Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Leader of the Labour Party and Her Majesty's Opposition, known for his rise from student union president to party leader.
On the island
Eight records
The Great Welsh National Singing Festival Choir
it's conducted by a great friend of mine, Owen Awell, who's in university with me, and it is a magnificent hymn. There's a chorus in it, Tie gest ange, Tie gest Ifern, Tie gest satan, dande droid, which essentially says that Christ will trample evil and the devils and Satan under his feet. It evokes much more than musical ideas with me.
I simply like it. I like a great deal of opera. But this one again is evocative, and we also saw it performed in the Vienna State Opera in 1985, sat in Maria Theresa's box, which is a special thrill.
Serenade (from The Fair Maid of Perth)
was my mother's favourite, Hedel Nash, singing the serenade from the Fair Maid of Perth, and it is a beautiful song, but it's so reminiscent of uh so much about home that it would be the kind of thing I'd want to take me if I was going to be stuck by myself for a long time.
Symphony No. 1 in C minor, Op. 68: IV. Adagio - Allegro non troppo ma con brio
Chicago Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Sir Georg Solti
It's the tape that was uh being played when I turned the car over at slightly in excess of seventy miles an hour on the M four back in july nineteen eighty three... and the car was scrambled. When I took the tape out of the car and put it in the tape deck the next day, it played. Now, that's one reason for playing it, but the other reason is that when we started to change organization style presentation in the Labour Party... we decided to use as our theme music these few bars from the Brahms number one.
It pulls together the fifties, not only in terms of music but in terms of sentiment. And it also pulls together the late 60s and early 70s, the kind of music we were playing then and enjoying very much when we just got married, when the kids were born, when the kids were starting to grow up, and is also great music.
The seventh record is one I don't particularly like. But I'll tell you why I'm going to ask it to be played... if you're having people for supper on a Saturday night... and the first to the tape deck determines what's played then in that really quiet twenty five now, if it's me, it's going to be Beethoven or Haydn... If it's Glenis, it's Dori Previn. So what playing this will evoke for me is that twenty-five minutes of total peace and confidence that comes before people knock on the door.
Horace the HorseFavourite
My final record comes from an eminent artiste, my own daughter Rachel. Back when she was two and a half, I used to play her under the tape and record her saying things... Everybody who hears it still these years later can't help laughing. And I think that laughing and loving are the two greatest things that human beings can do. And I really need a laugh on a desert island.
In conversation
Presenter asks
0:54Do you get the feeling that your luck is running out?
No, I don't think so. I've been lucky longer than that twenty years, actually. I was very fortunate in my upbringing, the kind of community and family that I belong to... So whilst not depending totally on luck, I think luck comes out of hard work as often as not.
Presenter asks
5:33What sort of household was it that you lived in? How poor were you?
Oh, we weren't poor. Both my mother and my father were working... I was never conscious of any real shortage of money. I mean, we never had a car, and I was fifteen when I bought our first television set for ten quid a second hand set. But it couldn't have been thought in any way as a poor household.
Presenter asks
12:05How did [your parents] die within a few days of each other?
I don't think it was a coincidence. I think my mother literally died of a broken heart. She had suffered bronchelasma very severely... my father had uh suffered from hypertension and some heart trouble... He eventually um died after a week in hospital. And then I think that strain and the awful sense of grief was too much for my mother. And uh she died in seconds.
The keepsakes
The book
R. H. Tawney
I think R. H. Tawney's essays on equality, partly because they're inspirational, partly because they're so incisive and partly because in bits they're funny. And I think that would keep me going. It wouldn't send me off to sleep, which is always a great advantage.
The luxury
I think I'd take Radio Four and anybody who listens to Radio Four would know why.
Presenter asks
21:05How do you feel when people accuse you of being a bit of a windbag?
Yes, [upset] because it, generally speaking, comes from people who have never been confronted with a requirement to make a real public speech in their life... to really take issues head on and have nothing. but words and commitment to try and convince. and advance... It j makes me a bit fed up. It'd be silly to say that it doesn't. But it can't be allowed to deflect or to diminish or to depress.
Presenter asks
22:51Do you think you're ruthless?
Only to the extent that there are objectives that need to be achieved in order to make our country more just and more productive. And there are inhibitions to that that are largely self-inflicted by some people in the labour movement... So when they do get in the way of that objective... I am fairly direct, yes.
Presenter asks
24:39Have you got the patience to wait for [unity in the Labour Party] to happen?
That I'd admit to. You see, the the problem is with this job, I've had to exercise a degree of patience. That I've never ever had to exercise in my life before... patiently... you set the objective and then you try and work things to get agreement... rather than take drawing your sword and dashing at it, which temperamentally is what I'd much, much prefer to do.
“I think luck comes out of hard work as often as not. Then it's always useful. Napoleon said, Give me lucky generals. I believe the same thing.”
“I think my mother literally died of a broken heart.”
“I think that laughing and loving are the two greatest things that human beings can do. And I really need a laugh on a desert island.”