Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
President of the National Union of Mine Workers, a fiery orator and committed socialist known for leading the miners' strikes.
On the island
Eight records
In my early days I was a fanatic as far as jazz was concerned, and I've always paid particular attention to the great black jazz musicians in uh America. And one of my favorite pieces of music is the uh Scott Joplin piece, The Entertainer.
O Love That Will Not Let Me GoFavourite
a record that um epitomizes my feeling about my mother. She was a Christian incidentally so am I. It's a beautiful hymn, it's called O Love That Will Not Let Me Go.
Orpheus in the Underworld: Overture
Royal Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Douglas Gamley
My third record is one that um I've always uh loved since I first heard it, and it's a section from Orphis in the Underworld by Offenbach.
Louis Armstrong and His All Stars
I'd like to hear The Beale Street Blues by Louis Armstrong and The All Stars.
Well, my fifth record have has got something to do with my home life in the sense that um I've talked already about my three wonderful Adel dogs, and uh I suppose most people have had the experience, the tragic experience of of losing one of their dogs, but uh also uh having had the love of that animal. And I'd love to hear Old Shep sung by Elvis Presley.
Massed Bands from the Yorkshire Miners' Concert conducted by Ray Jenkins
the first time I heard it, I also heard the legendary Paul Ropeson, and I was so struck by the concert itself, but by the eighteen twelve in particular, that it's always remained with me a firm favourite.
looking back on the minor strike, I think if Edith Pieff was to sing for me, No Regrets, it would epitomise what I feel.
Nabucco: Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves (Va, pensiero)
Chorus of the Hebrew slaves, because that's a signal of what can be done. When people escape from bondage, and here I am on a desert island, I can escape.
In conversation
Presenter asks
0:54How much does it worry you that you are something of a bête noire to many?
It doesn't worry me, it sometimes saddens me that people can have an image … of a person that's not true. … And I think what happens is that the image of Arthur Scargill disguises the reality of the person, and it's only when people actually meet me that they discover the real me and when they do, by and large they say that you are different from the person we thought you were. So while it saddens me, I understand it.
Presenter asks
6:53Can you remember your mother, because she died when you were quite young?
She died actually when I was eighteen. I remember my mother with probably more … vivid uh recollection than anything else in my life. It was the most devastating period of the the whole of my life when she died. and for three months it literally rendered me unable to function properly. … I was very, very close to my mother because my father in the Second World War was in the Royal Air Force. and so my mother and I became inseparable.
Presenter asks
10:03What was it like, that first descent into your father's habitat [the coal mine]?
The first day at work was almost indescribable. I remember walking the pit yard at Woolly … And it was a dank, dark morning … and we went across the pit yard and down some steps. Under some very dark areas and then down some more steps. into an area which I can only describe as being comparable to Dante's Inferno. The dust was so thick you couldn't see more than about a foot or two foot in front of you, and the noise was so intense that I actually learned within the space of three weeks to Speak with sign language.
The keepsakes
The luxury
Because I always regarded this painting from a distance as being overrated ... I fell in love with it then and I'm still in love with it now.
Presenter asks
13:37How quickly did you spot that what [the other young boys down the pit] needed was a champion, a leader, somebody to stand up for them?
I think um relatively quickly. I mean, I thought the d the uh Circumstances in which we were working were so appalling that they needed challenging. … And so the lads asked me if I'd be the spokesman. And I went into the manager's office … and I explained to him the case … He says, Thou knows I can't give thee that permission. … And I went out and I thought I haven't succeeded in those negotiations. And I suddenly realized he hadn't said no. It simply said it couldn't give us permission. And so when the time came at the end of the shift was to come out, I promptly led them all out with the rest of the men. And to everybody's astonishment we all got paid our full wages, and from that moment on I was regarded as something of a champion in the pit.
Presenter asks
24:53As you sit on your desert island and rerun [the year-long miners' strike] through your head, what will you think you should have done differently?
I don't think I would think that I should do anything differently, quite frankly. And that's not to be bigoted. If there was one thing that the miners didn't do, it was to take action before they did. … I think that the events over the past three or four years have demonstrated that I was absolutely correct.
Presenter asks
26:58During that constant pressure [of the miners' strike], did you ever quietly, privately, briefly crack?
Never once. And the reason's a simple ones here. I believed passionately in what I was doing, and I knew that the cause was absolutely right. And when I'm sitting on that desert island, I'll be able to sit back. under that palm tree, looking out over that beautiful stretch of sand, and say to myself, What I did was right. And above all, I never sold out the men.
“I think what happens is that the image of Arthur Scargill disguises the reality of the person, and it's only when people actually meet me that they discover the real me and when they do, by and large they say that you are different from the person we thought you were.”
“I often think back and uh regret deeply that she never saw any of the things that I was able to achieve in later life because the only thing that she ever saw me do was to go down the pit and join the Young Communist League and both of those things she disapproved of because she didn't want me to get hurt down the pit and she didn't want me to get hurt by joining the Young Communist League.”
“I think that if you look at the strike itself and take it into context. I think you'll see that it uh led to. An inspiration as far as the labor and trade union movement was concerned.”
“If the criticism is that I'm single-minded, I plead guilty? If the criticism is that I don't doubt what I'm doing is right, I plead guilty.”