Lord Kinnock interview

Will Barber-Taylor: Hello, and welcome to the Centre Think Tank interview series, In Conversation. As always, I am your host, Will Barber-Taylor. And in this episode, I am delighted to be joined in asking questions today by Torrin Wilkins, the Director of Centre Think Tank. And the recipient of our questions is Lord Kinnock of Bedwelty, former leader of the Labour Party from 1983 to 1992. Welcome to the interview, Neil.

Neil Kinnock: Hello, thanks very much for having me.

Will Barber-Taylor: It is great to have you on. Now, the first question I would like to ask is how important you think mining was in shaping the politics of Wales and your political upbringing.

Neil Kinnock: Well, coal mining and any mining has distinctive characteristics as an industrial occupation, as a means of economic exploitation. The first characteristic is perpetual danger for those engaged in it. And it is very arduous work, which generates a lot of dirt so that whilst the miners take the risks and endure the hardship, their families, particularly their wives, have got a great deal of household obligation, dealing with filthy clothes, very dirty men, certainly until the arrival of pithead baths in the 1920s and 30s, and particularly in the 1940s after nationalisation. So the whole family was unavoidably engaged in the act of digging out the coal.

The second really strong characteristic is, almost by definition, that the settlement is around the pit. So that leads to congested housing and the establishment of communities that are almost solely dependent upon the coal mine. Those two features breed a sense of community, of interdependence, both because of the nature and danger of the work and the hazardous working conditions, but also because of the proximity of where you live, where your family lives, and where the whole of society is developing around the pit. And that in turn breeds a spirit of collectivism, the understanding that very few freedoms and assets that individual human beings need are available to them by purchase because of low wages and difficult conditions. That collective activity, whether in terms of work or in terms of social conduct, is a very straightforward reality of life. It is the only way to get along, really, because there are no individual coal miners.

The nature and structure of the communities mean that there is an understanding of neighbourhood that goes right into the bone marrow. And that is like a mining community. It is fairly common in some other communities, the cotton industry, for instance, or the steel industry. Even those communities were more diverse and widespread than the very tightly knit coal mining community. When I was growing up in such a community in Tredegar in South East Wales, what used to be Monmouthshire, at the northern edge of the coalfield, literally at the very top of the valley in which I live, Sirhowy Valley, is across the valleys that most of the bituminous coal was developed, coking coal, steam coal, vitally for driving industry and maritime trade.

So that community, when I was growing up, was about 17 to 20,000 people. And my father was a coal miner, became disabled and had to become a steelworker. My mother was a district nurse. I was very fortunate. I was an only child, and there were two incomes in the household. My grandfathers were both coal miners, as all my uncles, except one, had also been at some time in their lives, but the depression of the 1930s scattered my father’s brothers all over the United Kingdom. And just my father and his eldest brother continued to work in the industry, and then in the locality.

The reason that I am giving you this long tale about the nature and structure of the mining industry and communities is that I did not come from a stridently political background. My parents were both convinced socialists and trade unionists, as indeed were the rest of my family, our friends and neighbours. But it was the realisation by the time I was about, I do not know, maybe 10, certainly by the age of 12, that all the good things that we enjoyed in that community had been collectively developed, financed, organised, whether it was the national provision, like the National Health Service, which was born in Tredegar, and all the concepts followed by Aneurin Bevan, who was our Member of Parliament when he became the Minister of Health after the war, had been developed over the previous 50 years in the Tredegar Medical Aid Society, which collected tiny contributions from just about all the workers in Tredegar to develop a comprehensive, high-quality system free at the time of need, the essential concepts of the National Health Service.

But whether it was that national provision, because I was born in 1942, the health service came into existence in 1948, my mother worked for it, as she worked for the Medical Aid Society after she completed her training or the education system, which was benefiting from the 1944 Education Act implemented by the Labour government of 1945, or the Workmen’s Hall, the glorious cinema, the park, the swimming pool, the tennis courts, the libraries, the dance hall, all the good things, and many of which we could never have afforded as a family were available to us because of collective action.

So I guess that the step from understanding that to realising that this was applied socialism, practical, everyday provision by collective means, where we could exercise freedoms, is the essence of it that we never could have exercised otherwise. I guess the concept of socialism was in my veins long before I came to comprehend socialism as an ideology. It was a means of mundane action, a way of life really, which was easy for me to understand. And whilst that was not uniquely associated with coal mining, the points that I made earlier to you about the collective and community nature of communal development around the coal mine meant that collective action was not a matter of developed organisation, it was a matter of instinct and the reality of existence. That is really where it came from.

Years later, I realised it could be developed into a coherent way of thinking about the world, society, and the economy. By the time I was 14, I also recognised that if we were going to secure improvements, and there was always a need and room for improvement, for making things better, then it had to be organised. So I joined the Labour Party naturally. That is where I come from.

Will Barber-Taylor: Just to move forward a bit in terms of your career, we recently published an article on the website marking 44 years since the creation of the Social Democratic Party. And I just wondered, reflecting on that period from 44 years ago to today, I suspect that your feelings have not changed, but have your feelings about the Social Democratic Party changed at all about that particular time in politics?

Neil Kinnock: No. My wife was a very strong woman with great insights. And back in the early 80s, when the Social Democratic Party was formed, she said, Well, it is easy to see what they stand for. They are Labour without the unions and with the bomb. And I think that summed up the Social Democratic Party pretty comprehensively. You could relate their origins to a strong commitment to the European Community. They were a group of Members of Parliament who grew very impatient with what they saw as an increasingly leftward intonation of the Labour Party. And instead of staying and combating that with confidence in their own set of beliefs and nuances, they split.

And of course, it caused immense damage to the Labour Party. Apart from everything else, this means that the anti-Conservative vote by 1983 was divided, and Mrs Thatcher could get 100% of the power, which she used with 1000% authority based on 43% of the vote, with the Labour and Social Democrat votes divided against it. But when I became leader in 1983, the main problem that I identified with the Social Democrats was that they had adopted political stances that were appealing to both Labour and Liberal voters and some Conservative voters. And it meant that in my efforts to shift and in some cases radically change Labour Party policies, I was perpetually accused of wanting the Social Democratic Party Mark II.

So far from assisting with the re-education and reorientation of the Labour Party, they impeded it. Because I had to offer the reassurance and exercise even more time and energy on securing change for Labour, because of the unfavourable comparison with those in conflict with us from the Social Democrats. And I have never changed that view. In addition, Social Democrats from their very early stage, back in 1980, 81, were committed to proportional representation.

And yet they failed to understand that the only way in which we were going to get a more proportionate system, or since we would never get it from a Conservative government, was by a Labour government. And their action in dividing the Labour vote very seriously impeded any arguments in favour of electoral reform. So they were, in a sense, self-denying in that respect, as well as destructive. So, based on the harm that they did to the Labour Party and the delay of any movement towards what I consider a more democratic and proportionate system, they were a bloody nuisance.

Will Barber-Taylor: I think that is a fair enough answer. Robert Harris suggested in his book, The Making of Neil Kinnock, that you held more power between 1974 and 1979 outside government than within it. In retrospect, did you ever think that, although it would not have been an electoral benefit to you in the 1983 leadership contest, you may have benefited from some experience had you had a ministerial role under Harold Wilson or Jim Callaghan?

Neil Kinnock: Well, Jim was kind enough to ask me twice to join the government. And on both occasions, when he became Prime Minister first and then a year or so later, I had to say to him, because I greatly admired and liked Jim Callaghan, not only because many people liked Jim. But I have known him since the early 1960s, since 1961, because I was a student at Cardiff University. And of course, he was the Member of Parliament for Cardiff South East. And I would have been active in the city party. So I would know him, and we had a friendly, not fond, but friendly relationship. He would always help, for instance, by coming to speak to the Students’ Union Socialist Society, which I was chairman of. So we got on very well. And I could speak to him as an older friend, not just as the Prime Minister. I had to say to him when he asked me if I wanted to join the government that it would be very dishonest because I was engaged in trying to move the government from a public expenditure policy to what I thought would be a more sensible policy. And then on the second occasion, I was deeply engaged in organising the defeat of the government’s proposals for devolution in Wales.

So I said, “Jim, I could not honestly become a minister when I have such basic reservations and opposition in two crucial areas of government policy. I would very much like to, in other circumstances, I would certainly like to serve your government, but you do understand.” And he did. He never held any grudges. Our friendship and familiarity continued.

But I do not think it would have benefited me a lot. I know that when I ran for the leadership and was elected as leader of the Labour Party and of the opposition, people said I was very inexperienced and so on. I think that on that score, most people who attain high political office, whether the President of the United States or, in the case of John Kennedy, a senator for a few years, which did not begin to compare with the office of President. And then the many other instances of people who have got the aptitude, the skills required to fulfil senior political roles, who have not done an apprenticeship in those roles, but they know their trade. They know what leadership requires, and they get on with it. And I just hope I was one of those people.

So I do not think that, in a couple of years as a junior minister, it would equip me any better to be the leader of the opposition. And the history of those who have had experience in senior office before becoming leaders of their parties is, to say the very least, mixed.

I cannot help thinking when you asked that question of Mrs Truss, who enjoyed several senior roles in government and how she lasted 44 days as Prime Minister. Anyway, there you go.

Will Barber-Taylor: I mean, it is certainly a fair point to make. In Kevin Hickson’s book, there is an interview for that. You mentioned that you designed the Labour National Policy Forum. How could it be better used? And what do you think, what kind of effect would you think it would have if it were better used, in the way that Labour formulates?

Neil Kinnock: I stole the idea from the Swedish Social Democrats, so I cannot claim the genius of inventing the idea. I took the idea from the Swedish Social Democratic Workers Party because I would observe their system in action, and I adapted it; you could not transport it whole to British conditions. It has never been properly used, unfortunately. The basic concept is of engagement by legitimate representatives across the party geographically in terms of their distinctive roles and politically in the development, formulation and implementation of policy, so that there are on the policy forum representatives of every part of the United Kingdom. Some have backgrounds in trade unionism, in local government, crucially, people who have expertise in women’s issues and concerns. Youth are there, guaranteed representation. Go through the whole spectrum of society and political experience and expertise, and they constitute proportionately the membership of the forum.

The function of the forum then is to take policy proposals coming from constituency parties, trade unions, regions, interest groups, affiliated societies, like the Fabian Society, the Labour Movement for Europe or the Co-operative Party, and so on. And by considering various proposals, and very thoroughly analysing the utility and potential impact, to develop a body of policy which can then be submitted to, in the Swedish case, their biennial Congress, in the Labour Party’s case, the annual conference, for further due diligence and assent, rejection, modification by the conference acting under the guidance of the National Executive Committee and the Shadow Cabinet. Those roles are firmly installed.

Now, the problem of under-use or under-exploitation, maybe that is a better word, comes from the fact that before I could convene a National Policy Forum, all I could do was design it, propose it, get it adopted and included in the Labour constitution, because I then ran out of time. We had the 1992 general election. John Smith came in, and although a very diligent and effective leader, as he had been a shadow spokesman, a very smart guy, he never fully comprehended the purpose and potential of the National Policy Forum. And I offered to get members of the Swedish Social Democrats, or as it happened, one Member of Parliament who was a member of the Labour Party and, because he was half Swedish and spoke fluent Swedish, was a member of the Swedish Social Democratic Party, to explain to John what the thinking behind the idea was. The offer was never taken up.

I made the same offer to Tony Blair when he followed John. So when the National Policy Forum came together, I went to the first meeting, and I think it was 1993, and I thought, well, this is a talking shop that is never going to be used unless somebody gets hold of it. Anyway, nobody ever really did get hold of it. But understandably, some would say inevitably, when confronted by this policy formulation process, leadership would wonder how it could be manipulated to conform with leadership preferences. That is just not true. It is not anti-democratic or any nonsense like that. It is just what leaders would do. I guess it is what I would have done if the policy forum existed when I was the leader, because you want to ensure coherence in policy, but also adherence to your preference. And that has been the story, really, of the National Policy Forum.

So it has never been fully exploited as a means of policy development. And it has evolved into a means of, on a good day, endorsing the leadership preferences, which is good in terms of party cohesion. It is just that I think we might be missing some inventive and useful ideas by not giving it a free rein.

There is one real difficulty in the UK, of course, in trying to emulate the Swedish and, indeed, now Norwegian and Danish model, because the Norwegians and the Danes have similar arrangements. So to some extent do the Social Democrats in Germany. But they do not operate in an environment in which the press is only looking for rifts, leaks, antagonisms, and divisions. So that in those countries, I am not saying that they can operate with impunity or total independence or ignorance of the political environment. Of course, they cannot. But the political environment in Britain is more subject to the hostile press looking for means of causing problems for the Labour Party than is the case in those countries.

So there is an inhibition on the work of the National Policy Forum that will always be difficult to deal with unless and until such processes become part of the natural activity of political parties in the UK, democratic political parties. So, it is an idea that still has to be fully developed. And that is when, 32 years after I invented it, there you go. It is only of interest to real, deeply embedded anoraks.

Torrin Wilkins: So, for the second part of the interview, I am going to be talking more about present-day issues and also where your views stand on those. You mentioned the Swedish Social Democrats, and we focus a lot on looking at Nordic policies in different countries and how they work.

Are there any other lessons that Labour can learn from Nordic Social Democratic parties? More generally, are there lessons the Labour Party could take away from the way those Nordic countries run politically?

Neil Kinnock: Yeah. Well, I mean, we are not describing utopia around the Baltic Sea. I want to make that very clear. However, by any measure, these societies are more fulfilled, more economically productive in many ways, and certainly more secure societies with greater opportunity than our country.

And if I had a wish, it would be that in Britain, Labour had started earlier, around about 1931, and had more consistently been in government to sustain the idea that the welfare society has to be productive to ensure that the resources necessary for maintaining a high quality of social provision, protection and opportunity are maintained. Well, because that wish could never come true. And therefore, we are left with the tasks confronting us now.

The feature of the Nordic social democracies that most people recognise and understand is the very high quality and quantity of social provision, which has to be paid for by quite high levels of taxation. And there is a willingness to make that contribution from taxpayers that is not recognisable amongst sufficient numbers in the United Kingdom.

The reason why they contribute without a great deal of complaint and finance very high-quality health, education, social care, and opportunity throughout the society, regardless of background, gender or age, is that they can see a connection directly between the level of their contributions through a fair taxation system and the standard of provision that is made. And that means that that consensus is sustained even when they have conservative-level governments or indeed quite extreme right-wing parties who either give support to coalition governments or are not very ferocious in their opposition. That is a social consensus that almost defies political boundaries.

Now I am not looking for support from ideological conservatives or populists. But I know that it has always been vital for Labour to be able to establish high-quality and connect satisfaction with those outcomes to a readiness to contribute. That requires two things.

First of all, the quality is observable, which is experienced. The hospital bed is there. The school class is small. The achievements of cures and treatments, the achievements scholastically and vocationally, are manifest. But it also requires a fair taxation system, which we have not got in Britain yet.

And it has been made more unfair in the last 14 years, and before that, during the Thatcher years. Those years were not sufficiently overcome by the 13 Labour years. So we have a system that inflicts higher taxation on earnings than on owning.

And that imbalance has got to be gradually corrected if we are going to get tax revenues that do not inflict severe charges on working people, but obtain fair revenues from unearned incomes, asset appreciation, ownership of land, and other assets that have risen monumentally in value in the last 40-odd years and are barely taxed. Dealing with those who have a non-domiciled tax status, I hope that is just the start, not for punitive reasons. Nobody is out to punish anybody, but so that all of the sources of wealth in society are fairly levied so they can finance improvements across both the economy and society.

Now, they have achieved something like that. It is not perfect by any means in the Nordic economies. And we must seek to emulate that because apart from anything else, they produce what, by any of the recognised measures, are more contented, happier, enjoyable societies, and I am all in favour of enjoyment.

Torrin Wilkins: I agree. To move on slightly to more recent events, you endorsed Vaughan Gething in the Welsh Labour leadership. And I was reading through some of the articles on there, and one came up, and I am sure you will know them, but from Nation Cymru. There was the headline, which was “Labour’s most prominent anti-devolutionist” in response to you. And the reason that they are given there is that you were against the devolution reforms of 1979. So, how do you feel that your views have changed since then? And would you say that you have always been pro-devolution? Or would you say that you have been on a journey?

Neil Kinnock: I have always been in favour of devolution and decentralisation of power. I do not expect that publication to recognise that. I was making the argument back in the 1970s that if the decentralisation of power was a good idea for Wales and Scotland, it was a good idea for everybody in what I recognised then as an over-centralised state and system of government.

And one of the reasons that I was very hostile to the form of devolution that was being proposed by Jim Callaghan’s government was because it was what I called sole firm devolution, that it was a concession to nationalism, not an effort to democratise the government of the United Kingdom. And that was not an ideological point; it was a very practical point. And I think that the results in the referendum tended to show that I was rather closer to the sentiment in my constituency and Wales than those who were trying to introduce that form of devolution.

In my constituency, we won by nine to one, and in Wales, we won by four to one. Matters evolved and developed after that, and Tony Blair introduced something like the original concept. Now, that reminds me that my arguments in 1979 were about the block grant, the means that had been developed by the then Financial Secretary to the Treasury, a dear friend of mine, Joel Barnett, for trying to make allocations of finance proportionate to Scotland and Wales.

Now, Joel said about his own creation that it was the back of a fag packet. And within months of actually introducing the system, Joel was arguing for reform. He did that until his dying day, very effectively in the House of Lords, where I was sitting alongside him when he continued to make arguments for the radical reform of his system.

And the core of the problem is this: the Barnett formula in 1979 could not and did not take proper account of the different levels of challenge in Scotland, whether industrial or rural, or Wales, industrial or rural, in transition. And it just so happens that the inherited poverty of Wales has led to higher levels of morbidity and illness across the generations. And the nature of the needs of Wales is different from the nature of the needs of Oxfordshire. It is quite similar to the needs of Cumbria, Northumberland, and even parts of the Midlands. And we need a different formulation.

The problem is that if devolution is not backed up by adequate, proportionate, utilitarian resources, then it is all responsibility without real power. And that does not enhance democracy. It weakens it. It does not attract people to engage in the process of decision-making; it eliminates them.

And we can see it, for instance, in the constant taunting by Tories of Wales and the National Health Service performance. By some measurements, in some areas of some services, Wales is doing better than England. But in terms of major salient measurements, waiting times, ambulance delays, cancer cures and so on, Wales is behind, simply because there are not the proportionate resources that are relevant to the needs of Wales made available by the Barnett formula and the system of Treasury allocations.

I have embraced devolution because it exists. We have got to get on with it. As individual members of the Senedd would tell you, wherever I can support efforts to try and attract investment or make the argument for more effective financing, I readily, happily do that because I want it now to work; we got it. And it would serve nobody’s purpose by continuing to be antagonistic to the concept.

I do make the argument, along with Gordon Brown, my dear comrade, that there is a case for devolution across the United Kingdom.

And I hope that with Labour’s commitment to decentralisation of power, we should see that come to pass. I just wish it had happened 40-odd years ago. I think we would be in a different position, both in the deprived areas and neglected areas of England and in Wales and Scotland, and probably Northern Ireland too. And who knows? If there had been adequate devolved finance to Northern Ireland, with the particular salient issues, we might not have had the repeated pauses in democratic government in that part of the United Kingdom.

Anyway, they are all arguments that develop out of the basic question: how are we governed? And at the moment in the United Kingdom, for various historic and political reasons, and against a particular economic background of deindustrialisation, we are not well governed. I would like to change that. Devolution to the whole United Kingdom is part of the answer to that. And I just wish that whatever nationalist newspaper you are quoting catches up with that reality. Though, of course, nationalists by definition have vested interests in perpetual grievance, for reasons we all understand.

Torrin Wilkins: Is it true that you were originally more sceptical of proportional representation? And how much did the 1987 and 1992 elections shift your view on that issue?

Neil Kinnock: Well, my view shifted most of all after the 1983 election. I had been sceptical about proportional representation, partly, and mistakenly, because of the kind of people who were seeking to promote it. And I had a lot of political differences with them on other grounds. And, as I say, mistakenly, I confused the proposal with the people proposing it, which is often not a good idea.

So, 1983 comes, and as I said earlier, in a slightly different context, Mrs Thatcher got elected with a majority, I think, of 41, with 43% of the vote, and naturally, all of the elected power, which she used ruthlessly. And on reflection after 1983, I thought, wait a minute, there is something wrong here, because for all the years since 1951, the Conservatives have continually benefited from a divided anti-Conservative vote. And we need to try to take our insurance against that.

There are two ways of doing it. One that will never happen, and that is the unification of the Liberal and Labour parties. And the other one, which is constitutional reform, which I think is worth working for.

The nearest I managed to come to promoting that when I was leader of the party was that I set up a commission and a lovely man, a professor of politics at Southampton University, with various experts on the commission to examine ways of securing a more proportionate election and government. And he reported, I think, quite shortly after I stopped being leader. It is a form of single transferable vote system. And I think that it would benefit our country because it would permit the retention of constituencies and make representation more proportionate, not perfectly proportionate. I think there are errors in going to a perfectly proportionate system because it gives undue significance to tiny minority parties. And I do not think that helps the democratic system. But a more proportionate system, which is constituency-based, is what I favour.

Torrin Wilkins: So, for my final question, of course, Labour looks likely to re-enter government, although nothing is certain with any election. Do you think that you will be offering them any advice or anything like that?

Neil Kinnock: I hate backseat driving. My comrades, whom I hugely admire and value, if they ask my opinion, either on something that they are doing or would like to do or if I have any ideas, I more than happily offer it.

And that is the relationship. But I would never seek to advise on detail or navigation, because it used to irritate the hell out of me when people tried to do that with me, even when it was immensely friendly advice, very well intentioned. I said to one or two of them, Look, I hear what you say, you are not sitting in my seat. There are considerations that I either cannot or will not go into to explain why we are doing what we are doing in the way that we are doing it. So you will have to just bear with me. And because they were friends, they did.

And I just would hate to think that Keir or Rachel or any of the people leading the party now were getting advice, demands, suggestions from me that constituted backseat driving. The only people who can drive are the ones behind the wheel.

Will Barber-Taylor: One final question. One thing that I have always wanted to ask you, Neil, is about a music video you were in in the 1980s with Tracey Ullman. And I just wondered, how did that come about?

Neil Kinnock: Tracey’s people, her agent and somebody contacted the office and asked if I would appear in this music video. And initially, I did not give it a second thought. And then I mentioned it to my daughter, who was eleven at the time. And she said, “Oh, I would love to meet Tracey Ullman.” So I said, “OK, I will do it.” So that is why I did it.

It led to the foundation of a friendship. I will be going out for lunch with Tracey in a couple of weeks; she has a great daughter who is also very political. And Tracey has this gall, and she is still the ebullient Tracey that she was when she was in her late teens, I guess she was then. And she is a star and great company. I do not think it did me any good, although we did get to number eight in the charts. I have got to remember that. But I do not think it did a great deal of harm.

I mean, the people who were determined to target my inexperience and immaturity and lack of gravitas and all that rubbish, they would have done it anyway. I got the same treatment. I went to a pensioners’ rally in Westminster Central Hall to make a serious speech. And outside the hall, I met Roy Hudd, Bill Owen, and a couple of other good old Labour performers of stage and silver screen.

And it started to rain. And Bill, for some reason or other, had a top hat. So I got his top hat, put it on, and we did Singing in the Rain together on the pavement to the delight of the old-age pensioners going into the hall.

So I went into the hall, made the speech, got a very good response, a standing ovation, all the rest of it. And I enjoyed myself. I was with my chums. No better company in the world than Bill Owen and Roy Hudd and people like that. And Lance Corporal Jones was there as well. And Clive Dunn was a lovely man. So we did, the four of us, singing in the rain. And that was represented as making me unfit for office.

So, I do not know whether it was because of the inadequacy of my dancing or my singing, though that was pretty good at the time, I think it might have had something to do with the fact that they hated Labour politics.

Will Barber-Taylor: Thank you so much for taking the time to speak to us, Neil. It has been a real pleasure.

Neil Kinnock: Thank you.

Note: This interview has been edited for grammar, clarity, and flow. The original recording is the final and definitive version.