Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Labour MP for Brent East, known as Red Ken for his left-wing leadership of the GLC in the early 1980s.
On the island
Eight records
I couldn't go without Tina Turner track because not only is she wonderful, but it also gives hope to people of my age that you can get fit again one day, you know, if you really apply yourself. But there's a track called Paradise is Here where she's basically saying I think it's so true for politicians that I mean don't seek power and fame in the future. The real pleasure in your life is here with the people around you.
I remember when we just got television for the first time, they had on a woman singing uh something from opera and it moved me to tears. The first time I've ever cried listening to music. And I remember my grandmother was I looked round and she was p patting the tears away from her eyes and then she said you go don't be ridiculous, boys, don't cry over things like this And it wasn't until years later I realised it was actually one fine day from Madame Butterfly.
Joe HillFavourite
Paul Robeson singing Joe Hill, because if if there's one thing which is a genuine hymn of the Labour movement, I think this captures it more than anything else and it's international.
Well one of the records which I think captures a key point of change is Marvin Gay singing Abraham Martin and John which is his song that follows the assassination of Robert Kennedy and I think it it brings the 60s to an end. I mean for all of us who went through the 60s it was a time of hope.
Nimrod (from Enigma Variations)
Number five is really the the end of the GLC, the very last minutes as the flag came down. I mean and this wasn't my choice to tell me it was it's Tony Banks. He he decided as the last chair of the GLC that as the flag came down, literally the last music heard on that day at that weekend of celebrations really, was going to be Nimrod from Elga's Enigma Variations.
Going back to happier times when when everything seemed possible, there's so many things you could choose from the sixties. And one which is I mean a band which has disappeared completely off the scene was called Love and led by Arthur Lee. And he did one album which I think is on everybody's list as one of the ten best albums from the sixties.
I'm a sentimental old thing really. And one of my favourite uh albums of all time was Joan Armour Trading, Show Some Emotion. And you're always torn. Um it could be Willow, but I think my favourite is Warm Love.
Les Troubadours du Roi Baudouin
Well, my final choice is from a film back in the 60s. Everything Mrs. Thatcher and Norman Tebbit would loathe. It's called If. It's a film about a public school, boys' school, where they all suddenly become revolutionaries and challenge. It's fantasy. But tremendously uplifted the soul of all of us, dreadful lefties in the 60s. And one of the tracks from that film is from a Congolese choir singing the sanctus.
In conversation
Presenter asks
1:07How much did that ability to be popular take you by surprise when it first happened back in the early eighties?
It took a little time to get the popular side of it. I remember the odious side much more clearly at the beginning. But see, I think I perfectly trained for this. I grew up watching television. I'm this f the first generation of people that grew up stuck in front of a box. I mean, I'm used to sound bites.
Presenter asks
3:17How will you fare on a desert island? Do you think you might wither from lack of attention?
I've real doubts about being on a desert island because I'm totally social. When I'm away for a conference or something like that, my partner, she's delighted, it's a nice quiet weekend, she can read and so on. And when she goes away, I just fill the house with friends. It's never empty, never quiet. And so I'm horrendously social. I should imagine being on a desert island is going to be s just short of a prison term really. I mean, I would hate it.
Presenter asks
6:42Are you less ambitious than you were? Have you mellowed?
Oh no, I I still want to change the whole world. I just recognise it's most probably not going to happen or it won't happen in my lifetime. So you've mellowed? Well not mellowed. I mean if you think about it, I became leader of the GLC I was only thirty-five. Most politicians in Britain sweat away and and in their mid-fifties may get some position uh that gives them some real influence or power.
The keepsakes
The book
Marion Zimmer Bradley
It's a feminist perspective on King Arthur's Court by Marian Bradley. It's called The Mists of Avalon. ... it is just such a different perspective on that period of history, about the struggle between the Druids and the Christians for control of Arthur's Court. I learnt a lot from that.
The luxury
a radio that can get the world service
I'd like to take a a radio that can get the world service, so I continue to be angry with my colleagues if they lose elections.
Presenter asks
19:40Was [ousting Andrew McIntosh] a delicious victory? Is that the kind of political manoeuvring that you enjoy?
No, I I knew there was a price to pay for doing that. It had been obvious to everybody for months that I had the votes to to become leader. Um I remember going and seeing Andrew McIntosh a couple of months before the ocean saying, I am bound to win. I mean, it would be better if you stood down now and he just thought I was completely mad'cause of course nobody ever tells you if you're losing.
Presenter asks
25:54What was it like in human terms when you arrived at the House of Commons and were left out in the cold?
I remember being greeted by the deputy whip who said, We've been warned about you. You're a horrible little monster. Ain't you causing any trouble here? I mean at the end of the day, the only thing that can sustain you in politics is your own self-respect. Do you believe what you have done is right? If you've got that. You can cope with years of being vilified and isolated and marginalised because you actually sleep with self-respect.
“I was the smallest boy in my school. I mean there's two thousand one hundred boys and I was the smallest. This is a disaster. ... And the only way I could survive was I could either I could have learnt to sort of kill with one blow to the throat. I didn't really fancy that. Or I could learn humour.”
“I've never been one of those socialists who's worried about money. Working class people are not embarrassed by money, they're embarrassed by the lack of it. I if you decide to leave me in your will or your earnings, I'll put them to very good use. I'll have a nice holiday and I'll use the rest to help overthrow capital.”
“At the end of the first six months of of my leadership, I thought I was finished. I was going into work each day, keeping everyone enthusiastic, saying, Yes, we got to do this, next, that, you know, and overcome this, that problem. But in my heart, believing I had been so damaged by that campaign that I could never be re-elected to anything.”
“I would have thought that the best times of socialism are still to come because we no longer have the incubus of the old state regimes. I think out of the next five or ten years, socialism will be modified to take on board a much stronger commitment to democracy and to the environment.”