrey Howe32:05

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