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. In this episode, I am delighted to be joined by Torrin Wilkins, the Director of Centre Think Tank, as we ask questions today. 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. 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: 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. It is very arduous work, which generates a lot of dirt. While the miners take risks and endure hardship, their families, particularly their wives, face many household obligations. They dealt with filthy clothes and very dirty men, certainly until the arrival of pithead baths in the 1920s and 30s, and particularly in the 1940s after nationalisation. The whole family was unavoidably engaged in digging out the coal.

The second important characteristic is, almost by definition, that the settlement is around the pit. This 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, and also because of the proximity of where you live, where your family lives, and where society as a whole is developing around the pit. That in turn breeds a spirit of collectivism. It is understood that very few of the freedoms and assets that individual human beings need are available to them for purchase because of low wages and difficult conditions. Collective activity, whether in terms of work or in terms of social conduct, is a straightforward reality of life. It is the only way to get along 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. That is what a mining community is like. It is fairly common in other communities, such as the cotton or steel industries, but 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 Southeast Wales, which used to be Monmouthshire, I was at the northern edge of the coalfield. At the very top of the valley in which I live, the Sirhowy Valley, it was across the valleys that most of the bituminous coal was developed. Coking coal and steam coal are vitally important for driving industry and maritime trade. 

That community, when I was growing up, was about 17 to 20,000 people. My father was a coal miner. He became disabled and had to become a steelworker, and my mother was a district nurse. I was very fortunate because I was an only child, and there were two incomes in the household. My grandfathers were both coal miners, as were all my uncles, except one, at some point in their lives. The Great Depression scattered my father’s brothers across the United Kingdom. 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. It was the realisation, by the time I was maybe 10, certainly by 12, that all the good things we enjoyed in that community had been collectively developed, financed, and organised. The national provision, like the National Health Service, which was born in Tredegar, and the concepts that followed, all developed over the previous 50 years by the Tredegar Medical Aid Society, were championed by Aneurin Bevan, our Member of Parliament, when he became the Minister of Health after the war. It collected tiny contributions from almost all the workers in Tredegar to develop a comprehensive, high-quality system, free at the point of need, embodying the essential concepts of the National Health Service.

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

The step from understanding that to realising that this was applied socialism, practical, everyday provision by collective means, where we could exercise freedoms we never could have exercised otherwise, is the essence of it. 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, which was easy for me to understand. This was not uniquely associated with coal mining, but 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 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. I naturally joined the Labour Party. That is where I come from.

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

Neil Kinnock: No. My wife was a very strong woman with great insights. Back in the early 80s, when the Social Democratic Party was formed, she said it was easy to see what they stood for. They are Labour without the unions and with the bomb. 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 increasingly impatient with what they saw as an increasingly leftward shift in the Labour Party. Instead of staying to combat it with confidence in their own beliefs and nuances, they split.

Of course, it caused immense damage to the Labour Party. Apart from everything else, this meant that by 1983 the anti-Conservative vote was divided, and Mrs Thatcher could secure 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. When I became leader in 1983, the main problem I identified was that the Social Democrats had adopted political stances appealing to Labour and Liberal voters, as well as some Conservative voters. This 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.

Instead of assisting with the re-education and reorientation of the Labour Party, they impeded it. I had to offer reassurance and exercise more time and energy on securing change for Labour because of the unfavourable comparison with those in conflict with us from the Social Democrats. I have never changed that view. In addition, Social Democrats were committed to proportional representation from their very early stage, back in 1980, 81. Yet they failed to understand that the only way we would get a more proportionate system, since we would never get it from a Conservative government, was through a Labour government. Their action in dividing the Labour vote very seriously impeded any arguments in favour of electoral reform. They were, in a sense, self-denying in that respect, as well as destructive. 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: Jim was kind enough to ask me to join the government twice. On both occasions, when he became Prime Minister first, and then a year or so later, I had to say to him 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. Then, on the second occasion, I was deeply engaged in organising the defeat of the government’s devolution proposals for Wales. I greatly admired and liked Jim Callaghan, not only because many people liked Jim. I have known him since 1961, when I was a student at Cardiff University. Of course, he was the Member of Parliament for Cardiff South East. I was active in the city party, so I knew 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. We got on very well. I could speak to him as an older friend, not just as the Prime Minister.

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.” He did. He never held any grudges. Our friendship and familiarity continued.

I do not think it would have benefited me much. I know that when I ran for leadership and was elected leader of the Labour Party and the opposition, people said I was very inexperienced. 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, have not done an apprenticeship in those roles. There are many instances of people who have the aptitude and skills required to fulfil senior political roles without prior experience, but they know their trade. They know what leadership requires, and they get on with it. I just hope I was one of those people. I do not think a couple of years as a junior minister would have equipped me any better to lead the opposition. The history of those who have held senior office before becoming party leaders is, to say the very least, mixed.

I cannot help thinking about 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: It is certainly a fair point to make. In Kevin Hickson’s book, there is an interview where you designed the Labour National Policy Forum. How could it be better used? What kind of effect do you think it would have if it were better used in the way that Labour formulates policy?

Neil Kinnock: I stole the idea from the Swedish Social Democrats, so I cannot claim the genius of inventing it. I took the idea from the Swedish Social Democratic Workers’ Party because I observing their system in action, and 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. Representatives from every part of the United Kingdom are on the policy forum. 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. The whole spectrum of society, political experience, and expertise is represented, and they constitute the forum’s membership proportionately.

The function of the forum is to take policy proposals from constituency parties, trade unions, regions, interest groups, and affiliated societies such as the Fabian Society, the Labour Movement for Europe, or the Co-operative Party. They consider various proposals and thoroughly analyse the utility and potential impact. They then develop a body of policy which can be submitted to, in the Swedish case, their biennial Congress, or in the Labour Party’s case, the annual conference. The conference then conducts further due diligence and can assent, reject, or modify the proposals, acting under the guidance of the National Executive Committee and the Shadow Cabinet. Those roles are firmly installed.

The problem of under-use, or under-exploitation, 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 he was a very diligent and effective leader, having been a shadow spokesman and a very smart guy, he never fully comprehended the purpose and potential of the National Policy Forum. I offered to arrange for members of the Swedish Social Democrats to explain to John the thinking behind the idea. There was even one Member of Parliament who was a member of the Labour Party and, because he was half Swedish and spoke fluent Swedish, was also a member of the Swedish Social Democratic Party. He could have explained it. The offer was never taken up.

I made the same offer to Tony Blair when he followed John. When the National Policy Forum came together, I attended the first meeting, which I think was in 1993. I thought this was a talking shop that would never be used unless somebody got hold of it. Nobody ever really did get hold of it. Understandably, and inevitably, when confronted with this policy formulation process, leadership would wonder how it could be manipulated to conform to leadership preferences. That is just natural. It is not anti-democratic or any nonsense like that. It is just what leaders do. It is what I would have done if the policy forum had existed when I was the leader, because you want to ensure policy coherence while also adhering to your preferences. That has been the story, really, of the National Policy Forum.

It has never been fully exploited as a means of policy development. It has evolved into a means, on a good day, of endorsing leadership preferences, which is good for party cohesion. It is just that I think we might be missing some inventive and useful ideas if we don’t give it 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. To some extent, so 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. In those countries, I am not saying they can operate with impunity, in total independence, or in ignorance of the political environment. Of course, they cannot. But the political environment in Britain is more subject to the hostile press looking for ways to cause problems for the Labour Party than in those countries.

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 democratic political parties in the UK. It is an idea that still has to be fully developed. 32 years after I invented it, it is only of interest to real, deeply embedded anoraks.

Torrin Wilkins: For the second part of the interview, I will discuss current issues and where your views stand on them. You mentioned the Swedish Social Democrats, and we focus a lot on Nordic policies across 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: Yes. 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.

If I had a wish, it would be that, in Britain, Labour had started earlier, around 1931, and had been in government more consistently. This would have sustained the idea that the welfare society has to be productive to ensure the resources necessary for maintaining a high quality of social provision, protection, and opportunity are sustained. Because that wish could never come true, 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 is paid for by quite high levels of taxation. There is a willingness among taxpayers to make that contribution that is not recognisable amongst sufficient numbers in the United Kingdom.

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

I am not looking for support from ideological conservatives or populists. But I know that it has always been vital for Labour to establish high-quality provision 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 in cures and treatments, and in scholastic and vocational endeavours, are manifest. But it also requires a fair tax system, which we do not yet have in Britain.

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. We have a system that imposes higher taxation on earnings than on owning.

 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. We need to obtain fair revenues from unearned income, asset appreciation, land ownership, and other assets that have risen monumentally in value over 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. They have achieved something like that. It is not perfect in the Nordic economies by any means. 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. I was reading through some of the articles on there, and one came up that I am sure you will know about: from Nation Cymru. There was the headline: “Labour’s most prominent anti-devolutionist” in response to you. The reason that they give is that you were against the devolution reforms of 1979. How do you feel that your views have changed since then? 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.

One of the reasons that I was very hostile to the form of devolution that was being proposed by Jim Callaghan’s government was that 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. That was not an ideological point; it was a very practical point. 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 after that, and Tony Blair introduced something akin to the original concept. 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.

Joel said his own creation was the back of a fag packet. 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.

The core of the problem is this: the Barnett formula in 1979 could not and did not properly account for the different levels of challenge in Scotland, whether industrial or rural, or in Wales, whether industrial or rural, in transition. It just so happens that the inherited poverty of Wales has led to higher levels of morbidity and illness across the generations. 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. 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. That does not enhance democracy. It weakens it. It does not attract people to engage in decision-making; it eliminates them.

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. 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 attract investment or make the case for more effective financing, I readily and happily do so because I want it to work now; we got it. It would serve no purpose to continue being antagonistic toward 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.

I hope that, with Labour’s commitment to the decentralisation of power, we will see it come to pass. I wish it had happened 40 or so years ago. I think we would be in a different position, both in deprived and neglected areas of England, Wales, Scotland, and, probably, Northern Ireland as well. Who knows? If there had been adequate devolved finance for Northern Ireland, with the particular issues addressed, 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? At the moment, in the United Kingdom, for various historical and political reasons, and against a particular economic backdrop 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. 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? How much did the 1987 and 1992 elections shift your view on that issue?

Neil Kinnock: 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 seeking to promote it. I had many political differences with them on other issues. Mistakenly, I confused the proposal with the people proposing it, which is often not a good idea.

In 1983, as I said earlier, in a slightly different context, Mrs Thatcher was elected with, I think, a majority of 41, with 43% of the vote, and naturally all the elected power, which she used ruthlessly. 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. We need to try to take out insurance against that. 

There are two ways of doing it. One that will never happen: the unification of the Liberal and Labour parties. The other one 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. He reported, I think, quite shortly after I stopped being the leader. It is a form of single transferable vote system. I think it would benefit our country by allowing the retention of constituencies and making representation more proportionate, though not perfectly so. I think there are errors in adopting a perfectly proportional system because it gives undue significance to tiny minority parties. I do not think that helps the democratic system. But a more proportionate system, based on constituencies, is what I favour.

Torrin Wilkins: 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 on something they are doing or would like to do, or if I have any ideas, I am more than happy to offer them.

That is the relationship. I would never seek to advise on details 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, very well-intentioned advice. I said to one or two of them, “Look, I hear what you say; you are not sitting in my seat.” There are considerations I cannot or will not go into that explain why we are doing what we are doing the way we are. You will just have to bear with me. Because they were friends, they did.

I just would not want to think that Keir or Rachel, or anyone leading the party now, was getting advice, demands, or suggestions from me that amounted to 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. 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. Initially, I did not give it a second thought. Then I mentioned it to my daughter, who was eleven at the time. She said, “Oh, I would love to meet Tracey Ullman.” I said, “OK, I will do it.” 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. Tracey has this gall, and she is still the ebullient Tracey she was in her late teens. She is a star and great company. I do not think it did me any good, though we did reach number eight in the charts. I have got to remember that. But I do not think it did a great deal of harm.

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. Outside the hall, I met Roy Hudd, Bill Owen, and a couple of other good old Labour performers of stage and silver screen.

It started to rain. Bill, for some reason, had a top hat. 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.

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

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 their hatred of 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.