Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
A politician and eloquent Socialist, best known for renouncing his peerage and serving in every Labour Government of the 1960s and 1970s.
On the island
Eight records
The guest also refers to this as 'Bunyan's Hymn'.
The transcript has 'Kirsten Flagstadt' and 'Sir Adrian Boat' (Boult).
In conversation
Presenter asks
1:14How does it affect you, never quite knowing what sentiment you're going to bump into next?
Well, I'm not aware, I see, of being loathed except by uh people with power. Uh certainly going round and in the street and shopping and on my bike in Chesterfield and uh on the bus and the train. People are tremendously warm.
Presenter asks
2:08How do you regard going to the desert island? After all, there are no audiences, no support, no one.
I suppose it would be an opportunity to reflect, and I hope I'd had pen and paper to write and think. Uh but I am a gregarious soul, a family person, and I like uh being with other people, so I suppose I would miss it a great deal, miss the uh community a great deal. Uh but it might be like going into a retreat, uh so long as it didn't last forever and ever and ever.
Presenter asks
2:38Are you a religious man?
Well, you see, I suppose the most powerful influence in my life is what would be called the dissenting tradition. An ancestor of mine, William Benn, the Reverend William Benn in Dorchester, was ejected from his living in 1662 because he wouldn't take instructions and was a congregationalist. My grandfather, my father's father, was a congregational minister in East London. The Reverend Julius Benn worked in the cholera outbreak. My mother, who is still alive at 92, was the first president of the Congregational Federation. I must be the only man in public life, or indeed anywhere else, whose mother was the head of a Christian denomination. And this passion for justice is one that goes back to the beginning of history and will never be extinguished. And I think that is the most powerful influence. Why do we live in an unjust world and an unjust society when we are all equal in the eyes of God?
The keepsakes
The book
Karl Marx
But to read the Bible from cover to cover, and to read Das Kapital from cover to cover, I think would give me a better understanding of the world from which I had been removed in my isolation on the desert island than anything else.
The luxury
kettle and an inexhaustible supply of tea bags
Well, I was going to say, if you allow a kettle and an inexhaustible supply of tea bags I think that's what I'd go for.
Presenter asks
4:29How did [your father] come by [the title Viscount Stansgate]?
My dad was elected in 1906 as a Liberal member... And then Churchill said to Attlee, we'd like a few Labour peers. And so father agreed to become a peer... So when my brother Michael was killed in 1944 as a pilot in the RAF, I was saddled with the thing... When he died, they threw me out of the Commons... But it was a very interesting exercise in how the British Constitution works.
Presenter asks
10:16What does [your mother] think of everything that's happened to you? Does she feel pleased or disappointed by the way your career has gone?
Oh, I think she's a well, first of all, don't relate her only to me. I mean, she's a person very much in her own right... she's very supportive. But I mean we have discussions and uh you mustn't think that uh family discussions are you know political in a narrow sense. It's a continual mutual influence.
Presenter asks
22:16When you stood against Dennis Healey for the deputy leadership in '81, and against Neil Kinnock last autumn for the leadership itself, were you not necessarily seeking to replace them, but simply for your challenge to be heard?
Oh, well, obviously if you stand, you're standing seriously. It's not what one might call a frivolous candidature. But in the case of those two candidatures, they did have, because of the number of meetings and opportunities to make speeches and so on, they had an impact on the opinion, not only of the Labour Party, but I think of the public as a whole.
“Well, I'm not aware, I see, of being loathed except by uh people with power. Uh certainly going round and in the street and shopping and on my bike in Chesterfield and uh on the bus and the train. People are tremendously warm.”
“Well, you see, I suppose the most powerful influence in my life is what would be called the dissenting tradition. An ancestor of mine, William Benn, the Reverend William Benn in Dorchester, was ejected from his living in 1662 because he wouldn't take instructions and was a congregationalist. My grandfather, my father's father, was a congregational minister in East London. The Reverend Julius Benn worked in the cholera outbreak. My mother, who is still alive at 92, was the first president of the Congregational Federation. I must be the only man in public life, or indeed anywhere else, whose mother was the head of a Christian denomination. And this passion for justice is one that goes back to the beginning of history and will never be extinguished. And I think that is the most powerful influence. Why do we live in an unjust world and an unjust society when we are all equal in the eyes of God?”
“There are two types of political life. There is the search for status and the search for influence. And I did decide, I suppose, quite consciously, that just climbing up the slippery pole in the hope of getting somewhere was not really a satisfying existence. I've had all the fruits of office, but I have tried to use such experience as I have to encourage other people. And if I had an epitaph, I would like people to say he encouraged us.”
“I think what happened during those years was that in the working week I was trying to be a practical minister, but in weekend speeches I was thinking much more deeply about these things, and it didn't happen suddenly. You see, you mustn't think it was just a question of opportunism, which is what is sometimes thought. I think that in the course of life people do change their view. And what you have to do is to examine very carefully whether it was a genuine and authentic and serious decision to reach based on experience or whether it was just hopping all over the place. I think there is a continuity of thought in favour of more democracy, more internationalism, a higher degree of sort of moral judgment in politics, and that these are the guiding lights which you could trace back over well, right back to my childhood. I think if I had to defend myself before the throne of the Heavenly Grace, I think that's what I would say on the day of judgment.”
“Oh, well, not so much my own, because one of the nice things about getting old is you don't want anything. I mean, I d obviously I don't want a peerage, I don't want cash, and I don't want office personally for myself. And of course, if you don't want anything, you're very, very much stronger. And I'm enormously optimistic about the future. But of course, there are a few little things we've got to clear up, and there are a few little problems. I think one of the problems, if you're a socialist, is this, that people at the moment, after this terrible experience of the last ten years, where an awful lot of people have suffered, you know, the roller coaster of Thatcherism, they want a convalescence.”
“Well, I don't agree an ageist thing to say. Because I suppose when you get to this age, people say, talk about the veteran, the old man, as a form of abuse, which is the equivalent, I suppose, of sexism. But I love it. I wouldn't take a day off my life. I wouldn't go back to yesterday. And if I'd known what fun it was to be 60, I'd have done it years ago. Somebody said, if I'd known what fun grandchildren was, I would have had them first. And I've got now five grandchildren, little granddaughter. All my children are very, very happy and very supportive. And so I've never been happier in my life.”