Lord Kinnock: Lord Speaker’s Corner

Former leader of the Labour party Neil Kinnock, Lord Kinnock, is the latest guest on Lord Speaker’s Corner.

‘I guess that's what gave me my politics basically. The idea that many people working together could produce and provide at the level of quality that would've been absolutely impossible for the individual or the family.’

Lord Kinnock speaks about growing up in south Wales and what drew him to politics, his early years as an MP and the Labour party of the late 80s and early 90s. He also speaks about his regrets from his time as leader, plus how politics and public discourse has changed today:

‘I don't want deference. Deference is not part of my makeup and I don't want anybody else to show it. But respect, accommodation, compassion, those instincts are fundamental to human beings, and they're too often being discarded or suppressed.’

Lord Kinnock also explains that he wished he had challenged the President of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), Arthur Scargill, more forcefully about the need to ballot its members:

'I told Scargill at the beginning of April 1984 that without a ballot, the strike would not succeed. And I said it publicly, I just wish that I'd said it more publicly (even), and repeatedly over the subsequent months as a way of simply telling the truth to men and their families who were showing superhuman loyalty to the cause and whose loyalty was being abused by someone who had a very peculiar, very odd interpretation of what he thought of as his socialist mission, which was misplaced and misleading and assisted in tragedy. I've said before that Scargill and Thatcher deserved each other. Nobody else did.'

The former Labour leader also gives a rare insight into private discussions between himself and Shadow Chancellor John Smith in preparation for the 1992 general election. Watch or listen to the full episode to find out more.

See more from the series https://www.parliament.uk/business/lords/house-of-lords-podcast/

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