0:00

This

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is a global player original podcast.

0:08

Welcome to Sweeney Talk. It's a podcast

0:10

series where I get to interview people who've

0:12

done serious stuff with their lives

0:15

and then got into trouble. Big trouble.

0:17

I'm not here to lecture them about that.

0:20

I'm kind of a professor of big troubleology

0:22

myself. I've got history with

0:24

the church of Science, North

0:27

Korea, Donald Trump, Vladimir

0:29

Putin, Tommy Robinson, and

0:31

the Russian Army. I'm

0:34

here to find out what it feels like

0:37

to be in the deep doo doo. How

0:39

you survive it? And then how the hell

0:42

you get out of it? If you've been

0:44

in trouble, you're not alone. So

0:47

come along for the ride. You might

0:49

learn some new tricks. You might have

0:52

a laugh. But one thing is sure

0:54

the best stories aren't told by

0:56

the well behaved. And

1:02

once you've listened to the interview, you can hear what

1:04

I really think about in Sweeney

1:07

keep stalking. Find that exclusively

1:10

on global player. The

1:16

great paradox of politics says

1:18

that no human being should ever trust

1:20

the leader who craves power.

1:22

But that those leaders who show

1:24

great humanity lack the

1:27

craving for power. So we end

1:29

up with people like Boris Johnson and

1:32

not today's guest, Alan Johnson.

1:34

Often said to be in modern times

1:36

the greatest prime minister we never had.

1:38

He is, without doubt, the best

1:41

writer who's held high office

1:43

in this century. His autobiographical series

1:46

is an astonishing achievement. This

1:48

boy, please miss the postman in the long

1:50

and waning road, showing a torch like back

1:52

into time and what it was like to be grindingly

1:54

poor in the fifties and sixties Britain.

1:57

Two novels have flowed too. What

1:59

stands out is Alan Johnson's common

2:01

decency. Unless that is, you're a member

2:03

of the far left, salty end of the labor

2:05

movement, then you're in trouble. But

2:07

let's start with the paradox. Alan Johnson,

2:10

the leaders with real humanity

2:12

and humility like you and we really

2:14

trust hardly ever make

2:16

it to the chop

2:17

job. Why is that? I don't know whether

2:19

that's true. I think, you know, I didn't know

2:21

clemately. Although I have to say his grandson

2:23

has done the audiobook from my

2:25

latest noble. Richard Hatley is an actor.

2:28

That's fantastic. Came to in the archers.

2:30

Yeah. It's my link with Hatley. But

2:32

by all accounts, He was a very modest

2:35

man, a very humane man. So

2:37

I'm not sure whether that's true. All I know is

2:39

I never wanted the top job. I wanted the

2:41

top job in my union and was very

2:43

clear about the pathway towards

2:46

it. I got that and it was almost to see if every bit

2:48

of ambition had been taken out of me except I

2:50

still wanted to be star, and that's still the case, John,

2:52

and I'm still hoping for a break there. Have you

2:54

got a band? No. No.

2:56

Not anymore. But you're dressing by the way,

2:58

you look if you

3:00

got fancy kind of truths on.

3:02

It's been raining, so they're a bit rains matter.

3:04

But -- Yeah. -- you're looking pretty like, it's

3:06

called mutton dressed as lamb. Yeah.

3:10

Well, once a mod, always a mod. But

3:13

no. So I I, you know, I saw I close

3:15

to the top there as home secretary. I

3:18

saw what I terrible job being

3:20

prime minister was. I I saw how

3:22

it not just disrupted your life, but

3:24

how it disrupted your family's

3:26

lives and everyone around you. And I

3:28

didn't want any any part of it. And

3:30

I felt almost guilty with people

3:32

in, you know, the Labour Party that ideally

3:34

love. Kind of pushing me, but

3:36

me not wanting to be pushed.

3:39

Whether I'd have been any I mean, it's good that people

3:41

would say, oh, the best prime minister we never had.

3:43

That's better than the most awful, you know,

3:46

bloody prime minister was ever thrust

3:48

upon us. Hey, you know. You'd Alan, you'd

3:50

have to be really -- Yeah. -- to

3:52

to earn that title. You're right. Yep.

3:54

Now let's let's with

3:57

with your mom and dad. Your mom is

3:59

from Liverpool. Yeah. My mom is down from

4:01

Liverpool. Where we're whereabouts where she's from? And

4:03

filled. And filled. So But

4:05

but but Ebersonal or or Liverpool?

4:07

Critical question because you can live in Amfield's

4:09

and be Eberson? Well, that

4:12

was the case of my uncle Harry, my

4:14

mom's brother-in-law. Who took me to

4:16

everton versus Aston Villa. In the days

4:18

when everton had Roy Vernon and

4:20

Alex Young, the Golden Vision, they were league

4:22

champions. Is this in the ZCard,

4:24

though? It's really international. Were they doing

4:26

ZCard? It might have started doing so. It's nineteen

4:28

sixty three, fifteen

4:30

to sixty four. Anyway, my uncle

4:32

Harry fed me a load of I was smoking

4:34

from about the age of ten. He smoked

4:36

woodbine untipped. Which

4:39

was like smoking raw hay,

4:41

you know. And he was pushing me to his

4:43

fags, and I wanted to see manly.

4:45

So in the first half of the match

4:47

on the terraces, I was taken

4:49

his wood blinds, smoking him,

4:51

and at half time, I fainted. I just

4:53

fell to the floor. Well, my old new

4:55

Harry didn't wanna leave the match. I think they were one

4:57

year up against Aston Villa. And they

4:59

gave us this seat since John's ambulance took

5:01

us to sit in the stands. And

5:03

my uncle Harry said, I'll have to bring you

5:05

to more is I've never got into the stance

5:07

of criticism part before. But

5:10

so that was my one experience of

5:12

watching Evanston. But, no, it was It

5:14

was Warren Road in Liverpool.

5:17

A new house my mom moved into

5:19

when she was small, when she was about

5:21

four, so nineteen twenty five with an

5:23

indoor bathroom and sink

5:25

in a homes fit for heroes. They didn't fit

5:27

didn't build many of them. But they built this

5:29

estate in Liverpool. And Ellis is

5:31

then my mom kind of regressed because

5:33

she left Liverpool when she was eighteen when

5:35

Wall broke out. She had a very hard

5:37

life there, by the way. So her mother

5:40

had had eleven kids by the age of

5:42

thirty eight and died at forty two.

5:45

Her mother, my mother's maternal grandmother,

5:48

had died at forty two, and my mom was

5:50

convinced that she was gonna die at forty two

5:52

as well, and she did. She had a

5:54

heart condition called mitral stenosis. She

5:56

had all kinds of problems, and

5:58

then she married a fatless idiot during

6:00

the war. I'm sorry to speak so

6:03

so brutally about my

6:05

father, but, you know, he was fatless.

6:08

She made the wrong choice. A, he was

6:10

a wonderful musician, played the piano

6:12

beautifully. But, you know, was a

6:14

womanizer, used to beat my mama when he

6:16

came back drunk, was a gambler. And,

6:19

you know, she made all the wrong mistakes

6:21

in life. But that she

6:23

moved to London to work for the

6:25

nappy, met him married

6:28

him went to where he came from,

6:30

which was North Kensington, quite wrongly

6:32

called Nottingham Hill these days. This

6:34

whole sway of Wesley's It's called

6:36

Nottingham. That's a space agent lies.

6:39

It is. Absolutely. I mean, it was

6:41

North Kensington, London, West town. We never called

6:43

it. We called it anything. We called it, Kensington

6:45

or the town. We didn't call it Nottingham.

6:47

And, you know, that was the kind of

6:49

grinding poverty, the same kind of

6:51

terrible housing. That people would have had

6:53

in Leeds and Glasgow in Liverpool, you

6:55

know, after the war, there was not only the

6:57

problem of all those terrible decrepid

7:00

houses there was the fact

7:02

that the houses that had been

7:04

bombed that needed to be real but rebuilt. So

7:06

it was a huge problem for government to replace

7:08

that kind of housing. Thankfully. I

7:10

think it largely went by the sixties,

7:12

but we were very much living

7:14

in those circumstances. Our house that we

7:16

lived in in southern Street in

7:18

North Kensington was condemned as

7:20

unfit for human habitation in the 1930s,

7:22

and we were still living in those. Terrible

7:25

conditions in the fifties. We're talking rats.

7:27

Oh, we're talking everything. Cobroaches aren't

7:29

so used to cockroaches. We're

7:31

talking rats. We're

7:34

talking any kind of vermin you could

7:36

imagine what was there. In

7:38

the winter, the flies, and the blue

7:40

bottles, and all of that in the summer, you

7:42

know, which seemed to be, you

7:44

know, this was a holiday camp for them to

7:46

come into these squalid unsavory

7:48

conditions, damp, terrible damp,

7:51

there'd be two families, a family to

7:53

each house. So originally there were four of us in one

7:55

room. That was very common. Then we got

7:57

two rooms. But there was lots of other

7:59

families in one room. So basically,

8:01

there'd be four stories on these, what

8:03

were quite grand houses once? Every

8:06

floor occupied by two families.

8:08

So, you know, eight families,

8:10

whatever, let's say sixteen, twenty, twenty

8:12

five people, no bathroom, no

8:14

toilet, this horrible old Cassie out in the

8:16

backyard that no one would wanna go to.

8:19

I sound like that multipotency thing

8:21

here. I know forty eight of us. I know about newspaper.

8:23

But these were quite common conditions. We

8:26

didn't think we were poor or underprivileged

8:28

or deprived in any way. Everyone

8:30

around live in that same way in those

8:32

same squalid conditions. Were

8:34

the streets dangerous? Yes.

8:37

Very very dangerous. You know,

8:39

it's fights. We're chucking out

8:41

time at what we used to call the KPH

8:43

Kensington Palace hotel in Labrador Road.

8:47

And almost any other pub you could

8:49

name. My father played piano,

8:51

although he's a pub pianist, the

8:54

fights outside afterwards to fight

8:56

between women, I remember to women

8:58

fighting each other in the street. And

9:00

God knows what kind of problems went

9:02

on within families. Because the police weren't

9:04

interested in domestic violence. My father

9:06

used to beat my mother up regularly. And because

9:08

you were living cheek by jowl with so many

9:10

people, you heard it Police weren't interested in

9:12

that. So there was violence at

9:14

murder as well. I mean, we lived

9:16

around the corner. To

9:19

ten Rillington Place. K? And I don't

9:21

even know Christie, and then that was a big called

9:23

Salab. They changed the name of

9:25

the street. What was it rutford

9:28

Avenue, I think they called it, because it was

9:30

so notorious. Yeah. I tell a

9:32

story in this boy. I won't bore you with that about me

9:34

delivering milk to ten Riddington

9:36

Place. And then when I was nine,

9:38

Caso Cochran murdered on the corner

9:40

of my street, a black, young, black carpenter

9:43

coming back from St. Charles'

9:45

hospital. One night, he cut his

9:47

son, his carpenter. He was walking back

9:49

surrounded by crowded city boys. Murdered

9:51

no one has ever been arrested or

9:53

prosecuted for that murder. So when people

9:55

like Nigel Farage sort

9:57

of in tone that we've lost

9:59

something, the time

10:02

before when the country

10:04

was much more homogeneously white,

10:06

etcetera. And things were good

10:08

then. That. They were No. I mean, try

10:10

telling that to my mother. I mean, my poor mother

10:12

died when she was before she'd

10:14

had a chance to I mean, she

10:16

The one thing my mom dreamt of, like so many

10:19

other families, was her own

10:21

front door. There was no way she was kind

10:23

of out of buy a house, particularly after my

10:25

father left when I was eight so she was on

10:27

her own with us too. Cleaning and

10:29

scrubbing. Job after jobs. She used to about

10:31

five jobs, cleaning down in

10:33

Church Street in South Kensington. Torch

10:35

houses up in LabCorp. People who were very kind to my

10:37

mother, by the way, gave her lots of stuff and

10:39

helped. And and you and you book you wrote

10:41

about how they one of

10:43

the worst things for you was going to the local

10:45

shop and asking for more tick from the go

10:47

Tic from mister Baraman. Yeah. Mister Baraman

10:49

never refused us. But good on whom.

10:52

Yeah. My mom built up such a debt that

10:54

my sister started, my formidable

10:56

sister who's three years old and me, started working

10:58

for mister Behrman on Saturdays and Sundays when

11:00

she well to pay down my

11:02

mom's bill. So the only way she

11:04

was gonna get out of there was

11:06

for a council house. Everyone was waiting

11:08

for a council house. And she died

11:10

on the council house waiting list, you know.

11:12

Hey, I got a council house. I got married when I was

11:14

eighteen, had a council house when I was nineteen.

11:16

But if you'd spoken to my mother

11:18

about those that era being a

11:20

time of peaceful innocence, she'd have just

11:22

she'd have laughed. I mean, it would it

11:24

was if anything I mean, we progressed since then, not

11:27

gone backwards. We if anything, we progressed

11:29

in terms of our society. Our ignorance

11:31

of history makes us slammed

11:33

our own times. Things have always been

11:35

like this, but actually today is

11:37

better. Anyway, well, at least you go

11:39

around that neck of words now. You you only

11:41

thing gonna get hit by is a Jabatta.

11:49

Your

12:01

mom dies, and your

12:03

sister does this amazing thing.

12:06

She manages to

12:08

bamboozled assistance. You don't go into

12:10

care. It was incredible. I mean, she

12:12

had been looking after me from a very young age

12:14

because my mom was in and out of hospital.

12:16

A lot, you know, to have this mitral

12:19

valve drained.

12:22

And so we I mean, there's one

12:24

Christmas describe when

12:26

she was ten and I was seven, we were on our

12:28

own all over Christmas. And she cooked my Christmas

12:30

dinner, the worst meal I've ever had

12:32

to endure in my life, by the way. But

12:34

she forgive her for that. What was the

12:36

problem in that cooking this year?

12:38

Well, she got a a hamper. My mom,

12:40

like most people then, working class families,

12:42

they paid trippants a week into a,

12:44

you know, Christmas club and you got a handbag

12:46

with a Dundee cake and, you know, Christmas

12:48

pudding or whatever. And then she got the chicken

12:50

from the butchers that was part of the deal, but she didn't

12:52

know you had to take the cellophane off. she stuck

12:54

it in the oven with the cellophane on.

12:56

That that was rescued when the smell of burn

12:58

in permeated through this multi occupied

13:00

premises. Someone came and helped us to

13:02

get out and Linda cut the chicken up.

13:04

Yeah. It wasn't it wasn't a good experience.

13:06

How she got her girl guide badge

13:08

for cookery? I

13:10

do. I do not know. By the way, what's

13:12

sweet about this is that you're being

13:15

really funny about it. So

13:17

you're you're not That's funny, John. It won't,

13:19

you know. My mom was a

13:21

really funny, pretty,

13:23

petite liver pugging. She'd laugh in

13:25

all the time. So what you do, you don't

13:27

sit there and have a kind of thesis about

13:29

what terrible conditions we're in. And we had, you

13:31

know, me and myself I mean, you know, I had an

13:33

easy life. It was my sister and my

13:35

mother who, thank god, these

13:37

two strong women, So just

13:39

coming back when my mom died,

13:41

Linda was sixteen, I was

13:43

thirteen. The age of majority then was

13:45

twenty I said, Alinda, what do we do? She

13:47

said to me, say nothing. Say nothing

13:49

at school. I mean, how we managed

13:51

to go under the radar? I mean, I'm so

13:53

pleased about By the way. In a way, I've got mixed

13:56

emotions about this. I think, you know, there's a lot of

13:58

intervention to be made in families at

14:00

times, but there's a lot of kids who have taken into care

14:02

when there's family members who could be

14:04

I am there to look after them. Passionately agree

14:06

with you. I did a series of stories about

14:09

Professor Saroy Medo for the BBC,

14:11

essentially giving bad evidence against

14:13

cut death mothers. Yeah. Sally Clark,

14:16

Angela Canning's donor Anthony, name, but

14:18

three. But one of the other

14:20

consequences of this bad evidence was

14:22

that Sally was removed as the mother of

14:24

her surviving child. Right. And

14:26

never created a proper maternal bond

14:28

with survived So when she

14:30

was finally freed from prison, he was

14:32

like a stranger to her. Yeah. Because and

14:34

and this had a catastrophic effect

14:36

on her. Yeah. But

14:38

also, it feels to me that if

14:40

there are granaries and grandads around,

14:43

then then the state should go

14:45

because care is not good. I'm I'm a

14:47

patient of a charity called Family Rights Group, the

14:49

campaign for just that kinship carers.

14:51

They call them these days. Yes. But

14:53

but I'd duck under all of that system.

14:55

And we were fine. We were living

14:57

in warmer road, which is just about where Grenfell

15:00

Tower is is now. And

15:03

then my mom through

15:05

the letter box came this offer of

15:07

a council house to my mom who

15:09

dead in Welling Garden City because they

15:11

were gonna pull our road down. Linda's

15:13

strategy of just staying quiet and

15:15

keeping, you know, storm was

15:17

falling to pieces. I said to my sister, what are we

15:19

gonna do? She said, they'll have to pull the house down around

15:21

us. And I thought, they'll move us

15:23

more easily than, you know, than that.

15:25

Anyway, she took when the letter came,

15:27

offering the council house. She

15:29

marched straight off to the council. Said my

15:31

mom's dad, but me and my brother, I'll have this. Thank you

15:33

very much. And the guy there said, you

15:35

know, suddenly we were on the radar. He said,

15:37

you're only sixteen. You got to be twenty one to

15:39

have a council house. And your brother's only

15:41

thirteen. I'll send someone around and

15:43

into our life came to wonderful mister

15:45

Pepper, social worker. And

15:47

things didn't start off work because mister

15:49

Pepper. He made a little presentation in our

15:51

front room. I was there. Front room, we only

15:53

had two, but he he

15:55

said, Alan, I've got you

15:57

foster parents to your school in

15:59

Chelsea. Linda who left school at fifteen

16:01

to train to be a nursery nurse.

16:03

I've got you a place at doctor Bernardo's

16:06

in their big headquarters

16:08

at parking, you can carry on your training

16:10

and live there at the same time. And I think he expected

16:12

around and applause my sister to tour

16:14

into him. Hand on hip, finger

16:16

wagon. You're not gonna split those up, she

16:18

said. Poor old mister Peppa went away

16:20

with this giant kind of linda

16:23

shaped flea and his ear. And he got us this

16:25

place. He got us this place.

16:27

See, it was probably the worst place the

16:29

council had on their books. They thought two bits of

16:31

kids will be in this. Ones

16:33

worth. No. No. I

16:35

don't know where this was. I never went to look at it,

16:37

Linda did. Saw what that she

16:39

told me afterwards that they'd taken off the

16:41

yenne doors. Previous occupants to

16:43

burn his firewood. I mean and they expected us

16:45

to move into it. In that state, she rang

16:47

mister Pepper up straight away, put her

16:49

full pants in, press button I.

16:51

We're not accepting this. And mister Pepper said, you know what? I've

16:53

been through to get you this. And she said,

16:55

well, you go this is the way she left it. Should you

16:57

go and look at it? You think you can live there with

16:59

your family. Kind of look me on the line, Tom.

17:01

And we never heard of that place again. We got this

17:03

lovely two bedroom masonet, you know,

17:05

indoor bathroom, first, we don't

17:07

have. In number eleven Pitt

17:10

House, in your growth battersea. I mean, we had to go

17:12

south of the Thames. That was traumatic for us,

17:14

but eventually eventually we

17:16

got over that And we lived

17:18

there very happily for two years. Then

17:20

my sister got married to a lovely guy

17:22

from Watford. They put a down payment

17:24

on a cemetery attached in Watford

17:26

that was three bedrooms, she wanted me to come. I said, I'm

17:28

not moving to the north. I mean,

17:30

I now live in whole, so, you know,

17:32

I got over that. And so I went back and lived

17:35

in digs around North

17:37

Kansington from about the ages

17:39

sixteen. Now,

17:55

before we switched on, I

17:57

told you that I was a postman

18:00

too. Yes. And then I was gonna push

18:02

you on this, John, because I've had this so many

18:04

times. I was supposed to know, say, yeah, you were

18:06

a Christmas casual, you know. It's

18:08

not the same thing. Well, listen.

18:10

I don't think I've ever carried

18:12

anything. So some of the

18:14

time I'm going to the war zone, In

18:16

Ukraine, I have to wear a very, very

18:18

heavy flat jacket with heavy

18:20

ceramic plates. And what it reminds me of

18:22

is when I was astute at postmen carrying the

18:24

heaviest bag I'd ever have to carry

18:26

ever, and it was cripplingly heavy.

18:29

Yeah. And and dogs having

18:31

your arm off Yeah.

18:33

And also people being kind of some

18:35

people being lovely, but some people being really

18:37

quite rude and offensive and having to struggle

18:39

putting flimsy envelopes through really

18:41

stiff. And it's actually. Yeah. There's a

18:43

technique to that. Oh, there's a technique which

18:45

which which those in the know. We used

18:47

to exploit you, students. Terrible.

18:49

I mean, you must've get exploited. I'm

18:51

I'm bullied. I can remember, oh, that's

18:53

bad. I mean, that way is bad. Well, there was

18:55

there was a guy who was he was

18:57

apparently asked, and there's lots of

18:59

rubber bands Yeah. And he was having to

19:01

go at me at something like this, and I flicked

19:03

him rubber band, and he hit him.

19:05

And I said, I'm I'm terribly sorry.

19:08

But also, I

19:10

loved it because it was the money

19:12

was good and there was lots of fresh

19:14

air and it was a public service.

19:16

Yeah. Yeah. So you you were

19:18

helping people with then you what's a

19:20

lovely line in Jordans

19:23

-- Yeah. -- for

19:25

who can bear to think of

19:27

themselves forgotten. Yeah. Yeah. I was I

19:29

mean, when I joined, it was part of civil

19:31

service. You were uniformed civil

19:33

service? You signed the official secret sign. The

19:35

official secret there's a moment

19:37

in your – in the Longer Mining Road, when

19:39

you're an MP and

19:42

a friend of the ministers trying

19:45

to get you some insight into what's going on the

19:47

civil service. Well, I'm afraid he hasn't signed the official

19:49

secret exactly. I said, wait.

19:51

Sorry. When I was eighteen?

19:53

Yeah. Yes. Yes. But

19:55

also you say and you quote the

19:57

lovely line from from

19:59

Gray's allergy. Yeah. What's

20:01

the line? Yeah. Four many of Bloom is

20:03

four many a gem of purist race

20:05

marine, the dark fathoms

20:07

of ocean bear. Full many Bloom

20:10

was born to blush unseen and wasted

20:12

sweetness on the desert air. I was very,

20:14

very struck by that because what

20:16

you're identifying here is a

20:18

number of people who your colleagues

20:20

in the post office, who were

20:22

really brilliant people, Autodox,

20:25

who had had been horribly under

20:27

educated. And then spent the rest of their

20:29

life catching up in a way.

20:31

Yeah. I mean, I said, you know, they were

20:33

the most literate bunch of people that I'd

20:35

ever worked with. And at the time when I wrote that

20:37

I was an MP so you could draw your own conclusions. But,

20:40

you know, there's something about discovering

20:42

poetry yourself when you haven't done a

20:44

kind of English glitch a course at university, you

20:46

discovered it all yourself. You're kind of

20:48

more enthusiastic about it in a

20:50

way, but it was a bit like a secret

20:52

society as poetry lovers.

20:54

In slough sorting office, which I've transferred

20:56

to when I got a council house. Come come

20:59

friendly bomb. And follow on slough.

21:01

Yeah. It's a political human. By the way, it's a

21:03

lovely place. It's it's Yes.

21:05

And I and I completely get it -- Yeah. --

21:07

that actually don't flag off flower. I

21:09

mean, you can you can if your poet, Laura, it. But

21:11

actually, if you've come from a

21:13

really poor background and place

21:15

with horrible housing, then suddenly you've got

21:17

a nice council house on the state. Yeah.

21:19

That's lovely. It's gorgeous. And, you

21:22

know, front garden, back garden, all of

21:24

that. Great and the Pueblo state was well,

21:26

great neighbors because rid of the neighbors were all

21:28

West Londoners who'd been moved out to

21:31

allow is a big LCC estate,

21:33

London County Council estate, and they took us all

21:35

from Sheba's Bush, Nottingham Hill Acton, all

21:37

that same area. So it's a bit

21:39

resentment by local people in SLau, I

21:41

guess, you know. I told the story of

21:43

two copas when Yeah.

21:45

First wife came to SLau station.

21:47

It's only thirty five miles from London, but, you know, it was

21:49

countryside to us. And there were

21:51

two coppers outside the station leaning

21:53

up against their blue and white

21:55

fooled anglia police car. And

21:58

I went up to one and said, do you know you waited at

22:00

Britwood estate? And he said, I should do.

22:02

I have to go there often enough. And,

22:04

you know, that's when we first realized this

22:06

place had this terrible reputation. Well,

22:08

we'd come from the slums of

22:10

North Kensington. And but we were waiting. What is

22:12

this terrible place? You know, is it like all

22:14

the fights we used to see in North

22:16

Kensington? It was pastoral. It's the

22:18

only way I couldn't describe it. It

22:20

was lovely. Greenfields, you know, all the gardens that I

22:22

talked about there. It was wonderful. I had nineteen

22:24

happy years living there. And also, you you

22:26

got a lovely what's it think when

22:28

when you're a postman your

22:30

beach or whatever it's called, what sort of like a walk.

22:32

Yeah. Your walk, but you had a lovely walk up

22:34

into the children's or something like this. Oh,

22:36

well, later when I learned to drive out of

22:38

proper rural delivery. a

22:40

place called Little World Common, which is

22:42

virtually a hamlet, not even a village. But,

22:44

you know, hundred and twenty customers

22:46

driving long distances taking

22:48

eggs around from the farmer to deliver,

22:50

taking bags of cold used to collect from

22:52

clears in Burnham High Street and take out

22:54

to elderly residents, given the odd

22:57

resident a lift in the back who wanted to come in. We

22:59

delivered the newspapers because no

23:01

newspaper shop could deliver out

23:03

there. And that gave me a little

23:05

taste of the kinda spoke postman that kind of

23:07

life, although you weren't allowed to have a black and white

23:09

cat in a car that was against regulations.

23:11

But that kind of importance

23:14

that that important detail in

23:16

the social fabric of the country that the

23:18

post office was, both in terms of post

23:20

offices, sub post offices

23:22

in rural areas. And as as postal

23:24

workers delivering to every single address

23:26

or twenty seven million of them no matter

23:28

how remote twice a day, six days

23:31

a week. Alright. Amazing.

23:49

Let's move on to politics. And I'm

23:51

I'm fascinated. I had a big run-in with

23:53

the church of scintology. I'm fascinated by

23:56

cults. At least I think some of the

23:58

time, I have no time whatsoever for the

24:00

far right, but there's also a problem with the far left

24:02

in British politics. And one of the

24:04

things you're very, very gentle

24:06

on assuming, ma'am. But there's a moment

24:09

after the last election

24:11

where you're there with the guy from a dead mountain.

24:13

Yeah. Yeah. Would you like to tell the listeners

24:15

what happened? Well, it was a bit of

24:17

a rant, but it was midnight. And we'd

24:20

lost. We'd not just lost Bishop

24:22

Auckland. We'd lost Bolsova. Dennis

24:24

Skiners' seat. We'd lost Skunthel. We'd

24:26

lost Grimsby in my neck of the woods.

24:28

We lost all these seats at Lee, which

24:30

was Andy Burnham's seat. We'd lost

24:32

all these seats that have been labor forever.

24:36

Into the studio, March's John

24:39

sat down next to me celebrating

24:41

the fact it looked like we were gonna win

24:43

Putney. Oh, well, great. We were gonna win

24:45

Southwest fifteen. All due respect to

24:47

Putney, I like Puntney. I love the people who

24:49

live in Putney, but that wasn't balancing out

24:52

the biggest loss

24:54

and the most horrendous

24:56

night. And it was Corbyn. You

24:58

could feel it in whole. I wasn't a candidate then. This is

25:00

twenty nineteen. You could feel it. Working

25:02

class people are not

25:04

gonna be told talk to as if they're

25:06

one of the masses, as if they have no

25:09

agency themselves, as if they

25:11

need someone someone middle class from

25:13

Islington to lead them out

25:15

of and this kind of philosophy

25:17

that Corbin steeped in. There's always

25:19

been this in the trade union movement. I

25:21

had the good fortune to have an English

25:23

teacher who made us read. Didn't

25:25

make us we were quite willing to, animal farm, you

25:27

know, on our hinge lidded desks when I

25:29

was thirteen, fourteen, and

25:32

I fell in love with Allwell, a Red Animal Farm then. I

25:34

read eighty nineteen eighty four. Ki Bin Asp additional

25:36

flying. I read Brady World and all

25:39

and not Brady World. That's all

25:41

just how actually, but I read nineteen eighty four. I

25:43

read all his stuff. So the thing that gets

25:45

me is Jeremy Corbyn and Seamus

25:47

Milne is is adviser who went to

25:49

Russia and sat on Napoleon with Vladimir

25:51

Putin. Have they never read animal

25:53

farm? I mean, what they get is you're talking

25:55

about the cult. I mean, it did feel like

25:57

a cult. I mean, you know, and it did

25:59

feel like the people who deeply religious

26:01

who refer back to the bible as their

26:03

they refer back to DAS Gabbatdown and Marx.

26:05

And I've got great respect for

26:07

Marx. By the I mean, I actually read that's

26:09

capital, unlike Harold Wilson Nukhren get past

26:11

the first page. I mean, for its time, it

26:13

was revolutionary. The theory says, the theory is

26:15

surplus value and all of that. was of its

26:18

time when working people didn't have

26:20

the vote and when they're you know, we were in

26:22

a completely different so this

26:25

adherence to one system

26:27

and this hatred of anyone who

26:29

disagrees with them. Even to the extent

26:31

of the people who disagree with them

26:33

on who have minor

26:35

little differences about

26:37

what Trotsky said on the

26:39

hatred that they generate and

26:41

this the arrogance

26:43

the arrogance that anyone who

26:46

thinks any different to that must be

26:48

completely subhuman, you know. The

26:50

problem I have with these people is

26:52

that them their sense of

26:54

purity is so cult

26:56

like that the

26:58

effects of it is to to deliver

27:00

what seems like permanent tory

27:02

rule. You put it far better. I love that

27:04

that sense of purity. And and

27:06

and it's Yeah. That's that's because of

27:08

the vote. isn't it? Because the voting

27:10

system means that these parties

27:12

can't stand on their own two feet, and the same happens

27:14

on the right as well. They come

27:16

in, they take labor's clothes because they know we're, you know,

27:18

popular with the working client because we do

27:20

stand candidates because we are a

27:22

party of government. Deliberately designed to

27:25

be that way, they steal our clothes

27:27

because if they stood on their own

27:29

platform, they'd be annihilated. Whereas in a

27:31

system where you had purple representation.

27:33

You could, you know, get a couple of percentage

27:35

of the votes. You wouldn't have any under

27:38

my system or proportional representation. You

27:40

need to get more than twelve percent of the vote. be

27:42

represented in parliament. But fair enough,

27:44

if they stand on their own two feet,

27:46

socialist workers' party, you

27:48

know, workers' revolutionary party,

27:50

whichever kind of little called Momentum Party.

27:52

Let's call it the Momentum Party.

27:54

Stand on your own two feet

27:56

with all the things that you believe in that got

27:58

into our manifesto at the

28:00

last election. And gave us the worst result

28:02

we've ever had in our in our modern

28:04

history. You can do

28:06

that under a better electrical system. Where

28:08

do you sell in Europe? Did you vote I ran the

28:10

labor campaign to remain in Europe? Yes. You

28:12

did. Yeah. So that we can Maybe part of

28:14

the problem. We said we got we got sixty six

28:17

percent of labor support opposed to

28:19

relate. However, Jeremy Corbyn

28:21

never said in a single sentence

28:23

clearly and properly, you've

28:25

really, really, really got to vote. You've played a

28:27

bit of a game Jeremy. But I don't blame him

28:29

for that disaster. I blame Cameron. I mean,

28:31

his Cameron's folly. And

28:34

Jeremy believe

28:36

what he'd always believed, Jeremy Corbyn,

28:38

he knew that the tide was against him

28:40

in the Labour Party. Labour Party voted

28:43

unanimously. For the remain in the first

28:45

conference after he was elected leader. So he

28:47

kind of went through the motions. We got

28:49

sixty six percent of labor support was to

28:51

vote. Not enough. Cameron only got well,

28:53

if the you know, Cameron whose

28:55

whose idea it was, if he'd got anywhere

28:57

near forty percent of Tory supporters

29:00

it would have been a yes vote. I mean, it was very close, of

29:02

course, you know, fifty two forty eight. I

29:05

believe that a dark Russian money

29:07

may have helped push the

29:09

vote for Brexit. What do you think about that? If you

29:11

believe that, John, you know far about these things

29:13

for me. I think there is

29:15

a clearer explanation. And the

29:18

explanation was the net migration

29:20

figures that came out a month

29:22

before referendum day. The net

29:24

migration three hundred and

29:26

thirty three thousand, far

29:28

higher than anything, and people said that we

29:30

had an open door policy in Ruger, which

29:32

was rubbish, far higher than anything

29:34

under Blair or Brown, and this is under

29:36

Cameron who said he'd get it down to the tens of

29:38

thousands. That was a gift.

29:40

That was a gift for

29:42

but let's face it. The real argument there

29:44

was about stopping free movement. And that

29:46

was a gift to the leave camp, and

29:48

they exploited it to the

29:50

full. In the end, I was surprised it was so so

29:53

narrow because because this argument

29:55

that actually, you know, will come

29:57

out of Europe No. The

30:00

argument that we were putting on the

30:02

doorstep was a quite a measured

30:04

look. We can deal with issues like that. We can

30:06

work with our European colleagues

30:08

human principles, the principles of pooling sovereignty. The

30:10

guy coming along behind us or the

30:12

woman, voting to leave, said

30:14

three things take back control.

30:17

Take back control. So you add together

30:19

the years of people actually believe in

30:21

our laws are made in Brussels when

30:23

that was a nonsense Yeah.

30:25

I mean, virtually, it was trade that was made in Brent. Everything

30:27

else, education, schools, policing.

30:30

We're totally in control of what, but

30:32

but that added to. That

30:34

headline bleeping figure never before have

30:36

we had such a

30:38

huge net migration figure and people

30:40

being told when Turkey comes into the

30:43

EU. Which they would never come in because we would have vetoed it. There's gonna

30:45

be millions more. So I think that's what did for

30:48

it. What

31:05

was your darkest moment when

31:07

you're in government, when you're in power? And

31:09

what was your best moment? The darkest moment

31:11

was probably when I was home secretary.

31:14

That's when all the dark things happened. The home

31:16

office is not the Ministry of Fun.

31:18

Although I must say I enjoyed all my

31:20

ministerial appointments, but that was there was

31:22

that guy who tried to detonate a plane

31:24

as it flew into Detroit Airport.

31:26

And he'd been educated in England.

31:28

He'd gone to Holland. There's a kind

31:30

of international trail. The shoe bomber? This guy He wasn't a

31:32

shoe bomber. He was the underpants bomber. Okay. He

31:34

put Semtech's in his underpants, but he

31:36

got through all of our security system.

31:38

And my darkest worry

31:40

and had shared with many, including

31:42

my American opposite number,

31:44

was that there were gonna be loads of them

31:46

now who'd found a way to get through our security

31:48

that was that was really bad. It was Christmas two

31:51

thousand and nine. My best

31:53

moment wasn't anything to do with

31:55

me being a as being an MP, the whole

31:57

tournament, who'd been treated so disgracefully, the

32:00

biggest fishing port in the

32:02

world, and they were all pronounced

32:04

out of work with no help. They were classified as

32:06

casual workers in an industry with a

32:08

mortality rate seventeen times higher

32:10

than coal mining, and they fought for years,

32:12

twenty years before I came in

32:14

as their MP because the fishing

32:16

docks are in my constituency, and

32:18

we got them there from the Blair government

32:20

in two thousand They got

32:22

every penny they'd been asking for, and that

32:24

was my greatest political moment. I

32:26

worked on the Sheffield Telegraph between eighty

32:28

one and eighty four at one point, yeah, because

32:30

I was annoying the news that it said, go

32:32

to the Grimsby and go to a crawler. And I

32:34

did, and I spent six days at sea.

32:36

And all I was doing was,

32:38

you know, drinking tea and watching, but it was some of the

32:40

hardest days of my entire life that they

32:42

there were some I was constantly seasick.

32:44

One point they called a dolphin and a and

32:46

a nap, but it was brutal.

32:48

They went to the places human

32:50

beings shouldn't be. I mean, they worked under the

32:52

northern lights, great. But it was, you

32:54

know, as far as human beings could

32:57

go sometimes forty degrees below freezing. And

32:59

they were on the decks. These men.

33:01

Thousands of them killed. There's a

33:03

problem. There are two there are two

33:05

great problems at the moment. One of which, if you're

33:07

looking at the covenant. I think the majority of

33:09

cabinet ministers have been privately

33:11

educated. How are those

33:13

people going to understand? What

33:15

ordinary people in this country go through.

33:17

I don't know what the makeup is of

33:19

the of the latest cabinet.

33:22

I don't take that as the yardstick because they

33:24

had no control over whether they were probably educated.

33:26

Claire Matthey had no control. He was probably Hey,

33:28

Murray. You know, yeah, there you go.

33:31

You know, fair point, lots of labor leaders have been

33:34

privately educated. Lots of labor MPs and

33:36

very good labor senior

33:38

politicians have been privately educated.

33:40

They had as much control over their childhood as I

33:42

had over mine. So I don't take that as

33:44

the first. I take the fact that

33:47

something, you know, this incredible

33:50

statistic about the percentage of

33:52

people who get into the higher ranks of the

33:54

civil service and the judiciary are

33:57

not And the media and the media

33:59

have gone to private school. That is

34:01

bad. And that's happened virtually over

34:03

the last thirty or forty years, you

34:05

know. day in the media when you could be the

34:07

court reporter on the, I don't know, whole

34:10

daily mail and make it to Fleet Street and

34:12

-- Yes. You know, because I'm an

34:14

editor. When I well, I joined

34:16

the Sheffield Telegraph in AC1 and

34:18

this was the first generation

34:20

of graduates. Yeah. But there were many the people older than me

34:22

who had left school at sixteen

34:24

and were brilliant. Yeah. And

34:26

I learned far more

34:28

from them about literature

34:30

and also life than I ever

34:32

did knocking around the

34:34

other seven percent of the population go to

34:36

private school and sixty

34:38

percent of senior positions. Okay. So

34:40

that's not the problem.

34:42

But it's a broader problem. But there's a second

34:44

problem, which is the way that

34:46

social media, I think, generates

34:48

antagonisms. And we've lost

34:50

the sense of -- Yeah. -- of

34:52

community and also

34:54

of civility in politics.

34:56

I think that's true, although I'm

34:58

hopeful, but the problem is with labor, isn't it,

35:00

John? I mean, the authorities are gonna be the that's

35:02

what they believe. And, you know, I grew up a lot

35:04

of working. My my dear brother-in-law, Mike, married

35:07

my sister, Linda, he was a working

35:09

class story. I knew lots of

35:11

working class stories. They're perfectly entitled to their view. Why

35:13

have they been able to I'm

35:15

a liberal I'm a liberal I've always

35:17

been under writing liberal or liberal democrat,

35:19

but I'm up success about labor excepting the Brexit vote

35:21

in a way that I don't think we should do

35:24

because it's foolish, and I'm not sure who

35:26

paid for it. I I can't be

35:28

certain about that, but I think that you Well,

35:30

acceptance accepting just means

35:32

that you're not going

35:34

to belittle the result

35:36

of that referendum. And the idea that

35:38

you would have a people's vote, you would I mean,

35:40

some of my best friends were arguing this, you

35:42

know, Peter Manelson, Tony

35:44

Blair, etcetera. And it was a lived debut. You should have a people's

35:46

vote as if the first one was, you know,

35:48

conducted by robots or

35:50

ever. Yeah. I mean, it was

35:52

never gonna work. It was never gonna work.

35:54

Even if you'd been successful and had it,

35:56

there would have been lots of people who would

35:58

have been voting leave who would have been

36:00

remained before, but who felt hold on.

36:02

We've told you once. Now we're telling you So

36:04

so so what we should have done so just from

36:06

his point, we should have agreed Theresa May's deal. Theresa

36:08

May's deals with what deal was the

36:10

softest Brexit you're ever gonna get. We

36:12

stayed in the symbol market, stayed in the customs

36:14

unit, albeit

36:16

freight period. Northern Ireland was sorted. Lots of European agencies we

36:18

stayed in. It had been negotiated

36:21

with the European Union. Painstakingly.

36:24

We voted against it. If we'd voted for

36:26

it, it would have it would have carried. So that

36:28

was the big mistake. I think, will it come back? And

36:30

Europe will come back on

36:32

to the political horizon. But Kiestime is sensible

36:34

enough, intelligent enough, and reads

36:36

the ruins well enough to know. This

36:38

isn't the

36:40

time to say we're gonna commit ourselves to going back into

36:42

anything. It's too soon. Are you an optimist about

36:44

the future? I'm always I'm always

36:46

an Always

36:48

an optimist. It's more fun. You know, kids today.

36:50

Yeah. I've got a twenty two year

36:52

old, but, yeah, kids today

36:55

They drink less, they swear less,

36:57

they smoke less, they take fuel

36:59

in chocolate market. Well,

37:02

yesterday, they were taken for you. You know, it's

37:05

they there's if you see

37:07

the world through their eyes, you

37:09

kind of have to be optimistic that we

37:11

we just mustn't let things slip

37:13

back. I think R. H. Tony

37:15

said civilization is built on whatever construction coming out of slime.

37:17

And if we don't keep working out, it will slip back

37:20

in. And I don't want to slip back to those

37:22

days of Kelso

37:24

Cochrane and the horrible

37:26

way that women were treated, let alone

37:28

people in minorities, let alone, you

37:30

know, people have a different sexual orientation,

37:32

and ensuring chemically castrated by the state. I mean, those were great

37:34

days, weren't they the early fifties, you

37:36

know? My dad was in the Battle Atlantic

37:38

as a engineer in the

37:40

merchant navy. And one of the reasons I'm here

37:42

is because of unensuring

37:44

cracking the Nazi enigma codes --

37:46

Yeah. -- because Without him,

37:48

more British ships would have been so

37:50

amazing. And the idea that this

37:52

great man was was

37:54

killed up That was also the ending of the laws,

37:56

criminalizing homosexuality, which was one of the great

37:58

achievements of the Wilson government. Yeah. Yeah.

38:00

More Jenkins. In a

38:02

sentence or

38:04

two, there are people here who are listening who might think of

38:06

me entering politics. Would you

38:08

tell them yes or no? Yes. Because

38:12

in our society, we

38:14

deal with conflict in a civilized

38:16

way, and that civilized way is

38:19

through a parliamentary democracy. That's

38:21

the big difference between me and the far left. They

38:23

don't believe in the parliamentary doing. It's

38:25

bourgeois democracy. I believe in a

38:28

part so did you know,

38:30

Kiahardy. Yeah. Kiahardy and he said

38:32

Kiahardy, so did Kiahardy who formed the

38:34

Labour Party. That precious ability

38:36

to debate,

38:38

decide abey whatever result comes from it, and obey the will

38:40

of the people at general elections.

38:42

And elections, I think, is crucial. For

38:44

that to work, there have to be people

38:47

involved in it. And there have to be people going back to your

38:49

first question who want to be the leader who

38:52

wants to be prime minister. I don't

38:54

quite take your view that, you know, you

38:56

have to you know, be drained of

38:58

all compassion to even want the job. You know, I think, thank god there are people ambitious

39:00

enough to wanna get to the top of politics,

39:02

but politics is a noble profession.

39:06

And despite all the problems now, social media and all the rest of it,

39:08

if young people wanna go into it, I

39:10

would say, yeah, just, you know, whatever party

39:12

you wanna pursue, pursue it that way.

39:15

Rather than pursue it in non parliamentary ways. And

39:18

then Johnson, you are have been throughout

39:20

your entire life a guardian of

39:22

British democracy. And that's

39:24

gonna be a say, John. Down your bit as

39:26

well. And thank you.

39:28

Thanks, John, for doing

39:30

what you've done. Thank you. Thanks

39:33

for listening to this episode of Sweeney

39:35

Chokes. You can hear what I really think about.

39:37

And then Sweeney keeps

39:40

talking. Find that exclusively

39:42

on global player. Listen

39:45

and subscribe now. Until

39:47

the next time, Goodbye.